So today was busier than normal, a complete workout before hopping off to “research”, two interviews without me bursting out by saying, ‘well, can we hire somebody who isn’t white for once?’, some catch-up pints with Laser, Japanese with Mark, and now unwinding quietly at home.

So here is my life after 5 today.

Ran downtown for my presentation. A/V problems like mad. Mac Minis are cute and wireless keyboards are hot, but the lack of hotkeys renders GSP almost stupid.

Did some adlibbing, made some jokes about cravats and the Siamese. Rob and Laser were mostly appreciative of my jokes, which were hedges against something or another.

Several choice moments include the following jokes: (I did not tell any jokes about what’s green and really far away? What’s really far away and hard to wash off?) A teacher complains her kids can’t even draw parallel lines and I’m like, “What, their rulers have only one side?” “Why did the parabola go to the guidance counselor?” “Because she lacks direction!”

I’m told the best joke I told was about how the vanishing point moves whenever you turn around. This joke cannot be transcribed.

We didn’t make jokes about urban kids are already familiar with traintracks, thankfully.

Some pints later, I try to stagger Midtownward for Mark, sadly leaving Rob in the lurch and Laser a bit confused, but somehow got lost by heading into Battery Park City, but the ruins of the WTC made me further and further away from the subway, so I took a cab (thank goodness for ExpressPay) to near the dojo, whereupon then I hopped on the train to Mark.

It was good seeing Mark. It was great seeing Mark. It was necessary and overdue seeing Mark. I’ve missed him unreasonably. Tonight was reasonably light and relaxed and just catching up, shooting the breeze, and flirty, retracing our first date steps somewhat on this our tenth, talking about the headlong, heady pace and how much we can see a future together, as much as we are leaving our own lives intact as possible (just don’t ask me how many times I’ve skipped practice in the past few weeks). It’s almost enough to make me revive that old song, “When My Boy Walks Down the Street,” but that was another country… And this time it’s somehow much more reciprocated, nourishing, and sustaining and there is longing which is not based on what is not but what we don’t have right now because of work, life, family, and such. Happily in love.

So the standard part of my evening adventure was pints with Laser at the local pub, amidst talk of politics, operations research, and faux communities of practice.

But after some delays I finally managed to meet up with Hat, a Taiwanese emigree on the closeted side of things, whose life is crazy enough that he is quasi-nocturnal, always running across the boroughs and impossible to pin down especially when his cellphone is dying and the 7 trains are all running local rather than express which made our attempts to meet on a train car not only twice-thwarted but very slow before we finally reached Flushing because the train skipped Corona and eventually eating with GBF.

That’s not the story, though, as much as the fact that I’ve been chatting up on MSN Donny, a decent, grounded masculine/bi guy whose renounced his family’s wealth and is trying to figure out balance in his life and how to be independent in the city while working for himself, and we’d made some sorts of plans to maybe hang out in Flushing, but it was very indefinite, and up in the air.

But as it turns out, the friend Hat was heading to see was none other than Donny, and so it was outside on the street that we ran into each other for the first time, unsure whether or not to actually acknowledge one another. In the end we didn’t…

Who knew the gaysian community was so damn small?