Do Not Adjust Your Television.This is Just a Test

The evening is the sorority slumber party it usually resembles at this hour.

Clothes, jewelry, makeup, hair products and other notions are all being offered or asked for from room to room. Clothes irons, flat irons, and curling irons all cooking. The bar bears all the hallmarks of a party well underway: glasses, limes, chips, salsa, opened bottles, half-filled glasses, corks lying still on screws, margarita foam pooled in bottoms of glasses.

We are a somewhat divided camp tonight. The Krotchfelts are here to party and have taken a new found albeit delayed shine to our friends from prior years. Our friends are going out in downtown and a contingency of our group, led by the K sisters is going to join them.

Since Jackie will only be with us this one last night and has expressed an interest in dining in a restaurant we have all come to know and love that is nearby, she and Joy and Kate have decided to go there. I am the vote that decides the majority, which for some reason seems to matter when it shouldn't.

I am planning to join Kate, Joy and Jackie.

I've heard from Alejandro a few times that day. It is apparent that he'd like to see me, which is nice to know but puts me in somewhat of a quandary. I'd like to see him for sure, but this trip is about THE GIRLS. Or is supposed to be. Last year, J. was a huge distraction and I felt guilty about not being present. And then about being a disturbance. I need to be present. I am here for the right reasons and nothing will distract me.

So Alejandro is a secondary concern tonight. A priority but not the top banana. And for genuine and meaningful reasons. But that is a pretty weighty topic that will require a very verbose and sincere explanation to be understood by Alejandro, which I am pretty sure is unnecessary given the fleeting and frivolous nature of this little romance. I am sure I do not want to seem like the psycho from the Wedding Crashers planning a wedding and 2.3 children after the first kiss. So instead, I am dodging. I'd like to say I am an artful dodger, but we are texting for chrissake, and it is an imperfect media. I am not doing the dance very gracefully. Aloof but not unavailable is the position I want to take but aloof comes across as bitchy in texts. Available comes across as desperate. I am doomed.

I would like to see him. Their plans sound like fun. (Hello, full contact karaoke participation!) But I am compelled by my friendship with the girls to give them the priority they deserve. This is a girls trip. Anything else is a bonus. This really can not and should not be adequately explained. It is just who we are to eachother.

As we approach the wine bar/coffee house/foodie heaven we have grown to adore, I get a text from Alejandro.

"If we are welcome, we'd like to see you girls tonight."

Great. My dodging and the imperfect media that is texting have managed to make him feel like a pest. Like I'm not interested. Too aloof. Blowing him/them off. So convincingly so that he will not even say he'd like to see me. Has to make it a group thing. They'd like to see us.

We sit at the bar, order wine, and wait for a table. I make a pact with the girls that I order something other than wine after the first drink. I love wine but have no idea how to avoid getting completely plastered when I drink it. So overindulging in public has to be avoided at all costs. One glass I am a happy, story telling companion. Two or three and I am likely to be found up on the table top dancing the can-can in my panties and no one would be capable of convincing me that it is not a splendid idea. So once I have placed my order for the first and last glass of the night, I excuse myself to right things with Alejandro and the boys.

I am relieved that he answers. I am better in conversation than anything else.

I let him know where we are and who I am with - and let him know that there are a few folks headed in their direction. I tell him directly that of course they are welcome. We love their company, and implore him not to worry about that.

He audibly exhales in relief.

I continue that Jackie is with us for one last evening and that 4 of us are spending the early evening together. Kate and Jackie intend to turn in earlier than the rest of us. Joy and I will likely catch up with them later. We can keep in touch by text.

Dangling little tidbits of information for the next few hours will right the ship. Vaguely suggestive little snipets that have him wondering why he's not in a cab on his way to see me.

This is where my degree in English and my love of just the right word give me the edge no matter what the media. My element. My game.

Game on.