June 27, 2002

I moved today.

I was all prepared for it to be a horrible, hellish experience, but it was pretty painless. My friends D.R. and Y.E. came over to be with me while the movers did their thing; D. kept getting mad at Y. for asking neurotic questions about R.M., Y.’s new girlfriend and a friend of mine, but none of the questions seemed neurotic to me. I’m not sure how much comfort Y. should take from this.

Part of what made the moving experience such a relative delight was that the head mover was this really hot Russian guy who kept taking his shirt off. At some point he started talking to me, saying things like (I am translating from his bad English), “I really like your world view” and “you are a really nice guy.” How my non-English-speaking mover would know anything about my world view was beyond me, but, hey, I’m never one to turn down a compliment. He kept going, though, and finally, after he had shaken my hand the third time, I started to wonder if he was trying to pick me up. It was a delicate situation: if I made no move, then I would get no action from the hot Russian mover. If I made a move and had misinterpreted his friendliness, I would get beat up by the hot Russian mover.

So after he told me he was a poet, I gave him my e-mail and phone number and told him I wanted to see some of his work. (This was, technically speaking, not a lie, though it was perhaps open to various interpretations.)

Then he said he would invite me to a Russian ex-pat party where there were lots of gorgeous Russian girls; it was where he’d met his wife.

Why is the world so unfair?

I wanted to demand my phone number back, but they hadn’t finished unloading my stuff yet and I figured the humiliation was a small price to pay for a piano that was still in one piece.