“I never thought it was such a bad little tree.”

It’s here. I think I was shell-shocked after Thanksgiving, still in denial (perhaps it was all the wine), that the holidays were much further away than they appeared. But Wednesday morning I realized, as it literally hit me on my walk to the office. Just as I reached Fifth Avenue at 52^ndstreet  - bam! - a guy bumped into me like he didn’t see me at all. My shoulder was thrown back and I turned around ready to yell. Upon further examination I figured he probably actually hadn’t seen me because he was a tourist (made obvious by a lot of things including but not limited to the jeans, sneakers and baseball cap in Midtown on a weekday), and tourists don’t see anything because they walk with their necks craned as though they’ve never seen tall buildings before.

And maybe they haven’t.

“Unbelievable,” I said, my go-to response for all types of frustrating encounters with people in and around this city (sometimes when it’s really egregious there’s a certain bleeping expletive placed before it). “Watch where you’re going, dude.” I opted for “dude” in an attempt to take a bit of the sting out of it instead of, say, “moron” or “blind idiot.”

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, ma’am!” he said. I turned around and he had his hands out in front of him as though he were bracing himself for me to throw a punch. I’m not sure what I was more taken aback by, how apologetic he was or that I’m now, apparently, old enough to be referred to as ma’am. I relented taking pity, and simply shook my head at him. It was a chastising but accepting gesture of his apology, and I proceeded to stand on the corner to wait for the light to change.

“I really am sorry,” he continued. “I’ve never been to New York before, and we’re in town for the tree lighting tonight and I’m trying to find where to go…”

My heart seized. The bleeping unbelievable Rockefeller tree lighting is TONIGHT? In all my denial about the holiday season I’d forgotten this annual tourist trap was upon us. Now all I could think about was how from tomorrow until the end of the month I’m going to have to push back against a torrent of tourists all gawking at store windows and blocking the sidewalks with their enormous shopping bags every time I enter or leave work.

“It’s three blocks that way,” I said not turning around, extending my right arm and index finger southwards down Fifth the way the Ghost of Christmas Future points to Ebenezer Scrooge’s grave.

I think he said thank you but I didn’t hear it, I was already crossing the street, leaving him stranded looking for where to go for what was sure to be one of the most irritating nights of his life. What is it about being wedged in with hundreds of people for hours waiting for Justin Bieber to sing a bad rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” that makes people feel like that’s what the holiday season is all about? I guess it’s the same people who eat their Thanksgiving dinners in tents outside Best Buy.

I wonder where they get it, the propensity not to feel depressed and annoyed at this season of emotional and materialistic stresses. Doesn’t it get to them, all the expectation and pressure, how we have no choice but to remember the way things used to be, that time when life was a lot less complicated? I’ll admit that for the rest of the year I’m a lot better at pushing the past and everything else back, keeping it at bay. But for some reason this season goes down like a glass of eggnog laced with melancholy, and I tend to go through December with my head down holding my breath until it’s over. 

Later that night while I was still at the office, I found myself remembering two years ago being at dinner with my friend Matt downtown the night before we were both meant to leave the city for Christmas. It was the last chance we were going to have to go skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park, and we decided as we paid the check that we should go. We hopped in a cab and sped uptown, shoving extra cash at the driver to get us there in time. He dropped us at Central Park South, and we ran through the darkened snow covered lanes of the park until we saw it, the bright icy circle floating in the distance, holiday music booming from surrounding speakers. 

We sprinted to the ticket window, and when we arrived, panting and out of breath, the woman told us the rink was closing in ten minutes, and they weren’t letting anyone else in. Matt and I, still both determined to enjoy this last bit of childhood holiday nostalgia, pleaded with her, reminded her of the spirit of the season. Soon she smiled and gave in, and shook her head at us as she waved us through. It was a Christmas miracle. We had enough time to make about five laps around before they started to turn off the lights. I remember how happy we were to have even that brief time on the ice, how the woman behind the ticket window told us to have a Merry Christmas as we left, and how we reminisced about some of the happier Christmases of our pasts as we walked through the abandoned red and white holiday tents in Columbus Circle on our way home.

Thinking back on that night I realized that's what they're trying to do, those crazy people waiting out in the cold to see the first initial lighting of the tree. They all want to feel something, they want back, even for a moment, the lightness and happiness of youth that Matt and I tried so hard to reclaim that night at the rink. Yes life is difficult and we can't get back the past, but it's important not to give up and lose sight of the good things right here in the present. 

That's why I decided to wait. I waited until Mariah Carey and tourists were all gone, and took a detour to the subway home. It was late and the sidewalks were already emptying as I walked down along Fifth Avenue - 50^th, 49^th, 48^th - and then suddenly there it was. It stood tall and proud, an 80-foot Norway Spruce from Mt. Olive, New Jersey that had been growing in the backyard of one Joe Balku since he bought his home in 1973. It had made it through Superstorm Sandy even as the surrounding trees in Balku’s backyard all were downed. Yet this tree remained. It battled the rain and the high winds only to find itself here, pulled from its roots and adorned with 30,000 lights and topped with a Swarovski crystal star.

Some people were still lingering, all posing for pictures, big smiles on their faces with the giant green tree alight behind them. That’s when I felt it - this tree is a survivor. It gave its life to bring all of these people together, and it will stand here as a beacon of hope for forty days, and after its stint in the spotlight it will become lumber for Habitat for Humanity in order to change the lives of others yet again. It will carry on. Because that’s what we do, in spite of or maybe because of the hardships in our lives we carry on, we survive. We may not know what our destinies hold but we adapt, we strive to find purpose and meaning, we aspire to effect change and to spark love in what little time we have to be alive.

We are all undiscovered trees in distant backyards waiting to find our place in the world, and we do what we can to get by. Maybe that’s the true meaning of the season, to find something that brings us together and reminds us we’re not alone.

A young couple both in puffy jackets and knit hats asked me if I’d take their picture. It took a few tries (I’m not handy with iPhones), but I think we finally got one with real greeting card potential. As I handed the phone back to them they thanked me, and I asked where they were from.

The girl looked at me strangely, cocked her head to the side and said, “Queens.”

Such a thing for two New Yorkers to find themselves together here in front of this tree. 

Further proof I suppose, that the brave New Jersey Norway’s lights shine for all who need it, no matter where they happen to call home.

Love (Online) is a Battlefield.

At a bar in the West Village I saw him standing there waiting for someone to show up. He was wearing what seemed to be his first date casual uniform – a blue gingham dress shirt (why do men insist on refusing to tuck in their shirts?), and jeans that had a bit too much flare. I was sitting with friends, and noticed him the way you notice people at bars who are by themselves. 

He, short and blond, was looking intently at his phone thumbing through messages in what I assumed to be an attempt to look occupied, inconspicuous, less nervous. It wasn’t working. She, shorter and brunette, was wearing a black dress and arrived apologizing profusely for being late. I noticed that their introduction was awkward. There was neither an embrace nor a handshake indicating the lack of intimacy of close friends or people who are currently dating, while also ruling out a business drinks meet-up. This, I assumed on a Sunday night in a dimly lit bar, was an online created first date. He ordered a beer, she something with a pinkish hue. They seemed to chat amicably enough, and after one drink they were gone.

Being myself a newcomer to the scene of online dating, (I’m coming up on my three week anniversary) I wondered what it was in their profiles that made them both think they might be right for each other. What was it among those strange questions and rankings of importance of religion, drug and smoking habits that felt so right that they decided to make a date? There must have been something there that made them both willing to overcome a whole array of fears in order to put on their casual first date uniform best, step outside their comfort zones, and meet a complete stranger. All this was I’m sure on top of the fact that they were both deep down hoping this person had the potential to become someone they might be with long term. I mean, isn’t that the ultimate endgame for all this dating, the prospect that at one point you won’t have to do it anymore?

I’ll be honest with you, filling out an online dating profile was probably one of the most soul sucking experiences of my life. I’m sure it didn’t help that I did it over copious amount of Aberlour, and with a crooning Ella Fitzgerald playing on vinyl in the background. I tried to take seriously questions like “what’s the most private thing you’re willing to admit” (as though that’s somehow any indicator of the kind of person I am?). It was hearing Ella’s voice that really started to make me lament for the old days, the ones when the concept of romance didn’t take place over a computer screen. This isn’t how Ella did it, or the folks who fell in love to her crooning voice on dance floors in jazz clubs back in the 50’s. Surely I too could find a better way? 

But the longer I sat there listening to her, the blinking cursor flashing in the empty field before me, the more I realized that women in the 50’s had their own set of issues to deal with, and it was time I started living in the present, no matter how much at times I might happen to resent it.

It takes a while for a somewhat old fashioned mentality like my own to come to terms with the fact that the man I might end up with could potentially start out as a thumbnail picture alongside a list of six things he could never live without (most often it seems to include different iterations of beer, football, video games, Breaking Bad, and working out). But I decided, as the A-side of the record came to its inevitable end, to defer to the very smart person who somewhere once uttered the mantra of people who give up everywhere - if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I downed another stiff finger of single malt, flipped the record over, and started to tackle how best to respond to the very daunting (and a little bit overwhelming for an online dating profile, no?) question of: WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?

Are they kidding me with this stuff?

As Ella started in on one of my favorites, singing, “The radio and the telephone, and the movies that we know may just be passing fancies and in time may go - but our love is here to stay,” I wondered if she, at the time she was so graciously belting out the words penned by Ira Gershwin, knew that the radio and telephone eventually really would go, and love, whether it’s here to stay or not was going to end up being sought out on a medium she probably couldn’t even begin to conceptualize.

What am I doing with my life? Damned if I know, but I guess I have no choice but to take a crack at answering it anyway.

Back at the bar I’d forgotten all about the first daters. I left not long after them and headed for the subway. It was there, waiting at 14^th street for the uptown 1 train that I saw him, blue gingham standing but three feet away from me on the platform. Of all the subway platforms in all the city. He was alone and thumbing through his phone again, only this time there was something about his gaze that made me feel like something was wrong. It was as though there was a spark that had been drained from his face since I first spotted him at the bar a little over an hour ago. And then I realized. He had just gone through what he’s probably been going through for a long time now - a series of first meetings full of potential that ultimately end with the morale shattering answer of she’s not the one for me, and back to the drawing board he goes.

On the train he sits across from me. While the whole car is either listening to iPods, or reading books or scanning the day’s copy of the Times, he’s just sitting there. He’s sitting there staring straight ahead into nothingness as though he’s reliving the date, trying to pinpoint where it went wrong, what he said, what she said, if it was his fault or hers. As we reach 42nd street I think I see despair settle into his eyes, and wonder if he’s asking himself just how much longer he’s willing to do this, to put himself out there with the results always being the same. Wasn’t it Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? 

I fear that insanity, and there it was sitting right across from me as I tried to avert its gaze. It’s what I wonder about now that I’m a part of this world of trying to find love on the internet - how long do we go on for, how long to do we try? I suppose I’m too new to the game to really ask that question seriously, but I know it’s an option, lurking there somewhere in my future when I might be blue gingham (I do happen to own that shirt), on the subway heading home after one-too-many-first-dates-to-count wondering how it ended up like this, how my love life became so difficult, a numbers game summed up by how well I can take a picture, and how interesting the most private thing I’m willing to admit is (and just for the record, apparently “I’ve never been in jail,” along with any other trace amounts of sarcasm doesn’t seem to go over too well).

But blue gingham realized a long time ago what I’m only just coming to terms with, that this era of finding love online is the one we live in now, and I’d be a fool to keep pretending otherwise. Ella is meant simply to be listened to, relegated to the past as the way things used to be, not the way things are. And since my track record of finding love offline hasn’t been very successful, perhaps it’s time to take a tip from her other songs like: Who Cares, because eventually I’ll meet Somebody from Somewhere and despite the fact that it ends up being online, maybe we’ll both just say screw it, Let’s Fall in Love.

We’re not a generation comfortable with approaching people at bars or book readings or on subway platforms or dance floors. We like to keep our ear buds in, smile briefly only to look away, to board the subway or leave the street corner wondering what could have been had we only just had the guts to say hello. So we go online. We hide behind profiles and head shots and hope for the best. And I get it. I am that person. But what I’ve also learned (and am still learning), is that it’s all about letting go of the way you thought things were supposed to be. Because supposed to be can ruin you. You can wait forever for it, and in the end the Rockies may crumble and Gibraltar may tumble so you might as well figure out a way to be happy while you have the chance.

To blue gingham I say once more unto the breach, dear friend. Online dating is a battlefield, it is a war of return on investment, a crapshoot pitting your energy, patience and expectations against less than encouraging odds. 

And yet while there may be defeats lurking on the other end of every of the click of the mouse - so too might potential be. All we can do as urban warriors of our own destinies is keep fighting, keep messaging and reaching out and taking chances and putting ourselves and our hearts out there with nothing but hope and the idea that one of these days, if we’re very lucky, we just might be fortunate enough to win the war.

Until then, of course, expect more reports from the field. 

HeTexted.com -- Crowdsourcing Relationships

The pitfalls of texting while dating, and living in an age where our minds have been taken over by the constant need for Text Content Analysis.

Read my piece at Huffington Post.

An Open Letter to People Who Repin My Pins on Pinterest

Tina, you repinned my pin “Summer Dress.”

Tina, that dress I posted to my “Haberdashery” board (which I called “Haberdashery” in an attempt to be clever and interesting), costs almost as much as my rent - why are you repinning it? I guess it’s because you like the style as I do, but in no real world scenario save for the both of us hitting the lottery, or maybe becoming best friends with the designer, are either of us ever actually going to be able to own that dress. Unless you’re really wealthy. Are you really wealthy, Tina? If you are then why are you on here pinning things when you could be out there actually buying them?

Emma, you repinned my pin “Apple Galette with Butterscotch.”

That galette looks so amazing, right Em? But let’s be serious here, are we ever really going to make this thing? I’ll be honest with you, every time I pin something to my “Sweet” board (much more interesting than “Desserts”), it’s because I’m stuck at the office feeling really hungry. In an ideal world I’d like an apple galette, or that six-layer chocolate cake Sarah pinned to just like, magically appear on my desk. But you and I both know that’s not going to happen. And I don't know about you, but if I'm being honest, and I think I should be, there’s no chance in hell I’m going to trudge home after a long day at work and attempt to make a galette in the kitchen of my studio apartment that has only enough counter space to store a cereal box. Emma, I bet you don’t live in Manhattan. If you did you’d probably just go and buy an apple galette on your way home at any number of bakeries this fine city has to offer like I will. Also, don’t you find the part of the recipe that calls for making the butterscotch from scratch hilarious? HELLO! YOU CAN BUY BUTTERSCOTCH IN A JAR! Crazy pinners…

To everyone who hasn’t repinned anything from my “Straight Up” board (so much more clever than “Cocktails”). I guess it’s because you, like me, prefer to have drinks made for you at bars instead of buying all the ingredients for, say, an English Heat (made with Beefeater, jalapeño-infused agave, lemon, Tuaca (?!?!), and dry vermouth), only to drink it alone in your apartment standing at your very small counter that has nothing on it but a cereal box.

Hey Alex, remember when I repinned that picture you pinned of a beautiful log cabin on a lake from your “Favorite Homes” board to my “Dream Home” board? You have other pins on that board too - a rustic Virginia colonial, a quaint cottage in Belgium, an Italian palace – so pretty! - however while these are your favorite homes, something tells me you don’t actually live in an Italian palace. Don’t worry Alex, I won't tell anyone (and while we’re admitting things, I’ve never been to Belgium). However, seeing as how it’s your “favorite,” I do hope that one day you get that lake house. You seem like a nice guy, and I bet you deserve it.

To my meager 30 followers. The reason I haven’t repinned you guys in a while isn’t because I don’t like your pins of pictures of dogs in trench coats, and wedding tablescapes, and black and whites of a brooding Ryan Gosling—it’s just that, well, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with them. I feel like Ben and the Pinterest Team would call me a fraud because I’ve never painted a table from Ikea using whatever color is hot right now (green?) and added a stencil of whatever animal is trendy right now (whales are the new deer are the new owls?). Nor have I ever used any recipe that I’ve pinned, including the one that looked especially tasty of herb roasted chicken with truffled cauliflower mash and lemon-caper gremolata.

I don’t even know what gremolata is. I usually have cereal for dinner.

I don’t know how to pull off mint jeans, or faux fur vests or knit leggings or horizontal stripes. Posts of Elizabeth Taylor, serving bowls, fruit smoothies, lacey underwear, outdoor lounge chairs, pictures of Sammy Davis Jr., antique jewelry, wedding dresses, feather headbands, Chanel handbags, Prada handbags, Coach handbags, signs that say things like, “Shit could be worse,” or “Punch today in the face” or “Don’t let anyone ever dull your sparkle,” —I’m just always like, I mean, I guess?

But I’ll keep pinning and repinning if you do. I don’t mind telling myself that I’ll eventually learn one day how to do my hair in that messy bun style, or match floral prints with neon, or make my own popsicles. I suspect we’re all kidding ourselves just a little bit every time we log on there anyway. It’s like HERE ARE ALL OF THE THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU BETTER BUT YOU'LL NEVER DO OR HAVE! Which is really sort of depressing, amiright? But at least it’s pretty to look at. I know my life would be better if I stored my toilet paper rolls in a glass flower vase, or used vintage hat boxes to organize my closet, or made my own face cream using egg whites and mayonnaise –but I just can't be bothered.

And then I saw that Erin posted to her “Dream Big” board a sign that said, “Life is what you make of it.” Erin what can I say, you’re so right. I’m going to go and try to track down Tina now. I have a sneaking suspicion she’s a millionaire.

Happy pinning!

How to Date in a Technological Age

(A response to Molly Templeton’s call for how-to pieces by women.)
 
When it comes to dating we know there are rules, and it just so happens that at this particular moment in our dating history, the rules are more complicated than ever before.

There was a time not so long ago when it was far less complicated. Lovers were separated by distance, and confessions of feeling could only travel slowly through this thing called the mail. This of course, was only after you had taken a considerable amount of time to actually write down, on paper, by hand, your thoughts. Because of this, there were many chances to second-guess yourself, to step back, clear your head, crumple that piece of paper up and throw it in the trash before breathing a sigh of heavy relief at your narrow escape from over-sharing.

We no longer live in that time. We live in a time where you can, at any moment you so choose, communicate with the person you like with just a tap your thumb. We think to ourselves, Yay progress! But we are wrong. Such access to say how we feel at the exact moment we are feeling it only opens us up to missteps, and subsequent meltdowns.

In an ideal world it would be okay to just tell people how we really feel. But love without games? Surely you jest. I'm confident there are some brave souls out there who have actually tried this approach. Whoever you are, I salute you. As for the rest of us, we’re cowards who painfully look at the clock until enough time has lapsed and we feel it's okay for us to text back an answer to the seemingly terrifying question of: Do you want to go to a movie tonight?

So if you (like me) are that person, here are The Rules:

Rule #1 - When to Move From Emails to Phone

If you’re emailing, you’re going to want to wait at least one day before writing back. You’re busy, and even if you’re not you want the other person to think you are. However, when you get to the point where the two of you are actually making plans, the rule is, cell phone numbers should be proffered. If you’ve set a date and time to meet for a drink and they never show up, you want to be able to call them to know if you should be really angry, or if they just got hit by a cab and are now in an ambulance en route to the hospital.

Rule #2 - How Long to Wait Before Texting Back/Amount of Texts

Texting is like tennis, and you send text for text like a ball across a net. You’re in a conversation of words on a screen, and it’s okay to keep it going. You will of course, inevitably reach the point when someone drops the ball and doesn’t write back. If it’s not you, you are allowed exclaim a la McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!” But fear not dutiful last-responder, if this other person knows the rules they’ll know that if they chose to end the text volley, it is now up to them to pick it back up (within the next three to five days is appropriate).

           

Rule #3 – Texting While Intoxicated

The hard and fast rule here is, never. I mean, you’ve been doing so well up to this point, cleverly crafting every perfectly timed response, why throw it all away now? It’s like running a marathon and halfway through just saying, screw it, I’m going to stop and go grab a slice of pizza. You’ve worked too hard for this to just throw it all away because of one too many vodka sodas! Texting under the influence always means mistakes will be made. The rule here is that once a drink is poured, power down.

*There is, of course, a loophole here. If you’ve decided that the only thing you really want out of this relationship is purely physical, then a drunken text is a surefire way to expedite the process of dating and get some action.

Rule # 4  - Skype

The ability for someone I’m interested in to see what I'm doing at any time of day scares me, which is part of why I refuse to replace my old laptop that was built before webcams existed. The only time video chatting is warranted is if the person you are dating lives in another country. And let’s be honest here, if you are dating someone who lives in another country, no amount of technology is going to make that relationship work. Get out while you still can.

Rule #5 – Google Chat

Ah Gchat, the instant messenger of the adult set. If you’re already emailing and texting with someone, online chatting can be excessive. You need to be able to leave at least one communication medium a no-bother-zone, especially if it’s one that a person might be on during office hours. Also with Gchat, there’s never a real endpoint to a conversation. Most of the time you chat for a while until eventually the little dot near someone’s name turns orange or they simply disappear. And everyone is OK with that. It’s like the silent understanding of Gchat. Gchat means never having to say goodbye. However, when you’re dating someone and they just disappear, well, that rule will go right out the window. The point is - all it takes is for one person to type “hey!” into one of those little boxes and hit send. Don’t be that person.

Rule # 6 – Emoticons

I get it, you’re trying to be cute. But if you’re not clever enough to convey that you’re happy or sad through actual words, putting a smiley face in there isn’t going to make me feel any better about what you’re trying to say. You didn’t see John Keats adding little faces with sunglasses at the end of witty lines in his love letters to Fanny Brawne, did you? The greatest communicators (and loves), didn’t need them. Assume you don’t either.

In short, love and relationships are complicated. Fortunately, you now have these rules to help you out. And don’t worry, if you mess up your current relationship because you over-texted, remember what Alexander Graham Bell said, “When one door closes, another opens.”

But then again, he’s the guy who invented the telephone, which was basically the beginning of the end for relationships everywhere. 

That said, good luck out there. Odds are you're gonna need it.

Hot Child in the City

The city is melting. Or I am. I don’t know which because it’s so hot I can’t really think straight. The heat rises up out of the pavement, and swallows my feet first before making its way up my entire body. When it reaches my chest my heart seizes. I look at the people passing me on the sidewalk like, holy shit you guys, is this for real?

And they just wipe the beads of sweat from their foreheads with the backs of their hands in an exhausted gesture of, yes, yes it is.

It’s hot here. Like Hades hot if you could venture a guess of how hot Hades might actually be (and I hope I never find out). And it’s all anyone can talk about, because for some reason, we just really can’t get enough of talking about the weather. I guess because it’s the one common thing that we have to unite us as New Yorkers - Park Ave. to Park Slope odds are you’re feeling the heat, and you’re not at all happy about it.

For the most part, we all really love it here, but the heat makes us hate it because it does crazy things to our minds. While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, it is the result of a high pressure system, which makes sense because that’s what we’re all under here, and it can take something like a significant jump in temperature to simply make us snap. When the mercury stretches up past 95 degrees, it’s as though everyone and everything in the city gets thatmuchcloser. People can be sitting next to me on the subway as they do any other day, but when it’s 95 outside (and feels like 100) its like they’re right on top of me, and I’m looking at them like: Would you just get the hell off of me for Christ’s sake!?

I don’t say that of course, because that would be crazy. And I don’t want to turn into that person who actually is crazy, who shouts crazy things at people on the subway that I usually look away from while thinking wow, that dude’s crazy. But when it’s this hot I’m like, thisclose to becoming that guy. So I tell myself, don’t be that guy, and I close my eyes and count to ten, and try to envision myself in the North Pole or someplace where it’s probably pretty cold.

I did that this morning when I was standing on the subway platform. I could feel a few beads of sweat make an appearance on my brow, and then attempt to make their way down the side of my face. I felt like I was sitting in a sauna wearing a dress and holding a handbag. I tried to focus and remain calm. North Pole, Antarctica, Iceland. Wait, is Iceland actually cold? In my attempt to muster Zen-like concentration to regulate my core body temperature, I couldn’t help but notice that the woman standing next to me was desperate. Her face was red and sweaty, she was fanning herself with her AM New York, and moving from side to side in frustration as we waited for the downtown 1 train.

I could see the dark rings already getting larger under her arms. I wanted to tell her that today was not the best day to wear silk, but I figured she was already having a tough time of it that I shouldn’t kick her while she’s down.

When the subway arrived, a near-empty car stopped before us. Anyone who’s been here long enough knows that when it feels like 100 degrees out (and 150 underground), and an empty subway car presents itself at rush hour, it doesn’t mean it’s your lucky day. What it actually means is that the AC is broken, and you need to start making your way towards the next car fast, because there’s going to be a legitimate stampede in approximately three seconds.

The girl next to me did not know this. Maybe it was her first day living here, or maybe she was so hot that her brain had actually stopped functioning properly – either way she looked so relieved to see that she could, in her anxious and overheated state actually sit down, that she bolted inside as soon as the doors opened.

I would assume that she probably passed out when she realized her gaffe, along with the handful of other people who didn’t know better. But I was too far away at that point to know for sure. Later, when I was wedged in a cool car like a sardine next to a guy who smelled like he definitely overdid it that morning with the Axe, I thought that maybe I should have said or done something to save her.

But this is a heat wave on a sweltering island with 8 million people. This is a battlefield. It’s every man and woman for themselves.

And it’s okay though, because according to Bill Evans and his Accuweather forecast that is, like, 90 percent of the time inaccurate, we’ll only have to endure this trauma for one more day. After that we’ll go back to normal (by the weekend 85 high, chance of rain 30%), and resume our lives as New Yorkers where our headaches are sourced from an unlimited list of grievances that don’t pertain the weather at all.

Our perspective will resume, and that extra inch on the subway will suddenly feel like a football field. We will go back to thinking clearly, dressing accordingly, using body spray in appropriate amounts, and the overall state of the atmosphere will adjust itself around us.

But I figure when that happens I should probably judge the crazy people who actually are crazy a little bit less, because I’ll know at that point just how narrow my own escape was from the same fate. 

So try to stay cool and sane New York. You have 24 more hours to go.

If you see something, say something.

You meet someone at a bar (even though you never meet people in bars), and have a wonderful conversation. You realize you have a lot in common while also finding them attractive. After hours have passed in what feels like a blur, you think to yourself that you’ve hit the jackpot because this is most definitely going to become a future date. This person has possibility, this person could be someone you like (and you don’t like anyone!).

They ask for your number, and you try not to think about all the people who have asked for your number before and never called. You’re trying to be optimistic this time. The phrase, “Benefit of the doubt” comes to mind even though you’re not entirely sure what that’s really supposed to mean. They tell you you’re wonderful, go on how much they want to see you again, and just as you're allowing yourself to believe they're actually telling you the truth, they tell you they’re flying home to Austin, Texas tomorrow.

You deflate. You actually feel it happening to your heart as the words come out of their mouth.

So you go home with a strange and unsettling feeling in your stomach, the one that comes when you recognize a missed opportunity. You repeat to yourself the phrase that all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves: It just wasn’t meant to be.

Two days later, however, they text you. You’re surprised to hear from them. You’re even more surprised when they say that if they lived in New York they would have wanted to take you out to dinner, or a coffee, anything to have had another chance to see you again. But they can’t, so instead they want to stay in touch, and ask you how your day went. This makes you upset. You think about all of the people who have asked for your number in the past and live only a few subway stops away and never reached out to ask you anything, let alone how your day went. But this guy. Well, of course.

So you sit. You sit for a long time staring at your phone contemplating your limited choices in this particular situation. You either respond and start up a conversation with a near stranger who is currently halfway across the country but has still somehow managed to captivate your thoughts, or you don’t. It takes you a long time to come to a decision. You think about how you’ve been here before, somehow having become incapable of meeting people who live in the same city as you, but finding that when you leave Manhattan all of that seems to change.

You have theories on yourself and geography, and figure that one day you'll inevitably be forced to leave the island if you ever really want to find love. Because of that, you have been open to the idea that geography shouldn’t really be a factor when it comes to finding someone you can have a good conversation with, (and years of meeting people in Manhattan has shown you that’s almost impossible to find someone with whom you can have a good conversation). Surely distance shouldn’t matter, not now, not in 2012. Wasn’t the whole point of progress and technology to teach us that we’re not limited by our zip codes? We can text and Skype and get great deals on JetBlue - shouldn’t it be possible to love across state lines?

But, like most things, it’s never that simple. Because if you have been here before, you know all too well that there will come a point when you’ve spent a lot of time getting to know someone through means of communication that doesn’t involve sitting across a dinner table, and it will be great and you’ll become invested, and one day you will even go to visit them and come to find that they have in fact, like a normal person, met someone they can see on a somewhat daily basis. Someone they can see a movie with, hold hands with, have an actual physical relationship with. These things trump all else. They even trump good conversation, and chemistry and the basic fact that you like each other when even the both of you know that finding someone you like and likes you back and wants what you want at the exact came time you do is tantamount to hitting the lottery.

Even that will be overlooked for a person who’s in reaching distance.

Well, you suppose, that makes sense.

So this time you tell yourself you’ve learned. Because you can know what you want in life, you can find it even, have it right there in front of you —but that isn't always enough. It’s a sobering feeling to have in a world that makes you feel as though there are no limits, when you come to find that in the end, no matter how much you try, when it comes to matters of the heart there are always meant to be limits, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.

Something as seemingly insignificant as the place you’ve chosen to live can change everything. Geography stepping in, setting its own restrictions on you without you even realizing.

So you look at the phone and you make a conscious decision not to write back. You do it against your own better judgment, but you know it’s the right thing to do, (and the right thing is never easy). Sometimes you’re just meant to meet people for a brief period of time, and that’s all it’s supposed to be (this is also what all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves).

You do, however, sometimes find yourself at random moments on the subway or walking up Broadway, wondering about what could have happened if you'd just written back. Maybe, just maybe, this time it would have been different. You’d have stayed in touch, you’d have moved on to talking on the phone (even though you don't particularly like talking on the phone). You’d have visited Texas or they would have come to New York. You'd have started making plans, realizing that even though you were both still dating in your respective cities, you just weren’t meeting people you liked as much as you liked each other. And you’d have moved to Texas or they to New York or who knows, maybe you’d have ended up somewhere else entirely, and gotten married and bought a house with a garage and taken out a mortgage and had kids and grown old together, always telling that funny story about how one night you met in a bar in Manhattan.

And telling the story you’d realize that there was a moment when it all came down to you. There you’d be, older now, graying, telling your grandchildren the tale. You’ll say something like, “You know, if I never wrote back, if I just ignored the message entirely because I assumed I already knew how it was going to end, none of you would even be here.”

Life can be funny that way. And mysterious and mind-boggling, always making you question whether or not you’re making the right choice, always leaving you wondering about what could have been (and "what could have been" can torture you forever).

But you try to remind yourself about what you know about life, that it isn't a movie. You tell yourself you know better. Because you do, don’t you?

And then you wonder when it was that you decided to stop taking chances.

The city reminds you at every turn: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. When it comes to most things in life, from national security to love, you never know what something could be if you make the choice not to do anything. Anything only ever changes if you do.

So you decide that you don’t know it all and never will and it’s foolish to ever think so. Next time, you vow to yourself, you won't be so afraid. Because the signs that read “Be suspicious of anything left unattended,” ought to apply to your heart as well.

On my birthday, 20 years ago.

April 17, 1992

The fourth grade totally sucks. They make us do math, like ALL THE TIME. Every time Mrs. Polanski gets up there and starts writing questions on the board my palms get all sweaty. I feel like everyone else around me is GETTING IT and I’m not. What does that mean? I guess if I don’t know this then I won’t do well and go to a college and get a good job and I’ll live home with Mom and Dad forever which wouldn’t be so bad I guess because I like our house and my room and we have a pool.

I used to want to be a doctor but then when Mom told me you need to know a lot of math to be a good doctor I was like, uh, NO WAY JOSE!

I’ve tried a lot of things already to figure out what I’m good at. Maria already knows what she wants to do which I guess is what happens when you’re older, which she is by two years. She says she wants to be the first woman president, which I think she would be good at because she’s good at bossing me around. She’s also good at ballet and goes to lessons all the time and I have to sit through those recitals which are SO BORING I want to die. I’ve seen The Nutcraker like a thousand times. It’s the longest ballet ever.

Mom and Dad have taken me to a lot of lessons. I took guitar lessons for a while, which was fun at first but then I hated practicing and just wanted to be outside and ride my bike. I didn’t practice and I would show up to lessons and Mr. Patrizio would be all, did you practice this week Victoria? And I’d lie and then I’d feel bad because I guess I’m not supposed to lie. Mom says I play pretty well considering I don’t practice and imagine how good you’d be Victoria if you actually practiced. Whatever Mom. My fingers hurt.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Thomas buys a skateboard that is 2 feet long. What is the length, in inches, of the skateboard?

Why do I need to know inches when I already know how long it is in feet? THIS IS SO STUPID.

I took gymnastics for a while, then quit. I don’t like wearing leotards and the girls in my class were not nice girls. I tap danced for a while because I wanted to be like Fred Astaire in those old black and white movies. I was super good but then I stopped because I got bored. I’m playing the piano now which I actually like because I don’t have to be in a class with other people and can do it on my own, and I started figure skating lessons because when Kristi Yamaguchi won the Olympics a few months ago and Dad said she was born with club feet like I was I thought ohmygod I have to do that too maybe I’ll be good at it! I’m not good at it at all.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Melissa has a rope that is 84 feet long. She is cutting it into 7-foot pieces to make jump ropes. How many jump ropes can Melissa make?

Why is Melissa buying all that rope and just doesn’t have a real jump rope like I have? It seems like a lot of work just to jump rope. Maria and I jump rope a lot in the driveway with our friends from the neighborhood. I’m good at that, but I don’t take lessons and I probably couldn’t have a job jumping rope. I don’t think they pay you for that when you grow up. You have to go into an office and get dressed up for a job. I have no idea what I’m going to be when I grow up because I’m not good at anything at all and that really scares me.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Milton takes $400 on a shopping trip. He plans to spend 1/5 of his money on cassette tapes. How much money will Milton spend on the tapes?

I don’t know the answer to that so I guess that means I’ll never have a job.

Tomorrow is my birthday and sometimes I think about where I’ll be when I’m old, like really old, like 29, and I’ll be married and have kids and own a big house like Mom and Dad. But that’s SO FAR AWAY and right now I’m really just excited about math class being over because art and music are later this afternoon after lunch and I really like those. I like when we read too. We just read Island of the Blue Dolphins. I love that book so much. I also like Where the Red Fern Grows. That’s so sad but so good. I like to write stories too but I hate math and I don’t like science and I don’t know why I have to be good at all of them because most of the time the questions are stupid.

Like how did Milton know how much money he wanted to spend on tapes when he didn’t even know what music he wanted to listen to? I don’t get that! I bet it was stupid music anyway. I like it when Dad plays music from the really big record collection he has and Maria and I dance around the living room. He used to be in a band. He played the drums. I like it when he plays the Rolling Stones. Dad said he saw them in Albany just fifteen minutes from our house back in 1963. THAT IS SO LONG AGO. I wasn’t even alive.

I hate the fourth grade it’s so stupid. It will be nice to be old and be able to do what I want to do which will mean NOT math. I think I’ll quit skating and try tennis next. Maybe I’ll be a professional tennis player if I’m not a professional piano player first.

I hope I’ll be good at something some time. I worry about that a lot. What if I'm not? How am I supposed to figure all that out? Mom tells me not to worry and always says to appreciate being a kid now because when you’re older you’ll wish you could go back.

Um, I DON’T THINK SO MOM.

I can’t wait to grow up. Everything will be better I'm sure of it.

Being a kid totally sucks.

I accept Time absolutely.

What a silly thing time is and what it is to look back on your life and see how much has disappeared. If you’re like me you compare everything to what happened to you on this very day five years ago and think even now, so many days and hours and minutes removed from that one moment in your whole vast life that somehow, it still feels like it happened just yesterday.

I guess that’s what happens when you lose someone you love and you lose them quickly, unexpectedly without warning at a time when you figure you have so much more time with them ahead of you. You go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning to a ringing phone that’s going to usher in news you don’t want to hear but can’t avoid no matter how much you try. And you don’t have time to say goodbye. Such a small word really, but as soon as the chance to say it gets taken away from you it suddenly means so much.

Everything before everything changed feels like another life, like it happened to someone else because now you think, looking back on it, that there was no way something like that could have happened to you, no way it could have happened and you survived.

Because things like that happen to other people. You are separate from them, distanced from the names and faces on the evening news, from the stories you hear friends tell about other people and families to whom tragedy has struck. So you continue on with your life, turn off your television, shut out the light and crawl into bed. You sleep with the comfort of knowing that they are not you, you are not them.

Then, one day, it happens. Time catches up to you. Fate, luck, chance, the outcome of so many decisions and choices made by so many people over so many years that lead you to that one seemingly unavoidable moment when you wish you could go back and change everything. But you can’t. So instead you ask yourself: how did this happen to us? And that question will torture you for years, maybe forever, until you accept and start asking the right question, the one we should all be asking ourselves all the time: why not us?

And time keeps moving forward and so do you, and you realize after not having been able to feel it for a while that your heart’s still beating. People lose people all the time, you’re not alone in that so you figure you ought to learn from it, learn from how fast these things can happen, how fast life happens and how easy it is to take it for granted. Because we do it all the time, something as simple as thinking we know what tomorrow will bring. We expect everything to go as planned - we expect the subway to come, for our local coffee shop to be open, for our jobs to be waiting for us. Above all we expect the people in our lives will be waiting for us, too.

If you’re like me you know better and you think people who don’t are a lot worse off than you because they don’t understand (but at some point eventually, they will) that this is it. Because this isn’t misplacing. No, we can misplace all we want because with misplacing there’s a very distinct chance that whatever we’ve lost we will inevitably get back. And that’s all we need isn’t it, that logical answer of, well it couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air!  Your keys, a book, your iPod, subway pass, that letter or picture. I just had it, you think to yourself. I just had it.

Your logical will struggle with your non-logical as you try to come to terms with the fact that there is no re-tracing your steps, no hope of ever getting back what you’ve lost. Finality like that is overwhelming and it changes you, it has to, because when you lose certain things for good like a person or a love or a chance of a lifetime you’ve got no choice but to see the world differently along with your place in it.

If you’re like me you’ll sleep fitfully and will wake some mornings even after so much time has passed and still think to yourself – was all of it just a bad dream? And for the briefest of seconds, in the amount of time it takes to blink an eye you’ll remember what it felt like to be truly happy, as the weight of loss lifts off of your chest and frees you to how you were before when you were not them, they were not you, when you were just like anybody else.

So you learn. Yes you learn to take more risks and more chances and to be brave and to not be so afraid, but the most valuable thing you learn are the tricks that Time can play, bewitching, deceiving, there’s-never-quite-enough-of-it Time. You know now for certain something so obvious and yet were only really able to fully understand five years ago —that you can just have a lot of things before they slip right through your fingers.

The question now, I suppose, is how often do you let them? Or have you also learned the very important lesson of knowing when to tighten your grip on what matters while you still can.

To the girl at the corner store.

I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number.

They’ve been coming in for months now with their large coats and boots and pressed suits, knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will walk in and you’ll be here.

I know it won’t be long though, and soon they’ll be coming in with tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons or afternoons in the park, all wearing t-shirts and flip flops and they’ll find you…gone.

You feel as though your life is happening somewhere else without you, and that no one here understands. As you watch customers come and go you find yourself wishing you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count dollars, count designer sunglasses and handbags and scarves, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.

You think that in time they’ll remember. Once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you they’ll think— who was that girl? and, I wonder where she went?

But you don’t count on it.

You’re tired of counting. So you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and goodbye. The only thing you know you can count on is the fact that nothing changes. Until it does. Until you make it so.

Because you know that it’s easy to love people in memory, looking back on them in the safe and comfortable light of retrospect. The hard part, you realize now as you begin to tally up the regrets, is to love them when they are there in front of you.

The mean reds.

I was on my way to work half asleep, reminding myself that I needed to go to the gym later and that perhaps it’s time to seriously consider online dating and that if the dumpling truck was outside the office today it was definitely where I was getting lunch, when my thoughts were interrupted by bright flashes of red and white.

Wait, what? I slowed.

I looked on in confusion at the people passing me by. They were carrying colored items in their hands and I stared at them in disbelief.

Is it possible? I could feel the panic start to well up in my chest and inch its way to my heart.

What’s today again? Halloween was just yesterday and I knew that for a fact because of all those children walking around my neighborhood wearing capes. A woman approached, she had blonde hair and was looking serious wearing a black wool coat, and when I saw what was attached to her perfectly manicured hand I nearly reached out and grabbed hold of her arm— Starbucks holiday cups?! Already!?

She looked at me with a nod of silent and reluctant acceptance. It is true, her eyes said, it is true.

She walked away leaving me filled with dread. The implications of such an early appearance of the ubiquitous Starbucks holiday cup were monumental. For however disposable, this little cup starts off a chain reaction all across the city wherein Christmas and its long and painful approach are thrust into our faces at every turn whether we’re ready or not. And just so we’re all on the same page here, I’m definitely not.

Overwhelmed I mistakenly sought haven in Starbucks in desperate need of my morning fix. To my horror I saw (who could help not to?) that the whole store was an explosion of red, with shelves upon shelves of holiday flasks, mugs and other festive paraphernalia. The menu board was promoting the peppermint mocha (I haven’t even had a pumpkin spice latte yet!). Is that it? Is fall over? Isn't someone going to say something? I started to sweat. I looked around with concern at all the happy red-cup-holding-New-Yorkers and my eyes were pleading - can't we get to Thanksgiving first for Christ’s sake?!

Apparently not. It's November 1 and I’m already drinking Christmas Blend (smooth and spicy) out of a grandiosely decorated grande cup. It has a picture of a snowman and some weird looking elf on it. They’re apparently singing Christmas carols, the words, “when we’re together snowmen come to life,” peeking out from under the sleeve marked 60% post-consumer fiber. CAUTION: THE BEVERAGE YOU’RE ABOUT TO ENJOY IS EXTREMELY HOT!

How about CAUTION: THE HOLIDAYS ARE MUCH FURTHER AWAY THAN THEY APPEAR.

I don’t want to think about snow or snowmen or greeting cards or plane tickets or trees or how I'm going to afford presents. Not yet. I want a little bit more time to let it sink in, to prepare myself. I think we all do.

So I went home and didn’t go to the gym but instead went for a long walk in Central Park to clear my head. Sure it snowed over the weekend and the trees are basically dead now missing out on their chance to turn pretty colors, but I did what I could to enjoy what little is left of my favorite season before it's pushed out entirely by corporate America. Give the pumpkins (and the kids' teeth) a chance to rot first, will ya? As I walked, avoiding death with each unstable tree branch that I passed, I came to the conclusion I’m not quite ready for online dating (maybe speed dating? Is that still a thing?) and that if the dumpling truck was back again tomorrow I'd make a second appearance (the chicken and thai basil are so good!).

I also decided that for at least the next month, I’ll be getting my coffee somewhere else.

“And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Like a lot of people recently I read Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. In light of his death many of us felt compelled to revisit it, if only in a vain attempt to try and find some solace upon hearing about the untimely end of such a creative and innovative mind. He is a man who singlehandedly changed the lives of my entire generation, and in 2005 while Steve was giving this speech, I was sitting in the Fleet Center 3,000 miles away in Boston listening to my own commencement speaker talk about all of the possibilities that lay ahead for me. My speaker wasn’t as inspiring as Jobs (current defense secretary Leon Panetta lacks a certain, shall we say, charm), but I can recall sitting there in my black cap and gown thinking that I had really figured out what I loved.

I stumbled across writing the summer before I started high school. As someone who never liked reading (I much preferred to be outside playing kickball than be stuck inside with some book) I decided it might be fun to try to write something I’d enjoy were I to actually make the choice of a book over backyard baseball. The problem, I had realized, was that I had been getting all the wrong books. When people stopped telling me what to read (Bartelby the Scrivener? Seriously?), and I was able to read about things that actually interested me, that’s when reading changed for me. Jobs talks about connecting the dots, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” And I do believe that, and so far, they have. I started writing, which led to me talking to a professor in college, who told me after I mentioned I wanted to be a writer that I should, “get a day job,” and that’s how I found publishing.

Life really can be a hell of a thing in hindsight.

However, what struck me most about Jobs’ speech was that he wrote it after having come back from the brink of facing his own death. Maybe it’s a bit morose, but sometimes I’m on the subway and I look around at all the people reading their newspapers and blackberry’s and iPads (thanks Steve!), and they have their headphones in and they all look tired on their way home as though they’ve just managed to make it through another tedious, routine day at the office and they’re worried about money and their kids and their mortgages and the stock market and their weight, and I think to myself as I look at them: all of these people are going to not be here one day. All of these people right here who I don’t know who all have lives and families and dreams and concerns and who get up every morning and go to work and come home and do it all over again the next day, someday, they’ll all just be…gone.

And then I think the only logical thing to think of next: well, that goes for me, too.

What Jobs says about remembering that you are going to die being the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose, that, over the last few years, has become my mantra. It’s something I repeat whenever I feel my courage start to waver: what have I got to lose?

Nothing. Except, well, maybe everything.

Okay, so maybe loving to write and having faith in that isn’t the greatest return on investment for a college education, but Jobs is right – I refuse to settle. If you don’t stick your neck out for the things you really want you’ll never get them. Life has taught me that. And it’s not immediate and it takes time and perseverance and more often than not you’ll want to give up or give in or walk away – the genius building software in their garage, the musician playing half-empty shows, the writer with a stack of rejection letters (ahem) always asking: when, for crying out loud, is it going to happen?

But the thing is, it already is happening because the work is what matters. Getting back to a story and enjoying the process and having faith, no, trusting in the fact that everything, some day will fall in to place however its meant to.

Life can change (and end) in an instant. We’d be fools, all of us, not to keep fighting for what we love.

I'd hate to imagine what the world would be like if Steve had given up.

Aviatophobia

I think everyone I know at this point is pretty much aware of the fact that I’m a nervous flier.

This wasn’t always the case, mind you. There was a time when taking to the skies was one of the most exhilarating things I was legally allowed to do. As a kid I’d be up on my knees on the seat peering out the window, eyes wide on takeoff, loving every second of how the plane was able to move so much faster than my parent’s old grey Audi ever could. I was like Maverick in Top Gun only with pigtails and saddle shoes, and the idea that I might not make it to my destination never even crossed my mind.

However as with cheap wine glasses and plastic shopping bags, the older I become the more I begin to acquire things I never thought much about before. Now, as soon as the plane starts to move I’m not screaming or praying or asking my seatmate if he thinks we’re going down (not yet anyway), rather, I’m keeping my eyes focused intently on the A section of The New York Times, unable to actually read it because my pulse is racing too fast (there’s nothing like feeling as though your heart is about to explode to remind you just how alive you really are, and just how fast – poof! – you might not be).

Until we reach cruising altitude I’ll admit I’m not thinking about much else aside from all the things I’d regret not having done (So much left unsaid! So much yet to experience!) if my plane were, in fact, to actually to lose a wing or have its engine drop out unexpectedly. (I do stop occasionally and look around and wonder why no one else appears to be concerned. Aren’t they the least bit worried? Is it possible that I’m the only one on this plane who isn’t entirely at peace with all of the things in their life? Maybe I really should pick up a copy of The Secret).

Of course, I am aware of the fact that I’ve never actually seen a news story about a plane having lost a wing in mid-flight, but then again, I never said my fears were entirely rational. And that’s the thing, most fears aren’t rational. If we really stop to think about all the things we’re afraid of – taking a chance on a new job or a new love or moving to a different city – we’re fools to be allowing fear to get in our way. These are the things of life after all, and yet, more often than not we find ourselves paralyzed.

I’ve been afraid (to name a few), of not living up to certain people’s expectations, of not accomplishing something important enough to define my life by, of not seeing enough of the world, of making a fool of myself, of not fitting in, of not being particularly very good at anything, of losing people, of being left behind, of getting my heart broken, of never finding love, of always loving the wrong people.

Curiously, I’ve never been in fear of losing my job, or becoming homeless, or going hungry. Just yesterday when I was on the subway thinking about writing this very post and contemplating all the things that I’m afraid of (come to find I’m also afraid of getting lost in thought and ending up at 242^nd street), I gave a dollar and my banana to a homeless man. He smiled and thanked me and I thought to myself: of all the things to really fear, why have I never been afraid of something as scary as ending up like this guy? In the face of homelessness being afraid of never seeing The Colosseum seems downright absurd. I hated myself immediately.

But we don’t think things like that can happen to us. Not us.  Things like that happen to other people. Nameless faces on our subways and streets, strangers in our newspapers and on CNN. And yet, somehow I’m fairly certain that when this guy was young and his life was full of promise and possibility, he didn’t exactly think he would end up on the uptown 1 train eating my banana for his dinner, either.

That’s why I keep getting on the plane. I keep getting on the plane and taking writing classes and hoarding travel guides and taking chances on men I know probably aren’t good for me, because I may be terrified, sure, who isn’t, but I’m not too afraid to live.

And that’s why when the wheels touch down, each time I tell myself that while I may not have any control over what happens at 38,000 feet, at least I can stop being so afraid of the things I can do something about when I have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

So the question to keep asking yourself is:
WHAT ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF?!

And the answer has got to be:
Be brave, be brave, be brave. Always.

If you see something, say something.

It’s one of the easiest, most basic words in the English language and yet, more often than not we’re paralyzed with fear at the very idea of actually saying it to someone. Perhaps it’s because as New Yorkers we’re so good at keeping our heads down - eyes on blackberry’s and iPhones, in books, newspapers and on Kindle screens that we’ve forgotten how to look up, how to look around. We’ve forgotten how to see.

He walked on the uptown 2 train at 14^th street and was tall and blonde wearing an impressive looking blue European cut suit, a striped half-Windsor and burgundy wingtips. He was carrying nothing save for a hardcover book in his left hand, and as he reached out his right to grip the bar I was holding, the cuff of his jacket inched up ever so slightly enough to illuminate a silver watch, the face of which was so big one could have an absolutely cracking game of hockey on it. We made eye contact but briefly, as he looked away suddenly finding the ad for The School of Visual Arts on the wall above the seats incredibly interesting, apparently.

I shrugged inwardly. Perhaps he’s thinking of applying now that he’s made his millions on Wall Street.

I looked at the book in his hand and caught a glimpse of the cover: Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation by Mike Schultz. So he hadn’t yet made his millions. He was still reading books to learn how to…IN ANY SITUATION. This suit, for all I knew, was the only one he owned. The more I pondered him the more it intrigued me that he wasn’t carrying a briefcase or a messenger bag or, for that matter, anything at all. Where did he keep his things? Didn’t he have things? I have a bag that always has a book, an iPod, a planner, a wallet, two blackberry’s, a pen, a small notebook for writing down observations, my grandmothers old compact mirror, a tin of Rosebud lip balm, and a tube of red lipstick. Where were this man’s things? Where were his keys? (hopefully not in his pocket ruining the lining of an absolutely splendid pair of trousers).

Perhaps today he was running late and simply left all of his things behind. Or maybe he just had an interview that didn’t go well and he threw away his mostly-empty briefcase in the trash just outside the office in a fit of frustration. Either way he must have sensed me staring, for he looked back at me and I managed a smile and thought seriously about saying that word, that easy I-say-it-all-the-time-to-everyone-I-know word that was now, for some reason, stuck in my throat.

I thought he was handsome and put together and I wanted to know his name and what his voice sounded like saying it. I also had a lot of questions for him, namely about the general whereabouts of his keys, but I wanted to sit down with him over a cup of coffee and hear his story and how his day had brought him to be here, standing in front of me on the express train speeding uptown.

I felt my heart skip a beat as his hand slipped on the bar and landed just above my own. I thought about what could happen if just said that one word, those two simple, almost insignificant little letters. I thought about all the ways my whole life could change in the amount of time it would take me to say, hi.

Maybe he had a girlfriend he wasn’t happy with anymore.

Maybe he was single.

Maybe I was just the kind of person he’d been looking for.

Maybe we had everything in common.

Maybe he was a Democrat and a Red Sox fan but that wouldn’t matter.

Maybe once he started talking to me he’d never want to stop.

Maybe I’d feel the same way.

Maybe we’d move in together and stay in bed all day on Saturdays and drink coffee while reading the Times all day on Sundays.

Maybe we’d travel the world together and go to movies together and argue over politics and baseball together.

Maybe we’d get married and have kids and bring them to piano lessons and swimming lessons and go to their school plays together and pay for their college and take a mortgage out on a house together.

Maybe we would grow old together, go on Social Security together, and eventually die, him before me or me before him, but there we’d be, in the end, together.

If only I just said it.

Because a word can change everything. It can be the only thing between you and what could have been. What could have been is what you think about when you find yourself looking back on that window of opportunity you had to reach out and take hold of something before you let it pass you by. What could have been can torture you for years.

Because you never know. Because there are infinite possibilities in a declaration, a comment, a gesture or a look. Because most of the time we’re there all thinking the same thing but none of us are brave enough to say something. Because everything is always the same all the time every week, day, hour, moment of our lives until, suddenly, it isn’t.

The question is: what are you going to do about it?

As I watched him leave the train at 72^nd street I thought about going after him but I stopped myself because that’s just not what you do.

But maybe it should be.

Maybe we should all stop being so afraid.

And then the doors closed on him and what could have been, and I wondered for a long time after he left how much we change our lives all the time simply by the things we leave unsaid.

Idiot.

The Home Relationship

Apartment, you’ve really been great. Honestly I’ve had so many bad relationships with apartments past - inconvenient locations, insane roommates, impossible to locate landlords with almost impossible to pay rents, that after almost two years together I feel we’re really meant for each other.  My finding your profile on Craigslist wasn’t chance, it was destiny. The very moment I approached your front door, thick oak attached to an aging but classic late 1800’s brownstone on a tree lined street on the Upper West Side, it hit me (bam!) like a taxi on Broadway –love.

And its been a nice two years, (ed. note: best and longest relationship), and during that time I’ve overlooked a few things. After all, isn’t that what a relationship is all about? Ones ability to let go of and accept all the little things you know you can’t change only to recognize at the end of the day the admirable qualities that outshine the more annoying ones?

Sure you’re just one room with a kitchen sink equivalent to those found on a Boeing 757. You proffer but one closet and provide me with what can only be classified as an eat-in bedroom, what with the refrigerator hovering ever so closely to the bed. But that’s OK. These offenses are nothing in comparison to what I have to deal with once I leave your four walls. Over the years you’ve been there as a constant, well-maintained and welcoming sanctuary from my hectic New York life. My office has no windows but you give me three, and I like to look out of them after a long day at work while eating dinner standing at the counter. You are quiet, save for the man downstairs who takes to playing the piano at late and random hours, but I find I enjoy that, especially in the summer when the windows are open and Rachmaninoff blocks out the sound of car horns.

I’ve even been willing to accept the infrequent strange bug you’ve added to occasionally disturb the peace. So far we’ve bypassed the crazy bed bug scare of 2010 and have worked our way up to the occasional cockroach sighting. Of course I freak out initially, but then take deep breaths and repeat the mantra I always do when things here really start to get me down – it’s OK, this is Manhattan, it’s OK, this is Manhattan. One must take charge of their life here, not run from it. Roach motels were purchased and installed. My Swiffer became my weapon of choice. Smush, Flush, Clean (SFC) became the Gym, Tan, Laundry (GTL) routine of my apartment life.

We even acquired a mouse recently (look at us!). The little guy darted across the floor with such speed I thought you must be playing a trick on me. As one determined to maintain her status as Urban Warrior, and in the vein of Macaulay Culkin in the ultimate bible of residential battles Home Alone (“This is my house and I have to defend it”), I set up traps and simply pretended he was that nice little boy from The Witches.

All was going well. Our future, well, it had never been brighter.

However like any relationship we reached an inevitable breaking point. One night while reading on my couch I spotted a roach having a field day running up and down my nice curtains. I panicked at first, repeated the mantra, then grabbed my trusty Swiffer. Before long he was down the drain and I was fine, knowing that if the past were any indicator I wouldn’t see another one for at least three to six months. Later I drifted to sleep, outside traffic humming, work-week halfway through. Oh Apartment, you’re grand.

I’m not sure how I woke up or why, perhaps it was a noise or a feeling or just a subconscious message from my beloved Apartment trying to help me out - but as I sat up, through the din I could see clearly a dark spot on the pillow beside me. In one quick movement I was up and on my feet with my fingers on the lamp switch. There, sitting calmly on my pillow illuminated by my GE Energy Saver light bulb was Cockroach #1.

At first I wasn’t entirely sure if what was happening was real or just a terrible nightmare, however upon seeing another flicker - Cockroach #2 scurrying through the covers - I became all too aware of just how real this little tableau unfolding before me really was. As the sweat on my brow began to form, I looked up and saw Cockroach #3 hanging out on my headboard as if simply to say, “How you doin’?”

The new mantra quickly became: Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.

In what can only be defined as a panic-induced frenzy tantamount to an epileptic fit, I began to furiously run my hands through my hair, feeling quite certain that there was at least a Cockroach #4 somewhere in there probably laying eggs, possibly burrowing into my brain. As I carried out this embarrassing performance, I managed with extreme precision to throw my thumb and its corresponding fingernail directly into my right eye. It felt like I punched myself in the face. Then, to my horror, the white of my eye began to bleed.

In a state of shock I began to recognize the truth that was slowly starting to take shape in front of me - my lover had just pushed our relationship too far. At the point when I was crying, shaking and holding the Swiffer in one hand prodding the roaches on my bed while dabbing a tissue to my blood-dripping eye with the other - that's when I knew we'd hit rock bottom.

I was reminded of a scene from a movie by another New York lover about their New York apartment, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. When she calls Alvy to come over to help her kill the spider the size of a Buick in her bathtub, Annie presented the age old question: when something bad happens to you in your home, what do you do and who do you call?  I called three people in no particular order at two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday, and no one answered. Standing alone and feeling out of options and hope, I let it sink in that my apartment had betrayed me. I suddenly felt like Bill Pullman in every romantic comedy, or at least as devastated as someone who doesn’t get a rose on The Bachelor.

When I finally got through to my sister she told me to calm down and get into a cab and stay at her place. I needed some space. I needed a break. My apartment was turning into Animal Planet. Now, after a few days and the exterminator en route I’m still not quite ready to go back. I still feel a stinging sense of unfaithfulness (in addition to the stinging pain in my eye). But the thing is, what I deep down knew even as this whole horror show was unfolding, was that I’d go back eventually. There was never any question. I’m not sure if it’s because it really is true love or because the whole idea of moving on and trying to find something new simply isn’t worth the hassle - either way I knew I wasn’t ready to give up. And besides, a whole new set of problems would inevitably find me wherever I went. You can’t run from your demons, I’ve learned, because they catch up to you eventually. Sometimes the bravest thing is to choose to stay and fight.

And anyway perhaps we all have a masochistic relationship with the places we live. They can’t be perfect but we know all too well that we aren’t either, and so exceptions have to be made. We live and love in denial and endure the rough patches in order to come out on the other side more enlightened, happy warriors of our homes and our hometowns. Alvy Singer was right. Relationships are irrational and crazy and absurd but we keep going through it because most of us just need the eggs.

All I really know is that according to my optometrist my eye will heal in ten to fourteen days. Maybe by then, Apartment, I’ll be ready to forgive you.

*Note the events of this post took place during the summer of 2010, and while I won that battle the war wages on. If you have stories of battles with your home I’d love to hear them. Please leave them in the comments.

“There are many things my father taught me. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

I would bet just about anything that there isn’t anyone, including scholars who have studied for most of their lives, who knows more about World War II than my father. There has actually come a point just recently when he held up his hand and pleaded to me, “Please, for the love of God no more books on World War II. I already know everything.”

From him I’ve learned:

To expertly wield a wiffle ball (during those intense backyard games of baseball).

How to throw a fastball, a curve ball, a knuckleball.

The best way to make pancakes.

How to enjoy good scotch.

How to mow the lawn.

How to use a power drill.

How to appreciate madras plaid.

The importance of having a political point of view.

The importance of music (his extensive record collection consists of: Zepplin, the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Doors, some Dylan, early Elton John, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, etc.).

About how great Thurman Munson was.

About how bad the 1961 Yankees were.

To stand up for myself.

To stand up for what I believe in.

That it’s important to love without conditions.

That it’s possible to love beyond ‘til death do you part.

If I were ever to see him and he wasn’t dressed sharply and tan and didn’t call me his buddy ole pal and then immediately tell me how disenchanted he was with the Yankees, local government and his golf game while still caring desperately about them all, I’d think there was something wrong.

I love that the baristas at the Loudonville Starbucks have to brew a fresh pot every time he goes in there because he’s the only person in the tri state area who drinks decaf. I love that I got him to go to Starbucks at all because he believes so strongly in small business. I love that when he gets up to the counter to say his order it’s with authority and conviction like just about everything else he does: Tall! Decaf! Misto! I love that he orders a misto even though after telling him several hundreds of times I’m still not entirely sure he really knows what a misto is.

I love that he always rents movies that my sister and I have never heard of before, “I don’t know it could be good. It’s got that guy from Gladiator in it.” I love how much he appreciates it when I bring him really good sfogliatelle from the city. I love that he doesn’t understand why men aren’t lining up outside my apartment to take me out on dates. I love that he respects that I want to be a writer yet sometimes says things like, “well you know dentists make a lot of money, have you ever thought about doing something like that?”

I love that he consistently quotes Scarface “meet my little friend” and The Godfather, “leave the gun, take the cannoli,” and always tries but gets confused quoting Churchill, “this isn’t the end, but it’s the end of the beginning. Wait, no, it’s the beginning of the end. Wait, no…”

I love that he yells at the television when he watches the Sunday morning shows. I love that the license plate on his Jaguar XKR convertible says "40thPrez."  I love that he has an XKR because he's worked hard his entire life and deserves it more than anyone I know. I love that he can fix or build anything. I love that he's addicted to YouTube.

What I love more than anything is sitting with him on the deck in the backyard as the sun goes down while we both smoke a cigar and nurse a glass of Macallan in the soft summer breeze.

“Did I tell you about that book you gave me, The Third Reich at War?” he says looking over at me. “I was reading it and it was all things I already knew, but you know, there were a few bits that were new to me.”

I smile and look at him and think that we never know everything even when we think we do. I’ve learned most of everything that matters from him and I forget, more often than not, to tell him that I’m grateful.

So Dad: Thanks! For! Everything!

I love you, but I’ll never be a dentist.

Me age 2, with Dad. His t-shirt reads: #1 Dad.