Thursday, March 31, 2011

About last night

Last night was bizarre. I met a small group downtown to review a few pieces of writing. A couple of us planned to attend the spring workshop reading at Grubstreet afterward. A friend of mine dared me to read a flash fiction piece and after a few beers, both of us decided to go for it.

The reading went really well. It was amazing actually. Afterwards our instructor lavished us with praise and I experienced some sort of literary euphoria. Smiling, tingly, and a little sweaty. Like a first kiss. But before I could really soak that in, a man approached me.

I didn't quite put it together at first, but he was someone I'd met awhile back. He was trying to start a writing group near my house. He turned out to be a little aggressive, alienated the entire group (12 or so people dropped out, more than half before our first meeting), and had his meetup group officially removed, twice. Red flags all around. I was starting a new class at Grub, so I politely told him that I couldn't work it out.

Except he showed up at the reading. It felt like he hung out a while near the elevators, so I'd have to talk to him. It was weird because while the thing is technically open to the public, usually the event is just for people who've taken a class that session. He followed us outside and then proceeded to chat us up on the sidewalk for awhile. Puffing away, asking about the classes, commenting on the readings, etc. I urged him to take the novel class and extracted myself. He'd likely take the same train as me, so I left with a friend and waited it out at a nearby bar, we needed to go over some things anyway. He's probably a harmless enough guy, he owns a business near my house and has for many years. Still. Not sure if that will be the end of the story.

So finally I head for the trains and they are all late. I am waiting and waiting, texting the sitter. I get on a train and it stops twice. Lights out, no explanation. At one point the train expresses to the final stop and I have to get off and catch another train. By this time, my sitter is not going to make her train home, so I call her a cab before I even get there. Cab, sitter, killing time at the bar, I've spent a small fortune on this evening.

She leaves and texts me to say that the cab got pulled over. I stay up to wait for her and Little Guy wakes up with a nightmare. It is now past 1 AM and I am downstairs when I hear his feet hit the floor. He runs to my bedroom looking for me, but of course, I am still awake and in the kitchen. I head up there, walk him back to his bed and he says, "Mommy can you just be in your bed now?"

So it was one hell of a night, both awesome and weird, but he was right, at that point I really just needed to be in my bed.

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