I’m Sure It Will All Go Perfectly.

Lieu and I are going to New York this weekend.  We are staying in a nice hotel, going to a show on Broadway (great seats!), and hanging out with my best friends from college.

You know, just like people in casual relationships do.

I am anxious about (and excited for) this weekend in a million ways, but one thing I’m not too concerned about is that my college friends don’t have much post-1997 dirt on me.  I like to tightly control the amount of information about me that Lieu has, and how he gets it.  I know I need to get over this, but it’s true.  So drunken funny college stories don’t scare me…but there is one story that they might tell that still makes me cringe. And by cringe I mean writhe in remembered shame and social agony.

In 2005, I lived in Connecticut for six months, taking care of my brand-new and much beloved cousin while his parents finished up their residencies at Yale.  I had been laid off, and just bought half of a house, and was building my freelance business at the time.  It was a really lovely interlude; the baby was in day care part time, so I could work, and the rest of the time I just hung out with him and cooked dinner.  When my cousin and her husband got home, there were very smart, funny people to talk to, and to they were enthusiastic recipients of my cooking (I like to feed people.)  There were plenty of eager volunteers for baby duty.  Except for the fact that winters in New England are clearly God’s punishment to humankind, and the fact that I wasn’t actually living my actual life, it was perfect.  Which is why I left, but that’s another post.

Anyway, I slipped away to NYC for a few weekends here and there, and on one of those trips a bunch of my classmates were getting together.  Some I hadn’t seen since graduation, some I was in touch with regularly, and some I had seen at the wedding of mutual friends a few years prior.

I got to the restaurant late, of course, and it was dimly it, and the table was long, and we were somewhere in the East Village so everyone was much cooler than I am.  I was flustered, is what I’m saying, and I drank a glass of wine in two gulps, before the bread basket even headed my way.

So, to recap: I was flustered, tipsy, unable to see well, unemployed, and feeling insecure.  Have you got that?

So then this conversation happened.

Me: “Hey, Gage! How are you?”

(Gage lived down the hall from me freshman year, and had dated a few of my friends.  We’d known each other for a long time , but not well.)

Gage: “Hey, C.  Good to see you.  This is my girlfriend, Anna.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, we met at J & M’s wedding.  Good to see you again, Anna.”

Gage: “No, you didn’t meet there.”

Me: “Yes we did!  Remember, we all sat at the same table, and talked about how funny the early 90s novelty rap meme is at weddings, and how much we like it?”

Gage: “Uh, yeah, but no.  You did not meet Anna before.”  Gage is smiling awkwardly, and I’m beginning to revise the opinion I’ve always had that he is a smart guy. I make one more attempt to help him realize that he is an idiot.

Me: “But yes, we did.  I know we did, because I remember talking about how Anna was a resident at Columbia and how that was going.”  Maybe my superior memory skills will finally prove my point.

Gage: “That was Emma. Anna is a med student at Cornell.”

Me: (starting to see the terrible thing I have just done, loudly and repeatedly, in front of everyone I know) “Oh…of course.  My bad…nice to meet you, Anna.”  I suddenly become very preoccupied with digging something out of my purse.  Gage and Anna retreat to the far end of the table.

My very good friend A, who was married himself last year in Minneapolis, leaned in from halfway down the table and stage-whispered (and by that I mean bellowed),  ”Jesus Christ, Ms. Ohio, do all Korean girls really look that much alike to you?”

And then my whole body disintegrated in a violent paroxysm of shame.

Lieu is going to love that one.