I Think I’m Ready To Start Dating Again

“I think I’m ready to start dating again.” The thought hit me like a rush of energy through my body late last night as I gazed up at the lights from the Q train below running across my ceiling through a wash of fresh tears. I cry when I orgasm, a habit I picked up when David E. broke me into a million pieces about 6 years ago. It hasn’t always been this way though I suspect it will be more so than not these days. I haven’t been touched in 6 weeks, 3 days, 8 hours and who cares how many minutes and all I can think about is why the fuck am I still single? This realization has come at an incredibly inconvenient time. I lift my naked sweaty body off my bed and stumble to the kitchen for a drink. The closest thing is a newly opened bottle of Svedka. I turn the top and drink until the shock of alcohol overtakes my restlessness and drowns the fucking tears that seems to still be streaming down my face. This is not a love story. If that’s what you are hoping for, stop reading now.

There is something innately romantic about being shut into one’s sixth floor corner apartment alone for an unknown amount of time. A sort of freedom all of the sudden, once the shock and fear of the vastness and horror subside, of course. But once it does your inner world explodes outside of you. Everything you could not admit to yourself. The invisible luggage of the everyday societal pressures and expectations we pick up and carry throughout our lives fall away and you’re left with your thoughts. Alone with your body. Alone with yourself. You learn to become friends with you, you learn to become lovers. The once in a lifetime gift of shedding yourself, of reinvention, is exponentially expansive now. What have I always wanted to be? To learn? To wear without judgement? To sing because no one is listening? Where do the unknown parts of me live? What have I yet to discover about my body? What is important now? Everything is illuminated with such crisp clarity.

You learn to utilize every inch of your 700 square foot apartment. Appreciating what it is, not resenting its limits. Once you’ve exhausted your chairs, couch, desk, bed. Try the corner near the bookshelf by the tiny window that faces the grey brick building. Or turn your empty bathtub into a chaise lounge and enjoy an afternoon dirty gin martini blasting Sidney Bechets Petite Fleur. And don’t neglect the kitchen floor, sitting on mine reminds me of my mother’s house in the high desert of California, where we all used to gather and talk and cook for hours. I cannot recommend enough the importance of changing your perspective while also appreciating the hidden and long ignored architecture of your pokey New York home. You will learn to love it.

I struggle with silence these days. There is a moment in between songs, when one ends right before the next one begins that overtakes me. It’s a deep breath moment. A reminder of space and time and reality all balled up into 3 measly seconds. A moment where you can clearly hear the ambulance sirens screaming through the late afternoon April rain. I stop. I don’t remember ever being aware of it but i’ve come to dread it and look forward to it at the same time. Like coming up for air briefly, and retreating back into the fantasy of music.

I miss foreplay, not the kind that comes before sex, social foreplay. The kind that we use in bars and on the train, walking to work, at work, in line at the bank. That brief intimate encounter with a random New Yorker on a street corner as you both sigh, knowingly laugh and shake your heads at the German tourist angrily trying to wave down a cab in the pouring rain, to no avail. I miss hands and gestures and that look someone gives you letting you know they want you closer. I miss senseless carefree brushes on the shoulder or arm or hip. I miss flirting for hours on end with that really cute regular at the bar I work at, used to work, serving him Stellas and carrying on like teenagers. I miss making customers laugh and laughing with them. I miss the sweet crotchety older couple that would come in together on a busy Friday night and grumble about not having a table available for them right away, that they are late for a show, but wait anyway. I miss makeup and perfume and a reason to wear it. I miss the train ride to work, cresting over the Manhattan Bridge revealing the skyline of our beautiful city. I miss the busy Soho streets in the early days of spring. I miss eating dinner out and absurdly expensive wine. I miss the carefree laughing of groups of girls shopping. I miss the absolute insanity this city holds as we shuffle along unfazed.

I take a deep breath, place my pen and notebook in my purse and stand up. A bit shaky, I find my train legs. This is the first time I’ve ridden the subway in 16 weeks, 12 hours and 35 minutes. It’s mid June. I walk up the stars of the Broadway/Lafayette station as Debussy’s Clair de Lune plays. I am awestruck. By this city, by these beautiful resilient people. By life itself. Everything slows down around me as I walk down Mercer street to work my first shift back. I take nothing for granted at this moment. The warm summer air and light breeze tickling the hairs around my unmasked face. The horns fill the air from traffic backed up on Houston Street of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters inching toward the Holland Tunnel, home. My usually aloof boss standing out front laughing and greeting passers by. Fanellis is ablaze with the music of a hundred regulars voices reunited with their chosen family, tears and laughter play as chorus. We say hello and tap elbows. I walk inside. Welcome home.

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