Let Me Love You

After landing at LaGuardia, I jumped in a cab toward the city. Caught up texting and checking Twitter while the ride was happening, I had to remind myself to put the phone away to stare out toward the city as we approached. It's a cinematic gesture, and while the view isn't surprising or necessarily breathtaking, it's an important one to take in to create that artificial "I'm here!" moment.

Arriving in Chelsea, Amit's doorman greeted me by my full first and last name as I went into his building. Confused, I tried to recall if I knew him from my last visit. "Hi?"

"I recognize you from Facebook!" he said. Ah. Of course Amit is Facebook friends with his doorman. If I'm ever to achieve the noble status of unionized door person, that's the sort of intimate relationship I'll need to build with my clients. The door guy gave me an extra set of keys, opened the elevator, and then escorted me up. That's amore. Once inside, I noticed a Toy Story Martian mask in Amit's closet, which I recognized from his Halloween tweet. You really are connected through Twitter, even from friends far away.

Everyone was just finishing up the boat ride in honor of Thyda's thirtieth birthday, and I waited for their phone call. Thyda and her friend had invited a hundred friends to fill a four hundred capacity boat. I had really wanted to attend but the flight times didn't make that a possibility. Seeing as it was sub-forty out, I decided that my late arrival might actually have been a good thing. I changed into every layer I could in anticipation of the weather. I decided I'd forgo gloves and hats until absolutely necessary, to build up my winter tolerance.

Once I got in touch with everyone, I was directed to a bar on 23rd and 3rd, a street I spent a lot of time on last summer. It holds our favored karaoke place, as well as the bar where many shenanigans have happened on previous visits. Of course it figures that the thing we'd do on my first hours back in New York was to visit familiar haunts. It's probably one of two bars in the city I could find without the help of an iPhone. The bar was intensely crowded and I couldn't quite handle the mass of people and music, and neither could anybody else, so we went over to karaoke to clean out the night.

I guess most people don't sing "Part of Your World" with as much intensity and seriousness as we do. The non-regulars among us couldn't stop laughing. They should have been singing along.