I haven’t seen a Broadway play.

No, not accurate.

One.

I fell asleep.

99.9% of the time, I can only fall asleep in a bed, and then mostly my own bed, or a motel, or an RV. But then, sometimes in a hotel, I’ll stay awake watching cable.

I woke suddenly as a helicopter was landing, or crashing, I didn’t know, I was startled and leaped out of my seat.

She was put off; it was, like, our fourth date.

In the lobby I apologized for my leaping forward suddenly and told her it must have been a Nam flashback, connecting the remark to a central theme in the play and suddenly her face relaxed, she stilled, floated there, staring at me for a long moment and then she laughed; she liked me, she’d come to love me, her date that slept at the play she was so excited to bring him to.

We had seen an off-broadway production for our first date and I brought my Mom, a’h.

“You’re bringing your Mom on our first date?” She asked me.

“Yeah, she wants to see it.”

She shrugged her shoulders and went along with it. I knew we had a shot, I mean, I wasn’t interested in  convincing someone who abided by a formal set of rules to love me. Sure, strategy is important, but how adept are you with tact?

We rode back in a cab to her apartment in the Heights, and I thought about it. Maybe she didn’t know I was sleeping?

She did, but she was also a great artist. Invisible, but her work canonic, later generations would know her.  She enjoyed the play, and enthralled, didn’t care that the man next to her, that she was discovering a love with, wasn’t interested, wasn’t curious enough to stay awake, or had just zonked out. I don’t know the answer, she was just happy enough with herself to not need reassurances from the world.

At her place we poured ourselves drinks, she teased me for sleeping, called me a bastard.

Then, sitting down (while she excused herself to wash up), staring out the window, before our touching distracted, the lights outside running into liquid streams  of flashing quiet beats, I was suddenly afraid of dying.