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Wed, April 25
Jane
This morning I brought in the latest issue of JANE magazine (bought it in the airport last weekend) for my coworker Laura. I was pretty excited--I never remember to bring things I tell people I'll bring for them. I marched triumpantly towards her cube, and held the issue with Bryce Dallas Howard and Kirsten Dunst on the cover up over my head. Hero-like.
"Awwww! I actually bought it last night! I didn't think you'd remember," she said apologetically.
It was the "scandalous" issue with pictures of women's boobs in it. We opened to the article and had a good laugh. 'Cuz, c'mon. Boobs at work = funny.
It was a shame to put a new issue of Jane to waste. So I thought the teenage daughter of our department head might like it. I personally think it is one of the smarter women's mags out there (way better than Cosmo, Elle, or Glamour any day) and there were some particularly good articles in this issue.
After I gave the magazine away, Laura started chuckling.
"What's so funny?" I asked her.
"Uh...You don't remember the boob drawings you made?" she asked.
And then I remembered...As we were giggling over the pics, I couldn't help but take my Sharpie and draw glasses and moustaches all over the boob spread. Because I'm so mature.
Now my boss's daughter will think I'm a perv. Awesome.
Posted by lexzog at Wed, April 25 | Comments (0)
Thu, April 19
The Show: Tainted Love
Finally, I've gotten that darn song out my head ("tainted love...ohhhhhh, tainted love"). The show was kick-ass! I know, I know, I say it each time, but they truly do improve with every show.
Here's a few of the pieces that were read:
MY PIECE:
Tainted East Village
I’d like to open my piece with a poem:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door "
--“The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
On the night of my twenty-second birthday, I fell in love with a bartender on Avenue B. Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so much as love as it was that I’d have given my first born to run my fingers through his side-swepped Emo hair. But it was enough to make me want to leave the Upper West Side for the East Village so I could be with the bartender, or at least, find other bartenders of similar aesthetic pleasingness.
So my roommate and I said ta ta to the Zabars and Talbots of our uptown life and “hey” to Russ and Daughters, and American Apparel. There was so much to see and do in my new neighborhood: You could have coffee in the garden of a cafe around the corner, or enjoy an outdoor DJ set down the street on balmy summer nights. And I was super excited to eat Southen comfort meals at the famous Mama’s on 3rd street, where you could get three days worth of food for only eight bucks.
Once we moved, I had to revamp my wardrobe to fit in with my new hipster neighbors. This meant cutting up every t-shirt I owned, shopping for shoes at the salvation army, and of course, spending hundreds of dollars I had no right to spend on clothes that could have belonged in my old babysitter’s 80’s wardrobe. But I was fine—I had prepared myself to live an austere life style of eating PB&J just so I could afford to dress the part of my new ‘hood. But the reality was, hipsters don’t eat PB&J—instead they have a strict diet of cigarettes and PBR.
I soon became known on the scene at every establishment that sold alcohol on Ludlow. The bouncers gave me knowing nods when I walked in the door, and the bartenders became my best buds. I busted my ear drums listening to horrible local bands. I visited my bartender crush at his bar. A meal at Mama’s went up to $9.50.
A month or so later, I was sitting in a café on A, when a cute, unwashed looking guy started talking to me. He told me he’d been a runaway as a teen, and lived on and off the streets ever since. He was also a grafitti artist. It was instant love. He drew me a picture of an elephant and said it had something to do with warding off evil spirits. We talked for hours. “You want to hear my music?” he asked me. We went back to his place—which was in the basement of a yoga center, next to the building’s boilers and some stray cats. He pressed play on his little cassette player and I pretended to enjoy his wailing on a guitar. “I model on the side,” he told me conspirationally. “Want to see my pictures?” Looking at his portfolio felt vaguely like looking at gay porn. “Did you take these in a…um..studio?” I asked him? “Nah..This guy approached me on the street, so I took a few pictures with him.’ “Ohhhkaaay Runaway Model Boy.” I took this as my cue to leave. “Wait! You want to come to a Hari Krishnah yoga retreat tomorrow?” he asked as I nearly tripped on a cat on my way out the door. Only in the East Village, folks.
One quiet night out at Welcome to the Johnson’s—a bar on Essex with a bathroom you could catch genital herpes from simply by breathing through your mouth—a slight and soft-spoken guy named Paul challenged me to a game of pool. I was trying to take a break from dating, and was happy when I got a gay vibe from him. We hit it off, and I was happy to have a new guy friend…Until we met up for coffee the next night and he talked about his on again off again girlfriend back in Virginia who was only sixteen years old. Note: Paul was 27. His defense: “She’s really mature for her age.” Paul also worked for Con Edison, checking for electrically charged man holes in the AM hours. He recorded songs about his childhood dog Sassy, in a falsetto reminiscent of a twelve year old girl. He had a giant tattoo of a cow jumping over the moon on his stomach inspired by a milk ad on the side of a truck. An immature man with pedophilic inclinations and no real job? Dreamy. Sign me up!
We took long walks through Thompkins Square Park, Paul and I, since—well, neither of us had much money to blow on dates that costed anything. A couple weeks into dating, I found out he and his future statutory rape case were on again, again, When I found myself stalking her on his Friendster page, I knew that it had gone too far. I made him give me my favorite sweatshirt back, wished him luck with his man-hole checking career and was not surprised when he called me crying a couple of weeks later, telling me he wanted another chance, and by the way, things were really off for again, again with the teenager. We had one last date—a real one—at Mama’s—where the meal was now $10.75. Then we never spoke again.
Luckily, when my love life seemed less than stellar, I always had the bartender to fall back on. We had tea and talked about books, and his stint in AA. I watched his band play at Murcurey Lounge, and ignored the dirty looks from the dozen or so other girls fighting for his attention after a set. He promised me a cassette of my favorite song of his. I figured it was only a matter of time before he wrote a song about and declared his true love for: Me, the nice Jewish girl who didn’t really belong in the East Village, yet understood his angst.
Well, that didn’t exactly work out. I ended up in a near fist fight with a chick named Sophie at 4am one night at his bar. She claimed to have gone down on him in the back room just an hour before I’d shown up. I told her he wouldn’t do something like that. She laughed at me, flashed me her boobs, then tried to get my number and suggested we hang out sometime. The bartender affair seemed to have gone on long enough. I went home, and ate some leftovers from Mama’s---from a meal that now cost nearly $12 bucks.
So I cooled it with the downtown dating scene. I realized I couldn’t rely on my neighborhood to improve my love life, or my life in general.
By the time I moved out of my east village apartment, things had changed. It seemed as if all my favorite places on Avenue B had “for rent” signs up. My corner café with its garden closed. My go-to dance spot had become Bridge and Tunnel, and my regular bar was infested with NYU kids. I was sick of wearing cut up t-shirts, and was so over leggings and other people’s shoes. I couldn’t even afford Mama’s anymore.
On my last night in my apartment I went to the liquor store on 4th street and asked for some spare boxes I could use for packing. I was holding so many, I could hardly see where I was going. So when I felt them magically lift out of my hands, I was a little bit surprised. Chivalry in the East Village? Was my White Night finally revealing himself?
No. It was a homeless guy with a shopping cart, “Here you go Lady! I got ‘em!”
“No, that’s cool. You can keep them.” I told him.
“No, no, I’ll walk you to where you need to be. Where you headed?” he asked.
“No, really, it’s fine. You can have the boxes.”
I started walking home but he followed me. At this point I felt bad. I couldn’t be that priveledged dainty gentrifying girl with the homeless man hauling boxes for me. I acquiesced to telling him my name when he asked.
“Alexis is ELECTRIC!” he shouted.
As we walked down 4th street towards B, the street seemed to be darker than ever before. Weirdos started to creep out from the shadows like in the Thriller video. How is it that this never happened the previous two years I’d been living there? Why, on my last night, was I being accosted by a homeless guy like some girl from Jersey coming to the big bad city for the first time?
Why did I have such bad male karma in the East Village?
Five bucks got rid of the homeless guy for good, and I still got to keep my boxes. I moved out and was only slightly sad to be leaving a place where I’d experienced and expected so much. The irony of the whole thing was—for a place that was supposed to be gritty and downtown, it had become more expensive than the upper west side ever was. I thought that it was the only place I could meet interesting guys, but the truth is—they really were just guys in expensive t-shirts trying too hard to look unclean. Or, in the Box Guy case, actual homeless men.
I live in Gramercy now—with my boyfriend. He never was in a band, he wears his hair short, and he showers on a regular basis. He even cooks me mean fried chicken wings…and it doesn’t cost me $20 bucks.
RAQUEL'S PIECE:
A Vacation That Loves You
Raquel D’Apice
An analogy is “a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.” Analogies are one of my favorite things-- closely trailing coconut macaroons and intense descriptions of disfigurement. They can give someone a better understanding of a situation by likening it to a circumstance the person already knows well.
Situation 1: “Having a child,” a friend’s hippie mother remarked in the late seventies, “is probably just like having a kitten.”
“This is maybe the worst analogy you can possibly make,” says my friend, who is 28 years old, litterbox trained, and has never preferred Purina to Paxil. “Saying that child rearing is like having a kitten is like saying that nine minutes on the elliptical machine prepares you to compete in a biathlon. “It’s nothing like having a kitten,” she said. “Having a child is nothing like having a kitten and anyone who thinks otherwise is either hideously neglecting their children or taking fanatically good care of their cats.”
I have no idea what having a child is like with the exception of "hard." "It's hard," said my mother, distracted.
"Do you have anything more descriptive?" I asked. "Having a child is like..."
"Having a child is like...really hard," she said again, cutting onions with vigor. Really, really hard. And sometimes, when they're young you want to throw them against a wall. You don't actually do it," she specified. "But you want to."
I had been dating someone who was aware that the “having a kid is like having a kitten” comparison was more than slightly inadequate. (“A kid will not be fine if it takes a flying leap off the deck,” he observed. A kid won‘t be killing chipmunks and leaving them on your pillow after 8 months, and if he does you should probably have him in therapy.) He did not want kids, he said. Ever.
“Ever ever?” I asked. I didn’t want children until I was at least in my thirties.
“I think ever ever,” he said, sighing. “I’m sorry.”
We should have forseen the problem. I had always known I wanted children and a family; he had trouble watching Eight is Enough without suffering paralyzing anxiety attacks. And while “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” the Tour de France-like challenge of raising a family is often eased by having a vehicle of some sort as assistance. Especially when the terrain is uphill. Especially especially when the uphill terrain is not underwater, given that, in this scenario, you are a fish, and would most likely be overcome by a mass of MacLaren strollers more intimidating than the cast of Shark Week.
Uncertain of exactly what children entail, I Googled for more analogies.
I read that having a child is like taking your heart out of your chest and letting it walk around outside your body.
“That’s exactly what it’s like,” my mother said, widening her eyes in recognition. “And it never gets any easier. And you never stop worrying. Ever.” This is my mother’s fool-proof plan: to tell me about the physical and emotional pain of child-rearing and how your life will never again be your own, all the while purchasing gifts off Amazon.com for her eventual grandchildren. (She has purchased, to date, “A Child’s Treasury of Poems and Verse,” and Charlotte‘s Web, which she says she is excited about reading ‘to them.’ When pressed as to whom “to them” refers, she will say quite casually, “Oh…nobody. I am very excited about reading them to nobody.)
I fished for further analogies. I read that having a child is like lifting a veil from your eyes and that it’s like adding another color to the rainbow.
“Ohhh, that last one,” my father said. “The rainbow one. That’s what it was like for me with each of you. Three new colors.”
“But why would you want another color in the rainbow?” my boyfriend who never wants children asked me in private. “What would you add? Brown?
I read that having a child is like a bomb going off and that having kids is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain. I read that it’s like waking up after a night of snorting cocaine—you’re confused, exhausted, broke, and you’re not positive why there’s no food left in the fridge.
I read that having children is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
“That’s how I feel,” said the boyfriend. “Like I’d be nibbled to death by ducks.”
“So you don’t want to do this, ever.” I could feel the pressure building. The duck analogy had stuck in my head and I was pelted with images of the Mighty Ducks Hocky team (headed by Emelio Estevez himself), slowly advancing on their opponents with their tension-building call: “Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack!”
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”
“Ok,” I told him. “Then we need to move on.”
* * *
And that is not, of course, exactly how you break up when you realize that one of you does not want children.
"I can't. I just can't."
"Ok. Then we need to move on."
Aaaaaand, scene.
There is a lot of embarrassing, drippy crying. There is the destruction of at least 1/4 of an acre of rainforest to produce products on which you might blow your nose.
"Stop blowing it on paper towels," my mother said, handing me a box of Puffs Plus. "What kind of an idiot has a perfectly good box of tissues and blows her nose on something that feels like industrial wrapping paper."
There is a good deal of snot that goes on, and a lot of thought. So I found myself suddenly conjuring a new type of comparison—analogies about my situation and what it was like ending a relationship with someone I still cared for. I went, for assistance, to my good friend Google who had served me so well in the past.
Situation 2: Google Search. “Ending a relationship with someone you still love is like"
Nothing. It is like some woman's webpage who had all 10 generic search words in no particular order.
"Ending a relationship with someone you care about is--"
"Hard," says my mother. "It's really hard."
“That’s not an analogy, I say, frustrated with her attempts to help,” Ignoring her continual adjective, I proceed. “All right then,” I say, if I can’t find one I will make one myself. “What reminds me of this situation?” I asked. And the simple answer, as anyone who has ever broken up with anyone can attest, is everything—everything reminds you of that situation, particularly if you are listening to the radio. We cry because every song reminds us of our circumstance, while at the same time we are convinced that no one has ever hurt as badly as we are hurting right then.
“Ok,” I say, summoning my powers of comparison, “This is inadvertently being hurt by someone who cares for you, so breaking up with someone you love is like being accidentally stabbed by your mother.”
"I'll accidentally stab you right now if you honestly think that makes any sense at all," my mother said.
“Ok, that didn't work,” I admitted. Physical pain and emotional pain are different.
“All right,” I said, regrouping, “So what’s something you care for deeply that might be taken away before you’re ready to lose it?
A breakup with someone you still love, I announced the second time, is just like the death of a puppy.
But it’s not, of course, anymore than raising a child is like having a kitten. Pets and partnerships have some notable differences. Perhaps breaking up with someone you love is like the death of a puppy with whom you were “romantically involved.”
“That,” my mother pointed out, “is beyond awful. If you’re sodomizing litters of puppies,” she said, “you have more on your hands to worry about than a breakup with a significant other.” A breakup might be like having a close friend die, but I’ve been fortunate enough never to have a close friend die, so I can’t make the comparison.
What is it like? It was an experience I loved and got so much enjoyment out of and was over before I was ready for it to be over.
The whole experience was like going on a trip that I wanted to last (you know how you’re 4 days into your 5 day vacation when you finally settle in and start to relax?)—it was like a too-short trip abroad, only I felt loved during it. So breaking up with someone you still care about is like finishing up a vacation that loves you.
Which again, makes no sense.
It is a unique situation. Not unique just to me, obviously, since everyone goes through the same thing, but unique to each person, since everyone is completely unprepared to handle it even if they’ve been accidentally stabbed by their mothers, witnessed the death of the puppies they were romantically involved with, and had a vacation really, genuinely love them back.
JUSTIN'S PIECE
Untitled
No two things are about as immiscible as marijuana and girls. Allow me to explain…
I want to bring all of you to a very scary and lonely place. You look around, everything seems all too familiar, but there is an eerie feeling in the air. You recognize the people around you, but they always seem to look at you funny…and tell you to clean your room. Welcome to the post-college-living-with-your-parents-quarter-life-crisis.
Like any other 22 yr old, unemployed, desperate to find meaning in life, I spend most of this time on my laptop…on facebook. Facebook is an incredible tool, oh wait oh wait.. im sorry – I forgot Im in a room full of my sisters friends, you old fogies use uh…friendster right? So you know the number one use for these internet social networks…sending birthday wishes right? Wrong… HOOKIN UP! There was one girl from highschool. Her name was Amber. She was so hot. Thin, half philipina, half german, all bangin. And on top of being seriously sexy, she was also down to ride. She smoked more herb than Snoop Dogg, and to beat she was a certified cleptomaniac. We had a few trysts back in the day. But none as memorable as the last…
Anyway, It’s a Thursday night, a few months ago, and I’m looking through her profile, pictures, etc. And then I notice her cell phone is listed. I think for a moment. Instead of sending out a witty facebook message, involving how we havnt seen each other in years and how we should get together for a “coffee” or a “caramel” or “whatever the cool kids are doing these days”, I just pick up the phone and call her.
“Amber!”
Yeah, how’d you know it was me?
I’m still in your phone? Crazy! I deleted yours YEARS ago!
“Well, anyway, whats up? What are you up to? How’s college?!”
No way, that’s great!
What? You’re home? You’re driving right now? No way, you’re telling me the one random time I call you in over 4 years, you’re minutes from my house?
Yeah..i guess you can stop by
Five minutes? Cool…c u then.
At this point in the night, I’ve just been chillin out all day and Im not even really sure if I showered in the morning or not. I throw on some jeans and a sweater, and grab a stick of gum. I lazily slip into my berks and walk outside. Amber pulls up in her car then struts up right next to me. “Hey”, she says. “Hey”, I respond. She moves a little closer to my perch and grabs my belt. “It’s good to see you”. “Yeah, same here”. Within seconds of initial eye contact, we’re makin out like 7th graders behind the bleachers. She backs up. “Listen, I have to go, but do you wanna get together tomorrow. I’m still in town for the next few days, and I have no plans. I think to myself and remember that my parents are going to dinner with friends tomorrow. Perfect. “Yeah, that’d be great (spoken real chill). Amber says, “I have some ill chronic, we’ll have a great time. “I can’t wait…come by tomorrow round 8” “OK, bye cutie.” I am so stoked, but I keep my chill. I lightly bounce off the car and make my way back to the house. I need to get my sleep, for I have a long day of overly preparing for what will surely be one of the weirder experience of my life tomorrow night…
Next night:
“HUNNY, WE’RE GOING TO DINNER– WE’LL BE BACK IN A FEW HOURS!”
“OK MAHHHM”, I yell back as she leaves the garage
I’ve already spent most of the day deciding what shirt to put on and how to artistically poof up my jew-fro. I’m so excited! This girl is bangin, and I havn’t slept with a girl in eons.
She walks in and we exchange our hello’s and been a whiles.
“So, you wanna smoke, she asks”
“Fuck yeah!”
I run upstairs to fetch my pipe, which I havnt used in probably a year or so. I rarely smoke these days. I kind of forgot what it was like. I’m sure I’ll be fine…
We’re outside, and we begin to smoke. We chat a little about common friends and college. As I’m struggling to smoke, I realize that I’m also struggling to interact. Her face looks a little less innocent from what I remember.
I run out of the TV room and into my bathroom. To my surprise, they are missing. They are not on the counter, not on the floor, and not in any of the drawers. Not in the shower, not in the towel closet, and not underneath the toilet. As im frantically looking for them, I stop. I know where they’ve gone. Amber was in here before, and she took a little extra time in here…just enough time to pocket my mother’s golden nail scissors. She must have, she’s a clepto! I knew it…that bitch…
I walk back into the room like Jodie Foster approaching Anthony Hopkins. My face, an combination of confidence and cold dread.
Finally, I turn to her and spit out very quickly in one breath. “Didyoutakemymomscuticlescissors?
“Justin, what are you talking about”.
“Oh nothing”, I turn back to the TV
a few moments pass. The Charade Once again
“are you sure you didn’t take the scissors? I mean, stop fucking with me cause I’m pretty sure you took them.
“Justin, you can check my bag, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I remember wanting to check her bag but resisting.
I sit there and wait…hoping my ice grill will break her.
After a few more moments, she breaks the weird vibe and jumps on me. She kisses me for about 10 seconds and then holds my cheeks and says, look, I gotta go.
I knod with my face still in her hands, with a look like a cat that doesn’t wanna be held.
I walk her to the door, and hold it open very politely – perhaps befriending the enemy will lead her to confess – but as she crosses the door, I beg her, almost crying…Amber just tell me straight. Did you steal my mom’s cuticle scissors.
“Byyeee Jusstin.”
I don’t even wait for her to have her foot out the door. I run upstairs, as she leaves and I start to turn the house over. I start in the bathroom and open up every drawer and look inside every shadow. Then I move to my room, and tear up my bed and sock drawer and closet. I move to the TV room and look underneath the couch, and then to the kitchen inside the refrigerator. Before I know it, It’s 2 in the morning. I’m sweating, and everything is in a complete mess. I walk upstairs, with sweat on my brow and blood on my hands and slump back up to my bed, with no sight of the scissors.
“hey amber?”
“yes, Justin.”
“Amber (desperate and tired), did you take my mother’s cuticle scissors”
“Justin…”
she starts to talk…she sounds like she’s gonna fess up and reveal her evil scheme to me once and for all
“Justin…”
“yes?” I ask desparately.
“Please don’t ever call me again.”
I hang up the phone, tears down my face. And I fall asleep. I wake up the next morning to my mother cleaning my room.
“Oh justy boy, I was doing the laundry and as I was folding the towels, my cuticle scissors dropped out. I hope you didn’t spend too much time looking for them.
Posted by lexzog at Thu, April 19 | Comments (0)
Sat, April 14
Auntie Em! Auntie Em!
Right now I am writing from Dallas, TX. J, Michele and I flew in LATE last night because of unprecendented weather right in downtown Dallas. We were sitting at TGIF's in Newark airport,when right on CNN we saw that there was a tornado headed towards Dallas Fort Worth airport--exactly where we were headed!!! It was the worst storm in Texas in one hundred and twenty years...Em called me and told me that she and Jon were taking shelter in their bedroom closet, but were hoping that we'd still be able to fly. Slightly disconcerting. We made it in one piece at 2 in the morning...Howdy!
Posted by lexzog at Sat, April 14 | Comments (0)