Down My Street

Tonight I returned home from a sushi dinner with a friend on an outdoor patio near the lake by our apartments. She had graciously agreed to join me despite having already eaten in order to keep me company while I satiated my hunger that had been growing all afternoon. I had been on an eharmony happy hour with Jason, the crawfish-boil attendee who also runs marathons and was raised on a dairy farm. The date had been fun, but I was starving, and so little mattered until half a spicy tuna girl roll and half of a Temptation roll were lined up in my belly.

After the hunger waned and the sunlight fell, I dropped my friend back home at her apartment, and I picked up my dog from my own for a quick 9:30 stroll around the neighborhood, I began to think of things other than food and my recent date. I began to notice the world around me, the perfect July nighttime air, minus the humidity of the earlier part of the week. Nearly everyone else in my neighborhood, or at least everyone under age 40, had noticed the same gorgeous nighttime quality and were taking advantage of the weather in groups or pairs, or even alone on a bike.

My apartment sits across a busy street from a coffee shop. The streets behind this coffee shop wander towards a lake, and along the road are 80 year-old homes with yards, some lacking grass in lieu of sustainable indigenous plants and flowers. One home I pass daily has a delicate little arrangement of toy cars, plastic dinosaurs, and today I noticed a plastic hedgehog head placed strategically among the flowers. There are no children at this home, but I have often seen one of the two women who live there working diligently on her yard. My section of this part of the city is four blocks away from the action, the Urban Outfitters and Victoria Secret, the Famous Dave's that hosts live blues and swing dancing, L.A. Fitness, the Aveda Salon, the restaurants il gatto and Chino Latino. I often walk the four blocks towards the fun with my dog and then back, taking in the urban art on the way that's filled with irony and wit. Some graffiti bandits have sprayed tarantulas randomly over the sidewalks. Clever artists have added the words "Drop & Roll" to a stop sign. It is my belief that these same artists also added the words "Don't" and "Believing" to the stop sign down the block in the same thick black marker that looks like wet paint. This stop sign is the whole four blocks away from the giant sea mammal spray painted on a utility box above the smeary words "Oh! The manatee!"

So, it did not surprise me that in this neighborhood, I passed a group of urban hipsters standing on the sidewalk outside a rented home waiting for a cab. It also didn't surprise me that they began singing "Livin' on a Prayer" by Jon BonJovi at the top of their lungs. My dog did not approve and began huffing and snorting like an old man, which is what he does when he knows he will be scolded for barking but he wants to show his disapproval anyway. I, on the other hand, chuckled. In fact, I was tempted to hum a few bars myself, this being one of my absolute favorite karaoke songs.

I restrained myself and walked away from the karaoke group, and I began to think about karaoke. The most recent of my karaoke escapades involved a denim dress (the one I am planning to wear tomorrow for eharmony date #3), an old bus filled with vinyl seating and fluorescent lights, and a tribute to lovers of blue-eyeshadow everywhere: "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," by Pat Benatar.

I was attending a birthday party for a woman I adore who was turning 30, but she was really the only person I knew. While I love karaoke, I was not sure that I'd be able to sing on a bus full of strangers at 11:00 in the morning.

We actually did not board the bus until 11:30, though, in part because the birthday girl's sister, let's call her Kristi, was outside the apartment talking on her cell phone in her car.

"So, I think Kristi's going to ask you some questions later," said my friend after I hugged her a Happy Birthday.

"Of course," I said, knowing that Kristi, the mother of a three year-old and a on year-old, had found out a few weeks ago that her husband had been having an affair with one of their friends. Her life was upended, he wouldn't stop seeing the other woman, and now she was facing a divorce.

"Right now she doesn't want anything," my friend said. "She wants him to keep it all because she doesn't want anything to remind her of their lives together." I knew what she meant, and I knew how I felt when I left my ex, and how Kristi was probably feeling the same way.

I knew I'd be happy to talk to Kristi, to sympathize, to share my story, and when she got on the bus, this strawberry-blond 35 year-old mother of two. A woman wearing a denim dress with a heart-shaped neckline and an A-line skirt, and that matched her round-wide blue eyes. I liked her immediately. "I'm Katie," I said, looking at her to see if the name clicked, "I work with your sister." Recognition showed in her eyes, and I knew we'd probably chat later, after a couple drinks.

After an hour on the bus (plus a mimosa and a bloody mary), I did get up the courage to sing in front of a bus full of strangers. Part of me was doing it because I love karaoke, and another part was just sheer stubbornness not to let my anxiety stop me from doing something fun, but as I started to sing Pat Benatar's song, the one I had chosen on a whim because "Livin' on a Prayer" wasn't on the bus's playlist, I started to feel something more.

Suddenly I was really believing the words.

"You come on with your c'mon's; you don't fight fair. That's ok, see if I care. Knock me down, it's all in vain, I get right back on my feet again. C'mon- hit me with your best shot!"

I started shaking my hips a little, making a pouty face, shimmying my shoulders, and I gave those lyrics my best-throaty-blue impersonation (the one that got me a slightly-better-than-chorus role in my middle-school's production of "Annie" back in 6th grade). Suddenly I just wanted so badly for Kristi to know that you do recover. That at some point you smile and it doesn't feel forced. That you do get back on your feet again, and you sometimes even sing loudly for a bus full of people you don't even know.

Later Kristi and I would talk and I would feel my eyes welling up with tears for this beautiful woman and wanting somehow to make it so she wouldn't have to go through the experience.

But even more badly, I wanted her to understand that my divorce was the worst, but also the best thing to ever happen to me.

****


This is what I was thinking about while walking my dog through my neighborhood, watching a black bat move like a cursor across the story of the sky.