Dual dose of sugar bowls

Now, you know when I don't write for a few days, it's usually because there's something good or bad going on.

In this case, it was beyond good. It was tremendous.

I was in New York last weekend for a video-editing class. After a horrendous oversold train trip up, where I basically got to sit on the floor from Baltimore to Newark, New Jersey, and after having got to New York late, a guy I work with and I had a decent dinner at Angelo & Maxie's and I went back to the hotel to discover that The Manhattan Effect had trashed my laptop. Fuck. And the hotel had free broadband, too.

I wrote the laptop off, and we went to the class on Saturday and Sunday. Went out again Saturday night, to several places around Times Square for food and/or drink and/or watching women. I realized something about New York: it's all about the numbers. A city that massive doesn't actually have a higher percentage of pretty women, but 1% of 10 million is way more than 1% of 5,000, which is how big my town is. Thus, everywhere I looked, there were sexy, dark-haired lean women.

With terrific calves, from walking briskly around Midtown in heels. How they do it, I don't know. I don't even care. They just do. There was one on 6th avenue in a gray pleated wool skirt, pink sweater and black heels who smelled terrific, and I could have followed her for miles, till the Segway battery ran out, had I not had somewhere to be.

The class was OK... hopefully it will inspire me to get back into doing digital video again. I have (literally) miles of raw videotape around my house, some of it dating back 15 years or more, and I really want to do something with it all. As much as online words are my tale, my videotape is my adult life.

After the class on Sunday, Bill and I wanted to go over to the Apple Store on Prince Street, and we were walking over -- well, HE was walking, and I was on the Segway -- when my phone rang.

It was Penny.

The first thing she asked me was, "what kind of commitment are you willing to make to make this work out?"

"Almost total," I told her, not quite knowing what she was after.

She told me basically that she had told Steve it "wasn't going to work out," and she wanted to see me again.

I did not, in fact, fall off the Segway.

We talked for the next eight blocks, and what it basically came down to was that Penny had eaten enough from the sugar bowl, she hadn't been able to forget me, Steve wasn't all he was cracked up to be, and she wanted us to get back together. Her timing could not have been more perfect. I frankly am getting pretty tired of meeting new people and really want to concentrate on someone again. I've had my year to play, and it has been unbelievable, but I wanna just be with her. Wake up next to her a lot. Listen to her talk. Be dazzled by her looks.

I am damn tired of fucking around. Yeah, yeah, I've been eating from the sugar bowl, too. And some of you are envious. Well, shit, if I can do it -- I, the confirmed lifetime troll, the high-school untouchable, everybody's uncle and nobody's lover -- then YOU can do it, too.

Got to the Apple Store, parked the Segway inside the front door, where it immediately drew a crowd. Looked at expensive gadgets, and then went off to the hotel to pick up our suitcases and go to Penn Station to catch the train.

On the trip back, I talked to Penny some more, and things came more into focus. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about me when she was with Steve, and she felt he wasn't being very honest and open with her. Turns out he'd been dating a couple of other women (yeah, Mr. "I Took My Profile Off Match.com As Soon As I Found You") in recent weeks and didn't seem like he was going to miss her much.

Dillweed.

Steves of the world, you have been vanquished again! Fucketh thee!

The train back was crowded, but at least we had seats. And drinks and food. Got back to Baltimore late, I dropped Bill off, and talked to Penny on the way home.

I finally got to see her Monday night. I had a dental appointment, then drove up, and it was incredible. It was if a light was switched back on, and we took up exactly where we'd left off. Talking, touching, making something for dinner, having some wine, talking some more, fucking each other's brains out. I did not stay over. I went home and collapsed.

Tuesday night I went to dinner with Mary, and she, though you might think otherwise, was delighted for both of us. She's known for a while that I really wanted to be with Penny, and she knew we weren't really right for each other as lovers (though sex was great fun and Mary is, after doing some web.research, thrilled with the idea of more lab work dealing with her newfound talent for ejaculation), so she thinks this works out well for everyone. She just met some guy who has dogs, whom we'll call "Rick" because that's his name.

All the world is in balance, I guess. The light is back on, and everything seems great again.

Nothing simple ever happens to me.