December 1.

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving. The turkey has been cooked for over four hours and we’ve eaten it in under four minutes. Now Christmas, the other big holiday that they’ve so cruelly dropped in between now and New Years, is now upon us.

I’ve tried to look the other way for weeks now, since Halloween when stores were already promoting their holiday merchandise in windows all over the city. I’ve tried to look the other way, but I’m poised again to now send out cards and buy gifts I can’t afford for people I care about but certainly haven’t seen enough of since last Christmas.

Why is that? Busy I guess. Lost in our own lives, which is easy enough to do. This morning watching the Today Show, my coffee was getting cold as they told me that the tree lighting is in two days (I nearly dropped the cup). Two days. And in 31 days this year will officially be over. I now know what Charlie Brown was talking about when he said Christmas just ended up making him feel depressed. And no amount of gifts, glasses of highly-caloric egg nog (note: now available in grocery stores) and tidings of good cheer can do much to change that (back off, Linus).

Last night as I was walking up Broadway in 65 degree heat (global warming?), I saw on almost every block, wooden stands holding up trees. Like clockwork they appear every year right after Thanksgiving, and as I passed one near 87th a signing voice imploring me to dream of a white Christmas drifted through the tinny speakers of an old radio. A family of four picked out the perfect Fraser Fir ($90?!) and the Dad hefted it over his shoulder to walk it back to their apartment.

Ok, so I guess I can’t look the other way any longer. December and Christmas in New York are staring me right in the face. And while I can hardly believe it, (and can’t afford a tree) they’ll light the tree in Rockefeller in two days and I’ll eventually go over to see it. I’ll get used to the smell of pine walking to the subway just in time for it to be replaced by dried old trees thrown out and left behind on the sidewalk.

It’s the holiday cycle, and as much as I try to resist it every year, it’s unavoidable. But I figure I’ve made it through Thanksgiving, and if I just keep my head down long enough I’ll make it through to January soon enough, too.

taxi cab confessions.

At one o’clock in the morning after a long night at Smith and Mills, half-drunk on Jameson’s in the back of a cab speeding up the West Side Highway, one of the last things I expected to have to deal with was a meaningful conversation with someone…especially not the driver of my cab.

"Gray’s Papaya," he said.

I think we were out of Tribeca at this point and nearing the 20’s, but I was barely paying attention. I was looking out the window at the city flying by, already trying to figure out how I was going to make it to the office in the morning.

"I’m sorry?" I asked.
"Gray’s Papaya, you know, the hotdog place on 6th?"
"Yeah I know it. What about it?"
"I got a ticket there today. Picked up a passenger while stopped in the crosswalk and the cop gave me a ticket, can you believe that?"

He sounded baffled.

"Is that illegal?" I asked.
"Well…yeah," he said. "But that’s not the point. You know those coppers got nothing better to do on a Wednesday night than write me up picking up someone by the curb."
"Yeah. Really ridiculous," I said. It didn’t sound like much of an outrage to me, but he seemed terribly upset.
"Of course it is!" he shouted.
"Well it’s near the end of the month, you know how those cops are…" I said cringing.

What was I even saying? I don’t how those cops "are," but it felt like the right thing to say.

"Oh I know it," he said. "And I should have known that woman was going to be trouble when I saw her standing there. Should never have picked her up."

We were quiet for a while and I wondered if maybe I was supposed to say something else, like about how women are trouble and that I was sorry he’d had had such a bad night.

"You know what I really want to do?" he asked, and I had a feeling he was going to tell me regardless.
"What’s that?"
"Be a doorman."

I nodded in the backseat but I don’t think he could see me.

"And not just any doorman, not an apartment building doorman, a hotel doorman. That’s where the good money is. Good money."
"That sounds like a great idea," I said thinking it over. "Why haven’t you done it?"
He was quiet for a moment before he spoke.
"I don’t know, actually," he said and it sounded like he surprised himself.
"That doesn’t really sound like a good enough reason to me," I said.
"I know," he said shaking his head. "I don’t know what I’m doing, why I keep putting it off…"
"Listen," I said, taking my A-1 professional tone. "What you need to do is make a list of the top ten hotels in the city you think you’d like to work for, and then call them. Get your resume ready and just show up, talk to their HR departments, whatever it takes."
"I know," he said, and he sounded like he really knew. "I know you’re right. I mean there’s the Sheraton, The Marriott, the Hilton…"
"All good places," I said channeling my best Dr. Phil. "But you need to actually do it, talking about it won’t actually get you the job."
"But…what if I’m not qualified?"
"You’re qualified. Of course you’re qualified. Look, you must be pretty prompt, I mean you’ve got to get in this car every day don’t you? And you’re a people person, right? I mean you’re in here all day talking to customers. What more could a doorman need to do?"
"You’re right," he said, nodding his head now. "I know you’re right. I don’t know what I’m so scared about."
"I don’t know either. This is New York," I said. "You can be anything you want as long as you try hard enough."

When we reached my corner I felt in that moment a great love for this city surge up in my chest.
Why in the world would anyone ever want to live anywhere else?

"You’re right. I’m really going to do it. I am. Thanks so much for your advice," he said and then turned back and smiled at me through the hole in the partition. "You owe me nineteen bucks."

It's unseasonably warm in New York.

I know now that I have no idea where summer went. In fact, as I walk down the streets of Manhattan, leaves turning yellow and falling making the ground slippery in the rain beneath my feet, I wonder where the last year of my life has gone to.

I always hate people who lament the passing of time as though they weren’t awake for it, as though they’d gone out of town or fell into a coma and can’t at all be held responsible for what’s happened while they weren’t paying attention. Where has the time gone?! they plead to each other. Its been flying! Time just packing its bags and settling in first class on a trip far away while their backs were turned.

But this time, (I hate to admit it) I agree with them. I agree with every word they’re saying because the more I try to recall what I’ve done since this year began, the more I don’t feel like I’ve done much of anything at all. And instead of having the cold air of fall to numb my brain so I don’t have to think too long about all the time I’ve wasted (what was I thinking?), all the opportunities I’ve let pass me by (so many and I still can’t understand why...), I’ve got the warm humid air of spring coming through just a week before Thanksgiving to ensure that I feel it all. Each little pang of regret. Each fuzzy memory of an entire year gone - poof - just like that.

I want this warm weather to leave like the leaves on the trees will soon, entirely, so that I can try to pretend that next year things will be different. I’ll take the cold and snow now please, so that I can try to pretend that with another change of the weather (and trust me, it will happen fast) maybe I’ll be different, too.

Here's looking at you, kid.

“Are you here with someone?” he asked. He was stuttering and a bit drunk and in a bar crowded with so many people I really had to wonder how it was that he’d spotted me.

“Yes,” I lied. I know it’s a callous thing to do, but sometimes you just have to pick your battles when you’re found alone at a bar while your friend has abandoned you for the bathroom and a stranger approaches.

“Are you here with someone great?” he swayed slightly has he spoke.

“Uh yeah he’s pretty great,” I said. Why not? I mean, if I were going to be anywhere with someone wouldn’t they’d have to be pretty great?

“Is he as great a guy as you deserve, or,” he said and paused for effect. “Do you think I might be better?” He smiled slowly and blinked slowly and I had to give him credit for making his case as well as he was considering he looked to be about ready to topple over.

I checked my watch.

“I’d say he’s about as great as I deserve, yes,” I said suddenly wishing this person we were talking about actually existed.

“Okay,” he nodded, slowly, looking satisfied. “As long as you say so then I guess there’s nothing more I can do.”

“Afraid so,” I said.

He shrugged and stuck out his hand through the fog of his alcoholic overload to shake my own. It was as though we’d just had a sort of interview for a job he tried his hardest for, but had to now accept that he wasn’t the right man for the position.

“Really really great to meet you,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“Sure,” I said knowing what was inevitably going to happen next.

He never came back.

Of all the men in all the bars in all the city…

parade.

If I’m on the subway in the morning with sunglasses on trying to read the paper my head still fuzzy because I haven’t had coffee yet, please don’t enter the train at Penn Station with a bunch of your friends where you’re all obviously arriving, (already drunk at 9AM), from New Jersey being loud and in Yankees attire carrying open Bud Light cans in plastic bags talking in front of me about bad movies and pretzels and declaring you hate “The city,” and “Could never live here” (we know that) and “What stop is this? Is this our stop?” every two seconds because you have no idea where you are, while proving how amazingly unable you are to stand up in the train as it’s moving and ultimately stepping on my foot more times than I can count.

Because if you’re going to do that, “sorry” just isn’t going to cut it.

'tis the season.

Fifth avenue window displays.
Red Starbucks holiday cups.
Rockefeller Christmas tree.
Endless ads for animated movie retellings of old holiday classics.

I'm not ready yet.