“We are all doing spectacularly well,” I declare with a raise of the icy glass.

We’d gone for coffee after brunch, but stopped at a bar instead of a café and ordered cocktails instead of espresso. I was deep into my third at this point, the early afternoon pouring hot over us as we sat and stared at passing strangers and reflected on how simultaneously odd and natural it was that school had ended a few years ago and that we were still all kind of together despite the jobs and break-ups and graduate programs that have been pulling us back and forth through time zones.

And yet here we sat in this nexus of a city, sipping and talking, as casually and comfortably as we’d had so many times in the past. We examined each other, commenting and complimenting on weight lost, new freckles, longer hair. We made fun of our quirky constants: Looney’s accent, my tardiness, Jeremy’s nose. We repeated jokes. Jeff did his Kramer impression. The ever-absent Elijah was summoned, as well as the other old friends: brisket and sickly-sweet Manishevitz and Jorge Ramos and strange roommates and Looney’s bourbon-soaked accent (yes, worth mentioning again).

“We’re 25 going on 50,” Jeff jokes; a fact effortlessly confirmed moments later when Looney mentions The Atlantic, William Jennings Bryan, and Bill Buckley all within one sentence and is met with a hearty laugh from the rest.

It didn’t matter that it had been so long or perhaps more since we’d seen each other. There was no need for catch up, really.

And Jeff noted that it felt like he’d been away for only a long weekend, and Looney and I murmur something about how we are happy and I think to myself how the little tricky months here and there just kind of seemed to have disappeared, melted away like the glistening drops of condensation slipping down the side of my glass.

Labels: friends, Moments, New York

For the past few months, I’ve been spending more and more time with an old friend of mine from high school. We’d been close back then, he being a prominent part of our nerdy, wonderful little group. College pulled us apart, though, and save for one or two dinners in the interim years, we really hadn’t seen each other since graduation.

It was Friday evening after a particularly boring week, when I was surprised to see the familiar name on my cell caller ID.

“So it seems that your blog has requested my friendship on MySpace,” he told me with a bit of a laugh in his voice.

“I didn’t even know that inanimate objects could create profiles!”

I cracked up and after chatting for a while, we made those tentative usually never actually happen “let’s grab drinks soon” kind of plans and hung up. Minutes later, the phone rang and it was him again.

“Actually,” he asked. “What are you doing now?”

Somehow, he convinced me out of my pajamas and into the shower, and two hours later we were sitting in a coffee shop downtown, enthusiastically catching each other up on the last several years of our lives. We spent a lot of time marveling over the way the hobbies and extra-curricular activities we had each been obsessed with at age 16 had now, nearly ten years later, become our careers. It was hours before I got home, coffee having turned into a movie followed by drinks and then a couple hours of just wandering around West Village side streets. Morning light was just starting to creep into the sky when I finally crawled into my bed, feeling happy at having found my old friend and still relishing in that familiar comfort of being around someone who knew you when your hair was always frizzy and your stupid knee socks would never stay up.

We found ourselves telling bits of that story again this past weekend as we dined and drank and dined and drank again with some of his friends and coworkers—a vibrant circle of clever, intelligent people that I’ve been openly coveting as my own for the past couple months. I was chatting with a girl sitting across from me when I heard him mention going to a concert I would have loved.

“Wait…wait…and you went without me?!” I exclaimed, a bit offended at the thought.

“No, no,” he said quickly. “This was a couple years ago. It was after/before!”

“After/before?” I asked, the sangria/blueberry stoli/wine combination I’d been imbibing all night lending obvious fuel to my confusion.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “after we met but before we met again.” My smile broke through then as I understood. “Ohhh…” I said with a boozy whisper. “I call those dark ages…”

Labels: friends, memories, New York

I've started a little online business. It's something I've been working on for the past couple week and finally I'm ready to go live. It's a little virtual bakeshop (with very real, non-virtual cakes) on Etsy.com.

Labels: Administrative, career, cooking, food, life decisions, Nerdiness, New York

I rushed past that spot again today on my way home from work. It was probably about the 10th or 11th time since, but it was only today that I realized it as I walked by, heels clicking quickly where they once were content to stand perfectly still.

It felt like fallout; space imbued with so much weight. The rush of dizziness and heat as intense as the moment rising, then disappearing just as suddenly.

It didn't even look the same. A mass of people: police officers, officeworkers, shouting prophets, highschool kids with low-slung backpacks. A little boy tried to jump the turnstile--his dad stopped him.

That night felt silent, but this seems more familiar--less terrifying. This I understand. I swipe my card. I lift my purse to pass.

The dizziness comes and goes, and (as the facts fade into memory) I wonder if perhaps it wasn't ever really even that strong to begin with.

Labels: memories, Moments, New York, The Subway

I ask him to join me outside for a cigarette and he obliges gallantly, unenthusiastically. We stand outside the rope and watch the cars and our breath mingling seductively with the smoke.

I note the slight step back he takes when I move closer, the way his muscles tense when I lay fingertips lightly on his chest. But he laughs at my stories and looks at me in that way... searchingly. (Quizzically?) I match his glance with my own, wondering if he can see the screams streaming out of my eyes. In my head they're like lightning bolts, razor-edged and fiery. In my head they knock him down hard. In reality, I'm the one that is falling.

In an hour or so he'll press me against a wall at the next bar; hands searching familiar territory, mouths pulling and devouring. We'll lose our friends and make our escape into the cold night, conspiratorial laughter and whispers echoing into the near-empty street. We'll sleep soundly, after, and in the morning will fall into each other once again without question.

In a few hours, this moment will seem irrelevant. This panic, unnecessary. But for now, I continue to talk too quickly. I bite my lip. I ash nervously. Because for now, he hesitates.

Labels: memories, New York, Smoking

We got there just a few minutes before closing time. The men in the fish market pointed us towards the back, barely looking up from the hoses they were using to clean the concrete floor. Smelly water splashed at our feet as we made our way through a low door into a dusty storeroom cluttered with teas and jars filled with alien gels and liquids.

A plump, diminutive woman with a frizzy black bob and flappy doughy arms, waved at us from behind a desk in the far left corner. This, I supposed, was Lucy—the woman we’d come to see.

She was with another customer and shouted at us “One minat! One minat!” Her voice was gruff and accent risible, and had it not been followed it with a raspy peal of laughter, I would have misinterpreted her commanding tone as anger.

Lucy is an herbologist. Trained in the ancient Chinese art of combining medicinal herbs, she uses a blend of herbal knowledge, Chinese Astrology, and intuition to “prescribe” remedies of carefully selected herb and root teas. The herbs are meant to help the patients achieve balance of the yin and yang by purifying the system and eliminating toxins that can otherwise manifest as various ailments.

My dad’s yin was off. A routine physical had revealed uncomfortably high PSA levels that had his doctor concerned and my mom, little brother, and me carefully dancing around that word that we were all thinking, but much too frightened to say.

He was scared too. As evidenced by the odd, strangely clinical tone he adopted when explaining the results to me over the phone one afternoon. His voice has always had a way of changing when discussing things that make him uncomfortable. He switches from his native, casual Spanish, to a formal and laborious English. His classical theater training shining through in his purposeful and measured words, carefully punctuated with the requisite beats and pauses. As if the thing he has most control of—his voice and language—could serve as a barrier between him and that which he feared he could not.

We’d come to Lucy on the recommendation of his friend Sam, who swore she saved his life. Sam, a large brute of a man, with too much of a tan and arms like tree trunks, would shed tears when recounting the moment she spotted him at the market and—without introduction—ordered him to the emergency room pointing frantically at a spot inches away from his heart. Frightened by her earnest cries, Sam drove directly to the hospital complaining of chest pains. He was admitted and it was there that the doctors discovered a clot that would have surely resulted in his death had it gone untreated just a few hours longer.

I was curious to meet this woman who’d saved Sam’s life with her keen sixth sense. She was short, and barely visible from where we stood, but every so often her arms would flap up and a cackle of laughter would fill the room. After a few minutes, she called us in. Her office was basically a desk, the old banged-up metal kind my elementary school teachers used. It was littered with papers and strange wooden boxes. In the center she placed a marble composition notebook and a gold-tipped fountain pen and well. Behind her, the wall was lined entirely with old-fashioned apothecary drawers, each labeled in fading hanzi characters.

“What’s in those?” I asked, pointing at the wooden drawers.

“Is Tea! Is Herbs and Teas!!” She shouted at me in the tone I quickly realized was her normal speaking voice.

She began examining my dad, first asking him to write down his name and birthday. She looked up his time of birth in a guide and giggled to herself as she jotted some notes down in her book.

“Take off watch!!” She commanded, grabbing his wrist with her thumb and forefinger to count his pulse.

“Too fast!!” She shouted, again writing something in her book.

She then sketched the crude outline of a man into the notebook and began drawing strange scribbles in the area near his kidneys. “You have too much poison!”

My dad shifted uncomfortably and tried to explain what the doctor had said. “NO! Stop!” She shouted again, not letting him continue. “I know how to fix.”

She stood up, setting up several brown paper bags into which she tossed large handfuls of mixed herbs from the cabinets. Occasionally she would explain what she was putting in and why:

“Dry Yam—for kidney! Dandelion—for heart!”

The woman spoke entirely in exclamation points.

While she continued her mixing, I got up and wandered back into the storeroom where I realized many of the products were labeled with price tags. I found a bottle of Japanese sesame oil on sale for two dollars and walked back in to my dad.

“Can I buy this?” I asked him, not really sure if it was for sale or not.

“Yeah, get what you want,” he said with a wave, his eyes focused on Lucy who was rummaging through a giant box of what looked to me like hay. I started collecting things and bringing them back into the office where I piled them on a chair: a tin of Chinese white tea and another of jasmine green, a bottle of chili oil, a jar of chili paste, a gigantic bag of panko, dried seaweed, a box of something called “Woo-Man Tea,” which featured a Baywatch-esque lifeguard on the package and a translation explaining that it was “Tea for Woman.”

When I finished, I came back into the room. My dad looked exhausted and Lucy was writing out a list of things for him to avoid. “No meat!” She said, jabbing her finger at him.

“Not even chicken?” My dad asked, slightly defeated.

“You want chicken? You eat chicken! You eat chicken but you die!!” She shouted back, throwing her head back into a laugh.

“DIE?!” My dad cried with a cough. “That’s not funny! Why are you laughing!”

She ignored his question, continuing to tick things off as she wrote them down: “No. No meat. No bread. No ice cream. No sugar. No spicy. No tofu. No soy milk. No candy.”

I was having a hard time controlling my own laughter while my dad continued to protest as each of his favorite items was added to the list.

“What do I eat? I can’t lose weight…I have to look healthy. On camera,” He explained.

“Sweet potato! And Rice. You eat sweet potato with rice you get fat and good. No meat!”

My dad grimaced at the thought of a diet of sweet potato and rice and continued to offer suggestions in a syntax that was quickly mirroring hers. “What about fish? Fish OK right?”

She shook her head and sighed. Looking at me she shouted: “Tell him!”

I put my hand on his shoulder as I replied with my best straight face:

“No fish.”

Lucy burst into laughter again while my dad sat stubbornly reluctant. She came out from behind her desk and took his hands. Her voice was soft for the first time as she looked into his face:

“We fix problem first. Then you eat what you like. OK?”

My dad understood. Shaking his head in quiet agreement and collecting his teas. We bid Lucy goodbye and took our bags through the fish market. The lights were out now and the vendors had all gone home. In the vegetable market next door, we passed by a stand full of sweet potatoes.

"Here Papa!" I showed him, selecting two of the largest yams. "Eat! You get fat!"

My dad laughed for the first time since we'd arrived and gave me a hug as I put the potatoes down.

"Thanks for coming with me," he said, with a bit of a crack in his voice.

I nodded, making sure to keep my slowly dampening eyes away from his face.

Labels: My Crazy Family, New York

I have a friend who lives on an island on what sometimes feels like the opposite side of the universe. Last night he sent me this link and told me that he thought that I would love it.

I do. And I think that you will too:

Hitotoki

Meant to serve as a literary map of a city (currently Tokyo and New York, but more are on the way), it's a way of experiencing a city the way people really do--through collected moments.

Labels: Japanese monsters, New York, Writing

The NY Bloggers Meetup group meets tonight for our 7th meeting. If you're in the NY area and want to attend, there is still time!

Click HERE for more details.

See you all tonight!

Labels: blogging, New York

Am I the only one who noticed that this show is basically Cruel Intentions with lots of text messaging? Lots and lots of text messaging...

My favorite scene in the premiere was when the young freshman, about to get date-raped by the striped scarf-wearing senior (played by some creepy Jimmy Fallon clone), actually text messaged for help.

I'm going to say that again. She text messaged for help. Twice! Instead of, oh, I don't know...running?

Labels: New York, tv

NY Times finally catches on...

(Now I have two years worth of archives to catch up on.)

Labels: Internet, New York, news

Back in the spring, I took an incredible writing workshop that helped me figure out a few things about what I wanted (and needed) to be doing. I ended up taking some pretty bold steps soon after and I know that much of the clarity that I needed to do so came from the conversations and realizations that I made that day.

Classes are really only as good as the students in them make them out to be, and this class was no different. There were six of us, all women at different stages of our life, but with one very important thing in common--we all wanted to write.

One of the girls that I met that day is Paula. A brilliant writer and raw food chef, Paula has started a blog chronicling her research, experiences, books, and other things having to do with the intersection of food and culture--specifically the culture of France and America. I particularly love her reminisces about her time spent living at the bookstore Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Woven throughout all these experiences is her interaction with the other key figure in her life--her omnivorous French husband.

You can read her artfully crafted words at: http://alucidspoonful.blogspot.com/

Labels: blogging, food, friends, New York, Writing

Not long ago, blog rockstar I-66 and I met for the very first time in real life. A spectacular lunch (complete with deadly white chocolate martinis) was complicated only by a very strange, very confusing, possibly coded message. A message that we need your help with...

Earlier in the afternoon, I heard a great song playing in the restaurant. It was loungy and jazzy and had a sexy female vocalist. I asked our waitress if she could get me the name of the song and then promptly forgot about my request. A deadly martini later, she wordlessly slipped a folded message next to my plate. I-66 and I looked at it a bit nervously completely perplexed about what it contained. Once we opened it, we were even more confused. The note said this:

Zo MCDE

ONE SELF

"What the...?!" It took us a few seconds to realize that the code was supposed to be the song and artist. It looked weird, but assuming that our beverages were adding to the confusion, I tucked it into my purse for later googling.

The problem. It's been over a week and neither one of us has been able to find this song. The puzzle is compounded by the fact that we can't really tell if "One Self" is the band or the song name. After various tricks and tries (including, apparently, a few spins through an anagram solver), we've decided to open the mystery up to our reading public.

So, your mission (should you choose to accept it): find me this song...

The winner gets a magazine subscription of his/her choice (to be selected from a list of the ones my company publishes). If the winner is in DC, then he/she will also get an added bonus courtesy of block rockstar....

Labels: blogging, friends, music, New York

Intuition can be a funny thing sometimes. The way that tiny instincts can sometimes lead to the completely and utterly unexpected. That feeling, for example, of being drawn at the very, very last second to a party that I was really tempted--and really quite determined--to skip. Or the pull that lifted me out of my chair, led me to walk across the bar, and gave me the courage to talk to the stranger who'd been silently watching me all night.

"I was waiting for you to introduce yourself," I said to him with a confidence that scared me a little bit. And he smiled and nervously ran his fingers through his boyish sandy blond hair and admitted that he was shy, that he hadn't been sure quite what to say. "I fell in love," he said later, and I laughed and let the words fall over me all warm and dreamlike and impossible, but still...maybe? And for those brief moments I ignored the cynical bits that usually gnaw at me--the disappointments, tears, and unmet expectations—and let myself feel the fairytale that had seemed to be slipping further and further away with each passing month.

“Will you disappear if I bring you home tonight?” I asked him a couple weeks later as we stood near a cab, my voice suddenly hesitant with a mix of fear and drunken honesty. He thought before replying, his eyes darkening a bit, a hand on my cheek as he looked at me and told me exactly what I wanted—and needed—to hear.

“Princess,” he whispered, later, when I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down towards me again. "Yeah, baby?" I said, my eyes looking up at his, our mouths just seconds away. “We should wait to get home...” he murmured unconvincingly as I slipped my hand over his chest and buried my face in his neck. "OK," I sighed, pulling away for seconds before he drew me towards him again. I could hear someone speaking German, the rush of cars as we drove by, a honk, a siren, it all seemed to blur into the background...

There would be no waiting.

In the orange glow of the morning I counted the freckles, chocolate brown specks clustered along the smooth white expanse of his back. Funny how natural it seemed, this semi-stranger in my bed. The muscles in his arms curved like sand dunes and my stomach fluttered as I traced them with my eyes. He rolled over slowly,and I wondered if he'd felt me watching him. I noticed that our hands had somehow found each other in the night. Our eyes locked for a moment and he wrapped the rest of his body around me. Together, we drifted back into sleep, me nestled tightly in those increasingly familiar arms.

We spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon like this, with breaks for water, more kisses, falling in and out of sleep. I dreamt about him and he about me and when we woke we laughed to discover this, both of us slightly confused as to how much we’d dreamt and how much we’d actually lived. “Did you kiss my forehead just a second ago?” I thought about asking, but didn't because I knew that at that very specific moment, dreams and reality and yesterday and tomorrow really just wouldn't mean anything at all.

Labels: dating, memories, New York

from a window at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Act by which individuals leave a piece of their shadow behind. When departures are sudden, there is usually a delay of the soul. The physical site where a departure has taken place acquires a slight weight that is usually imperceptible to those who have never experienced loss. Departures are two-sided, like joints between past and present worlds. They serve as the diaphanous bridges of our memory. Sometimes departures are temporary, but those who return can never become the same person. Those who seek to escape from themselves often depart to never return.

Labels: New York

Here's one that I've been meaning to post for a couple weeks...

My breath fogs as I peer into the windows of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, marveling at the way that past and present crash so elegantly in this part of town. It's Sunday morning and I'm waiting for Ilana. We have brunch together every week--decadently eating our way through NY just like we once did Washington.

"Damn," she says when I call to let her know I've arrived, 10 minutes early.

"I was counting on you being late." I point out that I was coming from Brooklyn this time, not New Jersey, and the trip took all of 20 minutes.

"OK," she tells me from the lobby of her Murray Hill apartment building. "I'm getting in a cab now."

It's freezing and I really have to use the bathroom. I don’t want to enter the restaurant yet, and choose to wander the slushy streets in search of another option. The cafes all seem a bit too earnest for my purposes, and I instead seek refuge in the stylized comfort of a Starbucks on Delancey. I stand in line, waiting for my turn to order from the green-eyed barrista with a band-aid on his neck. As he turns his head to call out a drink, I realize it's meant to hide a swollen hickey, one of several peeking out of the collar of his black Starbucks polo. It catches me by surprise—a bit of the real seeping through the crafted uniformity. They look recent and raw. I wonder if they're from a boyfriend. One who's languishing in bed right now thinking about the subtle saltiness of this green-eyed boy’s neck. More likely they’re from a stranger, met in the sweaty early hours when everything glows red and the search for right quickly declines to right now. In my mind I watch him creeping out at dawn, climbing over the snoring body, searching for his jeans, pausing momentarily to debate whether or not to leave a number before slipping out of an unfamiliar apartment into the crispness of the morning. It takes him a moment to realize what part of the city he's in before he turns and heads south.

"You can't show up at work like that," his roommate later warns when he wanders into his kitchen searching for a remedy to combat the pounding in his head. "There's juice in the fridge. Want some oatmeal?"

Paul--because that’s what I’ve decided his name is --declines and lights a cigarette instead, inhaling deep drags as he leans against the counter and studies his reflection in a dirty glass pane.

"I’m going to be late, " he mutters, as he searches for an emergency kit purchased post 9/11 by a slightly anal former roommate. He finds it and rips into two packs of generic painkillers.

“That’s supposed to be for emergencies,” his roommate says pointedly.

Paul glares at him and downs the pills with a loud gulp from the sink, gagging as the sweet coating of the caplet combines with the metallic aftertaste of city tap water.

“Can I help you?”

His impatient tone shake me out of my reverie. I want to tell him that I see past the band-aid. I want to ask him for the real story. I don’t, of course, and instead order a caramel apple cider and request the key to the bathroom. He tells me that it isn’t working in a way that makes me feel like I should have already known that.

I wonder if it’s too late to cancel my order.

There are no empty seats so I walk out and head towards the restaurant again, wrapping my exposed fingers around the steaming cup. I take the long way, splashing through the murky puddles and dodging the fat drops melting off of the fire escapes. The morning seems flooded with couples ambling through the city in a sleepy Sunday intimacy. And though I usually enjoy wandering the city alone, I feel that familiar ache and find myself wishing that cider wasn’t the only thing keeping me warm this morning.

I spot Ilana getting out of a cab as I round the corner.

“I’m sorry,” she says as we enter the crowded restaurant. “Were you waiting long?”

“Eh…no worries,” I reply, suddenly thankful for those quiet moments. “It gave me something to write about.”

Labels: New York, Writing

The sun arrives an hour earlier, casting an unforgiving light over the unfamiliar. Day reveals dust, books, photographs—secrets that remained hidden when we first stumbled in, giggling and secretive, cloaked by the smoky darkness.

I sit at the foot of the bed and slide my legs into a pair of hose as I try to reconcile the objects with the sleeping body behind me. I note the book titles (wordy, masculine writers like Miller and McInerney; also an apparent interest in screenwriting), albums (mostly hip-hop, but also classical), and the artwork (photographs of misty European cities; a Rothko print) that line the walls, marveling at how much more I’ve learned in these few silent minutes than in the hours of flirty, tequila-infused conversation the night before. There is a plaque on a wall—some kind of award from his firm, and an orderly pile of unopened mail. I wonder if the young man in a sepia-toned photograph is his grandfather. I think of other questions I’d like to ask. I know that in a different time, a different version of me would probably like to get to know this person, but right now I just want to go.

He wakes as I head towards the door and smiles at me.

“Hey beautiful,” his voice is thick with sleep. “Are you leaving?”

“I’m meeting a friend for breakfast,” I lie.

“That sounds fun,” he replies, pulling himself up on his elbows. “Call me later?”

“Sure” More lies. I wave as I button my coat and slip out his bedroom door, shutting it behind me.

I was someone else last night. I was trying her on for size and while I found that she fits, I can’t say I like the look of her.

There was no passion, no real pleasure, and certainly no love. I felt myself turn cold, detached—a little frightened at how easy it was to separate my self from my body. Means to friction—the words bounced around my already foggy head as I felt myself drift up and outside. “Fuck it,” I thought. A decision born from the putrefying combination of alcohol and unjustified envy.

“That watch is great,” he’d said afterwards. “Where’d you get it?”

“A friend…” I murmured, turning away from him and curling up into myself. He wrapped himself around me, but already my mind was elsewhere. I felt his hand trace a line down the curve of my waist, over my hips, and around my thighs. A gentle tug; a breath on my neck. I waited for the flutter, the tremble, the slight dizziness to start, but it wasn’t there. “I'm sorry…” He understands and brings me a glass of water and a few Advil. I take it and let him stroke my hair while I rest my head on his arm.

It’s not my head that hurts.

*****

I step out of the dark hallway into the brightness of First Ave and am surprised to find the 59th Street Bridge looming high above me. I think of Nick Carraway walking into Manhattan with Jay Gatsby at his side: “always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world"

Something in me swells as I head west in search of the 6.

Chelsea. Morning Mass is starting and for a moment I consider going in, but I’m not Catholic and my stomach is growling so I opt for the familiar clatter of a nearby diner. In the bathroom I brush my hair, my teeth. I wipe away the traces of smeared eyeliner and reapply lipstick. I’m a bit of a nomad and carry everything around in my purse. “I can’t decide if that’s sexy or weird,” a friend once said when I pulled out my toothbrush one morning. “Probably a little bit of both,” I replied.

I order a broccoli and cheese omelet, and pull out Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. I have a book club meeting in a few hours and seven chapters to go. For the rest of the morning, I lose myself the way I prefer: in Auster’s labyrinthine plot.

Out of habit, I run my thumb across the base of my fourth finger in search of the white gold and amethyst ring I’ve worn since I was 16. It’s missing. Like a flash I see myself placing it on the windowsill while getting dressed. Loss washes over me and I fight the urge to cry as the empty feeling spreads from my hand to the rest of my body.

Outside the diner, a vendor is selling tweed newsboy caps. A young homeless woman wrapped in blankets stares longingly at the hats and scarves from her bench. I ask if she’d like one and her eyes light up.

“The red one is pretty…” she says timidly.

I hand the vendor a ten and bring her the hat. It feels like an offering; a sacrifice to wash away the guilt.

Maybe I am more of a Catholic than I’d like to admit...

Labels: New York

My friend Moe calls these Miles Davis days—when the gray promise of an impending storm swallows up the city in sulky thoughtfulness. It’s late, much later than I’d like, and I’m heading home. It hasn’t rained yet, but the air around me feels thick, full, round. It lurks—like his horn—somewhere in that middle register. And the feeling of something unspoken is unmistakable.

“I’ll play it first, and tell you what it is later…”

There is a trumpet player at the corner of 41st and Broadway. He’s no Miles, but he has a way of always playing my thoughts. His song swoops around me as I ascend from the musty underground into the biting winter night, and strikes me right at that achey part—the part that’s 24, and equal parts ambitious and unsure. The part that knows exactly why it is that she is in this city, and yet still wonders how she got here.

I slow down a bit and empty the day’s change into his open case—what’s left of the morning’s bus fare, my lunch, the large coffee that pulled me through the mid-afternoon slump. Our dark eyes meet as the coins slip from my hands, and as I walk away, he interrupts his tune to play me a thank you:

“Love-ly…never, ever change…”

I’m not quite sure how I look tonight, but I smile to myself as the strains follow me down the street, filling the empty night with song. Forty-first feels like a secret compared to the brash street carnival just one block over. It’s dark. It’s empty. It’s the behind-the-scenes. It’s all stage doors, service entrances, and scaffolding. It’s dancers, waiters, and stagehands taking cigarette breaks as they wait impatiently for their break. I love this street. It’s the kind of New York I sometimes crave—the man behind the curtain, the grit behind the magic.

I take my time here.

I wind through a handful of teenage girls in leggings and ankle boots, milling about the entrance to the lime green Nederlander. Their chatter reminds me of my own adolescent trips into the city. Trips made when I was giggly and 12, and when New York was synonymous only with entertainment. It was Broadway and the ballet, Times Square and giant stuffed animals at FAO Schwartz. It was all wizards back then...

Further down, my father’s four-foot face smiles at me from the row of buses parked along the street. It’s his evening news smile. It’s his Monday through Friday at 6 and 11 smile, which is different from his Sunday morning smile and his dinner table smile and his thanks for baking me a pie smile. His success looks over me, my own personal Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, as I click-click-navigate the slush and subway grates in the heels that he himself told me were far too impractical for winter in this city. And I’m amused by the drivers who whistle and call out and wink, completely unaware that the eyes and smile and body that they’re so hungrily leering at, once came from the very man they drive around all day advertising. I’m glad to see him there, smiling that silly smile. It’s a reminder that my blood, my genes, my name has already made it in this city. That my path is there, somewhere, beneath the slush and cigarette butts. “Hi, Papa...” I hear myself whisper into my scarf.

I think more on this two-block walk than at any other point in my day. I try to capture the moments—I try to swallow it all. There’s much more that I could add to this—the hotel that looks like the marzipan candies in the Florentine candy store, the peeling Annie Leibowitz photographs papering the walls, that strange urge that I get each night to steal an orange from the tiny bodega displays (I haven’t…yet)—but perhaps it’s best if I stop here.

I’m just capturing moments, for now. I’m still not sure what the ending is. But that’s no bother. After all, the thing that I love most about jazz is that it doesn’t resolve.

I too will play it first—I’ll tell you what it is later.

Labels: Jazz, New York, Winter

There are some mornings when I sit, paperback in hand, just one among thousands of sleepy passengers careening through the ancient tunnels of New York City, and I find myself wishing an impossible wish. I hold my breath and—eyes focused on the blurred mosaics outside the window—I wish that my train would just keep going… Going and going, past my Union Square stop, past Canal all the way down, down, through all of Brooklyn, past Coney Island and Stillwell, crashing right into the icy waters of the Atlantic and beyond...

I’ve always been a bit of an escapist. I slip into the pages I read. I get lost in thought. I sleep to dream.

I often wonder if there are many like me: for whom the reality and the fantasy can also meld so easily. I stare at the faces in my car—the man rustling through the sports page, the NYU girls gossiping in their legwarmers, the young mother calming her screaming child—they all seem so here. They all seem so present. Almost as if that's all there is. And with a mix of fear and pride, I suspect that I’m destined to spend a life weaving fantasies, bridging one world to the other.

My eyes settle on the elderly woman across from me. Her thin hair is pulled back tightly; her face is creased by the years. We stare at each other—two women at opposite ends of a subway car, two women at opposite ends of our lives. And I wonder if she ever has mornings like I did the other day, where she wakes up throbbing and damp, pulling herself away from a dream that was just too vivid…just too good. Does she dream of vodka or the color red or the backseat of a blurry yellow cab? Does she ever find herself invaded by thoughts of a remembered kiss, a breath on her neck, a strong hand pulling at her thighs. I wonder for a moment if this is a part of me that will fade as the years pass. And then I close my eyes, I bite my lip, and I feel the goose bumps beneath the heavy layers of wool and silk as I lose myself in pair of absent arms.

“It’s your imagination that turns me on,” I told him once. Or maybe I never actually said it; perhaps I only dreamt that I did. Either way, it’s true. I seek others like me. Others for whom a word can stretch into a story, for whom a line can bend into a work of art. I want to surround myself with the minds that race ahead while others sit complacently and with the ones who stand still amid the roar. I ache for the comfort of understanding, for that safe, rare place where raised eyebrows are replaced by knowing nods.

The train stops and I’m forced to get out. I’m swept along in the sea of students and office workers each battling to shave seconds off their commute. It’s on these mornings when I pause outside the station, turning down the fliers and newspapers that are pushed my way. I light a cigarette and take deep, deliberate drags, watching the paper burn and the smoke dance and hang in the air above me. And for just a moment, I am that smoke, floating high and dissolving into the day. I love this city. I love my job and the friends that I’ve met since I’ve moved back. I don’t even mind living at home that much. But there are moments when all that I want is to lose myself in the familiar warmth of my dreams.

The ember in my hand goes out and I toss the remains into a puddle. As I walk towards my office, I feel the rumble in the vents beneath my feet, and I realize that though I’ve stepped off for a while, that train has not stopped. I can get off and on as I please, and that, perhaps, is the beauty of this gift.

Labels: Imagination, New York, The Subway, Writing

Saturday night turned out to be one of those unexpectedly wonderful nights. I hadn’t been planning on going out. In fact, all I was trying to do was get back home. I’d crashed at a friend’s place the night before and had that stale feeling you get when you sleep in your clothes and have to borrow other people’s toiletries. But Sara had called and said that she and our friend Lou were in town. They had driven up from DC to take a few salsa classes in the city, and wanted to hang out. Their class was scheduled to get out at 5 and I half-heartedly agreed to meet them.

We walked around the corner to 6th where we entered the first bar we saw—Rogue, a large, elegant sports bar with polished mahogany tables and HD plasma screens covering the walls. The Colts/Ravens game was on and the bar was filled—and I mean filled—with men. The three of us looked around appreciatively as we took note of the fact that we were pretty much the only females in the room.

Food was our priority, and we proceeded to order platters of wings, calamari, and something incredible called “Irish Nachos”—thin slices of fried potatoes covered in sour cream, cheese sauce, chives, and bacon. Sara got a bucket of Bud Lights for the table, and Ilana and Vanessa soon showed up from other parts of the city to join us. Within the hour, we were eating, drinking, and shouting at the TV like we knew what was going on (we clearly didn’t). Our waiter, Alex, took a quick liking to us. “You guys are going too slow,” he said with a wink as he brought us yet another bucket that we hadn’t ordered.

“You, sir,” I giggled while waving my beer in the air, “are a very good waiter.” He smiled and a few minutes later came back with a tray of tequila shots and a handful of limes.

A little while later, another group of women showed up. They were older—probably early to mid 40s—and decked out to the nines. I’m talking tight bedazzled jeans, leopard print halter tops with little velvet jackets, heels, and hairstyles that are best described as “coifs.” Their faces were caked with make-up and a cloud of perfume followed them wherever they walked.

They were clearly cougars on the prowl.

The girls and I watched them as they were shown to a table across from ours.

“Betcha they order Cosmos,” I said under my breath.

Within minutes, a round of pink drinks in martini glasses was brought to their table.

“Oh god,” Sara moaned.

We watched them for a little while the way one normally watches the Discovery Channel. There was something about their dress and movements that seemed so calculated, so desperate… Their eyes constantly searched about the room and they each took turns taking the looong way to the bathroom, prancing around the room in their stilettos and cackling loudly to each other. The majority of the men ignored them, keeping their eyes glued to the screen. After a while the women seemed to lose interest and left just as loudly as they walked in. The whole spectacle barely lasted 40 minutes, but we couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“It’s like they purposely came here because they knew it was game night. There can be no other explanation,” I said.

“It’s a little sad,” said Lou. We nodded in agreement and looked at each other silently, each of us thinking but not willing to say the same thing. Finally, Alex showed up with another bucket of beers. We each grabbed one and I raised mine up. “To not ending up like that,” I said. We laughed and clinked our beers, and joined the crowd in a cheer as the Saints scored.


*********

“You guys are like the Latina Fox Force Five,” said a friend when I recounted the story later.

“Yeah…except that Ilana is Jewish…” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but that’s her thing,” he explained. “You have knives, Vanessa has guns, and Ilana isn’t actually Latina. It’s kitschy…”

Obviously he was just kidding, but it felt like there was a little bit of truth to it. Together we were like a powerful little team. It’s really rare that I get to go out with a group of girls. It’s usually just Vanessa and me, rolling around my bed watching movies and drinking ginger tea. Occasionally we’ll venture out for a night of salsa dancing (OK so we’ve only done it once since I’ve moved back, but that counts!) or a “books and booze” night in the East Village, but most of the time we’re total homebodies who giggle and daydream and act the exact same way that we did when we first met ten years ago.

As much as I love our quiet nights, it felt good to be out for a change. We were totally relaxed—Sara and Lou were in sweats, Vanessa hadn’t washed her hair, I was all kinds of dirty, and Ilana—well, ok, Ilana looked pretty freaking amazing, but still… Unlike the other group of women, we weren’t there to meet guys or flirt. There was no pressure. We were just a group of girls, having fun and catching up. The irony is that even though we weren’t the least bit interested, suddenly all these boys were paying attention to us—several guys spent the night staring at our table and smiling at us, the waiter continuously lavished free drinks on us, and by the end of the night a whole table full of guys had sidled up near us and kept finding excuses to join in on our conversation.

Near the end, one of the guys asked what we were doing next. “Going home,” I said as I signaled Alex to bring me the check.

“Really?” He asked. “No party?”

“No party,” I replied. “We just want bed.”

We bundled back into our coats and walked out to Vanessa’s car. On the drive back to NJ I turned around and realized that Sara and Lou had fallen asleep in the backseat.

“They’re kind of like puppies, aren’t they?” I asked Vane softly. We giggled to ourselves and turned down the radio.

“Hey,” Vane asked. “Can we make ginger tea when we get home?”

“Of course,” I replied.

Labels: food, friends, New York

I always say that I'm going to try and make it to more shows/museums/plays etc., but nine out of ten times I just end up curled up on the couch with my laptop and a glass of wine. Last night was the exception, however, as I finally motivated and met up with a friend at Pianos in the LES to check out band Mattison's set. I hadn't heard about Mattison until the aforementioned friend linked me to their MySpace page earlier that day, but now I'm really glad he did.

They've got this great melodic sound that swoops around the room and engulfs you like a warm bath. And lead singer Kate (last name Mattison--not a coincidence) has one of those sultry, classic voices that really makes me wish it was still legal to smoke in NY--and this despite the fact that she was battling a bit of a scratchy cold. Plus, she likes my glasses, so you know she's got to be cool...

Labels: music, New York