(1 june 2011)

i was sitting with my married friends in the corner of the russian teahouse in the early days of the deep dark winter of 2010.

i’d never met mr. married’s wife and i was seeing him for the first time in eight years. in his memories of me from college, i was reading books in corners at parties. in all of mine, he was wearing plaid pajama pants.

we talked about where we’d been living and what we’d been doing and everyone we’d ever known and then he asked what my dream job was.

i ordered an entree off the children’s menu, leaned over the vodka flights and said the first thing that came to mind: biographical researcher writing a biography on the side.

i’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

it was the first time i’d ever put it into words.