Friday night recounting.

Last night, I accepted an invitation to a gallery opening. I need to provide the context it's a two-room former commercial space fairly deep in Brooklyn and very much an amateur effort - when I arrived a half-hour before opening, someone was still putting the decals in the window. This isn't shade on the art itself, or on the curator's eye for composition. Simply to say it's not quite SoHo.

Also not quite SoHo were the moments I found myself talking to one of the two photographers whose work was on display and he simply couldn't answer the questions. I asked him why he took that one picture of his house, what about that moment caught his eye, would he have felt differently if the light was on in a different window. He couldn't say other than he didn't know. Also not quite SoHo was that none of the pieces had prices listed, or any information on whether or not they were for sale; after the show, someone commented he'd have happily purchased a print of something, but had no way to find out or ask.

But like SoHo, the curator was suitably engaged with his work, talking about what he'd gotten from the artists and the way he could put their work in conversation with each other instead of simply having two artists in the space at once. Also like SoHo was that before the show began, I had some time to wander, so I walked a couple blocks and found a city park tucked in between long-occupied row houses and empty industrial buildings. On my way back, I walked into an open-air thrift store - there's really no better term for it, there were sections for flatware and glassware, for vintage camera equipment, for jewelry, for records - and walked out less than ten minutes later wearing a Navy captain's coat. No, really. I checked the buttons, stripes, and the star. It's a captain's coat. I walked in, walked through, saw the stripes, and knew it had to come home with me. It's broad enough in the shoulders I wore it over my raincoat to keep my hands free, and a lot of people told me they liked it. One particularly grand moment was when I stepped outside and put a hand up to my forehead to focus on some birds flying west, and a couple people joked I was the admiral giving a salute.

The art itself was fine for what it was: two people's black and white compositions of lost childhood homes and close family members. It knew what it wanted to do, and largely did it, even if the artists themselves couldn't quite say what or why.

I should say I went because my younger brother R. and his wife G. were friends with one of the artists, so afterwards, several people including R., G., and myself went to a nearby bar. I'd been having a disappointing night, the coat notwithstanding, so I thought I'd try to raise my spirits with a cocktail. I sat at the bar and told the bartender I knew I liked rum, I knew I liked a dark and stormy, but I didn't know what else I'd like, and I wanted him to make me a rum-based drink he enjoyed making that few people ordered. He said he liked my attitude, and when he asked how I wanted it, and I said I trusted him to make it the way he liked it, he had a good laugh. What came out was a dark daiquiri: darker rum, darker sugar, more lime juice. Perfectly refreshing. Later I took a similar strategy to ask him to make me something with tequila, which came out as something with tequila, mezcal, and hibiscus.

There was an issue with dinner with one of R.'s friends. The three of us walked to a nearby restaurant to get tacos for the group, and I suggested we simply bring back vegetarian tacos for everyone as nobody specified what they wanted beyond "tacos." R.'s friend immediately went in on vegetarian tacos being a bad idea as they tend to go soft and soggy quickly, and I switched to saying that if they were that bad, I didn't want any tacos to begin with. It took some work and I still don't think he quite gets why I reacted the way I did - from what I gathered on the conversation during the walk there, he's not a particularly sincere person, and going by how things went as we kept talking, he doesn't know how to deal with sincerity as someone's default mode - but I ended up with some tacos just the same.

Another notable interaction: G. saying she had to repair a balaclava she'd made for a friend who ended up ripping it due to negligence and who expected G. to fix it. She sounded upset, but said it was fine, and asked what would it cost. I said, your friendship. She said, she was doing it because she was her friend; I told her, her doing this would cost her your friendship. Another notable interaction: asking the doorman at the bar if we could step out for a little while and then come back, and when he said yes, I told him I appreciated his flexibility, and got a genuine smile out of him.

Another notable interaction: two people I don't know all that well greeting me with hugs without asking. I'll know to keep my arms up next time. Another notable interaction: People complimenting me on my dress, which I bought well over 12 years ago and still fits nicely, and was genuinely a nicer dress than all of the other dresses there that night. I'd worried about overdressing, then decided against worrying.

It started at the beginning of an evening that was flat and still wet, soft from the day's rains; it never quite cleared up or dried out, but it eased out enough to spot the moon through the clouds. Which is fitting for how the whole night went down, start to finish.