Alive and Well

"Chivalry Is Dead." - Ladies, all the time, everywhere

"I was never really much of a romantic. I could never take the intimacy." - Kanye West

"It's insulting to give someone dead things." - Pops, on flowers

"Speaking of Ghost, I'm going to see him on 5/9 at the Wang.  Olson and I are going.  If I get kicked out, I'm taking him with me.  No chivalry when there are no ladies to protect." - Mitch

***

I started my second Real Grown Up Job in January of 2009. As is my custom, I was generally unfriendly to everyone for approximately the first four months. It's primarily a defense mechanism. There are just too many social anxiety tripwires in Office World: navigating elevator small talk, sharing just-the-right personal details to appear engaging and normal, remembering children's names and activities, bringing in baked goods to share - I just can't. I'm not interested in the weather unless we can talk about the Apocalypse and I don't watch the right TV shows. My life is weird, and seems even weirder in tiny snippets. I cannot bring myself to care about the World Cup, so Tommy's soccer game iszzzzzzz. I can't bake, and even if I could, why would I whip up an extra batch of whatever to haul into an office full of people who'll scarf them all immediately?  Wait until the afternoon! Brownies in the morning upset me!

So I'm skittish and standoffish the vast majority of the time, save the rare instances I can't keep something to myself and I engage fully, before I remember where I am. Half surly toddler, half shelter dog: you have your moments, but no one really wants to take you home. It's a pretty effective system.

A person like this turns a lot of things down. What you don't know is complicated, so stick to what you do. So why, on that Friday afternoon in May, after spending months as the least adoptable pet, did I accept M's invitation to join everyone for a beer after work? Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was thirsty. Maybe I was curious. Maybe even the toughest Pound Puppy has their weaknesses. So I went inside the bar. 

You make a thousand decisions every day, and most of them will never matter. If I'd left when I first thought to, after the first beer, that might have been one of them. But someone bought me a second beer, and I stayed for a third, and then we went outside to smoke. It was that perfect part of late spring in Boston, the leaves the greenest they'll be all year, the sky the bluest, all offset by the ruddy brick in the courtyard outside Sweetwater. Even the late afternoon sunlight is brilliant. The bar had been so dark, I was still squinting when I stubbed out my Parliament and realized these were my friends. By the time we made our way to the Common, I wondered where they'd been all this time, how I hadn't noticed before. 

There was something in the air that spring, something different about me, like I'd grown all these new branches. I started the year scowling from the corner of my playpen, and ended it with all these new people in my life, people I realized almost immediately would be there forever, now, people I love so ferociously sometimes I wonder where they end and I begin, scattered as we've become, there are these titanium heartstrings connecting us. 

That sounds a lot like being in love, doesn't it? I can get there, despite the fact that I largely eschew romantic love, the person who refuses to 'date', the whole concept absurd, those tiny job interviews all shot through with the vaguely concealed motives of sex and high expectations*. But I do, believe in love, and in a certain type of romance, even, although it skews to the non-traditional. And there's chivalry everywhere, if you pay attention, those two concepts are alive and well. Thriving, actually. You find them watching terrible television on a rainy afternoon, doing the tiny thing you wanted without having to ask, without having to even think it on your own. It's a lingering dinner in a divey New Orleans burger joint, when the tables beside you have turned over twice already, but the waiter knows better than to say anything at all. A glint of sunlight, a smile meant only for you. It's a moment inside a cone, everything else is outside. Like the pyramid in that episode of Six Feet Under when they go to Claire's art show. Like sitting on a bench by Crystal Lake with J and S, watching the reflections of trains in the water, souls totally bare. We were the only three people in the world. Those are the moments to write poetry about.

And chivalry is not a jacket over a puddle, or opening a door, or flowers to mark a date on a calendar. Chivalry is the little boy on the bus who worms off his mother's lap, tugs her hand, offers the seat to newer mother who just got on. It's the stranger who can see something is wrong, and gives you the cab at the end of the night. Chivalry is November, 2009, the Ghostface show at the Paradise. Mitch was nice enough to provide party favors**, and when a disapproving security guard came over, he took the whole fall. When the security guard asked him if he knew me, a confused and generally unhelpful me with whom he was clearly acquainted, he denied it. Mitch spent the rest of the show in a grimy Allston Chinese joint next door, texted me a photo of the black 'x' marks Sharpied on the back of his hands. He waited until it was over. We joke about it now, but it was, to this day, the most chivalrous act I've ever witnessed. Maybe you had to be there. It was a really good show. 

Thanks for taking me home, everyone.


^I did a Google Image Seach for 'Pound Puppies Ghostface' and was rewarded with this AMAZING picture of Usher and this adorable puppy. So, enjoy that.

*Of course, 'not dating' is equally ludicrous, confusing on all levels, from the person who made an effort at what you predetermined to be a carefree hangout, to the years I've spent 'technically single' without being able to remember the last time I was actually, completely all on my own. It's a habit I'm trying to break.
** Sorry, Mom! This detail is kind of integral to the story. Also, it was a fucking Ghostface show, come on.