You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands

Seth was away at Beach Week on June 3, so we celebrated our two-year anniversary on Monday, June 7. Last year, we went to Pho; this year it was A&J's, for a $10 meal of dumplings, tripe, bean curd, and wontons. He asked me what we should do after lunch, and I suggested going back to my house. "To do what?" he said.

"Hang out, have conversations,” I said. “We've been managing fine so far."

"Do you mean today, or for the past two years?"

Both are generally true, as I replied - I can't conceive of the sheer volume of conversation hours the two of us have logged. Our dates have been mostly walking around/sitting in various Bethesda locales, punctuated with media appreciation and restaurant meals. It's remarkable how much we've found to say about ourselves, our friends, books, and music (with incidental other things like world affairs and religion). For example, on our anniversary celebration day, we: played a record of T.S. Eliot reading "Prufrock" and made fun of his British accent/Midwestern drawl fusion; became disproportionately excited over "Bizarre Love Triangle" while playing New Order in the car; and were self-consciously sentimental.


Other things that we've done on dates more recently (because the chronology is superfluous): walked to The Other Side of Town, where there are actual homeless people and a fenced-in dirt lot next to a dingy CVS, and lay on the couch in his basement after his parents were asleep, watching "Who's Line is it Anyway?" For once, in the countless times we've done that, we didn't have to worry about a legally enforced midnight curfew - because I am no longer 17, and neither is he! We also played Scrabble, visited Bethesda ES playground, and read poetry out loud. I was pleased to report those things to my boss, when he asked how I spent my day off (last Thursday). He looked a little appalled and said, "Ah, freewheeling youth."


On Thursday, June 10, I saw Seth, as well as Hank and Tara, for Harry Potter. Neither of the boys has read the books, and Seth hadn't even seen the first two movies; Tara and I provided whispered plot summaries. Afterwards, we sat for a while in the picnic chairs chained outside Potbelly's, while Hank rooted through Tara's purse. (He also abandoned it in a wheelchair-access elevator across the street, but Seth made him retrieve it.) On Wednesday, June 16, Nick S., Tara, Natalie G., and I met for dinner, and afterwards Seth came and Natalie left – and we went to my place to watch Duck Soup. It was our first exposure to a Marx Brothers movie (for everyone but Seth), and it was really surprisingly funny. We chased it with soft porn that we found on channel 350, playing with my TV's new sybaritic features.