Airing Your Laundry, and Shaking Dirt in Someone's Eye

Slate has an interesting series this week in which memoirists explain how writing about their lives has affected the people around them. It's fascinating to read about the aching pile of lovers who feel betrayed, or who wish they had merited a different portrayal ("I will forgive you for just referring to me as a pack a day smoker who laughed at your jokes in history class instead of your girlfriend who gave you lots of blow jobs, because I understand that in a memoir there is not room enough for everyone."). It's sad to read about families who were torn up over what was written about them, who sued and cried and railed against the writer. It's encouraging to read about those who admit life can be raw and ugly and painful and still admire the honest work (as honest as memory can be, at any rate) that was done by their friend or family member.

I've not done much writing about my personal life, and the small amount I have done has appeared only on this website. And even so, it's reverberated in my personal life in ways of which I'm aware and ways in which I probably am not. My mother found this site a few years ago and was horrified, embarassed, and furious that I was airing what she thought was dirty family laundry here (albeit more or less anonymously). There are many things I don't write about here because I don't want to embarass or upset my family; I extend that courtesy because I want to protect them, and because I want to protect myself from estrangement. I'm not looking to write a book, and certainly not a memoir, but in the dark, mean corners of my heart the strongest reaction to my mother's protestations were that 1) if the bad stuff weren't going down, I wouldn't be writing about it; ergo, it is not my fault and 2) she was lucky I wasn't trying to cut a book deal and the only people privy to it were those fishing around on the web, and probably didn't know me at all. It was a threatening, revenge-tinged thing to feel (and certainly I wouldn't want either of those emotions to motivate any larger piece of writing I did), but I'm ashamed to say I felt it nonetheless.

In an age where all facets of people's lives are increasingly splayed scattershot across web, I suppose what our web presence looks like -- to family, friends, potential suitors or employers -- is something we all have to monitor, for better or worse. When you google my full name, one of the first things that comes up is a story I wrote many years ago, when I was still grieving and feeling particularly cheated, about a beloved ex boyfriend of mine who broke up with me because he realized he was gay. I don't know how that being out there for him to see has affected him. And I also don't know, really, how in the end its presence has affected me, because I have no idea how people who run across it might interpret it or how it might alter their perception of me.

This isn't something I sit around fretting about ceaselessly. But the Slate articles provide a good cross-sectional view of how writing in any capacity can affect your life, and the lives of those around you, in a way that is unique to people who make their living by weilding a pen.

Please Don't Ask Me Out

If you are this guy, please don't ask me out. Ever again. Go away.

(Link, circuitously, via Gawker.)

A Note to My Exes

God knows I love my man-menagerie of exes (my MANagerie, if you will [aha! I have found the title fo my first book!]). Somehow I managed to wriggle out of all but two of my many relationships with some amount of grace, few hard feelings, and moderate reserves of goodwill and mutual affection. Thusly, many of my exes remain close friends, and they add much richness and happiness to my life.

But sometimes, the MANagerie collectively gets out of hand, it usually happens when they start to hear tentative musings about my happiness with someone new.

And just like that, I'm faced with inboxes bursting with laments over losing me all those years ago. Love poems printed on scrolls and stuffed into hand-painted boxes are propped against my door. Kisses that normally land on my cheek are suddenly redirected toward my lips, and I'm forced to duck to avoid them. Someone confesses that I'm all he's ever wanted in a woman. Another sticks his nose in my hair and declares that it smells just as sweet as it once did. Friendly dinners I expect to be drama-free end with someone weeping in my arms, and "I love yous" that never got said while I was actually DATING the gents in question suddently start flying around like so many cupid's arrows. Literally, this happens EN MASSE, and I can't point to just a single offender.

So to my collectively freaking exes: Guys, you know I love you too. Each one of you is special to me in your own unique way, and I hope we can always be friends. I wouldn't have dated you if I didn't think you were awesome, and you are still awesome, even if I did decide to dump your sorry (and hairy) butt.

However. You should have kissed me WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER. You should have told me you loved me WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER. Your syrupy attempts at poetry would have been more appreciated WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER. You should have told me how much you loved how I smell WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER.

You had your chance to appreciate me to the fullest, and you didn't. You now realize the error of your ways, and I'm sorry that that makes you sad. I certainly don't want you to be sad. But there ain't a thing I can do about it except implore you: In the future, when you find someone as awesome as me (although your chances of getting that lucky more than once in a lifetime are decidedly slim, bucko!), look for the things that are lovely about her, and tell her you see them, and appreciate them, and then kiss her and take her out for a nice dinner. Hold her hand on the street on the way home, and look her in the eye.

Perhaps if you do so, you won't be crying to HER three years down the road about all of your regrets.

Cavemen in Esquire

Hi folks. If you could be so kind as to go read my latest scribblings today over at Esquire, I would be ever so grateful. The piece is entitled "The Evolution of the Postmodern Caveman."

"It's Weird Down Here"

There's a great Q&A piece on Salon today with Anne Lamott, who talks about her faith and her life and her political beliefs. It's so comforting to me to know that there's someone else out there who both believes in God, doesn't lump themselves in with the Christian voting bloc we're so often associated with, and loathes George Bush to the point that it causes physically palpable pain. Lamott's books are so exceedingly earnest that sometimes I roll my eyes and wish for just a whiff of snark or sass, but nevertheless she remains someone with whom I'd love to share a bottle of wine and cook a casserole.

An excerpt:

"Everything in the culture says that if you're a person who really loves Mary or Jesus or one of the Hindu gods or whatever, that you're not supposed to have jealousy or existential waves of judgment. And I don't think God ever said that. I think the message of Jesus is "Me too" and "It's weird down here" and "People can be really awful and the amount of suffering you're going to see around you, whether in San Francisco or Fairfax or a foreign country, is going to literally blow your mind."

A Call Guaranteed to Ruin Any Appetite

I have a friend who's a pharmacist. The other day I was talking with my friend and his mother, and the subject of his grandmother, a lovely lady in her 80s who's been a widow for many years, came up. The subject was Grandma's boyfriend, who, for the sake of this retelling, we shall call Larry.

I asked whether Larry, who's a good 15 years grandma's junior, was a boyfriend-boyfriend, or just someone to hold hands with while they watched the 5 o'clock news and ate tapioca or whatever it is old folks do. My pharmacist friend's mother said, "Well, I don't know the particulars, but I *do* know that one day last week I got a call from my daughter moaning about boy problems, and then 20 minutes later I got a call from my MOTHER moaning about boy problems. That was not a good day."

My pharmacist friend shot his mother a withering look and said, "You think THAT'S bad? Last week Grandma called during my lunch break at the pharmacy and asked me if there was anything on the market to treat VAGINAL DRYNESS. Needless to say, I didn't eat my lunch."

I guess that answers my question re: Larry.

Meaning, Money and the Wealth Gap

Ben Stein has an interesting article in The American Spectator about the growing wealth gap in the United States, something that's unendingly apparent in a city like New York. While on one hand I don't begrudge Wall Street workers their vast fortunes -- given that they drive much of the city's economy -- on the other it's frustrating to be unable, as a decently renumerated working member of society, to purchase a home given the spiraling costs. Costs that are decidedly influenced by living in a city where a certain class of people command annual bonuses large enough to pay cash for real estate. Though I make enough money that I could support a family in relative comfort elsewhere, as a single person in New York my salary is probably by many perceived as one on which I must "scrape by" (though I don't feel that way). Given how much Ben Stein is worth, I find his perspectives on wealth interesting and grounded, and I am always somewhat amazed when the wealthy don't forget upon having their first million in the bank the struggles of the masses and the inevitable problems (inherent to any economic structure) of capitalism. (Link via kottke.)

Will Goes Out of Bounds

If you subscribe to the NYTimes, go over and check out my friend Will's New York Times blog, "Out of Bounds," about the NCAA tournament. I promise, even if you're not into college ball, it's a great read.

Bitchyface

So when I was in Colorado hanging out with my niece, I taught her lots of stuff. She's only ten weeks old but in the sevenn days I was there I taught her how to spit up milk on my pants, and how to let someone give her a bath. I taught her how to watch Oprah and how to fart loudly so that it reverberates against your diaper if you're sitting on someone's lap. She aced all these tasks. Obviously, she 's quick on the uptake; she has a lot of knowledge to gain from her big city Auntie and this is only the beginning.

My brother in law bought an "I Love New York" onesie for my niece when she was born; he had recently visited the city and really enjoyed his time here. One day while I was in Colorado my sister put the onesie on the baby so I decided that THAT was the appropriate day to teach my niece an essential New York City talent: bitchyface.

If you're a woman lucky enough to enjoy any hint of attractiveness (i.e., you DON'T have a goiter hanging off your face and you weigh under 350 pounds), it's likely you'll endure daily harrassment on the streets or in the subway, several times a day if you remembered to comb your hair that morning. "Bitchyface,"-- a steely-eyed, pursed-lip, silent rebuttal to all this nonsense -- is a necessary evil. If I walked around with a smile on my face all day long, street harassers would probably see it as some kind of invitation to stick their dirty fingers into the waistband of my jeans, or worse. And no one wants that.

It was high time my niece learned this skill. So right before we took this picture, I leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Now give the camera a look like you wish it was DEAD."

I think she'd get along real good in New York: all cuteness and cuddle on the outside. Until you look into her eyes and see: ICE.



(And that's the end of indulgent baby pictures. I promise, this won't turn into Dooce.)

Staying Home, and Not Bored Yet

Yesterday one of my friends called to see how my trip to Colorado was going. When I relayed the seemingly banal events of the day, he asked "Wow, aren't you even going to go out at all?"

Given that my nightlife companionship options consist of a pouty ex boyfriend who's trying to (in his own words) "punish" me with sullenness for the crime of seeing someone new, or my sister's handsy, horny boss, who every few months will send me a dirty text message asking me to be in a porn video with him or some such, staying home doesn't seem so bad.

Besides, look at all this cuteness in my lap! I mean, babies are endless hours of entertainment. Trying to get them to smile, laugh, burp, sleep, cuddle is really way more fun than it sounds. Yesterday my nice Jillian and I had a pretty sweet day together -- I gave her a bath and then we watched Oprah (pictured, above -- the watching, not the Oprah) together while my sister took a shower and put on makeup for something like the third time since she had the kid ten weeks ago.

Frankly I don't feel bad at all dialing back the socializing for a week. The frenetic pace that I, and seemingly everyone else in New York, socializes and parties and dresses to impress, falls away when I come out to the mountains, and my liver is enjoying the much-deserved respite (though I did have a couple glasses of fantastic wine last night while watching Babel). All the parties and bars and fancy dinners will be waiting for me when I get back to New York.

So for now, I'm just going to enjoy this slippery happy squishy little kid for as long as I can get her to sit in my lap, and hang out with my sister, and go hiking and running in the mountains and regain my peace and center, which so often get lost in the city. I'm feeling extremely de-stressed, to the point where I might return to New York with one OR MORE of my normally-frayed cuticles intact. I'm in such a good place that I've even conceded to have dinner with the Pouty Ex this evening. I intend to cajole him out of his place of sorrow and regain his good graces by force of sheer charm.

But tomorrow night, I'm staying home and babysitting. And I can't wait.

Mountain Time: On Hiatus

Hi folks. Didn't want you to think I had forgotten y'all on my little mountain hiatus. I arrived in Denver around midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning and drove up to the mountains with my friend Kris, who has a sweet setup in Frisco, a mere 15 minutes away from Vail and 5 from Copper, Breck, etc. His housemates were gone for the weekend so I, a person who normally lives in a room the size of a European compact car, was awarded the master suite -- complete with a king size bed, fireplace, hot tub on the deck overlooking the mountains, and jacuzzi tub. What's really sad is that all this luxury (a huge two bedroom, three story, three-bath house in the mountains) can be had for around half the monthly rent of my mouse-infested, crumbly old brownstone in Brooklyn. But anyway.

We boarded Copper on Saturday and got some fresh snow, but it was cloudy and, going on three hours of sleep, I got in fewer runs than I probably would have otherwise. That night we ate at the Boathouse (looks bad, tastes great), which I highly recommend if you're staying in Frisco. Sunday, after a long rest, it was time for VAIL (pictured, above), my all-time favorite resort in Colorado. It just can't be beat for views or snow and the back bowls are miles and miles of open terrain with powder everywhere you look. We got a bluebird day and it was in the mid-40s to boot. It was one of my best days boarding ever. Because the snow was so good I rode pretty aggressively and subsequently suffered a few ass-bruising tits-over-teakettle falls, but I'll survive and a few Coronas in the hot tub afterward went a long way to easing the pain.

We drove to Dillon later that night to eat at the Dillon Brewery (which has fantastic buffalo burgers), but they were shut down thanks to a power outage. There was a cute teenage hostess standing outside turning hungry boarders and skiiers away. She said to us: "Sorry, guys. We're closed because of the power outage. But I LOVE your hair, it's so pretty!" Since Kris is bald, she was talking to me, and I gotta say, a compliment from a dewy faced young teenager who found something attractive in me, someone likely 12 years her senior, felt surprisingly nice.

Since Sunday night I've been hanging out with my sister and my new niece in Denver, where it's been 70 and sunny every day. My niece is about 10 weeks old right now and I'm having fun getting to know her and test out my "parenting" skills. Actually, I'm pretty good with this kid. As long as you bounce her around on your knee fairly vigorously, you can keep her from crying, and I've done pretty well getting her to take bottles and pacifiers, and even putting her to sleep. She seems to like me (she let me know by throwing up on me not once, not twice, but FIVE times over the course of two days) and I think we'll get along just fine. Here we are; she's looking for dinner down the wrong shirt. More pics to come, undoubtedly along with more scintillating tales from the suburbs.

IM Conversation of the Day

Tonight I'm meeting up with friends to go to another group of friend's readings on the Lower East Side. These nights often prove to be beer-soaked revelries, typically ending in unnecessary and highly unadvisable tequila shots, double Scotches, 3 a.m. consumption of sketchy Chinese eggrolls (with a side of sauteed cat) and blurry cab rides home. I IM'd one of my friends, who has a four-year-old kid, to see what time we were meeting up.

Me: Hey, what time are we meeting tonight. 7?
Friend: Yeah. Sorry, was in the meeting of death. I'm gonna shoot up now.
Me: I felt like that on Monday. I actually thought, "I wonder what heroin feels like. I bet it would be AWESOME right now." Maybe we can score you some tonight on the LES. I'm sure your wife wouldn't mind.
Friend: Getting the kid to school tmow will suck enough. I love being the parent who smells like a hobo.

My friends are so awesome.

Moonstruck

On Saturday night I watched the first full lunar eclipse in three years from the roof of my brownstone in Brooklyn. It was beautiful.I only started watching it about 45 minutes after it started, so I only got to see a little bit of it while it was glowing reddish and eerie, but even later as it returned to normal, it was quite pretty. It was a clear night so there was an awesome view on one side of the Statue of Liberty, and the colors of the Empire State and the jaunty top of the Chrysler building really popped out from their inky backdrop over the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge. I drank a glass of Prosecco and marveled at the beauty of the city and the sky and of life in general, and knew that I was in exactly the right place in the world at that moment.

Reason #573 Life Is Harder in New York (In Which I Find Myself Naked, Wet, and On All Fours)

If I lived anywhere else in the country, I'd have myself a cute little four-bedroom house, purchased for five measly thousand down, and a $1,500 a month mortgage. It would have a shiny washer and dryer, and I would faithfully clean out the lint filter. I would have a car in the garage (garage!), and I would conscientiously change its oil every three thousand miles. I'd have room for a dog to run around. I could have friends over and after drinking much wine with me and talking long into the night, they could sleep in my spare bedroom -- or wherever it was they happened to pass out. I could have big dinner parties and sit out on my porch in the morning while I drank my coffee. I'd have my own grass. Maybe even a TREE. (Perchance to dream!) As mundane as it sounds, these are luxuries New Yorkers can only conjure up in the sweetest of fantasies. My friends Marie and Jer have just such a thing (hi guys, and congrats on the new kid! Sorry she was such a watermelon!), but hey, they have to live in South Dakota to get it.

And therein -- THEREIN, readers! -- lies the rub.

Because to live in New York, one has to make sacrifices with regard to one's living situation. I've made plenty. I lived in a studio the size of a Starbucks bathroom with a gay man who had a splashy habit of throwing up in mesh garbage cans. I lived in a drafty old brownstone nestled up against the projects, where I was harassed alternately by burrows of scrappy mice and project-dwellers who were as incensed by my gentrification as they were thrilled that they could mug and relentlessly catcall me. I was forced out of my airy loft by greedy developers who wanted to turn it condo and sell it to some rich fucking I-banker instead of allowing a working class schmuck like me to keep paying rent. Note to Awaye Realty: It's been two years now and those condos STILL aren't sold. Nice way to come in at the peak of the market! Hope you enjoyed that icy cold bath! You got what you deserved, assholes!

Speaking of icy cold baths, I was left fervently wishing for one this morning when I made the beginner's mistake of trying to take a shower at my house. You see, I'm a gym addict so I shower there about 90% of the time. Unfortunately, this lulls me into forgetting the maddening exercise that is trying to shower at home.

For those of you who've never had the pleasure of living in New York City, you might think that running hot water in the shower is something you're entitled to if you pay rent. Wrong! You are laughable and naive.

My apartment, a fourth-floor walkup in a 150-year-old brownstone, apparently hasn't upgraded the plumbing since the days the bathroom was called a "water closet" (or perhaps "an outhouse."). Most days it feels like hot water makes it up through the pipes, and out of my shower head, thanks solely to the ministrations of an emphysemic old man who lives in the basement and has been hired to blow it through a garden hose. Occasionally I get a hot shower with steady water pressure and limited fluctuations in temperature, but if someone downstairs is showering, forget it. Enjoy that trickle of alternating scalding and icy water; it's just like a spa treatment! IN HELL.

So anyway today, having just slathered conditioner on my head and soaped up my entire body, the emphysemic man apparently went off to take a nap in the corner. Because the water pressure dropped to zero, and nothing came out of the shower head. I stood there, goose bumps rapidly covering me, with soap and conditioner running into my eyes. Cursing the heavens, I tried to figure out how to get out of this pickle. Heat up a bucket on the stove? Walk downstairs and use the neighbors' shower (although, I assume, they were already in it -- hence the problem)? Immediately proceed naked to the airport, where I would throw in the towel (ha!) and move to a reasonable state where it's not too much to expect to take a shower at home?

After awhile, I thought maybe if the water couldn't make it out the shower head, it might make it out the bathtub spout. And sure enough, I was able coax out a modest trickle.

And that, my friends, is how I found myself shivering and naked, on the floor of my bathtub on all fours, my head tipped upside down under the faucet, trying to get conditioner out of my hair and splash water on my soapy armpits.

Literally and figuratively, it was something of a new low in my ongoing quest to live with dignity in this city.

Today, New York, YOU WIN. You WIN, ok?