Joe's getting married down the road from me.

Check out Joe at work, talking about our wedding on top of a hill in Western New York, at the wrong Ellicottville ski lodge. 

Darling, it's HoliMont lodge. Not Holiday Valley. Ah well! He's so cute when he tells people we're getting married somewhere we're not. I'll let is slide.

PS. This video is one of several segments spun from Creative Loafing's 2009 Summer Guide. For more summer lovin', click here.

Hello, romantics. This one's for you.

IF YOU'VE BEEN FEELING SURLY LATELY...

HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS... 

FROM A WEDDING I PHOTOGRAPHED LAST MONTH...

ON CASEY KEY BEACH.

THESE FOUR ARE SISTERS.  

SUSANNE (2ND FROM RIGHT) GOT MARRIED AT PAULINE'S (FAR RIGHT) BEACH ESTATE...

NEXT DOOR TO HORROR NOVELIST STEPHEN KING'S HOUSE.

THERE WERE ONLY 25 PEOPLE THERE.

IT WAS SIMPLE & BEAUTIFUL & QUITE LITERALLY...

TOOK MY BREATH AWAY.

EVERYONE WAS SO CHARMING & PHOTOGENIC... 

I FELT LIKE I WAS IN A SCENE TORN FROM THE GREAT GATSBY.

I HAVEN'T PHOTOGRAPHED MANY WEDDINGS...

BUT IF I DO, I'M CERTAIN THIS ONE WILL BE MY FAVORITE.

EVERYONE WORE PAISLEY PRINTS AND BRIGHT COLORS.
IT WAS ALMOST A SHAME TO EDIT THEM INTO BLACK & WHITE.

THEY CALL THEIR HOUSE "THE TREE HOUSE..."

BECAUSE IT'S LITERALLY BUILT UP INTO THE TREES...

LIKE TOWN & COUNTRY'S VERSION OF THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON... 

TREE HOUSE.

I BARELY POSED ANYONE.

EVERYTHING FELT SO NATURAL...

TO ME. 

SUSANNE & PAUL ARE FROM MUNICH, GERMANY.

SO I ASKED SUSANNE'S FATHER (BELOW & ON THE LEFT) IF HE HAD HEARD OF THE TINY TOWN...

WHERE MY OMA IS FROM.

AND HE KEPT SAYING, "VHERE IS DEES PLACE?"AND I KEPT SAYING, "BAD SOODEN-ALLENDORF...IT'S A SPA TOWN SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF GERMANY."

A ROMANTIC POET NAMED WILHELM MULLER ONCE LIVED THERE.

IT'S A PLACE RIPE WITH MINERAL SPRINGS AND SHOEMAKERS' KIN... LIKE MY OMA'S SIBLINGS & THEIR CHILDREN & THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN.

BUT SINCE I DON'T SPEAK GERMAN...I DIDN'T EXPLAIN THIS TO SUSANNE'S FATHER...WHO WAS WEARING THE MOST AMAZING SUIT COAT I'VE EVER SEEN.

INSTEAD I THOUGHT...

AS THE SUN SET ON THIS AFFAIR...I HOPE MY WEDDING IS AS AWESOME AS THIS ONE...

OR MORE SO.

I'm still here!

This is my 100th post. It's a post I started at midnight about two weeks ago but fell asleep in the middle of writing. When I woke up the next morning, I was 27 years old, had a 9 a.m. phone interview with a mathematician from Maine, a cover story due about a ballet dancer from Houston and plans to go to the beach (see left) with my best friend Ro and sister Heelya.

I didn't know I had it in me to stick with the Lance. I figured I'd get bored with it. Tire of writing about myself, my friends, my family, the odd ducks and lovable strangers that cross my path and make me laugh, cry, whisper and cuss.

I thought I'd get distracted. Find a new way to spend time while Joe was asleep. Take up abstract painting. Join a knitting circle. Volunteer at a nursing home. Start trading stocks online.

But here I am. Still Lancing. Truth is, I can't shake it. I find a story in everything. So much so that's it's annoying. If you were to ask me to write 500 words on the sound a potato chip makes when it's chewed, I'd give you 600 words and a sidebar on the texture of french onion dip.

In the picture above you'll find me on the left, Ro in the middle and Heelya on the right. Joe took it the night the girls arrived from Buffalo, just before we unfolded the pull-out sofa in his Man Cave and the girls fell asleep in a cocoon of down-filled blankets.

Ro and Heelya like nests. They like to burrow and they like to snuggle. I know because I spent many nights curled up beside either one of them, prattling on about things girls prattle on about.

Ro sleeps with her mouth open and Heelya talks and eats in her sleep. One night, when we were teenagers, I heard Heelya murmur something about French fries. Another night I caught her in the refrigerator, rummaging through the crisper for cheese slices.

Growing up, Heelya and I slept in bunk beds, alternating between the top and bottom bunk every few months. Whenever Heelya slept on top, I'd lay on the bottom with my feet planted on the planks of her bed, kicking her up in the air a good three inches just to aggravate her. One night when I was on the top bunk and Heelya was on the bottom bunk, my mattress fell through the weakened planks and landed on top of her head.

Basically Ro, Heelya and I spent the weekend laughing, catching up on nonsense, drinking beer and telling old stories around the campfire. There's much more of course, but I'd be here all day if I were to write about it all. So I guess I'll write about April 10, my birthday.

We had plans to go out to a Japanese steakhouse – me, Joe, Heelya, Ro and my sister PK – when around 7 p.m. PK, who lives an hour away, called to tell me she got in a car accident.

"Don't freak, Heid. I'm fine," she said, explaining that her car was towed from the scene and that the cop gave her a ride back to her apartment, and that for every day her car was in impound she would be charged a grotesque $100.

To avoid this monetary raping and to get PK up to St. Pete for my bachelorette weekend, I had no other choice but to load everyone in my car, drive an hour south to Sarasota, free the crinkled Escort from the impound lot and pick up PK – birthday or no birthday.

So at 9 p.m., with Joe in the front seat and Ro, Heelya and PK in the back, I pulled off a desolate street in North Sarasota, into a gravel parking lot guarded by angry dogs with no manners, where a Bubba with a belly like a bass drum unlocked a prison-high fence and mumbled that my sister's car could be freed for $250 cash.

(Note: Heelya is in a Sophia Loren sun dress. Ro is in a Doris Day skirt. And Joe is wearing the faux suede gentleman's blazer he reserves for television appearances and birthday parties. Remember, we were supposed to be at a Japanese steakhouse, sipping sake and watching a chef chop onions in the air using a Hattori Hanzo samurai sword.)

So at 9:15 p.m., with dapper Joe in the front seat and Ro, Heelya and ATM card-less PK in the back, I pulled into a SunTrust bank and withdrew enough money to recover a bent 1998 Ford Escort.

PK was pouting. I was bitching. Joe was deciding whether we should refuse to pay the after-hours fee. Ro was insisting the charges be itemized and Heelya was bitching about my bitching, suggesting I should just be happy we were all together.

And to be honest, though I was irritated and driving with night-blindness through a ghetto on my birthday, I was, actually, ecstatic we were all together.

When we returned to the impound lot with money in hand, the Bubba behind the gate barked at another Bubba to, "chain up the Escort and move 'er out," at which point Joe lost his cell phone in the dusty abyss.

As we followed the tow truck driver back to PK's apartment, and as Joe began frantically searching the car for his cell phone, I remarked that my 1997 Honda Civic was dogging it with so many bodies weighing it down.

"Shit," Joe muttered. "I must have dropped my cell phone in the parking lot."

"You sure it's not under the seat?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I checked there."

"You sure it's not in the glove box?" Ro asked.

"No, I checked there."

"What about in my purse?" I asked.

"I looked through your purse."

"Did you check in the door?" Ro asked.

"It's not there."

"What about under the seat?" Holly asked.

"IT'S NOT UNDER THE SEAT!"

And then the car fell silent until we got to PK's apartment ...

Around midnight, after PK's car had been towed to her apartment and after we had returned to the impound lot for a third time to comb the dusty abyss for Joe's cell phone, and after we had returned to St. Pete, ordered two large pizzas, nibbled on leftover ice cream cake and opened presents, I settled into bed, exhausted, content and three years away from 30.

You see, I've been a little stressed lately. I'm not exactly sure why. I seem to be working things out in my dreams though, because every day I wake up a little less wound. I wonder if it's wedding stuff. Work stuff. Money stuff. The fact that I just paid the government $1,400 in taxes – half of my pathetic life savings. Or that I still can't clear up the pug's eczema, or stick to the novel I suck at writing or finish the novel by my bed I suck at reading.

One things for sure. My friends, my family and my fiance keep me grounded. Without them, I'd lose my head.

I tend to digest life better when I'm driving. I think it's because it's the only time I sit still and concentrate on getting from point A to point B. On my way home from the Tampa airport after I had dropped off Ro and Heelya at Southwest Airlines' curbside check-in, I started sobbing so much my temples hurt.

When I got home, Joe walked with me to the bike shop to pick up my Bianchi and I cried some more. I told him my heart breaks every time I have to say goodbye, and he told me to keep my chin up and sang me a stupid pop song to make me laugh.

And it worked I suppose, because on the walk home I saddled up my Bianchi like Lance Armstrong and pedaled fiercely from point A to point B; Joe running like a bull behind me with my purse slung over his shoulder, trying to keep up, looking hysterical and lovely at the same time.

--

PS. Ro & Heelya – I miss you and love you. See you in June when we ride 62.5 miles in The Ride For Roswell.

PPS. To my succulent readers – I'm alive and well. Thank you all for checking in on me! I received e-mails, Facebook messages, TWITTER greetings, younameit, wondering where the hell I'd gone. Thanks to yesterday's deep tissue massage, I'm back to my narcissistic self. I plan on catching up on all your blogs this weekend from my new Sky Chair.

There's fairy dust on my keyboard.

My mother told me this when she and my dad were out visiting last week. It was the first time I'd heard this story and I thought it explained a great deal everything:

When I was about five years old, I moseyed into my bedroom with an ice cream come. You know the type that come in a big store-bought box? The kind that go stale in 10 minutes if you don't roll down the packaging immediately after opening?

Those kind of cones.

I loved them even without ice cream scooped on top. They were a nice cardboard-flavored snack.

I reckon biting into stale ice cream cones is a fine way to hurry along loose teeth and considering I was fairly cash-strapped at five, gnawing on these things until teeth fell out was probably a small price to pay for dividends from the Bank of Tooth Fairy.

So yes, on this particular day I lost a tooth. And when I woke up in the morning and the tooth was gone from under my pillow and a dollar bill was in its place, I noticed that cone crumbs were in my bed and on my floor in a trail leading out the door.

"MOM!" I yelled. "COME HERE!"

Pointing to the crumbs, oblivious to where they'd come from, I explained that the tooth fairy must have left dust in my room.

My mother, amused and well aware of my sloppy eating habits, let me believe the crumbs were fairy dust and entertained my request for a sandwich baggie so I could bring them to kindergarten class that morning for show and tell.

A few days later, when my teacher saw my mother, she said, "Nice touch with the tooth fairy stuff. Crumbling up food and calling it fairy dust. Cute."

My mother replied, "It wasn't me, Kathy. She walked into her bedroom that day with an ice cream cone and dropped crumbs all over her bed. When she woke up in the morning she was convinced they'd come from the tooth fairy."

Thank you Mom, for letting me believe in things like this. I love you.

--

PS. That's me up there in the pumpkin patch, showing off my baby teeth.

"She's the other half of my zipper."

ST. PETE – Today I had lunch with one of my oldest friends in Florida.

It was at a Thai restaurant called The King & I, and we were talking about relationships – his not mine – and I could tell by his blushing and squirming that the chick he's dating is turning his insides to goo.

If he hadn't squirmed and hadn't blushed, I'd be writing about his smile. His smile was a billboard that flashed: DUDE IN LIKE, as it was one of those punch-drunk smiles that you cannot, no matter how much you think you're in control of your facial contortions, pinch shut.

Basically, the man is smitten and getting smitten-er by the day.

Before I tell you what he told me today, which I'm pretty sure you garnered from the title of this post, I've gotta give you context. I've gotta paint a picture of this kid so you can squint him into focus in your brain.

I won't tell you his name for fear that She, whom he is falling for, might read this. We're not Facebook friends or Twitter friends, but who knows? We might one day be, and just you watch this relationship go in the shitter.

Ey! I pray it doesn't. At heart, I'm a romantic. By trade, a cynic. It's just that in the event that She screws Him over, or He screws Her over, I don't want to air His vulnerabilities on the Internet.

This friend of mine. He's analytical. Nerdy in the best way. Wears T-shirts with ironic expressions and dinosaurs decals. He's a whore for gadgetry and all technological advances. And despite his CNET membership and frequent use of the word, "app," he's devoutly religious. I think the only friend I have who goes to church every week.

For four years he has insisted on paying for our lunches and dinners, which usually run several hours long and have functioned, for me, as food-talk-therapy sessions.

Anyway. So he's dating someone new. A girl I've never met, but whose name I've invented a song for. (Well, not invented, per-se since the song I sing is a real song with a refrain that sounds like this chick's name, but more like a song I adapted in the spirit of her name.)

It's a nice name. Makes me think of gingham curtains and Ashley Judd in bare feet.

As grease dripped down my chin from the tubular spring roll I was eating, this glowy friend of mine explained in the most rudimentary terms, how this girl is just about perfect for him.

"It's like my zipper theory," he said. "You know how a zipper has two parts that are a little different, but kind of alike? We're like that. She's just different enough."

"You're so head over heels it's killing you," I said.

He blushed. Smiled like clothespins were pinching his cheeks and nodded begrudgingly in agreement. My supremely picky, painfully rational friend had found himself a lass.

As I began pounding the table in approval, he began pointing out that there was, of course, one problem.

The Perfect Fit had been really busy lately. So busy, that last month they went one whole week without speaking or seeing each other. So my friend, the self-preservator, decided to end the relationship. Nip it in the bud, as they say.

But of course, there was one other problem, he said.

He liked her. Good and plenty. He liked her tons. And when he dumped her, he felt cinematic-ly sad. Couldn't concentrate at all at work the next day.

"She wasn't making time for me, so I figured maybe she didn't like me. But when I broke up with her or whatever, I could tell that night, by her face that maybe she liked me."

So he decided to call her a few days later to see if she wanted to meet for dinner. And without officially reconciling, they began dating again.

As he told me this story, blushing and eating spring rolls, insisting he wasn't going to invest himself in the situation because he wasn't sure how the gal felt about him, I couldn't help but pound the table again.

"But she's your zipper," I cried.

"I know," he said.

Independence, 1950

This one's for my Nana.

We were sitting around the kitchen table Christmas night – my mom, my sisters, Nana and me. And for whatever reason PK got on the subject of homesickness.

She remarked that she has good days and bad days. That some days, no matter how many romantic comedies she watches, or how much chocolate ice cream she eats, she cannot shed the veil of homesickness that shrouds her every move.

Because I'm hard-headed and fail miserably at making my sisters feel better when given the opportunity to do so, I didn't tell PK that when I was 22 and living alone in Sarasota, I Googled the distance between North Collins, N.Y. and the Gulf Coast of Florida. And that every time I cried out of homesickness, I'd remind myself that 1,269 miles is pretty good chunk of space.

Putting my pangs of sadness to good use, I wrote a math equation.

For every one mile I was separated from my family I would devote one day to giving Sarasota a fair shake. Rounding up slightly, I divided 1,269 miles by 365 days, giving myself 3.5 years to make a go at in Sarasota. If after 3.5 years I was still sad as hell, missing home, or craving a new adventure, I'd throw in my beach towel, pack up my things and leave.

But of course I didn't tell my sister any of this as we were sitting around the kitchen table. Because the happy ending to this story is, after 3.5 years I met Joe.

Instead it was my Nana who piped up.

"I was terribly homesick when I was living in Arkansas," she said.

Dumbfounded, we asked, "WHAT? Arkansas? WHEN?"

My Nana – who raised her family next door to her sisters' houses, across the street from her brothers' houses, and literally within footsteps of the house she grew up in – lived in Arkansas. Arkansas? I don't think even my mother knew Nana lived in Arkansas.

Captivated, my sisters and I urged her to continue with the story, the likes of which goes something like this:

Nana's father owned grape fields stretching the length of Brant-North Collins Road. Nana and her six brothers and sisters grew up in these fields. And if they were doing poorly in school their father, my great-grandfather, would pull them out of class and stick them on the farm.

My Nana, the middle child, was whip smart, with a wicked sense of humor, and strong arms from playing softball and picking grapes. When Nana was 18 her father sent her to Sturkie, Ark. for the summer, where he owned a strawberry canning factory with his brother, Louie.

"Dottie," he told his daughter. "I'm too tied up in local affairs to travel south. I need someone to keep an eye on the Arkansas factory."

My great-grandfather had gotten wind of some shady dealings in Arkansas, and Nana, being whip smart, was as good an ambassador as any, so he sent her.

It was 1950, and Nana, together with a girl named Vicky and a guy named Vinnie, crossed the Arkansas/Missouri line in a dusty Cadillac with the windows rolled down.

Nana, wearing a sundress and feeling ridiculously independent, remembers pulling over for breakfast at a diner with fly strip-yellow lighting. She remembers Vinnie, who was older, perverted, and a friend of her fathers, muttering under his breath that if the waitresses' tits weren't rubber, he'd eat them. She remembers she and Vicky slapping Vinnie's hands away when he went to pinch the waitress' ass, and she remembers thinking: my father sent me to Arkansas with this creep?

She was dating my Papa at the time, so of course she missed him and wrote him letters every day. When she heard that he was dating someone else – another girl named Dorothy – she brushed it off, because, as she says, "the other Dorothy wasn't a threat."

One time, Vinnie handed Nana a letter. He asked her to drive it to a post office in St. Louis, Mo. Any post office, so long as it was in St. Louis. Nana says she figured the guy was fooling around with some lass in Arkansas, but that his wife back home thought he was in St. Louis. Whatever the situation, she didn't care. It was nice to take a break from strawberry canning and get behind the wheel of a Cadillac.

When Nana got back to Brant, she scolded Papa for "philandering around," (with another Dorothy no less.) Two years later she and Papa got married. They had five children, including my mother, the second-to-the-youngest, who was born in 1960.

Nana says she found the other Dorothy's sweater pin in Papa's possession, and that Papa tried to pawn it off as a gift for her. But she knew better.

She held onto it for few years. It was after all, a name pin, and Dorothy was her name too. Whenever she'd see The Other Dorothy around town, she'd think, Ha! I've got your pin at home. But eventually she lost it, threw it out, or whatever happens to things like that.

As she talked about Arkansas ("It was awful. I couldn't wait to come home.") her eyes sparkled. Sure she was homesick, but I could tell, the memory of her independence thrilled her.

For the helluvit, I Googled the distance between Sturkie, Ark. and Brant, N.Y. It's 946 miles. Or by my coping calculations, two and half years.
--

PS. Happy Birthday Nana, four days late.

A post for Ricci's 26th birthday

This is Ricci and Mbaye.

If you've met them, you know they're a pretty dynamic couple.

Ricci moved to Senegal a year ago.

To say she moved there "to find herself," would totally undersell her career ambitions and gut instincts.

She's a remarkable photographer with an adventurous soul. And like all of us, she settles into comfort zones and second guesses her impulses, of which she has many.

When we were both journalists living in downtown Sarasota, Ricci would frolic around my shanty cottage in her bathing suit, reminiscing about the beach picnic we had just had as if it had happened 30 years ago. I suppose it's because she knows a good thing when she's got it. That, and she's grateful for moments. Not stuff.

But Ricci utterly thrives when she's plucked herself out of a comfort zone. Some flowers live OK in the shade but blossom in the sun. Such is the case with the Ricci species.

Last January, the night before her flight to Dakar, Ricci called me to debate her decision to move to West Africa.

"Buck up," I said. "Board the GD plane. Africa was all you could talk about for months. If you turn around now, you'll have shackled your brilliant whims and awesome plans to fear and anxiety."

In truth, I wasn't that eloquent and Ricci called several friends that day who were all likely to say jump, so of course she boarded the plane. Had she dialed my German grandmother I'm afraid she'd have accepted a full-time job as a staff writer for a magazine in Chicago with medical, dental and a 401K.

So Ricci moved to Dakar and worked as a correspondent/photographer for Voice of America, a radio and television broadcasting service governed by the United States and stationed in countries around the word.

And so it was, that as my life became increasingly domestic hers became fiercely independent. At night I'd browse her blog, blown away by the pictures – Bill Clinton on an AIDS mission, the president of Iran at an Islamic Summit, men in wheelchairs playing basketball, big-bellied women stirring vats of cous-cous, children sliding off the backs of beached whales, goats getting slaughtered in the street ...

I was so proud of her – mostly for politely stomaching goat intestine soup – that tears wet my laptop. Every now and then she'd post a picture of herself, and even in a headscarf and dusty pants I could tell she was euphoric.

Then she met Mbaye, a soccer player with a come-what-may attitude and contagious smile. They dated for nine months in Dakar and then Ricci moved back to Chicago.

A month later she flew back to Dakar. By Thanksgiving she and Mbaye were back in the states – Mbaye for the first time in his life.

Rather than explain any of this I'll dig up an old e-mail written by Ricci in bullet-point fashion, as I'm sure she was writing it while filing a story about Senegalese scrabble champions, while photographing a sword-juggling monkey, while carrying on a conversation (in French) with a soothsayer, while daydreaming of malted milkshakes.

Heids,
Filed the story and now ready to file my story with you.

• have bought plane ticket back to states for sept. 17. this freaks me out, because i do not want to truly leave to dakar.
• also have plane ticket back to dakar, where i will stay from oct. 20 -- nov. 22 (i have some work to do here at that time)
• my boy and i are going to the us embassy next wed. to apply for a visitor visa so he can come here and meet the fam. we're SO nervous. i'm scared of the us government. if they say no, i guess we'll just have to get married so he can come visit. (do NOT get me started on the ridiculousness of this process. i'm actually documenting it (via words).. it's SO convoluted and feels like some ridiculous Willy Wonka-type, bureaucratic scavenger hunt. Just so he can come VISIT!!) our country blows sometimes.

Not one to stop at a visitors visa, Ricci contacted a sports agent in the U.S., who arranged for Mbaye to try out for several soccer teams on the East Coast. In between tryouts they stayed with me for a weekend in St. Pete.

I interviewed the couple earlier this month on a sun-drenched stretch of interstate on route to Sarasota. Since Mbaye speaks only French and Wolof – his native Senegalese language – and since the only French sentence I know goes something like, "Ohh la la j'ai une rendevous avec David dans 20 minutes ..." I asked Ricci to translate.

Note: Unless Mbaye gets signed to an American soccer team he will have to return to Dakar in May.

--

Mbaye, are you nervous about your soccer tryout next week?
(Ricci translates)
"He says he’s a little nervous because he doesn’t know who he’s going to meet and if they’ll be as nice as they were last time.”

Ricci, are you nervous?
“I’m nervous about him flying by himself, about him getting lost at the airport or something.”

You don't feel the fate of your relationship hangs on whether or not he makes the team?
“I just have to think we’re going to work it out no matter what happens. If he makes the team, great. If he doesn’t we’ll figure something out.”

Have your communication skills improved, dating someone who doesn’t speak English?
“If we have a fight — and it’s usually me who gets mad because he rarely gets mad — I want to make sure I say how I feel correctly in French. And after I go through it in my head I realize if I can't explain it simply in terms he can understand, then it’s probably not worth getting mad over because it’s convoluted and more my problem than his.”

You’ve learned to not overreact.
“There’s a level of communication that has to be there because sometimes when you speak the same language, you just assume what somebody means when they say something. For us, when I say something, it’s like this is what I’m saying, but this is what I mean.”

What do you guys fight about?
(Translates into French for Mbaye)
Ricci: “I don’t think we’ve had a big blow-out fight.”
(Mbaye interrupts in French.)
Ricci: “Oh yeah. We had one in Senegal.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “It was over money.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “And we got in one once when we got in a car and I didn’t know where I was going. I was freaking out and he was l like, ‘Don’t freak out you’re going to get in an accident.’”

Is that his role? To calm you down?
“Oh yeah.”

(Ricci laughs. Translates into French.)

Mbaye (in broken English): “She is never calm.”

Ricci: “One time I was calm and peaceful and he was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ And he said, ‘When the volcano is quiet one must question why.’”

Did Mbaye have anxiety about coming to the United States?
“He worried that my friends were going to think he was different or maybe not a good guy. He wasn’t afraid that they would be mean. He just figured they’d act weird around him.”

Did we act weird?
(Translates)
“He says no. He says all my friends were so nice and took such good care of him.”

Does he have a favorite American food?
(Translates)
“He says he has a stomach he doesn’t understand. It accepts everything that goes into it.”

How has your relationship changed in the United States?
“In Africa he knew how to get around and he knew the language and I was the person who didn’t know what was going on. If we’d have to get something done, he would know exactly what to do and I wouldn’t even ask questions. In Africa we never spent the night together. There were days we wouldn’t see each other. And here, I don’t think we’ve been apart more than an hour — once when he flew to Charleston for a tryout. I was worried at first that we would get sick of each other, but we’ve gotten along better the more we’re together."

(Translates into French for Mbaye.)

“He says the relationship is better here. When we were apart I'd call him 20 times a day.”

Because your insecurities are magnified when you’re apart. That's pretty normal, I think.
“Yeah. We fought more in Senegal than we do here.”

Were you worried Mbaye wouldn’t adapt to American shizzle?
“I was worried he might get homesick, but I wasn’t worried about him adapting at all.”

(In lousy French) Le Ikea pullout couch etait-il comfortable la nuit?
Mbaye: “Tres comfortable.”

Ricci, how would you describe your relationship with Mbaye?
“It’s easy. It’s almost like … I don’t know ... I’m happy. Girls always say, ‘I want to find The One. I want to find The One,' and when you think about it, it’s like, oh this is it. Anticlimactic is the wrong word because it has a negative connotation, but I don’t know … it just feels good.”

Finding The One was less dramatic than you thought.
"Yes, I guess."

The people in your life better be comfortable around cameras. Does Mbaye ever tire of being your model?
“He loves it. He always jokes he’s the poorest model in the world.”

Is it frustrating for him to not be able to communicate with your friends?
(Translates)
“He says he’s not frustrated. He’s sorry he can’t speak English but the fact that people try to talk to him is the most important thing. He says there’s a lot a smile and hand gestures can communicate.”

In what ways is this relationship different than others you've had?
“Well, we don’t speak English and we’re biracial. Those are the obvious ways it’s different. He makes me a better person. I feel like I have to be a better person because he raises the bar for me. Sometimes I’m like, but what do I do for you?"

How has the biracial thing played out?
“I have a lot of friends who date Senegalese men, but it’s also like ‘he’s with her because she has money and connections. Or, 'he’s using her to get further or whatever.' Someone said to me once when we were applying for a visa – 'how do you know he’s not just using you for the visa?”

That’s a rotten thing to say.
“First of all I said, 'He wouldn’t do that because he’s a good guy and an honest person.' Second of all, there’s a level of trust in every relationship. How do you know your girlfriend is not cheating on you? You have to trust people are who they say they are in any relationship.”

But generally you haven't felt discriminated against?
“Most of my friends are super liberal and accepting. I’m sure there are some people who have problems with it but then it’s like, it’s not your relationship. I’d rather be with him and have these kinds of problems than be with somebody who doesn’t make me happy and have people look at us like we are – quote – normal."

True dat.
“I feel like most of our problems are the world's problems, not our problems."

And what does Mbaye think?
(Translates)
"He says people look at us strangely because we’re beautiful.”
--

PS. The picture above was taken during a turkey sammie picnic on St. Pete Beach. For a glorious list of sammie recipes click here.

I fell for him dressed as Courtney Love

It was a blip of a moment in an overly air-conditioned bedroom.

Joe was wearing a souvenir alien T-shirt from Area 51. I was wearing his heaviest red sweater. We both had our glasses on, which doesn't happen often because Joe hates wearing his glasses. He says they make him dizzy.

I was about to embark on a solo road trip from Sarasota, Florida. to Bandon Beach, Oregon, which Joe ever so delicately suggested I return from.

Stubborn, fiercely independent, and at times straight-up flighty, I couldn't promise him that. At least not in the beginning.

The first time we met, I was standing by the Pac-Man game at a bar in St. Pete, drinking Miller Lite and making good on a dare by pole dance around a fat oak beam.

When he asked me about myself, I told him how my family had installed a corn-burning furnace in the basement of their Western New York home, and how when it burned, the whole house smelled like Orville Redenbacher's.

The second time we met, I told him I was outta here, that I was moving to Oregon or Idaho or Montana. I told him I was writing a book about a girl who spends her days righting ordinary wrongs, who makes a living on a ranch and sleeps in a hayloft that smells like manure and maple syrup.

"I have to live if I want to write it," I said nonchalantly.

We were at a birthday party in Sarasota, at a bar with a punching bag. I was dressed as Courtney Love - pink baby doll dress, combat boots, mascara smudges, the whole getup. The theme was "high school flashback," and I was never so happy to resurrect the 90s. A 1993 graduate of an all-boys Jesuit high school in Tampa, Joe was wearing a too-tiny suit and tie that made him look like Ben Stiller.

I told him I was reading a memoir by Mary Karr that was written like none other I'd read before. He asked me if my novel would be a memoir and I replied that it was pompous to write a memoir at the age of 25.

"Not that what I'm writing isn't mostly true anway," I conceded.

I was chugging too many Miller Lites, filming the party for my roommate Zac, confessing on camera in a slurred lisp that I was fed-up with doing his dishes.

Joe drove me home that night in his blue Honda Accord. Unlike most of the cars that belonged to people I knew, his was immaculate.

We went back to our friends, Max and Meredith's house - a beach cottage - where we drank some more, played games and ate leftover pasta from the fridge. Joe heated up a bowl of bow tie macaroni with red sauce, and in between rounds of (was it Taboo?) he offered me several spoonfuls, which I found comforting.

As we sat there on the steps leading into Max and Meredith's 10-by-10 living room, our knees touched. Joe was still dressed in his Jesuit uniform. I was still dressed as Courtney Love. Spooning noodles out of his bowl and into my mouth, it was as if I had slopped off his plate for years.

When he walked outside to have a cigarette, I stumbled out of the living room with my roommate and left. It was late and I was tired.

The third time I saw him we were on an actual date. At the urging of my roommate, who had observed our Lady and the Tramp pasta moment, I went ahead and asked Max for Joe's phone number.

"Tell me he's not one of those too-nice, sappy guys," I said.

"No, but he's not an asshole either if that's what you're asking," Max replied.

For four days his number sat untouched. Written on a Post-It note and stuck to a cardboard-box-night stand by my bed, I agonized over making the first move. I was nervous. Feeling sheepish. Feeling like perhaps I drank too much that night, or that I had left coldly without saying goodbye.

When I finally called, he answered on the second ring. He knew right away who I was and why I was calling. He fired off date plans like a semi-automatic pistol, as I joked that simply willing your phone to dial on its own never works.

"Lucky for you, you picked up on the second ring," I said. "I probably would have hung up on the third."

Yes, I had bigger balls in 8th grade, but I was hellbent on moving to Oregon, or Idaho, or Montana. If the way we shared pasta were any indication of things to come, Oregon, Idaho, Montana - all of it - would scarcely measure up.

However, none of these moments were as compelling as the one I mentioned earlier that came two months later, a week before my Jack Kerouac-ian gallivant across the country.

We were lying on his bed - Joe in his souvenir alien T-shirt, me in his heaviest red sweater, and the pug curled up like a Roman snail beside us.

He was questioning my blind love for the Dakotas. I was romanticizing The Badlands. Reaching around my side, he kissed me somewhere near my armpit and said, "If your body were the United States, this would be South Dakota."

Though not in agreement, I let him go on.

Next, he kissed my elbow. Called it Iowa. Then my wrist. Called it Missouri. My spine - Oregon. And on it went. Lazily, languidly, and with no regard for geographic accuracy, he mapped out my road trip with kisses.

When he finally reached my lips, our glasses clanked together like timpani drums.

He didn't say it, but I knew. In that overly air-conditioned bedroom, in that heavy red sweater, in our similarly prescribed eyeglasses, his lips were home.

--

PS. Joe proposed last week. I said yes.

11 people I've interviewed in Sarasota

Divine guidance can be found in a reporters notebook.

...

"No one ever wanted to ride with us in the winter because we only had two blankets. And in the summer, when temperatures reached 95 degrees, we choked from the heat because the car didn't have air conditioning."

- Roberta Tengerdy, with husband Tom, on the 1967 Volkswagon Beetle she bought her sophomore year at Colorado State University, the same year she met Tom. 

"You're lost if you don't believe in it. It's something you don't exactly feel. You just know it's there. You know that when you die, times going on forever. It's not the end. It's the beginning."

- 100-year-old Mildred Bessie Barton Hill on heaven. 

"That's a good question. If the cheese were square it'd stick out the side of the sub."

- Subway superstar Jared Fogle on why the sandwich franchise that made him famous cuts its cheese into triangles.

"He needs his shade. He's a very spoiled bird." 

- Johnny Malone on why he sits under the awning at Whole Foods with his cockatiel, Bobby.

"Everything has changed but everything has stayed exactly the same. Often people will say to me, 'why do you still have Cathy on a diet?' And I say, look at the headlines. It's an endless turf out there. While it's redundant in a way, these are the things we keep wrestling with - our relationships with food, our relationships with the opposite sex, our relationships with our mothers, our relationships with the clutter on our desks. The things we face each day are what I love writing about and women have this fabulous capacity to keep having hope even if there's no hope to be had."

- Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite on why she's refrained from changing "Cathy," to conform to 2008 post-feminist ideals. (The comic strip, which debuted in 1976, began as a series of sarcastic sketches Guisewite would mail her mother ripping on her pathetic mid-20s love life.)

"I'll tell you one thing. He changed. I think he saw a lot of things too young for his lifetime. He came back a  man and I never thought I'd say that. He's a little more guarded and careful now. He's quiet now."

- In 2004 Sherri Vroom's then 20-year-old son, John, served eight months in Iraq. Two years later he was deployed again.

"Well, she has beautiful hair. She has a beautiful face and beautiful eyes."

- Seven-year-old Caitlyn Gutierrez on why her mother is beautiful.

"I'm gonna de-bone them first. That way I'm not sitting on one wing for too long."

- Gilberto Noriega on how he planned to win the Munchies Fire-In-Your-Hole wing eating challenge. (He lost.)

"I look at the bus as a research and exploration vessel. It functions as an idea and information hub. We're researching, exploring and recording our findings."

- Roth Conrad on why he and friend Bob Downes (right) bought their old high school bus, converted it to run on vegetable oil and drove it across the country. See link.)

"I'm an outgoing person. I like to be the funny guy. I want people to notice me. If I had any other role, I wouldn't have been as funny as I was."

- Baseball catcher Connor Davis, 13, on how he knew he owned his middle school production of The Wizard of Oz when his drama teacher cast him as The Cowardly Lion. (His dream role: Dracula.)

"What I told the jury at the onset was that I was going to ask the questions that needed to be asked ... because if not me than who?"

- Assistant Public Defender Adam Tebrugge on how he handled the pressure of defending Joseph P. Smith, the man sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. 

--

PS. Cathy Guisewite photo courtesy of People Magazine. All other photos are mine.