Last night Stephen and I walked south on Broadway toward the subway en route to meeting friends for dinner at Covo, a place just north of Fairway in Harlem. Stephen said something about how hot it was and I said that it was like a freezer compared to a few hours earlier. It was a stressful week!
The meal was good — I had a shrimp and asparagus risotto — but the restaurant was too loud; I kept saying “what?” and “sorry?” and “I didn’t quite catch that?” I’m probably paying the price now for all those years of playing electric guitar. We discussed the plight of non-heterosexuals in contemporary society and agreed that despite some progress here and there, the world remains a grim place. (We decided not to get dessert.) We discussed highly implausible ways to get rich by designing iPhone applications or by making short films about gay detectives.
After dinner we walked back up to Broadway. People were out on the sidewalk, sitting and talking and playing tag (in the case of the kids). The heat had settled over the neighborhood like a thick blanket. The trees glowed under the streetlights. It could have been eighty or ninety years ago (or well, maybe sixty or seventy, with all the cars), which made me wonder what it will be like eighty or ninety years from now. Some questions we can ask but are assured of never knowing the answer.
