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Wed, June 20

Shop Boy

Last Friday I did the usual girly pre-birthday weekend stuff: I got my hair cut and highlighted, and looked for a cute shirt to wear to my birthday dinner with the boyfriend. I found an adorable top at French Connection, and went to try it on. The sales clerk was a hipster looking guy. Straight, my gaydar told me. And also a DJ of some sort (I overheard that part. My "dar" is not THAT good).

When I came out of the dressing room he asked, "So how did it go?"
"Great!" I exclaimed. "I am totally in love with this shirt."
I smiled and was about to continue my way towards the register when he said,
"Yeah. It didn't look bad."
I stopped in my tracks:
"It didn't look BAD?" I asked.
"Yeah, it didn't look so bad," he repeated.
I looked at him like he had two heads. What kind of sales pitch was this? He's implying that either he thought it would look bad on me, and was pleasantly surprised; or, that it did look bad, but not outrageously bad.
He went on to explain:
"Well, it wasn't like I was going to say it looked PHENOMENAL..."
"And why not?" I asked, more rhetorically than anything, and walked away.
Nasty! Nasty nasty sales boy. What a loser.

Posted by lexzog at Wed, June 20 | Comments (0)

Tue, June 19

Some Pieces from the last Inner Monologues

In case you missed the show, or want to relive it, below are some of the pieces that my performers read:

Trapped
By Raquel D'Apice

My younger sister and I sat in the back seat of my parent’s station wagon, listening to my mother play Simon and Garfunkel on seemingly endless repeat while my father patiently drove the family to Utica. Not having sat still the entire four hour ride, my sister had discovered a small dead fly in the light fixture and was controlling its movements through static electricity, finding that if she pushed her finger up to the light and moved it around, the bug’s body would jolt eerily along with her movements, the way iron filings follow the path of a magnet. It was a grotesque version of Wooly Willy-- the 7 cent arcade toy in which you ‘give a man facial hair through the wonders of magnetism-- and could hold one’s attention for the same span of time. I watched from my seat as my sister lost interest, drawn away by the irresistible pull of unmarred window condensation. She looked at the window the way Michelangelo must have looked at the rock that was to become his David, slowly lifting her finger to the glass. Tracing a circle on the window, she covered it with a feeding frenzy of medusa-type hair, uneven wide set eyes, and a mouth full of grinning snaggle teeth, alternating with wide, toothless gaps. Drawing a smooth arrow toward the figure, she wrote out the name “Raquel.”

“You’re such an idiot,” I told her.

“Um, at least I don’t look like that,” she said. “That’s a really good picture—it’s exactly what you look like.”
She reached for a rubber finger puppet she had brought for the car ride (she had won it from the dentist), mounting it on her tongue and waving it back and forth at me.

“You’re such an idiot,” I said, calmly suppressing my feelings of complete fury. “I’m the older one,” I said to myself. “I need to set an example. It’s just a stupid picture.”
“I don’t know,” said my feeling. “I think this really, really bothers you.” It was smiling, smugly, along with my sister. My feeling was such an asshole.
“I am going to act like an adult about this,” I said, sitting up very straight and pointing my chin straight ahead. That’s always been how, in my mind, adults act. They sit around with very straight backs and ignore things. It sounds like riotously good fun.
“But doesn’t it bother you just a little?” my feeling asked. “Look—she’s giving you whiskers. That doesn’t bother you?”
“No,” I said, as Pam playfully drew strings of drool and vomit dribbling from “my” lips. “I’m just going to ignore her or she’ll never stop. I really don’t care.”
“You really don’t care?” asked my feeling.
“I really…don’t…care.”

I sat very still, pretending not to care until suddenly, my intense hatred for my sister burst out of me and I leapt at her window, hoping to smear the picture away with my hands since that was NOT WHAT I LOOKED LIKE. Pushing her face into the seat with one hand, I frantically reached toward the window, my attempt foiled as she grabbed my arm and diverted it. Simon and Garfunkel began playing “The Boxer” as I frantically stabbed at her with my fists. I pressed my palm into her cheek, pinning her to the headrest as I threw myself across her lap, straining to reach the picture. I managed two finger-width streaks in a far corner of the window, next to which my sister drew an arrow and the words “Nice try” and “Lame.” I was at this point unsure if I was trying to destroy the image in the condensation, or my sister herself.
I stepped back to breathe and then lunged for her again, unsuccessfully. She laughed, pushing me away and I strained against my seatbelt, strategizing an alternate plan of action—I would smother her with a green throw pillow my mother had packed for the ride, cutting off her respiratory function while l either removed the horrible picture or managed to write the word “not” above the word “Raquel.” My sister was already laughing like she had won—I hated when she did that—happily adding pockmarks and horns and a moustache to the already grotesque likeness. Slamming the pillow into her face (“Mom!” she screamed) I desperately reached for the portrait—damn Volvo and their effective seatbelts! Reaching for my clicker, I momentarily allowed my sister a breath of air.
“Mom, Kelly’s taking off her seatbelt.”
“Girls can we please act like adults?” my mother asked. “Please?”
I pouted on my side of the car, wishing my own window would develop condensation—how was moisture following only one side of our car? Panting hot breath onto the glass I quickly wrote “Pam Sucks” but watched it fade almost immediately, as if implying that Pam did not suck, but that I really did look like a poorly drawn, epic monster.
I breathed on my car window again and miraculously, the fog held, albeit weakly. Drawing on the alleged knowledge that love heals all wounds, I drew stick figures of my sister and I hugging each other, hoping that that would end the dilemma. This then prompted Pam to write the word “Loser” on her window, which then prompted me to draw a knife lodged in her head in my own picture—the hug turned into a morbid death hold.
“Way to draw a knife,” she said. My knife looked (to be generous) like a banana with a crucifix coming out of it.
“Oh my god, Mom, Pam’s being such an asshole.”
And I fully expected my mother to chastise me for using the word ‘asshole’ to describe my sister (even though it was incredibly accurate, under the circumstances) but she didn’t. She didn’t do what I hoped either, which was to say, “Pam, stop being an asshole,” and then forcing Pam to erase the picture and be really nice to me for the rest of the weekend. But in my mother’s own words, she was not getting involved because “we were old enough to handle these things on our own.”
“You’re old enough to handle this on your own,” Pam said in my mother’s voice, writing out the word “hahahahaha.”
“If you just ignore me I’ll stop doing it,” Pam said, mimicking my mother’s words of “alleged” wisdom.
“GIRLS,” my mother said. “PLEASE.”
And there is no ending to this pathetic struggle—I know because this fight has happened countless times on innumerable fogged windows which, bafflingly, are always on my sister’s side of the car. This particular instance stands out in my memory only because it happened last month on the way to my cousin’s baby shower when my sister and I were 25 and 27, respectively.
“Act like adults,” my mother asks us. “Please. We have another 2 hours in the car together.”
And so I do my best imitation of an adult (I have been studying them for quite some time.) Sitting up very straight, I stare straight ahead and ignore my sister. In my peripheral vision I see her face creeping closer and closer to my armpit. Adult, I think. Act like an adult. I sit straight-backed and quiet, taking unnaturally deep breaths. And then, in the most professional, mature way possible, I knock the wind out of her with my fist, smear my hand across the window, and enjoy momentary adult feelings of superiority and success.

-----------------------------------------------------------
The Roach Delusion
By Laura Motta

It is the delusional girl, the first-time New Yorker who tells herself stories like, “Well, there’s a roach in my apartment, you know. I’m just waiting for it to come out again so I can kill it.”

It. As though you could name him or charge him a share of the rent or—if the size is right—harness him and ride him at Belmont.
What no one will tell you when you first move to New York, when you’re shoe-horned into a 10 by 15 foot apartment on the Upper West Side, is that there is no such thing as one roach.
If you see one, you must understand that you are actually dealing with a teeming, stinking colony of many, many roaches. Tiny-eyed, long-feelered, with their R2-D2 armor gleaming in the yellow kitchen light.
In the summer of 2003, though, when one slipped out from under my counter—a giant, the length of my index finger, big enough to converse with if he understood English—I was deeply sure that I had a only a small problem.
I said hello and threw a shoe at him. I missed. He ran away. Then I tried chasing him, shoe in hand, but I was outrun.
Finally, I realized that this was not like stepping on an ant. Killing something that size was like homicide. It required the removal of a body. Maybe a chalk line and police tape.
I engaged in positive self-talk. I bucked up. (You are a hundred times bigger than the roach. Roaches carry disease. You can conquer the roach.) And the next time, I was ready for him.
Sitting on my counter at the ready was a purple plastic salad bowl.
And when he paused to regard the apartment, silent on his stealthy little legs, I dropped the bowl over him and he was caught. Instantly, he began to race around the edge of the bowl, circle after circle, and I thought he would succumb immediately to dizziness and exhaustion. After all, I would under similar circumstances. A cat would.
But he did that, the psychotic roach Indi 500, for the next two hours. I started to get scared. If he had that kind of energy, why could he not tunnel out? Why could he not eat me as I slept, one skin cell at a time? My fears were confirmed when I saw his rancid little antennae, sticking out from under the rim of the bowl. He was conniving—a fighter. Finally, I put water in the tea kettle and used it as a weight.
That night, I could not sleep.
In the dark, I could hear him banging against the sides of that bowl, fighting to get out. At one point, I swear I heard a kind of high-pitched, nearly-silent bug scream, as though he could sense the air getting thin, the plastic, purple world growing dim around him.
When I woke up the next morning, he was not dead. I imagined the things he would say to me.
“Hey Laura, thought you could kill me by sticking me under a bowl. That’s funny. My people are older than the bedrock. You’re going to be a faint memory on this dim, sad planet and I will still be alive, six inches long, and tap-dancing on your grave.”
To which I would yell back, in the direction of the bowl, “I hate you, you stupid roach.”
He lived, without food, without light, without social interaction, under a purple plastic salad bowl, for three weeks. As the days passed, as he walked around the edge of that bowl, slower now, as though he were growing weary, I began to see myself for what I was. A murderer. Someone who was capable of isolating, starving, and verbally abusing another living creature to the point of extreme agitation and ultimately death.
My humanity was compromised. What would happen if I had a child? Would I trap it under a human-sized salad bowl and watch it tap the edge, mouth the word “mommy” as I cooked my dinner five feet away, oblivious?
You’d think feelings like this would prompt me to free it, or call a therapist, but I did neither because I lived with a kind of paralyzing fear. Maybe my actions had angered it, had fanned the flames of its roach-y inner rage. If freed, it could seek revenge in any number of ways. It could burn down my apartment.
Fear and apathy conquered. I did nothing.
After the roach finally died, I was too horrified with who I had become—the John Wayne Gacy of roaches—to do much of anything. I was emotionally frozen and chillingly calm—very Court TV.
So the bowl, and the tea kettle, and the dead roach underneath it sat in the center of my kitchen, for a month. Until my mother came to visit.
I pointed to the contraption, the roach motel of no return, and said, “Please get rid of it. Hide the evidence.”
After the deed was done, she came back up the stairs and held it out to me—the bowl, the death machine—and said, “So, do you want me to wash it for you?”
I did not.
Afterwards, I felt a kind of guilty relief settle, and I rationalized away. Roaches are bad! Roaches are not people! Roaches spread typhus! I had done a good, noble thing. Hadn’t I?
And then the next night, I sat down at my computer, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. From under my refrigerator there crept, on stealthy little legs, a roach.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Good Advice
By Bridge

My daddy always said, If you have to fight, fight like a cornered cat.

I took this advice when I was waitressing at a strip club in the nineties. One balmy night, the cholas took aim at the blancas and it was so West Side Story, but way grittier. All it took was one airbrushed manicured hand – complete with nailcharms – to wrap around my ponytail, and I fought like just like that, just like a cornered cat. Claws, teeth, the whole bit. I think Daddy would have been proud of me that night, duking it out in the dressing room of the club in defense of my friends, Heaven Leigh (spelled L E I G H) and Ferrari. We lost, by the way.

But hey, here’s a tip – if you ever want to ruin a stripper’s day, pour bleach through the vents of her locker. Ruins everything. But you should fully expect to find sugar in your gas tank, and a roving gang of Mexican strippers who want you dead in the street. So you should fully expect to find a new job. And a new city.

Anyway, Daddy’s advice took me far. I’ve learned a lot from him. For example, if you wish to get out of neighborhood carpools, remove the seatbelts from the backseat of your Mercedes. No parent alive will let you cart their children to and fro without them. Also, you don’t necessarily need a cupholder in the car – it’s perfectly acceptable to leave your scotch on top of the roof. There’s a fifty-fifty chance it’ll still be there when you arrive at your destination. More likely, you’ll remember it at a stoplight, reach out the window, and have a sippy cup for the road.

Another thing my father is fond of saying is, “Water. Tried drinkin’ it once. It’s alright, I suppose.”

He was full of great tidbits. “If you want to meet women, open a fur store.” “You don’t need nothin’ but steak and martinis.”

When I was eight, I saw him kissing my music teacher before the school Christmas concert. She had huge fake boobs and wore the same choir t-shirts we did. In the same size. My dad was a true suburban pimp back then. Now he drinks Carlo Rossi Chablis, tempered with three-quarters seltzer. My once badass dad drinks wine spritzers. Good old Dad.

My mom is much younger than my dad, but her advice is just as down-to-earth. She was born in Ireland, but she told me never to sleep with an Irishman because they are terrible in bed. She claims the same for the British, but everyone knows that already. She acts like she “discovered” this in order to make useful the “research” of the entire summer of 1967. Some mothers pass on wedding dresses or dollhouses to their daughters – my mother gave me that.

She tells it like it is, though. I once got a ticket for fare jumping. The officer wrote my information with a shaky hand and when the summons came in the mail, it was addressed to Budgie Muffins. I called my mother – who is a judge, mind you - and she that I shouldn’t go to court, if only so I wouldn’t have to stand up when they called Budgie Muffins.
“Don’t go,” she said. “It’s just too embarrassing.”

She believes anything worth eating can be cooked in one pan, so she owns exactly one. The woman lives on quesadillas.

She says that the secret to happiness is something to do, something to look forward to, and someone to love. After a particularly absurd relationship that dragged on entirely too long, she told me that twenty-five is too old to cry over a boy. When I didn’t stop crying, she said, “Call him up right now and tell him your mother wants to speak to him.”

That shut me up. I guess it’s the grown-up version of “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Once, she warned me never to go to a gynecologist who reminds me of an ex-boyfriend.
Awkward, she said.

Between that gem and her constant tittering about how a funky scarf will jazz up any outfit, I think I’m set for life. Thanks, Mom.

She called me yesterday to tell me that I need to create an In Case of Emergency file. To put in my filing cabinet, I guess. You see, my grandpa died recently, and no one could find his will or anything remotely helpful in such a situation. Over Memorial Day weekend, she went to his house to clean it out and found a file labeled In Case of Emergency. It was right behind the folder of golf coupons that expire in September 1982.

Inside the In Case of Emergency file was my grandpa’s will, and all of his banking and insurance information. Everything. And right on top, he had composed a letter.

It said:
This is in case of an emergency. All this information can be found in a folder labeled In Case of Emergency.

Which he promptly filed in the In Case of Emergency folder.

Brilliant. Then again, this was a man who made us grandkids eat out on the boat because “you can’t hose off a house.” We’d sit on the boat as it bobbed on the bay, tethered to the dock, and eat dinner while everyone else ate in the dining room. We had to eat on the out there on the water until we were teenagers. And after we were done, he’d hook up the hose and spray down the boat, erasing every last crumb and ketchup smudge. Thanks Grandpa, I miss you.

My mom is always good for advice. I used to be a party girl. Out every night, carousing with what my grandmother would describe as ne’er-do-wells. Once, a photographer asked to do a series of pictures of me. I was broke and he said he’d pay me. He was well-known, so I knew he would actually pay me, but I still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.

I called my mom. She said she wanted to go to his website and see before she could decide, but I advised against it, and tried to think of a way to explain:

“Ok, you know Abercrombie ads?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Those are quite controversial.” (She’s adorable. She really is.)
“Right. Do you know American Apparel ads?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, they’re like Abercrombie ads on heroin.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of this,” she replied.
“So this is like an American Apparel ad shot in the back of a jack shack with someone throwing curdled milk on me while I lounge on soiled bedsheets from a motel in Red Hook.”
“Well, I don’t know where Red Hook is,” my mom said, clearly pensive. “Is there nudity involved?”
“I think it’s more the idea of nudity. From the looks of it, you either get to play a crack whore in a bathtub or a dead whore in the woods,” I replied.
“I still don’t know,” she said, thinking. “But I’m not sure I like the sound of this Red Hook place.”

I can’t say I disagree with her.

All in all, I think the best advice I ever got came from a stranger – a cab driver, actually, about a year ago. We pulled up in front of my apartment, and when I asked for four dollars back, he gave me five.
“That was for you,” I said.
“I think you need it more,” he said in stilted English.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you are girl. In New York.”
“That’s true,” I replied. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said and I went to get out.
“Wait,” he instructed. “Close door.”
I did. I sat in the back and waited.
He turned and said, “You are not new here, but if were, I’d give advice.”
“And what advice would that be,” I asked.

He took a breath and said, “Welcome to New York. Spend like millionaire, live like bum. Live like hurts, sleep like never. Drink like fish, fuck like animal, work like dog. This is great city, this New York, this my city.”

“And if you have to fight, fight like a cornered cat,” I replied.
“Hey, good one,” the driver said. “I have to work that in.”

Posted by lexzog at Tue, June 19 | Comments (0)

Sat, June 9

Sick of it!

Anyone else out there tired of how noisy this city is? Every morning on my way to the N train in Union Square station, I have to cover my ears to not hear the 6 train as it screetches in and out of the station. I am also that weird gal on the sidewalk holding her ears in disgust as fire trucks and ambulances go by. Are my ears becoming more sensitive, or did the city get louder this past year?

I can't sleep with my windows open. I hear the sigh of the bus as it stops along third avenue to pick up or drop off passengers. I hear NYU kids squealing to each other as they go past my window. I hear car horns at 5am.

My neighbor fiddles with something in her closets every night around midnight. I don't know what she's looking for but I'm almost willing to knock on her door and help her find it.

So I escaped to Rockaway last night for a much needed reprieve from summer in the city. J and I took the A train. I covered my ears so I didn't have to hear the conductor say at every stop: "This is the A to Faaaaaaaar Rockaway!"

Once in the quiet of the suburbs, I heard birds, kids running up and down the street, and dogs barking. I didn't even mind the occasional sound of a lawn mower. It all connotated feelings of peace and rest and not hustle and bustle.

I know I won't feel this way in the fall and winter. Something about cooler weather muffles noise and I don't know why. I also don't mind being cramped among crowds of people when I'm cold. But for now I'm just going to have to figure out a way to be more Zen about hot, noisy, city summers.

Posted by lexzog at Sat, June 9 | Comments (0)

What I Read at Inner Monologues

Inner Monologues: Cornered
Date: 6-4-07

Cornered Table:

Privacy is as hard to come by in the city as a one-bedroom apartment for less than a mill. The people who live across the street from me have seen me naked so many times they could probably spot a new freckle on me easier than my dermatologist. And space? Forget about it. I’m so sick of men on the subway who like to spread their legs out like they’re farting in their favorite armchair, and take up two seats. MY seat.

The ONE place every New Yorker is entitled to, with a fee attached of course—is a nice table in a restaurant with elbowroom. And maybe even a little emotional space from the table next door.

Last week I was unintentionally forced into someone else’s horrible date. My boyfriend and I were looking forward to catching up on each other’s day, while nursing a glass or five of wine. But we were seated so close to the table next to us, we could have been on a double date.

When this happens, I feel like I should introduce myself:

“Hi, I’m Alexis and this is my boyfriend Jesse. We will be your company for this evening. If there is anything I can do to make this evening more enjoyable for you—say, pass you my salt, let you have a bite of my calamari, and maybe let you play footsie with me under the table, please do let me know.”

The Dude sitting diagonal from me was forty-something, with a big belly and an even bigger mouth. I swear his jacket lapel had a family crest of some sort. I had to shout at the waitress so she could hear me over his booming voice.

I gestured toward the Dude’s date, sitting next to me:

“Hey Jesse.” I asked, leaning over the table. “Is she pretty?”

Because I’m not judgmental. Just curious.

“She’s alright,” he answered. She could have been Heidi Klum, but he’d still give that same answer. Good for nothing.

I started to unleash my usual “guess-what-happened-at-work-today” tirade, but was rudely interrupted by the Dude, saying to his date:

“You know. I’m not really that much of a dessert person.”

I looked at Jesse, and he looked at me. Dating etiquette 101 strictly says that one should NEVER tell a woman she can’t have dessert, or even vaguely hint at it.

His date said nothing, so he continued:

“I mean, I like the occasional sweet here and there like the next guy, but honestly, dessert is just not for me. I say we just keep drinking.”

I wonder if he was trying to get her wasted. You think?

I tried to ignore what was going on beside me, and focus back on my own date. I asked Jesse how his day was, and tried to talk about our weekend plans. Once again, I was interrupted.

“Oh Waitress. Waitress, could you come here for a second?”

I looked over at the Dude’s table, to see what egregious error the waitress could have committed. I noticed that there was a plate of cheese on the table. Which I guess doesn’t qualify as “sweet” but it is considered dessert in Europe at least.

“Waitress, this is not what we thought it would be.”

“But Sir,” she pointed out. “You didn’t want the cheese plate?”

“Well, we ordered the cheese plate, yes. But this isn’t exactly what we were expecting.”

I know this menu pretty well. It clearly specifies that there is a selection of three cheeses on the cheese plate. It doesn’t get more straightforward than that. Ugh. His date must have been mortified.

I hoped that perhaps Jesse and I would be able to eat our beet salad in peace, but lo, the date from hell continued to trudge along beside us. And now it was just pure entertainment.

“I usually only date Jewish girls,” the guy said loudly. “I hope you respect ME for dating YOU. Since you’re Korean and all.”

He took a bite of cheese and between chews said, “I mean, I respect me.”

I almost turned to the guy to say, “Really? You do?”

Girlfriend must not have been offended enough, since she started talking politics. “Do you think we’re ready for an African American or woman president?” she asked, sipping her wine.

He folded his hands, leaned his head into her earnestly:

“Yes, yes I do. I think we’re more than ready for both. You know…I did put a little money into supporting Obama.”

Hm. Obama and Hilary are interesting topics of conversation. Jesse and I took their cue, and started discussing the merits and faults of each. But before I could delve into the future of America much further, I couldn’t help but overhear Girlfriend threw down some History:

“It was really dick of you to dump me for that lawyer,” she said.

“Yes, that is true,” he mused. “I did leave you for the lawyer…but it didn’t exactly pan out as you know.”

“We’ve been down this road before,” she told him.

He made his best hang-dog face, sighed, and made a ballsy move: He abruptly got out of his chair, his ass coming dangerously close to dipping into my lamp chops, so he could walk to her side of the table. He leaned in and planted a sloppy kiss on her lips.

“I couldn’t help doing that just now,” he said.

Yes, he was playing the “if I distract you with my unadulterated smitteneness with you, perhaps you’ll forget that I’m just trying to get into your panties.”

And he totally was the type of guy to say “panties”. He probably would even say something like “moist panties”, which is the worst combination of words in the English language.

“I don’t need you, you know,” she said.

Jesse and I stopped chewing to get a better listen. You go girl! I was cheering her on Jerry Springer style, in my head.

“I have lots of other men in my life,” she continued.

Yes! Walk out of the restaurant and leave him with the bill! Better yet, slap him, and THEN walk out. Then we’ll all clap and holler.

The Dude interjected:

“Why can’t I be one of those men? You know…I could be one of the men in your life that you call when you need your needs to be met.”

Ew! Gross! Come on Girlfriend, this is the last straw. You are NOT standing for this kind of talk or behavior.

“You’re not coming home with me,” she said.

OK, ok, it was a start. I whispered to Jesse that she was just getting her bearings. Any moment now she’d get up and walk away, and then we’d be able to eat what was left of our meal in peace.

“Listen,” he reasoned. “You are a very, very sensual woman. A very sensual woman. There are…lots of things we could do together…that would be…pleasurable without…you know.”

And then I kind of fell in love with the gal when she said,

“Absolutely, one hundred percent NO.”

Cue Girlfriend pushing the table away, slapping the dude, and walking, walking on out that door.

Jesse and I looked at each other expectantly.

But she didn’t do any of that. Girlfriend stayed.

I wondered if she was really a homeless woman masquerading as an attractive Korean girl, who would pimp herself out for a nice meal—even if it meant having cheese instead of dessert and having to sleep with a red-faced man with a loud, nasal voice.

Our plates were cleared away.

Their check came.

“Oh Waitress! Waitress?” the guy cried.

“Yeah. I ordered the $37 dollar bottle of wine, not the $38. Just a small mistake on your part. Mmmm.”

They paid, and walked out the door, and out of our life hopefully forever. Sadly, I suspect Girlfriend took the Dude home to do sensual things people can do, without…you know. And he probably showed her his family crest.

And all I wanted was a nice dinner with my boyfriend, at my favorite neighborhood restaurant. A place where I could occupy prime New York city real estate even if only for an hour, for the price of a meal. I’d been on enough bad dates in my own life that I didn’t need to be cornered into suffering through anyone else’s.

Our dessert menus were placed in front of us. We decided to have two desserts: One for us, and one just for spite.

Posted by lexzog at Sat, June 9 | Comments (0)

Sun, June 3

My Moms is So Fly

The other day, Mom asked me if I'd read the article in the New Yorker about Paul McCartney yet. I told her I hadn't had a chance.
"Well you really should," she insisted. "He really impacted a whole generation. He changed Dad's and my life."
"Really Mom?" I asked. "He changed YOUR life?"
"Well, me. No, not really. But Daddy was really influenced by him."

That was more like it. I'd grown up thinking that all moms had an innate ability to listen to 30 seconds of a classical piece on the radio and then be able to name the composer. I thought that that was really dorky. (Except now, when I go to the Philharmonic and people ask me what I'm going to see that night I just say, "Brahms, I think." Which is a good guess, since lately that's all they've been playing there.)

My mom sits at the piano for somewhere around three hours a day, practicing. And while she's dabbled here and there into other musical genres (she loved The Eagles for a brief period, and Julio Iglesias), she definitely has no idea what the kids are listening to these days. Or rather, what my brother and I were listening to when we were kids.

Whenever we had the radio playing--and it was usually playing rap/hip hop--she'd do a little hustle, smile, and say,
"Oooh, I like this. Is this Lil' Kim?"
"No, Mom. It's Salt n' Peppa."
A few days later, she'd walk into the room, shake her hips and ask,
"This is Lil' Kim isn't it?"
"No. It's Foxy Brown."
A couple years later:
"Lil' Kim is STILL on the radio?"
"Mom, no. It's Pink!"

So fine. Rap and hip hop or pop music for that matter, are not her forte. But I find it incredibly amusing that she called me today and exclaimed, "GUESS who goes to my nail salon?"
"Who?" I asked.
"What's the name of that rapper who I always thought was playing on the radio? I can't remember...Something "Small"?
"Lil' Kim?" I asked.
"YES! Her!" Mom answered.

Mom was actually a little starstruck.

"And you know what?" she continued. "Lil' Kim asked me what nail color I was wearing, and I said, "Figi"!"

I'm so proud. In some minor way, Mom's influencing the flavor of hip hip style. Just you wait and see:

All the fly ladies 'gon be rockin' the Figi tips.

Posted by lexzog at Sun, June 3 | Comments (0)