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Happiness | Oct 13 2001

Leaving in ten minutes to watch a seven and half hour film with my friend Jodie at the MOMA. Still have to make a sandwich to eat in the middle. Things like this make me happy.

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Didn’t see the film. Wrong day.

Me: “I suck.”
MOMA desk guy: “You made a mistake. Could have happened to anyone.”
Me: “I fucked up.”
MOMA desk guy: “Yeah, you fucked up.”

Left late because I wanted to post the link above and wasted twenty minutes writing what turned out to be three truncated sentences. Tried to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich to eat during intermission, but spread the peanut butter too quickly, “tearing” the bread, if that’s the word, the bread rolling up around the blob of peanut butter the way that snow rolls up around snow in the making of a snowman, the rolling of the three big round parts. Gobbled this on the spot, seeing that it was unwrapable.

Arrived five minutes after the film was scheduled to start. Jodie was nowhere to be found, I figured she’d given up and gone inside. Was told by one of the too many guards that I couldn’t bring a bag into the museum. Stood in the bag check line for five minutes. Stood in the admission line for ten minutes. Stood very briefly in the line where you show them your admission ticket and they give you a movie ticket. Saw the schedule there and realized I fucked up.

Desk guy was nice enough to get me a refund. I called Jodie. She’d figured that she was the one who had it wrong, so she hadn’t bothered to call and warn me. Now she wanted to see the three o’clock film, Damnation. I preferred to buy underwear. She talked me into waiting for her and hanging out together until Damnation, at which point she would see Damnation and I would buy underwear. A good plan, except she took twice as long as she said she would, which left me waiting for her in the lobby of MOMA, thinking I should have just left and bought underwear when I had the chance.

Then Jodie showed up with her new boyfriend, who I immediately liked, some people you immediately like, and I forgot about the whole underwear business. I asked him when he was returning to San Francisco (I knew he was from San Francisco) and he said that that was up to Jodie, so I turned to Jodie and Jodie gave me a little smile that said, “No time soon,” and so now, after all this crap – taking too long to write three sentences and fucking up a simple sandwich and arriving late and standing in three lines only to discover I have the wrong day – I’m happy.