I felt like I was sitting there forever, I had no idea what to do.  So when I heard the familiar clip clop back into the men’s room, I figured it was just time to leave.  I got up and walked out of the stall and made eye contact with Martin for a second.  He looked at me, the stall and then the hot dog, and thought to say something about it, but I guess he was so confused or embarrassed he let it pass.

When I went back to my desk, I had been gone for a really long time.  Glinda asked if I was feeling well, which at this point, I wasn’t.  I knew she meant if I was sick, but rather than explain (where would I have started?), I just said no.  So in an extreme moment of kindness on her part, or just basic germaphobia, she let me go home early.  I grabbed my jacket, and gingerly put the hot dog in my messenger bag and took off.

As soon as we got out the door to the building, I took the hot dog out of the bag. By this point, I was crying.  I don’t know if I can explain it, but I really wanted this…this thing to work out.  I mean, the hot dog really had a point, I had felt something, and yet I didn’t know what to do with that information.  So as I’m holding the hot dog, walking down the street, it says to me:

-Why are you crying?

and I go:

-I don’t know!  I just feel bad!

-Look, Peter, this isn’t supposed to be complicated.  I’m not trying to hurt you or make you feel bad, I just want to have a chance, to…well to give us a chance to just see what happens.

I looked around for a second, suddenly worried that someone would see us talking but I apparently was just lost amongst the crowd.  I suppose I looked normal enough, like maybe I just had one of those hands free headsets.  Also, I’ve found people in cities don’t like to approach strangers crying.  I once was on the train and saw a girl balling her eyes out, like she maybe just got hit by a car, or lost a baby or something, and no one said anything to her.  So I reached out and as I was leaving, gently patted her on the shoulder and said:

-It’s gonna be ok.

And she looked back up at me and smiled.  I guess I was hoping that would happen to me.

I wiped my tears away, and said to the hot dog, maybe we can just keep talking for awhile, at home, and the hot dog said “ok” and I headed down the stairs of the subway platform and got on the train.

It was an excruciatingly long ride to my apartment in Long Island City.  We didn’t talk, but there was a lot of tension.  At one point I saw an older business man, who was probably just really hungry, staring at the hot dog which I had perched on my lap.  Out of no where I suddenly became very jealous, and shifted position, trying to hide the hot dog from his gaze.  I know it sounds irrational, but at the time, with things happening as fast as they were it made sense to me.

By the time we got to my house I was spent.  I realized by this point, I hadn’t really eaten anything all day.  Even though I had a fridge full of food, I couldn’t figure out what was appropriate to eat in front of a hot dog, so I just sat down at the kitchen table and took off my coat.  The room was eerily quiet, and it felt like we were at a standstill, until finally I said:

-Ok.  What if we were going to try this?  How would it even work?

to be continued  on 3.5.10

UPDATE!  Continued here!