Otherwise Engaged

E-mail from the nice Cambridge Jew. Subject line: "My news." I immediately think he's landed a fancy new job, but it is this: "I just got engaged!" She's a casting director who knows Colin Firth, apparently.

I was awful to the Cambridge Jew, I couldn't fancy someone any less, I had very little to say to him, and yet the news brought me down. He was a nice, clever guy who only wanted to get married, and I wondered if I'd made a mistake. CJ certainly knew who Evelyn Waugh was (a recent date I had did not), even if he probably only would give me a copy of Scoop if he'd gotten one for free on some media mailing list (God, I abhor cheapness).

Maybe I should be grateful that the option to go pick up that relationship -- to settle for something I know is wrong -- has been removed. But at the moment, in my Beth-centric world, all I can do is think about how and if this reconfigures my thoughts about where I will live. It doesn't, exactly, except it adds to my growing feeling that the London I would return to -- my London -- would look nothing like the London I left. And in fact, that I might not enjoy living there. This makes me unbearably sad, since I am not sure I'm cut out to be a New Yorker, either.

I forwarded the email, which even detailed the proposal, to a few friends. O promptly wrote back that if CJ is engaged, there is hope for all of us. In typical O fashion, he also criticized the proposal location as touristy and said that if he'd been proposed to at the Colombe d'Or in Saint-Paul de Vence, he would tell the person to "eff off." Love the lovely friends.

I suspect the real purpose of the email was in the last couple of lines: a not-very-subtle attempt to see if I had any details about who's attending the Obama fundraiser at Gwyneth Paltrow's house in London tonight. I forgot how desperate celebrity reporting makes you. I don't miss it a bit, and in fact feel great glee if I happen to notice a celebrity these days – mostly because I don't have to do one single thing and can just go about my business, not caring.

I emailed back my congratulations, and joked that I would alert my former employer so that the magazine can be in prime position to cover the wedding. If there is hope for him there should be hope for me indeed, but I don't feel it.