"I remember I was in jail this time, and I was talkin' to this guy. He said to me, 'You know, no one believes in G-d until you put a loaded gun to their head. Then everyone believes.' I'm not sayin' that's my mentality, but what I'm sayin' is that even people who don't believe in G-d, even Agnostics, when something big happens. When some big catastrophe happens, even they look to something beyond themselves. They acknowledge that there is some force beyond themselves."-Mike (a friend)

Ok so I went out and did no work. Went to my local hang out after finding out we had finally started bombing Iraq. So I expected the tvs to be on and everyone to be talking about the war. No, the tvs were on ESPN showing some basketball game. Some of the regulars were there. Jim and his fiancee. Audrey. Shane. Mike. Patrick. Meredith. We sat around and talked about random things, Jim's marriage, and after Jim left, whether we thought it would last. It was like any other night in F's. For the first time I saw the comfort in the routine. I had always found it a torment, how some things never change, but this was reassuring that no matter what happened I could go to F's and there would still be joking and relaxation and at least temporary escape. Only temporary of course, but still its something.

So not going back to the John story yet, it's too depressing for the beginning of the war. I will forage ahead and tlak about the two other wedding proposals I've had. So I get into a cab on wednesday (I have not been taking the subway this week because of the harassment I suffer from my mother) and this cab driver, Mario, starts in with, "You must be in love. Only a girl in love has a beautiful smile like that. You are in love?" So I lie, "Yes I'm in love." and he goes on and on. Very poetic cab driver, talking about, "I am a ghost now, but I know all about love. I have been used by beauty all my life. That is why I am only a ghost now. I have been a victim of love. Not such a bad thing. You make the sacrifice knowing it will use you up." Not bad, not bad. I wonder what he has been reading. Then he starts in with "So are you married?" I say, "Not yet, I'm getting married this weekend." So then he says "Well, to a boyfriend?" Again, I lie "Yes." "Well," he says, "This is no good. You can not marry a man that you know. This is what everyone does. You need adventure and mystery you need to marry a stranger. You need to marry me." I'm like "Oh great." So he goes on and on asking me what sign I am and all this finally I have to get out and he doesn't want to charge me at all, he just wants to marry me. There is a fair trade, in exchange for the fare marry me, it will be your dowery. So I manage to extricate myself from Mario and his cab of love and I get out and call my friend James. I'm leaving him a message "James, its an epidemic, I've never proposed to before and now two men in three days." So, and here is where things get funny if you can believe it, so this guy as soon as I'm done with my phone call turns around and says "Will you marry me?" So I start laughing. I mean, smart guy, normally you can't just start talking to a girl on the street, but he found an in. So he says to me"Now you can say you had three proposals in three days." So I'm laughing. Then he says "So what are you doing for the next forty years?" and I was like "Only forty?" And he says "Well, after that amount of time I think we will have to renegotiate our contract." So we walked a ways together and chatted. He studied classical music for a while. So then I gave him my card. And he sent me an email, as the first of my suitors to actually continue contact, he does have a shot and winning my hand.

There is a part of me that regrets not taking John G. (the first of the suitors) up on his proposal. Ther eis a part ofme that wishes I had just upped and married him in Atlantic City. Of course there is the other side of me that says I did the right thing, and you can't just haul off and marry a man you don't know at all. There are some romantic ideas that just don't work in life, and this is one of them. It's better to just leave it as an idea.