So much happened last night. Or maybe I just need to get out more. Stephanie is 34. I thought she was pushing 40. I do not know how old her husband is but by appearances they seem to have a chasmic age gap such as she eschewed when first we met. She asked how “anything could possibly last” if there was a 15+ year age gap between people. I heard echoes of mortality in her complaint, but she might have been thinking in more practical terms. i.e.: ED. In that spirit she let go to me that she recently had her tubes tied. You see, this is where she and I are friends. It’s been I don’t know how many years since last we met but we picked up right where we left off in terms of candor.

Molly

This was indescribably random. I mean, maybe not so much considering the town and the dispersity of the population. But in the genre of “Where Worlds Collide” this was LOUD.

Stephanie invited Molly and another friend, and of course her husband Doug. I did not know Molly and the other but that’s all good. This is one of those situations where Stephanie is as good a friend as one could want, since she is so nimble in social situations. And her husband Doug is really cool. He is lead brewer at the Tampa Bay Beer Company, and he works long, long hours.

Conversation with Molly veered toward the seemingly inevitable: What high school did you go to? She went to Academy of the Holy Names. I went to Jesuit. The two school were unofficially related. She was AHN ‘84. I was JHS ‘86. She started rattling off names of other people from AHN with her last name. I don’t want to give away her real name but let’s just say it was O’Flaherty. As she said her sisters’ names and those of others in the class I had to ask: “Are you Molly O’Flaherty?” She was. The O’Flaherty girls, all five of them, were among the coolest girls I ever knew of. But, as I soon learned, the 5 of them who were at AHN were not all related. Three of them were sisters, the other two were from different families. All these years (not that I thought about it much, mind you) I thought the O’Flaherty clan numbered at least 5.

Why was this something of an existential relief for me? Well, the O’Flaherty I found most inspiring was Patty. In the summer between junionr and senior years I sent Patty an epic letter, 40+ handwritten single-spaced pages, talking about everything that passed through my head in the 2 weeks it took to write it. I liked her a lot, and I think it could have been mutual. My first encounter with her was a cold call, out of nowhere, asking her to go to the Prom. We had never communicated at all before this call, which lasted hours. It was a good conversation. No, it was an amazing conversation. I saw her a day or two later and she smiled at me, saying “Hello.” It was nice. But I fucked it up with the 40+ page letter. The next time I saw her she did not smile at all. She scowled at the sidewalk, pretending I did not exist.

Patty went on to become a police officer somewhere in Central Florida.

The reason the O’Flaherty clan clarification was such a relief to me is that Molly is almost certainly not in contact with Patty, since she is not actually her sister, as I thought. So Patty would not have this horrible memory to share should Molly mention my name to her, since that will probably not happen. And my first thought on seeing Molly and connecting her to the O’Flaherty clan was: She doesn’t look anything like Patty

And the way this connection to a Tampa high school alumni via Sunswick in New York was crazy awesome.

…

The Girl Sitting Next To Me Saw My Cock

It’s true. I mean, I think it’s true. I didn’t ask. Why would I? But I sensed the discomfort  which segued into a certain sphere of normalcy in which women assume guys just do this sort of thing. Those intangibles might have been lopsided toward my brain.

What happened was, in the course of conversation I remembered taking a picture of something. I wanted to show it to the others. The picture was on my phone camera. So I whipped out the phone and started swiping through the images, one by one. For some forgotten and now inexplicable reason I had taken a bunch of pictures of my big fat cock the night before. I had no memory of this. Even seeing the pictures did not jog my memory of actually taking the pictures. And truth be told this is something I simply Do Not Do. So I turned the phone’s screen away so that woman next to me wouldn’t see any further cock shots, should there be any. She was conspicuously muted all of a sudden. She saw it. It was just right there in front of her.

I have no way to know if she will say anything to Stephanie or the others. If it was solely and solipsistically about me I honestly would not care if she did. It’s out of respect to the sensibilities of others that I refrain from flailing my big fat cock around. I have a cock. I know this. If I hear anything of this cock-pic malfunction I know what I will say: “Now you know I have one.”

…

I helped save some ducks yesterday. A mama duck somehow guided her raft of about 10 little ducklings into our swimming pool. They were too small to get out. Mama duck was angry, and called in a squadron of backup mama ducks. I laid out a deflated raft for the raft of ducklings to climb onto, and up. It worked. It was awesome. The raft climbed right up onto the raft and up the 45-degree incline to safety. I had pictures I showed the others at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company last night. Everyone was like “Aaaawwwwwww.”
…

OK, then, writing this at end of the day Wednesday, with another story about today to come. Seeing Phil tomorrow then flying home Friday. A lingering question revolves around why Tom, the owner of my building, called me today but did not leave a message. I am *almost* certain that was he who called, using a new-to-me cell phone number that I think he used once before. He does not seem like the sort who would call just to say “Hey, we’re done!” It seems like the only reason he would even think to call me would be to say that the job is taking longer than he expected. He had said it would take 3 days. I gave him 5, since I left Sunday and won’t be back until 7 or 8 pm on Friday. I told him it would cost me $200 to change my return flight. He knows this. Staying here a few more days is no problem at all, it’s the flight change penalty that would be bad. And there is no possible way he would pay me back that $200.