August 29, 2006

Guys: Word of Advice

I’m apparently going to grow old. I’m going to grow old, alone, and maybe with lots of cats because I’m…smart? Wait, that can’t be right. I mean okay, I guess I can say I’ve always wondered why it is that there are all these girls walking around with men on their arms who they don’t know Louis Vuitton from Louis the VIII, but in all honesty, Michael Noer is out of his mind (and I’m assuming married to someone who can’t read or tie her shoes without his assistance).

He is saying (and please, you have to read this article for the full effect) that women who have jobs aren’t women you men out there should be marrying. We are, apparently, more likely to cheat, less likely to love you, unwilling to bear your children, and more likely to divorce you, as opposed to say, someone who doesn’t work or care about the fact that they can’t support themselves, and are fine with you being the sole breadwinner.

“…successful men are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure … at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is, the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?”

Yes men, don’t you all just have it so tough.

Word of advice: men need to get over themselves (and read Elizabeth Corcoran’s response). Last I checked marriage is about two people making the decision (albeit somewhat insane) to spend their entire lives together recognizing that life gets in the way and marriage isn’t one smoothly paved road to the Promised Land. There are going to be problems, and in the changing economy where inflation is going to make maintaining our quality of life harder than ever, how can a marriage survive without both parties holding down solid jobs?

If the reality-based truth that marriage is hard work and warrants compromise and understanding isn’t present in your mind when you’re walking down the aisle (or in this case watching your future walking down the aisle towards you) – abort.

“If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy” (Has he given birth?) “They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do” (Since when does making a lot of money make anyone unhappy?) “You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do” (Get over it). “You will be more likely to fall ill” (Successful woman =death?). “Even your house will be dirtier” (Learn to wash your own dishes).

And in case we haven’t gotten to the most offensive part of this man’s column yet, here’s my all time favorite statement:


“The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen his or her mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase that he or she will meet someone more likable than you.”

Does no one really actually love the person they marry anymore? Does no one have restraint or morals or trust? If all of this is true and the person you ‘til-death-do-you-part with just frolics off with the first person who plans the office holiday party with them, then there are greater issues involved here. As in: perhaps you never should have married that person to begin with, 401k and benefits or not.

And let’s not forget some famous couples in history here: Charles cheating on Diana, Bill on Hillary, Donald on Ivana, Frank on Kathie Lee, and the one I think was the worst betrayal in the history of adultery, Woody on Mia with her own daughter.

And we’re the ones being branded with scarlet letters?

This is all really too much. And just in case I wasn’t already on the fence about the whole, with this ring I thee wed business, Michael Noer and his male point of view (and I’m not making a blanket statement here) doesn’t do much to improve my overall opinion.

Because no matter what, I’ll always be the kind of girl who steers clear of $1000 plus priced hand bags.

I guess that like a good job, a good man really is hard to find.

August 27, 2006

"Get me off this bus"

I don’t remember much of the nearly five hour bus ride form New York Boston aside from the fact that the guy next to me was literally sleeping on top of me. Boarding the bus without anything, no book, no magazine, not even an ipod, I knew I was in for a long trip. The worst possible thing would be that he might want to talk with in order to pass the time. Probably talk about where I’m from and where I’m going and why I’m on this smelly bus looking like I don’t want to talk to anyone. Like I’ve mentioned in other posts about traveling, I don’t like to be troubled with other people.

So I sat and diligently read The New Yorker and tried not to encourage him. An hour into the trip he was out like a light, sleeping like he might were he home in his living room, sprawled out on his worn-in recliner. At one point his head was on my shoulder, his leg almost draped entirely over mine and the irony didn’t escape me that it was there, on a reckless, speeding, smelly (did I mention that before?) bus that a guy is all over me.

If I got any closer to the window I would have been outside.

When he woke up, finally, he looked up at me with sleepy eyes and asked in half-amazement: “We’re here?”

Yes. And the symphonic range of your snoring made the journey all the more delightful. Can I have your number?

But in this day and age (meaning living in New York City and being 23) I can’t argue with spending $15 on anything, and in this case I guess that meant some unwanted bus-time canoodling.

August 23, 2006

New York Is...

When I first came here I didn’t know what I was doing. Eight months later and who’s to say I’m any further along that path to figuring it all out. Who says I’ll ever get there. I spend too much money on coffee, throwing in cash to keep awake in this life I’m still creating, each day as the sun rises and sets, as I make my way to work and to home, Lower West side to Upper East. And it’s always alone, the daily grind, the coming to terms with change and how this city is constantly moving.

And then one day you wake up and realize things are changing. It’s been happening so gradually you hardly notice it, but then you come home from work and your new roommate, your old friend is marking another birthday and you find yourself surrounded by friends, new friends, people you’ve just met but whose lives you’re suddenly a part of, even if only in the smallest of ways, and you feel you’re making something of yourself. You’re finding a life you never knew existed. You’re starting to make ties to people who will eventually tie you to others, and who knows where that will take you.

In a city where you’re constantly surrounded by people it’s almost impossible for the direction of your life not to be influenced in some way.

And then tomorrow, or today really as it’s rounding one o’clock and people are still filtering out of the apartment, dizzy on Dirty Waters and beer, I’m leaving for Boston to visit my old life for a few days. A night at the Pig, sleeping in my old home in the Back Bay realizing maybe (maybe) that life is where your stuff is, where your new friends are, where your future (no matter how uncertain) rests, waiting for you to come back.

Because there are always certainties, like the life you know and have left behind. But New York Is…the life you’ve yet to experience, where certainties come and go as fast as subways and it’s the idea of the day to day that keeps you moving forward (with coffee).

So tomorrow is Boston (still sad and recovering I’m sure from the five-game sweep), and after that back to the city. Because New York Is…home.

August 17, 2006

Salsa Wednesdays

Only in New York can you be at one place, mention to someone how much you'd love to go salsa dancing, and, ten minutes later be in a cab en-route to the best Afro Cuban salsa club in the city.

August 15, 2006

We're All Afraid

I think about it every time I see someone whose home is the corner of 72nd and Lex and I think I have no idea what I’m doing in this place that houses the person in the penthouse and the one who sleeps beside it. And when I pass them by I think that the story books never told them about this.

Because one day it hits you. Like a truck or a speeding biker on 5th Ave or the deep pangs of regret that happen upon you when you lay awake and night, staring at the ceiling thinking about all the things you should have done, or shouldn’t have, wishing you could go back and change it, rewind, fast forward, delete, become someone else…

…someone on the corner of 72nd and Lex, hand outstretched. It hits that what you were taught about life isn’t the way things are at all.

We have been raised on measures of fear, of reality, of self-hatred. Instructions: use sparingly.

But the thing we’ve been made certain of is the restriction of one thing – our time.

Time in itself, offers very little.

So I think about it, every time I see someone whose home is the corner of something 2nd and anything ave. that maybe we don’t know much, but we know one thing. Because one day life could hit you, bam, like a truck or a speeding bike and there you’ll be, hand outstretched wondering where the hands of the clock have run off to.

And yet, still we’re all of us, all afraid.

August 14, 2006

August 6, 2006

different cities, different lives

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city I barely know. How can someone know a city so large in only eight months? How can someone ever really know a city at all? It’s always changing and with that comes the inability to really get comfortable. Because as soon as you do it’s another favorite bar that goes out of business or restaurant that relocates, leaving you lost and alone, making your way out again into the fray to forge ahead in an attempt to recreate your life.

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city I’m learning to love, to my friends. They’ve been left behind in different cities, in different lives, and when they came to visit I wondered how it is that I’ve been managing all this time on my own.

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city that has become my home, realizing that the street corners grow on you and change (as does a city) from daylight to dusk, from walking past at 2AM drunk to 2PM sober. They incorporate themselves into your life like the mundane chores of breathing and eating and this is how you come to know them. This is how 72nd street becomes your life and how you find the man who works at the 24 store on the corner (Kevin) giving you life advice at 3AM.

It changes, life (and the city) like the array of smells that hits you from one block to the next. And then suddenly it’s 48 hours later and your friends have to leave, back to their different cities and different lives and you take comfort in the fact that you’re building something here, in the ever-changing city that surrounds you.

August 3, 2006

And to think in February we couldn’t wait for summer.

At the end of the day the office was buzzing with who had power and who didn’t.

Lower East Side, Park Slope, the Bronx.

People were making plans on where they were going to stay and making phone calls to the electrical company demanding (as New Yorkers do) to know when it is expected to come back on.

“We’re not sure,” wasn’t good enough. It rarely is.

On the way home it started to rain. I got off the bus early at Park Ave and walked home to 2nd and people around me were running, newspapers on heads, large umbrellas taking up sidewalks impeding vision and all I could think was: is no one ever satisfied?