Do you REALIZE?

September in New York (i.e. a walk through the Central Park zoo while being serenaded by jugglers and rollerbladers) is sweatier than DC (i.e. a stroll to Sticky Fingers vegan bakery from your boyfriend's basement). It is especially ablaze in New York City when you are standing in line for TKTS tickets for see Sister Act on Broadway (Spiderman is sold out slash $250) in pants and long hair sans Billy Elliot fan, but you remind yourself the sweat will evaporate after you elbow your way into the red velvety, heavily chandeliered theater and sink into your plush cushions. The playbill will have a funny interview with the principal actors in The Book of Mormon (which is also $250 a ticket and has won an embarrasing number of Tonies). You and your boyfriend laugh out loud at the playbill interview, and strain to read in the dark a second after the lights go down.

September in New York on a certain day of the month is wonderful, except you are more likely to cry than other days. Yesterday it would have been very unlikely you cry, but today it would be unlikely you didn't. There are lightbulbs that burn out after all, plastic bottles that don't get recycled, hands that don't get held, children whose mommies die, couples who cheat, and extremists who bomb buildings and perpetrate genocides after all. Instead of indulging a sudden instinct to write angsty poetry about... what was it? Oh yeah, that 60minutes-Dateline-CSI-type documentary segment on the crack-dealing landlord who killed his tenant, burned down her house, and buried her in the woods... you cry about it all the way to Penn Station on the nasty-roach-rat-dirt NY subway and cling to your boyfriend who has somehow become to you a beacon of light in a world infested with black-hearted sociopaths, but instead of writing flaming arrows and existential nooses to die by and whywhywhy's in some much too self-conscious a rhyme scheme, you spend the 3-hour Amtrak ride back to the District drinking Cabernet Savignon from the bottle and reading so many pages of the Hunger Games (yes, for the second time) over your boyfriend's shoulder. (No, he doesn't mind.) He shares excited and nervous faces with you when the suspense is making your heart beat fast. This exchange is like joy-full lemony daffodils growing from the shit of earlier-evening despair. The pain of bookmarking and closing the page-turner is only alleviated by the sudden realization that "Rachel!" your 9-5 cube-mate is sitting three seats behind you, and "Who's that?!? Bill Cosby?!!!" is not far behind. In the same train car. On the same train. Getting off at the same station. In the same world.

Some things happen that are weird after that. Like outsmarting an hourlong wait a Union Station taxicab - oy vey, the queue in the middle of the night - and some other things. Like almost playing some rap music you(r boyfriend?) had accidentally bought for a Lincoln from a complementary rapper (damn, you better marry her - she fuckin beautiful). This all at Times Square outside the Bare Escentuals store after Sister Act. (No, before Sister Act but after all the chestnut layer cake and jarlsburg cheese and European iced coffee.) Speaking of 30 Rock, instead of rap you turn on the Gabe Dixon Band, which your boyfriend plays often but you pay so little attention to that you have know clue what the band sounds like unless you are presently listening to it. Like right now - you are not listening to it and you couldn't possibly name one lyric, hum one tune, or list two instruments (guitar, obviously) involved in Gabe Dixon's Band-having-musicplaying-noisemaking. That, in fact, is weird.  You, in fact, are oblivious. But there were a lot of things you noticed when you were in hot New York with the delis and the knock-off vendors and the skinny girls in neon and zippers. You noticed your boyfriend was a little right about New York sidewalk-walkers not being very good-looking. And Carnegie Hall. Three times. The exorbitant price of cocktails, the nostalgic country paintings in the hotel lobby. And every flavor and nuance of every bite of Bobby Flay-recipe sea urchin, your new favorite mermaid-style snack. Mmm, mmm, better.