And on your left you'll see. . . oh crap. . .

It's happened to me once before. Someone I know spotting me on the bus. It was acutally quite karmic, every time I do a Night Loop and pass by the Bowery Poetry Club, I give a shout out to whoever's working there, often Pavel, I kid I knew from high school. This time, Pavel stepped out of the starbucks he works at day times in Soho on and shouted out to me. It's fun, it's a good way to let your tourists know that you really live in this city. This time, it was a little more awkward.

Coming up Pike Street, after the Brooklyn Bridge story transitions into The Expansion of Chinatown bit, I see a rather shapely and nicely tanned young woman in a tanktop and sunglasses jumping up and down and waving. Of course, my initial response was just to feel flattered that some hot New York babe was so excited to see a cute tour guide, (yeah, I'm a smug bastard sometimes.) But that was when I recognized her.

"Oh crap. . . that's my ex-girlfriend." I normally shy away from any expletives, even PG-rating, let alone going into my personal or romantic life, but it kind of cut me off guard. I moved on quickly, but the sighting stayed in my mind for the rest of the day.

Hannah and I dated briefly. Only about 7 weeks, which was actually the most substantive relationship I'd had in years. We met on a dating site. Big deal. We planned a rendezvous at Strand bookstore, where she would "accidentally" drop an Ezra Pound anthology on my foot. We would laugh about the clever nominal pun implied in the author's name and go out for coffee from there. She was very attractive and had a rent-controlled apartment in Chelsea, which was more than enough reason to stick with her, all though I was far too focussed on my own personal development to really make an emotional blah, blah, blah, I called it quits.

Regretted it sometimes, offered to her that we maybe catch up over a beer, which she proudly rebuffed, politely offering that although she had no grudge nor negative feelings toward me, she also had no interest in seeing me either. Then we glanced at each other on a crowded Williamsburg bound L-train on a Friday night. A shy smile and a wave were all we felt obligated to offer. But after her seeing me at work? In my "office"?? In front of my "clients"???? Oh, I wasn't going to let this one slide.

I had a maybe-date with a phone-tag-honey in the East Village later, but with no confirmation, dressed in my spiffy short-sleeve cordurouy jacket and punky-T & jeans, my bicycle at my disposal and Chelsea being on the route from the Grey Line office to EV, I think it was only appropriate to make a visit.

BUZZZZZ
"Hello?"
"Hannah? It's Gideon."
Pause
"Hannah? What're you doing on my tour route?"
"What are YOU doing at my apartment?"
"It was on my bike route. Come out to the fire escape."

I decided that if I'm ever going to make a serious commitment to a girl, it'll probably be after we'd already broken up once. For some morbid reason, it seems like you need that initial rise, fall, and period of reflecton before you can get away goofy romantic crap like this, that seem to only happen in John Cusack movies.

"Listen!" I think we should have a bottle of wine and discuss ways to avoid each other a little better, cause this way doesn't seem to be working."
"A bottle of wine?"
". . . uh. . . or beer?"
"Beer sounds good."
"Should I come up?"
"I'll come down."

Well, I'm glad she made it clear.

We went to a place called The Half King on 23rd & 10th. The only place around there that wasn't a gay bar or a chi-chi bar/restaurant. Made up to look like a Olde Fashioned Inn. A blues band in the back was wailing away and the drinks were overpriced, but good. I liked it immediately. They handed us a couple of menus that told us that The Half King was an Indian cheif who helped a young Liutenant George Washington in the French-Indian wars, among others, and was a military strategist and fierce warrior and leader, one that had greatly inspired and influence The Man Who Would Be President.

The conversation flowed smoother after the first round of Bourbon based cocktails. She was living the good life, graphic designing for the Absolut campaign, which means sometimes getting paid to party, and going to fabulous fashionista parties, sometimes for free. Her roommate also moved out, meaning she was now living in a two-bed in Chelsea, by herself, paying maybe 1/5 what the place would be worth on the market. Oh she looooved rubbing that one at me.

But she was a City-Gal. A corporate-artist in the world of the Beautiful People, which at 23 was not bad at all. I'm a Brooklyn-Boy, poet and hipster-kid working in the family business, entertaining for a wage that I can coast on, if not really save or spend extravagantly. If it were a race, technically she would have "won" but we both knew it wasn't like that. We both had good lives, we could share them, but we'd never want to trade.

It also might've worked. In theory, on the opposites attract front. A perfect lay-out for a romantic New York comedy, and maybe it would've worked here in the real world too. It just didn't.

"Oh, let me show you something." I once asked her to design a business card though. it's never a good idea to mix sex with business projects though, even if it is just a biz card. I produced one from my wallet and showed her the image I had described to her eight months ago.

"Oh. It looks good." She placed it down on the bar. Pause.

"You can keep it if you want." A slow, snake-venom grin crept up her Manhattan-lacquered lips.

"It's allright. If I wanted to see you, I'd know how." Yeah. ambushing me on my bus.

The night ended with a peck on the check and no expectation of another future encounter. The phone-tagger had left me a message while we were at the bar.

She made other plans.