look for it on netflix

I had insisted. It was the solstice, meant to be enjoyed outdoors. He brought his glass of wine and I'd brought my bowl of blueberries, feeding him every third or fourth one in what probably should have been an embarrassing way. If I wasn't over that by now.

Little kids were running around on the roof, babbling nonsense, and someone somewhere was smoking pot. How do you know when kids get a contact high if they act like this all the time?

The sun went down on the longest day of the year, the day's heat coming from below now, oozing back out from the concrete and metal. He kissed me. Then he kissed me for real.

And. . . fireworks. Big, literal, professional fireworks. Directly in front of us, perfectly timed.

Writing is hard, these days. We both feel it now that we're in the part of the romantic comedy that happens after the credits roll. But fireworks? The sequel to our first movie is straight to video.

~beatrix

about sex and chores and other big news

He came home and took off his clothes and pressed against me.

I said, “What’s that?”, and he said,

“I’m reaching out to you.”

I said, “We can have sex if you wash the dishes after, while I wash my hair.” but he just kept searching my face with his lips.

And I dodged those lips and asked if he promised until he promised.

I came out the winner all-around.

We found a new apartment, ready in a few months around the same time we are. We’ve been faxing a lot of things, but cross your fingers that the prize for all the paperwork is a washer and dryer and some walls.


~beatrix

being angry makes me tired OR word salad

I feel like a vegetable. I could be a carrot or a head of cabbage, if carrots and heads of cabbage were capable of a blood-boiling rage induced by subway performers.

I am broccoli. I have no face.

I want to move like acorn squash.

I could be jicama if a jicama pushed her smiling boyfriend away on Saturday morning (normally jicama’s favorite part of the week), rolled over, fell asleep for two more hours, then pretended to sleep for an hour more, all the while wishing he’d smile while he brought her some cereal.

I’m a potato.

~beatrix

dressing

You should know that I will buy party dresses before I will buy furniture. I might buy party dresses before I will buy food, which is sort of a cyclical budget and a diet plan all in one. I know some girls like shoes to the point that it’s really just a cliché, and you know I like shoes fine because you’re always tripping over that pile of mine by my closet, but party dresses are like therapy and maybe you need to feel pretty while you check your email once in a while.

You like this one, I think. I’ll wear it to your friend’s wedding with these shoes, probably, because they are good for dancing a lot, but I’ll need another black accessory to help them make more sense. You probably don’t care about the details, but yeah, I’m pretty sure you really like it. . . . That’s another thing about party dresses: your boy hands have an easy time convincing me I’m sexy when they find my scrawny curves through a layer of tailored satin.

You can twirl me, tell me you’re lucky ’cause you like me every day in ponytails and jeans and boots that keep out rain and cold, but sometimes I’m extra show-off-able for your friends. You can keep touching me, baby, but let me take it off before we get too far. . . . I haven’t even worn it out of the house yet. . . .


~beatrix

serious is a relative concept

It seemed sort of serious when he let me help him with his Netflix queue. We decided to watch all the Harry Potter movies in order, interspersed with Mad Men. It took us three installments to get through the first Harry Potter because I kept falling asleep, so we’ve managed to plan our couch time for at least the next few months.

“Oh! Can we add Grey Gardens?
“That’s a girl movie”
“You don’t have to add it.”
“I’ll add it, but I’m also adding this one where Jessica Alba is a stripper.”

This from the boy for whom Netflix recommends the category “Gay & Lesbian Action & Adventure”, which seems pretty specific.

Yeah, planning what movies we are going to watch seemed serious.

He has Torah portions in his calendar along with work obligations and parties.

“Is it ever going to matter that I’m not Jewish?”

He ‘s across the room when I ask; he comes close to answer. He doesn’t say anything I don’t know.

My hands find his chest, fingers up his tee shirt sleeves. He explains, things I knew without asking: It’s important to him, he’d never expect anything from me, it would matter if there were kids.

And this is where we are and my tears are fat and falling and his are more sideways and shiny. And I need to know need to know need to know now. Can we do this? Will we do this? How do we do this?

Can you believe we're really here? Talking about babies?

“I need to know now. I can’t waste time. I need to know now. I don’t want to be old and alone.”
“You won’t be old and alone. You’re loveable. You’d find someone.”

Fatter, fallier tears. Because finding someone to love me is not a problem. Don’t you see? Don’t you see I want you? Lie to me. I promise I’ll believe. Don’t you know? I’ve wished for you over 312 smoky birthday candles, sent the hope of you up into 143 dark night skies toward that first prick of starlight, kissed my necklace clasp every time it falls to the middle with a secret thought of this, and fallen asleep 5840 nights, hoping to dream you into my reality. Don’t you see? Don’t you see how lucky you are? I want to choose you.

But, please, don’t leave.

I have his shirt clutched in my fist.

“No. No. You can’t want me to be with someone else.”

He’s back.

“You’re right. You’re going to be with me. We’ll figure the rest out.”

He picks me up, tosses me on his bed.

The rest we’ll figure out. Every day, we’ll figure out. This part, we know. This is good.

hard's not so hard

“Ok. I promise we can have sex tomorrow. Probably. I’ll put it on the list.”

Maybe this is the hard part. . . .

When seeing each other revolves around my hair washing schedule. And we keep ending up in diners at 11:45 on work nights because he works late and the chocolate-covered biscotti I bought at Rite-Aid to get cash back don’t really count as dinner.

When there are complicated logistics involved in ending up together in bed. And once we’re there, all we want to do is sleep.

When the majority of our conversations end with one of us reminding the other that we like our jobs or at the very least other people want them.

I think this might be the hard part.

It’s the being with him that’s the easy part.

~beatrix

on budgeting time

I spend my waking energy

23% Working at my actual, paying job
19% Making out / Watching Glee
5% Trying not to fall asleep
4% Deciding what I want for lunch
9% Doing something to my hair
5% Pinching my belly fat / using a combination of mirrors to check the visibility of the bones in my spine / wondering if my boobs are shrinking
6% Idly speculating about the lives of strangers
8% Remembering what it was I was going to blog about
6% Deciding if this matches / is too short / requires a bra
5% Calling my mom
10% Trying to convince friends and strangers to get a puppy and/or let me cut their hair

I’ve given a number of successful haircuts. In fact, the only mishap occurred on my own head. And even though I think I might be slowly convincing him, Ted’s not so sure it would be good for our relationship.

Maybe he should just get a puppy.



~beatrix

we are gathered here today

We had sex three times then wrote some wedding vows not quite on purpose:

I, Beatrix, take you, Ted, to have and to hold and all of that even if you get fat from all the snacks. I love you more than eating. . . Um. . . I love you almost as much as eating. . . but it’s very close. Also, I promise to try to remember to clean the hair out of the shower drain as long as you try to remember to trim your mustache before it gets long enough to get in my mouth when I kiss you. And you know, I’ll forsake all others. . . unless Natalie Portman agrees to that thing we talked about. So I generally take you for better or worse and richer and poorer, though let’s aim up and not down, ok? Forever and ever.

~beatrix

decisions, decisions

The band became two in the front, diverged, left a space for a square of metal with an inset diamond. It was, in short, the ugliest ring ever. And it was at least three sizes too big.

The moral dilemma: I like this boy. A lot. I want to say yes. But I’ve spent years not only believing but preaching that an ugly ring means that a boy doesn’t know you well enough to marry you.

I was only too happy to wake up from this nightmare. It was early, and I told Ted about it, because these days I tell him everything. I told him about it before we broke the futon again and before we fell back asleep perpendicularly so as not to have to lie in the ditch of the collapsed frame.

~beatrix

accidents

There was a whole mess of traffic in Brooklyn and no left turns and it took forever to get on the bridge, and I should have been more terrified by what he said.

“They should just kick out everyone who isn’t from here,” he declared, before realizing that that would mean I’d have to go. “Except you,” he corrects.

“What if I got deported?”

“I might have to marry you.”

“Really?”

“I’d think about it.”

Another day in the same car but on a different bridge, I claimed to have not kissed that many boys before him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells me, “ . . . as long as I’m the last one.”

He hears it the way it sounds to me, not quite how he meant.

These things come out as accidents, I know. He’s as cautious with this thing as I am, maybe more so. But the scariest thing of all is that these things he accidentally says, they don’t scare me so much at all.

~beatrix

an open letter

Dear Harper,

Last night Ted and I picked up some Vietnamese coffee and bahn mi for dinner. For a little excitement, we decided to eat on his roof. The sandwiches weren’t quite as good as the ones I get at this sketchy place in Chinatown, but the weather was nice since it had finally cooled off and I could see at least one star. We decided that were are sort of boring, but that we’re learning to live with it.

But then, six stories above the growl of traffic and two above the chatter of a roof-top dinner party, in view of a window-silhouetted girl at a desk and the Empire State building, we had upright, clinging-to-each-other, shouting-into-his shoulder roof sex. And we decided we’re not really that boring after all.

love

~beatrix

nostalgia at three months

“Wait,” he tells me, even though I can hear a train downstairs.

I had the same idea.

He grabs me around the waist and kisses me big. We miss our train.

We’ve been here before.


~beatrix

probably more than five seconds of crazy

I hadn’t seen Ted in. . . days. So as soon as I got home and showered and changed (many, many apologies to anyone who was in smelling distance of my hair on the trip home), I headed his way. And after a few minutes of making-out hellos, we were able to talk a little.

“I’m going to be a crazy girl for five seconds, ok?” I warned him, then took a deep breath so I could get it all out at once, “I was thinking maybe we should go to New Orleans in October because it’s my five-year reunion and the weather will be nice and I need to go back already.”

October is a long way from now, in terms of we.

~beatrix

psa: nola love

You should go to New Orleans. I promise you will love it.

You’ll love the way the air is always thick. And the way the sidewalks are all broken in every direction, and you’ll love the million-year-old oak trees that made them that way. You’ll love the way you can just pop into some divey bar to use the bathrooms while your friends wait in line to go to the real bar and how while you’re there you can pick up one drink and three beers for $11 and they’ll pour it all in plastic cups so you can bring it out on the street with you. And you’ll love the food, no matter what you’re eating.

You’ll love that it’s always a party. You’ll love the ghost-faced bum on the sidewalk who does nothing but wish you well. And you’ll love the ghost-faced shotgun houses on the side streets, not just the wedding cake ones on St. Charles. You’ll love the way there’s still something getting started at 4 a.m. and how it’s ok to have a drink and some fried seafood no matter what time you wake up.

You’ll love the street names you can’t pronounce; you’ll love Tchopitoulas and Freret and Carondelet. And you’ll love the couple, still on the sidewalk of the bar you left hours ago, bickering and pausing only to make out and share sips of what you imagine, at 10:45 a.m., to be a very warm, very stale Bud Light. You’ll love cab drivers who take off without asking where you’re going because they need to tell you their stories so badly. And you’ll love the comfortable shabbiness of it all.

You might even love the way the water from the cold tap is lukewarm at best or how it could rain at any time or the way your hair smells that forgotten, actual bar smell the morning after.

New Orleans isn’t all Mardi Gras and hurricanes; it’s the best city in the country. And it still needs us. You should go.

~beatrix

something is certainly working

We were in the throws. The whispery, giggly throws because he had friends in town, sleeping in the next room.

I don’t remember why he mentioned the grocery store at a time like this, but he did.

I moaned, then laughed, “I love the grocery store.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your favorite part?”
“Oh! Produce. . . .”
“Produce from the grocery store? . . . or the farmer’s market?”
“Oooo. . . Farmer’s market. . . .”

Giggles, before he starts again.

“ I was thinking of vegetables. Like butternut squash. . . or zucchini.”
“I’m more excited about summer things. Like tomatoes. . . and corn.”
“I like corn. . . .”
“Oh! Oh! And peaches!”
“I think this is why we work.”

~beatrix

i don't have swine flu

“In an effort of full disclosure, I don’t feel good. And I might have fever. So it might be swine flu.”

Ted came over anyway, which was good. He brought Tylenol, and we ordered dinner. He slept over even though I was 12 million degrees and kept covering up, uncovering, opening the window, closing the window and turning on the air conditioner, turning on the light to better see the air conditioner knob, turning off the air conditioner. . . .

We talked a lot. There’s not much to do at my place besides sleep and make out. But that’s the thing we didn’t do: kiss. Not that night or the next morning. It was responsible. And hard.

But we talked. A lot. And I like being with him, even when he can’t kiss me.

I think we might have something here.

~beatrix

i guess that's what you'd call it

B: I might meet Ted’s family this weekend. Like his whole family.
H: Wow. So is he your boyfriend?
B: Um, maybe? We sort of talked about not wanting to kiss anyone else.
H: That’s a big step. So can you kiss other people? Or no?
B: I don’t want to.
H: Like “I don’t want to but if I get drunk or someone trips and lands on my lips it’s okay”?
B: I probably shouldn’t let anyone accidentally fall on my lips.
H: But if you do it’s not cheating. . . . So you and Ted are voluntarily exclusive?
B: I guess that’s what you’d call it.
H: Why aren’t you boyfriend/girlfriend?
B: We just haven’t exactly used those words. I took Single off my Facebook profile.
H: That’s a good move in general.

. . . .

H: So you’re going to meet your voluntarily exclusive man-friend’s entire family. . . .

~b

something like the second scariest question ever

Four days, a three-day weekend, and two outfits-- it just doesn’t quite add up. I just kept ending up in Brooklyn and not leaving. There’s sun and lots of food and hours of awful reality shows and naps. There are lots of great naps.

Everything is good, but I feel like something is stirring.

He asked about my plans for the next weekend. He told me what he was doing. I’m ignoring it until he makes it impossible not to.

We’re sitting on his bed, kissing and cuddling when he asks me:

“Do you want to come to Princeton next weekend?”

I sit back. He’s going to a big family graduation party, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

“I don’t know.”

That’s all I’ve got.

~beatrix

i so needed a weekend

Somehow every time I’d stayed over, we’d had something to do early the next day. It was usually a work night, and we’d fallen into a little bit of a routine. We’d wake up late, get up later, and scramble to get clean and dressed. He’d nearly forget his tie, then shove it in his pocket on the way out the door. I’d chatter incessantly while I put on makeup in the visor mirror. And he’d drop me off a few blocks from my work.

It works.

But this is better.

We wake up late, get up later, and it’s fine. We have brunch in the sun, and I drink too much coffee. A walk, a streetfair, a farmer’s market. A walk down the park. Deciding not to see a movie, it’s a nap instead. We only get up because we’re so hungry. Delicious dinner. Only go home because I have to some time. I guess.

This is almost too easy.

~beatrix

how i spent my sunday or this isn't that couch

The bankers-- these guys who work for hedgefunds and in private equity and who do finance things that I don’t quite understand-- they all have the same sofa. It’s cold leather. Black, maybe very dark brown. And it’s huge-- I can stretch all the way out on it, and usually, so can they. It faces the flatscreen on the opposite off-white wall in a sparsely-decorated one-bedroom with granite counter tops in a newish building.

This? This isn’t that couch.

It’s just a little lumpy, but comfortable. Found on the street just in time to replace one that was seriously destroyed, he says, then assures me it’s clean. Burgundy with gold damask. Not in his own apartment, exactly, but upstairs where there’s another kitchen. It’s across from a flatscreen, set against a bright blue wall, cables taped to the ceiling. There’s stuff on every surface, detritus from a Saturday-afternoon barbeque: a bag of hot dog buns, Oreos, empty beer cans, not-empty beer cans, what I think can be described as drug paraphernalia, half a bottle of that wine with the kangaroo, a pile of lighters.

He’s not a banker. He’s a writer. And a writer seems like a good idea.

We bang teeth when a housemate walks in.

He was supposed to be at a Mets game. Reportedly.

It feels like college. But the kissing’s good, so I can’t say I mind. And I don’t mind the way he takes my hand on the way to the park, assuredly, no fumbling with finger placement. Or how he lets me lie on his arm in the grass or moves his cap out of the way to kiss me a little more. I don’t mind that, back at his place, he leads me to his bedroom. I don’t even mind, too much, that I end up spending ten hours with him, most of it touching.


I went home alone. It was still hot like summer at 10 o’clock. And I had the distinct print of a tank top and a locket sunburnt onto my skin.


~beatrix