It all started this weekend with a kiss in a taxi on the way home from a holiday party.
Under the influence of eggnog, Christmas lights and carols, I was sharing the cab ride home with my long-time friend Ned who was visiting from California. We’d just crossed 14th Street when Ned turned to me and started stroking my hair and whispering romantic sentiments in my ear. It could’ve been all the eggnog he’d consumed or the inevitable moment in a ten-year friendship in which there’d always been a “will they/won’t they?” factor. But it was Ned’s wistful tone and words that made me think this could very well be the result of Yuletide sentimentality.
Looking out the taxi window, which was now fogging up as Ned nuzzled my neck, I had to admit that I’m often sentimental around the holidays. I choke up at that first drawn out “I…m” of White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby. By the time his voice warbles at “sleigh,” I’m usually sobbing. I’m not so sentimental when it comes to relationships though. Like Clara of Nutcracker fame, I generally banish with the throw of my slipper the hideous and insidious Mouse King ex to the past. But this night, with the year drawing to a close and Ned’s hands closing in on my drawers, I couldn’t help but think back on this year’s romantic travails, and how the ghosts of boyfriends past had come into my present, and the boy friends in my present were apparitions of boyfriends yet to come.
The past boy specter is not an unfamiliar sight to me. Periodically it makes its presence known, appearing at odd times, often when I’m really happy with another guy. It’s like it just knows. Last year had actually ended on this theme: with a flirtation with an old crush, initiated by said crush just as I’d finally met a guy I rather liked. Both had become ghosts by Christmas.
This year, however, had started on a promising new note: with the kiss of a handsome Englishman at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Tromso, Norway as fireworks lit the night all around us.
It had been unexpected. Just the night before, while freezing out in the countryside looking for the Northern Lights, I’d mused to Cassidy and Sandrine, my best friends and travel companions, that gob-smacking attraction felt about as elusive as the Lights (which did elude us that night). Then the next day, there I am waiting at a bus stop in Tromso and I turn around to find inviting hazel eyes looking back at me. In this magical place, with long, bitter winter nights and barely breaking days that easily inspire fireside snogs, this sometimes cynical city girl met a charming, soft-spoken and independent man who was good with his hands and goes on holidays alone. I guess you never know when or where romantic things will happen. It’s just a question of how far you’re willing to go. Sometimes it’s 200 miles above the Arctic Circle far.
Tromso and the Englishman had set the bar high for the New Year. I’d wondered what the year would hold back home in New York City.
No comments:
Post a Comment