Dropping the Shoe

As a first order of business, I bet you've noticed (unless you're a Reader reader) that my music didn't harass you as soon as you stumbled onto the page today. That's because I re-installed the coding so that it's no longer on auto-start. So if you want the music, just hit the play button (or any track you fancy). And if you don't, then you won't have to rush to hit the pause button before the music starts. You're welcome.

So it's been a pretty good weekend...

I decided I needed to get my hair cut before grad school auditions. I meant to go last week, but life got in my way. Luckily, a woman I met through my Shakespeare workshops is a hair stylist, and she said she could fit me in on Saturday.

As I was waiting for the bus (for far too long) to go to the salon, I was absent-mindedly staring at the road, and I saw this piece of paper in the street. It looked a little like a receipt, and I didn't think much of it. It had clearly been driven over many times in the dirty slush and looked nasty. But as I continued to zone out while unfocusing and refocusing my eyes in its general direction, I realized it looked a bit like money. So when the cars were stopped at a red light, I walked out into the middle of the street and picked it up. Sure enough, it was a dirty, sopping wet five dollar bill. Hurrah! I think the other people at the bus stop may have been envious of my eagle eyes. Of course, then I was stuck with this cold, disgusting, limp piece of cloth-paper money in my hand in the freezing cold. I waved it wildly in the wind, trying to get it to dry off, but gave up and folded it into some loose papers in my purse.

I'm excited that I finally have a story to tell that involves the phrase "and then I found five dollars."

I feel guilty about keeping it... Is that weird? I mean, it clearly didn't belong to anyone around. And I lost about $14 dollars last week when it fell out of the shallow pocket of my work pants... So maybe this is the universe's way of giving back to me? I don't know... Maybe I should give it to a homeless person. Still undergoing a moral dilemma about this seemingly inconsequential bill grab. Let me know if you have any opinions on the subject.

Back on track...

I rarely get hair cuts. My last was in July 2007. The one before that was in November 2006. So when I go, I usually get a significant amount cut off (several inches), but my hair is so long at this point that you probably wouldn't notice if I didn't tell you.

Karen (my new friend and hair stylist) was trained to cut hair straight and dry. She did some preliminary cutting with my hair wet, and then blew it out and straightened it with an iron. I was a little cautious about this initially, as my hair is not straight, but she assured me it would look right when back to its natural state. And I trust her. So I walked out of the salon with hair so straight that I could actually run my fingers through it (see above photo). That never, ever happens.

On my way back from getting my haircut, I was standing waiting to cross the street, and I was honked at by a car carrying two men. They waved at me. I smiled and waved back, not knowing what else to do. And then the man on the passenger's side winked at me and blew me a kiss as they drove past.

I stopped to get some pizza before hopping on a bus back to my apartment. And as I was sitting at the bar, two men walked by on the sidewalk right outside. I don't have great peripheral vision, but I could tell that they were looking at me as they passed. After passing, one of them actually walked back to the window to look at me again. I made eye contact with him and smiled. He smiled back a little sheepishly, for having been caught, and then went to catch up with his friend.

I love it when strangers check me out. I don't think anything makes me feel more attractive than that.

I know, I know. I'm setting back the women's movement. I shouldn't want to be treated like a piece of meat. But I do. I like it. It would probably bother me if they actually tried to hit on me or something. But just staring at me and blowing kisses? Made my day. Seriously.

Maybe I should straighten my hair more often...?

Maybe there's a part of me that's boy crazy. I have, after all, proposed to three different men in the last two months.

*waves to Barry, Ricky, and Brian*

But maybe that's just because I've been watching too much Arrested Development (in which the character Maeby proposes to people frequently). Especially funny about the proposals, by the way, is that those are three people whom I pretty much only communicate with via internet and cell phone. Apparently, I connect with people on a stronger level when I'm not actually around them? I don't know. And, in case you're curious, I haven't received a solid response from any of them yet. (Fingers crossed! Maybe they'd be up for polyandry?)

But then, as I mentioned in my last post, I can't imagine anyone ever actually wanting to marry me.

I'm sort of working that out through my novel, actually. I posted the fifth chapter today, and it involves my main character day-dreaming about possible weddings.

When I started the editing process for this, I separated my original Word document into 18 documents, so that I could work on each chapter individually without being distracted by the others. Today, I decided to start a new document, in which I'm copying and pasting everything that I've published in the private blog. So as of today, and the end of chapter 5, I am at 23,229 words and I'm on the 54th page. Keep in mind... My original, unedited 18-chapter document is 56,032 words and on the 148th page. So obviously, it seems wrong that less than a third of the chapters should account for half the words and more than a third of the pages... So I went back to my original document and looked at where chapter 5 ended initially: The very tip-top of page 46, at 20,219 words. WHAT??? Here I thought I was going to clean it up, make it less wordy and more concise... And I've added about 8 pages and 3,000 words (which I'm guessing is mostly dialogue). I'm worried that this is one step forward and two steps back...

But it's fun to edit it. I've taken out a couple of romantic interests for the main character, as 8 is just too many. That'll take out at least one first kiss, but that's alright I suppose. As much as I love writing about first kisses.

In life, I romanticize the first kiss. I imagine it to be so wonderful. Particularly that moment before of not knowing whether the kiss is going to happen or not... It's exhilarating.

My friend Anna and I (and a couple of our other friends) refer to it as the "Drop the Shoe" moment. We were in a production of Cinderella together. At one point, the Prince and the Herald were on stage together, and one of them was holding a pillow bearing the glass slipper between them. And as the scene went on, they kept moving closer and closer to each other, and the sexual tension was palpable (we had one sequence of photographs that was particularly good proof of this...). Of course, both of the actors were straight, but we always joked from the wings that they should just drop the shoe and go crazy on each other. Hence, the "Drop the Shoe" moment was born. We'd stand backstage chanting "Drop the shoe! Drop the shoe!" Sadly, they never did. (Too bad. Would've been hot.)

But it doesn't always happen like that. In fact, I've had some really terribly timed first kisses. And it takes away that moment. Like my first kiss, which happened right after I told the guy that I didn't want him to kiss me (although in retrospect, it was a good thing). Or the guy who was playing keep-away with my car keys when I was trying desperately to get home and planted one on me. Or my first boyfriend, who kissed me as I was in a hurry to get into the security car that was getting me back to my college campus (the security people do NOT like to be kept waiting... and the guy was watching, which was horribly awkward). Or my second boyfriend, who kissed me when we were in an incredibly uncomfortable position on a couch. Or the most recent guy to give me a kiss, who asked if he could kiss me (which was endearing, but it removed the moment).

Now, don't go thinking I'm some sort of rampant kissing fool. I'm not. Even if you include the men I've had to kiss on stage (which I only do when trying to pad my numbers), I'm only up to eight. And I'm occasionally reluctant to count the keep-away-keys guy... He kissed me (or tried to) on multiple occasions, but it was always a sneak attack sort of deal. I didn't really have the option of whether to kiss him back...

But anyway.

I think I've only ever really had a Drop the Shoe moment once before a first kiss. I won't go into it, but it involved a football metaphor. He tried to kiss me twice that night before I actually let him. And it was without a doubt the best first kiss of my life (even though the guy ended up being pretty unimportant). God, it was hot. I mentally revisited that moment for weeks. So much so that I actually dropped a class as a result of it... But that's a story for another day.

To be honest, I think the best times I've had that moment were ones when the kiss didn't happen at all. Where, for some reason, the shoe never left the pillow.

If you read my diary-x back in the day -- which I think is three of you -- you might remember that I had many moments like that with my friend Greg (among other people). Including this one from May 2004:

It had been raining earlier, so the roads and the trees were wet and glassy.
The sky was starting to turn red from the sunrise.
It was kinda perfect.
He almost kissed me.
I knew it.
I almost kissed him.
I think he knew it.
But we just waited until the droplets of water returned.

We stood there
Silently
In the sunrise rain

I can still feel that particular moment in all its perfect, metaphoric, metaphysical glory.

(That's one of only a handful of passages I still have from that blog, since it was accidentally erased. I have it thanks to getting it in a PM on BWW from my friend Chris back in the day... you know, back when I used to carefully compose poetry in blogged form, instead of the insane rambling posts you read now.)

Those moments... *sigh*... That moment is easily the sexiest part of the chase.

With my first boyfriend, we actually had a moment like that long before we were dating. We were walking down a hallway in the basement of a dorm (Regina, between Room 16 and the dance studio, for all the SMC readers out there) a few steps behind another friend of ours. I don't remember how or why it happened... But suddenly, he grabbed me and dipped me. Right in the middle of the hallway. And his face was so close to mine. And I thought he was going to kiss me. But he didn't. I would've let him if he'd tried. It was hot. In fact, that was the moment that made me take him off of my As Good As Gay list ("flipping the switch", if you will). Without that "Drop the Shoe" moment, we might never have dated.

I had one with my second boyfriend, too. For some reason, I was terrified that he was about to kiss me... We were waiting for the L, and my train arrived right before he could. He kissed me at the spot where my jaw meets my neck... Oh, that was way hotter than our first kiss ended up being.

In case you were curious (and why wouldn't you be?), the hottest kiss of my life was from the same guy as the football-metaphor first kiss. It involved being pinned against the side of a mini-van in heavy rain around 2am. We were drenched. And, really, it should've been cold and gross. But it wasn't. It was unexpected, and exciting, and sexy as hell.

It's really too bad that things didn't work out with him. We had amazing, inexplicable chemistry. What I wouldn't give to revisit chemistry like that... I hope someday I can find it again. I hope it wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime deal.


This picture was the background on my computer for most of my first year of college. I wanted that. It always seemed to me that the guy had just decided to start dancing with the girl out of no where. Caught her off guard. Trying to make her smile, maybe. Or trying to get her to kiss him. I don't know. But I love it. I'd drop the shoe for a guy like that. Or, in this case, I'd drop the flowers.


May you have many reasons to "drop the shoe."

~A~


P.S. I'll be auditioning for grad schools on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please pray for me. (Or, if you're not a praying person, think positive thoughts. I can use all the help I can get.)

P.P.S. I know I've mentioned this a few times already, but I thought I'd reiterate... If you're interested in reading my work-in-progress novel, just leave your email address in the comments section and I'll add you to the list of approved readers for the private blog.

P.P.P.S. I edited my last post and added a great quotation at the bottom. If you're a Reader reader, you may have missed it, so you might want to go back and check it out.