As I was waiting in the bus station for the hour-plus that I was there (my doing, not a late bus), I was thinking about all the ways in which the universe was conspiring to drive me out of town. Thankfully I had the ticket that was my birthday gift from Girl. Had I not, I probably would have wound up having a meltdown.
Let me first start by saying, it is INFINITELY more pleasant to take Greyhound to South Station than to Port Authority. Not only are there fewer passengers to/from Boston, they are not nearly as intrusive, loud or imposing. I was better able to sleep on this bus than I have in a very long time. My only lament was that I forgot to bring a pillow…
But that was okay because I got to Boston whole, calm and happy to be out of town for a while. Girl’s roommate picked me up around midnight and we went back to their flat in Brookline. He showed me around WoW, trying to convince me to play and then let me get to bed by 2am (I had been up since 6 and was on about 5 hours of sleep from the night before anyway). I slept on a couch in the living room, making it exceptionally easy for me to be woken up by a wonderfully strange drunken greeting from a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in a while. A petite figure in the dark room, hovering over me with a giant "HI!!! WELCOME TO BOSTON!" is a strange thing to wake up to at 3am.
Girl woke up around 4am because she had to work in the morning. She woke me up around 10 (or something. Morning.) and we got started prepping and cooking for the party that was scheduled for 7pm. Since Girl is the Pastry Chef at a very nice restaurant, several of the boy chefs came over to help with the prep. It was nice to see how well respected she is and how her peers like her enough to come before or after work to help her get ready for a party – especially since one couldn’t even make it!!!
I broke the cardinal rule of knife handling and tried to catch it, which resulted in a very clean cut that bled profusely. It didn’t hurt until I started to clean the nasty soft cheese that I was cutting out of the wound. Really, it looked a lot worse than it is/was, simply because cuts on the pads of your fingers do tend to bleed profusely and, in my case, for a very long time…
I asked Girl’s roommate who was coming, how many people, what we were looking at and he told me that this was going to be a "grown-up party." It was, in a lot of ways, too, and it was really interesting to have it all pan out.
You see, part of this larger circle is a group I used to run with in my 20′s. Back then the parties weren’t so much organized as happenstance and they were decidedly NOT grown up. We’ve all done a lot of exploring of our life paths and figuring out who, where and what we want to be and now we really are growing up without attaching the dreaded word "adult" to life.
It’s that the people at the party all have places to live, and mostly had, not just jobs, but careers. Or, at least, "real" jobs. Not the slacker ones we had because we needed some flow of income. We’ve had long-term committed relationships, some of us have children. At some point, male and female, most of us cut our hair. We’re not the kids we used to be… and I think I’ve never seen that quite as clearly until I found myself back in that same circle, even though the names and faces weren’t all familiar.
The food was excellent, the party was small, but large enough to create pockets of conversation to flit between and be the social butterfly. It was interesting, though, because most people who have seen me in party situations have only seen me in my element. You know, the parties where I know a significant number of people in attendance, which was NOT the case here. I knew remarkably few people, though they were names that I have heard countless times. As a result, instead of charging into the fray, I hung out on the sidelines, waiting for a spark or an opening. I observed until I felt comfortable enough to venture into the unknown and seek out one-on-one or three-way conversations. Anything larger than that is a little too much for me when I really don’t know anyone there.
Girl was a little thrown by seeing me out of my element, but I think it gave her an insight into me that could never be conveyed with words. Even though I did wind up flitting about and meeting and connecting with almost everyone at the party, there was reservation that is not only rare for me to feel, but even rarer for me to exhibit.
I think the party ended between 1 and 2 ("Either go home or help clean."), but we stayed up for at least another hour, and then I stayed up for even longer catching up with my friend who had woken me to say hello about 24 hours earlier. We were all pretty exhausted, but the house was in remarkably good condition and it was a body tired, not as much of mental exhaustion.
The recovery day was Girl’s actual birthday and it was peaceful and quiet and nice. The weather had cooled and was overcast, but not gloomy and the general feeling in the house reflected that. I hopped on the 5 o’clock bus home and again, to a much more pleasant trip than to OR from NYC.
And I came home to the drama that I left subsiding. Not resolved, but no longer burning, which is a start. I’m all about having a plan and there is a plan in place. If it breaks down, we’ll rethink it, but it’s alright for now. I also gained some clarity about a few issues that had been plaguing me before I left and that is very very good.
I have also been THRUST into party season. I think I didn’t realize that I had taken the summer off from being a social butterfly, but with a party this past weekend, one the weekend before that, one next weekend, one weekend off and then the gala premiere of the Ed Wood Film Festival (wherein Spawn is part of the cast of one of the microsodes), I’m remembering how good it feels to be busy and to have my presence requested. That’s just September and it doesn’t count the concerts, the local events, the regular movie night, etc., etc. This is looking like it’s going to be a most excellent fall. I’ve been invited to visit friends in Maine, which I fully intend to take advantage up and I know of at least one Hallowe’en party already. I’ve had to start using Daisy as a calendar again or I’m gonna find myself even more booked than I can possibly handle. I’m even starting to hear murmurs of plans for New Year’s parties, so catch me early 
It’s interesting to me, with so many of my friends having birthdays a week (or so) after mine, I’m reaching out and trying to acknowledge them. This is after attempting to refuse to have a birthday myself. Only a few of my more tangential friends have even noticed that mine was nearby – though in which direction, they couldn’t remember. I know that there are people who would be insulted, but having not made a production out of it, I can’t fault people for an unknown… and those who do notice and say something are even more touching for not having been reminded, you know?
Coming home, even after a short weekend jaunt, it feels like "back to the old grind", but when I really stop and think about all the things that I have coming up, and the diversity of all those things, I think that maybe "the grind" isn’t as back as it seems on the surface. There’s really nothing like removing yourself from your standard environment to clear your head well enough to be able to change perspective.