I just returned from a blissful weekend on Fire Island. Will post the weekend details tomorrow. Because what happens on Fire Island gets divulged on the internet for anonymous strangers to read.

On Sunday evening, I come back into the city and go out for drinks with my funny Jew friends. Or as I like to call it : The Summit of Funny People. Liz, Prom Date, and Sarah (Prom Date’s sister).

We sip on grassy white wine at EU and then head to Yuca bar where we meet up with the Bearded guy (yes, I have uncreative nicknames). I wanted my friends to meet him and give me their opinions because I’ve had such cloudy judgments on people lately that even my gaydar is screwed up and I need a tribunal to deem if someone is worthy or not. My friend Sarah thought that at first he was just some skinny hipster boy but he’s actually pretty smart and cool. “Someone should give him a burger though,” she says.

I ask him how his week is going and he says, “Pretty shitty. My best friend died.”

You know when you’re at that point after having a couple of drinks and your synapses aren’t firing so quickly so it takes you a while to register what people are saying and then it finally hits you that someone just brought up death at the table and and now you have to actually figure out how to respond to a statement like that?

Yeah…

And all you can come up with is “I’m sorry.”

It turns out his friend died of a heart attack, most likely from a drug overdose. He was 31.

My friends leave and I ask the bearded guy for more details about his friend and it turns out that it was the friend that was with him that night we first met at The Room.

Snickles.

They held a little memorial for him at The Room on Wednesday night. That explains the late night drunk texts and calls. Or more like emotional drunk texting.

He was telling me how he remembers emailing with his friend last week, making plans to meet up for their regular happy hour, and now he has to get used to not having that exchange anymore.

It’s the mundane things.

So we chat more. Talking about family and obligations. It was actually kinda nice to hear that his family is just as fucked up as mine. In fact, our family dynamics almost mirror eachother.

And then we head out of the bar hand in hand. I tell him that I want to sleep alone tonight. I don’t know. Something about all the emotional intimacy was overwhelming for me and I just wanted to be alone. So instead we just hug on the corner for like two minutes.

Sometimes a hug can be more powerful than any other physical interaction. Sometimes all you need is just contact with another person’s skin to know that you are not alone.

He says that he’s going to Philly for work and that he’ll bring back lobster mac and cheese since I didn’t have a chance to get it last time. I tell him it’s okay, he doesn’t have to do that. But, in my head, I am thinking: That would be fucking amazing!!!!

It’s the mundane things.