I won't lie: I've been in a funk.

As I grow older and gain precious and fragile flecks of wisdom, I've learned that it's probably better not to inflict The Funk upon others. This is difficult with a full social calendar. So this week, I cleared it and spent my evenings brooding at home, eating salad and watching bad TV. I've neither emailed many people nor felt like chatting on AIM.

An intuitive coworker was catching on.

“You OK?” he asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“You haven't said anything snarky to me or picked on me for anything. Something must be wrong.”

I'd thought about blogging about The Funk, but I wasn't ever sure what to write. This particular funk included a debilitating communication breakdown. I couldn't speak without messing up my words, couldn't attempt a joke without it flopping tremendously. I couldn't write, just couldn't express myself. Because I couldn't even put words to what was going on in this little noggin of mine. Because I just didn't know.

I still don't know what was wrong.

But it's all in the past now—The Funk has been broken!

This morning, as I walked out of the subway on my way to the office, I reached into my bag looking for quarters. I need a Coke. While grabbing for some change, my phone started to buzz. Who calls so early? ... Oooh, it's her! This must be it!

“Hi! I have some news,” she said.
“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Tell me!” I hoped I knew what she was about to say, and I was giddy already.
“He proposed last night.”
“Hooray!”

I babbled lots of “Congratulations!” and “I'm so happy for you”—and I got so happy my eyes welled and spilled.

So, my friends are getting married, and it's news so thrilling and exciting, it's snatched me straight out of my funk.

And I'm so glad—I didn't need another funky weekend.

“How much is this hat?” I asked.
“$8.”
“I’ll give you $5.”
“No, I can’t give it to you for $5.”
“How about $6?”
“No, sorry, can’t do it.”
“Fine …” I get out $8.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you [something inaudible].”
“You’ll give me something?”
“[Something inaudible].”
“Um, yeah. Here’s $8. Thanks.”
As I walked away, I realized that [something inaudible] was $7.

Stupid.

On the eastbound M86, upon reaching Fifth Ave.
“We should get off here,” she said.
I said, “No, I think it will make one more stop before …”
“It’s going to go into the park.”
“No, I think it makes one more—Oh. … Want to go to the Natural History Museum instead of the Metropolitan?”

Stupid.

A familiar man and woman walk up.
I ask the man, “So where is this mystery girlfriend of yours?”
He shrugs and tilts his head.
“Oh. She didn’t come? That’s too bad!”
Later, I ask, “So really: where’s your girlfriend?”
“Good. She’s right over there.”
I see familiar woman.

Stupid.

Me: it's a wonder i'm a functioning human being
Him: I've always been shocked that you made it so far in life
Him: ;)
Me: i know
Me: me too
Me: no one's surprised i'm single
Him: I am
Him: after all, you COULD be my back-up
Him: but you said no
Me: i don't want to be anyone's backup
Him: do you want to by my fiancé then?
Me: are you asking me to marry you?
Him: I dunno, are you saying yes?
Me: no
Him: then no
Me: hee

There's a cowboy on the TV.

Just him and his big hat, letterboxed in a night sky. Black sky. I know Paul Newman has blue eyes even if in this movie they look light gray.

“You don't know the whole story. Yeah, him and me fought many and many a round together. But I guess you could say I helped him about as much as he ever helped me.”

“How did you help him, Hud? By trying to sell him out? By taking the heart out of him? By making him give up and quit? Is that how you helped him?”

I love old movies.

I know people who very intentionally—even proudly?—avoid black and white movies. My brother is one of those people. He thinks, if it's old, it can't be good. For him, new is good.

I shake my head when I think about all he's missing with that attitude. Roman Holiday, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, The Gold Rush, North by Northwest, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Seven Samurai ... Shakespeare.

Classics aren't classics because they suck. They're classics because they're better than great.

I went to BAM once to see a screening of Cool Hand Luke. This'll be great, I thought. I'll get to see this great Paul Newman movie (can you tell I have a crush?) with other people who love movies like this too. And maybe I'll meet some cute movie-buff hipster-type and we'll go for a drink and watch more movies and we'll live happily ever after! Calm down, silly twit.

“One for Cool Hand Luke, please.”

I took a seat in the middle of a half-empty theater. I think I was the only woman there, and I'm more certain I was the only one under 45 years old.

Not what I had in mind.

Gotta go. The movie's almost over.

I maneuvered to the back of the bus where I saw some open seats. I wiggled into a space next to a woman, and everything about her was big—big curly platinum hair, big fingernails, big black Chanel sunglasses, big black furry coat.

It wasn’t a day I wanted to read or do a crossword puzzle; I just wanted to space out. I looked across the aisle. An elderly woman wore a headscarf, green pants and orthopedic shoes. Her mouth was smeared with pink lipstick and her scowl was permanently etched. And, like a prototypical celluloid villain, she had a hairy mole protruding from her cheek.

Next to her was a handsome man, but I didn't light up just to have it dashed. I live in the Chelsea of Queens, and pouted him off because he was unavailable. Gay men are even hotter because they won’t look at me; I love an unavailable man. Did I ever mention that I deny myself happiness on a regular basis?

The bus moved down the street, past the holiday decorations that should have been taken down weeks ago. Past Pretty Girl, a discount clothing store that I’ll buy a $5 shirt from, if it's cute. Past the line of students waiting for the English language school to open. Past the bodega and under the elevated train.

An overweight woman with a huge backpack moved into the back of the bus. My hat brim and glazed-over eyes kept me from noticing that this woman was walking with a cane—until she fell.

The bus leapt down Roosevelt Avenue, and the woman with the cane grabbed onto a pole to steady herself. The weight of her backpack swung her around the pole—and into the elderly woman.

Several of us sprang to our feet to help the fallen woman and to offer her a seat. She chose a seat farther back. I sat back down next to the woman in the big black coat, cursing myself for not noticing she’d been moving with a cane. I would have given her my seat. I would have!

Then I heard the elderly woman shout, “I told you to shut the fuck up!”

Most of the time, I'd think a septuagenarian saying fuck would be funny. Then again, to see a septuagenarian so angry that she would say fuck isn't very funny.

She was yelling at the gay man next to her. He’d been trying to calm her down after she got very upset when the fat woman fell in her lap.

She continued, disgusted with him. “This country! Giving you the freedom to be what you are!”

She knocked the breath out of me. And she wasn’t even addressing me. I wanted to spew a rant of my own. How dare you! Bigotry and intolerance! This day and age! Peace and unity!

But she was in her 70s. Can you berate a senior for their near-century-old opinions? I didn’t think so. But I liked to think that if she was 50 years younger, I would have said something. I think I would have said something.

And I felt for the young man. How often has he heard that before? How many more times will he, in his life? And he kept his mouth shut too. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was. If she were younger, the things I’d say to her...

The woman in the big furry coat—her shoulder tickled my cheek—looked aghast at what had just happened as well.

“What is wrong with human beings?” she asked, shaking her head.

I wished she would put her arm around me and hug me into her soft bosom. I wished the verbally-assaulted gay man was the kind of guy who wouldn't let some old bag's hatred hurt him. I wished my day had started differently. I wished the elderly woman would spontaneously burst into flames.

But all I could muster in reply was, “Really.”

{except that you can't overhear an AIM conversation ... just go with me on this ...}

She: (can you tell i'm looking for validation? :))
Me: hahah
Me: it looks good
She: (and not the w3c kind either... hahaha)
Me: <nerd alert!> she made a computer joke! </nerd alert>
She: lol
She: i know, i'm so bad
Me: <nerd alert!> i just made a joke using faux-html </nerd alert>
She: roflmao

Save me from myself.

Boss: We may have a Dennis Kucinich interview this week.
Other Boss: We're so cutting edge.

It seems things are looking up.

Last month, one friend was demoted at her job for speaking against management, but now she has a new job closer to her boyfriend’s school and they’re back living together. Another friend saved up enough money to buy herself a laptop computer. Another’s new small business is picking up steam. Another is doing well in grad school, which he started in the fall, and even picked up a great new job that he can do from home. Another just got a job, after she’d been out of work for about a year. Another is well on her way to follow through with her plan to pay off her credit cards and quit her job in the spring to become a full-time writer. I just got an email this morning from a friend whose sister just had a healthy baby girl around 1am today. And there’s more: an acquaintance—long a single girl—met someone she thinks is lovely; another friend recently got a raise; a college friend got himself a better job.

And tomorrow is my birthday. That’s something.

Things will be better this year, I think. I really do.

Oh woe are the days when I have run out of clean underwear and don bikini bottoms as a substitute. Am I the only one who does this?

“There’s something here for you on the table,” H__ said from the dark kitchen, discovering the package. It was 3am, and we had just walked in from a party. We didn’t even have our scarves off yet. It was a cold weekend in Boston.

I looked at the tissue-paper wrapped package and picked off the little white envelope taped to the front. A birthday present?

“It’s from J__.” I recognized the handwriting. Why would she be giving me anything?

C__,
I was just going to throw this away, but I wanted to return it because I know you put your heart into it.
J__

I peeled away some of the tissue paper and saw the corner of it. I didn’t have to open the rest to know what it was. I was too embarassed to even look at it. I shouted to H__ that it was a returned gift I had made just for J__ back in college.

“Shhhh!” Her roommate was sleeping. “How does that make you feel?” H__ asked from her bedroom.

I ignored the question. I shook off my coat and thought silently for a few minutes.

A few years ago, I decided that it was too hard to be friends with J__. I can’t now seem to remember the specifics. Just shadows of feelings. I remember she made me cry a lot. I remember she made me feel bad more often than she made me feel good. I remember not understanding her, feeling shut out, never feeling close, always feeling at an emotional disadvantage, vulnerable, that she could hurt me in ways I never could have done to her because she never let me in.

My friends all call her crazy. I wonder whether they do it to make me feel better—or whether they really think so too.

The returned gift was a poem I had written and she said she liked. I painted it in watercolor and framed it for her. Until I saw the red border, I’d forgotten all about it. She could have thrown it away and I never would have known.

I ripped off the rest of the tissue paper, and was too embarrassed to even look directly at the poem; I kept my eyes to the red edge. As I warmed in my friend’s cozy apartment, a flush of shame joined it and my head swam. I felt silly for ever having given it to her—a bad love poem I wrote when I when I was 19. “You put your heart into it.” I didn’t reread it. I remember how it goes.

I took the pages out from the frame and ripped them up. I plunged them into the kitchen trash among the eggshells and paper towels. I took the card from the table and ripped it up too.

I wandered into H__’s bedroom.

I never did give J__ an explanation for my disappearance. Before the self-imposed moratorium, I’d tried to express my frustration to J__. She had a way of double-talking me into being ashamed of my own feelings, making my point of view wholly invalid. I remember agonizing about our friendship. I decided she’d never get it, whether I wrote it in fluffy cloud letters on a blue sky canvas or tattooed it on her leg. I gave up trying. And walked away.

I think about her sometimes, whether I did the right thing. I didn’t really have any other choice. I’d tried to explain myself for over a year. I couldn’t keep trying; it was stressing me to where I’d spend hours at work emailing with her—and other friends about her. It doesn’t seem like I did a very mature thing, just walking away from her without letting her know why. What else could I have done? She wasn’t listening to me. She only heard me once I was silent.

“I’m not going to read into this,” I said. “She said she didn’t want to throw it out because I put my heart into it. I’ll assume that’s what she meant.”

I won’t email her to let her know I got it back. I won’t call to tell her she could have just thrown away that poem that made me feel so naked, instead of having that naked image reflected back to me. I won’t tell her why I had to leave.

From this telling, I am the bad guy, it would seem, tossing a friend so coldly out of my life like that. And maybe I am. After all, this blog is a lot about my ugly, scaley, sharp-toothed side. I think you had to be there. J__ hurt other people I know, not just me. Her manipulation and cagey nature are hidden deeply behind charm and flirtation. I don’t need to defend it to you anyway. I know what happened. It's OK if you don't.

But she doesn’t, I guess. I don’t know what I could say now, or why I would want to. I don’t want her in my life. …

I wish I’d never seen that poem again.

Right now, I am looking at a Playbill for “The Producers,” propped up on a box of unsent holiday cards and dusty CDs. It’s autographed by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

And I didn’t even see the show.

My original plan for tonight was to come home and clean my room. Maybe watch a DVD.

A friend surprised me at 5:30pm. Her mother was caught in a freak snowstorm in Connecticut and wouldn’t be making it in to the city, would I like to join her for sushi and a Broadway musical?

Clad in a bulky sweater and track pants, I hesitated. Oh come on, have some fun. It’s too cold out; no one will care what you’re wearing. True, true.

The sushi was great. The gossip was excellent. We saw “Never Gonna Dance,” a musical based on a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, tap-dancing and all. We both thought it was adorable. A very cute show. I recommend it, but only if you like a cheese with your theater. I happen to love cheese.

The heavy red curtain fell, and we packed on the layers—coats, mittens, scarves; we both forgot our hats today—and walked outside. Across the street from the theater where “Never Gonna Dance” was showing, a small crowd waited outside a stage door. We glanced up; we were looking at the St. James Theatre, home of “The Producers.”

We decided to hang around for a few minutes. We didn’t have to wait long.

A worn and pasty Broderick came out, donning a knit cap and poofy jacket. He signed autographs and posed smilelessly for pictures with fans. A man, armed with a tall stack of Playbills, started passing out autographs. My friend, who is taller than I am—who isn’t?—snagged one easily. I reached and waved and whispered "Me! Me!" The Playbill-passer-outer moved to the other side of the crowd.

“Just catch his eye,” my girl said. I waved and tried to see over the guy in front of me. Soon I realized I had been silently cursing Broderick himself for being in my way of getting the attention of the guy handing out autographs.

Silly me.

I love New York.

I should clean my room.
I should empty the cat litter.
I should unpack from my Christmas vacation that I got back from over a week ago.
I should go grocery shopping.
I should eat.
I should throw out the garbage.
I should pay my bills.
I should start writing those 15 assignments I have. At least one of them.
I should fix the crooked pictures on the wall.
I should hang my curtains.
I should empty the dishwasher and then load it again.

I should get off the computer.

Trey and I didn't have drinks the other day. His mother ingested some germy food and fell ill. Trey cancelled so he could bring his mum flowers and pharmaceutical goodies from Duane Reade.

I twirled in my chair at work and squealed to the girls, "I don't have to go on my date!" I planted my feet and stopped the twirling. "I guess it's not a good thing that I'm so excited it's been cancelled, huh?" The girls nodded. "Means I never wanted to go in the first place."

Trey and I had made tentative plans to go to the zoo today, but yesterday I told him that I honestly didn't want to go.

* * *
The other day I was talking to Brady, my wizened-beyond-her-years girlfriend. (She says I am mature for my age too, but I feel too much like a fool and a fuck-up most of the time to agree.) I said I thought it was time to blow the horn to end Dating Season. She agreed that it sounded like a good idea.

"Be the person you want to be in the relationship you want to have," Brady said.

That was something new.

Be the person I want to be in the relationship I want to have. What an interesting way to look at it all. (This is why I love Brady. I love the way she thinks. And she cares about me, as I do her.)

Loving myself and being open—scars, warts and all—may not be enough. Am I today where I want to be when I find the love I want? Actually, no, I can see that I'm not! (It was frighteningly easy to jot a mental grocery list of the switches I needed to pick up.)

How eyes-bright encouraging! I know what I need to do. I know what changes I want to make. I do know where I want to be. Meeting a man won't solve my problems for me. I have to do the opposite: solve my problems and a man may follow.

A loving relationship isn't guaranteed to follow, I know that. I'm not delusional—and I'm not that optimistic anymore. But Brady was right. I'm not yet who I want to be. And it won't just "happen."

I'll be the one to make it happen.

A few weeks ago, I went on a blind date with a guy named Bob. I'd replied to something funny he wrote on the Internet, and we'd emailed a few more times after that, just joking around, I thought. I wasn't looking for a date. But he asked me if I'd like to get together sometime. I didn't see why not, so I said, "Why not?"

Then he started to tell me about how nervous he was to meet me. And how shy he is.

Oh man. Nervous and shy are two things that really turn me on. Is this guy still a teenager or something?

"And the worst part," I told a few friends, "Is he's a Republican."

I didn't want to go on the date. I was on a streak of bad dates (see I Will Tell You Why). None of them were working out, and some of them even scared me. I was frustrated with dating and was feeling jaded. And I wanted to take it out on someone, someone who was bound to be a nasty person anyway.

All day long, my friends told me I should just cancel it if I didn't want to go. I don't know why I didn't. I guess I thought it would be rude to cancel. (Though, in hindsight, maybe it was more rude of me to go. Read on.) I convinced myself we had nothing in common and wasn't even open to getting to know Bob. He's a self-confessed nervous nerd who believes the war is right and Bush is good. Shoot me now.

Bob and I had some drinks. When the subject of politics would rear its head, I'd shut down the conversation before it even began. I didn't want to hear his coservative trash talk of liberals. I didn't want to hear a love-fest for our president. I didn't want to even risk hearing what he thought about gay marriage, the state of the economy or a justification for a war I find unjustifiable.

I wanted to leave. I'd only been there for two hours, but I wanted to go home.

We stepped outside and I refused the last cigarette in his pack, but he reluctantly told me I should just take it.

"I don't think you were ever interested in me," he said. He looked mad at me for having wasted his time. And he had a right to be.
"I'm sorry."
"You seem to have a big problem with politics."

I couldn't think of what to say. He was right. Why was I being like that? And it dawned on me.

I was a breathing example of the intolerance I profess to despise so vehemently.

"Well, really," I said and touched his arm, "If you do get sent to Baghdad, I do wish you the best of luck. I really do mean that."
"Thanks," he said, crushed his cigarette under his boot and went back inside to have a few more beers, not even looking me in the eye. I shamefully made my way to the subway.

I wanted to cry. I let my own prejudices get in the way of getting to know someone. It wasn't his race or religion or economic status. But it was just as bad, and he saw that in me. And to know that that was the impression that this person who had never met me before came away with, made me hollow inside.

On this date, I was the jerk. I was the asshole. I was the freak.

I'm really not a jerk, asshole or freak. But then again, I guess I am. I am.

I still have some growing up to do.