I woke up to these texts from Nicole the Polish Girl. I felt Seen. The context is that apparently we will both be in Italy at the same time toward the end of July. I told her she could find me in the shade.

And I said also that perhaps for the second time this year we shall run into each other again in a country where neither of us lives . . . provided the Father wills it. Nothing will ever top the miraculous and fated one-in-ten-million chance of seeing Nicole at Narita Airport in Tokyo after nearly dying in a plane crash off the coast of Japan, though hey: I’ll take any opportunity to see her again. She truly is one of God’s own prototypes, never even considered for mass production. To know a person such as this is to glimpse the promise of Eternity. She is proof of it.

Meanwhile, Nicole the Italian Girl, another angel among us, who will also be in Italy with Bex and me, has shown concern over my severe lack of swimming beneath the sun:

(I realize the past particle of swim is “swum”, but for some reason it feels like a pretentious word to me??)

Anyway . . . as she herself is a fellow Pale Person, I find her surprise at my admission equally surprising. Girl, I’ll burn! It’s gonna be hotter than Georgia asphalt in southern Italy. But as long as someone is willing to paint SPF-50 zinc oxide all over my back for me, I’ll consider going in the water for 20 minutes . . .

Will the two Nicoles cross paths? I wonder. It’s fun to wonder at such things. What the hell else am I supposed to do, now that the world has placed a reticle upon my soul? I am living on borrowed time, having already cheated death twice already this year. More on that in a longer essay I’ll probably publish tomorrow.

Till then . . .

P.S. My friend Steph once said: “Your website is an endless love letter to all your friends.” And so saying, I wonder once again what I did to deserve such people. Nearly every good thing in my life was got through blind luck, which is true of many of my friendships. Historically I have fallen ass-backwards into them. Against all odds, we find each other out there in the wolfish world and just keep on knowing each other. You have to. Such is my tale. Often I feel a despair at my existence . . . but perhaps it is a sin to dwell in this state when I have been gifted with all the fine people in my orbit who continue to tolerate me year after year. How many people can say they know Two Cool Nicoles of Western and Central European bearing?? If friendship is the truest currency in life (it is), then I am swimming in a Scrooge McDuck vault of gold. Wow! I love it.