There’s really something magical about the first snowfall of the season.
The leaves are still dried, rotting away in gutters, illuminating the grayness of cement with the colors of their death — reds, yellows, and oranges, turned a musty brown as the moisture seeps into the skeletons left behind. All bets are off when it snows.
It snowed today.
I presented with BFF and a few others tonight to a large group of eager (for extra credit) students, discussing history and travel and humanity. BFF, D (who also presented), and I decided we needed to catch up. D has been teaching several counties away, and we no longer have classes together since he’s working strictly on thesis hours. We wound up at Jonny Carino’s splitting a pitcher of Bellini with three straws since it was too thick to pour into our glasses. The three of us became friends on a trip to Italy a couple summers ago, and our decision to split the pitcher was familiar territory, ringing distant memories of bottles upon bottles of wine in Florence and Rome, huddling up to keep our shit together. D and I almost had a thing on that trip, but he recently began dating his roommate’s ex-girlfriend before the trip, so nothing came of it but dancing, holding hands, and sharing drinks.
We asked how things are going with the two of them, since the last time we drank together his apprehension about a serious commitment wavered. He pulled out his phone and said “Check out what I’ll be picking up when I go back to Indiana over Christmas.” It was an engagement ring. Beautiful. Classic. “It was my great-grandmother’s.” Of course it was.
BFF and I reacted appropriately, offering congratulations and excitement and suppositions that “we’re of course invited to the wedding, right?” but when we made eye contact, like true BFFs do, we knew we were both screaming on the inside.
“I bet you’re jealous, huh? Since you don’t have this,” D said to BFF, who has been in a relationship for the last few years. What a little fucker, I thought. Somehow we changed the subject, but the sting of it stuck: when the hell did everyone decide now was the time to get married?
We said our goodbyes, and BFF and I decided we needed to continue drinking (even though it’s Thursday and I teach in a few hours). So we went to our favorite bar. Well, really it’s my favorite bar, mostly because the bartenders know me by name and have my gin and tonic prepared as I’m walking to the bar. I spent about 82% of my weeks there over the summer getting pre- or post-drunk. I’m an extremely good tipper for those who are responsible for my drunk.
“Dude, seriously, what the fuck,” isn’t really an uncommon way for us to start conversations, and this was no exception.
I mean really, it’s like someone decided that the second you hit your 20s, you’re supposed to have a ring on your finger and a zygote growing in your uterus. College? Careers? Post-graduate degrees? Na, bro. That shit’s for fools.
Clearly we’re fucking fools.
BFF hasn’t been out drinking with me when I’m in usual form for quite some time; mostly because she’s in a relationship, and single beast-me knows how to welcome conversation from strangers.
A homie with glasses and a satchel sits down across from us, offering his hand and a name. [Okay, total side note, but my radiator just kicked on and it almost made me piss myself. Damn old radiators.]
We spent the next hour or so accepting shots of tequila and chatting it up with homie with the glasses and satchel and his friend, Twitchy. Twitchy is awkward as shit, which I find ridiculously adorable. So much adorable, that when they got up to close their tabs, I told BFF I think Twitchy is super adorable and I could totally fix him, to which she replied “Bitch, I swear to God I will smack you in the face if you say that again.” Reason why we’re best friends? I think yes.
I’m not one to refuse strange conversation, especially from not-entirely-creepy guys who tell me I’m pretty, so I allowed it. Where was I from? I’m a German Jew, abandoned in the corn fields of Nicaragua. “Really? I’m a first generation American, too!” Hell-fucking-yeah. Making headway.
I spent most of the night awkwardly laughing, grateful that homeboys came around. I’d finally admitted to myself and to BFF that no matter what pseudo-homeless guy says or does, I forgive him and I never hold it against him — that much in love. (He’s a whole other story and kind of makes me turn into a Debbie Downer, so maybe I’ll save that for another day, but the quick and dirty version: I’ve been madly in love with him for years.)
I know it’s a good night when I (mostly soberly) tip 80% and can’t stop smiling as soon as I sit in my car. I live up the street from this bar, which likely contributes to my frequency of it. The ride home was brought to me by Flogging Molly’s “The Times They Are A-Changing”:
It’s no accident that tonight, when we learn of D’s engagement, we’re also reaching epiphanies of our (hopefully) inevitable happiness in relationships and how ridiculous we’ll feel in a few years (again, hopefully) when we’re with whoever-his-face-is while being courted by nice, drunk-as-fuck awkward guys who buy us shots and listen to me lie and tell us we’re pretty, the first snowfall is here, masking the death of summer in a blanket of silence.
The times are a-changing. I can feel it in my bones.
Or maybe that’s just the gin.
–AM.
avamaura 