A World-Pivoting Moment

Earlier this week, I wrote about when I was in undergrad, about guys asking if my name had an H or not and how it felt like a world pivoting moment.

I haven’t articulated this to anyone before (not really even admitted it to myself,) but  I’m going to be honest here: When I was that age, I would watch everything happening to me as I lived it. Like, I would visualize it all happening in a story as it was happening to me. So the man behind the counter, more beautiful and completely different from any other man I had ever known, was asking to know me better. Across the dark counter with the rain misting the windows, the street lights shining in the puddles. In the movie in my head, the world was pivoting around that moment.

Could I hear my high heels tapping on the pavement as I left? Did he happen to leave at the same time, with his trench coat flapping in the wind? Did the breeze lift a lock of hair?

I’ll tell you, it was fun in those days, telling those stories to myself. There was one year, my then-best-friend Ann lived in a beautiful old building, and next to it was this little market. The market was owned and run by a man who, if you squinted and crossed your eyes, looked like Gabriel Byrne.

I mean, I think he was Armenian and barely spoke English and didn’t look like him at all, but still.

Then, there was this one night, outside of that apartment building, I was with another friend and ran into a guy I met at a party a few weeks before. I couldn’t totally tell, but I think he gave me a meaningful look. I couldn’t sleep that night for staring out the window and dreaming about what he would have said if he could have. How significant it would have been.

Did you ever do that or anything like that?