Exponent Essays #2: "Meant2B"

Essays by Erin Barra on her new EP "Exponent"

Stream "Meant2B" Here!

When I met Caesar it was like an explosion went off in my life - the kind that doesn't destroy but rearranges, that leaves the landscape completely changed. I didn't really believe that people could meet their person on any given day, and from then on, have everything be different, but that's exactly what happened to me.

We met on OkCupid at a time when online dating was still taboo and people weren't openly talking about it. We made plans to meet at a bar in Alphabet City before I took him to an industry party at a local studio nearby. Earlier that day this man CALLED ME ON THE PHONE. We were already so deep into text mode in 2012 that an actual phone call felt almost eccentric. For some reason I picked up, and we had a conversation I barely remember - appropriate attire, his excitement to meet me, small talk between two strangers who didn't yet know they were about to become each other's whole story. I hung up the phone and thought, who the fuck is this person? In retrospect I see it as the highly chivalrous gesture that it was. At the time I just didn't have my bearings yet.

We met at Bar A on Ave A & 2nd Street in Manhattan. I was wearing a blue mini dress, very short hair. God, I used to be so hot. I was at a table in the back when he walked in - slacks and a button-down, like some type of lawyer who had gotten mildly lost. We said hello. I already had a drink and suggested he go get one. He walked to the crowded bar, stood there for a few minutes, and came back empty-handed. He didn't drink. My immediate internal reaction was: this isn't going to work. I had been a bartender and bottle girl in New York City for over five years at that point. I wasn't an alcoholic - but I wasn't sober either. He was already something I didn't have a map for.

We talked for a bit about whatever we talked about. I was able to determine he was not a serial killer or a threat to my existence, so we moved on to the next part of our evening.

Flux Studios was our next destination - a rooftop industry party, late summer, the city glittering below us like something that had been arranged specifically for the occasion. I barely remember the party itself. What I remember are the moments that have become constellations, the ones I can still find in the dark:

• Me looking at him at one point and thinking, with something close to reluctant admiration: wow, this guy is really good looking.

• The two of us on a staircase, me leaning in to kiss him - catching him so completely off guard that he pulled back in shock, and I missed his face entirely.

• Leaving the studio and walking hand in hand through the Lower East Side, the San Gennaro festival spilling around us, through Chinatown all the way to the F train, the city loud and warm and incandescent.

• Him walking me all the way to my front door even though he lived in a completely different part of Brooklyn - a long, unnecessary detour made by someone who wasn't ready for the night to end.

• Sending him a text about how much I'd enjoyed the evening, suggesting we do it again - a message waiting for him when he resurfaced from the subway.

• The full-body rush of knowing - not wondering, knowing - that at the very least, I had just met my next boyfriend, and being so lit up at the thought of seeing him again.

That was September 14, 2012. We have been together ceaselessly since - never breaking up, no other people, two states and two children later. If there was ever a love-at-first-sight story, I believe this was ours.

It's a story we retell to each other every so often, turning it over like something precious we want to keep from fading. Sometimes on our anniversary, I wear the same dress I wore that night. September 14th is our north star - the fixed point we always know how to find, the place the whole map of us begins.

I wrote "Meant 2 Be" with Miles Robertson in those first few months of our relationship, when everything between us was still electric and new and almost too bright to look at directly. You can feel that palpable obsession in the energy and lyrics of the track.

Three years later I would walk down the aisle to this song. It has always been the one that encapsulates those moments - that night, that roof, NYC late summer. You can feel the shift and lift of the bridge, the way it carries you somewhere you haven't been before. That's the moment on the roof where I truly saw him for the first time. 

Poem: The Gentle Giant & I

I collided with a gentle giant 

On Ave A & 2nd Street

I gazed up at his starlit eyes and saw a him-shaped puzzle piece 

That magically snapped in place with me 

Two creatures from worlds apart 

A lower east side fairytale 

Captivated, cupid-fated 

The gentle giant & I

I was bonded to the gentle giant 

From that moment forward 

Never a stretch nor a second thought 

It was a mutual surrender 

A tandem jump, untethered 

I bore him two children, magical beings 

Who broke us into a million pieces 

And from them created a perfect mosaic 

The gentle giant & I

The ages marched on and we learned to hate, to fight, 

To fall apart & to lose ourselves 

The gentle giant forgot who he was, could be 

I was adrift inside myself 

At odds with ourselves & each other 

The odds were never in our favor 

but fairytales work out no matter 

What, and so the story goes

Hand in hand with the gentle giant 

Over mountain tops & valley's low 

We write the story & tell the tale 

A happy ending, a fate foretold 

Whatever you find at the end of the rainbow 

Make the world bend to our will 

Despite the world & despite ourselves 

Turn the pages, one for the ages 

The gentle giant & I

By Erin Barra

Stream "Exponent"