Ordinary Beauty

People. People. People.

“r.s.v.p.”

It’s not that hard. You get the Evite, you look at your calendar, you make a decision, you share it with the entity who invited you. “Yes” “No” “Maybe” There’s only three choices. Just select one, okay?

Yeah, sure. Sometimes the event is weeks and weeks away, and you’ve got other things in your queue of possibilities.

Yeah, sure. Sometimes there are three or six other sexy things going on the same night and you’re still holding out for the device that lets you be in all those many places at the very same moment.

Yeah, sure. Sometimes you’re waiting to see if a particular one of those sexy people on the invite list is going to r.s.v.p. Yes, in which case you’ll be Yes-in’, too.

Sometimes you’re not wanting to appear too eager by saying “Yes” right away, like that means you have a pathetically empty social life. Sometimes you’re overburdened by the chore of crafting a clever response (’cause we know we peruse each other’s wit, or lack thereof).

Here’s the deal.

1. When you don’t reply, your name stays on that list of “Not Yet Replied” folk, letting all the world know that your manners are so caveman that you can’t even respond to your Evites.

2. You don’t have to be witty, really. The witty ones are mostly either just cracking themselves up, or showing off. (Yeah, I like to think I’m a TRULY witty one.)

3. Think about this. You can use the Evite to further your personal agenda. Change your reply over and over again, and it puts you at the top of the list of respondents each time–flirt, campaign, cajole, confuse the world. Maybe that will make it worth your time.

4. If your social life was completely ph*ckin’ perfect, you wouldn’t be on any Evite lists anyway, you’d be above all that. It’d all be engraved correspondence and hand-written notes and one-of-a-kind messages sent by sky-writer aeroplanes.

So, just answer the Evite already, okay? (Your grandmother’s watching, you know.)

I’m in Seattle. If you haven’t lived a year here, you won’t understand. Sorry.

Summer arrives (it trickles in teasingly in May, then leaves until about July).

Then, people experience rapture. Bodies fall prone on the grass, skin emerges, skin heats, skin peels. That’s what rapture causes, right?

Anyway. The other thing that happens is that people leave. I don’t know really where they go, because Seattle is my dream city during summer. But, they leave.

So, you can tell summer is in Seattle in two distinct ways: traffic thins remarkably (the commute becomes a breeze, just like it was back in the 80s) and the Evites dwindle; where in the winter I’ve typically as many as a dozen invites in my Evite account, today the message says: “You have no Upcoming Events”.

Funny. I sure have too many things to do on my calendar this weekend; I guess it’s just all UN-organized fun.

Strange morning today. I never did narrow in on what was responsible for my feelings that my commute was surreal, but it was. The bumper stickers seemed incongruous with their autos’ drivers. The traffic lights seemed to coordinate an effort to slow my travels. “My” regular DJ’s playmix seemed odd and out of character. I don’t know.

The sky seemed fine, normal. But the pedestrians moved along oddly, with freaky postures and miscellaneous objects in their hands.

And, the butter on my morning to-go biscuits wicked into the napkin and left me without a good hit of grease. That, was all wrong.