Welcome to the Middle of School. Ooh.

Welcome to the beginning of the middle.

Today, I think it’s only natural to write about what the hell I’ve been up to for the last 2 weeks and try to describe something that’s indescribable like a real honest-to-god copywriter.

My cousin was married in New York on July 2^nd.  The whole affair was as amazing as I anticipated with a few unexpected pleasures and confusions. 

My cousin’s new husband, Tommy, played the perfect gentleman and was a mensch to the end.   Though it was the first time he’d met my entire family, he remembered our names and faces like we were family already. 

A quick digression:  I can tell I’m getting old (other than the 2 day hangovers) because I no longer have the ol’ highschool-in-my-underwear-and-I-forgot-I-had-an-exam nightmare.  No.  Now my nightmares consist of me at my wedding to anonymous-hot-girl and me forgetting-and-being-terrible-at introducing all of my and her relatives to each other.  Suffice it to say, I was very impressed by Tommy’s memory. 

Italian weddings are exhausting.  It ‘s not from running around or dancing like a madman.  It is partially from drinking copious amounts of free liquor, but that’s true at any wedding.  No it’s from the level of Italian-wedding gluttony.  I expected and was not disappointed by the spread at the cocktail hour.  Lobster, crab, jumbo shrimp, fresh oysters, mussels, clams, salmon. Chicken three ways.  Roast beef and other red meat preparations.  A finger food selection for each digit.  Any exotic fruit you could chuck a spear at.  A charcuterie plate Mario Batali would salivate for.  And that was just the appetizers.  After that smorgasbord, we were ushered to another room where we found our tables and were served the actual wedding meal. 

I ate it all.                                                                                                  I am a fat fat man.

I was surprised by a few things: To my utter amazement, for being such a pretty girl, my cousin had very few hot friends in attendance.  Here I was, a virile single guy at a wedding without succor anywhere in sight.  Captain of the S.S. Bachelor marooned at table 7.

By the end of the night it wouldn’t have mattered if I were in a brothel with Scoutmob, I was too tired to get much of anything up including myself out of the chair.

It had been at least a couple years since I had last been to Long Island or the City and was startled how much I missed it.  I was born on Long Island but having moved to Denver after just 8 months, never grew a childhood connection to it. 

Here’s the part where I try to describe stuff.

The City just seems so damned familiar.  And it should, since I’ve been there a bunch of times, but that’s not really what I mean.  Familiar like déjà vu-familiar.

New York City has an enormously loaded history.  Nation-building history.  It feels like a center and it is.  There is a sense that the city is a catalyst for it’s own evolution, like a perpetual motion machine.  I get caught in it like an undertow. 

Now, in real words: I missed the city even though I never lived there.  For the first time ever I felt like I could live there.  That I wanted to live there.  My whole family comes from New York, so for the first time, I feel that I have a duty to live there.  It's fucking weird.

Both of my brothers lived in the city for a number of years, one just recently (2 years-ish ago).  I’ve been there a dozen times or more.  Every time, I was glad to leave, except this time. 

So that happened.

I learned to hate trains.  Not so much the train itself, but the process of the train.  What a fucking ordeal.  What a schlep.  Once on it, the train is an antiquated but suitable mode of travel.  Any transportation you can sleep on is a good one.  Earlier this morning I said in conversation, “It’s funny, the quality of a plane is judged by how easy it is to sleep on,” but the same could be said for almost any mode of transportation.  On a 1-10, first class is an 8 (for John Q. Public, anyway.  I’m an amazing plane sleeper. First class for me is a 12).  Coach on a train is about a 5, me included. 

In D.C., I played a lot of pingpong, hot tubbed, played with my nieces and nephews, and saw the monuments and memorials till my feet hurt.  Tomorrow, I’ll do my best to describe the indescribable again (better this time) and write about concrete that signifies stuff AKA memorials.