Saturday, 12:14PM. Motorama, Jones and Danforth.

I am so hangry (so hungry I’m angry) that I can’t have a charming brunch conversation.

Nikki, Maria’s granddaughter, brings me three gigantic chocolate chip pancakes smothered in butter and topped with bacon and everything is better, except that I’m going to be embarrassed when I can’t eat it all.

I realize that the Motorama neon sign is gone and I am shocked and saddened. I am going to search the garbage for it when I get home tonight. That thing is worth like 10 grand at a hipster antique shop.

Sunday, 2PM. Bonjour Brioche, Queen and DeGrassi.

There is caviar on my scrambled eggs. Caviar. This is the opposite brunch of yesterday. More of a thing, this brunch. But probably the same amount of butter.

I love being completely indulgent, but I hate always being 15 lbs overweight. There’s probably a French Women Don’t Get Fat lesson in here somewhere, but my library card expired so I never read it and I thought maybe running a lot would be enough, but that’s not a very French thing to do either.

t: I shouldn’t make fun. I have girly conversations all the time.
m: Sorry?
t: I have girly conversations all the time.
m: I thought you said, Oh, I have great conversations all the time.

Amazing. “I have great conversations all the time.” is my new icebreaker.

I wish I had a cot beside my desk. I would just get so much done if I had a cot in the nook.

Am I that disorganized that I haven’t figured out how life works yet? Or do I insist on making unreasonable goals for myself? I mean, I know I do. I’m like Caesar crying at the statue of Alexander, except I’m not even a living god yet.

It does feel like the time to throw myself into work: at a reasonably young age, before I have a family of humane society dogs with Yugoslavian names, before I’m more than just 75% cynical. I guess it will always feel this way. I should know that by now,

Or, you know, I should enjoy what remains of my youth (youth lasts til 35, right?) and not worry so much. That sounds like something I would do.

I’m going to… try harder.

I’m more confident on the field, truly happy, just generally a more effective person. I also yell and fall down a lot, which is more socially acceptable on the soccer field than in real life.

This is why co-ed soccer was such a revelation to me, in that most awkward period of adolescence, the mid-twenties. I thought it would be a good way to meet boys, because they would see what a good soccer player I was and… want to date me. It didn’t work, because that’s an insane plan.

But, soccer was fun. My team is a happy little multi-ethnic family. Until Dennis arrived.

Our captain, invited Dennis to come play one day as a substitute. And it was love at first sight for me and Dennis. At least, it was for me. It just suddenly made sense that I would date a soccer playing engineer with cute hair, kind of nerdy, glasses.  So I went home and took fate into my own hands, and did something I never do – I added him as my Facebook friend.

And then I just sat and waited for him to become my boyfriend.

But he ignored my friend request, for months.

And each week, I would kind of forget that I was in love with Dennis, and then I’d get to the game and he’s look at me with this wide, open smile and it would make me smile and feel all funny inside.  He’s 31, but I like him so much that it makes me feel like a pedophile, because I just want to touch him and he’s so shy and smiley about it.

This one time, I was putting the nets together, and you sort of have to snap the crossbar, and it’s a bit tricky, and Dennis came over and grabbed my hands, like his hands on top of my hands, and looked right in my eyes and smiled and helped me snap it together. And I was like, oh, this is happening.

I was happy for a week. But the next Monday I saw him pull the same hand-holding, crossbar-snapping move on Spyros. Dennis! He just really wants to get the net together.

We usually go out for drinks after the game, and it’s like musical chairs. My friends all sit down really quickly so that Dennis is forced to sit beside me. So he sits down and says “I’m not that hungry, do you want to share the mussels with me?” and I’m like, oh, whatever , SURE I WANT TO SHARE YOUR MUSSELS DENNIS. And he keeps saying things like “Oh, can we have some more bread for our mussels?” “Can we share the apple cake?” and it’s just this really lovely date that twelve of us are on.

The sangria comes in this scientific pitcher and Dennis says, “Oh, I wonder what kind of flask that is, and I say, “Oh, that’s an Erlenmeyer Flask, which I know because there was an episode of the X-Files where Agent Scully finds an alien fetus in one just like that.” And Dennis says, “Oh, do you like the X-Files,” and I say, “Umm” and he says “Some people say that I look like Fox Mulder.”

And my friends who have been eavesdropping on this conversation go OHHHHHH!!!! And my brain knows what my stomach and sweat glands and ovaries have known all along, which is that Dennis looks exactly like a 5’8” Fox Mulder, circa season four. And what I thought was love at first sight was love after nine seasons, and what I thought was meant to be was maybe just me being shallow.

The next week, we’re sitting together in the corner of the Monarch Park High school gym, covered in sweat, chests heaving, and he says “I don’t feel great, I think I’m going to take a sick day tomorrow” and I say “Well, maybe if you had added me as a facebook friend months ago, I could have known and sent you some get well soup over the internet.” And Dennis says “Yeah! Click to eat!” and mimes clicking a mouse and eating soup.

In the morning, I come up with a cunning plan. I am going to tell him that I like him. I am going to tell him that I like him in an email newsletter, because I am a marketing professional.

I go into Constant Contact, our company’s email marketing program, and pick out a really cheesy template with a checkered tablecloth. And the email reads:

Dear Dennis,

Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of soup that isn’t gross?

Get well soon.

T.

And there is a picture of some soup, and it says “click to eat” and when you click on it, it takes you to the Ravi Soup takeout page.

Dennis doesn’t open the email. I keep refreshing the results page, maybe now he’s opened it, maybe now, but I’m having a crisis of confidence. This was an insane plan, it’s going to go to his junk mailbox, who tries to pick up guys with email marketing? And while I’m having my little mini-crisis, a gchat window pops up, and it’s my boss, Dave, and he says “Why do I have an email from Constant Contact in my inbox about soup for Dennis”

My crisis of confidence seriously escalates. Because I don’t know if I’ve sent the email to Dennis and Dave, or Dennis, Dave, and all of the high school English teachers in Ontario.

Dave says “I’m glad to see you’ve been working so hard this morning”

Probably 8 hours later, Dennis writes, “Haha. Thanks for the soup.”

Dennis! He is a conundrum.

It’s after Christmas break I decide I am going to once again take matters into my own hands. A real email this time.

Dennis,

I moved to my new office near you guys. All I need now is noodles and a lunch companion. Pad thai this week?

Tanya

I think it’s pretty clear.

I wait. Email from Dennis!

Sure! I haven’t packed anything for lunch tomorrow. See you at 11:50? I invited Arabind, too.

I’m pretty despondent until Arabind calls, “Dennis invited me on your first date! But I told him I have a meeting and will be late.”

Salad King, 11:47am.

Dennis has on a black pea coat, glasses, hair in his eyes. Christ, he’s perfect. He keeps looking at his stupid phone going “I wonder where Arabind is?” and I really want to creepily shout “ARABIND’S NOT COMING DENNIS, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU” but I keep it together. We go upstairs to eat. There are moments when he looks right in my eyes, paying perfect attention, saying “Really?” and then shyly looks down and plays with his food before looking up and proclaiming something. I think – this couldn’t be going better. We sit easily, we talk easily, we eat together easily. I’m telling you there is a friggin ease between us, that feels like respect and trust and – I almost said friendship but I don’t want to say friendship because – I want to believe.

- Told at Raconteurs Storytelling, in Toronto, on Feb 8 2012. 

At least I went into it with a clear head (two martinis) and open heart (yeah, reasonably open heart, you know, except for the excess defensiveness) or whatever they say in football movies.

I mean I can’t do much better than let insane Liza say it for me:

Extra desperate voice: It’s gotta happen! Happen sometime!! Maybe this time!!! Maybe this time… I’ll win.

I want to rename our team Ryan Family Values. The Ryan family is unstoppable on this team! They should have even more brothers and sisters.

One thing that is almost as good is getting laughs at a performance of something you wrote. But, in a more narcissistic way.

(*Some people you may love even more than others. Some people are going to get a very embarrassing multi-media valentine this year.)

If you go to the Harry Ransom Center, which is the library at UT Austin, and ask really nicely, they will let you read and marvel at the most wonderful things. I read six drafts, from handwritten to final publication, of DFW’s Kenyon Commencement speech, This is Water.

And tomorrow, if all goes well, I am going to hold the handwritten manuscript of This is Water, David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement speech, in my hands.

Isn’t that strange? I think I will cry. And they will surely kick me out of the library.