I had gone in trying to keep it super casual, Future Sam. Like rel-a-a-a-xed. No big deal. But that wasn’t me. And I wanted to melt with relief to discover that it wasn’t him, either.
He broke the silence with, “What are you reading?” and of course, the flow was back, because I’m reading a book about this amazing alternative to capitalism called “heterodox economics,” which basically says that economics as we know it is tied to… oh, wait. Sorry. Anyway.
We stopped for iced coffee and sat on the grass on the Dartmouth campus. I saw the spring-clad bodies everywhere and thought of that SAT word, languid.
“So how do you get around New York?” I asked.
“If I have time, I just walk everywhere. The subway is only faster if you have to go between boroughs.”
“Really? That doesn’t seem physically possible.”
He put up his hands in surrender. “Okay, that’s not always true. I just like walking.”
“But you’re able to get everywhere on time?”
“I don’t have a very, uh, strict schedule.”
“You just write all day?”
He squinted, almost as if it were painful that I asked. “I try. I also work as a barback a couple nights a week at this place downtown. Basically it’s just wearing all black and listening to rich people’s conversations, so it’s ideal. It’s what I would do anyway,” he said, and laughed.
Stuart did an impression of a snobby woman ordering a cocktail. “And make sure the lime juice comes from a locally sourced lime tree, I don’t care if limes don’t grow here.”
“And the ice is from a glacial stream…” I added.
“And the glass from a Swedish glassblower…”
We laughed so hard I snorted.
I was feeling the echolocation again, the waves of energy coming off his body as he leaned on the earth while I remained upright, conscious of the shaving nicks on my bare legs.
His nose, straight except for one bump near the end, where he must have broken it.
He has a freckle on his collarbone.
He gave me a sip of his iced coffee and I just did it, I just put my mouth on the straw, and he didn’t care.
I am learning:
There is no secret language, Future Sam, that you have to speak in order to talk to someone you like. You just talk to them. Bonus points if they can speak intelligently about life and work and the best coffee shops in Manhattan.
I had imagined Stuart moving down the sidewalks of New York with his long strides, passing everyone, head down, thinking of settings and dialogue and characters, but here he was now, very different. Softer. More relaxed.
And maybe there might be a softer version of myself, too.
You don’t have to be a robot, Future Sam. What you’re doing doesn’t have to be going toward something. Sometimes you can stop, or at least pause. Sometimes you can just be.
Anyway, eventually Stuart had to leave to work at the Canoe Club, where he was picking up a couple of bartending shifts while he was back in Hanover.
We stood up.
He looked at me for a long time with those wet black eyes, and bent slowly toward my face. Oh my god, he was getting very close. Radioactive burns imminent. I gasped.
He stepped back quickly. “Sorry. Can I kiss you on the cheek?” he asked.
“Is that standard?” I asked, and immediately blushed.
“Standard for what?” he asked.
“A standard good-bye for what we… for what just happened?” Remember how you had just decided that you don’t have to be a robot?
He didn’t answer right away. Now he was nervous. He played with the hair on the back of his head, looking around. “What just happened?”
“I mean, what we did today. Hanging out.”
“Uh…” Stuart tried to hold in a smile. He shrugged, looking off into the distance, then looked at me. “We don’t have to categorize it.”
“Let’s categorize it,” I said quickly, and waited. Stuart opened his mouth, puzzling, and I felt guilty, briefly, for pushing him, but then I didn’t. A kiss without context or meaning is the kiss equivalent of small talk. And what would happen if he didn’t want to categorize it, and just ran away forever and didn’t talk to me? I’d go back to my work, to my little room above the attic, pining for him from afar. Big deal. I’m used to it. What else is new? “Sorry,” I continued. “I just have too much up in the air right now to fuck around.”
“You do not…” he said, laughing, shaking his head. “You do not fuck around.”
He put on his sunglasses against the setting sun, and the lenses lit up with two blazing spheres. He took one of my hands with both his hands and said, “I want to kiss you on the cheek because I think we had a nice date.”
Date. Date. I nodded in agreement.
He bent again and pressed his lips on my cheek, barely an inch from my own lips—one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three—and let go.
UUGGHHGHGHGHGGGGHHHHHH
Then the other shoe drops. When I got home, an email from Mrs. Townsend dinged on my phone:
Sammie,