2002-06-09 - 1:47 a.m.

Okay, so it's been a very long time since I updated. I'm trying to write a book, and I don't spend nearly as much time at home as I used to since I moved to Boston. Sorry. I will update when I feel there's a story worth telling. Tonight, as I sit in my room at a quarter till two in the morning, full of energy and mind-bogglingly happy, I have a story to tell.

I was out and about tonight, and, at about 7 o'clock, when I found myself in the heart of Boston on a Saturday night, there was no way in hell I was going to go home. I was going to find myself some entertainment. So I headed to Harvard Square, walked around, watched some street performers, bought a cheap CD and a mocha frappucinno, and did a bit of writing.

Then, at just before nine o'clock, I found this large crowd gathered around a band playing covers of all kinds of classic rock songs. I sat down on the steps with the outer ring of spectators, setting my backpack in front of me.

A few minutes later, I get a tap on my shoulder. I look back, and it's this quite attractive young girl, who asks me what time it is. I tell her it's a few minutes to nine, smile, and turn back toward the band, when I hear her friend say, "You did that deliberately, there's a giant clock right there," and pointed to the indeed rather large clock atop the bank right in front of us, which I hadn't noticed before.

Then I get another tap on the shoulder. This time it's the friend, who tells me that the reason the girl had actually asked me was "mngrrrffffff!" The reason for the odd reason is the girl threw her hand across her friend's mouth, screaming, "Noooooo" and pulling her down onto the ground.

Finally the friend told me that the reason was that the girl thought I was cute and wanted to dance with me. Before I could respond, however, the girl got incredibly embarrassed and stomped off. Her friend said that she'd be back, which was true, but only to tell her that their bus was there and they had to leave, which was true.

So, it sucks that the girl was gone, but the shear fact that that had happened left me with the kind of confidence one only usually finds in action movie heroes.

I wanted to get up and join the dancing part of the crowd, but was worried about my backpack getting stolen. That's when I looked through the contents of the bag and realized that if they did that, the most expensive thing the thief would make off with was the bag itself. So I stashed it somewhere where I could easily see it from the crowd, and I started dancing.

That's when the newfound confidence took over. I brazenly danced near various attractive young girls in the crowd, smiling at them, smiling even wider when they smiled back, making idle chatter with a few, and just generally having a stupidly happy time of it all.

As midnight and the end of the show approached, the crowd had died down some, and I found myself with a strange, drunken fat man with no shirt and a 3/4 unzipped jacket who was going around hugging people on my right, and a very cute girl on my left, who'd been at the show since before I got there. She was in a long-sleeved black shirt that said "United Colors of [something I didn't recognize and thus can't remember]," which looked quite soft, and eventually turned out to, in fact, be quite soft, and a surprisingly flattering dark gray baseball cap.

We danced pretty close, made jokes about the drunken fat man, who apparently thought the girl and I were together, and when he asked me about it, I said, "I wish, man, but I've never met her before just now," which got her to smile at me, and caused me to suddenly wonder where the hell I'd come up with that line, and how I'd actually managed to say it.

Finally, at 11:55, the band announced they were going to play the last song, and I started to panic. I had to have some sort of conversation with this girl that would result in our seeing each other again, but I didn't know how. That's when the band started playing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." We swayed slowly next to each other to the music, but I didn't have the confidence to ask her to dance, partially because there were practically no couples dancing to it.

That's when one of the men behind us said, "Isn't this one of those group hug songs?" Within seconds, a line of people with their arms around each other formed behind us. She looked back and two people broke to give her a place to join the crowd. Then she turned to me, smiled, and waved me in to stand next to her.

I was so amazingly happy just to be actually touching her--at her request!, no less--that I didn't even think about considering hesitating to take the place she offered me there, and had my arm around her shoulders so soon that I don't actually remember the transition there. And as I stood there, my arm started to get tired and drifted down, just a bit, so that it was across her shoulderblades, touching her back the whole way along rather than just kind of hovering above her shoulders, linked with the guy next to her. With a stronger will and an actual desire to do so, I could have held my arms higher, but... Why?

Then, as the song ended and the line parted, I pulled my arm away, slowly brushing it along the small of her back once, long enough to be noticeable, but not quite long enough to feel unnatural and possibly creepy. Then I tried to figure out what to say to her afterwards so I could see her again. As the band announced that they'd be back again the same time next week, she started walking away behind me, and I couldn't think of what to do.

That's when, from behind me, she took ahold of both of my shoulders, put her head next to mine, and said into my ear, "See you next week?" I turned around to see her smiling at me, still standing pretty close by, and said, attempting to hide my elation but probably failing miserably, "You're coming back next week?" She said she was there every week, but with her parents, gesturing to where her parents were probably standing, in a way that implied that she had to leave right then, even though she'd want to stick around otherwise.

I said, "Hey, what's your name?" I did this mainly because I have an odd tendency to forget to ask that, and feel like an idiot later. She told me it was Sasha, and asked me mine, which I told her, and then said, "Well, Sasha, if you're going to be here next week," (she nodded) "then I will most definitely see you then." She smiled, said, "Okay, see you then," paused for a bit, and headed over to find her parents.

I stood there, smiling, for a few seconds, went to pick up my backpack, and headed to the subway stop, trying to look as normal as possible, despite the huge grin on my face, until I knew I was somewhere that she couldn't see me. From that point on, I was running, bouncing, skipping, sprinting, and even hurtling the occasional bench until I got home.

Would this actually be considered, in a sense, a date? I'm not sure. I like to think so. Whatever it is, I'm very very happy.