The Belated Partier

I just got home and danced for ten or twenty minutes, it felt good. I am back.

The hometown is littered with film crews. It seems you can't turn a corner without some idiot wearing a safety vest holding a walkie-talkie directing you around some mess of cords and trailers. That's why I was surprised it took until now to hob-knob with someone in the film industry

Tonight I had dinner with Franny, who I would run into now and again here and there, but I certainly never fathomed the two of us sitting down to dinner together. I hadn't seen her in quite some time, but she is working on a Disney production to be released around christmas, and we have been swapping music and links over iChat all week. She suggested that we have dinner, I was surprised.

I arrived early at the izakaya style restaurant so I could get a head start on the saki. Even though I saw her approach the restaurant through the front window, I buried my face in the menu until she was at a very particular distance from the table. It's all about timing. She wore a smart black over coat, a black skirt with chanel inspired pinstriping, and boots that acknowledged this with emphasized seams that ran up the inside of her leg.

I got up and greeted her with an embrace, and poured her some saki with a shaky hand. Despite my quivering demeanor, this is where I am in my element. Able to ramble on endlessly, never allowing the conversation to lull, I had her laughing the entire time. How long though will we be able to hold on to the ambiguity of why we are sitting and having dinner together on a Tuesday night, before feelings are exposed? I want to live in the first date, and never leave it. It is desire, and the power that it wields that I am unable to cope with. But I am a perpetual charmer, and would have liked to lean my head on her shoulder if only for a moment. The restaurant was loud and I found myself edging closer and closer to her as the evening wore on.

We paid the bill and went to a bar around the corner, where we met up with Wallington, the editor of a local magazine, and after some introductions we had drinks together. Wallington and Franny swapped celebrity stories, and I shared my West Village sighting of Dr, Ruth Westheimer, which was pretty lame compared to Franny lunching with A-list actors on a regular basis.

It was getting late and the time to say goodbye was fast approaching, so I offered to walk Franny to her car. A 68 Camaro, red. I was amazed. She offered me a ride home but I declined, sitting outside my apartment in her car would have been too much. We hugged, and I gave her a kiss, it was not something I had at all intended on doing, and I hope she didn't feel the roughness of my skin against her soft cheek. I lit up a smoke and watched the Camaro pull away, appreciating the sound of dual exhaust, and Detroit muscle.

Then I went home and danced, alone.