Doesn't look a day over beautiful.

The day after Amber's thirtieth birthday, I feel invigorated for the first time in months. Kristina, Sarah T, Amber's mother, and Holly attended. Others were invited, but either were not available - Susan was promised to another state, David to work, Sarah M to her convalescing mother - or did not respond to the invitation. Holly was a surprise because, though I make a small habit of inviting her when possible, I have grown not to expect other than a maybe that becomes a no, just to let me know she is still alive. This is nothing against her, merely that her priorities may not be for all-night drive-in horror movie marathons; she has other things to do and her absence is not meant personally.

She said she would be coming late. More precisely, she said "we" would be coming late. Against Amber's admonishment, I massage her on this plurality. I like most of her friends, but prefer a forewarning as to who I will be hosting. No, this was no old friend, but a new lover. Via messenger, I told her I wanted details and she replied she was only too happy to provide them.,

When I returned from picking up pizza - easier than making food as we have in the past and cooler in the summer - Holly had recently arrived. Everyone else hovered about the edges of the kitchen.

"Amber, did you neglect to tell our guests that we have chairs in the living room?" (There is no wall between these respective rooms.)

I grabbed a slice for myself and invited Holly to begin her devotion on the topic of Ken.

Ken and she had corresponded a couple of times through a dating site Holly was only on to say she was and shut up well-wishers; she doesn't profess to have been expecting much from the experience. He vanished for the better part of a year. He stopped ghosting her in May, pleading dueling personal tragedies had put him out of commission. He made up for this lost time with a vengeance, asking her to be his girlfriend before they had done more than talk on the Skype (he is a film-maker and was in Texas on assignment). They met one another, he mentioned already looking at engagement rings, they met each other's parents, then he came to live with her. He lavishes on her hypodermic and constant affection. After Dan's criminal sociopathy, and a few unavailable men in the interim, the attention of someone so unfiltered is a pleasant shock. He asked if they couldn't skip all the awkward relationship beginning and jump to the middle, to being a married couple which is exactly what, in their cohabitating domesticity, they are trying. He has had other relationships - perhaps too many - but seems to adore Holly.

He backed out of joining her at this party because he wanted earlier pizza and to rest, but insisted she promise she would not stay out too long so he wouldn't have to miss her much.

There was some small implication he saw me as a threat by dint of being a man Holly knows and feasibly appreciates, but I am not at all a threat and barely a man. (I'm more a biological suit for writing and neuroses.)

It was around this time I caught Amber's eyes and gave her the hand signal of "This is the most I have heard Holly say in years. Are there any chicken slices left?"

Holly is having a loft-warming - the room had been her project for a year and provides an acceptable excuse for a party - and promises I will meet and vet Ken then, though I can't imagine caution at this point would be more than wasted breath. She's in love. He wants a commitment from her and reportedly does not want to rape children, so he is a vast improvement over her ex.

As we choked down rummy Jell-O shots - I am on meds for which alcohol is aggressively contraindicated, but the lemony sliver I tried burned the back of my throat more than alcohol before - and talked, I felt warm and right. It was a minor affair - soda and pizza, shots and cake Amber's mother made, three types of chips - but was the sort of socializing of which I require more, the sort of seeing people that was near weekly when Daniel was a resident of the Hudson Valley.

Though I am good at making friends, I am not great at having them, however salubrious nights like this are for my mental integrity. This is something I need but forget to want until I mistake the hunger for suicidal ideation. I need my tribe and I resist trusting people to be that. I don't even need people I love, simply those around whom I may comfortably be myself.

(The winter is, in part, harder because it is more of a struggle to coerce people over for dinner and maybe a movie. We cannot spend time outside, which is one of my favorite things to do and something I do not do enough.)

Amber is having perhaps predictable angst at entering a new decade of her life. She skims though shopping sites, asking if this ensemble or that is the outfit for a thirty-year-old. I tell her she can wear whatever she would like. That is the prerogative both of being an adult and being Amber: with a little personalization, there is not much I don't think she could wear with her blithe confidence.

I don't remember thirty as a bad year for me. I found steady employment. I met the love of my life. I tell Amber that maybe she will too, at which point she playfully shoves me and assures me she has. Thirty-six was existentially painful, but thirty felt as though it had the potential of being a new beginning, something which I absolutely needed after an agonizing breakup and years of borderline poverty. It may feel different for a woman, though, societally prized for an expiring youth.

I prefer to think that, since she has me and can see newness in her life via beginning yet another degree, she would not fret too much. I am not apt to love her less. She is happily married and is accumulating the carrying limit for pets. She is far from stagnant. She has the potential of an exciting future before her, one purposeful and deserved, and I am delighted to be a part of it.

Soon in Xenology: Lake George. The loft-party.

last watched: Archer
reading: Vellum
listening: The Fray