Tales from the Vault- Here's What I'm Saying

“Yikes, this mirror needs cleaning.”

I say this to myself while checking my appearance quickly, not really looking at all. I’ve chosen worn jeans, a black t-shirt, hoodie, and my classic ones worn down from excessive wear and tear.

This is everyday attire. 

This is first date attire.

There was a time when I’d obsess over every piece of clothing I’d pull out and put on for a first date, but these days, I’m over it. I am 31, jaded, and refuse to be uncomfortable but cool looking in the hopes of making a good impression. I brush my hair though, and then tousle it quickly; then brush it again. This is the most time I spend on anything as far as appearances go. I’m admittedly excited this date is a fellow writer, but not “Collared Shirt & Slacks combo” excited.

I glance over at my bookshelf wondering if I should grab my Golden State cap; I consider it lucky. I don’t want to be lucky today, however. I want to be me. 

I leave it on the shelf.

I am 15 minutes early and standing in front of the coffee shop where we’ve agreed to meet. This always confuses me. Despite my best attempts to be the last to arrive on these first dates, I somehow always wind up as the premier person on scene. My goal is to avoid this, but it truly never fails. I don’t mind really, as long as the other person shows up on time.

I open up my iPhone and tap the vocabulary app. Mastering vicissitude was easy, but for some reason I keep making the same mistake on celerity; it means rapidity of motion or action, both of which I’m clearly showing a lack of when it comes to memorizing the definition. I tell myself it’s a dumb ass word anyway and press forward. 

Through my peripheral, I notice someone making a beeline towards me. She sidles up. The moment her feet stop walking, without looking up, or shifting my attention, I speak.

“Y’know, it’s quite rude to encroach upon a person’s personal space.”

She laughs.

I glance at the time and am pleased she’s early. I respect people who respect a Stranger’s time. I smile and look up from my phone. We hug, shoot witty banter back and forth briefly, then make our way inside the coffee shop. Or at least we would if the door handle I’m tugging on would just... give... an... inch. 

She pulls open the door adjacent to it and enters the shop.

And they’re off, I think before following her inside.

At the counter, the Barista takes her order, there is chai involved. She reaches into her purse and pays for her cold brew without a backward glance. I am impressed. Between this small showing of independence and her comfortable appearance, I’m convinced we’ll get along swimmingly.

I order a black iced coffee with two sugars. The Barista tells me I have to add the sugar myself. I thank him and remove the most esteemed coffee title from his person in my head. Nothing against him, but I can’t help thinking that the guy behind the counter at the corner store adds the sugar when you ask, and nobody calls him a “Barista.” But we’re in midtown Manhattan, everybody’s bigger than they are here, or at least pretending to be. I add my sugar begrudgingly, give myself the most esteemed coffee title of “Barista,” and we exit the shop en route to Central Park.

The conversation flows easily on our walk. She is personable, this makes her charming to me. She’s newly returned to the city and I am trying to be impressive. She makes it easy. 

As we walk, she begins rattling off titles of my posts randomly and has kind words about a lot of them. The Woman has done her homework. If I’m honest, it makes me a tad bit uncomfortable; I tell her I appreciate people reading, but I’d much rather they discuss it with someone who isn’t me.

“Do you know Meryl Streep can’t stand watching herself act?” I ask before prattling on, “I mean, I’m no Meryl Streep, but I think I understand where she’s coming from. I’d much rather get to know who you are than focus on who I claim to be while writing.”

She says this is a smooth line.

I tell her I don’t use those.

We are now standing across the street from Central Park and she has just corrected me on where the Reservoir is. I call her bluff, her phone confirms it, and she has quickly proven me wrong twice in one day. I should’ve wore the lucky hat. I pick my ego up from the ground and try to save myself some embarrassment by admitting I’m not all-knowing.

We enter the park. I have absolutely no idea where I am. Apparently, while I was away someone built a tennis court. Or I don’t know the park as well as I think I do. 

Of all the times to get turned around, of course it has to be now, I think to myself. I admit I don’t know where we are, and thankfully, she has no judgements. We walk to the reservoir.

Once there, we have a decision to make. I want to go left. My favorite part of Central Park is on the East Side, but she is hesitant.

“Everyone’s running in the opposite direction,” she says.

“So, what are they gonna do? Give us dirty looks? Trust me, we can handle dirty looks, and I can handle a lot more than that if it comes to it, is what I’m saying.”

She relents and we head deeper into the park. I’m glad she’s willing to go against the grain with me. I don’t give a second thought to the joggers. The way I see it, I spend the majority of my life forced to go around or forced to wait, so today, I won't be doing either. The world is just going to have to deal.

We have been walking and talking for a while and I can’t find the patch of grass I’ve nicknamed Frodo Fields. This happens a lot. I try to disconnect from my cell phone whenever I’m in Central Park, so I’ve never marked the location of Frodo Fields on the map in my iPhone. I know if I come into the park from the East Side, heading North at 86th street, I can landmark my way there, but we’ve come in from the West, at 96th street, heading south. I’m not even attempting to locate it anymore. She provides excellent conversation so I don’t mind.

Wandering aimlessly with her, we bond slowly over my favorite R&B singer being a bit of a tool, Napoleon Dynamite being a great movie, but only after it’s over, and Chihuahuas being rats misclassified as small dogs.

She walks quickly and up on her toes. I like that, and am laughing to myself when she relays how she’ll routinely get her friends lost because she tends to move with purpose even when she doesn’t know where she’s headed. 

Leaders lead from the front, I tell myself silently.

After a while, she realizes I won’t be finding Frodo Fields and says we should go to her favorite spot instead. When she tells me what it is, and where, I call her out.

“There is no way there’s an Alice in Wonderland statue in this park,” I say. “I would’ve spotted it a long time ago. I know my track record is against me right now, but that I would surely know.”

Ten minutes later I am wrong again.

We are standing at a pond for toy boats a few paces removed from the aforementioned Alice and The Mad Hatter. I am trying to figure out when Central Park became Wonderland while my date is pointing up at a building overlooking the park from the East side. I am craning my neck, absorbing the details of the cascading facade when she asks if I want to hear a cool story. 

"Always."

She tells me about a documentary on Redhawks in Central Park. How in this documentary, her Grandfather and Grandmother (to whom she owes her name) can be seen. She says her Grandfather was a brilliant Surgeon, but not the brawniest of men. In this documentary he can be seen, a  slight man in his eighties at the time, holding her Grandmother by the waist as she is leaning over a very narrow ledge to catch a glimpse of a balcony below them where the Redhawks have made a home. One wrong move, one slip, and things could’ve taken a turn for the disastrous. It sounds scary, but I find it cloyingly romantic.

“That’s what love is, though,” I say matter-of-factly, “leaning over the edge together, taking risks, trusting the person who has you to never let you fall.”

I tell her I think I love her Grandparents. We stand here for a while talking about the meanings of our names, counting ducks and toy boats before we decide to continue onward.

Through luck and coincidence I have found Frodo Fields. We sit in the grass and talk. I’m flattered when she asks where I learned to write. I credit reading the same books over and over as a huge help in the process and recall the moment I knew I was decent at it.

It is a Junior High School essay on my favorite aunt; a proud, headstrong woman named Joyce. I can’t recall the details, but I remember it was an essay of regret. To be fair, in Junior High School, all of my essays were of regret. 

Now I’m lost in my head. I haven’t thought about her in years. I’m both ashamed and grateful that this date has brought about the memory of a woman I still hold in the highest regard.

I compliment my date’s writing. She lives with Type 1 Diabetes and has written about her experiences doing so. From what I’ve read before this meeting, I assume she’s a very strong person. After hearing how she goes about her approach to writing, I’m assured in the fact. I’m a firm believer in pain being a necessary part of life, but can’t fathom what it must be like to have your body turn on you. I think the strength of her spirit is captivating and bite my tongue before I blurt out “Strong is sexy.”

We both agree that writing is very much a solitary sport, but can be a unifying experience when read. That a lot of the time when scribbling or typing or however we scribe, we feel very much alone, but if we’re lucky, in some instances people will relate, love, and appreciate greatly that someone else out in the world knows what they’re going through and has shared their experience on some level. She’s touched quite a few hearts. Some of them strangers. I commend her on doing so, but know she doesn’t need my validation. She’s a strong woman after all.

The conversation shifts to our tattoos after she notices the stylized ankh on my inner right forearm. She asks how many I have. I start from the beginning.

“So, this one is in tribute to my favorite Wrestler. I got it when he was retiring and he got it when he felt his career was beginning to take off. Around that time in my life I felt the same and found it fitting. Plus y’know, feminine fertility and all that.”

I grasp my right tricep and break down the Achilles quote from Troy that's plastered there. Then I get worried; it’s truth bomb time. I’m usually cucumber cool leading up to this moment but it’s the one that always gets me rattled.

“I have a son.” I say, and it comes out as it always does, with a hint of trepidation.

We talk about him. About the history. About the lack of time. She says my energy has shifted. I admit I’m nervous. When she asks why, I tell her women don’t usually like the fact that I have a son. They like even less that I have a child I’m unable to see. I’m not ashamed, embarrassed or wishing things were different because I know what has been done in regards to me having a better relationship with him, but it usually turns women off.

She says it’s fine, but I’ve heard that reassuring statement before and feel it’s all downhill from here. I continue onto my third tattoo, nevertheless.

I talk about Darth Bane. The rule of two. The Code of the Sith. Self Empowerment over all. I ramble on a while. I can be overly passionate when explaining the Sith. This calms me down a bit. Focuses me. I feel a little better. I shift the conversation to her tattoos.

There’s a grouping of Plumeria flowers on her right shoulder with an outside of the lines splashing of color I like with the quote “I am not afraid, I was born to do this.” among them.

There's an Ankh that’s devoted to her Grandmother and Brothers on her back I don’t get to see, with the quote ‘I believe in the sun even if it doesn’t shine’ under it.

The Hawaiian phrase ‘E kupa’a i ka pono’ (hold fast to goodness) on her ribs and my personal favorite, the coolest Deathly Hallows symbol I’ve ever seen on the nape of her neck.

I tell her that the positive and uplifting messages on each tattoo are awesome. I can clearly see she’s given them a lot of thought. I don’t tell her the Deathly Hallows tattoo makes me want to bite the nape of her neck playfully. Everything ain't for everybody.

We sit in Frodo Fields for quite a while. The topics are all over the place and I don’t know if she’s trying or not, but I’m slowly letting my guard down again. Molasses slowly.

A young boy named Ephram comes waddling up. He can’t be more than a year old and extends his hand for a high five. I reach out and give him one before jokingly telling him to pull up a seat. There’s always room in the Field of Frodo. His mother is calling him repeatedly but he’s apparently taken a liking to me and refuses to turn and leave. His sister, realizing Ephram will clearly come home with me if they continue to pretend they’re leaving grabs him by the hand and drags him off towards their mother.

I bet my date nothing that as soon as his hand is released he’s going to try to come back. Sure enough, as soon as his sister drops his hand he hits a drop step that would make Shaq proud. He has to be picked up and hauled away before he makes a mad dash back to us. I scream an apology to his mum, but don’t really mean it. His brief visit was boosting my confidence, and now that the attention is squarely back on me, my sense of unease returns.

My date says she needs to use the bathroom so we look up the closest Starbucks and make our way out of Central Park. On our walk, I try to explain to her my views on public urination.

“I understand the law, believe me. I get it. Here’s what I’m saying, laws are created for the good of society, but society is made up of individuals, and some things need to be taken on a case by case basis. There’s a difference between doing something out of convenience and doing it out of urgency. Do you agree?”

She agrees. I continue.

“So, of course it’s wrong to run up to the side of a building, whip out, and pee because you don’t want to wait, but it’s much different if you’re squirming. Squirming is the tell-taliest of signs that you’re clearly in an uncomfortable position.”

“Tell-taliest?” She asks.

“The tell-taliest.” I repeat before I pantomime how it looks when my bladder is filled to bursting. This garners a genuine laugh from her before I go on.

“If the latter is the situation, I feel a judge has to understand this. Ok, yes I broke the law, but I’m allowed self respect and dignity. Pissing myself because I couldn’t find a bathroom keeps me well within the confines of the law, but removes me from both of these things; it’s like if I’m tussling with someone who’s pulled a gun on me and I shoot and kill him. Yes, it’s technically murder but I was fighting for my life, is what I’m saying.”

She says it's a pretty giant leap from public urination to a murder in self defense, and I laugh, but don’t think so. If a law isn’t taking the circumstances of the situation into account, the law needs revision, big or small.

Our walk to Starbucks shifts to art and a "critic" I met a few days ago. I say I’m not the type of person who critiques someone’s work without a thorough understanding of the sacrifices that went into it. I find it pompous, and frankly, disrespectful. She agrees and tells me about her studies of the great artists during the Renaissance and the thoughts and ideas they were trying to convey in their work. I absorb her breakdown.

We arrive at Starbucks, wait briefly for her to get into the bathroom, and leave shortly after she uses it, but not before buying an overpriced coffee when she’s done to avoid the “restrooms are for customers” speech. For the second time this evening the Barista doesn’t live up to their title. I’m convinced I’m the last real one in the city.

We’re walking aimlessly now and pass a 6 train station. I ask unthinking if this is the train she needs to take to get home. She says yes, but floors me shortly after my question with one of her own.

“Why’re you trying to shoo me away?”

I’m taken aback. I tell her that in my experience, once I’ve left the area where the date is taking place, both parties usually try to get out of dodge. I just assumed she was one of those women. When she reprimands me for it, I stop making assumptions. We decide to return to Central Park.

On our walk back over, my mind is jumbled. I can’t seem to figure this girl out. She’s confident, forceful, blunt, and has no problem spotting my moments of weakness. I try to make conversation casually but she’s picked up on what I assume is a verbal cue to my nervousness throughout our encounter.

“Do you realize you say ‘Here’s what I’m saying’ a lot?”

I think back and can’t remember one time I’ve use it before the moment that’s just passed. I rattle off a host of my favorite phrases from nailed it to I’m just saying, but tell her truthfully I’ve never noticed that phrasing being on heavy rotation. I then proceed to say it no less than thirty times unwittingly through the remainder of our date.

I blame it on nerves and hyper self-consciousness because I pride myself on having a firm grip on my thoughts that become words, but am embarrassed that I seem to be so untamed with them tonight. She says she’ll coach me through it. I appreciate her concern, but am sure there is nothing about my life she can coach me through. I take it as a red flag statement and nip the whole idea in the bud.

“You’re observant, but as there’s nothing wrong with what you’re observing past repetition, in my opinion, believe me when I say, ‘you won’t change it,’ and I’m serious when I say ‘Don’t try,’” I spit out in a huff.

“Jack Fuckin’ Kelty,” she starts,  “Way to assert!”

I tell her “assertive” is the default setting in a life like mine.

We have been together a little over 7 hours now, and are standing in the train station at Columbus Circle on the landing above the platform for her train. Our conversations have ranged from Snape being misunderstood, to her University of Miami clique, Bob Dylan, Politics, Sex, Religion, Spirituality, Seattle, Hawaii, Alaska, Family, Friendship; the list goes on a while. I understand though, It’s a very good list.

I give her a hug and kiss on the cheek. Before turning to leave, I hesitate. I tell her I’m going to wait with her until her train arrives; she calls me a Gentleman. I say I’m all about equal rights, so I don’t know where she came up with that assumption, but of course I do. I’ve been holding doors all day. 

Nana didn’t raise no heathe… Well, Nana didn’t raise me rude to Women.

When I hear her train approaching, I build up my courage. Before I can stop myself, I invade her personal space and kiss her tenderly. She kisses me back unfettered, and all the while I am counting my “Mississippis.”

One mississippi.

Two mississippi.

Three mississippi.

 On the fourth, I pull away and tell her to hurry before she misses her train. I don’t want to end this moment, but this car will only have its doors open for a second longer. I don’t want to be the reason she’s riding the local home.

On my own ride back uptown, I’m laughing at my foolishness. And Nervousness. And anxiousness. I think she likes me. My awkwardness.

But how could she not? I’m the best damn Barista in Manhattan. At least that’s what I’m saying.