Although I am far from a minimalist, I am not someone who enjoys Stuff. I purge my closet (too) frequently, I hate clutter, I strive for tidy and organized spaces. (Strive = constantly stacking and re-stacking things on coffee table; obsessively wiping down kitchen floor with Method wipes) I am not a gadget person. I don’t collect anything. And I hate shopping.
Less than a philosophy I’d say my minimalist tendencies are a result of inertia and status quo: I am all about making do. Sure, it would be nice to have a food processor/coffee maker/full length mirror/iron/curtains on living room windows/pair of rain boots/drawer dividers in the bathroom/new lip gloss but whenever I start to think how useful those items might be, I swing right back to, ‘Eh, but I’ve been doing fine without them’ (up for debate: the full length mirror). “Eh” is a powerful argument. “Eh” is hard to top. “Eh” usually wins.
“Eh” coupled with the 300 square feet that was my last apartment meant that when I left my Brooklyn condo, I did not take much. I took just enough to Make Do, and then I bought six green bowls at Anthropologie. The end. I gradually furnished myself with additional odds and ends (a rug! a replacement for the 2qt saucepan I missed so much! a toaster!) but my distaste for Stuff and general belief that there are only five kitchen essentials (chef’s knife, Microplane zester, 4qt saucepan, one big fry pan, wooden spoons) plus the fact that our current kitchen is OHMYGOD SO VERY SMALL has kept me far away from Bed, Bath & Beyond and the like.
But there was something else going on. I hate to even write this down but somehow, somewhere I got the notion in my head that: “That’s What You Do When You Get Married.” As if anything I bought pre-marriage was disposable and that post-marriage I was supposed to exist in some sort of spartan purgatory with my refugee silverware and four plates. It’s bullshit. Total bullshit. Even so, the idea of furnishing a home for myself seemed frivolous.
Which is not to say, Hey! Everyone go buy a $300 stand mixer! but rather that gift registries are not where kitchens are born and if I need a toaster or new mattress or if I want bright green towels despite the faded grey ones working just fine, I can buy a toaster or a mattress or bright green towels. There is no minimum occupancy for a home: if you live somewhere, you have a home. And you should be comfortable in it, whatever that means. If you live alone, you are just as entitled to steak knives as the newlyweds among us. If you and your roommates want to have a martini party, buy the damn martini glasses. If you happily live with your partner out of wedlock, you can still have nice things. They just might not come with wrapping paper.
A friend of mine is moving out of an apartment she’s shared with a roommate and into a sweet little space of her own, and when she told her roommate the news, the roommate understood but then started to panic as she realized that most of their Stuff belonged to my friend. “But what if I need to BLEND something?” she asked. “Well,” my friend answered, “Aside from the fact that I’ve never seen you actually use our blender, you’d probably do what I did: go to the store and buy a blender. They are $50. You’ll be okay.”
Independence is not the same as spending power and I hold to my Less Is More mantra of home furnishings (my rule: if something comes home with me, it should either perform a critical job or be something I love.) (I have broken that rule more than once, like for a coat rack which I now loathe and which does a job, sure, but is hardly essential when you consider that we have a coat closet and that coat racks become blights once they are actually covered in coats and so now that coat rack has created more of a problem than it solved and every time I look at it, I get angry.) but I think it’s ultimately unhealthy to live in a state of permanent temporariness. Which is not a thing, I know, but living in tiny rental apartments or with roommates can sometimes fuck with your head and make you feel as if you’re in limbo and that should never be the case. Live where you live. Get what you need. Enjoy it.
Building a home with someone is a privilege for which I am thankful, every single day. I love coming home at night. I don’t mean to sound preachy and I don’t mean to sound smug. Building a home, period, is an essential delight, and it’s never the wrong time to start doing so. I remember a friend telling me, when I debated whether to buy four plates or eight after moving into my studio apartment, “Just get four; you’re going to end up moving in with a guy eventually and you’ll get new stuff.” On the one hand, she was right (I did move in with a man; ironically our dishes used to be hers as she moved in with new roommates who provided a fully stocked kitchen) but on the other hand, I really hate the “Wait until you are living with someone before committing to anything because it’s all just temporary if it’s Just You” sentiment. (I am a hypocrite, by the way: D. lived with a roommate and had hideous black dishes that I absolutely considered to be temporary for him as there was NO WAY IN HELL they were making the move with us.)
I just bought eight new wine glasses, is the short version of this post. Just because I liked them. (And because I realized that if more than two wine-drinking people ever came over at the same time, we’d be unable to put out matching glasses.)
October 14th, 2009
I have had writer’s block for so long that I can’t even pretend that I have writer’s block anymore; I’m just not writing. I flopped and moaned and pouted my way through August and used, ‘But it’s August’ as an excuse well into September. And then suddenly it was October and have no idea where the past three months went but gone they are.
October is nice.
This was my first full season as a Red Sox (albeit by proxy) fan. I met D. towards the end of last year’s season and sat tensely next to him during the final game of the ALCS series, unsure of what – if anything – to say (I opted for nothing) and when the Sox lost to Tampa Bay we hopped on a plane and headed to Barcelona, which was a pretty nice way to spend an October week, post-baseball. This year I was at Fenway for opening day and in between that cold and rain-delayed afternoon and yesterday, I probably watched 100 games. That is a lot of baseball, and while I’m not necessarily a legit fan, I invested a lot this year (100 games! Maybe not a full 100, and maybe not all watched in detail, but still!) and went through my own ups and downs (the downs seem to stand out) with D. and the Sox and I have to tell you: it’s draining. By 4pm yesterday, I was drained. And a little sad; post-season baseball is fun. Even so, October is still nice.
A dear friend from home was in the city this weekend and I had brunch with her and her husband and her baby and we walked through Central Park and plopped the baby in leaves and took photos and ended up on the east side where we walked up to the Guggenheim and it was great for several reasons: I got to spend time with lovely people, I got a nice big bite of October, and I got to see New York through fresh eyes. I need to do that more.
My mother was also in town this weekend, and she texted me last night to say that Beyonce was on her flight back to California. That never happens on my JetBlue flights to Oakland.
My 8-week old nephew has my parents wrapped around his little fist. I had to laugh when, during dinner on Friday night my mother said, “Now, I know people say that all babies are beautiful, but they just aren’t. But Ronin! Ronin is – objectively speaking – a beautiful baby.” Objectively speaking, of course, as all grandparents do. (He is, though. And he has giant cheeks and wears special earmuff headsets when he goes to concerts with my brother and sister-in-law which are the cutest things I have ever seen, aside from a beagle puppy I saw one time who tripped over his own ears.)
My friend Laura had a baby on Sunday, the day before her own birthday. Her name is Margot and she lives in Queens and I need to go meet her soon.
I have eaten an entire jar of Nutella in the past week. I cannot get enough of wheat toast with Nutella and banana on it. And when I run out of banana, or bread, I’m content to just eat Nutella right off my finger, which I am shameless about dipping into the jar.
Some friends-of-friends are in a band and that band was playing on Saturday night so I took a break from my Nutella binge and D. and I went out for tapas and sangria and then walked over to The Mercury Lounge and every time I go there I forget how small it is, and perhaps this is just a sign on my age but I also forget how LOUD it is and it’s definitely a sign on my age that three songs into the second band’s set I was yawning and asked D. what time it was and the answer was 12:34 and I was like, OH DEAR MUST BE IN BED BY 1AM NEED STRETCHY PANTS AND A PONYTAIL ASAP so we stayed for a few more songs and then ducked outside where we both remembered how annoyingly hard it can be to find a cab at 1am on a Saturday night in downtown Manhattan. MY FEET HURT, D. said. I’M SO TIRED, I said. We found a cab, made it home and were asleep within half an hour but here is the saddest thing of all: I was tired for ALL OF SUNDAY. All.
Sigh.
October 12th, 2009
I flew to California on Thursday night, finally meeting my nephew: he is currently seven weeks old and weighs maybe ten pounds, although I can’t be sure. He likes to bounce and stretch and kick his legs. He doesn’t mind when the dogs lick him all over and he lets pretty much anyone hold him. He gets hot and sweaty really easily and enjoys looking at shadows on the ceiling.
When I was little, I was given a selection of Beatrix Potter story books and figurines. I knew that my brother has been rounding up some of our family’s favorite childhood books for my nephew, and my mother nudged me in the direction of a storage box, under the guest bed. The Beatrix Potter figurines were all wrapped up but I pulled out the little books. Some were inscribed with holiday messages in the careful caligraphy of my mother’s friend. Some had torn pages and yellowed scotch tape. Two had “HAPPY EASTER MOLLY! LOVE THE EASTER BUNNY, 1978″ written in my father’s printing inside the front cover.
I felt the tiniest of pangs when I saw the books; I had honestly forgotten about them but somewhere there is a part of me which catalogued those sentimental relics from childhood and sort of figured that they’d end up being passed along to my kids. I don’t think I’ll ever have kids of my own, and I’m pretty comfortable with that, but there is a weird phantom tickle which wonders, BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE WEE PINK THINGS AND TINY SHOES?
Which is neither here nor there, except that I understand why people pay so much money for baby clothes, toys, gear: IT IS ALL SO SMALL AND CUTE.
I gave the Beatrix Potter books to my nephew (or as my mother puts it, he is ‘borrowing’ them). He has been sleeping in a little wooden cradle that was built before I was born, and in which all of my siblings and I slept. My brother M. gave our nephew his copy of The Polar Express, and recorded a CD of him reading it aloud. Our family is currently trying to track down our original copies of Where the Wild Things Are, because the whole world done sold out of it.
It’s hard for me not to hope he grows up to be a bookworm (although a left-handed pitcher would also be cool).
I somehow managed to avoid any and all dirty diapers: when you eliminate that element, babies are pretty nice.
September 28th, 2009
A few years ago my friend Emilie mentioned the book Birds of America by Lorrie Moore and was sort of incredulous that I hadn’t already read it (and everything else by Lorrie Moore) and so I went out and bought a copy of Birds in America and proceeded to DEVOUR it and upon finishing, ran to my local wee little independent bookstore (Sniff, I miss you BookCourt!) and bought – literally – every other book Lorrie Moore had ever written and while paying for them, attracted the attention of the sales associate who looked at me and was all, OH MY GOD I LOVE LORRIE MOORE I AM WRITING MY MASTER’S THESIS ON HER SHE IS AMAZING and then he and I started talking and he invited me to join him to hear her speak at The New Yorker festival that fall. I declined, but dove into the works of Ms. Moore and emerged as the biggest, geekiest Lorrie Moore fangirl possible, which is saying a lot because her fan base is rabid with adoration, as far as I can tell. It’s been eleven years since her last book (the dreamy, perfect Birds of America) and the aforementioned rabid fangirl base has been collectively adjusting their chunky frame glasses in anticipation of her latest novel, A Gate at The Stairs.
A few years before THAT, D. was living in Washington D.C., working as a journalist, and (in his words), ‘getting after it.’ A lot. “Getting after it” seems to involve primarily pot, booze and concerts (and one unfortunate and not completely corroborated lightning strike), which I suppose is par for the course of a twenty-something guy in the mid-nineties. Playing a large role in that era was the music of Sleater-Kinney.
Flash forward a decade(ish) to 2008 and witness our first date: the two of us perched on barstools and fiddling with our drink glasses – D. with vodka on the rocks, me with overpriced Italian wine – as we got our footing and our conversation gained momentum. I’ve not been on a lot of first dates (D: I’ve been on A LOT of first dates.) but during my brief singlehood I quickly learned the importance of having an arsenal of Miscellaneous Questions to discuss with the relative strangers one encounters in the dating world. We didn’t necessarily struggle for conversation (and were aided by a curiously familiar and intrusive barfly next to D.) but still managed to hit on some of those First Date Questions, things like, “Who would play you in a movie,” and “What song would play over the end credits in the movie of your life?” (The second one was mine; I love that game.) D. didn’t have an answer for the End Credits song question (Mine, at the time: Carry Me Ohio by Sun Kil Moon) but the topic morphed, eventually, to what our entry music would be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room (Mine, circa 1995: American Girl by Tom Petty, memories of Silence of the Lambs notwithstanding) which morphed into what our At Bat music would be (because D. has the baseball disease and therefore many conversations eventually come back to baseball).
Which gets us to last week, when I saw a blurb online about Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and Lorrie Moore (the dots, they are about to be connected): in her new book, Lorrie Moore has a reference to Sleater-Kinney, and Carrie Brownstein – being of the rabid fanbase I mentioned above – had eagerly bought the book as soon as it was released and discovered the SK reference on page 27. She then blogged about it on her blog, and when I got home from work last Thursday I felt compelled to tell D., seeing as how two of our most significant pop/lit/whatever influences had collided out on the internets.
He started clicking back through her archives and came upon an entry in which she and her sister attended a sporting event and had the discussion, What would your entry music be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room. Which became, What would your At Bat music be, assuming you were a professional baseball player. (You see where I’m going with this, right?) She opened the question up to her readers, in comments.
And that brings us to now, in which D. and I revisit that question which stemmed from our first date as re-imagined by Carrie Brownstein, with help from Lorrie Moore.
Ahem.
It was an irresistible topic, and D. wanted in on the conversation.
It continues on our newest vanity project; come visit.
September 16th, 2009
My friend Kathy and I used to have what we called our Luge Theory which basically assumed that everyone has some area of brilliance (or at least extreme aptitude), and people lucky enough to have discovered that area of brilliance early in life (obviously) have a better chance than others at building a career (which I am using very loosely as one’s area of brilliance could be parenting or cultivating roses or painting or any number of Things which do not necessarily provide a livelihood) around said Thing, while others may struggle trying to identify where their talents lie, and in some cases individuals may not ever be put in a situation which allows that talent to reveal itself. I might be a world class luger, the theory goes, but how on earth would I ever know it?
Finding one’s niche is not easy (for most of us); it’s a process of elimination for those of us who didn’t wake up one morning with the itch to play violin or the desire to become a teacher or the uncanny ability to run really far and really fast.
(Well, duh, right? I mean, who doesn’t want to discover their most amazing selves and cultivate their most extraordinary talents?)
I don’t know what my Luge is (and I may never discover it) but I am not without abilities and talents of my own. I can cook meat to the perfect level of doneness, almost without fail. I am good with a wine list. I can string words together in ways that work. I can stop the DVR at the exact moment when Commercial switches to Show, every time. I’m good with babies.
My area of brilliance, however, is not in fashion. Fashion is not my Luge. I like clothes. I like clothes A LOT. I work in an industry devoted to clothes. I work with people who are good at clothes. I am not one of them. This morning I had a twenty-minute delay getting out the door because the first outfit I put on was a beige sweater worn over a cream colored bra but the bra was too light and the sweater too fine a gauge and the bra showed through the sweater but my beige bra was in the laundry and the other appropriate colored bras have lace which makes them too bumpy to wear under fine gauge knits and OH MY GOD it took me forever and ever to put clothes on my body and it’s not like my shirts were hidden and my pants were locked in a combination safe and I forgot the code or anything like that: I just suck at clothes. When Plan A fails, my brain goes blank. I am terrible at putting together outfits. I am great at identifying Fashion! and can spot trends and fall in love with ridiculous items and pour over magazines and all that but when it comes to my own damn self and my own damn body, I am hopeless and no amount of shopping and/or closet-purging seems to help. (I am fine when going Out; this particular affliction is specific to the everyday.)
I am good at shopping. I like to think that I have good taste (although, doesn’t everyone?). But I watch Rachel Zoe on television and I flop over on my bed in despair because while she clearly has found her Luge (and oh dear, how I love Rachel Zoe), the very idea of having to style people – to say nothing of styling oneself – exhausts me and gives me anxiety, similar to watching certain scenes in The Devil Wears Prada.
Which is why, if I ever win the lottery or rub the magic genie bottle, one of my purchases/wishes is totally gonna be a personal stylist. Done and done. And then I’m flying myself to somewhere icy and taking luge lessons.
September 15th, 2009
Look, D. and my dorky habits and emails, documented:
Tuesday’s Paw
(Neither of us speak Blog Design, obvs.)
September 14th, 2009
I should warn you upfront that this post is very narrow in focus, but over the course of the past few months, D. and I have been watching The Wire. It is awesome. (Duh.) I had seen the first three seasons when they first aired on HBO (and part of the fourth) and I remembered it being great upon first viewing but a few episodes into the fourth season I fell behind and never picked it back up. (Partly, I think, because of the original Sunday night time slot: my Sunday Night Anxiety makes it hard for me to sit still and concentrate on much of anything and The Wire – more than any other show I’ve loved – demands concentration.) D., on the other hand, had never seen the show. His reluctance to watch The Wire stemmed more from his hard-wired contrary streak; enough people tell you, YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS SHOW and you start to resent being told what to do. I mean, how good can it be?
I’m preaching to the choir when I say this (because if there is one thing I know, it’s that the internet LOVES The Wire) but it really is that good. It’s a masterpiece. It’s nuanced and detailed and rigorous and meticulous and economical and tragic and dark and clever and compelling and whatever else you’ve heard about The Wire. No one needs me to sit here – several years after most people had their own AH-HA moments with the show – and pile on the superlatives. As far as I can tell, there are two types of people when it comes to this particular show: those who love it, and those who have not seen it. The Wire doesn’t need me to spread the word.
Beyond loving the show, though, I’ve loved watching it with D. It has consumed us. We talk about the characters and the stories and the issues raised with care and consideration. I mean, we really get into it. We carry this show around with us and at any given moment one of us is likely to bring up a plot, or a character, or a question about the show. We have hypothetical discussions and inside jokes and we have examined the show inside and out. We are writing our dissertation on The Wire, conversation by conversation.
We finished the final season over the weekend (What are we going to watch NOW?) and in honor of the end (for us), I thought I’d share an email I sent D a few weeks ago. One morning he sent me off to work with the following assignment: Come up with a list of your ten favorite scenes from The Wire.
This is what I sent him:
10. Carver visits Randy in the hospital: “You gonna look out for me, Sergeant Carver? Huh?” Randy’s voice followed Carver as he walked down the hall and it will follow him, I’d suspect, for the rest of his life.
9. Cutty tells Avon he’s out of the game: We never met Cutty before he was in prison but I can’t imagine that any of the characters names are coincidence and I have to assume Cutty’s last name is ‘Wise’ for a reason. He experienced a profound change in prison and remains the only character able to get out – and stay out – of the game. He did his time, he earned his due respect (from the street), but he was done. As Avon said, “No, he a man today.”
8. Snoop buys the nail gun: From this moment on, we know we are dealing with a new breed of criminals.
7. McNulty in Stringer’s apartment: Who the fuck have I been chasing? Stringer wanted so much more and he spent all of his effort trying to raise himself up, which is why his death – shot like a street gangster, in the shadow of a B&B Enterprises billboard – is so tragic. He was a bad guy, but he was a bad guy who worked and worked and worked at creating success for himself. The police assumed he was a thug, he died like a thug (“well get on with it, motherfu-”), but that moment in which McNulty realizes how much more there was to Stringer Bell than he’d realized is beautiful, especially coming off the heels of McNulty’s own dressing-down by the DNCC woman. If there’s one thing McNulty can appreciate, it’s being uncomfortable with ones station in life.
6. Omar in court: he takes the pay lawyer DOWN — “I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game.”
5. McNulty and Bodie, in the garden: Bodie is a soldier, but he’s realizing the war is never going to end and his side is never going to win. His whole life has been the game but once the towers came down, the game changed and it’s a new kind of warfare and he knows it. He knows Marlow has no honor. Bodie has honor, but he’s tired, and McNulty gives him the first chance at some breathing space, and it’s the only time I can think of in the entire show where there is nothing else going on…no street noise, no other people, no background, no city – McNulty took Bodie out of it all, just for a minute. And then Bodie dies, on his corner, a soldier’s death.
4. McNulty and Bunk at the scene of that first murder: the only dialog is back-and-forth ‘Fuccck’. We see McNulty eying the scene and working out what happened while Bunk chews on his cigar – that one scene gives us all we need to know about the two of them and their relationship – working and personal. Real po-lice.
3. Dukie gives Prez the desk set: Dukie has nothing – literally, nothing, yet somehow manages to show up with a shitty little gift because in Prez’s class he was happy and proud and for the first time in his entire life, he had a caretaker. As soon as the school deemed him a “success,” he was doomed. When he goes back to the Jr High to give Prez the gift – that shitty little pen set – we see how badly he wants to be back there, and at the same time we see Prez realizing he can’t save Dukie. That shitty little pen set broke my heart.
2. Avon and Stringer on the rooftop: Brother turning on brother, reminiscing about their younger days, each knowing nothing that they had dreamed of will ever come to be. “Us, motherfucker.” “Us, man.” It was Stringer saying goodbye.
1. Wallace’s death: it’s even more brutal and poignant in retrospect — Bodie didn’t want to kill Walllace but he’s a soldier, and he was following orders. Wallace was the first death that let us (the audience) know no one is safe. Wallace was watching out for the young-uns, he wanted to get out of the game, he was a KID…but falling in love with a character is the easiest way to get your heart broken on this show. No one is safe.
(We both, by the way, amended our Top 10 list after finishing Season Five. It was even harder than it sounds.)
September 8th, 2009
Saturday night D. and I went out for dinner to celebrate our one year anniversary. We stopped for a drink in the West Village before walking in the general direction of 15th Street, heading for a tapas place I had suggested. As we crossed Hudson a woman passed us and hollered, YOUNG AND GORGEOUS.
Internet, I have reached the age where the “young” gets a lot more mileage than “gorgeous.”
I am no fool and gladly accept all compliments but that “young” rang in my ears a few minutes later as we stood in front of the boarded up door of what used to be a tapas restaurant.
I’m so old that all the restaurants I know have died, I moaned.
Young and gorgeous, people. I’m clinging to it.
September 3rd, 2009
I tried to tell D. that a year ago (give or take a day) I hosted a little dinner party for some friends and that I made goat cheese and fig quasadillas and crab cakes and that a few lovely friends from very different corners of my life all converged on my tiny studio apartment and that among that group was a friend from college who had pledged my sorority during my senior year. I hadn’t known her well then, and then – boom, zap, Facebook, pow – 12 years later she was in New York (a brief stopover on an impressive career of Saving The World) and we got in touch with one another (although I don’t even remember how, exactly) and I invited her over for dinner and she showed up and then proceeded to charm the rest of the room (room = whole apartment, then).
A. is one of those people who have “It.” I’m not sure if “It” is luck or charisma or intuition or clairvoyance but she has that thing. Some people lead charmed lives. I’m not talking about charmed; I’m talking about something a whole lot deeper and more interesting. She joked that her friends call her Forrest Gump because of the way things just tend to happen to her, but I – a committed non-following, non-practicing anything – have pretty strong feelings that certain people simply have “It,” and that “It” is a result of shit that has gone down in past lives. This sounds insane, I realize, but I have no better explanation for that Thing, that old-soul, right-place, right-time quality that some people possess other than this: the Universe is watching.
That probably sounds like a whole lotta nothing, but my point is twofold; point one is that A. is the sort of person who has a certain Karmic It-Girl thing, and point two is that she brought it to my apartment last August. If the Universe has taken her around the world and back again (which it has — she tells stories that end in, And then we were fucking in a chicken coop in Thailand, or And then I made a documentary about the effect of global warming and resource depletion on the indigenous population of Arctic peoples, or And then I met [insert famous author here] and she offered me a job) I have to believe there was a reason it sent her to my apartment that night.
She told us that on a recent stay back in California she had come in contact with a long lost male friend – her junior high boyfriend, basically. And after fifteen years and many times around the world she suddenly found herself face to face with him once again, and the thing that hit her was this thought: I want to have babies with him.
And long story short, she has since moved back to California and found herself madly in love with the least likely person, at the least likely time, place, etcetera.
I remember emailing A. after that dinner and letting her know how much I enjoyed her company and how excited I was about her new old love. And I was. It seemed to represent all that I wanted to believe in: live your life, live it well, and when love smacks you in the face, take notice.
I remember thinking, THAT is a story I want to hear more about, THAT is what we should all want to hear more about, THAT is what I want.
Within a matter of days I had met D. and within a matter of weeks I had been smacked in my own face, so to speak, and now – as I look back on the past year – I have to just marvel at the delicate mechanisms in play, the timing, the very appropriateness of all of it. I wish A. well, although I have confidence she needs nothing from me, and I think of her often, as she has some of the best stories I’ve ever heard.
Including one about a burglar taking a shit on her roommate’s bed, but no one wants to hear about that, now do they?
August 27th, 2009
Walking through Riverside Park on Saturday I had the thought, You know, maybe I should be out here in my bikini, sunning it up and getting some tan lines, but then I realized that we’re in August and my stomach hasn’t seen the light of day in nearly a year and while all those skinny bitches laying out in the park are nice and evenly bronzed after three months of sunning themselves I am still pasty over vast stretches of my body and have had limited sun exposure this summer which means the discrepancy between my belly and the bellies of said skinny bitches is just too great for public viewing, so instead I brushed my sweaty, growing-out bangs out of my eyes and kept walking, feeling the faint dampness of backsweat beginning to bead up on my lower back. Then I went home and stood in front of the air conditioner for 17 hours.
It’s August. It’s hot. It’s swampy. Everyone is cranky. The people who are not cranky are at the beach on on vacation but the rest of us are hot and cranky and we are sick of waiting for the C Train to come. We are frizzy. We are running out of skirts and capri pants to wear. We want ice cream and fruit salad for dinner. We took two showers on Saturday and Sunday, each.
Every year I develop a sort of soggy malaise around this time of year and without fail I first start to wonder, OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME I HAVE THE MALAISE and I feel ugly and fat and slovenly and lazy and then I start getting angry at myself for feeling ugly and fat and slovenly and lazy and there’s nothing good on television and the city smells of garbage and dog pee and I think things like, I AM UNLOVABLE AS A HUMAN I MEAN LOOK AT THE GREASE ON MY SWEATY FOREHEAD WHO COULD LOVE SOMEONE LIKE ME, WITH THE GREASE AND ALSO THE BAD HAIR and then eventually I realize that I’m not, in fact, a worthless wine-guzzling slag but that rather, It’s just August.
It’s August.
Last year I flopped about and read magazines and wrote the month of August off and then, on the second to last day of the month, I met D. I’m not saying those two things are related, but I’m a big believer in timing.
August 18th, 2009
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