I think I just saw the mother of one of my exes. It would make sense given the location at the supermarket right across the street from where she lives. It also might explain the sustained yet uncertain look of recognition in her eyes. But she was wearing a mask, and I seem to remember her as a person who wore glasses, which this person was not. I forgot her name until I looked it up later on my phone. I haven’t thought about that whole mess in a long time, but she and I, somewhat secretly, used to have conversations when we crossed paths in the neighborhood. They were pretty good conversations, too, with respect to the breakup and what really happened. But the ex was never to know about these conversations, and as far as I have any reason or resource to know she never did. The family never blamed me for anything. They never hated me. They were disappointed that it ended after 3 years but no one thought badly of me for calling it off. As her mother mentioned in one of our off-the-record conversations, the family even made a point of watching “CBS Sunday Morning” when I made my appearance in 2017. That might have been a year after the breakup, I don’t really remember anymore when it ended. They were also quite ensconsed by the coverage my Mr. Softee/LinkNYC prank got throughout 2018. The whole family thought I was going to go to jail on account of that nonsese.

As certain as I remain to this day that the relationship had to end I still consider her parents and sister and her sister’s husband to be the clossest thing to family I’ve ever had in New York. But after the catharsis of those secret conversations finally wore off I don’t think either of us has anything to say to each other. I think it ended in 2016, about 9 years now. I’ve had no shortage of dalliances and attempts at serious relationships since then but I have no idea if the woman I knew and lived with for 3 years found anything else. I hope she did. She’s a cool person but what did us in was her anger and insecurity. The moment she had me pinned to the pavement of 30th Street with her fist raised and a look of murder in her eyes is when I knew this had to end. You could call it “the last straw” but seriously, there had been countless incidents that would have caused any normal guy to call things off. But me, I’m prone to abusive relationships. I always have been. In some circumstances (not this one) I think I subconsciously craft things so the person I’m with will become abusive.

She would later insist “I wasn’t going to hit you” to which I said (not out loud, because I was done talking about it) that no, she wasn’t going to hit me that night but when it came to matters of anger and even rage things would always escalate with her. It was like a perverse kind of contest where every argument or altercation had to be louder, longer, and angrier than the previous one. It was only a matter of time before she crossed into the threshold of physical abuse. 

After the breakup I also had a couple of “secret” conversations with her sister. As with the chats with her mother, there was a certain awkwardness about it at first but after a while it was fine and ultimately cathartic as hell. She was the one who said “The family doesn’t hate you” and then she asked,  point blank, “Was it her anger?” that was the moment the catharsis opened up. I was not going to volunteer anything about what went down that night, and I did not go into details about the incident on 30th Street, but I did say something like “You guys would not believe some of the shit that happened.” God, I don’t even want to think about it myself now. I was about to rattles off a list of the incidents that would have sent any normal guy packing but it’s done. The past is safely in the past. I wanted for us to be friends. But we were never friends to begin with. Just lovers.

About 20 minutes after what I now believe without hesitation to have been a wordless encounter with the mothe rof one of my eses another moment of what might be called kismet occurred. On a fence, and on 30th Street no  less, not far from the spot where the 3-year long relationship ended, I spotted an company ID card that someone had placed on a fence. By my interpretation the card had been dropped on the sidewalk and someone with good intentions propped it up on the fence to make it visible to either the person who lost it or someone who knew the guy. I don’t know the guy but I’ve seen his name on packages and mail deliveries here, and I know he lives across the hall from me, in 5B. I’ll get back to the 5B connection in a minute, but when I found the card and recognized the name on it I thought Neat, I can be useful to somebody today. I took the ID card off the fence and, since I don’t know the guy beyond a single very random interaction, I left it downstairs, on top of the mailboxes. He should find it there soon enough. I hope. Leaving it at his door would be creepy. Knocking on his door would create a needless interaction in which I would likely have to explain how I knew his name and which apartment he lived in. 

What of 5B? I would think any reasonable food delivery person might assume 5B was on the 5th floor. We don’t have a 5th floor, but try telling that to the stoned-as-fuck delivery guy who walked up to the 4th floor, ignored the warning signs that say it’s illegal to be on the roof, and who opened the door tto aforementioned roof thereby setting off an extremely loud alarm the landlord had recently installed. The noise from the alarm led me to step out into the hallway to see what the hell was happening. The individual in 5B was also in the hallway, waiting for his food delivery. Through the deafening noise of the alarm he said something about expecting food delivery, to which I responded (shouting) that the delivery guy must have thought 5B was on the 5th floor, which would be the roof. 

What I don’t remember now is how or where I came face-to-face with the delivery guy, whose face clearly indicated he was fucked up on something. 

Anyway, getting the guy’s work ID back to him (still in progress) reminds of an earlier heroic deed. The time I found a guy’s iPhone on a sidewalk. He dropped it just as he was getting into the passenger seat of a car. For some reason it didn’t look like a phone to me. It was in a case and the way it landed on the sidewalk it just didn’t look like a phone to me. If I’d recognized it right away I would have called out to the guy who dropped it but everything happened too fast. The phone hit the sidewalk, the car door closed, and the car whisked away into infamy. 

Only after the car drove off did I put it all together: Dude dropped his phone. I picked it up and reluctantly took responsibility for some dude’s phone. I considered calling back the last number called or texting the last textee but there was a passcode. I tried to hack the passcode with obvious “1234” patterns but no joy. At a certain point I considered doing what someone did with that ID card I found today. I was just going to leave the phone on someone’s fence or other obvious place and forget about it. I briefly imagined getting a couple hundred bucks for it on some sketchy dark web black market. But I would never do that.

About 5 minutes after I found it the phone rang. No passcode was needed to answer a call. I answered, asking “Is this your phone?” Rapidltalk ensued. Yes, this was his phone, where are you, where am I, can you be here quickly? Quickly they were there, and oh my wod, that dude could not have been happier if it was his wedding day, or if he was welcoming his first born. He asked about the details. I told him he dropped it as he was getting into his car by the school. He was lucky I found it. There were some school kids nearby who might have had other plans if they got their hands on it. He, of course, gave me $20, which I think he borrowed from his buddy who was driving the car. I tried to refuse the $20 but did not want to spoil the joy of the moment for him. It was nice. I felt useful. Valued. That’s rare for me.