THE STORY OF LOUISE 7-22-04
Every man's life is a novel composed of interesting and uninteresting people, events, thoughts, and encounters, that working together, make for a solid volume of experience. Whether or not a person in the book of someone else's life will be a major player, or just a cameo, is a crap shoot. Some stick around for a while and develop full and intricate back stories, some occupy only a few chapters, some a footnote, and some vanish without ever getting a name in the credits. Here is the story of Louise...
Well, to get some background on how we ended up meeting Louise, you should read the update about JOSH CLARK'S BIRTHDAY PARTY. The rest of the story takes place after the initial meeting at that party, so it's good to know the groundwork.
Ran-D went on a few dates with Louise over the next few weeks in the city and they got to become close. Ran-D, who was renting an apartment in Easton, Pennsylvania at the time invited her to come back to his place for the weekend. She did and they chilled out there, visited me for a bit, we played cards and shot the shit. Sometimes it's weird to see a person in a familiar environment when the only time you've seen them before was in a drunken party state.
I saw Louise with Ran-D again on St. Patrick's Day (which is also Ran-D's birthday). We went to a shitty bar in Easton and hung out for a bit. How a bar can be dead on St. Patricks day is insane. It went out of business a few weeks later.
A month later (and just a few days before Ran-D's gallery show in Easton) Louise headed back to Copenhagen, Denmark where she owns a condo and would be resuming her former life.
Ran-D and her decided to actually use the word Boyfriend/Girlfriend a few days before she left. Ran-D had been sketchy about getting back into a relationship after dumping his ex-fiance of four years who cheated on him with a junky scumbag some few months back, so this was be a big step for him.
For the next month Louise and Ran-D spoke over the phone tallying up an astronomical 4 digit phone bill. A few weeks later (after express delivery of his passport) Ran-D was boarding a plane to Copenhagen where he would live for the next two months. Protesting in Christiana, smoking hash at rallies without repercussion, getting drunk on wine and walking the streets for inspiration like Hemmingway and the expatriates in their moveable feasts of old.
On his trip back he picked up a copy of British Maxim in London, and was all psyched to see my work in it and to actually have bought it in England. He's all proud of this fact, because I haven't even been to England to see my work on the racks yet.
Well, the plan all along was that Louise and Ran-D would break up when he returned to the states, therefore the entire relationship had a timeclock ticking on it and it was all predetermined and would be painless. But, when he returned, they didn't break it off. Louise started planning to move back into Harlem in September, wherein he would move in with her.
They talked on the phone off and on, and over the course of a week Louise decided that when she moves back, he shouldn't live with her, but can come and stay over any time, she just wanted to feel secure that the apartment was hers.
A few days later she was sketchy about even moving back to the states because the job she was supposed to resume wasn't going to happen.
They finally did what they were supposed to do weeks earlier, and broke up.
Like all good bros, when one of the tribe becomes released into the wilds of bachelorhood, the others are obliged to take you out and soak up your tears in beers, and or, toast your freedom.
That night (last night), we decided to go to a small town in Pennsylvania called New Hope. New Hope is a very rich town that was founded by hippies and was once a hippy community, but has evolved into an upper-class yuppie hipster spot. I had never been there and only thought it was a hippy new age community based on what I had heard about it in the past. Ran-D informed me that, that's what it used to be, but it's evolved. "That would be like saying SOHO is the part of New York City where all the squatters live."
The great thing about this town is that it's so unexpected. 99.99 percent of Pennsylvania is bumblefuck. We refer to these bumblefuck areas as Pennsyltucky, because it's so hillbilly farmland, it might as well be Kentucky. That's what took me aback with this town, the main street in the town could be ripped right out of NYC. There is a lounge there that could compete on Park Avenue, and the other bars on the street are roofed cabana style bars I haven't seen the likes of since Miami.
We got thoroughly sloshed and wandered up and down the street in a constant bar crawl from about 10-2. At one point we thought maybe the bars in Levittown, NJ would be happening, so we decided to walk the bridge over the Delaware River into New Jersey. When we got there, the town was so dead I was surprised there weren't tumbleweeds. Not wanting to loose any precious drinking time, we both jogged over the bridge back to New Hope.
When Ran-D left for Copenhagen I was still with Jen, my ex who I had been with for 4 years, I'd never hung out with Ran-D while I was in college, and the time between College and my ex, he was with his ex fiance, so we haven't been both single at the same time in years.
Being two single guys hanging out as single guys for the first time since high school we flirted with many women, and had a grand ol' time. It was a drunken night of revelry and many toasts.
I noticed something tiny and yet significant though, like everything in life, things you do stay with you, and people you meet and how you associate with them and feel for them can change you to be a better, wiser, stronger, more accepting, and more cultured person. Ran-D used to say cheers when he raised a glass. It was one of his trademarks.
Now he says "Skal!" (pronounced Skoat) it's Danish equivalent
Funny how these things work out.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo