ProCrasstheNation

The fall of 1991 was a special time in my life. I entered into my senior year of high school, and I knew that things were about to break my way. I spent the entirety of the late 1980’s filling my head with fantasies of what my college years would be like. This was aided in large part by really bad 80’s movies with poor plot lines and gratuitous breast shots. Having gone to an all boys four year Catholic high school didn’t much help matters. I was seriously handicapped when it came to social interactions with women. The celluloid world allowed me to live vicariously through the exploits of others, while maintaining a safe distance. I never got hurt, but was able to covet the experiences that others shared through the medium of film. I couldn’t talk to a girl, or woman, but I certainly thought that if I was put in the correct situation at the correct time, that I would ascend to my destiny like a great many of the surly down on their luck underdogs that came across the screen in 130 minute R-Rated films recounting the sexploits of misunderstood teens. You name a movie from the that was filmed and released from 1979 to 1989, and I found a way to see it and apply it to my perceptions of the world as it was, and to the world as I knew it could be if I was just given the chance to show everyone that I too could impress the class homecoming queen, hold a boombox outside of someone’s window, win the homecoming carnival, make a woman fall in love with me by being the best lover she ever had (even though I had never had sex to this point in my life. somehow, I just knew I would be the best. I believed I’d be the best), and throw the greatest party of all time with little of no consequences to follow despite any number of things that could and would naturally go wrong in such adventures. This is the time where I came of age. These are the ideas that shaped and formed me into the man I would become much later in the third stanza of my life. The base line of the beliefs  of my life were set in fantasy, and the bar of living was adjusted in the living from my teen years that bridged my life all the way until I turned 29 (the year I barely escaped being wedded to a natural disaster). So naturally, I fully believed that I had a deadline to get things going. Senior year, 1991 into 1992 was where the rubber met the road. I had several cronies that helped, hell even went as far to fully encourage my fantasies about how life should be lived in the pinnacle year of our youth. It was a period of discovery, the birth of experience. We were free to explore in a very unencumbered manner. Leaving the homogenous homesteads of our younger lives behind. We were naturally drawn to these things. Things that were nominally dangerous, but lacking in consequence. We sustained our vanilla by remaining grouped, never straying too far from the shield that a foraging group of privilege people provides. There was no wrong option, as our hearts stayed attuned to the notion that we were associated with the Divine Right of Kings. There existed an extreme feeling of outlasting any adversity, and the world existed to provide for our whims alone. We didn’t understand how lucky we were to own the privilege our birth provided for us. We were insulated from its truth, and that is the very nature of the thing. We possessed the privilege of never having to think about the privilege we possessed. I think this greatly helped us to move around without inhibition. This and a supply of underage alcohol. Underage alcohol tastes much better than of age alcohol. The buzz that permeates a youthful bloodstream is enhanced by the challenge of procuring the drug and then eventually by its clandestine consumption in areas not meant to serve as a venue to such actions. One time we were drinking in public, and we were so involved with the conversation that we were having that we didn’t notice the cops coming up on us. We didn’t even have a chance to pretend that we weren’t drinking. Thank god we were white. Thank god we were known to the cop. They took and upturned our courage, can by can, all the while giving us a PSA on the finer points of what could happen if we became alcoholics. This was some time before the current opioid crisis, and the worst consequence that could occur was getting wrecked on booze and then behind the wheel of a car thus increasing the possibility of destroying your own life or even worse the lives or others. I remember how the cop’s words hung in the autumn air as he chided my friend for drinking and then challenged him to remember who he, the cop, actually was in relation to my friend. My friend, cheaply buzzing and within the confusion of a bright MagLite’s corona gave the eventual shrug that elicited a rush of air to come forth from the cop’s mouth. The cop allowed, that a long time ago, he used to tie my friend’s skates. So because we were not known drug addicts, white, and the one cop that busted us tied my friend’s skates in Charlestown Youth Hockey, we learned that as scary as an encounter with the cops could be, that it would be ok in the end. This is an interesting truth I had never considered would be applicable to only some of us in society and not all of us. The world I knew, that seemed so open to possibility for us, was not an equal playing field for all. The seduciton that came of believing that we were on the right side of things resided within a palace of non-consideration of what others were experiencing. This was the danger of pushing boundaries within the safety of known environs, we never had to consider that perhaps the way we moved about in the world was a singular experience not accessible to all. This was not a lesson to be learned until way off in a distant future. A lesson that would only be learned because of the proliferation of technology and the ability of society to enlist said technology as a means of exposing the inequality that existed but was not known to a great many because we were insulated from the truth by the segregation our experiences provided. Of course I speak for myself, and in truth I haven’t spoken these thoughts to my cronies of those times, but I have to wonder if they have arrived in the vicinity of these thoughts on their own. We shared an affinity for keeping the fantasy going all those years, and we felt entitled to keep trying, to keep pushing the envelope.

Our kingdoms were to be cultivated within a small window of opportunity and we wouldn’t take NO for an answer. Weekend keggers, packy runs after procuring an older relative to “buy for us”, hungover street hockey up at Hockeytown in Saugus, spending lavishly on clothes at Urban Outfitters, and THE GAP, having the time to figure out how we would waste our time, keeping the tabs of each beer we drank as if each was the relic of a Saint and could imbue upon us some further power of persuasion in a social setting, eating at HoJo’s with the septuagenerian Connie Catang who would deliver a mountain of banana pancakes across two of the shortest and strongest arms I’ve ever seen at 3 in the morning all while taking the abuse of six or seven smart ass teens. And that time I put my hands down on the table and excused myself at the Howard Johnson’s, as I had discovered while sitting there that there was a well lit sign with maneuverable letters that read “Please try our great meat balls”, which needed to be changed to “Please try our great balls”. Mission accomplished. Mission completed while under the shadow of the State Police barracks across the way. Another universal truth related to our run-ins with the cops that seemed to permeate my experiences of these years: you could usually do mischievous things right under the nose of cops and they wouldn’t ever catch you. It was only when bystanders called the mischief in, could they get a jump. Poor old Connie Catang, she has to be deceased by now. She was a great woman. I don’t know all the particulars of her story, but I know there was one. Certain of it. I never asked, and that is the vanity of youth, you never believe that the present will ever become the past, and that you will ever become a waitress slopping patty melts to the ungrateful punk mouths of North Metro Boston’s most conceited and unsatisfied rabble. I hope wherever Connie ended her days, it was in peace and that someone served her as well as she served us. No, they couldn’t have, she was the best. She had gumption and was clever enough to never get sucked into our patronizing games. Her hairnet was forged in the fight of living for others. She must have been sliding plates for a son or daughter that had a child of their own and was struggling through life, or maybe she was compiling a little extra to catch the bus from downtown Malden to Foxwoods to take her chance at the slots or stamping winners in the stadium bingo hall. I’ll never know. The only thing I regret is not seeing Connie for the humanity she possessed, but how I chalked her up as a stock character from one of my beloved 1980’s films. Maybe to me she represents the sorority house mother in “Revenge of the Nerds” that stood between the nerds(me) getting some nookie. Connie didn’t stand between me and anything. Perhaps a plate of hash, fries and patty melts, that’s about it. I should have asked her why she worked the shift she did. I should have tipped her better. I should have given her a hug and told her how appreciative that I was the she was there to take my order. How appreciative I was that she was THERE.

It’s hard to say whether or not I ended up at Howard Johnson’s on the night in question. I concede there was a significant probability that I did, but the end of the night is not as important to this story than what came before it.

What came before the fall night of 1991, in the pinnacle year of my most important youthful year of my pre-adult life, has already been laid out. I was ready to come out the the world and lend my services to any woman anywhere. I began trips to Harvard Square with increasing regularity, as I wanted to increase my exposure to the magical powers that resided in that special space. I honestly believe that Harvard Square is one of the few places in our world that is a wormhole, on top of an ancient Native American burial ground, teeming with a sub-sub level of complex catacombs that allow students, professors, transients, and the homeless to travel from any point of existence to any point within Harvard Square in an instant.

I make mere mention of another instance that occurred at Harvard Square as a dropped pin, so that I can return to it and explain at length the ire of homeless I’ve raised in my short life. The great bum and bindlestiff councils of the Northeast Corridor have myself and my great friend,the West Coast Bandit, tied atop the list as 1 and 1A on their most wanted civilians with crimes against the homeless. This was not an easy feat to achieve, as the homeless are rather resourceful and used to a lot of devilry coming their way unsolicited. Despite their greatest superpower of being invisible and a preternatural instinct to navigate the underbelly of Harvard Square, the West Coast Bandit and I made good on many a mischievous misdeed that interfered with the quotidian happenings of the local bummery and their strategems at survival. I am more than half convinced  that some day I’ll be taking a quiet bath and fall asleep to only awaken at some point later on to a bathroom full of angry, soiled, vengeance-driven weirdos looking to make good on the transgressions of my long lost past. They will find me and they will make me pay. I know it, I’ve always known it. Of course, I could always join them. That may be the only way. I could request a meeting with their leader. I’ve always suspected that there is a hierarchy of bummery, an that they also have a union. Is this a digression? Well, in a way it is but it also relates to the magical fall night already thrice mentioned. You see, the closest I ever came to the leader of the bums, was the fall night in 1991 when I met Eve the Enchanter.

I believe I caught Eve the Enchanter before he slipped fully into his homeless designation. He was more of a traveler new the the parts of New England. He had a way about him that conveyed that he had been on adventures in this world and worlds beyond. He seemed to operate on another plane of existence. This all came to me in a singular moment, as I happened upon him while he was holding court with fairies in the Winthrop Square section of Harvard Square kitty corner from the Garage complex. I think there were fairies about, because there was no one there with this chap as he was moving and swaying and gesticulating wildly at an audience. A preacher with an absent congregation. As I said before, he was on another wavelength. This was the sort of thing that I was drawn to and rushed headlong into without consideration of consequence.

The air was replete with an energy that I had never known. It was electric. I moved around this character’s periphery, and I could sense that he sensed me. He was the cosmic black hole of my young life, and all those within my party drew a similar feel and recounted it as such after the fact. In retrospect, I like to think that my observation of this soul completed a mobius strip of fate between him and I that initiated a Hawthorne Effect that still reverberates throughout space and time to this very day.

Standing before me was a man unlike any other I had seen in the flesh to this point. Memory estimates that he could have been anywhere between twenty-five to forty-five years of age. The difficulty in determining the exactness of his age resided within the film of filth that surrounded him. It would be accurate to say that he was possessed of a cloud of dust that lent a golden glow to him. Quite angelic, and the halo about his crown was a muslin rag rolled tight and tied into a knot behind his head. The crazy tufts of hair that populated the head of my new found focus, played waveringly around the headband and fell this way and that without rhyme or reason. The cord that kept the sweat out of his eyes strangled his scalp and did less to keep the wayward hairs from falling forward and backward. One of the first things I noted about Eve, was his constant collecting of hair from his face and eyes and smoothing it backward over the glossy exposed skin that indicated some male pattern baldness gaining on him.

This movement happen over and over for the entirety of the time I was held under his spell. He also revealed healthy tufts of armpit hair edged by yellowing sections of the at-one-time white tank top seemingly painted onto his upper torso. He was adorned in well earned sweat, and the air was autumn crisp with a tinge of humidity. When I eventually got close enough, I believe I could taste cumulative amount of garlic and red onion he consumed in his lifetime as it attacked my nose from every exposed pore. His clothes were a map of his travels, and presented an alternative to the sedentary lifestyle I enjoyed. It never occurred to me that one could travel the world outside of the Greater Boston area.

The most memorable physical characteristic that still haunts me to this day was the supple scrotum that spilled out of the cut off jeans that Eve wore and he exposed to us all as he put his leg up on one of the cement fence posts while simultaneously bringing a cigarette to his mouth for lighting. The pud that was released in this motion was incongruent with the armpit hair I had already espied earlier on in my investigation. His balls were as bald and shiny as the patches on his head, and as he raised his knee ever higher, seemed to stretch the flap of skin to a breaking point. It was in the revelatory moment, I finally caught eyes with Eve. I didn’t know if I was more transfixed by his gaze or the novelty of taut testes playing peekaboo out the bottom of well worn shorts. The other thing that amazes me when I think of this night now, is how the exposure didn’t seem to phase Eve in the least. He just kept eyes locked at me, and seemed to be sizing me up and making decisions about how to engage me. It is as if I was at the zoo looking into the orangutang habitat, and the orangutang was looking back at the animal in me. I couldn’t handle the stare and I looked away, but it was too late. I made the connection and we were engaged now. He rolled his leg off the cement post, retracting his bald balls into his pants. It happened so quickly that I doubted that I even saw it. It wasn’t until I got an elbow in my ribs from the West Coast Bandit, did I realize that what I saw really happened. I snickered and took my eyes off Eve only long enough to get the visual validation that my friend was experiencing the moment with equal parts amazement and disbelief. The gravity of Eve pulled me closer than I ever wanted to get, or so I thought. All of the fairies in his congregation sidestepped as I moved closer to this marvel. Eve gave the obligatory head nod of recognition, which seemed slightly out of place to me, as we had not ever met before, at least in this lifetime. I now know that it was easier for him to assess me from the position of his worldliness than it was for me to venture guesses about him from my insular viewpoints. Eve was gracious in the moment. He invited me, and the group to enter his sacred circle. He held court, and seemed to be adding ammunition to his clip of profundity with every drag he pulled from the eternal cigarette that danced along his lips as he further engaged our collective curiosity. Once he opened his mouth to speak, what came next would be forever recounted in the tales told of our friendship and the history of shenanigans we pulled throughout that time. It is tough to place the exact accent that Eve possessed but it seemed to be an amalgam of Ringo Starr’s Liverpudlian Lilt and a wee bit of the Leprechaun from Lucky Charms commercials. With that said, it lacked any real cartoon quality, but seemed to frame every word he said in a slow melodic inquiry that seemed to say: hear what I’m saying, enjoy it, and never forget.

Mind you, it was not something to be forgot, but with all of this craziness in life happening about me, stuff gets back-burnered from time to time.

At any rate, I made my sacred bond to he, and I make the same to you, that I will one day tell of the story of Eve the Enchanter and Slappy-applause Nan here on this blog. I like to tease. So there it is.

A few points for you to dwell on while imagining Eve the Enchanter and Slappy-applause Nan.

there is no ambiguity here, Eve was a man, and a hell of a lot more Enchanting then several Enchantresses I’ve encountered in my hellion days.  Even during the period that I was searching for lost idols and bartering with donated blood and Cool Ranch Doritios in the Dominican Republic (by the way, a used adolescent Jim Rice baseball glove has no apparent value in the D.R. )

There were others involved in the night in question, and for the sake of propriety I must insure that they would be flattered by being featured in this telling (yeah right, shit’s going to be exposed, consider this as fair warning)

Eve still haunts me to this day, and I must do justice to his visage, his actions, his soul, and the begrimed bubble gum pud that hung out of his tinker-tailor-soldier-spy Daisy Duke’s that night. Slappy-applause Nan must be out there in society somewhere, although she may not remember that night, I am sure that with the right hypnotist we could regress backward through time and help her to remember.

All these things are important, and must be cared for in the telling. So look for the Tale of Eve the Enchanter and Slappy-applause Nan by week’s end, there will be laughs, there will be tears, and yes I will have all the answers to the most important questions in life.

I got Eve started on the subject of Religion and he shot back quite agitatedly “I’m am entirely sick of hearing about people being killed by religious fanatics. It is shameful behavior for fellow humans to act out against other humans under the shield of fanatic faith. To those of the faith that feel that they are wrongfully persecuted because of the actions of the few fanatics within your tribe, where is your outrage? Why do you not speak out against it? You are collectively silent. Silence is assent. You are a joke. You belief system is a joke, and your incessant need to force others in our global community to pay attention to your madness is a huge time suck for all. Grow up, and pursue the advancement of all humans through examined and educational pursuits that will lift up our humanity for the better. Where is the critical thinking? Why can’t the people that commit these atrocities swallow themselves up within their own hatred. Grow up, embrace the impermanence of this life, and the void that follows. Place some importance on making this life worth living and not infringing upon others because you hedge your bets on what MIGHT come next. Religion is infantile in its entirety. It holds us back. There is no being that would create beings and hold them to impossible standards of behavior and penalize them for not adhering to them. That is only a human invention, because only humans are perverse enough to commit such sadism. If you don’t like the fact that I hold religion in such low regard, then perhaps you can convince the people that blindly believe and practice it stop fucking with the sane people of the world who pursue living without the shame, exclusion, and terror that most organized religion has brought to the masses for the last few thousand years.”

Today I’m fonding. What is fonding you may ask? Well, I’ve taken the liberty of taking an adjective describing how I feel about something, and I’ve turned it into a verb, in the hope that it might explain the action I take when I actively try to describe how I feel about something I am liking or have affection for. So, I’m fonding.

Fonding what? Why, the past of course. There is no such trajectory in fonding to be gained while imagining a future, simply because you can’t like something or have an affection for something that hasn’t occurred yet.

Regularity is a good. Most especially for kid’s bedtimes and stupped colons. If you don’t have regularity for either, there is no end to the amount of shit that can keep you in distress if the schedule is not adhered to.

That brings me to other things that could benefit from regularity. Raking the leaves during autumn days, spending autumn nights in Harvard Square.

In this same moment, over in the periphery of my sight, I saw an elderly asian couple bickering at length. They were heatedly pointing at a stone bench and seemed to be challenging one another to act in some way. I can’t confirm it, but they held all the markings of an old married couple. The violence of their argument was belied by the shame exuding from the wife. She kept looking around to see if anyone else was viewing what was going on. When she was satisfied that no one had seen her public domestic dispute, she reached into the long pocket of her trousers and pulled out a tissue and unfolded it several times. She then took the tissue and turned toward the stone bench gesticulating in a fashion that led me to believe that she at some point in her life had practiced the motions associated with conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a full Fourth of July rendition of the 1812 Overture. She then gingerly patted down and brushed the same bench with the unfolded tissue until it was appropriate for whatever purpose she engaged in the activity for. Somewhere near its conclusion, however, her husband who had been busying himself looking through one of many nondescript plastic bags tied in a series of exponential knots, saw what his wife was up to and flashed a look of disgust for all to see. I cringed having to bear witness to this. I’ve seen similar chapters act out in the relationship between my parents over the years. The look of disgust was just the tip of the iceberg, he had to teach her a lesson. He then went right up to her and windmill slapped her in the middle of her bent over torso. The sound was the sound one makes when attempting to and succeeding in creating a belly flop dive into a community neighborhood pool. This action stunned the wife and she let out a grunt. The husband not missing a beat went back to the business of his knotted bags. Again the wife stood up and looked around the area to see who had seen what had just happened.  We all looked away, not wanting to inflict another wound to her. The husband then untied one of the bags and pulled out a series of tissues with which he started to repeat the activity his wife had just completed, but with many loud puffs and huffs, and the continual muttering that indicated that he was insistent that in order for it to be done right, he had to do it himself. The wife shot him a look that plainly said that when you are next waiting for a train to arrive, I will push you the fuck into the track and watch the train destroy you. I now the look, I’ve wished it upon many people, but never had the follow through. This woman was third rail electric to off this guy. She accepted the bench and sat down, once more looking around the perimeter to see if her shame was noticed. During this exchange, I also kept an eye on Eve, and he studied the couple up and down all the while taking measured drags on his cigabutt. I put my arm around the West Coast Bandit, and conveyed the myriad of thoughts on my mind, to only find that he was sharing many of my opinions of the scene. Forging a friendship through the recognition of commonly recognizing the humanity in others while they are being candid was a very enjoyable. I often feel that these youthful moments helped to plant the seeds of our longterm friendship that has been as rewarding over the balance of the years we’ve been friends, but most especially on nights like this one.

We all watched the asian couple have at each other. A game of chess with two grand masters, that seemed to believe they could out-duel each other, but could only end up in a continual draw of dissatisfaction. They sat themselves down and waited. What they were waiting for I will never know, but sound of the slap followed by the guttural grunt will always be with me. Whenever I”m in an uncomfortable situation, I just think of these two folks and remember how awful it must have been for them to live through that moment in time. Subsequently, I entered a long-term relationship that had its share of dissatisfaction and public domestic disputes, but luckily she never slapped my bent torso because I used a tissue to clean a stone bench to perfection before parking my behind on it.

Eve finished pulling on his cig and looked as if he had something profound to share with me, or anyone wishing sharing distance. I looked at the West Coast Bandit, and he back at me, the tractor beam look of what have we got to lose affixed between us and casting the die to favor an immediate engagement with the object of our observation of the last fifteen minutes. We headed over. In these types of social situations I generally conceded the lead to the West Coast Bandit, however, on this night I was feeling particularly courageous and wanted to show the others on my party that I could take the lead on one of these outings. When I think back on exactly what I did to engage him, I imagine it to be a lot more graceful than it likely was. I remember that I extended my hand to him and said something along the lines of ” What’s up? My name’s Chris. Yours?”. He surely had some world in him and he didn’t flinch at my approach and handshake that was wrapped in the safety of four high school age strappers. He was cool and rode the wave without giving it a second thought. He shook my hand and his head simultaneously, all while somehow slipping another cigarette magically between his lips and bringing a Zippo lighter in the non-shaking hand up to his mouth to breathe life into it. He sucked the life out of the cigarette breathed down deep, shrugged his shoulders, and squarely eyed me while saying “Eve.”

I said, “Eve?”

He said, “Eve.”

He continued to shake my hand and haul the cig. Then we went down the line giving each name over to him. He assessed each of us with a straight smirk that conveyed that he was skeptical but heading toward being okay with our group. I looked over at the asian couple that were now talking aggressively with many hand gestures and broad strokes of threatening posture.

There was a tremendous amount of small talk going on between my friends and Eve, and my friends in their infinite wisdom decided to engage Eve in the “Who do you know?” gambit. To no one’s surprise, none of us knew anyone that the other knew. The air was clear and we could move onto the business at hand. The questions came fast and furious: “Where are you from? What are you doing here in the Square? Do you have any weed?” To which the answers were: “All over. Hanging out. No weed, just some hashish, It’s moroccan, ya’know?”

Pay dirt! we weren’t truly interested in any drugs past alcohol, but we gained our highs in collecting the details associated with characters we encountered on our adventures. We were out of our minds with delight in happing upon such an earnest person. It is safe to say we never met anyone like Eve before. It was unanimous. He was the fulfilling embodiment of every Deadhead we didn’t engage in our previous trips to the Boston Garden during the Grateful Dead’s Annual Concerts. There was nothing quite like the smell that enveloped the Causeway Street and accompanying areas when The Dead came to spread their gospel. Patchouli, mushroom, earthy tones, body odor, tie-dyed timidity holding up one index finger in the quest for liberation from the reality of not possessing entry to the “show”. We jumped and jived around the Garden on these nights and soaked it all in, and reveled in being part of something unlike anything we’d ever experienced to that point in our lives. Eve was like these folks but not of them. I’m sure he had a passing appreciation of the culture, and could have blended in with any of them in their Volkswagen buses, but Eve was a citizen of the world and he could move in and out of any group without committing to long term designs.

We were enamored of his personality within moments of meeting him and would follow him anywhere if he led us. A lot more small talk ensued and we asked him to buy beer for us, and he kept smoking cigarettes and exposing his pud every time he put his foot up on the stone post. It was as if he was the Pied Pud Piper, and he kept willing people to come to him  every time he flashed a nut.

I looked over to see if the unruly couple were still there, but they were now gone. Just to the right of the stone bench were they were, now stood a young woman. The bench was also notably littered by used tissues.

The young woman was frenetic in energy and vision. She had obviously spent the earlier part of the day in a tanning booth, and was dressed in a high-rising pair of khaki shorts. Her athletic legs measured in comparable smoothness to Eve’s. Ironically, as hairy as Eve seemed to be, his legs and scrotum were baby bottom smooth. The young woman had her hair pulled back tightly into a bun, and had highlights and sported a wet look. She had noticeable cheek bones and a puckered mouth. The midpoint of her ensemble incorporated a ribbed black tank top, through which a gold chain peeked around the neckline, lying on top of her copper sunned skin. She was looking directly at us, and had a shit eating grin from ear to ear. The four of us Townies and Eve the Enchanter formed a new pentaverate that ordered itself with exploring the small space we inhabited in Winthrop Square and arriving at the same conclusion that we needed more folks to join our exploration to validate our efforts. The woman that walked toward us seemed to be arriving at the perfect moment and she held all the hallmarks of someone wanting to join in the fun: a buzz, plenty of enthusiasm and no obvious encumbrances to speak otherwise of the chance she was now taking by engaging four man children, and a misplaced mystic.

We welcomed her into the fold.

“Hi, this is Eve the Enchanter, and my name is Chris. This is Dave, Brian, and Jeff.”

She looked us up and down and flitted in and out of our space like a hummingbird seeking water in  a tulip.She then immediately started clapping extra fast and quickened her pace every time we made her laugh or impressed her.

“I’m Nan,” she giggled and then clapped repeatedly.

There was a bit of discomfort in her body language. After all, she was engaging with five strange men, and there didn’t seem to be many other people paying attention to our gathering. She slowly gravitated towards ease as Eve did a few little dance moves. Actually, what he did had amounted to a jig of sorts. It was as if he knew exactly what to do to make her feel at home within this new dynamic.

When he completed his jig, Nan clapped excitedly. The two of these creatures ran the gamut of the temperament spectrum with Nan running hot on the eager manic side of the scale, while Eve tended to observe the Zen chill approach. It was very interesting to see the space in between them, but also how easily each traveled to the other as they engaged. It wasn’t all quickness, but rather temperate movements that awarded patience and leisurely attempts towards being part of something special. They fit each other hand in glove, and there was no room in between for anyone else to turn their efforts aside.