Whatever It Is That Boy Put a Spell On Me

There has been some fuzzy-ass anniversaries in the past few years. We celebrate on Halloween.  Our first date was near around that holiday about a hunnerd years ago in SF.  I met him from my bestie KK who worked in the same record store.  I was swore off of men at the time even though it was torturous to try to find a straight one in that town anyway.  But it was also very interesting to see how the lines get so blurry when freedom and youth and openness come into play.  I met some amazing boys that I'll never forget but not because of a romantic connection, mainly due to an inability to find a way to connect romantically.  I never felt like it was any kind of a sin to experiment when your heart was driving you somewhere new.  But some things don't work. It was like a dairy intolerance. Or a bear trying to eat at a turtle or something.  You know something cool's inside there but you can't get to it.

But nonetheless I was still ecstatic to start fresh and meet this amalgam of so many of my interests and dreams.  A musician and a songwriter, a genuine lover of music, a Midwesterner, a kind heart, a poet, someone engaged in life, someone who I could also learn things from and grow with. He made films on Super 8 and had provocative friends.  His voice on the phone used to send me reeling.  Of course he was also a smoker at the time, wasn't that considerate of women and didn't know how to act on a date.  He was not romantic or really all that sweet to me at first, although he had his moments.  He drank all my roommates beer on our first date and never called me the next day.  At one point I considered off'ing him just to have some peace.

Maybe it's fitting the anniversaries are as hazy as the courtship.  Two years ago, I went to visit my sister.  One year ago we had Sandy come visit unexpectedly.

This year for reasons I am not at liberty to divulge, we are on a strict diet of no oiled foods and no fats and no sugar.  We both worked, so the celebration was muted. I made a stir fry of sorts with fresh vegetables, a frozen medley, canned bamboo shoots and shrimp.  I cooked each of the items separately in a bit of chicken stock before finishing them all together with a corn starch slurry.

We like to remember the date but we're really not ones to haul off and hold some big party.  It's more like a gentle reminder, oh yeah that happened at this time of year.  huh.  It's all a purple haze.