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Brenda Vaccaro

I’m pretty sure it’s her. There’s a short woman with a big smile and a newly fluffed red ‘do walking out of a salon on Broadway. She waves to the car waiting for her and for a split second my chest tightens. I want to ask, “Are you Brenda Vaccaro?” but if there’s anything I’ve learned about bumping into celebrities on the street it’s that they don’t want to speak to anyone they don’t already know, or haven’t known for at least five years. She’s grinning ear to hear, running her manicured hands through her newly blown-out waves, and she’s radiant. She reminds me of my mother. Not because they look anything alike, but because the first time I was made aware of her she was playing Gloria Tribbiani,

Joey’s mother on Friends, when my mother saw her and recognized her immediately–she had an endless catalog of actor faces and names she drew on throughout her life, and now when I can’t place someone’s name I hear her voice in the back of my head knowing exactly who it is. While the divine Miss B is certainly more than that, she of the sixty-some-odd year career in showbusiness with an Emmy and a Golden Globe to her name, it is mom’s sighting in this particular form that ties me to her. It’s the spirit of my mother that’s there, and on this particular day I need it.

I am looking for a new apartment. I have just come from a brownstone on the Upper West Side being rented by a man who lives in and owns the building, and when I ask him for the criterion he is looking for in a renter he cannot give me an answer. I am holding it together on the outside but I notice my hands gripping the back of a chair in front of me as I wonder what hoop I will have to jump through this time, what apparently unnameable, unknowable factor will determine my worthiness of a place to live.

Trying to find an apartment lives in my collected vision of what hell must look like, one that also includes people only wearing athleisure, nail polish that won’t dry, being ghosted, waiting for a delayed train in the dead of July heat, and tuna melts. And if it weren’t difficult enough for people with regular jobs, as it is by now of course well-documented, I am a freelancer. I do not have an employment contract or pay stubs or a boss, but I have excellent credit and for 12 years I have been consistently paying my rent on time in New York City, and have been vouched for as an excellent tenant by my landlord of eight years. I am proud of the life I have built for myself and I am not interested in changing it to suit someone else’s idea of what a good tenant looks like. The proof is there that I am capable of paying the rent, even though it comes in a different package than someone might be used to. But who ever moved to New York because they wanted to be like everyone else?

I am not the only person like this. And as the gig economy grows and New York continues to attract the creative entrepreneurs it always has, something eventually will have to give. However, while I am waiting for New York City real estate to catch up to me, I am watching people in athleisure eat tuna melts in the dead of July while I wait for a train at Union Square with wet nail polish after being ghosted. I am, in short, in hell. And some of the apartments I have seen thus far belong there as well.

Astronomical rents for only a mini-fridge, no stove but only two burners, grime-covered and sticky carpets, garbage dangling from entryways, dark apartments that won’t hold more than a couch, if that. And even with what I have seen, I’m sure I’ve not seen it all; I’m sure there is much worse that exists and what’s more, I’m sure there’s someone out there willing to shell out for it.

So after I am leaving this brownstone on the Upper West Side with this landlord who cannot even communicate what he is looking for in a tenant, my eyes are swelling with tears. I am wondering if and how I will maintain the energy to do this. I have a matter of weeks to find a place to live. There’s a reason why I haven’t done this in eight years. I remember last time I was so stressed out by looking for a place and walking across Manhattan in the heat that I lost 15 pounds. But I still can’t remember if it was this hard, this insulting, last time. While there is certainly solace to be found in the fact that finding an apartment is hard for everyone in New York, that freelancers who make four times the money I do have the exact same problem, at this particular moment when I am walking down West End Avenue, I am only feeling defeated. And when I am feeling defeated and I am on the Upper West Side, there is only one place I go. And that place is Zabar’s.

My brain is barely functioning but my legs are carrying me toward 80th and Broadway for an iced coffee. And it is on that walk that I see the divine Miss Brenda Vaccaro walking out of a salon, smiling and fluffing her red hair. Or at least I think it’s her. I want tell her about the first time I saw her on television with my mother, but my eyes are filling more fully with tears now and even if I did try to open my mouth I would just start crying. And while I’m sure Brenda Vaccaro is a lovely woman, I don’t imagine she wanted to spend part of her Friday afternoon listening to some woman on the street pouring her heart about apartments and landlords and moms and work she did 25 years ago. So I just look at her as I walk past. She has that sunny fluff and sparkle my mom had, and I want so badly to call my mom up and tell her about it. And while I know I can’t do that any more, there has to be something special about this moment, that as I am in the depths of this draining, agonizing search, traversing the last vestiges of any nerves I have left, that my mother is there sending a message in the form of an Emmy and Golden Globe winner that she is here, that everything will be okay.

I walk past and breathe, my platforms clicking along the sidewalk as I peer over my shoulder at Brenda Vaccaro. She waves down her car, a dark black SUV, and drives away.

Revivals

Over the course of 31 days in March I managed to both maim myself and contract a virus (not COVID) that led to me being house-bound for more days than I care to remember. While I passed most of the time with movie musicals from the 1950s which I loved, I would have much preferred to be gallivanting around my beloved five boroughs with a beautiful cup of shitty bodega coffee, feasting my eyes on my city.

After falling down some stairs in my apartment building, I had managed to recover and make my way out on the town for Ben’s birthday. It was my first evening out like this in what felt like millennia. While a spicy strawberry margarita in the back room at Juke Bar certainly helped, I didn’t need the tequila to feel that certain aliveness from dancing with your boys in a bar to Lady Gaga, the Spice Girls, and Britney Spears. My boots clicked on the wooden floor in twists and spins, hands framing the face extending into Charlie’s Angels-style finger guns. Oh, this is what it felt like two and a half years ago. Wearing statement eyeshadow and tight black pants. Not caring about the rain while waiting for friends to get Artichoke Pizza. Braving the crowds at Beauty Bar on a Saturday night.

I have to remind myself of this time frame often, these two years, when I wonder to myself where I’ve been. How I used to go to festivals and parades and cultural conferences or events every weekend. Then I remember that there hasn’t been any place to go for a while. As we slowly trickle out of the woods, I am back up to my old tricks again.

But then a severely hobbling case of RSV, Respiratory syncytial virus, mashed me into my bedsheets for several days, sinuses ballooning and face contorted in swells. GagaVirus, my friend Dusty calls it. I laugh even though it makes my face throb. I resent the sunlight pouring into my window, adding the insult of good weather to the injury of being too pained to leave my apartment. But then, slowly but surely, with the addition of Sudafed and a whole lot of Vicks VapoRub, the sinuses calm. The nose stops running. The medication ceases. And I take up my city explorations once more.

I remember when I started this blog nearly 12 years ago how much I loved exploring the neighborhoods that were so new to me at the time, a sense of wonder I’m happy to say I never really lost. Revisiting these places I once found so bewitching revives those senses dulled by the pandemic. When I am out exploring this past weekend, I am seeing with not just new eyes, but new senses.

At Coney Island on Saturday, it’s the Congress of Curious Peoples, an annual celebration of all things sideshow and misfit at the Coney Island USA headquarters on Surf Avenue. Getting off the Q train, it feels like coming home. A Nathan’s sign flashing even on a clear blue day. An oddities art market of vendors sharing everything from spike rings shaped like donuts to taxidermy foxes to steeplechase earrings to books of Vampira ephemera. I buy a sticker of a leopard printed mermaid smoking a pipe of bubbles. Shortly after, I treat myself to a snappy hotdog with sauerkraut and the world’s largest medium Diet Coke. At the Freak Bar, a jukebox offers Naughty by Nature’s O.P.P., The Ronettes’ Be My Baby, and the Ramones’ Sheena is a Punk Rocker. On the wall are skulls and stars and ferris wheels, collages of pulp cover girls, two headed dolls, spines and neon signs. Upstairs at the Coney Island Museum, a roomful of the beach’s historical ephemera and a panel on women in sideshow performance, from bearded ladies to contortionists to pain-proof rubber girls and professional daredevils. There has always been in this place a beautiful marriage of history and misfitry, an embrace of existences so simultaneously rooted in joy and self-awarely strange that they have a glamour all their own. A place I have always felt like I belonged. Later, I munch on saltwater taffy and gummy worms as I walk up to the boardwalk, murals and technicolor metals of amusement park rides dotting my path. I contemplate buying a Nathan’s t-shirt and wearing it with neon green platform shoes and a healthy sense of irony. The air is crisp and the colors vibrant, a visual buffet from which I never reach my limit.

On Sunday it’s raining, and the F train ride to Dumbo feels interminable. Arriving, I remember the first time I visited, when the Galapagos Art Space still existed and there weren’t quite so many luxury condos. Coffee in hand, I visit the new location of Brooklyn Flea–at an earlier iteration in Fort Greene, I bought a giant shortening tin I still use as a side table in my living room, a purchase I then carried on the train all the way back from Brooklyn to Manhattan because Lyft was not yet a thing. It’s dark here in this new location under the archway, but I’m grateful for the structure on this day that keeps intermittently spitting rain and wind. There’s a vintage Ramones shirt waiting for me upon my arrival, followed by two green glass 7-Up goblets that make me laugh. Everything is wrapped up in my bag as I trot around Dumbo, remembering the earlier location of PowerHouse Books, my first ride on Jane’s Carousel, and that day in some early spring when Andrew and I sat on the rocks taking pictures of quinceaneras. I love the brick buildings converted into apartments from factories and decide that if I were ever a rich asshole I would certainly consider living there. But today I am not a rich asshole, at least not as far as I know, and the wind is sweeping through my jacket, so I get back on the train. The train ride back is also interminable, but what wouldn’t I do for a little adventure?

Small Magic

There’s this glimmer of hope again, where with the imminent arrival of spring it feels like we are all collectively, slowly but surely, literally and metaphorically, removing ourselves from our caves and returning to the sunlight. It’s a wild 60-something degrees today and I am wearing shorts for the first time in months. I’m eager to push my jeans to the back of my closet, though I know the moment won’t quite arrive for several more weeks. But a girl can dream.

The past few weeks have been a flurry of moments attempting to chase away winter and ease back into life as we knew it in the Before Time, even though the return to such is still far away. But there are glimmers of the New York I fell in love with, and still love, too meaningful not to share.

On a Tuesday in February, somehow it is Fashion Week again. I remember what my Fashion Weeks used to look like, a hustle of camera and models and lights and backstages, and I am in the audience this time. A brand is debuting at a hotel downtown, and I am an invited guest. As if somehow the tide had turned, the usual 30-minute wait by which one could set one’s watch has disappeared, and the presentation opens almost exactly on time. Down a long corridor, models in gender nonconforming clothing sit on ornate couches and talk, gesticulate, laugh, eat hors d’oeurves. Their hair is shellacked, their cheekbones angular, their shoes shiny. I feel like I have seen this so many times before. I amble as best I can past the countless people taking photos and videos of themselves in the space and occasionally actually the models. I try to take a few pictures of the ensembles myself but the models keep moving. The best part is a beautiful jazz trio with an older woman’s experienced voice filling the space with music so nostalgic I must have heard on a record at least once before. The bar is exploding with people all vying for free drinks. I am not among them, and soon I leave. I always preferred being behind the scenes, watching hair get sprayed or teased, skin moisturized, lashes glued. There was more magic there to me somehow, in the stirring of the batter more than the eating of the cake itself.

But having been at this show maybe 20 minutes at most, I’m not about to go home: it took me longer to get there, dolling up not included. I wonder what else New York will have to offer me this evening, and I remember a film series at the Museum of Modern Art I’m interested in–Dames, Janes, Dolls, and Canaries: Women Stars of the Pre-Code Era. Pre-code cinema romantic comedies are delightful for their cheekiness and innuendo, this time before film topics were censored by what became the Motion Picture Association. There’s a film starting at 7pm–Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor’s One Hour With You from 1932, starring a young Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald–and if I boogie uptown on the 6 train I can just make it. Plus, films at MoMA are only $12. On the way, I chat with a man who identifies himself as a film director but doesn’t know what Pre-Code Cinema is. I wonder if continuing to chat with him is worth it.

Arriving at the museum, I’m not aware of batting my eyelashes, but maybe they bat for themselves because the ticket attendant lets me in for free. I realize I’ve never been to see a movie there before, ticket paid for or not. An escalator takes me downstairs to a large grey screening room. A gaggle of men in fine sweaters to my right, a few rows back a young couple in camel coats and loafers, some others sprinkled throughout the theatre, and me. Collectively we laugh at pre-code naughtiness, the wackiness of speech spoken in rhyme alongside songs sung operatically, the way some 1932 statements sound in a 2022 context, awkward but still somehow hilarious. I have this distinct feeling that people who make their way out of their apartments in the midst of a New York winter, in the midst of a pandemic, to see a pre-code romantic comedy are absolutely my people. There’s a sort of warmth to this experience I wonder if I have felt in a while. It keeps me warm enough that when I walk back to the 6 train later. Stores on Fifth Avenue have all closed for the evening, but their light continues to fill up the street. All I can do is continue to marvel at New York, still New York-ing away in spite of everything.

For Mom and Bloomingdale's

Well, it’s been a while. Some things have happened. But I’ll try to be back with a little more regularity.

On any given Sunday when I have nothing to do, I go to Bloomingdale’s. It’s a rare occasion that I actually need something, and I’m far more inclined to window shop my way through all of the department store’s floors wondering what it might be like to own silk nightgowns or studded stilettos or hot pink leather gloves. I try on evening gowns and luxurious coats for no reason, I wrap myself in cashmere ponchos, I sniff my way through all of their candle offerings. While a department store could easily be written off as a pastime of the frivolously wealthy, for me it always gave me a sense of communing with my mother. The store was a place where we could just look around and feel fabulous, even if we didn’t buy anything–and many times we didn’t. In fact, I’d often get dressed up to go. Bloomingdale’s was our holy ground, our seasonal pilgrimage, our site of endless hours of bonding. My aunt once said to me that the store in some ways was in my blood, that before I emerged into the world “you were inside your mother and we were in Bloomingdale’s.”

Sometimes I go when they’re having a sale, but often I just go to be with her. Usually upon entering the store I say hello to her, just sort of quietly out loud, into the ether. I know that she hears me from wherever in Spain she is vacationing, as I like to say. My mother used to joke that she’d be happy to move anywhere as long as it was within driving distance of a Bloomingdale’s. I don’t know exactly why she loved it so much–she never carried the same love in her heart for a Macy’s or a Nordstrom or a Saks Fifth Avenue, though bless her heart she had credit cards for all of them. But I wonder if she loved it for the same reason I continue to: that in its walls, no matter where you are, there’s some kind of attainable glamour. If you wait long enough or cross your fingers, a sale will emerge and deposit cashmere into your hot little hands for less than $100; or a dress that retails for three digits will find its way into your Big Brown Bag for a mere $13; or a designer sweater covered in lips, perhaps too kooky and warm for anyone else in South Florida, will keep you toasty back in New York. These things don’t happen all the time, certainly, but when they do it’s like having a beautiful little moment of luxury. But you could also leave Bloomingdale’s with just some makeup in a Little Brown Bag and feel like a zillion dollars.

When I walk around the store now, I see my mother in my face when I try on sunglasses or hold up earrings or try out a new eyeliner. She is on my wrist lecturing me about how perfume should smell, she is on the racks urging me to buy that sweater dress, she is in my ear telling me not to skip the swimsuits, she is at the makeup counter asking me if I really need another red lipstick. I remember when she’d go in to refresh her stock of Coco perfume, her way-too-many Lancome mascaras, her Chanel lipgloss, her Clinique blush–it was at the latter that she’d always get just enough cosmetics to receive their free gift with purchase. A sales associate at the Clinique counter in Boca Raton became a friend, and we bring our purchases–from all across the store–to her still.

Maybe it’s strange that a department store like this is such a defining facet of my existence, that I love it the way some people love a particular beach or a museum or a park. I don’t know that it makes much sense myself, but as a person in constant adoration of glamour and nostalgia, maybe it does. Walking around the store is an education in fashion, style, design, and economics. I often leave at least enlightened. Going was always something special, and I always feel at least a little special when I go now. This feeling is often something I want other people to feel, to understand, and when I take them to Bloomingdale’s it feels like I am sharing part of myself, my aspirations, my visual memory and aesthetics with them. I want them to know they deserve something special, too.

More than one friend once described me taking them to the store as a rite of passage, an invitation into an inner life I famously don’t share with a lot of people. I am an unofficial tour guide: I know what’s on each floor and where to look for the best-priced sale items, I can make suggestions about my favorite ways to order their frozen yogurt at Forty Carrots (plain with honey, usually, and it’s better to share), which entrance I prefer (in midtown New York, on 60th and 3rd).

I think more than anything I just always wanted to feel absolutely fabulous, and for a few hours that’s always something I can have at Bloomingdale’s before I exit out onto Third Avenue and go about the rest of my life: groceries, work, phone calls, etcetera. But like my mother, there’s always a piece of Bloomingdale’s with me, too.

Some Queens

On a Saturday evening, I am standing on Wall Street, of all places, talking to my mother. My skin is warm from the beach, still glossed with sunscreen despite a ferry ride, and there’s sand in my neon green platform shoes.

At this place no one goes unless they are a tourist or going to work, its cobbles under my feet, I am clutching my forehead as my mother gasps for air and tells me for the fifth or sixth time that she loves me. She is on a strong painkiller these days, and she’s only awake for a few hours at a time. But I knew I needed to get her on the phone to make her promise to me that she’d do her physical therapy.

“It hurts,” she says.

“It’s supposed to,” I say. “I want you to promise me you’ll try. I want you to come to New York and walk around at my book party in 2023.”

“2023,” she says once, and then a few more times.

She can only manage a few words at a time. I am talking to her like she’s five, this woman from whom I am more accustomed to hearing long-winded stories about her trips to Spain in the 1970s, getting whistled at by soldiers; decades of summers in the Catskill Mountains; visits to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade; my grandmother’s many husbands (four? five? I always forget).

My mother’s name is Rani, R-A-N-I, like maharani, like queen. She is a native New Yorker, from Forest Hills, a queen from Queens. Her grandfather used to buy her Little Golden Books like The Shy Little Kitten from the luncheonette near the subway station on Queens Boulevard. She went to Forest Hills High School and graduated at 16. She went to SUNY Cortland but dropped out because, while studying to be a teacher, she realized she didn’t want to be taught how to teach. At 17, she went to Mexico to visit our family there and my grandmother told her not to come home. She stayed and became their ninera and took art classes at a local university and taught conversational English. She lived in Kansas, moved back to New York, then to Florida.

Somewhere in there, when she was 22, a man named Bill wanted to marry her, but she wanted to live a little longer, a little more, before becoming someone’s wife. There’s a picture of her standing in the snow in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, a Spanish Lamb coat on her back, a golden retriever at her side, a flat-brimmed hat shielding her face from the snow. She went there to meet someone else, she told me once. She knew there had to be something else out there for her. I still have the coat, and even though it’s not mine, that memory. Despite all the wear and tear I have unleashed upon the coat in the last few years it remains among the warmest things I own. I have worn it on wintry dates and wondered if it was (capital T, capital M) Too Much but as my mother always said, “Well, Elyssa, if you’re Too Much then you’re Too Much, and that’s who you are.” It was something to own, not something to change.

I get my stubbornness from my mother, a trait for which I have recently apologized in advance. My mother is so stubborn that for nearly 33 years she has refused to tell me the origin story of the Playboy bunny key she wears around her neck, despite numerous requests to do so. My mother is so stubborn she refuses to stop buying cookbooks. My mother is so stubborn that for 28 years she has refused to let me forgo highlighting my hair. My mother is so stubborn she never gave up on her marriage of 35 years. My mother is so stubborn she is refusing to do her physical therapy. But even so, I want to believe my mother is so stubborn she refuses to give up on herself.

If this is true, my mother will be here for my book party in 2023. She will want to go to Bloomingdale’s and Balthazar while she’s here, and have a dirty martini or a Cosmopolitan at Bar Pleiades on East 75th Street. She will fluff her silver hair and smoke Winston cigarettes outside of her hotel, long nails painted some glossy taupe or peach color, gold jewelry jingling on her wrist, gold rings sparkling on her fingers, gold hoops in her ears. She will wear Supergas with gauze, or loafers with linen. She will shadow her eyes, add two or three layers of mascara, and a flash of blush. She will probably be late but she will try not to be because even though she’ll know she has a reserved seat she knows it drives me crazy. And she will sit in the front row, where I’ve reserved said seat, even though she hates sitting in the front row for anything, and she will just be there, like she said she would, like she always has been.

Ritual

I have a ritual now.

When I finish a chapter, or need a mental health day, I take myself to the beach during the week. While it seems like a run of the mill exercise, for a person like me who has to will herself to stop working and take a break for her own sanity, it requires planning, effort, and a willingness to take time off. I have to feel like I’ve earned it, which I’m sure has its own issues that I don’t need to discuss here. Any weekday spent rapturously separated from the throes of my computer’s grasp feels like an act of rebellion against the 9 to 5 workday, whatever aspects of sanity exist that people have to exchange for paid time off (I do not know because I have never had PTO myself), modern work culture and, well, myself. For as much as I can discipline myself to sit in front of the computer and work, I am still learning how to discipline myself to step away from work. But going to the beach helps.

The ritual is this:

At the first sound of my neighbors’ heinous children running across the floor and screaming loud enough to wake the dead, a morning phenomenon that has haunted me since February, I plug my ears and continue sleeping. Then, I wake up whenever the hell I want. I prepare a beach bag, shoving next to the usual suspects of towel and sunscreen whatever book I am currently devouring (at this moment it is Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks) and whatever unread copies of New York Magazine that have piled up in the last few weeks. Taking a sandwich or a bagel for the train, I make the journey to the Q and get off at Brighton Beach.

With my “My Other Bag is Your Mom” tote bag on my shoulder, I traipse past the cafes and supermarkets advertising in Cyrillic. Then I’ll encounter the elderly Russian grandmas and grandpas on the boardwalk who generally do not give a fuck. Their bellies in their swimsuits are swollen and wrinkled and proudly receiving the sunlight, their gray hair swaying in the salty breeze. I wish I had their confidence at all times, the fearlessness of exposing my skin to the sun in full view of others. But even when I am by myself I gingerly and with no small amount of hesitation remove the cutoffs and white tank top I am inevitably wearing as if there is a committee of judges with their eyebrows raised observing my every movement, curve, or fold. My heart catches a little before I sit down and swath myself in sunscreen. Of course nobody cares except me. Amongst the grandmas, I slowly become freer, a “fuck it” of my own passing across the headline news of my brain.

And then? Nothing. The sun. The ocean. The issues of New York Magazine and the book in my bag. I’ll cover my body in sprays of sunscreen and wonder what it might be like to have someone there to spray my back one time. Then I will quickly remember that if the only reason I want someone around is to spray my back then I’m not just fine but happy on my own. Perhaps what I should wish for instead is the ability to twist my arm upside down and backwards well enough to ensure I don’t end up with a collage of red spots in places I am currently unable to reach. But for now at least, I am happy to endure the spots in exchange for the joy of my own company, the coordination that does not have to happen before or after I leave the house, the ability to wake up at an hour of my choosing, and the delight I take in knowing that I can enjoy the silence and the only person I have to satisfy today is myself.

Part of that satisfaction also comes from reading and reading until I don’t want to anymore. There is something about reading at the beach that zooms me through books the way a parent drags a child across the mall during the holiday season, speedily and without interruption. Pages turn to the sound of the ocean, the radiance of the sun on my shoulders, my nose, my back.

If I want to go in the water, I’ll put my valuables in a ziploc bag and bury them in the sand under my towel the way Alissa taught me to, doing my best to make sure I can still find them afterward. I walk toward the water, surf rising toward my ankles, then knees, shivering as it touches my stomach and then quickly splashing my head under the water. I always hope I look like Phoebe Cates getting out of the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High but I know I eat too many hamburgers for that, so I will smile and continue to teach myself that being myself is more than enough and anyone who disagrees can, frankly, suck it. It is an ongoing process.

After what is at least two rounds of the surf-dry off-sand combo, I will walk the 20 minutes to Sheepshead Bay, skin warm with sun, traces of sand sticking to occasional patches of sunscreen. I amble past the vicious swans and boats of the eponymous body of water and the Brooklyn teens anxiously gazing into their phones on streetcorners waiting for their friends to show up and do the same. My destination is Randazzo’s Clam Bar on Emmons Avenue, its bright blue and yellow awning punctuated with a bright red lobster. I love this place because it’s been in the same family for some 80 years, at its current location for over 60. It feels like someone’s grandmother is in the kitchen every morning making their famous red sauce (I prefer the hot version). I chuckle to myself every time the waitress sets the menu down in front of me, amused by the fact that I think I might actually order something other than their calamari--excuse me, “gal-a-mad”--appetizer but knowing full well I won’t. Because why mess with perfection? The plate of crispy battered squid arrives in front of me. I eat it with a fork and knife even though I’m not sure how the locals might feel about that, but I imagine it’s significantly better than eating a piece of pizza that way.

Satiated, I’ll walk toward the Sheepshead Bay Q and begin the journey home, sun spilling into my eyes from the west, one last kiss of sun before I enter the train. And then tomorrow? Back to work, not as if it never happened, but because it did. 

Awakenings

A magical thing happened last week: my schedule started to fill up with meetings and events, real life, in-person spaces in my days and evenings I will be dedicating to being with other people outside of my house. If you had told me a year and a half ago I would be so joyful for such a thing--well, I don't know if I wouldn’t have believed you because that is always what I moved to New York for.

I don’t have to jabber anymore about how I was out all the time because...I will just be out all the time. It was during the pandemic--which of course, still continues but seems to have loosened its grip at the very least--that I found myself living the life I had always dreaded: working during the day, watching television and reading at night before going to bed. There are times when I worry now if I will be able to resume full speed or if I’ll get stuck, or if I’ll be more careful about how I spend my time or if it’ll just be a gradual process of reentering the world.

True to form, I have been grasping at any available opportunities to return to normalcy. There were miraculous days where I finished work before 5pm and, elated, paused and asked myself what exactly I wanted to do in that moment. One day the answer was take myself down to the West Village for a massive caprese sandwich and sit by the Hudson River watching the sun set. Another day, the answer was sitting in Prospect Park reading all my back issues of New York magazine that had piled up, with a bahn mi and bubble tea from Hanco’s (sandwiches seem to be involved quite often?).

And one more was dressing up in my new slip dress, taking myself to Maria Elena Valdes’s Muxelandia exhibition at the Tumbao Gallery in Williamsburg, chronicling the lives of the people embodying what’s known as Mexico’s third gender. Afterward I twirled my wrap around my shoulders and trotted over to the newly opened Black Spring Books, nestled next to the writer Henry James’s former home, and perused the shelves of used paperbacks. I searched desperately for a sandwich, only to end up at Oasis, a relic of my youth I knew in its days a few blocks south of its current location. It was a staple of drunk nights in the neighborhood before the yuppies moved in, when we’d shove our faces into falafel sandwiches at 1am before hopping on the L back to Manhattan because there was no Lyft and no chance in hell of getting a cab in that neighborhood and even if you did it’d cost a million dollars (and, frankly, it still does now). I have vague recollections of going there with my friend Rachel after a CHERYL party, covered in sweat as well as the fake blood and fake cocaine performers threw at us from the stage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Reflecting on being able to move through the world again makes me remember the other times I felt most alive. 

I take myself later to Live From Outer Space, a comedy show at The Cobra Club in Bushwick. The time disappears into fabulous sets from people who spent all pandemic cooped up, not being able to perform live, but who still deliver the goods. And while I realize it’s weird to go to a comedy show alone, or maybe not just weird but, uh, deeply unusual, I’ve resolved that after a year with far fewer escapades than usual, to say the very least, I’ve resolved it’s just better to go wherever I want and have an experience than to stay home. When I want to go out these days, even if it’s at the last minute, I am just listening to that voice. A burger at P.J. Clarke’s. Ramps with egg noodles and garlic at Golden Diner followed by kuih talam and lychee rose tea at Kopitiam. Curling up in the park with an iced coffee and a good book. 

Which is not to say I don’t seek out company, either. Bri and I do not stop laughing and spilling T from the moment we sit down for drinks at Automatic Slim’s, only to be driven out by yuppies in white sneakers with bad manners but after a heap of cocktails it was probably time anyway. How delightful to laugh so uproariously with a friend in a place that’s not my home, that has shelter from the rain. Which, incidentally, I don’t mind traversing to get there and back--it’s almost like nothing can stop me from having a good time anymore. But I don’t know if something within my control could ever do that.

Steven Jude and I share springy small plates at Baker and Co in the West Village, where we wait a few short minutes behind Scott Adsit, who played Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock. Morgan and I eat bagels and play chess in Washington Square Park. I lose every game and it’s hilarious and I would play again in a heartbeat.

Everything is slowly ticking back to life. There is something magical about being able to witness it, especially after having been on the other side for so long. The light! It is at the end of the tunnel! And so, gleefully, are we.

Small Joys

A thin, crispy crepe filled with fresh strawberries two days in a row because I have learned crepes have far fewer calories than I ever dreamed.

Hannah’s gold mules.

Finding out the tingling in my arms and legs is not a blood clot after being sent to the hospital by Urgent Care. Taking myself to breakfast at Green Kitchen afterward, loading up on lean proteins and vegetables and green tea to combat the anxiety they tell me is indeed coursing through my veins.

Almost being blown to shreds by a sudden gust of wind on Amsterdam Avenue, shivering and trying to call a Lyft, only to look down at the map on my phone and accidentally quip “Are we where we are?” At once, it is both a statement of confusion and an accidental lapse into philosophy.

A date with absolutely no chemistry to remind you what the ones loaded with all manner of synthesis actually feel like. Googling ‘chemical reactions’ to write such a statement.

A fucking incredible Caprese sandwich from Russo’s in Park Slope, bursting with sweet red peppers, tomato, and mozzarella, the bread just soaked enough for a soft yet chewy, balsamic-laden bite.

The parade of fluffy pups in the streets, in the parks, and on the sidewalks that come with a sudden burst of spring.

Taking myself to a fancy lunch at Chez Nick, unafraid of what the the oozing, greasy Cuban sandwich and French fries will do to my waistline because fuck it, I’ll just walk it off.

A thank you note from my roommate decorated with the drawing of a 1950s fashion model coated in glitter.

Reading the menu at O Cafe on Sixth Avenue and deciding what I will order the next time I’m hungry and in the neighborhood and craving something called ricotta toast.

Looking at and smelling perfumes I can’t afford from brands I’ve never heard of at Bigelow Chemist.

Walking past townhouses for sale in the West Village and wondering what it might be like to own one and live in it. Daydreaming about being left one in a will from a long-lost relative, as long as money for the property taxes is also included in the opportunity.

Short sleeve men’s shirts in a variety of tacky patterns (Melting popsicles! Pineapples! Flamingos!)

Petting the black cats at Enchantments on East 9th Street.

A challah grilled cheese and tomato soup from B&H. A fresh mozzarella sandwich with cold borscht at B&H. Carrying my B&H tote bag into B&H.

A magnificent museum or gallery exhibition that inspires you to make more of your own work (see: Adrienne Raquel’s ONYX at Fotografiska).

Picking up your camera for the first time, despite forgetting how heavy that lens is.

Sitting and reading quietly at Union Square to kill time before meeting a friend.

Walking into PANY for silk flowers and marveling at the exploding crayon box of colors--peach roses, magenta peonies, red hibiscus, none of which will ever die! And only need a slight dusting now and then. Walking around Manhattan with the flowers peeking out of your bag.

Finding a long out-of-print book you’ve always heard of but never expected to find on your first visit to a new used bookstore (Lulu in Hollywood by 1920s film star Louise Brooks at Sweet Pickle Books on the Lower East Side), even though god knows you don’t need more books but who cares?

Finding something to write about even when you didn’t think it was possible.

"7 Questions"

Last month, The New York Times published a piece called "7 Questions, 75 Artists, 1 Very Bad Year," surveying artists about the work they made in the pandemic. I am often at odds with the idea of calling myself an artist. Sometimes I think it’s something only other people should call you and taking on the moniker is an act of self-aggrandizing pretension--I feel similarly about people who call themselves “poets,” because I always thought that if you were really a poet, you’d just call yourself a writer--and other times it’s merely a statement of fact, the naming of a practice: if you make art, you are an artist. So, my feelings about the word aside, I decided to answer these questions here, since I was not among those originally queried, self-deprecation intended.

1. What’s one thing you made this year?
I’ve written it about it before and I’ll undoubtedly write it again: my book! Glitter and Concrete and I continue to be in the throes of passion and agony. There are days when slicing open a vein and offering its contents to The Great Muses proffers merely 300 words. Other days I sit down and spit out 1380 words in two hours. I am finding that writing history is like math, in that there is only one answer, but there can be artistry in getting that answer across. My days are filled with extraordinary tidbits I occasionally share on Twitter and Instagram. These include but are not limited to the drag queen who claimed to be straight despite marrying his wig stylist and living in their home with 19 Siamese cats. The grandmother of Jackie Curtis, Slugger Ann, who owned a bar of the same name and was known to “have a half dozen Chihuahuas stuffed inside her low-cut dress, propped up by her enormous breasts." The drag king who became one of the first choreographers for television, and many more.

2. What art have you turned to in this time?
At a certain point, I wondered what it might be like to become Nora Ephron in another (read: post-pandemic, post-book) life. I took to filling my soul with what were considered great romantic comedies of these last nearly hundred years in hopes of making myself a student of the genre. I don’t know if I succeeded because, as often happens, I get stuck in the movie itself, wide-eyed bobbysoxer at the picture show stuffing popcorn in her face, and I forget to more actively “study.” Despite my bobbysoxerdom, I did still manage to fall in love, if you’ll pardon the phrase in this context, with the snappy dialogue and inventive storytelling of the following:

When Harry Met Sally (1989): Duh. Nora’s classic, which I didn’t truly appreciate the first time I saw it as a teenager. Upon viewing as an adult, what a classic and, I’m bold enough to say, not just of romantic comedy, but of modern cinema.

Sleeping With Other People (2015): Devastating and quick with a finger on the pulse of the complexities of modern love.

The Grass is Greener (1960): Ferociously ahead of its time in temperament and viewpoints about love and marriage. A magnificent-as-ever Cary Grant accompanied by Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and Jean Simmons (in a host of lush, loud wacky outfits and scads of sweeping black eyeliner).

If You Could Only Cook (1935): Herbert Marshall (*swoon*) and Jean Arthur in a wacky comedy of mistaken identity where an auto tycoon (Marshall) becomes a butler to help a cook looking for work (Arthur) after he meets her on a park bench. While I don’t know if it earns a place in the grand halls of moviemaking, I watched it at the beginning of the pandemic when I was so sad, and it was just delightful and sweet and fun. And I think it’s okay when movies are just those things, too.

I also read Nora’s Heartburn, I Remember Nothing, and am currently reading I Feel Bad About My Neck. I feel like she is the vivacious aunt I never had and I love looking at the world through her eyes. In her work, she developed a signature storytelling and point of view, something I hope I can continue to move toward as well.

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast was also instrumental in my survival during the first few months of the pandemic. The comedian became simply “Marc” to me, a consistent enough force in my life that I would talk about him to my mother as if he were a dear friend. “I was listening to Marc today and…” He became someone she had heard enough about that he became familiar to her, too.

I did a dive into Mel Brooks as well, revisiting his early filmography as well as his standup and television appearances.

There was, in short, safety and comfort to be found in the work of older Jews.

3. Did you have any particularly bad ideas?
I barely picked up my camera. I photograph people and cultural happenings, and I felt no desire in particular to remember this time, people’s faces obscured by small bits of fabric. I photographed the vital and historical protests last summer, running through the crowd and asking permission as they weaved their way through different parts of the city. I photographed what were in November the last days of Astor Hair (they’ve since been saved, hooray!) for a magazine. I brought my camera to some places, but I hardly took it out of my bag. I miss wanting to remember things, to capture them and hold them as images forever.

4. What’s a moment from this year you’ll always remember?
While I know the key here is “always remember,” I’m going to approach this in a different way. Despite everything, there were still so many great moments I was able to craft with loved ones in masks, and while I might not “always remember” them, I remember them now.

Visiting Alissa in Philadelphia while she was pregnant, seeing the sights around the city, buying too many books, eating delicious food we cooked ourselves and bread we got from the Lost Bread Co. at the farmer’s market near her house. Feeling her baby kick and painting her toenails. Cheeseteaks and water ice with Sean. A vintage air force shirt that was reasonably priced.

Walking to Zabar’s from my house once a week, even in the cold, a tradition I think I’ll keep up post-pandemic, because why not?

The ways we fought to spend time with people even if it meant sitting outside in the steaming heat or frigid cold, and how it meant more when people sought you out this time over others.

The time I had a panic attack and walked myself over to the local CBD monger to load up on treats to heal my aching brain and body. I took probably more than necessary (a mint, a gummy, and a lollipop) and got *REAL* high, then got a vanilla milkshake and sat in the park listening to Marc Maron’s podcast.

Getting my book deal.

5. Did you find a friendship that sustained you artistically?
I think “sustained me artistically” is far too great a pressure to put on another human being, but I did meet people who inspired me. Last summer, Meena and I started chatting while waiting for an elevator outside a gallery. Seeking a sense of normalcy, I had seen that the galleries on the Lower East Side would be open later on a Thursday night, so I put on an art-seeing ensemble--black on black, I think my soul was feeling that day--and made the rounds. Eventually I ran into Meena, a musician, chef, and sound artist, and we walked around together. We talked about art and men and New York and Los Angeles and even had dinner together. She is a force of nature, always working on a new project with interesting collaborators or on her own. I am flattered that she sees in me a fellow creative, our witchy senses often aligned.

Dean, we will call him, to me is a person who truly embodies what it means to be an artist in that he uses his day job to afford himself time to make his creative work. A musician, he made three EPs in the pandemic, all of high quality in my opinion, and is currently working on a fourth. A screenwriter and comedian, he is also developing a film. Real art doesn’t sleep, and real creativity must come out of you or it will eat you alive. It’s important to access these things about ourselves, to exorcise the demons by exercising the angels. I think he does this better than most creative people I’ve met.

6. If you’d known that you’d be so isolated for so long, what would you have done differently?
I would have wanted to do a long-term side photography project, maybe starting up something similar to Project 30, and I would have made more of an effort to sell prints of my work online. I also would have written in my blog more so I could chronicle the good things that did happen in a more active way than photo series on Instagram.

7. What do you want to achieve before things return to normal?
This is another question I don’t love. What is normal? Why can’t I achieve that thing during other times? Why can’t whatever the thing is be a work in progress?

That being said, I really do need to be better about putting a trash bag back in after I take out the garbage.

“Cool” and Now

There was a Saturday in February when I tried to remember everything I thought was cool 10 years ago. I walked the East Village, weaving my way in and out of stores bearing everything from boldly colored scarves to Thai hand salve to photography books I’ll never be able to afford. I gripped my leather jacket tighter around me because, after nearly 11 years in this town I still haven’t learned how to attire myself properly on cold days. My thoughts quickly turned to avoiding the patches of ice I’ve slipped on in the past only to fall in the exact same place every time, leaving myself with scars directly under my kneecaps. I remember some of them now, though. I remember flavored vodka sodas at Beauty Bar (agh), lengua tacos from the truck on 14th and 8th at 3am, the house band at the Village Underground. Ladyfag’s Vandam party on Sundays at Greenhouse in Soho. A now defunct Australian restaurant on the Upper West Side called The Sunburnt Calf where we’d sit in giant parties of 6, 8, 10 or more for birthdays or out-of-town-visits or maybe just a Saturday night. Pay-what-you-wish nights at the International Center of Photography. Free lectures at NYU. CHERYL parties somewhere in what were then the wilds of Brooklyn.

Few of these things still exist and my own realms of possibility have also expanded beyond them, but I remember the feeling of chasing cool across New York City. It was a feeling I duplicated recently as I searched for Kim Hastreiter’s The New Now in different locations throughout the East Village. Hastreiter, who in 1984 co-founded Paper, iconic magazine of a very specific New York kind of cool, had undertaken a new project in the pandemic, a DIY newsletter offered for free at specific businesses throughout three three of the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx). I saw this newsletter popping up all across my Instagram feed, populating the grids of the capital-C chic and cool of New York and I had to have it. It would be not just a historic artifact of New York publishing, but it would be like being in on a small(ish) secret, insiderdom. Something that, as much as I love the life I’ve lived and carved out for myself in New York, is not something I’d ever say I had.

I think often of a Lou Reed quote I once saw at The Andy Warhol Museum when I was living in Pittsburgh: “If you weren’t a journalist, you’d never be invited to anything cool.” For a long time, I fully believed this was true. In many ways, I still do. I have forever thought of myself as a raging nerd, though my obsessions with and passions for cultural arbiters outside “the mainstream” have occasionally earned me opposite designations from others. Over a decade has gone by and I’m still chasing “cool,” a sentiment which I fully realize is anything but. I continually checked Hastreiter’s list of stockists on her Instagram, seeing which stores were nearby and open and supposed to have The New Now. Hastreiter refers to these as “likeminded businesses,” so the list also became a guide of sorts to the life Hastreiter leads, she who in the last 35+ years has become an arbiter of a very New York sensibility.

I perused Dashwood Books, at which I arrived by descending a staircase on the chic, cobblestoned Bond Street, a place I had never been. I marveled at its art books, its collaboration tote bag with photographer Ari Marcopoulous, its smartly designed zines, and in the back, Permanent Paper, another pandemic project, by stylist Masayo Kishi. The large-sized, elegantly designed biannual print magazine is filled with photos by Arthur Elgort, Luis Sanchis, Martyn Thompson, and more that could all be unfolded from the magazine's delicate pages and hung as art work on their own. I had been teased by the images for weeks online and immediately surrendered my credit card after turning its pages. But Dashwood didn’t have the newsletter I originally sought, so I moved on to another bookstore.

Karma Bookstore on East 3rd Street looks almost like an art gallery, unusual to anyone used to braving the stacks. A man with long dark hair in a long camel coat, fancy sweatpants and sneakers assists a customer. I wonder again about what “cool” is. Maybe it’s better to be cool without the quotes around it, to be a more subjective, mutable version of it, than to aspire to a life inside quotation marks. The thing I’ve liked about being a journalist is that I get to be in several worlds but not of them. I’ve never had to commit to a lifestyle because my life is constantly changing, perhaps not unlike New York itself. But I’m still excited about finding the newsletter, and Karma has what I’m looking for on more than one front: both the newsletter and Chantal Regnault’s photography book Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York, 1989-92, which I need as research for my book. These are things I think are cool, no quotation marks. I think that’s how I prefer it.

It also dawned on me, certainly later than it should have, that I was on a scavenger hunt. But in the process I’m tasting bites of New York I hadn’t known before and supporting local businesses. It’s a relief to know that even after a decade there’s still more to learn, that even amidst its constant, and at this point uncertain, changes, New York is not dead. I don’t even know that it’s sleeping. It’s maybe just on a longer coffee break, smoking a cigarette outside, burning down to filter after filter after deep, extended inhales, waiting until it’s safe to come back inside.

Wintry Mix II

I promised myself when I started working on my book that I wouldn’t work weekends. I know how I can get, and if I didn’t set a boundary for myself, I’d just keep going and burn myself out (like I’ve done many times before). So my presence here has been, to say the least, more intermittent. It’s hard to sit down in front of the computer when I don’t have to and when I’m not supposed to be working, but I hope to try to be better.

The winter in New York always presents unusual challenges, this year by no means an exception. But in the strange haze cast over these most uncertain times, I feel grateful to have experienced some moments of light.

Like when Meena cooks at her Chateau Ludlow on the Lower East Side. During Chanukah she made latkes and we danced to Jewish rockstars in her petite kitchen. Two weeks ago, trout with cilantro and roasted parsnips, last week bolognese with leafy greens, and sauteed peppers and onions with luscious grapes dipped in whole milk yogurt for dessert. She sits on her golden velvet couch in a variety of gorgeous ensembles looking like a photograph from Architectural Digest and there are disco balls in her bathroom. We delight each other with tales about boys who make jokes and ride BMX. We are probably too old to be saying “boys” but it’s more fun than saying “men.”

On a day after I have yet another negative COVID test, I walk all the way home from 40th and Park, Lexington Avenue as my guide. It’s a walk of several miles, perhaps more ambitious than necessary, but I don’t mind. The walk is an easy one, no throngs of people to sidestep, because who in their right mind would be coasting through midtown at 10am on a Saturday? All the places that typically serve lunch to the many 9-to-5 New Yorkers normally in the area are closed, maybe just right now, or maybe forever, I can’t tell. There’s a puppy store, a college, an eyeglass store where I get new frames. It’s not too cold to be uncomfortable, even after a few miles. I treat myself to brunch at Cafe D’Alsace, a cafe au lait served in a small tureen of sorts decorated with lions that prefaces runny poached eggs and smoked salmon on an English muffin, hollandaise sauce on the side. I pull my jacket a little tighter around me. I feel my nose getting cold.

Hannah and I brave the cold to see Gloria Swansong and Maxie Factor’s christmas drag show at Don’t Tell Mama in Hell’s Kitchen. These vintage-inspired queens perform only one song made after 1970, their makeup and hair a salute to the Golden Age of Hollywood. After one dirty martini and Gloria’s performance of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” some tears escape my eyes. A few more escape later when Gloria and Maxie perform “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” as sung by Judy Garland. Despite my best efforts, I know this is burnout, but I lean into it. Hannah and I clasp hands and watch, grateful for the people who create magic like this, that even in darkness it can still exist.

Steven Jude and I are late for our reservation at Claudette on Fifth Avenue. The host is salty because there’s a time limit on tables, but I promise him we will leave on time. The service is brisk and understandably so, but we manage to eat all the truffle hummus anyway. Steven’s beard has grown out, peppered at his chin with grey, and he looks dashing, ever the pashmina around his neck. After an omelette and sweet potato falafel and an early departure, we wander uptown to Eataly, which is mysteriously exploding with people for a Saturday afternoon. We marvel at unusual pestos and olive oils and cast scorn upon screaming children. We sniff luxury Italian soaps and marvel at neon green glassware. I am tempted by a bottle of truffle oil but I do not buy it.

I cannot drink like I used to. Or at least I thought I couldn’t, because when Andrew comes over and we order pho, somehow two bottles disappear and I am not hungover the next day. I have not seen my friend in months and in between slurps of noodles we tell each other the story of the last few weeks. It’s an evening of several hours and by the time he leaves I’m thinking of my last favorite time we did this, this past summer when we went to a drive-in in Greenpoint and sat drinking cocktails on top of his car as the sun set in front of us, a movie in itself. Tonight our movie is different, pho and beansprouts and limes and chopsticks and broth, but the friendship is the same.

Hannah and I sit on a bench outside of Punjabi Deli on Houston Street. She went out with someone recently who wrote a shitty article about how cultural Judaism isn’t real, so we sit in our furs sharing a Katz’s pastrami sandwich and drinking Dr. Brown’s sodas and prove him wrong. I give Hannah my pickle because I don’t want it and she puts it in her purse for later, which also proves him wrong. She asks me if I believe in God and I think I used to know the answer but I don’t anymore. If God does exist, I hope she looks like Grace Jones.

32

The day I turn 32, I take a self-portrait then weave my arms through my t-shirt of David Bowie’s mugshot and into a jacket that looks like I skinned Elmo. It is a Tuesday, Election Day, and I have resolved to spend the day as I wish, which thus far includes bundling myself up tight and heading downtown on the ferry. On the top deck, I tie my hair up so it doesn’t become one giant knot and the wind courses over my ears. I should probably have a hat, but I don’t. Exiting at Stuyvesant Cove, I trot in my black leather boots over to B&H for a grilled cheese and tomato soup and coffee. I know I’m one year older; it's nice it's not something that makes this day any different for any strangers walking past me.

I sit and read Charlie LeDuff’s Work and Other Sins, his collection of writing from The New York Times, in Washington Square Park. Youths skateboard and an old man sits on the bench next to me reading the newspaper. My hands and my nose protest that it’s slightly too cold for this, but I persist as I read a story about a pimp trying to make it in New York City after great success in Boston. When my hands and nose give up, I amble over to Mercer Street Books to buy myself a birthday present. Despite over 10 years in the city at this point, I hadn’t been there before Steven Jude took me there on a warm day this past summer. I had already bought too many books that day, and in trying to decide between Anais Nin and Sherrill Tippins and Frank O’Hara, I ultimately decided to leave them all on the shelf. But today, peering amongst the stacks while fielding birthday messages, my birthday present takes the shape of David Rakoff’s essay collection Half Empty, and I look forward to consuming his intellectual snark after I finish...yet another book I probably didn’t need to buy.

As the clock ticks ever nearer to 4pm, I make my way to Cafe Reggio to meet Meena, a new friend I met at an art gallery a few weeks ago. It is nice to know that even after a decade, there are still more good, interesting humans to include in my life, that I haven’t a threshold of friendships, even though it’s something DJ Khaled might prefer. Meena wants to take me for birthday “tea and cakes,” she says because she is British. We sit in the nearly 100-year-old cafe on MacDougal Street that’s normally crawling with tourists but today is merely a venue for working or meeting New Yorkers. There is an eclair and a croissant and blackberry tea and talk of politics, music, food before we cross over to Thompson Street.

“Do you want to play chess?” Meena says, and what a question! I don’t think it’s something someone’s asked me since middle school and, delighted by the novelty, I say yes. We go to Ches Forum. I have not played in years and my minimal skill is evident. As I remember the game minimal confidence erringly grows to hubris that correctly shrinks down again in fits of laughter. The music in the background is classical and “very chess-y,” Meena says, sort of intellectually crowded and complex in ways that make us laugh at both it and ourselves.

Walking down Bleecker Street later, bars with outdoor seating have propped up flat screen TVs so people can sit and watch the election results come in. It’s still early, a bit past 8pm, but my home county of Broward in South Florida, so far appears blue, which is a welcome change from years past. But of course I have already voted and it is my birthday, so I prefer to think about that instead.

I take myself to dinner at my new favorite spot, Kimika, on Kenmare Street. My plan is to indulge as much as I did for my birthday in Hawaii last year, to take care of myself and not worry about anyone else, a luxury I don't normally I afford myself. I remember the freedom in that, in just making myself happy, and that translates to dinner this evening. I don’t have to share, I don’t have to order anything I don’t want to order, I can eat as much of every dish as I want, and I don’t have to make clever conversation. All I have to do is enjoy the food, and I do indeed: their spicy shishito pepper margarita, olives in chili oil, figs with shiso and prosciutto, their signature rice cake lasagna with kimchi, various broccolis cooked in beef fat (!!!), apple crostata with melt-in-my-mouth pastry, and those miraculous, sinful, fabulously unholy mochi bomboloncini with warm nutella centers. Chef Christine Lau comes out and we do a birthday shot of tequila together because hers was the week before.

I leave with a feeling of having taken care of myself. This was a day I asked myself what I wanted to and my goodness did I answer with aplomb.

Morsels II

Writing about food and drink makes me happier than I realized.

Before Hannah and I meet for cocktails at four o’clock on a Sunday, I sidle up to Everyman Espresso in the East Village. In the Before Time, it was my home base, where I was enough of a regular that the baristas greeted me with smiles, knew my coffee order (milk and two Splendas, please), and asked how I’ve been. They didn’t get annoyed when I asked what song they were playing because somehow the music was always good, whether it was Chet Baker or the Psychedelic Furs or something in between. I have a coffee and sit at a table, hoping to read quietly for a while before cocktail hour. I realize a light sweater was a tad too ambitious and try to lose myself in the coffee but to no avail. I very politely ask Hannah if she wouldn’t mind sparing a jacket, and she kindly obliges.

The walk to Cafe Cluny warms my crisp exterior and, soon, so does the dirty martini I will pour into my interior. Hannah’s red leather jacket helps. Our next martini is a block away, at our beloved Corner Bistro, former haunt of the Beats. It arrives in a plastic cup and we toast and it’s wonderful and makes me spill my secrets. Underneath a wooden portico, we stare through a plastic window at the bar’s red neon lights bearing its name, martini goggles in full bloom.


*

It’s a Monday night and I haven’t seen Naomi in more than half a year. She arrives to meet me at the new Lazy Sundaes location on Waverly Place, a denim shirt and a neon beanie and a smile. The lovely ladies at Lazy Sundaes have treated us to fabulous bingsoo sundaes, Korean shave ice made of oatmilk and topped with “red bean preserve, condensed milk, mochi and soy bean powder” and bubble tea. In their storefront, a drawing of Frankie the cat lounges belly up on the wall, overseeing yummy cups of textured, creamy, icy goodness. We’ve caught them just in time, for in a few weeks it will turn little colder and their hot bubble tea will call our names a little louder.

Naomi and I walk our teas and sundaes to Washington Square Park, where The Youths are skateboarding and wearing mom jeans with crop tops and smoking pot. A man tries to sell us edibles, but there are achievements to discuss on the horizon, fellowships and chapter completions and offices made from closets while thick tapioca bubbles find their ways through straws. A skateboard hits me in the foot, but it’s the nature of the beast.

Our next stop is Bar Pisellino on Grove Street, which looks like it fell out of 1933 with its wood paneling, elegant coupe glasses, and intricately tiled floor. Dark liquors are on the horizon, a black walnut Manhattan for myself and a ginger hot toddy for Ms. Naomi. It arrives so beautifully on a silver tray with cleanly folded, imprinted napkins that I briefly turn into an Instagram whore. It is just cold enough for the dark liquors to make us warm again. There’s a rogue saxophone player in the street drowning out our explicit discussion of sexuality. "I don't think I have friends who aren't hot,” says my friend, the poet and scholar. “I’m all toasty with friendship and bourbon and thick thighs save lives,” I say. We are giggly enough to go get a slice at Joe’s on West 4th. I slap cash on the counter and soon the pizza is hot (enough) from the oven, the perfect and perfectly New York end to an evening. Naomi’s partner arrives in their SUV to take her home. I’m excited to meet him but I avoid saying “your other half” because they are both complete on their own.

*

Now that Kitchen Arts & Letters is open on Saturdays, Steven and I are able to put our incessant texting of “Are you free…” to a rest, trying to figure out the right afternoon to take off. Fittingly, he is wearing an M.F.K. Fisher sweatshirt embroidered by Fat Little Stitch with an oft-present octopus necklace. Amongst the bookstore’s food writing and memoirs and cookbooks and postcards we each find stories both old and new that we’re excited about. I’m not quite sure how we developed this mutual love of food writing, but having procured our texts, it feels as if we’ve made some sort of pilgrimage.
Lunch happens at The Barking Dog a block away, lovely for salad and coffee and a shared autumnal, brown-sugared apple crisp with a side of gossip. And then, ever my favorite pièce de résistance, a trip to Zabar’s. I fill my cart with gnocchi and smoked salmon and mango and arepas probably too many prepared foods. But what can I say? I am perpetually weak for the tastes of someone else’s kitchen.

Morsels

The last time I saw Julia, a man took our picture with a Polaroid camera and said the bright white of the flash would dissipate from our faces after it developed. He lied, maybe not on purpose, but he did. In it, we look like two friendly ghosts. We kept waiting for it to get darker as we ate pizza and salad in Crown Heights after a gig of hers at The Owl on Rogers Avenue, but it never did.

The day I see her again, so many months later--a phenomenon not unusual for anyone these days, I’m sure--we’re sitting under a peachy pink umbrella on a hot summer afternoon, drinking frose cocktails I’m sure meant for women who wear leggings to brunch and won’t shut up about SoulCycle. But we don’t care, it’s hot out, steamy, the kind of heat that makes your clothes cling to your chest, and a basic bitch cocktail is the perfect remedy.

*

The lightness I feel in my chest knowing B&H Dairy continues to survive the pandemic is practically levitating. SJT and I celebrate such a feat by dining there live and in person, and I am dunking my fresh mozzarella on challah bread into cold, cold borscht as if it hasn’t felt like decades since I was there last time. We slurp iced coffees and clink silver spoons against white ceramic bowls while young teens walk by dressed like they’re auditioning for The Craft. Ah youth, I smile, watching their Doc Martens amble past. I’m glad joy presents itself for me now less as trying to look cool and more like going shopping for vintage cookbooks at Bonnie Slotnick’s with SJT. While we are there, a woman named Jeannie tells us that eight short ribs is simply too many, how could you ever eat all of that. Later SJT promises to make me short ribs for my birthday, as many as I want.

*

HanOre returns from summer out of state and it’s jacket season, hers a red leather and mine the navy wool blazer I co-opted from my dad’s giveaway pile several years ago. We wrap them tighter around us as we sit at Amor y Amargo on East 6th Street in the East Village, nibbling on the roasted nuts we were required to buy by Governor Cuomo before sipping on smoky cocktails in high ball glasses. We talk about seduction and what it means to be a New Yorker, and how those things overlap. Somehow after two cocktails I am still standing and we go to Niagara a block away, the home of the Miss Manhattan reading. I miss my grungy weird little art bar and get a well drink in its honor with French fries lain across red and white checked wax paper. They’re too salty, but I don’t care. I’m just glad it’s still open.

*

Syd arrives to Le Moulin a Cafe and speaks French to the waiter. It’s so perfect he even laughs in French. I am drinking decaf iced coffee because I have been fighting insomnia but I miss the taste. The sun is hot but there’s a perfect chill in the air for my new emerald green chenille sweater, the one I love so much I have been wearing it for two days. I hardly remember what we ate because Syd--a history colleague I am delighted to also call my friend-- is so exuberant, joyful, vibrant I just remember laughing the whole time. Nobody ever comes up here, so it’s a treat when a friendly face appears. Later, we sit by the river and the sun shines and we talk about sex and television. Next to us, too close, even, an older woman undresses to absorb the sun and we’re reminded that New York is not dead.

*

As I’m preparing picnic goods for the park, I’m wondering when the last time it was that I truly entertained. It wasn’t going to be a big to-do, I was really just going to make a kugel for myself for Rosh Hashanah because last year’s turned out so well. But then I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me with Apples and she was talking about dinners with groups of friends at Alice Waters’s house and I was inspired. I missed friends in groups and cooking for them, even with my limited skills. We found a spot near the river and unwrapped the noodle-y, dairy-full casserole laden with raisins (yes, RAISINS, because I LIKE THEM) and I gave out first then second then even third helpings. Later, I packed leftover challah and kugel into Ziploc bags for friends to take home like a real Jewish mother.

*

When Magali meets me in Long Island City, we go to a French bakery, a miraculously independent business trembling under the weight of all that too-new, too-nothing glass and concrete dotting the river and blocking the sun. I have a long, crusty (in a good way) ficelle with ham and butter and a chai tea and we sit in the sun, a parade of pups going by. I roll my eyes at dogs in strollers because honestly, what the hell is that even. Magali tells me about Zurich, where people have special bags they put their clothes and belongings in so they can swim home from work. I would never, ever want to swim in the East River, but I saw once in a documentary that people actually do it. I nibble on the ficelle as I consider the possibility. What doesn’t kill you makes you more of a New Yorker.

Ten Years

Truthfully, I didn’t notice until about 5pm. In the flurry of our global nonsense, I often forget what day and date it is, constantly having to remind myself as I look into the nearest calendar. When I realized, a small smile crept across my face, as if I had earned a badge, leveled up, added a bullet point to my resume. As of today, I have been in New York for 10 years.

This year is not what any of us had expected or maybe could have ever imagined. When HanOre asked me a few months ago what I would do for my ten year anniversary, I didn’t know how to answer. There are a million things I could have said, but it felt like jumping the shark, as it were, to come up with a grand plan when the state of the world was a total shambles. It made me sad to even plan something when the prospect of having it canceled seemed all too great. But, in true New York fashion, I almost didn’t even remember in whatever the small daily whirl of my life has become.

So, after 5pm, I continued working on my book for another 200 words before my brain gave out. I had a cup of herbal tea to soothe my stomach, achy from too much caffeine (I’m fine, Mom), and I went for a walk along the East River as I have done so many days these past few months. I’ve ordered Chinese food that’s on its way. And I’m sitting here, writing on my couch, thinking about the last 10 years.

Maybe I’ve written about this before, but I remember the day I moved in. We drove up from Florida and the last few hours forced my body into a virtual conniption fit: we got stuck at the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour. I had come so close to this dream of living in New York and I was now a matter of miles away from my first apartment. Again in true New York fashion, the city would test my patience from the very beginning, offering the first of many rewards for passing its many tests, trials, and tribulations, rewards that have consistently proven worth the trouble. Finally we pulled up to my first apartment building in this giant SUV and began unloading all of my things into the lobby, slowly but surely bringing them up in the creaky, old elevator to the third floor. It was hot and humid like it was today, what I’ve since learned is a classic New York July. This was it. I was here. I was home.

I was reading Nora Ephron’s essay collection I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections recently, and there’s a passage in her essay “Journalism: A Love Story” that leapt out at me:

I'd known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I'd spent all those years imagining that it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place I could ever live; a place where if I really wanted something, I might be able to get it; a place where I'd be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might become the only thing worth being—a journalist.

And I'd turned out to be right.

She was speaking my language. Everything she said was it. My truth, the truth. Coincidentally, the book would also come out in 2010, the year I’d move to the city. It’s almost as if she knew someone like me would find it and hear her: “Yes, I understand.”

And even in the darkest days of these international crises, I have kept writing and I have never left. Loyal to a fault, perhaps, but that’s what love is. It’s a feeling not unlike waiting for a lover to return home after a long absence, that ache of heart, that longing for what used to be, the passion that brought us together. But it will be back soon. I have learned there is nothing quite so resilient as New York City, save perhaps for the people who live in it. “She who endures with patience is the conqueror,” as my grandmother would have said. 

Recently, the writer Rachel Syme posed a Twitter prompt I really loved, asking people to offer up things they loved and missed about New York during these times of crises. Several popped into my head instantly:

 

Walking through Central Park to Zabar’s, sitting at their counter and having a bagel with nova and cream cheese and an iced coffee, then going grocery shopping next door, sampling prosciutto and whatever else they're featuring on a cracker.

 

Getting off the Q at Coney Island during the Mermaid Parade and watching the flutter of costumes go by, finding the perfect spot near the start of the route and taking pictures til the end, then heading to the beach and later sharing a half tray at L&B Spumoni Gardens with a friend.

Bloomingdale’s at 59th and Lex on a hot day.

Filthy Martinis at Cafe Cluny with NE.

A restaurant I've never tried with SJT that's been recommended by The New York Times’s Ligaya Mishan.

Listening to Chet Baker sing "I've Never Been in Love Before" at Everyman Espresso

Dancing to Kim Petras at Hardware with my boys while drinking tequila sodas.

Sitting on a bench in front of Punjabi Deli eating a bowl of mattar paneer after a concert at Mercury Lounge.

Happening upon bevy of beautiful queens performing at No Bar.

Bushwig.

Cold borscht with glops of sour cream & thick slices of buttery challah at B&H with HanOre.

Russ & Daughters egg creams.

Accidentally drinking too much wine from clear plastic cups at Chelsea gallery openings.

Caramels in wax paper at Confectionary with LM.

Here are a few more I thought of now:

Ethiopian food at Ghenet with AR before doing something, anything really, in Park Slope, or stopping by South after a photography gig at Littlefield to say hello. Also, accidental New Jack Swing parties at Freddy’s.

Walking through Nolita/Soho on a day where I have nothing to do and perusing the stacks at McNally Jackson.

Waiting in line forever for a Nathan’s hot dog on Coney Island.

How when EH comes into the city we can always find a seat at any restaurant’s bar, even if there’s a wait.

Seeing Julia Easterlin perform...literally wherever. Girl, you know I will traverse all kinds of Brooklyn neighborhoods for you.

Days spent schlepping across multiple boroughs, navigating the subway map in my mind. My office in my giant red tote bag on my shoulder, going from working in a coffee shop to having lunch to seeing a movie or having dinner with a friend, and the sweet relief of plopping that bag down at my feet upon my arrival.

Photoshoots at decades-old family-run restaurants in Bay Ridge.

Killing time by watching the skateboarders or teens flirting with each other at Union Square or dipping into one of the international magazine bodegas between work and seeing friends.

A Mister Softee soft-serve vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles in a cone (not the sugar ones, the other ones that are fluffy when you bite them, what are they called?)

The drip of sweat across my collarbone as I’m waiting for the train--because even though I hate it, I’d rather be sweaty here than anywhere else in the world. 

I promise to keep waiting. I've made it this far, after all. 

Bodega

The more I traveled the U.S., the more I noticed there was a particular facet of existence in New York I found more special each time I came home and even more special now: the bodega. This corner shop, catch-all of anything you could need at any odd hour of the day, has been to me and countless other New Yorkers the bearer of everything from dishwashing liquid to bananas to ramen noodles to roast beef sandwiches. It is my haven of Swiss and apple grilled cheese on whole wheat bread after an evening of too many (read: one) martinis, when I totter in after 12am, sidle up to the counter, and before I can even say hello the man behind the register says, “You want a grilled cheese, right?” He’s there often, but only asks me that after midnight when I’m wearing a little more makeup and there’s a little more spring in my step than usual.

At first, I only realized how much I had taken bodegas for granted visiting places like San Francisco, where from my friend’s apartment in Inner Sunset it’s at least a 15 minute walk to the nearest grocery store. It was something I had not counted on when preparing to go out one evening as I made the mistake of thinking to myself, “Oh, I’ll just run and get a sandwich at the corner,” without realizing said corner was not only said distance away, but they didn’t even make sandwiches after a certain hour. I found myself trotting along street after street, wondering “Who do I have to fuck to get a quick sandwich in this town?” (knowing full well the massive yet delicious sandwich from Yellow Submarine on Irving Street was much too big for my needs at the moment) and wishing for home sweet Heavenly Market on my actual corner, where I could be in and out in 10 minutes after having walked a matter of feet to get there in the first place.

Similarly, a bodega is not a thing in South Florida, whose suburbs for the most part shut up tighter than a drum after 10pm. You also cannot get a sandwich or an orange juice at any hour on just any corner in L.A., something I became privy to after accidentally eating far too much weed chocolate and being high for 18 hours. But in New York? Take your pick. Reese’s cups? You got it. Seltzer? Right this way. Deodorant? Behind the counter. The bodega becomes a partner in your life in a way, always open, always there in a pinch, and more consistent than the subway. The people behind the counter know orders by faces, recognize dogs, say to me hello sweetie how are you doing even on days when I haven’t spoken to another living soul--which, working from home on my own, is something that happens not infrequently. The bodega also becomes this wacky lens into human life. I remember the woman who came in drunk in camouflage leggings with a tiny fluffy white dog at her feet and asked for two slices of cheese in wax paper, paid for them, then left. I remember the elderly woman who racked up $100 worth of groceries, piling them on the counter bit by bit. Doormen who come through in uniforms and loosen their ties as they get $1.50 cups of coffee. Tweens getting smoothies after school.

I realized how much I had taken my bodega for granted recently, too, but in a different way. It’s normally 24 hours, which has spoiled me in countless ways, mostly as I crave the snacks that are usually not present in my home. The back of my refrigerator is almost always visible, save for two rogue containers of sprinkles I’ve never used and a split of champagne I’m always delighted to see despite not quite knowing how it arrived there. Early on in these pandemic crises, the bodega began closing at 6pm, and when I was still married to my microwave in the first few weeks of this mess and jonesing for a grilled cheese at 10pm, I had nowhere to turn. It was, weirdly, when the bodega, this bastion of consistency, was no longer there, that I began to feel most lonely, when it became most apparent to me the threads of my own life in New York had begun to fray.

Amidst chaos--i.e., the regular state of existence in New York--there is comfort in the known, in the recognizable. It’s the reason we develop favorite haunts in a city that seems to be constantly teeming with newness in the form of stores or restaurants or bars or what have you. The absence of a sanctuary can leave us feeling unmoored. Bodegas are, in their own way, sanctuaries. In the midst of perpetual growth and change, they give us roots. I am grateful to the people who own and run and work in these establishments and have kept them open even though their work right now has great risks of its own. They're an essential part of life in New York, one whose absence is all too easily felt for reasons that go far beyond toilet paper, ice cream, and Tic Tacs.

My bodega has extended its hours to 10pm on the weekend, and a wave of joy coursed through me tonight as I bounded out of my apartment at 9pm into the crisp May air to procure a small jug of milk for a baking recipe. A group of pimply teenage boys in Kappa sweats shook long fuzzy manes at each other as they gestured wildly on the iron bench outside. The bodega door was open to let in the cool breeze and welcomed me inside. Through her mask, the lady behind the counter asked me how are you sweetie and I asked her the same through mine. I thanked her twice for being open, and not because I needed milk.

How Are You?

The other day I was going through an old stack of New York Magazines. I came across their annual ‘Reasons to Love New York’ issue and for a few seconds some tears dripped from the corners of my eyes. People had been listing their favorite restaurants in the city, their beloved spots for late-night food or sandwiches or what have you. Many of them I had never been to, but there were also several I knew better than well, places I haven’t seen in several weeks, and maybe won’t see for several more. I mourned for the New York I loved. I was having, I am having, trouble recognizing the one I’m in now. I’m sure many of us are.

I know it won’t be this way forever, but in the same way it’s harder waiting for the subway when you don’t know how long it will be, the waiting is difficult because none of us know when this metaphorical train will please leave and we can just get on with our lives, thank you very much. I miss the dirty subway tile teeming with dirt, how the arriving trains fill the station with the shrieking of their brakes and then the rumble of bodies.

The last time I took the subway was March 10, before everything exploded, before it became irresponsible to gather in public, before we arrived where we are now. While I’ve never had a problem walking around my neighborhood, and in fact I quite like the walk down the river and seeing the fluffy pups in the small dog park, it’s nothing in comparison to the days I loved best, the days spent rushing around the city from coffee shop to meeting to lecture to gallery opening to dinner--with SC at Peacefood, with HS at Beron Beron, with NE at Corner Bistro, with HanOre somewhere in Brooklyn off the Bedford stop because I hardly know anywhere to eat there--or “dinner,” hobbling into the bodega exhausted, my office in a bag on my shoulder, asking politely for a spinach salad, please.

The weeks seem to galumph along--oh, Wednesday, we’re almost done. Thank God it’s Friday. How is it Sunday night already?--in ways I never thought they did before. One of my worst habits as a New Yorker (as a human?) is making plans for every night of the week. I’m home often for work, which has not been a difficult transition, but the emptiness of my evenings has been one I’ve, well, also filled with work. After finishing my freelance work for the day or doing interviews, I go for a walk along the river (wearing a scarf around my face, keeping my distance), then work until about 10 or 11pm, and try to unwind by watching some television before bed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I’m getting a ton of research done, scheduling more and more interviews, organizing my thoughts. Sometimes they are difficult to organize, a symptom of our current state more than not, I’m sure.

Texting with HanOre this week, we came up with an idea to describe how we’re feeling--homesick for New York as it was. As it gets warmer out, killing time by sitting on the steps at Union Square watching skateboarders. Hosting my Miss Manhattan reading (in person! We’ll be digital tomorrow night on IGTV @MissManhattanNY if you’d like to check us out). Listening to Chet Baker and Prince and Wheatus at Everyman Espresso. Working at the Performing Arts Library and seeing the expanse of Lincoln Center from their window on the second floor. Wandering into The Strand for no reason. Walking the cobblestone streets in the West Village. The lunch counter at B&H for thick slices of challah swathed in butter to dunk into hot borscht. Tequila and sodas at Rise and dancing until late at Hardware to Kim Petras. Poking around Bloomingdale’s for no reason.

I remember in middle school and high school I was so desperate to leave the suburbs behind, to go someplace where I knew I would have the freedom to become the person I always wanted to be. Rather, not someplace, New York. My days and nights would be filled and I would never be stuck home alone on a Friday night again (that is, if I didn’t want to be). And yet, here we are. The “we” there is important, of course--that this is by no means a situation that’s unique to me, and the idea of such a thing is in its own way heartening even if it is sad. But there’s a low-lying ache that runs through me just the same, the one that’s homesick for the life we used to have here, the one I escaped the suburbs for. It’ll be back, of course, though it will take time. I want the city to bustle again. I want it to be safe for the city to bustle again.

In the meantime, I’ve bought ingredients to cook things with instead of feeling mournful in front of the microwave yet again. I take my walks every day to maintain some semblance of health. It feels like I know the view of the East River better every day. I eat probably more frozen vegetables than I should, but hey, it’s better than nothing. I pop into the bodega on occasion for a small coffee with milk and two Splendas, please, to my bagel place for a bacon, egg, and cheese on a whole wheat flat bagel and can you toast it please? I spent last night cooking Jacques Pepin’s mustard chicken recipe in The New York Times and, while watching Cary Grant movies, painted my nails that luscious purple color SD bought for me many years ago when we went to go see Eugene O’Neill’s stage directions done entirely as plays at Theatre for the New City on 1st Avenue. I spent Friday night talking with AS about raccoon Instagram accounts. Some days it’s hard to get out of bed, some days it’s easier. Some days I sit at my desk, some days on the couch. Last weekend I did laundry for six hours, put everything away, and cleaned the house. I’ve gotten used to the quiet and it’s manageable, but at the same time, I hope it doesn’t last.

I once said to someone that the New York you make for yourself is the best one. I know what mine is now, after nearly a decade. I’m just waiting for her to come back. We all are.

A Book Deal

The first time I said anything about it was to AR as we walked to see the Dyker Heights Christmas lights in December 2017. We had Chinese food and got cannolis to eat, and they clunked inside their white cardboard box tied with string. I remember how cold my hands and face were. I had had the idea for a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and AR was the first person I told out loud. I knew if I said it out loud I would acknowledge how scared it made me, but it was the kind of fear I’ve never wanted to shake, the kind of fear I run to wholeheartedly because it’s the right kind of fear: one rooted in excitement, the premise of a new challenge, rather than a need to flee from danger. I knew if I said it out loud I would be challenging myself to do it. We peeled off gloves in the middle of a chilly Brooklyn evening to press the cream-filled cookie shells into our faces and I watched the words leave my mouth, the cold turning them to visible swirls in the air. “I think I want to write a book about drag history in New York.” AR approved. It was a good idea, he said.

I thought about it for a few more months, how it would take shape, if it was really something I could do. Then I sat down with FT in Ground Support and said it out loud again. Yes, he said, you are the person to write that book. I felt so encouraged I started that night, making lists, what would the book include, who would I want to talk to. Magically, around the same time, I began doing a drag history column at Conde Nast's them.

My goal was to have the proposal finished by the end of the year, and with guidance from some amazing women, I made it work. They read my proposal, they helped me find agents to reach out to. I had someone bite the same day I sent out the proposal and then...nothing, despite having beat myself into the ground writing a sample chapter, starting to get sick in the moments I hit send. A few months later, another bite, two requests for revisions, a heap of helpful edits from TS, and then...nothing. I didn’t reach out to as many people as I should have last year, but in the new year I resolved to change that.

There were multiple very kind rejections, and then a referral, and then one more. And then a serendipitous flip of a switch in my favor on a Monday, a phone call while I sat myself outside the Metropolitan Opera after working in the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, but still nothing guaranteed. Pacing around the plaza for 30 minutes, actively trying not to fall in the reflecting pool, voice tempered, measured while sharing the details with my mother, cold enough to need a jacket but forgetting the temperature on my hands. I made myself eat lunch. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Could this really happen?

Filthy martinis with NE at Cafe Cluny. I told her the news. I feel it, she said. This time it’s really going to happen. I have witchy senses, she said. I am mostly useless the rest of the week. Another email of good news. I take that Friday mostly off. My brain is blank but my body is flipping out. Could this really happen?

Another phone call the following Monday. Preparation. A conference call on Tuesday. Excitement and praise I don’t expect on the other end. I am useless again. I go to the gym, come home, about to relax and watch 30 Rock. Another phone call.

An offer. A book deal.

I weep, but it’s short lived. I call HanOre. There’s a bottle of Perrier-Jouet champagne in my fridge given to me as a thank you for photographing a wedding four years ago, and I’ve been waiting for a special occasion to open it. Tonight is the night. I treat myself to a giant plate of enchiladas and later HanOre joins me to drink the champagne. We laugh and tell stories until it’s too late on a school night. She sends me roses the next day. A book deal doesn’t usually happen like this, the man who is now my agent tells me, but every so often, in a flicker of hope and serendipity, it does.

Two days later, margaritas with my agent, a phrase I’m still not used to saying. “My agent.” How do you feel? Are you still floating? He says. “I...don’t quite know what to do,” I say. I still don’t.

We talk about drag, New York bars nightclubs of our youth, too many nights at Therapy, Bartini, Greenhouse that made it difficult to get up the next day. I remember a drag queen I danced with once named Anna Phalaxis who was a nurse by day. Seeing Peppermint with AS for the first time at Therapy during her new queens show Cattle Call, the lipsync she did that was entirely scat-singing. Being 23 and photographing Yuhua before she performed at The Web, underground right next to Tao on 58th Street, where there were signs in the locker room warning go-go boys not to seek payment for sex acts.

I saw To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, for the first time at seven or eight, I don’t remember which. I saw my first drag show at 19--Cashetta, may she rest in peace, who I watched disappear a feet-long balloon down her throat to much fanfare during her drag magic show at the Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale. When I was old enough, 21, going to Lips on Oakland Park Boulevard with my parents, my mother whispering to me how gorgeous the host, Diva was. Another time, I sat at the bar there and photographed drag for the first time while sipping a frozen Cosmopolitan.

I think in some ways I’ve been working on this book for 25 years. The manuscript for Glitter and Concrete, my book that will be a cultural history of drag in New York, is still years from publication, but it’s on its way.