June 26, 2006

Short Cuts

In DC this past weekend we were moving from bar to bar, from Cue Bar to Local 16 to Saint-Ex. Too much vodka later I started thinking, and everyone knows that after too much vodka you’re not really thinking much at all.

I started thinking about timing and how when it comes to relationships timing is everything. People can be brought together or torn apart because of this one single word and it’s difficult to know when the timing is right. Most of the time it can come around and hit you in the face and you won’t even recognize it. We spend so much time trying to chase it down that sometimes it’s almost impossible to deal with when we finally catch up with it.

In DC and too much vodka later I got upset with timing and tried to grab hold of it and do something about it. Too much vodka later you can start to actually think there’s something you can do about it, something you can say to make it slow down the way you want it to. But, if you’re lucky as I was, in this futile but courageous attempt to reach out into the spinning vortex of passing seconds you’ll find that the person you were trying to reach has changed their phone number, leaving you wondering when this happened and how is it that you didn’t know. Has it been that long? you ask, as timing again is working for or against you and you’ll never know which.

And someone asked the question, “so what’s better – being in an easy relationship or not being in one at all?” I guess when something is easy it’s a lot more comfortable to stick around than go chasing after timing, especially when there might not be anyone on the other end. Because I get it, that loving is a fix, like a drug to an addict and it’s easy to take a hit and make it automatic. But still I answered the latter, thinking that in the end lost phone calls and quick fixes are never enough. We all take drugs of some kind to help ease the pain – and that was me sitting there just drinking too much vodka, alone.

June 25, 2006

Honestly, men.

I couldn’t help myself. My eyes started to look around me, on the floor, under the seats as a small strange subconscious panic overtook me as I was standing on the subway reading the latest TIME magazine book excerpt from Ron Suskind about Al-Qaeda’s plot to attack the New York City subway.

Great. As I read the article (and other people tilted their heads to read it too) I think all of us started to wonder when the morning might come when something could go terribly wrong. When I finished the article just before I made my exit at Houston, I took a deep breath, shoved the magazine back into my bag thinking there’s nothing I can do. No one knows what might happen tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, and living in fear is no way of living at all.

However this article from the New York Times gives me yet another reason to try to suppress fear on the subway. It happened on the T in Boston, but with all the more people on the subway here in New York it happens more often. While I’ve yet to be “groped” on mass transit, I have been verbally harassed, and have, on more than on occasion given withering looks to men standing next to me who have more than enough room that they don’t have to be pushed up against me and their eyes have more than enough other angles to look than the general proximity of my chest.

While I am someone who has yet to really understand the overall thought process of the opposite sex, this subway exposure thing really takes the cake. Men grabbing women as they pass and dropping their pants in front of them on the 4/5/6 really doesn’t make any sense to me at all. But then again, neither do men. In Tokyo they have already started the movement towards all-female subways. That’s just what I need – a morning stuck in a perfume packed car full of women ranting about the latest sale at Bloomingdales all while struggling to find room for their huge sunglasses and Louis Vuitton bags.

It’s getting more hazardous living in this city than ever, and it’s not because of what’s happening between the high-rises and cab filled streets – it’s what is taking place underground that has people living in fear. Whatever happened to the days when people could commute to work without worrying about whether or not they’re actually going to make it to the office? Whatever happened to the days when men respected women? Perhaps those days never really existed at all and what is happening now is the slow destruction of a society as it seeps down beneath its surface, infecting the core.

So when I finished reading the Times article I took a deep breath, shoved the newspaper back into my bag and thought there’s nothing I can do. Because this is New York and the city plays by it's own rules and because some men just never grow up.

June 22, 2006

Another weekend away

I'm going to The District tomorrow for the weekend and will be staying at the Brokedown Palace (Love Shack formerly known as the Urban Family's Secret Lair) in U Street.

Should be interesting if I make it back unscathed and still with my wallet. I will spend more money traveling via cab from my office to LaGuardia than I will for the entire flight to Reagan. I hate that I can barely afford to travel. I hate that I can barely afford much of anything.

Last time I was at the Brokedown Palace was in December for a Christmas party with Kinsey. I got incredibly drunk on vodka and cheap champagne which was spilled on my tulle skirt and ended up singing to (shouting to) Journey with everyone else who was there. I will of course be drunk for the better part of this weekend, and am looking forward to going back to New Vegas Lounge. Will report more upon my return.

Don’t stop believing indeed.

June 19, 2006

People Tell Me Things

The girl on the train had just about every gossip magazine you could imagine tucked into the seat in front of her. I sat down next to the window and opened up the manuscript I was supposed to be diligently reading for work, with my head down, absorbed, like any good New Yorker would be, not acknowledging anyone else around them.

Truth is I didn’t want to sit next to anyone. I didn’t want to get stuck next to the guy who ate the whole time, or the girl who talked on her phone, or, god forbid the person who wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want someone to ask me questions about myself and go through the typical travel bonding that people go through, thinking that just because they’re going to be sitting next to someone on a train for the next 2.5 hours going to the same destination, that suddenly we’re comrades in battle, old acquaintances, or come to it, friends.

In the end call it cynical or whatever you want, but I simply want to be left alone. And I could see out of the corner of my eye the late-comer travelers doing what all late-comer travelers do – scoping out who is the least terrible person to sit next to. With all window seats taken they look, assess who is the least offensive person, the least attractive, the least likely to smell, and they make their choice.

Kathleen chose me. She sat down reading with a box of Good ‘n Plenty, a candy which I have never thought to be neither good nor plentiful and about twenty minutes into the ride upstate decided she’d gotten enough information about the status of Nick Lachey and his new girlfriends, enough about the Dateline interview with Matt Lauer and Britney Spears and how she’s now white trash and should seriously reconsider the length of her skirts, and the latest about Brad and Angelina and that old looking dude from American Idol. Twenty minutes into the ride she decided she wanted to be my friend.

Kathleen, or Kathy if you will, is a sophomore at Pratt who is obsessed with Sex and the City, going to clubs, Midori sours, Spring Break in Miami and great literature like “Oh my god have you even read Bergdorf Blondes? Its only like the BEST BOOK ever written! I mean I don’t like to read but that book like made me want to read again. You have to read it!”

She can’t wait to graduate and come to New York and be like Carrie Bradshaw. When I told her how I came to New York from Boston she said, “Oh my god that must have been so hard. How did you do it? I mean I want to do that but I don’t know if I can, it’s like, so scary. I mean, alone?” she asked. She thought it was “fabulous” that I live in the Upper East Side, she thought it was “amazing” that I occasionally work with celebrity authors. She liked my sunglasses and my shoes and my outfit and asked me that if she ever gets to New York would I’d take her out to the hottest clubs and the hottest bars and introduce her to the hottest guys.

As callous as people may think I am, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my life isn’t as fabulous as she thinks. I didn’t tell her that her perception of great literature was making me slightly nauseous. I couldn’t tell her the truth about life and money and shitty New York (or anywhere) men. And then I realized that sometimes we can go through life not really seeing our lives the way other people see them. Some people, such as myself, are our own severest critics, and it is the Kathy’s of the world that can help us see we don’t have it so bad after all. Some people (gasp) even aspire to be like us. Now while that might make Kathy certifiably insane, and if she really got to know me she might entirely retract that thought - but for those 2.5 hours she thought I was pretty great and I couldn’t help but love her for it.

On the way back to the city this morning, reading the still unfinished manuscript half asleep with sunglasses on, a man sat down next to me, said hello, read half of Newsweek and fell asleep – just the way I like it.

June 15, 2006

Because some things never change

Woman on the subway today, painting her nails. Pink, I think. I can hardly begin to understand how she did it. I’m nowhere close to being that coordinated or, come to it, that desperate for time that rattling uptown on the express is the only chance I have to give myself a quick manicure.

I was talking to Sweet Girl tonight (pls. refer to Dirty Water) and we were both recognizing how tonight is Thursday and on Thursday’s in Boston we would always go to the Pig on the Hill and we would always have a great time and I would always be hung over at work on Friday. Not hung over on Friday anymore (sadly), as this job requires a lot more focus and concentration.

Speaking of a job that requires focus and attention – I’m heading out of the city tomorrow to visit home for the weekend. Since I’ve been here I don’t feel like I can function normally outside of the city limits but this weekend I’m giving it a try. Once you get into the New York groove it’s difficult to get out. Different cities have different feels, and while I’ve got Boston under my skin, New York (for now anyway) runs my life.

I smiled at the woman painting her nails with her groceries balanced on her lap on the subway, and thought that perhaps I’m headed down the path to becoming that kind of New Yorker. That kind of New Yorker is everywhere. But me? I would never wear pink.

June 13, 2006

As if I had all the answers

My friend just had her first one-night stand. She said that apparently the price of getting laid by her is a few 2 dollar PBR's and a taco at 3AM. A “seemingly amazing guy” who drove her home in the morning said he'd call and take her on a real date. So far, no call.

So she asked me for my advice. Now I may not have any clue on how to run my own love life. I may be someone who always likes the wrong people – guys who lead me on, guys who treat me badly, guys who cheat on me, guys who are in relationships. I may not have any idea why this is or how I might go about fixing it. I may be single and alone at 40 with cats, still on the upper east side swigging martini's every night and showing up drunk at all of my friends weddings. Regardless of all of this, other people always seem to come to me for my advice.

She talked about how her and the “seemingly amazing guy” walked around for hours talking about everything and nothing at the same time. She told me how she had never felt such an instantaneous attraction or connection with anyone before in her life. And one thing led to another and the next day after he brought her home, she knew. She knew in her gut the way girls know in their guts that he wasn’t going to call.

We go home with people knowing they’re not going to call because we’re all looking for something and we don’t know how to find it. We think they see something in us that no one else has ever seen. But there’s a difference in looking at a thing and seeing a thing. And people tell lies. They tell them easier than they should and more than they should and we believe them, even though we know we shouldn’t.

So I tell her among other things that there are no answers. I tell her that sometimes things just are what they are in the end no matter how you feel, and there’s no changing that. I tell her that a one night stand is a one night chance to figure out who you are and if you ever want to be a one night anything to anyone ever again. I tell her I’m no good with advice.

June 11, 2006

Because what you see isn’t always what you get.

There we were sitting in Tea & Sympathy and it was like no time had passed at all. More old friends coming into town to keep me company and it’s hard to think that one would need company in a city so large. We had walked from the East side to the West side through the Park and around the reservoir and could see from the north side, the city skyline. My friend looked at me earnestly and said “how can you look at this and not realize how great it is that you are here?”

Because, I thought to tell him, great isn’t just skylines. Because great can’t just be great views and great restaurants and tall buildings.

From the West side back to the East side we went to Bella Blu on Lexington for dinner where the bartender was burning napkins behind the bar and people were clapping at the flying sparks like they were sparklers on the fourth of July. After drinks uptown we walked home drunk and I thought that great is old friends and conversation and memories and not feeling like such an insignificant blip on the radar of such a massive city.

June 6, 2006

Conversation on the 1/9

Cute guy next to me on the subway looking exactly like all the suits who pile on the 1/9 express at 42nd street. Blonde hair and blue eyes with a black leather messenger bag with attached hanging nalgene bottle.

I was busy reading the latest New Yorker, the “Life During Wartime” issue. I skipped to the back first, which I always do, to the cartoon contest. I didn’t win the last one I sent in a few weeks ago. Apparently I’m not clever enough. At least not New Yorker clever.

Interrupting my reading of “Yugoslavia 1991” was two girls who were standing next to me:


“She just doesn’t get it. He totally doesn’t like her, it’s like so pathetic.”
“Oh I know, I mean she should take a hint ya know? You don’t just DO something like that when it’s so OBVIOUS that the guy doesn’t like you.”
“I know, like what was she even thinking? It’s like so ridiculous I can’t even believe it.”
“And then to like keep calling him?! Trying to like talk to him and shit.”
“Oh I know! I like honestly don’t get what was going through her head.”
“Me either. But whatever, she’s not even pretty.”
“Ew I know, totally not pretty enough for him. She’s like such a bitch anyway. I don’t even know why we’re friends with her. She’s always talking about everyone behind their back.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. I was eavesdropping because that’s what people do when you’re packed in like sardines on the 1/9 uptown express. They were right there sharing the same pole as me and cute guy with the briefcase and too much gel in his hair. I looked up realizing my outburst, and the two girls shot me a dirty look and got off at the next stop. Cute guy was smiling and holding back a laugh too. The girls weren’t pretty and the guy got off with me at 72nd and walked in the opposite direction, his nalgene swinging behind him.

June 4, 2006

Another Friday night

Without me saying anything he bought me a drink and it came back a small vodka soda with a lime and I realized that I have become a forgone conclusion, something I’ve never wanted to be.

But that’s what’s good about having friends and people who know you well. You don’t have to worry about being another version of yourself the way you do when you’re meeting someone new and trying to get them to buy you a vodka soda.

And there we were amidst New Yorkers on the Upper East Side who made it out in the rain at midnight on a Friday/Saturday looking for something. Every guy had on a collared shirt that was, patterned or not, blue or black. Every girl had on cleavage revealing tank tops with lots of jewelry and were traveling in packs.

Most of the time when we go out looking for it, it finds us and we hardly know the difference.