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I've got a lot about the weekend to get through today, and I had hoped to find time to update some of it earlier than now but I never did, so I'm just going to try and get through it all as quickly as I can.
On Friday, Shobhit picked me up at work and we drove straight to Alexia's apartment in Issaquah. We had a 6:00 appointment for dinner at an Indian thali restaurant called
Rajdhani Thali. This is a South Indian style of all-you-can-eat platter meal, which Shobhit and I ate at once before,
three and a half years ago, with a Project Management classmate of Shobhit's named Priya. I think the restaurant may even have been Priya's recommendation, but now Shobhit suggested we go there when Alexia had invited us to come over for dinner.
We got to Alexia's at 5:05, making surprisingly good time given it was rush hour. We hung out in the apartment for just a few minutes, and then walked the 20 minutes or so along the mile route to Rajdhani. There's an Indian grocery store next door, and we went in there for a few minutes, something Alexia had also never done before.
As for the thali dinner itself, I think Shobhit was the most effusive among the three of us: he loved everything. Both Alexia and I felt that certain little dishes—which servers would come around and refill as much as we wanted—were better than others. Alexia told me later that she did like it and was glad to have experienced it, but next time would prefer to go somewhere we can just order specific dishes we like. I would totally do thali again, actually—the stuff I loved was good enough to make it all worth it, including the shahi paneer that was a bit too spicy for me—but would also be happy to try another, more traditional Indian restaurant. One of these days Alexia should come to Seattle to have dinner with us at Tandoori Flame, just a few blocks north of us on 15th.
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Saturday was cram packed with activities. I had three different things scheduled that day, the first one being with Shobhit, and an unusual one: the
Alaska Cruise & Travel Show, sponsored by Holland America cruise lines.
I don't know how Shobhit catches wind of stuff like this so often, although I suspect it has to do with a mix of his past experience running for office, which I'm sure has him still on a lot of mailing lists, and his presence on a couple of local arts Boards. But he sent me an email about this about a month ago, asking if I was interested. It's a free event and all you have to do is pre-register, so, why not?
So, we went. I even got
a photo album out of it. Granted, only 12 out of the 20 shots in the album were taken at the show, and fully half of those are of Shobhit participating in an axe throwing demo. Whatever works! They had a very cute young man in a hard hat and flanel shirt assisting at that booth, which was clearly part of the appeal for Shobhit. Anyway, we walked down there, and stopped briefly at Pier 62 / Waterfront Park, which was where the first three shots were taken; after the show we walked down to the new chair-swings finally open on the waterfront near the ferry terminal, and I took another 5 shots there.
Anyway, Shobhit encouraged me to take a
lot of the Alaska tourism info available, much of which could be done independently without actually booking a cruise. He had this much more in mind even than he had when first suggesting we go, because yet again Alexia and I talked about possibly taking a short trip together to Anchorage sometime this year. Shobhit suggested a lot of things that are not likely, such as the 12-hour train ride from Anchorage to Fairbanks. I'm sure it's gorgeous, but there's no way we'd be staying long enough to make that kind of excursion feasible. But! I did take a lot of other stuff that could prove useful, even a "Visit Seattle" booklet, because I am a permanent tourist in my own city—something that lady at that particular booth loved hearing.
We also spoke extensively with a mamager from Denali National Park, which was very interesting.
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Shobhit and I caught the RapidRide G line back up Madison to Capitol Hill from there. I had just under an hour to help him chop vegetables for dinner Saturday night, and then I left to meet Laney at her building. Now it was time for our Weekend Happy Hour, which was a cheap one this month: I had a hot chocolate and a "spinach roll," and the total came to $13.96.
We went to
Piedmont Cafe, by all appearances a gay-owned, new coffee shop on First Hill, on the corner of Summit & Seneca. It has a very cool interior, with tall, arched windows along the wall and a lounge atmosphere. They close at 3:00 every day, which was why we had to choose a weekend. Laney tends to go there early on weekdays to write and finds a table easily, but did not think about how busy it might be on a Saturday. When we arrived, every table was taken. We decided we would order to go and then take our drinks over to First Hill Park with the adorable bear cubs statue, but we still had to wait at the bar—where there were two seats available—for the pastries we ordered to heat up.
In that time, though, two seats at one end of a table near the bar opened up. I sat on the half end of a couch that was now an empty seat, and Laney sat in the chair at the end of the table. She had brought her booze inside a tumbler into which she could pour her mocha, which is something I should do next time; I had brought my shots in a flask, and there was no way I could pour it into my hot chocolate without being obvious. Finally I thought about going outside to do it, and that worked well, even though I slopped a couple drops of hot chocolate on my backpack, pouring it while squatting on the sidewalk over by the alley. Then I went back inside, my hot chocolate now completely lukewarm but whatever. It was still tasty with Rumple Minzs in it!
It also had two shots of rum in it. Specifically, Bicardi rum. I had a splitting headache within a few hours. Next time I may just stick to the single shot of Rumple Minze and that's it. The Bicardi didn't even give me a buzz to speak of, so why just guarantee myself a headache? That's obviously not worth it, and I just want the peppermint flavor from the Rumple Minze anyway.
We did walk over to First Hill Park when we were done anyway. We did that on our way down to Pacific Place, for the third thing I had scheduled that day: going to a movie. We saw
Mickey 17, which was kind of fun but not nearly as thrilling as I hoped or expected. Oh well.
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We saw Alexia yet again yesterday, and this time she came to Seattle. She met up at noon, to finally start our Batman films marathon—something she was much more excited about than I realized. We met in the theater downstairs first, and yet
again—this keeps happening with her in particular—we could not get the projector lamp to work. She had Tony's wife's phone number and texted her; I posted to the building bulletin board. After I had started
Batman and we were 22 minutes in, Alexia heard back, and Tony actually came out of the condo next doo to talk to us. He even really went above and beyond and walked back down to the theater with us to see if he could get it to work—Alexia and I thought maybe there was some simple trick to getting it to work that we were missing. Nope. Not even Tony could figure it out. I'm amazed that this has never happened at Action Movie Night, and indeed this was one of the more irritating things about it: the lamp was working fine at Action Movie Night just last Wednesday.
So, we went back upstairs to continue watching the 1989 Tim Burton
Batman starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. Shobhit was home for that movie, and he watched with us. He also made popcorn.
Shobhit had a Seattle Men in Leather event to attend yesterday afternoon at 3:00, though, so he left for that, and Alexia and I watched
Batman Returns without him. Curiously, Alexia seemed to regard the first one as a better movie, but laughed way more at the second one, and even declared it "campy." I suppose that's fair, but I still love it. It was especially fun to watch it with someone who had never seen it before—Alexia could only remember having seen the first one before.
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I had roughly an hour after Alexia left before Shobhit got home again, although I had no idea when he'd be back. Gabriel texted me earlier in the day to ask me to call him sometime during the day, and I said it would have to wait until evening. I had texted him a couple of times over the week, but he did not respond to anything since what happened on the previous Sunday, Oscar Sunday. It turns out he actually was, as he put it "taking a bit of a Matthew break."
There's no sense in getting into too much detail about this conversation, or relitigating certain things. I did go out into the stairwell and then into the hallway between the stairwell and the back door on 15th to have the conversation, though, just because I didn't want Shobhit to come home in the middle of it.
I do think three particular points are worth sharing, though.
First: I had already mentioned Gabriel's grandmother who is in her nineties, as a reason for Gabriel's strictness about continued covid precautions. But he has more than just his grandmother to be concerned about; he mentioned both his mother (whith whom is grandma lives), and Stephanie, who is also immunocompromised due to cancer.
Second: Gabriel noted that being vaccinated alone is not enough, and I think this is fair. Vaccines do not prevent the spread of covid, they merely lessen the severity of infections. Now, I do think there is clarification to be made here: boosters do provide
some protection against infection, just
at a lower rate than the first vaccines. Plus, it has long been known that effectiveness wanes over time, and we're already six months since our last shot. So, Shobhit's idea that being vaccinated is as foolproof as we're going to get is wrong, and Gabriel's request that people test before coming over is a reasonable one.
Third: Gabriel confirmed that, even at Lea's birthday party, all of those guests did indeed confirm that they had tested before coming over. I always have as a matter of course, so I never asked, although it seemed unlikely to me. Apparently I was wrong.
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Okay. Shobhit and I had our first couples therapy session this morning—the "intake" appointment, as they call it. We got pretty deep into some stuff pretty quickly, actually. I feel like giving Shobhit some credit, because he never would have taken the initiative to do this, but ever since he agreed to do it, I have gotten no pushback to speak of. He even went ahead with scheduling our next session in one week, his only asking being that we meet at noon instead of 11 a.m. I kind of hate having to make appointments at noon which is when I usually break for lunch, but I'm okay with it in this case. It's hardly a major sacrifice.
As for today's session, I'd say it went . . . well enough. The lady's name is Amy, and so far I feel comfortable with her. Shobhit seems to as well.
There was one moment, relatively early on in the hour, when it felt slightly abrupt and she said, "Let me ask you a question. Do you
want to be together?" It's tempting to declare this a dumb question, because why would we be here if we didn't? Still, neither of us missed a beat: "Yes," and "Absolutely."
I could tell that she picked up on our challenges right away, and she was skilled at how she spoke to us both, and how she asked questions. She said the only thing that would immediately make her say we shouldn't be together is if there was abuse, something like hitting each other. There's none of that. When she asked if we are still sleeping in the same bed together and we said yes, she said, "That's better than many couples I see, who are sleeping across the house from each other." Jesus. Of course, I did seriously consider sleeping in the guest room last Sunday night, which would have been a first. But in the end, I didn't.
My greatest desire, at least for now, as that we end our sessions there at the very least feeling good about where we are or where we are going. So far so good. I deeply appreciate that Shobhit has agreed to do this at all, as there was a time when he would have said he never would. This has the potential to be the start of a whole new era for us, and a much better one.
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[posted 12:34pm]
