Last Saturday, I flew into NYC for a whirlwind trip for one my oldest and best friend's, Lexi's, wedding. (Excuse the overuse of apostrophes, I don't really get how to write that.) Anywho, a little on Lexi and I. We met in the fourth grade, when we both had awkwardly awful glasses and blindness to match, a penchant for literature and movies a bit beyond our age and a love for bacon and spicy food. Thank god, that latter things stuck, but we trashed those glasses the minute we hit puberty and have been making style improvements ever since. Lexi is the most open, warmest person you will ever meet and has the most magnetic personality, which is only amplified by her amazing sense of humor. Add that to the fact, she is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and has no idea, and she's like almost perfect. I say almost because we've have a history of explosive fights over things we forget about two minutes later, although some are pretty good.
For instance, we've actually had a fight over who ate more chili cheese fries at FatBurger when our parents abandoned us on Birch Street when we saw like four movies in a row without telling them we would be unreachable. I believe it was Finding Neverland, the Grudge, Christmas at the Kranks and maybe Shark's Tale. This was 2004. We had like three dollars between us and we crawled to FatBurger in a post-movie stupor just before it closed and Lexi counted our pennies out and purchased fries, which we inhaled like ravenous animals before turning on each other for both failing to secure a parental ride home at midnight. Thank god Ellen picked us before blood was shed.
Another movie-inspired fight was when we saw Scoop, again on Birch Street, and we then began screaming at each other about Woody Allen. If you didn't know (but you should), Lexi is a die-hard fan. And by die-hard, she would KILL for Woody Allen. I fall to the other side of the spectrum. With some exceptions, I think he talks too much, which doesn't work well for me, because I like to talk and I refuse to have competitors. So we were walking to the car, at which point I mentioned my minor distaste and then World War III broke out in the middle of an intersection with traffic horns blaring and Lexi and I squaring off in a vicious stare-off. But then we laughed and got ice cream. It was a close one.
There was also the time we rented Match Point and some other movie. Lexi was sleeping on the top bunk, me on the bottom bunk. And one thing you should know about me is I turn homicidal when I want to go to bed and people won't let me. At the end of the first movie, I was done with the night and informed Lexi in rather abrasive terms that we were not watching the second movie, we were going to bed. We got in a verbal scuffle, which ended in me turning off all the lights and leaving Lexi hanging halfway down the bunk bed with no glasses on. Like I said, she is nearly blind and it took her more than a few minutes to secure both feet on the ground before she strode out to the living room couch, where she told me to either get it together OR get it together and watch the movie with me. We watched the movie and bonded over all the crispy bacon in the morning.
But all these "fights" weren't really fights, they were times where I realized (generally midst fight), that Lexi is my sister. We can scream, yell, slam doors, but never once have I ever doubted that within two minutes, we would be back to drinking our beers, eating our french fries with hot sauce or plotting out our respective career paths together. And if you know how high maintenance I am, you know that her loyalty and patience is incredibly laudable.
So clearly it would take a special person, and by special, I mean outstandingly amazing, for Lexi. Someone with humor, intelligence and warmth. And when Lexi skyped me from Ireland to tell me about this amazing boy, and was giddy and giggly and girly, I knew there was something up. A long while later in 2011, I finally got to meet this man, Stephen, when he and Lexi met me at Borough Market. Not only did he handle our obnoxiously loud reunion complete with high pitched squeals, traipsing around fashion markets, and gossip about random people he had no context for, he was an utter gentleman. The moment that sealed the deal about how much I loved Steve, was when I had secured air mattresses for their visit, which the label assured me were fit for a comfortable guest bed. I opened these ridiculous mattresses, blew them up and realized they were actually pool rafts and were so narrow, you could only sleep one your side in a straight line and were only inflated about an inch off the ground. Whoops. But because I procrastinated, I had no time to find an alternative arrangements. Although I asked that Steve and Lexi take my bed, he was absolutely against it. He demanded that Lexi and I share the bed and he proceeded to sleep on the pool raft, which rapidly deflated throughout the night, leaving him on a nearly cement floor (with a thin carpet) in a grimy London dorm room where the radiator didn't work. And the next morning, he arose, fresh as a daisy, even more gentlemanly than the day before, inviting me to visit London, where he could return the favor of accommodation (with slightly more comfort).
Not just that, but its the way Steve looks at Lexi - with warmth and sweetness and romance - the same way he looked at her when he walked down the aisle. They mirror each other's grace and sense of fun and I couldn't imagine anyone better for Lex. So when I was invited to the wedding in the Catskills, I had to go. Not only was it a pleasure to see Lexi and Steve and both of their amazing families, but I also got to meet a lot of Lexi's NY friends that I have heard so much about. They are just as wonderful as she described them and I hope to see them again. And seeing Beej and Ellen reminded me how much I miss them and how much time I have missed with them being wrapped up in all that useless law school business. Also special shout-out to Nat and E for being my adoptive parents this weekend, xx. Thank you to Lex and Steve for an amazing weekend and I love you both!
For instance, we've actually had a fight over who ate more chili cheese fries at FatBurger when our parents abandoned us on Birch Street when we saw like four movies in a row without telling them we would be unreachable. I believe it was Finding Neverland, the Grudge, Christmas at the Kranks and maybe Shark's Tale. This was 2004. We had like three dollars between us and we crawled to FatBurger in a post-movie stupor just before it closed and Lexi counted our pennies out and purchased fries, which we inhaled like ravenous animals before turning on each other for both failing to secure a parental ride home at midnight. Thank god Ellen picked us before blood was shed.
Another movie-inspired fight was when we saw Scoop, again on Birch Street, and we then began screaming at each other about Woody Allen. If you didn't know (but you should), Lexi is a die-hard fan. And by die-hard, she would KILL for Woody Allen. I fall to the other side of the spectrum. With some exceptions, I think he talks too much, which doesn't work well for me, because I like to talk and I refuse to have competitors. So we were walking to the car, at which point I mentioned my minor distaste and then World War III broke out in the middle of an intersection with traffic horns blaring and Lexi and I squaring off in a vicious stare-off. But then we laughed and got ice cream. It was a close one.
There was also the time we rented Match Point and some other movie. Lexi was sleeping on the top bunk, me on the bottom bunk. And one thing you should know about me is I turn homicidal when I want to go to bed and people won't let me. At the end of the first movie, I was done with the night and informed Lexi in rather abrasive terms that we were not watching the second movie, we were going to bed. We got in a verbal scuffle, which ended in me turning off all the lights and leaving Lexi hanging halfway down the bunk bed with no glasses on. Like I said, she is nearly blind and it took her more than a few minutes to secure both feet on the ground before she strode out to the living room couch, where she told me to either get it together OR get it together and watch the movie with me. We watched the movie and bonded over all the crispy bacon in the morning.
But all these "fights" weren't really fights, they were times where I realized (generally midst fight), that Lexi is my sister. We can scream, yell, slam doors, but never once have I ever doubted that within two minutes, we would be back to drinking our beers, eating our french fries with hot sauce or plotting out our respective career paths together. And if you know how high maintenance I am, you know that her loyalty and patience is incredibly laudable.
So clearly it would take a special person, and by special, I mean outstandingly amazing, for Lexi. Someone with humor, intelligence and warmth. And when Lexi skyped me from Ireland to tell me about this amazing boy, and was giddy and giggly and girly, I knew there was something up. A long while later in 2011, I finally got to meet this man, Stephen, when he and Lexi met me at Borough Market. Not only did he handle our obnoxiously loud reunion complete with high pitched squeals, traipsing around fashion markets, and gossip about random people he had no context for, he was an utter gentleman. The moment that sealed the deal about how much I loved Steve, was when I had secured air mattresses for their visit, which the label assured me were fit for a comfortable guest bed. I opened these ridiculous mattresses, blew them up and realized they were actually pool rafts and were so narrow, you could only sleep one your side in a straight line and were only inflated about an inch off the ground. Whoops. But because I procrastinated, I had no time to find an alternative arrangements. Although I asked that Steve and Lexi take my bed, he was absolutely against it. He demanded that Lexi and I share the bed and he proceeded to sleep on the pool raft, which rapidly deflated throughout the night, leaving him on a nearly cement floor (with a thin carpet) in a grimy London dorm room where the radiator didn't work. And the next morning, he arose, fresh as a daisy, even more gentlemanly than the day before, inviting me to visit London, where he could return the favor of accommodation (with slightly more comfort).
Not just that, but its the way Steve looks at Lexi - with warmth and sweetness and romance - the same way he looked at her when he walked down the aisle. They mirror each other's grace and sense of fun and I couldn't imagine anyone better for Lex. So when I was invited to the wedding in the Catskills, I had to go. Not only was it a pleasure to see Lexi and Steve and both of their amazing families, but I also got to meet a lot of Lexi's NY friends that I have heard so much about. They are just as wonderful as she described them and I hope to see them again. And seeing Beej and Ellen reminded me how much I miss them and how much time I have missed with them being wrapped up in all that useless law school business. Also special shout-out to Nat and E for being my adoptive parents this weekend, xx. Thank you to Lex and Steve for an amazing weekend and I love you both!
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