A Small Town Girl's Guide » dating

Darth Vader and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

MilliGFunk — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:38:33 +0000

For those of you who don’t already know this, I’m a classically trained musician.

Despite my classical training and despite having lived an hour from St. Louis for eighteen years of my life, I had never seen the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra perform in Powell Symphony Hall. There’s a first for everything, and this weekend I experienced the SLSO in Powell Symphony Hall for the first time.

This SLSO pops concert featured movie music by John Williams, not limited to Superman, Harry Potter, JFK, Star Wars, Schindler’s List, Indiana Jones and the Olympic Fanfare.

Perhaps one of the most exciting elements of the performance was the fully-costumed Star Wars characters posed for photos opportunities in the Hall’s main lobby.

I give kudos to the SLSO for engaging all ages in a truly fun and memorable concert experience. And I give kudos to whoever decided to put Darth Vader in the lobby, as well.

Darth and Smalltowngirl, photo by JPD

Smalltowngirl's Worst Date Ever

MilliGFunk — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:36:53 +0000

Online dating was a brilliant way to meet new people and explore a new city when I moved to New York. For the most part I was successful with it, but nothing in life is 100% wonderful all of the time.

This guy’s online profile talked about his love for music and the arts, but my hopes for sophisticated conversation about concerts, galleries, and favorite musicians were crushed when I was met by a dude in half-laced tennis shoes, a black concert t-shirt, and a raggedy messenger bag with a babka inside.

Cherry Cheese Babka, photo by smalltowngirl

The only time this smalltowngirl had ever even heard of babka was on the infamous Seinfeld episode during which Elaine waited in a long line for a chocolate babka to take with her to a holiday party.

I was simultaneously amused and appalled that this guy, who incidentally looked not unlike a younger version of George Castanza (he even lived with his mom on Staten Island) brought a messenger-bag-smooshed babka to me on a first date.

Oddly, this wasn’t the first time that a man brought me baked goods on a first date. Babka Boy’s first date with me was also his last, so single men of the world take heed that baked goods are best off kept removed from first dates.

Picking Up Men in Small Town Missouri

MilliGFunk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:55:46 +0000

Flying solo in Southeast Missouri can drive a girl to desperate measures. That’s why I was so surprised, when, as I nosed through the tiny village of Caledonia, Missouri, I came eye to eye with this handsome man.

Hansome Man, photo by smalltowngirl

Oh, that thin little tie! Oh, that bright white smile! Oh, those dimples! And with spectacles like those, I’m sure he’s a smart and successful man.

I never expected to find love in such a small town, but my encounter with the gentleman in the top hat has inspired new faith. There may be love in Small Town, Missouri for a girl like me, afterall.

The New York Minute

MilliGFunk — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:46:17 +0000

I used to listen to The Eagles often.

The lyrics of the last stanza of the song, “New York Minute” say,

What the head makes cloudy
The heart makes very clear
The days were so much brighter
In the time when she was here
But I know there’s somebody somewhere
Make these dark clouds disappear
Until that day, I have to believe
I believe, I believe

In a New York Minute
Everything can change

Forward. photo of smalltowngirl

I moved away from New York City four months ago, and I’m just beginning to comprehend the meaning of the New York Minute.

Don’t get me wrong – I thought that I understood it before. It’s only now that I’m outside of New York, though, that I really get it.

In the last four months, the whole of my life has changed like a whirlwind.

Today, a yellow envelope arrived in the mail from the guy my world revolved around for almost half of my time in New York.

His return address has changed, and in the envelope was no note. There was nothing personal inside the envelope at all, actually. Inside the envelope was a t-shirt he’d found of mine, and a CD with “pictures of you” scrawled across it in red marker.”

My memories of New York are so real. So alive. So huge.

And yet, this little piece of plastic seems to represent how tiny those memories really are in the grand scheme of my life. Should I feel cheated that my memories are so easily captured and contained? Maybe. But I have to believe that if those two amazing years in New York City seem so tiny now, it bodes well for how big and extraordinary my future must be.

Too Many Tears for Chinese New Year

MilliGFunk — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:58:00 +0000

I sat with Jeff on a park bench in Chinatown watching teenagers in t-shirts toss a football to one another. It was nearly fifty degrees today after weeks of temperatures that hovered around zero, so warm sunshine and the lunar new year brought a sense of lightness to the park around us.

My hope when he invited me to come with him to Chinatown today was that we’d find our shared space again – the space where “he” and “I” are “us”.

We talked quietly about what lead us to break up; how I wouldn’t have applied for a job out of state if I’d known he saw a

future with me, and how me applying for a job out of state was the beginning of him falling out of love with me.

In seven months, he’d never spoken the words, “I love you” to me. Today he spoke them twice, and while it was good to hear him verbalize his feelings for me, it wasn’t romantic or special the way it should be when those words are spoken to someone for the first time.

I watched a lanky Asian boy gracefully catch the football his friend threw.

Instead of sharing the words, “I love you” with a sense of excitement or aniticpation, I heard them from Jeff for the first time with a football landing in a teenager’s hands, and a vacuum-like sense of emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

The words, “I love you” weren’t followed by a kiss or a hug. They were followed with a request that we be “friends.”

“I don’t want you to be my ex-anything,” he said to me. “I don’t think of you as my ex-girlfriend. I think of you as my friend.”

Kids laughed and an old man shuffled by in clunky black tennis shoes.

A hawk flew down from the sky and clutched a mouse from the sidewalk between its talons. As quickly as it landed, it flew away again. I’d never seen anything quite like that – such a breathtakingly graceful gesture, but one that ended in the death of a living thing.

I’d never felt anything quite like what I was feeling then, in the park, when Jeff finally admitted that he loved me, but followed it with a request that we be friends, either.

Some things just aren’t built into our natural, biological, or intuitive sense of understanding. Hearing “I love you” followed by “I want to be friends” is one of them.

“I want to be your friend, but I’m not even sure how to do that,” I told him.

I’d have my opportunity to learn how to do that a short time later as we entered a party thrown by his coworker, Ed, who promply introduced me to someone else as Jeff’s girlfriend.

I was proud of myself for smiling, not crying, and making small talk with the people there. I was proud of myself for doing everything in my power to be Jeff’s “friend” when so deep inside my heart, I feel pulled to be the girl he loves and holds and takes care of - not the girl he’s friends with.

“This is my friend, Melissa,” he would say to people as he introduced me.

I am his friend, Melissa. I would think to myself, rehearsing this new role that I’ve been forced into.

We went to the roof of the building, and I looked out onto the streets of Chinatown. Colorful scraps of paper littered the streets from the parade earlier in the day.

Nearly two weeks after accepting my new job in Missouri, a sense of the scale of that decision hit me firmly in the chest as I stood looking out on Chinatown from that rooftop.

I’m leaving New York, and in deciding to leave, I’m also turning my back on one of the best things that’s happened to me in a very long time; my relationship with Jeff.

The tears started then, as this sense of perspective hit me, and Jeff and I said a quick goodbye. He squeezed me in his arms, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.

I wiped away a few tears there on the roof, but tried to hold my composure until I reached the street outside of Ed’s building, at which point tender sobs grew out of my hurt.

I walked crying through Chinatown, to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I cried as I walked across it into downtown Brooklyn.

Through Brooklyn Heights and into Fort Greene I cried.

I cried as I walked through Fort Greene Park, down Dekalb Avenue, and onto South Oxford Street, where I sat for a few minutes on the stoop of our brownstone, taking it all in, and letting a few more tears stream down.

That was hours ago, but tears are sliding down my cheeks again now as I write this, in my pajamas, in my little bedroom in my shared apartment in Brooklyn – a place I can’t call home much longer.

I’m not his girlfriend anymore, and soon I won’t be a New Yorker anymore either. I pray that this decision I’ve made is the right one.

Breaking Things to Fix Them

MilliGFunk — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:15:00 +0000

We began talking. I apologized for snapping at you during brunch. You accepted my apology. Things seemed okay, but I had a lot on my mind. We were sitting on the white couch, and you reached out for me. I needed to talk, not to be held. Even now, when you aren’t here to hold me, I don’t regret that decision.

An hour later, I took your keys off my keychain and set them quietly on your book shelf. You walked out of the apartment as I started to gather the things of mine that had gradually accumulated in your space. I wanted to slip as gently and quietly as I could out your front door, and I wanted the hurt to stop hurting. I didn’t want to leave any traces of myself behind to haunt you.

I thought that maybe you were leaving – that you would take a walk and I’d be gone when you came back. A moment later the door creaked open, and you appeared with two sturdy shopping bags. It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realized you’d taken them from the stack someone in your building had left in your entryway. I packed my things.

I said to you what I wanted to say. You were standing next to the radiator. You looked like someone had crushed you when I said what I did. I guess that it really wasn’t until that moment that you realized how I felt about you. You had already made your decision though, and I needed to go.

You put my bags in the backseat of the cab, and then you wrapped your arms around me. I can still smell the leather of your coat. I could not hug you back. The heaving sobs rose from deep inside me – from caverns of emotions that I thought would be foverever closed. You had opened them up, and now they echoed my heartbreak.

I sat in the cab and watched you walk down the sidewalk defeated, shoulders slumped and arms hanging low. I thought to myself, “I love you,” and I asked the driver through choked sobs, “why do men do this?” even though I knew that man didn’t do this.

I had prayed for two weeks that our future would be made clear to me. Saturday night we laughed and teased and watched movies, and we fell asleep happy. The next day, I watched those words come out of your mouth, and I heard the tone in your voice. I think that you were as surprised to hear yourself say those words as I was.

I feel as if someone has punched me in the heart. Looking back at my life, though, I have never had a bruise that didn’t heal. And the healing that you offered my heart, Jeff, far exceeds the hurt that you’ve left in it. Thank you for that.