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Note | Apr 27 2003

I went to a party tonight. Got drunk. Danced. Left a note in a woman’s shoe. She wasn’t wearing the shoe at the time. It was under a chair. I’d seen her leave it there. With her other shoe. Even drunk I’m paying attention.

I gave her my email address. I mean in the shoe. On the note. After I wrote it, I made extra sure it was legible. Because that would terrible, if she couldn’t make out my email address. She’d be like, The drunk motherfucker what the fuck does this say?

For this reason I read the note through several times. I wasn’t totally sure, but it seemed as though the “at” symbol didn’t look enough like an “at” symbol, so I wrote a second note, the same as the first, but this time with a better “at” symbol.

This was in the hall outside the party. It was very bright in the hall which for some reason made me reason how drunk I was. Not reason; realize. I’m still drunk.

I went back to the party with the note in my pocket and sat in the chair beneath which she’d left her shoes.

You can imagine the rest.

I don’t think she’s going to email me.

*

Now it’s the next day. I laid in bed all morning talking with her. Her name is Tess. This wasn’t her, mind you, but an imaginary her. Although her name really is Tess. We didn’t talk so much as snuggle. She wore one of my t-shirts. At one point she cried but wouldn’t tell me why.

In another version (there were many) I went down on her. Then I decided it was too soon for that, so I wiped it out and started over.

In another version I watched her sleep. At a certain point her face became quite intent, like she was struggling with a difficult math problem.

In another version she snuck out of bed in the early morning and put her pants on and wrote me a note sitting at the kitchen table. She thought I was asleep but I wasn’t. I could hear the sound of her pen on the paper. My fear, lying there, was that she wasn’t going to leave me her number. The moment she left, I got up and looked at the note, which she had left on top of the fruit bowl. Forgive me, but that’s how it ends. I never got to the part where I find out what the note says.