the visit

I apologize for my absence online during the past few days. When someone is visiting New York for the first time ever, there is so much to do, the computer just collects dust in the corner. We did lots of touristy things, like museum visiting and tromping around the city. Some of the more unusual (for me) things:

1. Went to a Yankees game last night (where I single-handedly jinxed the game by proclaiming it totally won at the bottom of the 7th inning), and...

2. Got to the game via subway. That's right..the subway. For most people in and around New York, this is a daily activity. I hate the subway. I never take it anywhere. Not only did we descend into the bowels of the city to travel via train, but I, alone, navigated the route. For those of you who are aware of my inadequate sense of direction and my aversion to the subway first hand, try not to stroke-out at this revelation: We got there and back just fine, thank you very much.

I will not be making a habit of it, though. It's still gross and stinky down there. If I lived in Tokyo, where the subway looks and smells like the crew from Disney World maintains it, and there are women-only cars to prevent the subway frottage, it would be worth considering. But alas, I do not live in Tokyo, and I will remain anti-subway. We also did a LOT of walking. My poor feet hurt. Enough of the tour guide niceties you say? Give us the dirt on the man visit?

Ok, here's the thing. Though I referred to him as an "ex", I did so mainly to simplify the nature of our relationship. We've been friends for many years. There was a brief period, just before I got together with the most recent ex, when we tried to let our relationship move beyond friendship. Though he is also good friends with my sister, I decided not to tell her about it because I knew that she would try to use him in her arsenal of weapons to get me to move down there. Life happened, neither of us was ready to completely uproot our lives to move closer to the other, so we remained friends and that was that.

Whenever I go to visit my family, I see him, and ever since I broke up with the ex, he's been asking me why I don't just move down there and marry him. I've never taken it seriously. When I was down there for my niece's christening, my sister discovered the true nature of our relationship, and as I suspected, she attempted to use it to convince me that I was just destined to move and live happily ever after. To say my family knows and loves this guy would be a bit of an understatement.

When we were out with a few of his friends the other night (all transplanted now to nyc), one girl asked how long we've "been together"...an understandable assumption, as we appear to anyone around us to be a couple..very affectionate, we tell stories in tandum, have long standing inside jokes...He explained it best when he replied, "For about 10 years...but, you know, with the occassional split up due to a marriage and divorce somewhere in there". Which pretty much explains it all.

While he was visiting, we talked about it a lot. My feeling, for the time being, is that he is a man who wants to be married, and he wants more kids (he has a 4 year old son). That is vastly different from someone who is so crazy about me that he wants to spend forever and ever (a concept I find a little hard to conceptualize anyway) with me. I'm not ruling it out, I'm just saying...someone may need to point him in the direction of a white horse he can use to do the feet sweeping.