Whose Lipstick is That on Your Face?

I've been in a funk lately, thinking way too much about the past and the future, wanting to make things happen that I have absolutely no control over.

While I've been keeping busy my mind has been churning, trying to figure my life out, despite knowing how unlikely it is that I'll come up with answers or even any sort of a plan.

So much is in flux.

So rather than addressing life, I went out instead to enjoy it.

Tonight's adventure began by meeting a friend at the Grill at Patterson and Libbie for a bite to eat.

He wanted to talk about his life and his issues, which was great because it prevented me from focusing on mine.

Why is it so much easier to help a friend address his demons than it it to address your own?

He had the Philly chicken sandwich and I had the wedge salad (in an effort to eat lighter after all the extravagance of Sunday night) and he was agog at the transformation of the place from the old Freckles, a place where the two of us had lunched on numerous occasions.

We talked about how places like Freckles would soon be nothing more than a distant and quaint memory.

For a change, I did not have dessert but he tore into a piece of chocolate peanut butter pie with gusto.

Its light whipped texture kept the pie from being too rich or filling, but personally, I'm just not a fan of peanut butter messing with my chocolate.

Yet one more way I'm odd.

After my friend left for the movies (Copout, no thanks), I decided to walk over to Bistro 27 for a glass of wine and to experience whatever random people I might run into at the bar.

There was enough of a lull that Chef Carlos was free to chat and before I knew it, a plate of spicy calamari and polenta appeared in front of me.

"Something spicy for someone spicy," he told me.

So much for eating lighter, but the calamari was so good that who was I to watch my waistline when something this wonderful was sitting in front of me?

Before long a guy came in and he must have been a regular or at least a friend of the manager because we were introduced, in that way that happens when two frequent customers are the sole people at a bar.

Coincidentally, he's in video production, which was my former field back in the day when I was fully employed and not counting people by knocking on their doors.

He even mentioned an upcoming freelance job for which I sounded imminently suited and asked for my card, which I was more than happy to pass on.

I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome in meeting a random stranger...except for perhaps him turning out to be the love of my life.

Of course, as a friend recently pointed out to me, it's entirely likely that the love of my life is not a random stranger at all, but that's another story entirely.

Along with the manager, we had an enlightening three-way discussion of what makes a good boyfriend and I was told that sending flowers, giving back rubs, paying compliments and, ahem, pleasuring a girlfriend are the surefire ways to ensure your place in a girl's heart.

The discussion actually got a bit more graphic, but since you're probably not reading this blog for that kind of information, I'll let it go and you can fill in the blanks.

I was also told that sometimes a relationship needs to be revisited and that reuniting with a former love after a breakup can sometimes result in wholly different results, a consequence of the right person at the right time the second time around.

This is not something I've explored, but these two guys seemed pretty sure of themselves.

Of course, by this time they were also drinking tequila and rye (they did ask jokingly [I think] if I wanted to do body shots, but I passed), so I took their gospel with a grain of salt.

Not that I needed any salt, having already been told that I was the spicy type.

And I didn't need to be told that I wasn't going to appeal to anyone looking for safe or bland.

But for someone with an adventurous palate who knows how to be a good boyfriend (see Ron's Rules, above), the possibilities are endless.

Or as Eric, the regular, put it, "You have to want to do it."

I won't tell you what he was referring to, but it really applies to all of it, don't you think?