Caterina says:

“I’ve always been amazed that in the first moments of getting to know someone you see very clearly who they are, and then spend the rest of your relationship learning all over again what you knew in those first moments.”

This email from my high school sweetheart says something complex about my teen years:

“Saw this and for some inexplicable reason, thought of you.”

I wrote a very long Ladies Night excerpt for The Morning News. It’s a doozy.

Yesterday, I bought a grape nuts knockoff cereal called Crunchy Nuggets.

SAY CHEESE

Say, where would a girl go if she needed a pair of quality gold fangs for her next hot date?

Let’s just pray, baby…
Let’s just pray about it.
Do you want to pray on the phone, or do you want me to come over, sugar?…
No, no. I’m right here, baby. I just got on the bus, I’m headed up Market. I’m right near you, baby…
On the train…
Yes, sugar…
Do you want me to bring you some food or something?
Some coffeee or some OJaaaay?…
OJ? OK. Do you want filtered or pulp, baby?…
Pulp then. I’ll bring you some pulpy OJ, you get it all stuck up in your teeth and we gonna do some prayin’…
Uh huh. See you soon, baby.

Store Clerk: The white tags are DVD, the black tags are VHS. If you call at noon, we’ll do same-day reservations of all our Hollywood titles.

Me: Great, thanks.

(A few minutes later, on the street.)

Me: What do they mean, they’ll let you reserve the Hollywood titles?

Him: Didn’t you see the side room?

Me: No.

Him: They have a whole room full of boy-sex movies. Apparently they don’t let you reserve those in advance.

Me: I wonder why not.

Him: Probably too much trouble. They got one too many calls, Can I reserve that one with the two guys? Like, the one with the guy doing the other guy? The one with the big member?

I like Dave Eggers. As I’ve mentioned before, I subscribed to Might and McSweeny, I was among the hordes of subway riders who carried A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius on the commute, and I even attended a reading or two. When I heard he was starting 826 Valencia–a non-profit writing center for kids–I decided that Dave Eggers was certifiably swell. I also signed up to be a tutor. They called me in for an interview a few days ago, and I finally met Mr. Eggers.

For some reason, I was unprepared. I knew it was his project, but didn’t consider that I might see him there. He talked to me and two other tutors for about an hour, giving his take on the student-teacher bond and going through some sample writing. He had fantastic genius-hair, and seemed shy until he’d been talking for a few minutes. I listened and tried to seem more at ease than I was. On the way home, I thought about how weird it was to sit two feet from a guy whose work I’d been reading since I was 19. Then I realized my fly was open.