Moved to Tears

I went to a dinner party tonight, and my host greeted me by saying that I looked great. He noticed I'd lost some weight, and that was polite and flattering. He served me the drink of my choice and talked to me about the sauce he'd spent days cooking and the saffron his friends had brought him, smuggled and mislabeled, from Iran. He showed me around his house, including an office I absolutely loved--it was lined with shelves full of books I had read or wanted to read.

And he moved me to tears by giving me his Modern Library copy of The Philosophy of Spinoza, whom he described as "the rare Catholic atheist," because he thought I would find it interesting.

The first time he met me, I was in a short, tight, knit dress, fuck-me boots, and porn star eyeliner, and we were both drinking heavily, but he remembered more of my smart-assed half-philosophical bullshit than I remember saying. And tonight, with a used book that he said he probably hadn't written in too much, he showed that he truly respected the "me" that *I* value--the part that my body carries around.

I needed that, and sadly, even hand knits can't convey to him how much it meant to me. But I will read the book and put it on my shelf next to The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, the other volume that someone gave to the most real version of me.