i was out in orlando last week at some goth/industrial night with a friend. there is this girl with wings on in the corner. oddly from a distance I glance over, her frame similar to yours. and it passes through my head to wonder how you are and if you are ok. on some level, it occurs to me out of disappointment i never explained to you what i was feeling and why i let so much time and space pass between us. I continue drinking, laughing in a small booth with my friend. Its been an awfully long day at work, and even longer 24 hours of being on the road and i know it is going to be an even longer day tomorrow. teaching a group of people at 9 am is sounding awful and being out just lets me feel young. i haven't been out in months, here and there a fetish event. but i haven't set foot on a dance floor in ages.

sometime after 11, i lost track to time. sometime after 11, I lost track of drinks, and of songs. I do know I am telling my friend mike about you. But it isn't prompted by just a girl in wings. Its prompted by a birthday announcement to the girl in wings who happens to be named raven.

i drink some more. i watch this girl from the corner of my eye wondering why you would be in orlando on a wednesday. and what a bizarre fluke it would be if it were you. and i am here too. and my brain is foggy with rum and the smell of cloves is in the air and i am dancing my heart out on a floor i have never set foot on. meanwhile my friend hears my version of what happened. time passes.

i think i called justin. i don't know if it was while i was at the club, or before i passed out in a hotel or if it was at lunch the next day. i don't know. the drinks come as quickly as i empty them, and i can't drink like i used to. in fact i know this night is something i can't do like i used to. the dj spins, and its nice to be in a place where i am not worried about who i am with, or keeping up an appearances- it's nice to be out. i look around the room filled with hottopic clothing and get a little snooty knowing my corset is custom fit and ordered from SanFran. There's still an element of me. The bitchy aloof girl with expensive taste dressed to the hilt on a Wednesday a 3 hour flight from the fetish scene she is used to. Somewhere between pissing and drinking and dancing again mike nudges me to talk to the girl I think is you. the girl i spent the last 3 hours obessing about, which relly isn't the girl but it is you. at this point it is nearing 2, and i am feeling little pain and and I approach her. The conversation roughly establishes. A. She is not a girl i used to know B. Her birthday is the 3rd not the 7th C. She has never been to NY. D. She spells her name RAYVEN. All of which i knew but on some level i am happy to established this. i am happy to have said happy birthdayto rayven who wasn't born with that name, whose birthday is on the 3rd and has never left orlando. i stumble away, her friends staring at me, my friend drives me back to my hotel, my friend who is my student the next morning in all of 7 hours .

that conversation, drinking and the night made me contemplate writing you. i don't know you anymore. i don't know how you will respond this letter, or if you will respond at all. i don't think we need to rehash what happened or discuss it. i think if we were to do that it should have been done ages ago. so happy birthday and for what is is, i am proud of you going back to school.