He said, “So what else. Besides crossing the street. What else do you remember?”<\/p>\n
So we talked about what we remembered.<\/p>\n
Later:<\/p>\n
I lay in bed memorizing my lines. He sat in the chair reading The New York Times<\/i> “cover to cover”.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we talked. Mostly we didn’t. We were wrapped up in our own private activities. But we shared space. I don’t share space. I am always alone. It was so nice to have him there. <\/p>\n
Night fell outside. We ordered dinner. We ate at my kitchen table. <\/p>\n
Then we talked for hours and hours, late late into the night.<\/p>\n
The black Ghostbuster sky was still there, I imagine. The black clouds continued marching by overhead, in their smudgy procession, but they blended into the general blackness of night now, imperceptible. My lamps glowed, soft, golden and homey. <\/p>\n
Talking. Late into the night. <\/p>\n
2026 thoughts:<\/strong><\/big> I lived in a one-room apartment, with a kitchen that was basically a narrow corridor in which I squeezed a table. The main room was big enough for my bed, a small bookcase, this low squishy chair that was kinda just a big pillow, and a desk. Michael came to visit and stayed with me. In the one room. Michael and I dated<\/a> years before. The relationship was brief but strangely important to both of us and we are friends to this day. I thanked him in the acknowledgements section of my Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein book<\/a>. We remain, to this day, “fans” of one another and we keep an eye on each other. I mean, you aren’t interviewed together on a cable access show<\/a> in Ithaca, New York, and then just never speak to each other again. <\/p>\n Back then, he lived in Los Angeles, I lived in a building perched on top of a cliff in Weehawken (you can see the end of my street in the opening credits sequence of The Sopranos<\/em>, right when he comes out of the tunnel).<\/p>\n \n \nMy apartment was incredibly cheap but the views were spectacular. I would sit on the roof and watch the colors change. I lived in that one tiny room from 2003 to 2009, some of the most awful years of my life. I don’t remember much of it. And 2009 to 2012 was even worse, but at least my apartment was bigger. I started this blog in 2002, and it gave me an outlet. Michael came to New York for a week and stayed with me in my one tiny room. I remember the visit as being very soft and tender, familiarity and sparks, the intellectual stimulation we found with each other. We talked for five days straight. <\/p>\n He’s one of my forever people. He asked me to marry him, maybe six years before this original post in 2006. I think I was a year out of grad school when he proposed. We hadn’t been in contact at all – three years maybe?, and suddenly, there he was proposing on my answering machine<\/em>. He talked about John Cassavetes movies (one of our bonds), and how he was at a John Cassavetes retrospective by himself and he kept thinking I should be there, and why wasn’t I there with him. (Because you live in Los Angeles and I live in New York? Basically he was missing me terribly. But remember, we hadn’t spoken in three years. There was no social media.) Then he popped the question. “Call me back with your answer.” Click. The funniest thing – but it makes sense to me – is I said yes. I called him back and left a message on his answering machine: “Hey, I got your message. Here’s my answer: Yes. Call me back.” <\/p>\n Why is my life like this.<\/p>\n Why would I say yes when I hadn’t seen him in three years? It seemed like a no-brainer to me. If he was going to a John Cassavetes movie, and missing me the whole time … I mean, what else do I need to know. He hasn’t changed. I hadn’t had any luck in the whole traditional “we dated, fell in love, moved in together” scenario, so I totally understood why he would do what he did. We were good friends. When we were dating: It wasn’t some sweeping love affair, but we got along great, we fought a lot but we fought well and made up, we had the same interests, we valued the same things, we had similar senses of humor, we loved going dancing (he was a great dancer), we had physical chemistry, we also liked just sitting around reading quietly. We liked each other. We cared<\/i> about each other. We also believed in each others’ dreams! I mean, come on, what more do you need? People fall wildly in love, get married, and a couple years later the honeymoon phase wears off and they realize they don’t even LIKE each other. We have at least that part down pat!<\/p>\n We got together in Chicago to discuss marriage. We sat in a diner. It was freezing rain outside, and we talked pros and cons. We talked about going to Vegas or City Hall. Then he took back his proposal. Reluctantly. The conversation was very chaotic. Not rancorous, just … “wtf” all around. He said, “I didn’t think you’d say yes!” “Oh for God’s sake, what are you even DOING!!” “I DO want to though! I was missing you SO BAD. Maybe we can come back to it later?” “Michael, are you kidding me with this bullshit.” “You really like me that much to say Yes?” “Well, not anymore.” “No, seriously, you do?” “We get along great. I don’t know, seems like there are worse reasons to marry.” So romantic. Snapping back and forth across the table at the diner. <\/p>\n This was my SECOND marriage proposal by the way. There would be one more. Michael’s is the only one I said “yes” to. After talking about all of the problems with us getting married, when we hadn’t seen each other in 3 years and weren’t even dating (I reiterate: why is my life like this), we walked back to Mitchell’s apartment through the freezing cold, and lay on the couch together, fully clothed, all tangled up, watching television, not speaking. Mitchell, who knew the whole story, and loved Michael, came in from the cold, looked at us on the couch and said, “You two are ridiculous.” Michael called out, “Mitchell, tell us what to do!” Mitchell said, unwrapping his winter scarf, taking off his coat, totally over it, “You two need to spend the rest of your lives together, I mean what more do you want me to say?”<\/p>\n Well, we didn’t. I wasn’t heartbroken or anything when he took back his proposal. The whole thing was so random. It’s definitely a road not taken though. I wonder how it would have worked out. (Or not.) I still think the two of us had as good a chance as any. But we’re there for each other to this day. We keep track of each other. We cheer each other on from afar. I didn’t have much space in the acknowledgements section of my Frankenstein book. But I knew from the jump, even before I wrote the thing, that Michael had to be in there. <\/p>\n From the archives archive<\/b> Michael and I sat up on my roof for a couple of hours on the late afternoon-early evening of Sept. 10. The sky was what I call a “Ghostbusters sky”: smudgy, charcoal grey, heavy and low, dramatic. Smudgy almost-black clouds … Continue reading
\nI am a little bit amazed at how I used to write on here. This is wild to me. Of course I remember the day and Michael’s visit. A couple days after I wrote a bunch of quotes from our five-day long conversation: Snippets. No Context<\/a>. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Image-10-21-26-at-2.46\u202fPM-2-e1792610104225.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nThe first post on my blog<\/a> (2002)
\nWisconsin Idyll in Funny Hats with Rocket Launchers<\/a> (2011)
\nI Was Told I Would Get Wings<\/a> (2004)
\nMy Situational Crush<\/a> (2006)
\nChicago: The Cold Extreme<\/a> (2004)
\nA Sea-Level Kind of Girl<\/a> (2006)
\nThere Was Already Something a Little Off\u2026<\/a> (2003)
\n\u201cGo Ask Sheila.\u201d<\/a> (2010)
\nHow We Talked<\/a> (2011)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"