What New York is your New York?

I wonder about women in New York and why we're here. It's a difficult city to inhabit if you want to have respect in your job, live in a nice apartment, afford the occasional new outfit and meet a decent man. Yet we're here en masse, and everywhere I look there's all trying to make it happen, all attempting to piece together their lives in a city of 8 million people.

There is the woman who gets on the bus and sits down next to me with her three handbags because one has documents for work, one has her after-work gym clothes and one has the lunch she makes at home the night before and brings to the office every day because she's trying to stretch that paycheck as much as possible. She finds a seat and quickly opens her book, (probably Eugenides because Oprah told her to), and doesn't look up or speak to anyone until she signals it's her time to deboard.

New York is not only her home, New York is her part-time job.

Of course there's always that other woman, who for some reason or other, always finds a spot right near me on public transportation as though I (intently reading and always determined to talk to no one that I don't absolutely have to) have a sign over my head with a bright flashing invitation that says: Sit here please! Annoy me!

This is all much like the woman from yesterday whose elbow was thrust into the back of my neck while I was reading, because apparently when she talks on the phone she has to gesticulate wildly. I was then forced to turn around to give her my best passive-aggressive, are you kidding me? look, however she was too busy on the phone (or I was too insignificant) for her to notice.

Now, leaning forward slightly, I listened (who could help but hear?) as she hung up and began to talk to the woman next to her about New York. About her New York. Not so much a part-time job as a paid vacation.

She also mentioned how time in her New York doesn't really start until people are up on the west coast. "I mean right?" she said, her voice sounding so girl-like for her age that it made my teeth itch. "New York is dead until people in LA are near their phones."

I couldn't hear a response from the woman next to her who she apparently decided to just start spouting off her opinions to. I can only imagine she nodded in passive-aggressive agreement.

"But I mean, I love New York. And really, it’s just like I’m Carrie from Sex and the City."

What is it with women all over the country who can't let go of that ridiculous show? No one writes a column and lives in a rent-controlled $700 a month apartment and can afford $300 shoes. No one should even acknowledge someone who has the ability to do that. And what's funny about it, is that any true New Yorker will tell you that the women depicted on that show really are irritating and live in a Manhattan that doesn't really exist, and it's always the non-New Yorkers who can't help but insist on trying to compare their lives to it.

"I really am. I mean, I'm a writer, I live in New York, I absolutely love shoes, and I actually have the same birthday as Sarah Jessica Parker! So I mean, it's totally me."

I laughed because I couldn't help it. I laughed because her voice was so serious and proud of those similarities that she made appear as though took her months to put together. I laughed because she was so utterly unaware of how pathetic and sad and how non-New York she really was.

It was all I could do to stop myself from turning around and seriously asking her, you're a writer?

She didn't hear me laugh of course, and even if she did this late-twenty-something clad in a too-short dress clutching her Treo and Louis Vuitton handbag (just one) would have been too caught up in her own world to notice.

As I watched her leave the bus loudly and with great drama, and then watched the woman next to me reading heft her three bags out so fast and so silently that I almost didn’t even see her leave - I thought about both and what New York must mean to each of them.

Sure, the SATC wannabe probably has a better apartment, more new outfits and a different man every month - but who appreciates it more? Who really understands it?

I guess it's difficult to say and I’ll never really know for sure, but I do know who I was rooting for. I know who would probably be here longer and who would learn more and who, living around these 8 million people, would be more likely to piece their life together. And who, upon deboarding, was at a great risk of being eaten alive.

You could be happy.

I know there are a ton of movies out there that talk about chance, about taking a chance on love, a chance on a friend or a family member or a job or a new city - all of which will ultimately lead to the happiness you’d been searching for during the past 65 minutes (or your whole life up until this point). But what I want to understand, (and what I’m guilty of myself), is how much we manage to leave to it and why.

I just let things hang out, collect dust, eventually to be forgotten all because I was fairly certain chance would come along for pick-up and take care of everything I wasn’t willing, (or was too scared) to do something about myself.

Granted, of course, there are a lot of things I don’t leave to this one word and idea that no one has any control over or real understanding of outside of the overall concept that it is, in fact, a savior if you’re lucky enough to have it fall in your lap when you really need it. Because there is a line we each know we have to walk up to eventually (but dare not cross) when it comes to our own happiness.
But of all the things to give up on, of all the things to leave the important things in your life to, aren’t we too generous to chance? We give it too much, surely, so much so that one day we might be able to actually recognize all the things we lost because we believed in it so much.

And like any religion, a blind faith in a higher power that is somehow creating meaning for all of the arbitrary things that fall upon us while we’re waking (and are waiting for us while we sleep) - it’s so much easier isn’t it, safe, to believe that even if we’re too scared to do something chance will always be there looking over us, somehow watching out as it secretly and silently weaves the pieces of our lives together, until one day, (maybe), we might be able to actually recognize that chances only really happen, (perhaps), if you make the choice to take them.

A hippie according to Starbucks.

Its been a while. Not since I’ve gone to Starbucks (obviously) but since I’ve written about it. Mainly it’s because our relationship has been a little strained ever since they decided to raise the prices behind my back by 9 cents. (The horror!)

It was a blatant betrayal of my trust and a total attack on my unwavering commitment to them (for the most part) as my sole provider for my morning coffee du jour.

Was it callous of them? Yes. Was insensitive? Obviously. Have I forgiven them even though I have trust issues and a self-realized tendency to like things/people who are bad for me? Of course.

We live in a society, as this article states, where "…you either define yourself as part of the Starbucks community or as someone ‘who doesn't do Starbucks.’" I think the answer is fairly clear about which side of the line I’m on, and I have to admit there something overwhelmingly snobbish and irritating about these people who are all "I don’t do Starbucks."

What does that even mean? Are you saying that if the only coffee you could ever get again for the rest of your life was indeed, Starbucks Breakfast Blend, you would give up coffee forever simply because you "don’t do" coffee from the corporate coffee king? I mean, that’s a little more ridiculous than $3 a cup, don’t you think?

And where does such anger come from? Why the hostility? I’m turning the tables on where the snobbery lies in the Starbucks equation and it isn’t the Starbucks-goer with the elitist attitude, it’s the Starbucks-nongoer, (under caffeinated), who chooses to go out of their way simply to criticize and belittle previously mentioned coffee drinker for their provider of choice.

I don’t go around telling them that I "don’t do" PBR, or that I "don’t do" you know…dread locks and skinny jeans. So, I mean, why all the hate? It’s not your money I’m spending on my grande soy latte on only odd-numbered days in only the two weeks immediately following the arrival of a paycheck. Is it?

I didn’t think so. And to anger them even more I’ll continue to do so despite the fact the Starbucks Oracle as defined me as (when entering soy latte as my drink of choice):

Personality type: Hippie

In addition to being a hippie, you are a hypochondriac health nut. You secretly think that your insistence on only consuming all-natural products is because you're so intelligent and well-informed; it's actually because you're a sucker. You've dabbled in Wicca or other pseudo-religions that attract morons and have changed your sexual orientation a few times this year. You probably live in California. Everyone who drinks grande soy latte should be forced to eat a McDonald's bacon cheeseburger.

Also drinks: Beverages with lots of marketing that says they're herbal and organic
Can also be found at: Whole Foods, indoor rock climbing facilities

Well, I’ve never been to California...but I definitely don’t do McDonald’s.

A quiet night in the Bronx.

I was at the stadium tonight for the most un-thrilling, un-fantastic game I've seen in a long time (is this batting practice I'm watching?!). Basically I was there just in time to watch the Yanks throw away their winning streak and lose to Baltimore 12-0.

It was a rough night in the Bronx and starter Jeff Karstens couldn’t seem to make it happen (though pitching for the Yankees at age 25 made me wonder what I’m doing with my life) and nary a run was scored for the pinstripes and with Boston beating Tampa Bay 2-1 we're now officially losing the momentum we'd gained since Kansas City, and slipping behind our committed adversary, the Sox.

I'm sure they're gloating in Boston, as that's what Boston is good at - being bitter, moody, temperamental - and then gloating. And they never do give up, either. Walking out to the 4 train after the 7th inning (no need to stick around to witness the end of that kind of massacre) there was That Guy, that typical Boston Guy who is seemingly at every sporting event you'll ever go to in your entire life, screaming repetitively and loudly from the Upper Deck "Lets go Red Sox."

I mean, I get it. It’s a dual to the death at this point (and always has been in the eyes of the tried and true Fenway Faithful), and it doesn’t matter if the Yanks win as long as the Sox lose. However, had I seen his face I would have given him a fair rendition of a withering look and said: We’re playing Baltimore. The Sox are in Florida. Get it together man.

Because baseball game, hockey game, basketball game - it doesn't matter where you are or who is playing, whether the game has innings, periods or quarters, that guy will be there shouting at the top of his lungs simply to solidify the opinion of everyone everywhere that sports fans from Boston really just need to get over themselves.

And now, just 5 games out, there’s still hope (and isn’t it hope that Boston has thrived on for decades?) that the Yanks will cinch the AL East title and shut The Boston Guy up for good…or at least until April.

Wednesday!

Obviously I'm not writing about this until today because the day-of I was too offended, tired and did I mention offended? By what had happened to actually re-live it by writing about it. And I'm not even going to write about it that much because that's all anyone in New York has been talking about for the past 48 hours - "How the Rain Ruined My Wednesday."

And yes it was rain, just a lot of it, that forced me to have to walk 40+ blocks to work this week. And I won't even go into the heat, the crowds (your poor, your tired, your huddled masses...), my overall confusion that didn't clear until I walked from 68th to almost 34th (which didn't include my cross-town excursion) that we weren't in fact, being attacked by terrorists, and the sad, painful state of my feet (poor little toes!) by the time I reached the office - two and a half hours after I left my apartment.

Around 34th street I had been looking for a place in which to buy some cheap flip flops for the rest of my journey, when I spotted two people ready to grab the one seemingly free cab in the entire city, and chased them down and demanded we spilt it. Had I not done so, I'm not entirely sure I would even actually still have feet right now.

I digress. The point here isn't to write angrily about the MTA and how they, the largest mass transit system in the world, totally dropped the ball yet again and ruined the Wednesday (and a perfectly good one at that!) of millions of honest working New Yorkers.

The point is, is that we’re all just trying to make it happen in what sometimes truly becomes the most difficult and frustrating of places to live in of all time. And yet we know this, and we still think it’s okay. We accept it like you do the snoring habits of a significant other.

Yeah, it’s annoying, and yeah, you can’t remember when you last had an uninterrupted nights sleep and sometimes you think about leaving them in order to find someone without that deviated septum. But in the end I guess you realize that it’s worth it, to overlook such things because in the end they really are, despite their faults one of a kind.

Who needs sleep?

Well August is here and August in New York means that suddenly the summer is coming to a rapid end, and everything you told yourself you were going to do way back in the spring, ("as soon as summer is here I can’t wait to...") you realize that you haven’t even attempted.

All those movies in Bryant Park, restaurants known for their patio tables, hotels and their roof decks, Shakespeare in the Park (p.s. the most difficult thing to make happen in New York)....and that grand plan to befriend someone with a house in the Hamptons.

I know, a lofty expectation, however I’d like to note that it’s The Gay who came up with the whole friend-with-house-in-Hamptons scheme. He’s only just gotten a dresser (pls. refer to The Dresser) so I think obtaining a friend with a nice by-the-beach pad is a little grandiose at the moment.

Regardless,the point is, is that it’s so much easier to talk about doing things than actually doing them. I think in New York we do so much all the time that if we were to actually go through with everything we talked about, if we actually took advantage of everything that is available to us at every moment of every day - we’d never sleep. Ok, ok, I realize now that yes, New York is known as The City That Never Sleeps - but let me tell you, it does. And we do. We have to.

And maybe it’s not enough for all we do, the long commutes, the constant barrage of people all pushing you to get somewhere, the heat the seeps up from the pavement and closes in around your ankles every morning and makes the air heavy to breathe. The late nights at the office, the pressure that you’re not staying late enough, the pressure that you’re not in the right office or the right apartment or the right place at the right time (New York should be known as The City That Never Has Time).

In fact, things get so bad that sometimes you don’t even realize you’re awake. Sitting on the subway the other day, I was jammed in against a woman who was taking up more than her fair share of the seat, doing a crossword puzzle over the top of her glasses, mouth open as she moved her pencil back and forth over all of the Up and Down clues. On the other side was a guy with the typical male uniform of a blue dress shirt and khaki pants reading The Post. I myself was reading a book, wedged in between.

I like to say I was engrossed in the inner witticisms of Evelyn Waugh - however the truth is - I think that whole pages elapsed where I didn’t have a clue what was going on, where I entirely spaced out - because in a moment I looked up and there was no one on the bench to the left of me. The woman and her crossword puzzle was gone, and all that was left in our car was a few people across from me, and the guy in the blue dress shirt reading the Post who I now realized I was leaning up against.

After the initial embarrassment settled in I allowed the next lurch and stop of the train to slyly propel me away from him, though I’m pretty sure he was inwardly wondering what was wrong with me, because at that moment he leaned forward, made a grand gesture of putting his elbows on his knees and spread The Post out in font of him as if to say, "umm, that was weird." (Whoops).

So we aren’t exactly the city that never sleeps, but we like to keep that overall glowing opinion of ourselves, so we try to hide it well. And August is here (already!) and we still have three weeks to make some of those spring promises happen before the chill of fall settles in (before we know it).

So I guess I’ll just have to be sure to make a note to get to bed early.

Bridge Over Troubled Water.

What are we really supposed to do with ourselves when we finally realize that we have absolutely no control over anything?

I started to feel that realization sink in when I was stuck underground today on the way home from work on the 1 train for twenty minutes. I was standing and trying to read while the announcement kept saying things like "smoke" and "at 95th street," and my brain couldn’t stop from turning to the same questions of: why aren’t we moving? How long am I going to be trapped under here? and, When did this become my life?

Give anyone some time trapped underground in a subway full of sweaty, tired, angry New Yorkers and you’re bound to question the deeper things in your life - namely all the things that seem to be going wrong that you can’t control.

The thing about realizing a thing like that, is that you don’t really realize it until it happens to you. Sure, you can walk about thinking you’ve had quite a few miles on the highway without a front wheel blowout. You’ve had perhaps one too many close calls where you weren’t entirely paying attention when you crossed the street. You can be like Gregory Wernick Sr. of Rockford, Illinois who drove over the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis shortly before it collapsed.

He stopped to get a drink nearby and heard commotion, so he went back. "I figure I crossed about 10 minutes before it happened," he said. "That’s just too close to call."

Because that’s what life is anyway, isn’t it? A bunch of close calls. And when we think about those miles on the highway, or those times in the middle of busy 42nd street, or Gregory - we can recognize that its never actually happened to us.

What I want to know is: what are you really supposed to do with yourself when you’re one of those people who is just sitting there, sitting in rush hour traffic, stuck, bumper to bumper after a long day at the office, waiting to get home for an even longer night of making dinner and talking about your day and having sex and going to sleep - just listening to the radio or talking on the phone, or thinking to yourself that you still don’t know how it is that you ended up here, and the bridge you’re idling on just collapses beneath you.

What I want to know is: what is anyone supposed to do when they’re falling through the air and into the waters of the Mississippi, their cell phone dropping from their hand, their thoughts changing quicky to: What’s happening? What if this is it? How did it get here? Why have I not done more?

The only way, I’ve found, is to find a bright side. Not too bright of course, but bright enough so that you’ll have a way to get through the next day knowing that you’re just out there, every day, just out there in the open and anything could happen at any time.

The bright side, I figure, is that once the call finally isn’t close, once the call is actually for you and you alone - living through it will have reminded you that now, all those times you find yourself stuck underground on the 1, or idling in our car on a bridge and asking the questions of how you got here and what it is that you’re really doing - you should at least be able to realize that it’s quick, life, that’s what it is, and it’s all chances and calls (close or far away) and you shouldn’t waste any more time trying to figure it all out.

Because the water is always there, waiting.

The Dresser

OK. So for those of you who don’t know, getting furniture in New York is difficult. I’ve been trying to help a friend who has been living off of their floor and out of a suitcase for about seven months now, a dresser to hold the various items that I inevitably have to step over when I come to visit. "Are you just like, going to pick those pants up off the floor tomorrow and wear them to work?" I ask. He looks at me for a moment wondering, perhaps, what is wrong with doing such a thing, and says, "Well yeah. I mean, they’re clean."

Young twenty-something’s in Manhattan who don’t have a job in investment banking, are most likely living paycheck to paycheck. After rent, what little we have left over is saved for important things like: clothes, brunch, vodka sodas, shoes, beers, and dinners. We have no extra income for the fairly inconsequential things like superfluous costly furniture – namely, dressers.

We are a group of people who would rather store our clothes in a nice pile (clean) on the floor, than risk missing brunch for two months just to save up for a dresser. We do, after all, have our priorities.

However, the other thing about Manhattan is that you can, if you look hard enough, furnish the necessary things (like some plates, say, or a mattress even) without spending an arm and a leg. Craigslist is there for those of us who have arrived (not me) and are willing to sell their old stuff for cheap (Ikea) and actually invest in something new (like, not a futon). Their trash is our treasure (yes please!), and I made it my mission to find my above mentioned friend the least trashiest trash dresser on the island.

(Note: The Dresser is also a 1983 movie (and play) starring Albert Finney (and no one who was born after 1920), that premiered with the tagline, "What happens backstage is always true drama. And often pure comedy").

In the end, it was in fact an investment banker younger than me (ugh!) getting rid of her fairly nice trash dresser with a chestnut finish, and moving across town to Riverside Drive with her boyfriend. Really? So she's able to leave behind perfectly good furniture and her rather large studio apartment to officially grow up and invest in not only a new dresser, but a relationship as well? Surely her trash-to-not-trash changeover happened too soon?

My friend and I scoffed inwardly, bitterly wishing someone nice with furniture from CB2 loved us on the West Side too, just before we proceeded to carry a dresser 12 blocks uptown.

By 68th street the sound of the wheels from the make-shift moving-cart I borrowed from my doorman was loud enough to drown out a passing fleet of fire engines, however didn’t succeed in suppressing my overall hatred of a place that does everything in its power to test you in order for you to prove that you’re worthy just to live there.

Everyone who passed us looked at us with faces of confusion or sheer entertainment. What?! My face shot back. Have you never seen a dresser before?! Sorry we all can’t be rich and successful enough to actually buy one from somewhere real and have it delivered by actual men whose job it is to deliver things!

I was at a low point. I was no longer fabulous New Yorker on the Upper East Side. I was sad poser New Yorker who resided in 10021 but was dragging a large wooden box up 2nd avenue.

After we ruined the ear drums of a few more diners alfresco, we arrived at my friends apartment and then proceeded to carry the large wooden box up five flights of stairs.

When it was finally inside, standing in all its glory, a lone piece of furniture on an otherwise barren wall, I felt a sense of satisfaction (maybe it was the fatigue) flood over me.

My friend would no longer be sifting through piles in the morning to figure out what to wear to the office, which would inevitably save him time and frustration. We had, through hard work and determination, successfully moved one more step towards the American dream – to live in a home full of…furniture.

Yes, we may not have a lot, and no, we may not be investment bankers making six figures living on the West Side in a successful relationship heading towards what might be marriage in an apartment with plush new couches and tall sturdy dressers - but by God, I thought, we’re certainly New Yorkers, where what happens backstage is always true drama - and certainly pure comedy.

You've been here before.

It happens to me on occasion, where I’ve walked past the exact same apartment building that something was chasing me out of in my dream the night before. I look up for a minute at that front bay window and the greying black of the bricks and that same tree. Yes, that same exact tree was in my way last night, right there in the middle of my getaway as I ran in slow motion away from something that made so much more sense before I woke up with a start and thought with a panic "huh?" before I thought "oh," when I realized that nice thing you get to realize when bad things happen to you at night - it was just a dream.

The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the Laundromat tomorrow.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll have more time.

And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up - and you think yourself: how do I know you?

There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to study their face, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s "oh’s" and "ahh’s" all around as you show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this huge hole of a place - you know people.

But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot of people, and chances are that this random person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them, because everyone knows that no one in New York ever talks to anyone when they don’t have to.

And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and it’s more impossible to meet someone here than...and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know anyone at all.

(That, and, it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay).

So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll get it together. Is it desperation? (some would think so). Is it loneliness? (some would understand), or is it just this city taking it’s toll when all you need is to connect with someone else who doesn’t want your seat on the subway, doesn’t want to get past you on the sidewalk, doesn’t want to get in line before you at Starbucks?

Who knows. Some things don’t make sense whether you’re asleep or awake, and no one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.

And the subway carries on slow and steady, and so you do because, (huh!?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before. Oh.

Vertical New York is blocking out our sight.

I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives.

All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us. Because we deep-down know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze.

Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home.

But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion. Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the better bag, the better apartment, betterboyfriendbetterreservationatthebetterrestaurant...
How are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own? Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)

They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out. Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].

Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind...and empty-handed.

Recipe for New York.

There comes a time in every New Yorkers life when they think to themselves: am I really going to be able to do this forever?

Case in point last weekend having to go to Port Authority to get on a bus just to go to someone’s house in New Jersey for a barbeque. It was a friends office summer party, and I came with them because in this day and age he and I are both younger-than-usual people trapped in a late-twenties-early-thirties world. These sort of office functions we go to, as not only singles, but (gasp!) unmarried, makes us feel like we’re from some alternate universe upon arrival.

I decided that in order to make a great first impression on this married and older co-workers of his who all work at an admired magazine, that I would charm this backyard gathering with a homemade blueberry pie. So I spent my Saturday afternoon baking, from scratch, a lattice pie. (Fact: most of my ideas sound really great upon their initial burst into my brain, and not until I’m deep in it do I realize how far from great the idea really is).

Running late we decided to hop in a cab to Port Authority. The pie, still warm, was placed in a paper bag and set on the seat between us. We didn’t want to miss the only bus that we knew would bring us safely to this little town somewhere across the Hudson. Close to 42nd street I lifted the pie off the seat, and saw, much to my chagrin, a pool of thick blueberry syrup had pooled within the entire bottom of the bag and was currently falling over my hands and consequently, over the entire aluminum covered pie. Shit.

My friend and I looked at each other with shock, and as I held the pie in my hands, fingers burning, I realized something else was wrong the way you know when a big storm is about to break, and began looking frantically around the cab in a very blood-covered-Jack Woltz-pulling-the-covers-back-in-his-bed sort of way. Pools of blueberry syrup were all over the back seat, and the largest of them was alongside my leg, covering the entire left leg of my madras plaid pants. Shit. Shit. Shit.

All I remember at that point was running from the cab into Port Authority holding a pie like it was on fire with blue syrup streaking down my arms as people watched in confusion and horror. Sure, it was no horse, but it was still pretty shocking. And any New Yorker who has any foul play cab experiences knows that the only thing to do in a situation like that is to simply throw money at the driver and run before they can realize what you’ve done.

There was then the line of women in the bathroom who watched as I tried to wash the blue from my arms, and I hate whoever came up with the idea of getting rid of paper towels in public restrooms and opted for those hot air dryers. There were people watching as I ran back and forth from the bathroom to the gift shop grabbing a new bag, napkins, all just in time to board the bus and show up at this party and be introduced (and sure to leave a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons), with blueberry all over my pants with a large spattering over the chest of my white shirt for good measure.

On the bus, my friend looked at me and through laughter and disbelief over how sometimes it seems like I just can’t catch a break, asked: will there come a time when we just can’t do this thing anymore?

This thing that he was referring to, of course, was New York. There are a lot of times in this city when you wonder why you go through so much just to bring a pie to a party. Perhaps there will come a time when I won’t have the energy left, and fleeing Manhattan will be the only option.

Until that time, however, I’ll tough it out, I think, for a while anyway. Or at least until I run out of unstained clothes.

In Medias Res

One of these days I'm going to finish something (and I don't mean drinks or boring phone calls or bad movies). I mean one of these days I'm going to follow through with all the things I think about doing and talk about doing and feel in the pit of my stomach that I should.

But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.

For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.

Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.

One of these days I'm going to finish something so all these things that I've missed out on won't have been for nothing. We all have to find the time to learn to swim eventually.

Promenade (n): a stroll or walk, especially in a public place.

This morning walking east on 72nd street towards the bus stop for my morning routine of waiting-for-the-bus-for-the-fifty-minute-commute-across-town, a man passed me and asked me point blank how the prom was.

"How was the prom?" he asked with a big smile on his face. The prom?

I guess you always have to be prepared in New York because you just don’t know what it's going to throw at you – especially that early in the morning. The inflection of his voice at first threw me, because walking down the street on any given day I tend to hear men say the most ridiculous (and mostly crude) things to me.

But how was the prom? I was wondering how this was supposed to equal some form of pick-up line, or whatever it is these men are trying to accomplish when saying random things to random women on the street. It seemed like the verbal equivalent of a honked horn (which happens more than one would think) always leaving me to wonder: what are you really getting out of doing that except solidifying my opinion that men have not, in fact, evolved.

Prom guy was skinny with white pants and a grey t-shirt and was, I then realized, naturally, flamboyantly gay (I say naturally because I don’t think you’d find too many straight men so inquisitive about prom). He knew me. At least he thought he knew me. He thought I’d just returned from what was supposed to be the greatest experience in my teenage life up until that point, compete with hair, make-up, a limo, a cheesy pastel dress and matching vest for my too-much-hair-gelled date.

I had my big sunglasses on because it was early and I hadn’t had coffee yet and it’s been a long time since I’ve personally been to the prom, an event that, looking back, I altogether could have done without

"Ummm," I said bringing a hand tentatively up to my sunglasses thinking, should I just take them off and let him see his gaffe? But then I felt bad. I'd let our awkward moment go on for too long and his face was so genuine, his tone so concerned about the outcome of this particular girls’ night at the prom, that I couldn’t help myself but stop, pay tribute, and lie. "Ok?" I said feeling ridiculous.

Because New York is nothing if not a place where you can be whoever you want on any give day and I figured I might as well go with it. He noticed however, that I seemed confused.

"Ohhh!" he said, a hint of recognition in his voice. This is it! He realizes I am not who he thinks! "I thought you were your sister! You two look so much alike I can never tell!"

I nodded and smiled in agreement. What is wrong with this guy? The sister? Not only did he think I was someone else, he then thought I was someone else on top of being someone else! "Oh well!" I said and opened my hands in front of my like I was offering him something and shrugged my shoulders in a very it-happens-all-the-time sort of way.

I do happen to have a sister that people think I look just like and upon first meeting confuse us. She always gets upset, giving a look like, ew, I don’t look that much like her, do I? that I try not to get offended by.

Prom guy and I parted ways and I took my place in the crowd of waiting bus-goers. I could feel all their eyes on me, all silently wondering why I didn’t offer this apparent-friend more information about my twin sister’s night at the prom, not even giving so much as an "I’ll call you later," upon our departure.

But what else can you do in a city full of so many people that no one knows you enough to even know that you’re not someone else.

I've never been the gambling type.

"Do you ever play the lotto down in Manhattan?" Dad asks as we drive to the train station. It is a hot night in the suburbs which means it’s going to be an event hotter night in the city.

I never buy the lotto.

"You should really do it one day. Just a lucky number, birthday, anniversary..."

I suppose I should do it, one day. One day when I think that luck is on my side. One day just to pass the time. But I’ve always thought that you have to really believe in something in order to reap the benefits of it. Once you stop believing in the tooth fairy you stop getting a dollar under your pillow. If you don’t believe in true love you never seem to quite find it, and if you don’t believe in luck you’ll never strike it big.

"Just try it sometime. You never can tell."

People down on their luck are always believing in it more than they deep-down-know they should. Against all odds they put all their chips out on the table because they believe in that last almost tangible sliver of a chance that might turn their luck around. But luck is just what is caught up in the spinning axis of the universe that you can’t reach out and take control of. Luck is (unlike the lotto ticket) out of your hands. Numbers are just numbers. Birthday are just birthdays. Anniversaries are just anniversaries - and they mean something to you but they don’t mean anything to the automated machine that selects them at random.

We can’t control much, (tomorrow, you just don’t know), so we scratch those little boxes on those little pink tickets thinking we’re taking control of our lives. What would we do with all that money? What would we do first? We dream. We hope. We deep-down-know better.

Keep your luck to yourself, I say, your numbers, your birthdays, your anniversaries, and go about your daily chores in life - the hard living and working and loving (where teeth aren’t worth a thing) and pretend to yourself that every day is like your own personal lotto ticket. It may change how you think about luck. Just try it sometime. You never can tell.

You've been here before.

It happens to me on occasion, where I’ve walked past the exact same apartment building that something was chasing me out of in my dream the night before. I look up for a minute at that front bay window and the greying black of the bricks and that same tree. Yes, that same exact tree was in my way last night, right there in the middle of my getaway as I ran in slow motion away from something that made so much more sense before I woke up with a start and thought "huh?" before I thought "ohhh," when I realized that nice thing you get to realize when bad things happen to you at night - it was just a dream.

The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the laundromat tomorrow.

And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up, (forcing them to do what any normal person on the subway would do when someone is awkwardly staring at them - which is roll your eyes and turn away), and you think yourself: how do I know them?

There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s ohh’s and ahh’s all around as you can show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this place - you know people.

But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot, and chances are that this person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them because everyone knows that no one in New York talks to anyone when they don’t have to.

And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other, it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know you at all.

That an it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay.

So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Does it smell of desperation? Does it ooze loneliness? Or is it just this city taking it’s toll where all you need is to connect with someone else? Who knows. No one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.

And the subway carries on slow and steady and so you do because, (huh?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before.

(Oh).

You just never know.

The thing about knowing is that we always think we do. We always think we know more, know better, know enough to get ahead or get what we want, or just get by.

But as much as you know:

how frequently the subway comes
the number beer for you is one-too-many
what you look for in a boyfriend/girlfriend
why you came to new york
your favorite color

Just as easily, one day you:

find it derail and it never shows up.
drink more than you should
find someone who surprises you
realize that all your reasons have changed.
find that maybe green is the new black.

Because you can never know, and that's the scary part. You can never know from one day to the next what's going to happen to change everything in your life and make you walk to work, throw up on the sidewalk, or kiss someone you never thought would.

We like to think we're all smarter than we are, that we've been through so much we must have learned our lessons by now - but what can you know in a city with so many people about who you really are?

You just...Never. Know. when...what you know is always changing.

And in a city with so many people it's impossible to catch up - and you know more than you think (I think), if you let yourself know at least that.

gait analysis.

I've taken to walking. Not that I don't walk a lot in this city, because long blocks are everywhere and endless avenues are far, and you have no choice but to hit the pavement to get from point anywhere to point somewhere. But I've taken to walking on an intentional level as a means to clear my head.

Too many nights that I get back from work, late, when the approaching summer heat is still lingering on the more but never entirely empty streets, and I feel trapped. It's easy, isn't it, how quicky you can drown in your own life?

The more tired I get, (ain't it always the way?) the less I can sleep. That's when the restlessness settles in and the walls shrink and I think that if I become just one more nameless face to one more person in this giant metropolis of people all wanting so much to mean something, I'm going to implode.

So that's why I've taken to walking, because being out on the streets is the only way to feel like you're a part of something you can never fully grasp - your existence in a place where everything is up, the buildings, the rent, the price of a beer, and financial plans, plans for the future and everything is up, up, up.

Not me. I like my feet settled firmly on the ground. Not up, but straight, on an even keel, balanced, planted step in front of planted step. That's why I've taken to walking, late at night when people are locked away in their expensive high-rise cages all waiting to go to sleep to dream about getting through tomorrow.

The less I can sleep the more tired I get, and so the further I walk. And long blocks and endless avenues go by like the past, and I think that if I become just one more nameless face to one more person in this giant metropolis of people all wanting so much to just mean something, I'll walk forever. I'll walk on forever with my feet settled firmly on the ground. No more lofty expectations, no more pipe dreams, no more unrealistic ideas or hopes or goals - no more...up. Just planted step in front of planted step, walking me straight and fast out a life that, (easy, isn't it?) can so quickly make me feel trapped.

5°C (40°F)

There are things in life that we just don't want to address. There are truths that we know we have to come to terms with eventually, but tell ourselves we'll wait until later, wait until tomorrow, wait until we have more time.

Until, until, until.

It's like those mysterious tupperware containers in the back of my refrigerator. They've been there for a while, sitting and waiting in the back for me to reach in and take a chance on them. And I've been thinking about them, too, every time I open that refrigerator door and see their silhouettes slanted against the carton of milk, and the orange juice and the loaf of bread.

Each time I open the door the smell gets a little bit stronger, gets a little bit worse - but I tell myself that they're still good, that I shouldn't throw them away just yet.

So I wait. And day in and day out the door opens and shuts, the light goes on and off and there they are - just waiting for me to take a chance on them. I don't know why I keep waiting for later or tomorrow or until I have more time just to clean out the fridge. And now, because I didn't want to face the problem head on, it only got worse. I foolishly didn't deal with it right then and there when I knew the truth about how those mysterious containters of greening pasta and greying vegetables were never going to amount to much.

I could have easily just thrown it all away and started fresh. That's what I should have done. But we're accustomed to holding on to the smallest and most ordinary of things and making them feel like they're worth so much more. And it's all just a waste. All of it. Keeping things thermally insulated doesn't always protect them, making them numb doesn't always make them go away.

And it's not until, until, until you can barely breathe when you open the door do you realize that there are some truths in life you can only avoid for so long.

Listen to the tap.

You're tapping your foot. Do you like this song?

Pardon?

Tapping. You're (gestures to my foot) tapping your foot. That usually means you like the song.

Oh (I look at my foot and make it stop). Yes.

So you like jazz?

(What is it about jazz that makes men think things they normally wouldn't?)

Yeah, I do.

That's interesting.

Right.

Do you even know what song is this?

(What is it about a girl liking jazz that always makes men want to quiz you?)

It's Dave Brubeck (easy one) Pick Up Sticks.

Nice.

(I could have said Miles Davis or Coltrane, or Ricky Martin and he wouldn't have known the difference).

Yes, it is.

(then):

What's your name/where are you from/how long have you been in the city/what do you do/do you have a boyfriend?

(I answer all questions honestly and there's only one answer he pays attention to).

How do you not have a boyfriend?

Because (I say), I've yet to meet anyone who actually listens.

You know things are bad when...

You walk 12 blocks to Best Buy twice in one day to bring your computer that has been plagued by Blue Screen Of Death for the past few weeks (first trip to assess, second to drop off with appropriate CDs you’re surprised you even had). You spend $100 on System Recovery (whatever that is). You spend $130 on a new hard drive (you don’t even know what those really do). You spend $100 on installation (because how can you install something you don’t understand)?

You wait two days, happily thinking you’ve done what you always do, which is throw money at the problem and get good results. After spending $330 you walk 12 blocks back to the store and get that look that people who know things about technology always give you when they know you don’t know as much as you probably should. You feel bad about yourself. You feel even worse when you mentally factor how you’re going to pay next month’s rent with this huge financial blow. But you smile anyway because at least, you think to yourself, you’ll have your computer back.

You walk 12 blocks home, rub your hands together after you turn on your computer the way you do when you’re really excited about something. You wait. You are excited. Then after mere moments, you see none other than the infamous Blue Screen that you’ve come to hate (while still not really understanding it).

While waiting for your eyes to remember how to blink you consider your options: throw computer out the window. Give up on technology entirely. Buy pens with whatever money you have left (about $5) and learn better how to write more legibly by hand.

Instead, you call your friend to complain to him about your problem, knowing full well that complaining has never fixed anything, but it sure does make you feel better. Then you listen as he laughs in disbelief and tells you that maybe, just maybe, some peoples lives (yours) are simply just meant to always be Blue Screens.

Note: You can buy a 10-pack of Bic’s for $4.75. Donations are welcome. Preferably in black.