Maria

The room pulsed with the collective heart of a Friday night. I could barely hear Maria over the noise or the bar, glasses clinking, people talking, shoes shuffling, coat cast aside, laughter, instruments being tuned for the next band.
Maria was a friend of a friend of mine, Who I had bumped into that night at random. She was more interested in talking to him than to me. She suggested they go to a house party after the bar, and I don't remember how, but I heard mention of VCA.
Steeled by beer and atmosphere, I bullishly tried to assert myself in the conversation.
"What do you do at VCA?" I asked.
"Music" Maria said.
And that was that.

Marty

You spoke about facts. Those silly ones that everyone has a few of. You gave my friend your jacket and you called me hipster. "A BA? You look like you do a BA". We had to talk loudly over the music and seemed to dislike the dancing crowd as much as I did.

Marty is the first person I feel that I have really 'met' in a long time. I don't even know how we got started talking. Maybe because you spoke to the host, who was wasted didn't have any shoes on. I'd only met her a few times and she was going to take me on a tour of the house. That's when you chimed in with you fact about the moon being 400 times smaller than the sun, but the sun was coincidentally 400 times further away. So the result of that celestial phenomenon was that when there was a solar eclipse, the moon fit perfectly over the sun.

I talked to you most of the time I was there, some two hours. That's why I feel like I met you, because we got past those first steps of conversation, the foundations of orientating ourselves in each other, plotting, if you will, the scope of how well we might relate on different subjects. Talking to someone new is a lot like playing Battleships. A new topic might miss the mark and the conversation might begin to unravel, the charm broken.

You walked me out when I left. You said, 'I don't really do this, but can I get your number?'

This got me thinking about the follow through. Are connections momentary or are connections truly only when they more from the ephemeral to the more reified realm of the promise of more? I find there are never enough words in the English language to describe the stages of things like this. Perhaps those who we don’t connect with are the acquaintances. But then within that distinction, there are those who you might smile at in passing, or the ones who you would say hello to, and then another level – the ones who you would at least ask how they were for a few awkward moments. I suppose ultimately what it is about is the moment – the face to face and the being human. No matter the time frame, it’s the interaction that is the punctum.

…I did give him my number.