When the female bartender comped my drink, I really started to freak. I've been riding this wave of what can only be caled mojo--pink, sparkly, and undeniable, and it may just have crested tonight, preparing to bury me under it.

Consider:
-Coworker, Tuesday, and today he called me back, which is great! Yay Coworker! So I've got that going for me.
-Before that, a neighborhood guy got my number as I was walking back from my car, holding the remains of a hot dish I'd taken to a potluck.
-Dean, a while ago but arguably the start of this stint.
-The green jacketed gent who kissed me on St. Patrick's Day.
-The roomies and I had all managed to make out with reveling strangers on St. Paddy's, and Q, misunderstanding the assignment, somehow made a rendezvous with hers for the following weekend. P and I tagged along for safety, but not too stoked to stand there and watch her make out with this dude (he looks like a death's-head Dave Matthews), we tucked ourselves into a much lovelier bar right across the street. The bouncer, broadshouldered, goateed, shaved head (for some reason I imagine all guys who look like this come from Boston) was watching us with amusement as we stalked Wrigleyville looking for a place to alight. P and I chatted and drank, he swung by more than was probably necessary to maintain order, he offered us shots, I asked for whiskey, he came back with Jameson (well played, both!) and when we boiled out the door, he held my hands and said, "If you come back in here, I might have to ask for your number."
"Where's your phone!" I cried. "I'll give it to you!"
"No," he said, and this could have been a line, but I thought he was genuinely having scruples. "You've had stuff to drink--Maybe if you come back in."
Well, THAT was adorable. Then the girls and I went and had food. A taco al lengua on a Friday in Lent! Ha!
Fast forward to today, about three weeks later. We were back in Wrigley because Q wanted to make out (not with the same guy, at least) and the ladies did me the favor of meeting up at his bar, just so I could see. How sad was I as I entered and the bouncer was someone totally else, ugly and humorless. I went in; Q waved at me from behind an Irish dude bending over her (awesome), P was with her tucked into some guy's orbit, and I went and third-wheeled. Then P started making excited motions and I turned, omg, Bouncer, bartending!
His face lit up and he remembered my name, and asked if I remembered his, which I did. That's actually about the whole story. He bought us drinks. I admired as he shook them for others. Something about a really big, solid male body, dressed in well fitting clothes. I wish I could've gawked more openly, but it's a fairly well lit and classy spot. We had to leave in quest of a makeout for Q (which never materialized; more fool us, should've gone to the Hangge Up.) Anyway, he's unbelievably sweet, and how cool do I feel? I know the bartender.

But to continue with the mojo, the next place we went to,  I got eyed by the sexy cocktail waitress (mm, yes please) and the bartendress, as stated, did not charge me (for those keeping track, I drank free all night.) This is what life must be like for supermodels. Do I go out normally? Yes. Do I go to work normally? Yes? Walk down the street? Yes, and why all these people are falling over themselves to notice my lusciousness is more than I can say. It's like someone took a voodoo doll of me and dipped it in chocolate.

They're the people that you meet each day

One of the first strangers I recognized in Chicago was this older lady who rides my bus. (The other was this mountain of a woman with elaborate hair who works at the post office in the Sears Tower. I went there once to mail a package and almost exclaimed "I know you!" She rides my bus too.)

 

This first lady lives right near me and works right near me, so sometimes we'll travel the whole way together and other times I'll pick her up mid-commute, if one of us took the express and the other's transferring. I noticed her at first because she's an older black lady who wears the makeup of a 60's Stepford wife--frosted pink lipstick, frosted blue eyeshadow, big ol' stripes of blush. She has a fragile, careful look about her, like a regimented eater, and her face has a slack look which makes it older than her body.

 

Today she got on the crosstown bus with me, having not been on my uptown bus--it's amazing how often that happens. I took my sunglasses off to see if she was wearing her makeup, but she wasn't. She looked tired. She got off a few stops early and went into a Starbucks, and I noticed she was almost a head shorter than everyone else on the street. A class trip of high schoolers, rounded and pink-cheeked, stopped to let her through, bouncing off one another like bubbles.

Munchausen's Singledom by Proxy

In the Times Magazine profile of Maureen Dowd that came out when her book did, the author sniffed that MoDo, "at age 50, has never lived with a boyfriend." I don't like her much in general (it's not her fault that she happens to perform ultra-femininity in a position of power few women have, but it sure does make it look like that's how she got there) but that line helped us bond. When you're chronically single--or, like Dowd and not like me, chronically hopping along a string of enviable suitors--you tend to forget that some folks regard singleness as a disease or, at the very least, a symptom of some pathology.

I bring this up because (a) I've been having a crazy run lately where I get asked out left and right, entirely unprecedentedly and (b) I am largely a happy single, which the singlehood-disease camp REALLY hates. If you have someone who says "oh, it's okay, you'll find someone someday" or encourages you to give a chance to folks you're perfectly fine living without, it's because they think allowing yourself to remain unpartnered is on a danger par with fucking bareback. The fun only multiplies when the same person expects you to hear out the weepy details of their serious relationships or the numbing details of their inconsequential ones (and I am generally pleased to do this, because I am a good friend and a happy single.) But you know you've hit the pinnacle of awesomeness when the same person looks like they're swallowing vomit if you! the single! DARE to have even a mini-romantic success of your own. I told two of my friends a brief and less gushy version of the post below about last night. P was excited and happy for me while Q looked like she'd been poisoned. She left after a few minutes without having said, I swear, another word. It was the same way when I was with Dean (story someday) not too long ago.

Yes, Q has been having romantic hard times lately because she's still in love with her ex, but I'm not asking her to genuinely be happy for me or even not to bitch behind my back. Either of those would be totally acceptable reactions I'd pursue myself. But I would also muster enough of an act of interest and support to show the friend that I cared enough to muster the act. Hell, I'd pull off the act and she'd believe me. But I'm cool like that.

He Said/She Said

Hey, can I ask you something completely ridiculous?

Me? Sure.

Do you want to do something sometime?

Yeah.

We started grinning. We both look like we're about twelve. It must have been cute.
Later:

I've been thinking about this for a long time. How did it take four beers for me to ask Elle Daley out?

I was thinking the same thing. No, actually, it wasn't. It was the opposite of that.

 

What?

 

Oh, I was thinking that it isn't necessarily bad to make mistakes.

 

He was perplexed by this but took it in good spirit. Then we talked about books.

 

When he left, I put my number in his phone, and teased him because he already had another "Elle" in there, so I had to put "Elle D." He said "Or I could just label you Cute Cute Cute." I said "Shut up!" And then he left. We both still had grins on our faces.

 

I'll let you know if anything comes of it. I hope it does, but then I think it might be a mistake. We work for the same company.