� me to Vanessa, skeptically, as we were heading there on Friday night

Catharine read my last entry from Pittsburgh, where she�d gone for the weekend, shortly after I posted it Sunday morning, and she called me right away, concerned about whatever it was that I didn�t want her to learn from reading in my diary and wanted to talk to her about first. I suggested that she make a list of the top ten sentences that on the previous Monday she would never have imagined I�d say that week. But really I was on my way out the door, so I cut to the chase and gave her my own personal Number One, and why I was on the way out the door was the list item itself: I have a date.

Um.

HOLY SHIT. I don�t even know where to start. Monday morning as I was leaving the house, I felt hung over, so I grabbed a Sprite for the road. Then after I got into the car I remembered that I�d had very little to drink the night before and realized that what I had was the other kind of head-spinning. Then I took a wrong turn on the way to Gastro and drove several blocks, oblivious. At eleven I left the office to take the mail out as per schedule but actually left the mail in the office. In the evening I went to Capitol Hill and spent twenty minutes getting my hair trimmed and then almost that long looking for my car. After picking up Vanessa, I drove the wrong way in the Red Apple parking lot and the thought of attempting a right on red terrified me. I�m doing a lot of walking into doors.

OK. On Friday night, I was originally supposed to go out with Cheryl and some of the old TankedStock.com posse for Russ�s last night in town, but with that crowd if I have one drink then I have sixteen, and I didn�t want to risk ending up as the depressed drunk chick sobbing over a breakup, so I begged off. Instead Vanessa and I were going to get some cocktails at the South China, which turned out to be jam-packed before seven o�clock, so we needed a Plan B, and since Linda�s is out and the SCCC parking garage is convenient, she suggested the Cha Cha. The first time I went to there, years ago, it was with Joe and Tony and a friend of theirs who was visiting from out of town, and as they reminisced about their MBA program and international travel, I looked around the room and maybe it was someone�s party we were in the middle of or maybe I was tipsy, but everyone seemed very attractive and achingly indie and far removed from my own social circles, and ever since then I have crossed the threshold of the Cha Cha with some degree of trepidation. And plus I hadn�t had time to eat dinner before picking Vanessa up and was a little spacey, so I had forgotten to change out of the shoes that looked what-was-I-thinking retarded with my outfit and put on the styley ones from my sister instead. Vanessa assured me that the shoes were not a fatal error and that the Cha Cha was in fact not all that and a bag of chips, and in we went. And like I said I did not want to risk ending up as the depressed drunk chick sobbing over a breakup, but the fact was that this was the first weekend night after I�d officially served Todd with his walking papers, and the subject was close to my mind, and, all right, it kept coming up. I told Vanessa that I kept panicking that I had been hasty in having written the letter and should have stuck it out longer. She told me that on the contrary, I had eaten shit until I puked, and nobody could ask more of me. I told her that I was afraid that nobody I could stand to talk to for more than five minutes would ever like me again. Something about the vast desert of loneliness that stretched before me indefinitely. The drinks were strong. The bar had first run out of Jack Daniels and then Seagram�s, and I think they were apologizing to us by giving us Frontier-Room potent versions of our respective second choices, Jim Beam and vodka. Something indistinct. Then all of a sudden there were two guys sitting on either side of Vanessa, on one of the benches along the wall, and they informed us that they�d decided we needed to come sit with them and their friends, at a table just behind us. One of them was wearing an orange sweater. We talked to them on our turf for a little while, Vanessa parrying the comically desperate depredations of the sweaterless one, a Russian who could not process the concept that yes her boyfriend was out of the country but no this did not mean that he had a shot at taking her home. Then we moved to their table, where they were sitting with their colleagues from a software company you have certainly heard of, and then stuff started happening.

What was I thinking while the stuff was happening? Well, at first I was thinking that the timing was so irresistibly funny as to be a cosmic Valentine for me and only me � one minute I�m declaiming to Vanessa, Joan-Crawfordly stoic, that at my age and with my standards I might as well hang up the sequined tube top for good, and then the next minute there I am and there�s some dudes, a dude, and it�s a situation that�s had the melodrama sucked clean out of it and now seems to be a totally normal one in which I�m passing for a sassy and flirtable-with chick in a bar. Passing well: I realized that my impression of a hot single female out with her hot unsingle friend having some cocktails on a Friday night was in notably fine working order. I was congratulating myself on forgetting how sad and anxious I�d felt during drinks one and two and three before our confab got invaded. And then, I don�t know, the impression became the real thing, or I began to realize that making that happen was (a) a choice that was (b) mine, and my habit of watching myself objectively fell away rather quickly, and then I was no longer Acting As If I were wedged into a booth next to a very cute, smart, articulate, funny guy in an orange sweater who seemed to be thinking the same adjectives with respect to me, I mean acting the way I knew I would act if I were to find myself in such a scene. Or maybe it was the scene that fell away. But in any case the fact is that there I was, a scant four days into the A.T. era, talking to and flirting with some other guy for a hell of a lot more than five minutes and to my shock and delight liking him a lot. A lot. Orange sweater was Steve, a well-traveled, well-rounded software type with some intriguing patches of misspent youth. Not skinny, never been to grad school, smokes, and the color of his family collar is blue, blue, blue: sorry, Todd. And I didn�t shirk my responsibility for full disclosure on the relationship shiznit I�d just gotten out of, I was very frank. Steve likes Modest Mouse, plays soccer, and � yes � eats bacon. Um. Had compliments ahoy for Yours Truly across the board. Yours Truly was kind of having her mind blown by how terrific he was too. At this point my head would have been spinning even if the clueless Russian, still valiantly trying to get into Vanessa�s pants over there to my left a million miles away, hadn�t insisted on buying us drinks as if his visa status depended on it. (We did switch to beer at some point.) There was talk of a date on Sunday to see "Far From Heaven," there was my phone number given out, there was actual kissing in the actual bar, there was me driving people home. It was an evening I did not expect. I guess I�m cool enough for the Cha Cha after all.

There was a massive hangover the next day and Oh man, did that actually happen? and after I was ambulatory and was driving around shopping for dinner with Jeanne, I was wondering whether or not he was going to call, wondering as if the answer to the question would reveal itself to me if I puzzled the matter out correctly, and I thought that really I wouldn�t mind if he didn�t, I�d had an amazing time and it had been the ebullient beginning of a new kind of being friends with Vanessa and a very good-looking very smart fella had not only dug me but in doing so had chiropractically readjusted my sense of the possible in this respect; looking out at that desert in the early part of Friday night I had been defeated and stooped over, but now I felt great, unburdened, motile, and I knew I could get out there and shake my ass any old time I wanted to.

(The last paragraph was slow going, and now a few hours have passed during which I have gotten more and more scared of this entry; just thinking about it makes my self-consciousness flare up and cripple me. I don�t know why, or I�m aware of a whole matrix of possible whys, but it�s making me not want to write, so I�m going to tough it out instead and condense when I have to. Sorry about that. Or maybe I also want to keep some of it just for me?)

He called, and a bacon date was scheduled for Sunday morning. The author became aware that she should be embarrassed of her excessive use of the passive voice and periodic sentences, and she resolved to do better. Bacon. Hiking-type excursion. Conversation. Making out. The author, now attempting to eschew verbs entirely, is craftier than we had supposed. Let�s indulge her, though, because doesn�t it do your heart good to see her this delighted and goofy? Doesn't she deserve it, hasn't she been waiting a dog's age for a cosmic Valentine to call her own? Datey datey date date date. As for the movie, I think I was disappointed in it, the Wise Old Darky syndrome I hate so much plus it just seemed pointless and inert up there on the screen like a still life, more a paint-by-numbers image than an homage. The production design was ostentatiously gorgeous. Though I say I think I was disappointed in it because I was having trouble concentrating and my pants itched � maybe I was blown away, who knows. Then back to the bacon shack and more conversation and then a judicious cut to the fireplace, and there I am again sitting in my car calling Catharine. Um. I�m doing a lot of walking into doors.

But if I don�t tell the things, if I don�t tell the whole story, if I don�t tell you what I�ve been telling Vanessa via e-mail and while I could barely drive and sitting on my porch last night, then you are not going to know them, and to you I will seem guilty of wishful extrapolation and Steve, sketched but not filled in, will be just some chump I met in a bar who happens to have a pan to fry bacon in and some apparently good lines. And I do not want that to happen, that�s not me and that sure as hell is not him, but for reasons I don�t even know I am unable right now to reach into the swirling vortex of my synapses and extract the strands of something approximating a plot and then to sit here and braid them together. You will tsk-tsk remind me that I was drinking when I met him. Also you will say this: rebound. Fair enough. Oh, I�m tired. I don�t want to do this now. Diary, you vex me. When I talked to Catharine on Sunday morning and made my guess-what announcement, I then explained my intention to sit Steve down and give him a little speech about the fact that technically, I�d broken up with someone not even a week ago and that the best I could possibly offer him, if I was going to offer anything, was a part-time gig as Mr. Rebound Guy and that he could take it or leave it. She congratulated me for my determination to be forthright in this respect. "Of course," she mused, "the only way you�re screwed is if he turns out to be *great*." So maybe I�m screwed. And maybe you�re reading this thinking no, I�m not even screwed, I�ve just got my fat head so full of rebound that I can�t see the forest for the trees. I do not want you to think that, and I hope you don�t, but then again I appreciate that I�m the one lacking resources to point you towards the contradictory evidence. Catharine, do you remember another exchange we had a year and half ago or so, What am I doing? and your answer was Exactly what you want to be doing. Yes, again, better, more.

One thing. When I went to Steve�s place on Sunday morning and he came to the door, right away I was impressed with myself for having been able to maintain the self-delusion even for a second that it would have been all right if he didn�t call. It would not have been all right. And how many times do I get to say how good-looking (!) and hot (!) he is before I come off as shallow? Did I also mention the biggest working vocabulary of any guy I have ever met who was not a grad-school freak? Did I mention the copy of "Welding: Principles and Practices"? I know I didn't mention the e-mail, and that's because I don't want to make you jealous.

And how can I even be saying any of this and meaning it as much as I mean it when a week ago I was a total fucking wreck over Todd? I don�t know. It�s a mystery to me how neither thing can be diminished by the proximity of the other, but I�m here to testify, there is no diminishment and no compromise of integrity. Call me a liar all you want � as, for instance, Todd would if he got wind of this. I don�t care, because I�m not lying.

I am currying favor with the Gastro ladies, and the doctor in charge seems to think I�m aces, this despite the fact that for the past two days I have done basically nothing except keep Refresh-ing the view of my Inbox to see if anyone has sent me mail in the last thirty seconds and praying that no one would assign me and my addled brain responsibility beyond that engrossing task. My new favorite thing to do is send my friends e-mail that has in the subject header "Hey asshole" and contains nothing but a picture of the inside of a colon. There�s some possibility that this thing could go permanent for me. The pay�s probably (ha) crap, but an office with a window and a scanner and a cd burner, nice people, catered lunches from pharmaceutical companies, and lots of slacktime to write for the year and a half or so before I go back to school? Tempting. Ha, tempting as opposed to temping? Look at the state I�m in, this is not pretty at all.

The postponed dinner-and-movie with Jeanne on Saturday night went really well. Rebecca joined us for the foodstuffs then went dancing with Terry, and Jeanne and I got to hang out and be chick friends and watch the U of C. I cried, she didn�t, we�re going to keep in touch. Next dinner event, by the way, for having absorbed the attention of Steve�s horny Russian colleague all night so he and I could get acquainted more private-like, Vanessa is the guest of honor and I am so over-the-moon grateful for a pal like her that I will make her whatever and everything she likes. If that girl wants lobster I am willing to dive for it myself.

I�m seeing him again tomorrow night.

And, Jesus, what�s Number Two going to say about all this?