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.
Step 1: Move to New York. Step 2: Have experiences.
Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2022
Sunday, December 6, 2020
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.
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.
Monday, November 2, 2020
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.
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.
Sunday, October 4, 2020
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.
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.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Mist
When I moved to New York, I put my wide-leg jeans in the back of my closet, marrying my legs to the skinnies that were de rigeur almost 10 years ago. The wide-legs have gone in and out this last decade, and they’re back again, with everyone’s body pretending it’s 1978 all over again. I’ve periodically felt like someone’s out of date grandmother when I’ve worn them, but not today. They hung over my cowboy boots in this misty weather, paired with the grey cashmere turtleneck sweater I stole from my mother that I’ve now worn two days in a row. When I wore it out with LM she said I “looked like a goddamn cup of cocoa.” I hear that in my head every time I wear it now and I love it.
The rain hung just enough in the air to not warrant an umbrella, though many people walking in front of me today would have argued with me about that as they held their open nylon protectors upward toward the sky. I sweater-jeans-and-cowboy-bootsed my way to the main branch of the New York Public Library today, held captive in the house earlier by a phone interview. I want to go somewhere quiet where I can write, I said to myself, and moved myself past Patience and Fortitude, the library lions, up the marble staircases to the Rose Reading Room. It was silent save for the periodic shuffle of tourists’ arms moving against their puffy vests as they held their phones upward to take pictures of the really quite epic chandeliers and ceiling. I only wish they allowed coffee, or that I was crafty enough and not clumsy enough to figure out a way to bring some without spilling.
At first I am distracted by the fact that Peter Hermann, who plays Charles on TV Land’s Younger and is Mariska Hargitay’s husband, is sitting directly across from me. But, in true New York fashion, I shortly forget about him because I am too focused on myself. Later, there is a young couple--late teens, maybe-- sitting across from me--she is taking stickers out of a millennial pink book that teaches you how to identify various cacti and he is sketching her without looking at her.
The writing happens, but barely. A month ago I realized I had not had a proper vacation in four and a half years, and while I am rectifying that situation next week, I am in the unusual, regular situation of having to pluck the words from my brain rather than having them flow freely through my fingers.
There’s another group of tourists when I leave after two hours. I wonder if they’re looking at me the way I used to look at people when I visited the library: Wow, a real live New Yorker! I wish I could be her someday! But I am her now. Some days I am too lucky; other days I try to use the bathroom at the library but don't because I notice a toilet has overflowed, covering everyone’s shoes in water.
I sometimes forget what a daily commute looks like for most people--I’m often one of a few on the downward escalator when everyone else is heading upward. But I’m in midtown now, and everyone goes every direction at once. Getting off at 23rd, I’m desperate for a snack, and find my way to Foragers, an upscale grocery store, and wind up with things that don’t need to be purchased at an upscale grocery store: a banana and a cup of coffee. I spill some coffee on my shoes on the way out because of course I do.
I see Joel Meyerowitz speak at Aperture. A legendary photographer, he tells stories about making portraits in Provincetown, getting into arguments with Richard Avedon and photographing Norman Mailer. His voice is soothing, one you’d believe without question if it told you you could do anything. His hands are long and spindly. I can see bones and veins when he moves them while he speaks, these hands that have printed thousands of photos, held countless cameras, moving seamlessly over their shutters, focusing their lenses, loading their film. People line up to see him, to have him sign their books. He lives in Italy now and I didn’t even think to bring mine. I don’t know what I would say to him anyway, aside from the fact that his parents bought my first baby carriage (they were clients of my dad’s some 30--at least 31, as of this coming Sunday--years ago). A man asks me if I am a photographer and I say yes. He doesn’t feel comfortable calling himself one yet, he says.
On the way home, a man is sitting with his legs up on the subway reading a newspaper and I audibly whisper “asshole” as I walk in the other direction. Transferring to another train, there’s a woman in a grey pashmina and matching beanie with a shiny square diamond on her ring finger. She wears pearl earrings and cropped black pants and tortoiseshell glasses. Her ring looks like one I tried on a few weeks ago. Doyle was having a viewing for a jewelry auction and, always excited to ogle jewels up close, I walked in. Peering in the ring case, I saw this classic small square with a platinum band. “Would you like to try anything on?” a woman with glasses and fluffy, graying brown hair asked me. People don’t normally ask me that question when I’m perusing fine jewelry, instead ignoring me for someone who looks like they have more money (after we part ways, her colleagues do not disappoint). I was so taken aback someone asked that I said yes, I would, and tried the ring on, just to see what it felt like. I’m annoyed by the part of me that wonders this, that makes me a single woman cliche. But it almost fit aside from two small bumpers inside the band--apparently my ring finger is just a bit larger than a size 5. It was from 1920, the woman said, showing me the auction catalog, and estimated between four and six thousand dollars. A steal, I chuckle. When I show my mother a picture later, she says I should have something bigger. I disagree, I don’t want something bigger, but instead of arguing I say “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” offering up the bastardized expression we have come to love.
At home, I’m too tired to use a knife and fork so I rip a chicken breast apart with my fingers. I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s yesterday and I love it there but I hate that there’s one on Delancey Street now next to a Target. I wonder what New York will look like in another nine years.
The rain hung just enough in the air to not warrant an umbrella, though many people walking in front of me today would have argued with me about that as they held their open nylon protectors upward toward the sky. I sweater-jeans-and-cowboy-bootsed my way to the main branch of the New York Public Library today, held captive in the house earlier by a phone interview. I want to go somewhere quiet where I can write, I said to myself, and moved myself past Patience and Fortitude, the library lions, up the marble staircases to the Rose Reading Room. It was silent save for the periodic shuffle of tourists’ arms moving against their puffy vests as they held their phones upward to take pictures of the really quite epic chandeliers and ceiling. I only wish they allowed coffee, or that I was crafty enough and not clumsy enough to figure out a way to bring some without spilling.
At first I am distracted by the fact that Peter Hermann, who plays Charles on TV Land’s Younger and is Mariska Hargitay’s husband, is sitting directly across from me. But, in true New York fashion, I shortly forget about him because I am too focused on myself. Later, there is a young couple--late teens, maybe-- sitting across from me--she is taking stickers out of a millennial pink book that teaches you how to identify various cacti and he is sketching her without looking at her.
The writing happens, but barely. A month ago I realized I had not had a proper vacation in four and a half years, and while I am rectifying that situation next week, I am in the unusual, regular situation of having to pluck the words from my brain rather than having them flow freely through my fingers.
There’s another group of tourists when I leave after two hours. I wonder if they’re looking at me the way I used to look at people when I visited the library: Wow, a real live New Yorker! I wish I could be her someday! But I am her now. Some days I am too lucky; other days I try to use the bathroom at the library but don't because I notice a toilet has overflowed, covering everyone’s shoes in water.
I sometimes forget what a daily commute looks like for most people--I’m often one of a few on the downward escalator when everyone else is heading upward. But I’m in midtown now, and everyone goes every direction at once. Getting off at 23rd, I’m desperate for a snack, and find my way to Foragers, an upscale grocery store, and wind up with things that don’t need to be purchased at an upscale grocery store: a banana and a cup of coffee. I spill some coffee on my shoes on the way out because of course I do.
I see Joel Meyerowitz speak at Aperture. A legendary photographer, he tells stories about making portraits in Provincetown, getting into arguments with Richard Avedon and photographing Norman Mailer. His voice is soothing, one you’d believe without question if it told you you could do anything. His hands are long and spindly. I can see bones and veins when he moves them while he speaks, these hands that have printed thousands of photos, held countless cameras, moving seamlessly over their shutters, focusing their lenses, loading their film. People line up to see him, to have him sign their books. He lives in Italy now and I didn’t even think to bring mine. I don’t know what I would say to him anyway, aside from the fact that his parents bought my first baby carriage (they were clients of my dad’s some 30--at least 31, as of this coming Sunday--years ago). A man asks me if I am a photographer and I say yes. He doesn’t feel comfortable calling himself one yet, he says.
On the way home, a man is sitting with his legs up on the subway reading a newspaper and I audibly whisper “asshole” as I walk in the other direction. Transferring to another train, there’s a woman in a grey pashmina and matching beanie with a shiny square diamond on her ring finger. She wears pearl earrings and cropped black pants and tortoiseshell glasses. Her ring looks like one I tried on a few weeks ago. Doyle was having a viewing for a jewelry auction and, always excited to ogle jewels up close, I walked in. Peering in the ring case, I saw this classic small square with a platinum band. “Would you like to try anything on?” a woman with glasses and fluffy, graying brown hair asked me. People don’t normally ask me that question when I’m perusing fine jewelry, instead ignoring me for someone who looks like they have more money (after we part ways, her colleagues do not disappoint). I was so taken aback someone asked that I said yes, I would, and tried the ring on, just to see what it felt like. I’m annoyed by the part of me that wonders this, that makes me a single woman cliche. But it almost fit aside from two small bumpers inside the band--apparently my ring finger is just a bit larger than a size 5. It was from 1920, the woman said, showing me the auction catalog, and estimated between four and six thousand dollars. A steal, I chuckle. When I show my mother a picture later, she says I should have something bigger. I disagree, I don’t want something bigger, but instead of arguing I say “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” offering up the bastardized expression we have come to love.
At home, I’m too tired to use a knife and fork so I rip a chicken breast apart with my fingers. I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s yesterday and I love it there but I hate that there’s one on Delancey Street now next to a Target. I wonder what New York will look like in another nine years.
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Have Some More
Our bowls of pasta arrived sometime recently, but I don’t remember because time began slowing once our broccoli rabe appetizer, accented with strips of crispy pancetta, arrived at our table.
I am with my friend NE, human glitter, a poet who brims with shine and sparkle and intellect and knows how to appreciate joy and pleasure in big and small bites. We will be having dinner at Fiaschetteria Pistoia, which I will soon learn is a sliver of Tuscan culinary heaven on Christopher Street, where a man with tattoos in the window makes fresh pasta by hand, BY HAND, spinning dough into strips that will eventually become spaghetti, pappardelle, and lord knows what else. Waiting for NE in the tiny hallway next to a kitchen cordoned off by glass, I watch as another man makes slabs of veal in a pan, tossing in generous heaps of olive oil while the cast iron sizzles the meat to a light brown. Small plates of pasta, artichokes, vegetables leave the tiny kitchen window and exit into the room decorated with exposed brick painted white. A Keith Haring poster of Rome and another for Italian ice cream dot the walls. When we sit down at a tiny gray marble table, the words “Fresh Pasta is Never Al Dente Because it Was Never Dried” float above our heads.
We rip slices of bread, offered to us in a tiny brown paper bag, into a olive oil from an equally tiny ramekin. A waiter offers us wine from a selection of empty bottles, each tagged with ‘White’ and ‘Red’ like Alice’s bottles in Wonderland are with ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me.’ We don’t, instead pouring ourselves water from a repurposed bottle etched with what look like window panes.
NE is talking when the broccoli rabe arrives, its green stalks and florets dipped deliciously in olive oil, but I don’t remember what she says because I slide a chunk of it into my mouth with a sliver of pancetta and my brain stops working, the broccoli falling apart next to the crunch of the pancetta, releasing flowers and spices onto my tongue. She stops mid-sentence, eager to “have what I’m having” as When Harry Met Sally would say, and takes a bite. We look at each other, eyes wide. Wow.
We make our way through the small plate loaded with the shiny green vegetable until there’s just a little bit left.
“Have some more,” NE says.
“You have some more!” I say back, pointing a fork at her.
We both giggle and take each other’s advice. A lone floret rests on the edge of the plate when a waiter tries to remove it, but I make him pause so I can give it to NE. A smile spreads wide across her face.
Our pasta arrives in two small bowls lined with blue trim. I slide mine toward me, ribbony pappardelle made yellow by the redness of a bolognese-style ragu. I'm careful not to “chow down,” and remember to taste. The silken pasta glides next to the chunky, meaty ragu and slowly my brain begins to stop working again. I have trouble forming sentences. I try not to speak because that means more time I’m not eating. And NE is having the same experience with her Cacio e Pepe, this hand-rolled spaghetti with pecorino and black pepper that’s tangy and creamy at the same time. I taste it and eat it with all manner of impropriety, nibbling the strands of pasta from my fork one by one.
We go back to our own dishes, but NE insists. “Have some more!”
When I hear her say it this time, I realize she is not just saying to keep indulging in Cacio e Pepe. Enjoy, she is saying. Take pleasure! Live! Taste! Be in and of your senses and this moment. The food is so good, she says I start blushing. She wants to marry every man in the restaurant, especially the one who makes the pasta. After a while we stop speaking altogether and just look at each other and shake our heads. We both feel a little drunk, despite having only water to drink. This food euphoria is something new, a buzz not unlike a strong glass of wine. The pleasures of good food shared with a friend extend beyond the stomach. We are tasting joy, and in good company.
I am with my friend NE, human glitter, a poet who brims with shine and sparkle and intellect and knows how to appreciate joy and pleasure in big and small bites. We will be having dinner at Fiaschetteria Pistoia, which I will soon learn is a sliver of Tuscan culinary heaven on Christopher Street, where a man with tattoos in the window makes fresh pasta by hand, BY HAND, spinning dough into strips that will eventually become spaghetti, pappardelle, and lord knows what else. Waiting for NE in the tiny hallway next to a kitchen cordoned off by glass, I watch as another man makes slabs of veal in a pan, tossing in generous heaps of olive oil while the cast iron sizzles the meat to a light brown. Small plates of pasta, artichokes, vegetables leave the tiny kitchen window and exit into the room decorated with exposed brick painted white. A Keith Haring poster of Rome and another for Italian ice cream dot the walls. When we sit down at a tiny gray marble table, the words “Fresh Pasta is Never Al Dente Because it Was Never Dried” float above our heads.
We rip slices of bread, offered to us in a tiny brown paper bag, into a olive oil from an equally tiny ramekin. A waiter offers us wine from a selection of empty bottles, each tagged with ‘White’ and ‘Red’ like Alice’s bottles in Wonderland are with ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me.’ We don’t, instead pouring ourselves water from a repurposed bottle etched with what look like window panes.
NE is talking when the broccoli rabe arrives, its green stalks and florets dipped deliciously in olive oil, but I don’t remember what she says because I slide a chunk of it into my mouth with a sliver of pancetta and my brain stops working, the broccoli falling apart next to the crunch of the pancetta, releasing flowers and spices onto my tongue. She stops mid-sentence, eager to “have what I’m having” as When Harry Met Sally would say, and takes a bite. We look at each other, eyes wide. Wow.
We make our way through the small plate loaded with the shiny green vegetable until there’s just a little bit left.
“Have some more,” NE says.
“You have some more!” I say back, pointing a fork at her.
We both giggle and take each other’s advice. A lone floret rests on the edge of the plate when a waiter tries to remove it, but I make him pause so I can give it to NE. A smile spreads wide across her face.
Our pasta arrives in two small bowls lined with blue trim. I slide mine toward me, ribbony pappardelle made yellow by the redness of a bolognese-style ragu. I'm careful not to “chow down,” and remember to taste. The silken pasta glides next to the chunky, meaty ragu and slowly my brain begins to stop working again. I have trouble forming sentences. I try not to speak because that means more time I’m not eating. And NE is having the same experience with her Cacio e Pepe, this hand-rolled spaghetti with pecorino and black pepper that’s tangy and creamy at the same time. I taste it and eat it with all manner of impropriety, nibbling the strands of pasta from my fork one by one.
We go back to our own dishes, but NE insists. “Have some more!”
When I hear her say it this time, I realize she is not just saying to keep indulging in Cacio e Pepe. Enjoy, she is saying. Take pleasure! Live! Taste! Be in and of your senses and this moment. The food is so good, she says I start blushing. She wants to marry every man in the restaurant, especially the one who makes the pasta. After a while we stop speaking altogether and just look at each other and shake our heads. We both feel a little drunk, despite having only water to drink. This food euphoria is something new, a buzz not unlike a strong glass of wine. The pleasures of good food shared with a friend extend beyond the stomach. We are tasting joy, and in good company.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Beacon Beckons
As much as I love New York, one of the great pleasures of living here is also leaving it, even if it’s just for a day. When AR told me that Beacon, New York was just a hop, skip, and a jump from Grand Central (read: an hour and 45 minutes by train) and you don’t even need to rent a car to get around, the premise intrigued me. What if, one fine winter weekend, we went? And so with Mag this past Sunday we did.
We met bright and early at Grand Central and I went up to the golden booths where the ticket salespeople were to ask for mine just like Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor. “One round trip ticket to Beacon, please.” I don’t think I knew how much I wanted to do this until I got there when the premise of the machines presented themselves to me and I decided to be a 1930s movie star instead.
We hopped the correct train after first mistaking another one, and soon we watched New York City pass us by with stops in Harlem and the Bronx and all the little nonsense suburb-y places on the way until it became a little more country, a little more picturesque, a little less corporate America. The train ride didn’t feel long, either, since we laughed and talked and ogled the Olympic bobsled team the whole time. Cliffs and mountains that looked like dirt cake covered in powdered sugar sped past the window and ice floated in the chilly river as I took pictures.
Beacon is a small city in Dutchess County, New York, a former mill town that became a sort of funky, arty enclave New Yorkers now venture to to encounter things like fresh air and reasonably priced coffee. Arriving at around 11:15, we staked out a spot for brunch/lunch and ended up after a picturesque walk down Main Street (yes, Main Street), past all of its updated buildings that house galleries (like one for beach glass that’s in a converted firehouse), brunch spots, smoke shops, newfangled donut joints, and grocery stores. We ended up at the Yankee Clipper, a teeny diner inside what looks like a chrome train car. We drank coffee and ate a variety of breakfast and non-breakfast delights. Then Mag led way back through town, down a hill, to Dia: Beacon, the town’s contemporary art museum (there’s another one in Chelsea here in the city). She is an arty lady and has been before so she knows the way. I significantly lag behind because I keep stopping to take pictures. “Everything about you is a New Yorker except how quickly you walk,” AR says. He’s not wrong.
Dia: is a high-falutin’ sort of place, with deep philosophical installations that are nice to look at and interesting and make me think but also make me miss photography museums that I understand. Much of it is impressive but not necessarily art that you’d think fondly of when you leave home during a long vacation. None of it will make your house a home. Unless, that is, you have a rather large, austere house you want to fill with either white canvases painted white or intense sculptures made from ripped-apart machines (I actually really liked these pieces by John Chamberlain and perhaps would put them in my house--you know, my country house on acres and acres of land just a train ride from the city that I don’t have) or a giant wedge of wood or a pile of broken glass. In which case, this is definitely the place for you. AR, Mag, and I take a family portrait outside of its dead but still sculptural tree installation outside and we part ways, she heading back to the city and us to find some sort of pastry to eat and records to buy.
We met bright and early at Grand Central and I went up to the golden booths where the ticket salespeople were to ask for mine just like Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor. “One round trip ticket to Beacon, please.” I don’t think I knew how much I wanted to do this until I got there when the premise of the machines presented themselves to me and I decided to be a 1930s movie star instead.
We hopped the correct train after first mistaking another one, and soon we watched New York City pass us by with stops in Harlem and the Bronx and all the little nonsense suburb-y places on the way until it became a little more country, a little more picturesque, a little less corporate America. The train ride didn’t feel long, either, since we laughed and talked and ogled the Olympic bobsled team the whole time. Cliffs and mountains that looked like dirt cake covered in powdered sugar sped past the window and ice floated in the chilly river as I took pictures.
Beacon is a small city in Dutchess County, New York, a former mill town that became a sort of funky, arty enclave New Yorkers now venture to to encounter things like fresh air and reasonably priced coffee. Arriving at around 11:15, we staked out a spot for brunch/lunch and ended up after a picturesque walk down Main Street (yes, Main Street), past all of its updated buildings that house galleries (like one for beach glass that’s in a converted firehouse), brunch spots, smoke shops, newfangled donut joints, and grocery stores. We ended up at the Yankee Clipper, a teeny diner inside what looks like a chrome train car. We drank coffee and ate a variety of breakfast and non-breakfast delights. Then Mag led way back through town, down a hill, to Dia: Beacon, the town’s contemporary art museum (there’s another one in Chelsea here in the city). She is an arty lady and has been before so she knows the way. I significantly lag behind because I keep stopping to take pictures. “Everything about you is a New Yorker except how quickly you walk,” AR says. He’s not wrong.
Dia: is a high-falutin’ sort of place, with deep philosophical installations that are nice to look at and interesting and make me think but also make me miss photography museums that I understand. Much of it is impressive but not necessarily art that you’d think fondly of when you leave home during a long vacation. None of it will make your house a home. Unless, that is, you have a rather large, austere house you want to fill with either white canvases painted white or intense sculptures made from ripped-apart machines (I actually really liked these pieces by John Chamberlain and perhaps would put them in my house--you know, my country house on acres and acres of land just a train ride from the city that I don’t have) or a giant wedge of wood or a pile of broken glass. In which case, this is definitely the place for you. AR, Mag, and I take a family portrait outside of its dead but still sculptural tree installation outside and we part ways, she heading back to the city and us to find some sort of pastry to eat and records to buy.
We complete our tasks at All You Knead Artisan Bakers with a peach cheesecake turnover and Hudson Valley Vinyl, where I find the Richard Hell and the Voidoids album Blank Generation, which I never expected to see in person, much less in Beacon, New York. We drink tea and coffee at Bank Street Cafe, then walk to the train, a gaggle of does hobnobbing amongst the trees (suddenly I feel like Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny) and a fabulous sunset of technicolor pastels sending us off into the night.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Driving Miss Manhattan
“When’s the last time you were in a car?” JAL asks me.
I’m sitting next to her as we drive away from the mall and toward her house, winding our way through back streets and side streets I didn’t know existed.
“Um…” I have to think about it for a second. It was August, just a few months earlier, the last time I visited Florida before now, Thanksgiving time. I don’t particularly miss being in a car—that is to say, I don’t particularly miss driving one because anyone who knows me knows I take cabs probably much more often than I should. But every time I come home, there gets to be a certain day where I’m just so tired of being in the house I need to drive, and drive anywhere just to shake off the monotony of whatever the last few days in the house have been. Watching TCM with my mom or Jason Statham movies with my dad. Working my face off, lying on my bed in nine different ways trying to write an article that for some reason I’ve made due during what’s supposed to be my vacation. Sitting in the back reading a magazine in the sun. Or just sitting inside doing nothing.
I’ve never been a person who can do nothing for extended periods of time. It’s short, two days max, sometimes two hours max, before I start to fray at the edges, snap at anyone in my wake, and make an internal “grrrrrrrr” sound that would put an angry cat to shame.
My internal compass guides me the same place it always does, always has: the bookstore, the world’s most perfect place to wander and get lost when you simply need to just get out. My “grrrrrrrr” slowly but surely fades into a purr as soon as I place the key in the ignition. Driving down University Drive, it’s 45 mph speed limit and occasionally curving but mostly straight-shot roads if you leave the house at the right time. I change the radio to something good because I can’t drive in silence or with shitty music because that, of all things, is what’s most distracting to me. And soon David Bowie or the Pretenders or Phoenix or the Beastie Boys will spill out of the speakers (never too loud, though, unless the windows are down and it’s 1am and there’s nobody on the road, of course). Part of me will breathe, relax, unclench my jaw that I’ve been holding tight for the last few hours as I slowly make my way out the door, angry at myself for not getting there faster. I’ll feel my shoulders begin to move, my neck relax.
People write all kinds of manifestos about driving, how it brings them peace or a sense of control. I suppose it brings me both of those things, but only if I’m driving in places I already know—I’m not a good driver otherwise, and I will not, WILL NOT take the highway because well, I’m too scared of dying. I knew just enough people or people who knew people in high school who died untimely deaths in car accidents that I don’t know if I will ever feel truly safe behind the wheel of a car. I remember one time driving on the highway with friends and clenching the wheel so tight that my knuckles sparkled white on the steering wheel, having to pause every few minutes or so to stretch my hands. But when I’m driving someplace I know, my hands perform a quiet choreography on the steering wheel, turning the thing at just the right angles almost from sheer muscle memory alone. That’s actually something I look forward to, not just the choreography but the fact that I’m doing it means I’m visiting my old haunts, a part of myself that still only lives in South Florida, and not the part I said good riddance to when I moved away.
My mother loves to drive, my father drives faster than he should, and my boyfriend does both of those things (though the latter not while I’m in the car because he knows better). I’m happy to let them take the wheel when they want to. Driving is like a pair of shoes I like but never wear because I don’t have the occasion: they’re nice, but they mostly sit in my closet. I’m glad I have them, and I enjoy wearing them when I have the opportunity, but it’s also okay with me that I don’t wear them too often. So I’m happy to be the passenger, especially if I know someone else will do a better job driving than I will.
I didn’t get my license until I was 17, the August before I left for college. I took driving lessons first with my parents, who made no pretenses about holding on for dear life when I was behind the wheel; and then with an uncle who was a former driving instructor and told me a car is a weapon that can kill you and needs about the length of a roller skate to do significant damage; and finally with a mild-mannered man in a VW bug who never flinched if I made an error but instead asked me to try again. I failed my first driving test because, and I swear I will never forget these words as long as I live, I “brushed a cone” getting out of a parking space, which meant I failed no matter what else I did right during the test (which, apparently, was everything). I came home and sat in the sun in my heavy school uniform, totally ashamed. But I went back a few months later after practicing, practicing, practicing, and this time had two judges in the car, one woman in training and another already certified. “Well, uh, I can’t see anything she did wrong,” the trainee said. “That sounds about right to me,” the certified one said. And so I was given my license, the same one I have today. The picture is now 12 years old and whenever I get carded at bars people give it a double-take. I’m wearing an Old Navy t-shirt in it, and facing the camera straight on, which I never do now because it makes my nose look like a faucet. Maybe one day I will get a new photo. Maybe one day I’ll drive more.
I wish I could say I missed driving when I’m in New York, but what I really think I miss is having the windows down and the music playing, the cool air rolling around in my hair, brushing past my cheeks on a long ride home on a usually busy street that’s silent at 2am save for my car. Those things happen when I’m driving, yes, but to me they were always something more.
I wish I could say I missed driving when I’m in New York, but what I really think I miss is having the windows down and the music playing, the cool air rolling around in my hair, brushing past my cheeks on a long ride home on a usually busy street that’s silent at 2am save for my car. Those things happen when I’m driving, yes, but to me they were always something more.
Monday, October 30, 2017
A Walk in the Woods
Waterfalls, snakes, and endless colorful leafy vistas: a few sights from the wildernesses of just outside of Troy, New York, near Albany.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Clean.
Whenever I stare into my fridge and I encounter only an old jar of cocktail olives and two containers of sprinkles (one rainbow, one chocolate, naturally), I think of something someone told me once: that doing the little things in New York, like grocery shopping or laundry for example, sometimes feel so much harder than doing the big things, like maintaining and keeping a job. I know for me this idea feels so real, that while I am buried under the deadlines that creatively fulfill me and pay my rent, the dust bunnies under my bed begin to grow, my laundry pile reaches past the height of my dresser, and I start to seriously consider eating chocolate sprinkles by the handful.
August was a particularly busy month, thank goodness, and in the midst of all my work, the last thing I ever wanted to do when I was finished for the day was dig out a vacuum or haul a towering cart of laundry to get clean. Maybe it was important for me to not do anything, as rest and relaxation are often required to keep one’s sanity functioning. Or maybe I was just too fucking lazy. Either way, the bunnies had grown to dog size and I was tired of looking at them around the same time I had a free day to spend on myself, so I took the opportunity to deep clean.
Running the vacuum around my house, folding my clothes, dusting my blinds, spraying my mirrors with Windex, I didn’t feel like June Cleaver; rather, I saw it as an act of, dare I say it, wellness, an act of self-care. Every spritz and swipe was an act of solidarity, a vote of confidence in myself. Coming home to a messy room, a home that doesn’t feel or doesn’t look clean can seriously mess with one’s sense of well-being. Living in New York, this city that quite literally never sleeps if and/or since it doesn’t want to, this is not something that needs to be messed with.
I wonder if this prioritization of chores is something New Yorkers deal with on a more regular basis than people who live in quieter cities. Because there’s less to do, is there more time to take care of one’s life? Or are people everywhere just better adults than I am, who know how to prioritize these things over going to burlesque shows; trying a fascinating new restaurant whose bread alone is swoon-worthy, let alone the rest of the menu; and binge-watching Difficult People on Hulu using a friend’s borrowed password? All of the above may be true.
My mother told me a long time ago that you have to treat living in New York as if it were any other city. The Guggenheim is always going to be there. So are street fairs and coffee shops and, if you play your cards right and find genuine people who like you and who you like, so are your friends. Stepping away from the city and choosing not to engage with it and instead spend the time inside on yourself, on your space is as much an act of New Yorker-dom as is crying on the subway, taking a cab from someone who needs it more, and getting a slice from the pizza place below your apartment when you’re drunk before you head in for the night.
I’ve had the strange experience of having kept my room clean for a week now, something I sadly may not have done for any of my nearly 29 years. I think cleaning just never felt good before, it never felt like something I was doing to take care of myself; it felt like a chore. I don’t know that it does now. In an age where it seems we’re being taught that taking care of oneself is the ultimate luxury, as opposed to perhaps the fine clothes and jewelry of yore, cleaning my home rather feels, well, like luxury too. Imagine having time to spend doing such a thing? I may even be looking forward to my next date with Scrubbing Bubbles more than I care to admit. Tide, however, will still take some getting used to.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Stephen Chan
There are people in this world who, if you don’t like them, there’s something wrong with you. I have met three in my life. One of them is Stephen Chan.
Stephen and I met almost 10 years ago at our university on the first day of his freshman orientation, when I was an orientation counselor. We have not been able to get rid of each other since.
Any nice thing I try to write about Stephen will be an understatement, so I don’t know if I should bother trying. I will say he is so kind, hardworking, patient, warm, and genuine he makes me want to be a better human and that will have to do. His fiancé Jesse is a lucky man.
When Stephen is not a Product Manager at advertising technology company LiveIntent, he seeks to fill his life with even more creativity. He has recently taken up playwriting, sitting for hours at Caffè Bene in the East Village working on scenes for his playwriting class. He also has a finished play he will soon be revising.
We meet at Caffè Bene on a cloudy Saturday, a salute to his favorite place to write. “Do you like kombucha?” he asks me. I’ve only had it once or twice, but I affirm. We sip first pomegranate then ginger versions and talk about the future. Is it supposed to be smelly once you get to the bottom of the glass?
We walk down Avenue A to thrift store Buffalo Exchange. Stephen smiles mischievously at a shirt that says “Let’s Get Drunk” and another with a drawing of a bald Britney Spears, the phrase “It’s Britney, Bitch” underneath. Eventually, he makes other selections and heads to the dressing rooms.
The first shirt he tries on is a baseball-style shirt with “Boston” printed on it. Stephen was born just outside of the city. The shirt looks good, but it will stay in the store. “I think it’s too butch for me,” he says, amused. He ultimately chooses a pair of white shorts and black shirt that says “This is what a feminist looks like” in white letters.
We leave and try to walk down the west side of Avenue A, but are diverted by a closure on St. Marks for the New York Dance Parade. We cross over to the east side of the street by Tompkins Square Park, where the parade empties out, and get lost in a sea of young dancers in aqua sequins and tulle waiting to be picked up by their parents. I make it out first, but Stephen gets stuck and the side-eye he throws me makes me burst into fits of laughter.
We finally arrive at bar Amor y Amargo and order some expertly made cocktails. Stephen chooses the Renaissance Man, a drink the menu tells us is “earthy with rhubarb and smoke.” He sips and swoons, pausing to really savor it. We sit and talk even more this time, effortlessly, the way we always have.
Follow Stephen on Instagram.
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