My Woman Marriage.

I went in to my internship today and after it took me an hour and a half to write a press release my boss gently leaned over the desk and awkwardly touched my hand. (Actually, he brushed against it while pulling back in a jerking manner.) "Are you...ok Melissa? I mean, not that I have noticed anything...but are you ok?"

So, first of all, when someone tells you they have not "noticed" anything: they have. Hugely so. I just shook the unbrushed hair from my eyes and focused on my gnawed nails. "I'M GREEEEAAAT!" I loudly sang.

He told me to take the rest of the day off.

After a mind numbing class, my very close friend Deb and I decided to take advantage of the happy hour specials that pepper the mean streets where I live. They have to lure you in somehow, and I always feel like I am walking in to a child-prostitution ring with the signs hand scrawled out in front of the restaurants. "HAPPY HOUR HERE. FREE MUSIC AND CHEAP DRINKS IF YOU GIRL. WE HAVE TACOS." They really wanted us, and we answered the siren call. One horrible glass of wine in, we discovered that the man sitting alone next to us nursing a steak was probably a serial killer.

So we went back to my place.

I started in on some studying, filling out index cards for a midterm the next day. Deb happily perched on my couch, checking facebook and looking over at the "Mad Men" episode that I study to. (Yes. I study to men in suits and in their 40's drinking scotch. It calms me.) Deb would find me periodically checking my phone, which she loudly claimed was distracting me. I, in turn, denied I was on my phone, saying asinine things like: "Oh, I'm just checking the weather!" or, "Oh, just looking up the description of 'teetotaler'!" We worked together in this perfect little dance: giving each other grief, laughing at one another, and asking if the other needed more water. It was like a marriage. A perfect little representation of what I was missing belonging to "an other." She was taking on the role of someone that looked out for me, reminded me to take my vitamins, and cuddled up on the couch with me as we heckled some actors on t.v while heckling one another.

When she left I pressed in to her hand a case of mace that I keep in my winter hat collection. "Take this." I begged her. "To make sure you make it down to your car okay. And remember to point the spout OUT." She took it with a smile, and then I stood in the hallway calling out: "I love you!" until she disappeared around the corner.

I do love her. I love the fact that she brings me coffee in class, that I call her the next day after seeing her just to say hi. I love that we laughed so hard on Shattuck today that she had to prop herself against a building, and that we both talked to the serial killer while staring at each other with huge eyes.

She is such a good thing here. We compare public poop stories, (not our own...GOD. What we see others do,) and we laugh and drink wine and look out for one another.

She's my woman marriage.

And I am very happy.

She's also really pretty.