Two gigs over the weekend, plus other good news

Some good news to report. My pinkeye is gone, and I have a new pair of glasses (with designer frames). The American University chapter of my SigEp fraternity was just approved to receive its charter at a ceremony to be held later this year. I played two gigs this weekend. I ate crawfish for the first time on Saturday. On Thursday morning, I had a dream in which I made peace with a woman from my past who would be a complete stranger to me if I saw her today. I got a haircut again today. And I'm having a ball with a new woman in Alexandria whom I met on a Metrorail platform a few weekends ago.

Bad news today is that Bo Diddley has died. I saw him in concert once, opening for Chuck Berry. My impressions of Bo that night are that he was an impressive guitarist and splendid showman. It was great to see this important musician and influence on so many rock artists work while I still could.

So, here are a few of the weekend highlights I mentioned. The first gig was with Trademark, which had me back to fill in once again for their keyboardist. This was my second show with them, the first having been a few weekends ago. This was Friday night, after I finally accepted a long-extended invitation two hours in advance that I had turned down as recently as the night before.

The reason I'd been turning down the invitation to play was because I was supposed to go to an overnight house party in Herndon instead, and I had been looking forward to that party for longer than a month. But it's easier to hide pinkeye with sunglasses when you're onstage than it is inside somebody's house, so that was my choice. I had shades on the whole time to hide my pinkeye, and they were shades that covered the entire eye area, so it's not like anybody could have gotten it from me that night. The pinkeye was also receding and looking normal, thanks to some fast-acting prescription eye drops I also got that day. And I was able to drive since I'd just purchased new prescription glasses earlier in the day.

We played three sets, and out of all that music there were only a few songs I had never heard before (including two of the first three we played!). All in all, it was a good time. My third show with Trademark will be June 14, which means I have to start doing some publicity for it.

Then I played with the Usual Suspects on Sunday afternoon at a family's graduation party for two daughters (one graduating from high school and the other from college). That was the ultimate fun gig. The mother had a $3,000 stage set up in the back yard for the five of us to stretch out on. Some scattered showers didn't keep us from bringing on the rock. We were well appreciated, and because some of the family has connections in publicity, things are looking awfully good that we may be lucky enough to get other gigs from this one. Actually, this gig itself came about because the daughter graduating from college had seen us play at the University of Maryland on April 26 and booked us because of that!

The other good news is from the day in between. While I wasn't able to make it to the overnight house party my friends threw at their place in Herndon starting on Friday, I did make it as planned to the recover-from-hangover phase on Saturday in the early afternoon. We chowed down on all-you-can-eat crawfish and jambalaya at a sold-out crawfish boil held at Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria. It was also all-you-can-drink, but I opted for only water as I was driving. And as soon as heavy rainstorm greeted the picnickers, I got the hell out of there and hurried it up to my next stop.

I picked up a delightful artsy woman named Dina at the Greenbelt Metro. She'd just been up touring the Baltimore Art Museum since the morning. In my car, she returned with me to Baltimore – ultimately for a poetry reading and the release party of a friend's poetry journal, but in the meantime we had a few hours to kill. I was supposed to have come up with some options for things we could do to wile away the free time, but I didn't succeed at that in advance, so instead we just wandered through some seedy parts of town and ended up passing on a movie theater so we could just sit and talk by the harbor. It was hilarious when I failed miserably at giving her a piggyback ride when it was finally time to go to the poetry reading. We then listened attentively to the poems and not so attentively to the bands we could have lived without. But as the party went on, I realized Dina and I were making minimal efforts to meet any other people. We were just so enthralled with each other that we could have believed we were the only people in the room. At the end of the night, I dropped her off at her apartment building in Alexandria and gave her a sweet, 20-minute goodnight kiss that was eventually adjourned by the meddling parking lot security. I don't know yet when we'll be able to meet up again, but I'm hopeful it will be soon.

Getting to know her coincides with an unexpected development in my psyche. On Thursday morning, I woke up from a dream in which I made peace, once and for all, with my one and only ex-fiancée. Jill and I broke up in January 2006 after dating for nearly two years and being engaged for half of one. But the last we saw each other was in March 2006, when I abruptly left the apartment I shared with her – and by the time I returned the following month to move my stuff for good, she too was gone. We had nothing to say to each other, and so we didn't. I changed my phone number and threw away hers. I wasn't interested in funding out where Jill moved to and wondered if it was elsewhere in the city or back to family members in either Delaware or Maryland. We simply had no more communication, or reason to communicate.

Sometimes, I think about what I would say or do if I were to run into Jill by chance, now that two years have elapsed. How would I react if I came across her on the Metro or on the street or inside a restaurant or theater? Honestly, I harbor no ill will toward her. Time has only made me more aware of the ways I hurt her either intentionally or unintentionally. I realize now more of my old shortcomings as a boyfriend, a listener, a companion, someone with patience, someone with compassion, someone with generosity, someone with feelings. Likely, I would tell Jill I am sorry for anything and everything untoward I ever did to her. Sorry.

The other issue is how much of a sincere apology could I stammer out before she interrupted to remind me of what a horrible person I was to her. It's probably wrong of me to prejudge that she might cut me off to produce her own verbose litany of things I did wrong in my relationship with her, but I'd deserve every complaint she had about me.

One thing's for sure, if I ever saw her again, no matter what I tried to say: I wouldn't expect any pleasantries in return. I would just want to state my apology, knowing or at least hoping she'd heard what I had to say, and just take off. Leave it at that.

Well, that's exactly what the dream version of me said to the dream version of Jill when we met by chance. I apologized. But before I walked away, she had some comforting and even nice things to say to me in return. In the dream, it wasn't long before I said good-bye and went on my separate way, leaving her and her kind words behind me. Even though this didn't happen in real life, this must have been my mind's way of constructing an end to a situation that had not been resolved.

Now, in my real life, I feel like I could really use a girlfriend. I want to ask a woman how her day of work was, and mean it. I want to listen attentively to her answer before I interject my own humor and wisdom.

From what Dina says, she's not ready for a boyfriend. Until her last breakup a few months ago, she was in one monogamous long-term relationship after another with barely any breaks in between. She says she needs some time off now to figure herself out. I certainly know what that's like. There were two women I nearly dated exclusively between the end of my engagement and now, and I have spoken with both of them about my peace-making dream about Jill in the past few days. I related the finality of that to the way my mind might be allowing me to move past the situation in ways it didn't allow me before. My complex internal issues were partly to blame for why I didn't end up dating either of these two women. Now that those issues may have been resolved, I might be able to turn a new leaf with somebody new.

Dina is definitely one possibility.

Being 28.5 years old now and decidedly "not a kid anymore," I tend sometimes to feel old and like I've seen it all, been through so much, lived through it all, so there's nothing to get excited about anymore. (A gig's a gig to me.) But I felt the opposite way Saturday night when Dina was in my tight grasp standing outside my ride. It was like I was a kid again and enthusiastic about having some new and exciting person in my life. I felt that way my junior year in high school when I was running my fingers through the hair of a beautiful girl I went on to date for just over a year. And maybe the feeling has recurred in me with other women a few times since. But it's rare, I think, to have that distinct feeling again about somebody, 11 years later. It's nothing indescribable. Hell, I just did describe it. It's just rare these days, which makes it special.

Dina's special. I just can't afford to hurt her the ways I hurt Jill. I've learned an awful lot about what not to do – the things that make a relationship fall apart. I think I'm ready to focus instead on what I should be doing – the things that make a relationship thrive and last.