Never Gonna Happen

So, this is not going to work. First of all, I like you. Which means I want you to like me. That's deadly.

I behave like an idiot around you. I say all sorts of witty things in an effort to impress you, which is a bogus thing to do to someone. I mean, who wants to be impressed, really. Suddenly I remember every leitmotif from every obscure film I've ever seen that relates to the theme that we're talking about and all of the projects I'm working on are super interesting and I know everyone and I know about everything and it's just a mess.

I bring up a book I'm reading in an effort to talk about an idea but suddenly it's like, oh, by the way, did you know that I read? Ugh. So pretentious. Or I share some anecdote about when I was in Tokyo and it turns into, Oh, wow, you lived in Tokyo? Unbearably tacky. And you're there being all cool and indulgent and thinking that I sound like an intelligent human when really I just sound like an asshole. Yeah, we can't talk anymore. I'm fairly certain that the more we talk, the less you will like me.

I feel really great when I'm around you. I smile uncontrollably and giggle. Sometimes I even giggle when you're not around. It's undignified. And sloppy.

Plus you obviously know that I like you, so that's embarrassing. How will I hold your interest if I do not maintain some degree of aloofness? Who wants to be with someone who so obviously wants to be with them? This level of vulnerability is just crass on my part. Mortifying. It's inappropriate.

You're confident. Too confident. It makes me nervous. Like maybe you actually know who you are and where you're going in life. So, that's a shame. Definitely not something we have in common.

And sometimes I know that you're looking at me from across the room and maybe I look back at you and maybe we make eye contact and then I'm worried that I'll walk into something. If we don't stop doing that, it's gonna happen. I will walk into something. Guaranteed.

Also you have way too many friends. You're friends with everyone. Everyone likes you. Everyone wants to talk to you all the time. I would say that, as a general note, you are just far too well liked. Probably something you should work on. Plus what if you decided that you liked me and then all your friends liked me but then you decided you didn't like me anymore. No one would like me. Possibly ever again. I'd probably have to move to an entirely different city or something.

You're very handsome. It's off-putting. Lots of people probably think so. That you're handsome. Because you are. Women probably think that. Women that are not me. For probably like, fifteen years, people have been telling you how handsome you are. And who knows what kind of toll that can take on a person.

Plus there's the whole issue of how cool you are. Like, you have a cool job. Two cool jobs. You have probably the two coolest jobs a person can have. It's disgusting.

And you're nice. You smile a lot at a lot of people and people think you're nice. Even my bitchy friend thinks you're nice. People who generally don't like other people seem to like you. You're nice to me. You return my text messages and ask me questions about my life and pay me compliments.

It's an embarrassment of riches, really. Being nice and cool and handsome. Quite frankly it's a bit obscene. You don't need all three. You can be cool and handsome, but then you don't have to be nice. You can be cool and nice, but not handsome. You can be handsome and nice, but not cool. However, all three? I mean, seriously dude, it's overkill. And kind of awkward for everyone around you.

You show up places that I am, maybe even because you know I'm there. You make plans with me. And what if, one of these days, you make plans with me, and then can't follow through? Better to not make plans at all, I think.

It would even seem that, against all odds, you like me. You stay up late with me and spontaneously kiss me on street corners. I have a bruise on my knee from when you lifted me up while we were making out in the bathroom of that bar that neither of us should have been at. I banged my knee on the sink. I kind of like it, this bruise, because it's tangible proof that it happened. Like a photo or a text message.

Yeah, that was fun. Too fun. It can't ever happen again. All signs point to the fact that we would have really good sex and that would obviously just be a travesty.

Plus there's the fact that if we keep hanging out, you will inevitably discover what a disaster of a human I am. Like how I'm messy and narcissistic and immature. And I could never let someone as cool and smart and handsome as you, someone who everyone likes and is really nice and generally just pleasant to be around, yeah, I couldn't let you find out all that stuff about me. You'd tell everyone. Or, worse, you'd be disappointed.

And there's the chance that I would learn you're not as cool and handsome and nice as I currently think. Probably not a risk you want to take, seeing as you're an intelligent human.

I mean, I'm sure we've both been down this road before. It doesn't typically end well. The better people make each other feel, the worse they're capable of making each other feel. And you make me feel pretty great. So yeah, this should never happen. Let's cut it out before we have too much fun and somebody gets hurt.

We Go Way Back

When I think back on all the people who have made my heart totally freak out in one way or another, the childhood crushes stand out in a pretty special way. Like a fierce band of tiny, iridescent guardian angels watching over my romantic exploits for all time.

I got started early, to be sure. Ashley O’Bryan (my bff before we’d heard of the term “bff”) and I tragically discovered that we harbored romantic feelings for the same nine-year-old boy (I think she and I were still eight, we were two of the youngest in our grade). But rather than let our friendship unravel because of this unforeseen rivalry, it became something over which we bonded. We made little hope boxes and "invented" a highly sophisticated alpha-numeric code to talk about him: 31 was his name.

Of course we were filling our hope boxes with wishes for the same thing, wishes that were mutually exclusive, but for some reason that didn’t bother us. Probably because at that age, friendship was already a familiar concept, whereas love was not. The original bros before hos. Plus what did having a boyfriend in the 4th grade mean? That you would perhaps clandestinely hold hands at some point? In retrospect even that sounds pretty risqué. But a friend was someone you ate lunch with and had sleepovers with. Ashley was my first friend who had nail polish.

Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. My tiny heart was ready to burst. I wrote 31 a note, and slipped it into his locker. I told him that I wanted to reveal my true feelings, but wouldn’t write who I was. I would meet him by the bio-dome (our name for the metal structure that served as a jungle gym, set apart from the true “big toy” in the main playground area… this was a place for outsiders) on top of the hill during recess. I would be wearing a headband (I wore headbands everyday, it was a point of pride) and a “squiggly mouth smiley-face necklace” (oh! the irony. Even my eight-year old self couldn’t wear a true smiley face necklace! Especially not on today of all days!).

The jig was up before I had my chance to climb the hill. Lauren Denbaum confronted me. 31 had shown her the note. She knew it was me, I was wearing the headband. “Yes, but what about…” I began, knowing that my squiggly mouth smiley-face necklace was securely tucked under my turtleneck. Just then, Lauren’s hand darted towards my throat. Before I could do anything, she had pulled the necklace out, revealing me to be the note-writer. “This, you mean?” she laughed triumphantly. I had been foiled.

31 emerged from the playground shadows to stand behind Lauren. His henchgirl had done her work, now it was time for him to handle the situation. “I thought it might be you,” he said. I reached behind me for support. Ashley was of course there to back me up. “The thing is…” 31 began.

Just then Lauren interjected. “He likes her!” she shouted, as children on playgrounds are wont to do. Her finger was pointing in my direction. But quickly I realized it wasn’t me she was leering at. Of course, just over my shoulder, holding my hand, was Ashley O’Bryan. My bff. My co-conspirator. 31 was hers.

I let go of Ashley’s hand and ran off up the hill, to resume my outsider position on the bio-dome. Maybe no one would see me cry up there. But I heard a voice behind me, “Ani!”. It was Ashley. She followed me up the hill. I climbed the metal bars as fast as I could, but she was right behind me. She sat down next to me at the top. The highest point on the playground.

“I told him I don’t like him,” she said.
“What? But you do. It’s 31!”
“I don’t care. I like being your best friend better.”


My next really serious childhood crush came in Miss Patterson’s fifth grade class. Our desks were arranged in groups of four. Mine was next to a boy named J. We made little creatures out of paper clips and erasers and created an epic world that existed between our desks. J and I both liked fantasy novels and wiled away field trip bus rides discussing elves and the like.

Ashley O’Bryan had moved away, and the group of girls I’d been friends with since first grade had ditched me because I still wanted to play pretend, whereas they wanted to talk about the Spice Girls and Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I was the only one who didn’t have bell bottoms from Limited Too. So I began spending more time with two girls named Katie. On weekends I would go to Katie S.’s house and find J there with his family. We’d run through the woods to the lake, he was tall and faster than I was. I would tease him about being a giraffe… he didn’t like that.

The entire fifth grade took a trip to Cape Cod to go whale watching. On the boat J and I stood next to each other, leaning slightly over the edge. The ocean spray got in our eyes and mouths and we loved every second of it—there’s a photo of us looking like the two happiest kids who ever lived. I can’t help but think our grins were inspired by something slightly more than the thrill of the sea.

As the summer neared my grandpa took the cover off the pool. Now, the Katonah public pool was one thing, but having access to a private swimming pool was something else entirely. My mom said I could invite J to come swimming.

So I called… I can’t remember if I left a voicemail or spoke to J’s mom. Either way the reply came, a message on the answering machine at my mom’s house. “Hi Annika, this is J… uh, you called my house… I don’t really know why you called… anyway… yeah. See you at school.”

Ugh. Well, that was that, I thought. At least I had gotten out before another 31-style embarrassment struck. I was ten now, and much older and wiser.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time went on, as it does. And we got older, as kids do. A year later J invited me to his birthday party. By this time Sam M. and I were as boyfriend-girlfriend as sixth graders can be. During the game of flashlight tag, Sam pulled me around the side of J’s house and dared me to kiss him. I did. I don’t think J ever truly got over the fact that my “first kiss” was at his house, on his birthday, and not with him.

Middle school saw a lot of changes for me. Sam led me into the world of bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, and by seventh grade all the eighth grade “punks” were totally into me and I was going to Less Than Jake and Catch 22 concerts in the city. Trust me, this made me very grown up. In eighth grade I dated a high school freshman. We would spend weekend afternoons making out in his basement. But that Valentines day, J showed up to school with a small heart-shaped box of chocolates for me. “J, you know I have a boyfriend,” I told him. “Yeah, I know, I just wanted you to have that. Happy Valentines Day, Annika.”

The first three years of high school were not pretty. Freshman year I was confused enough to befriend a man who turned out to have a history of molesting girls my age. He drove me home most days and at one point managed to get me behind a door I didn’t know was locked. Thank God my mom caught onto that one before its inevitable conclusion. Sophomore year I started dating a guy who went to another high school and was three years older than I was. He would (inevitably) go off to college, start dating another girl without telling me, and break my heart. Junior year was basically a haze of eating disorders and vile rumors. And then senior year, all of the older kids had gone off to college, and I was left with my old Katonah crew.

These kids had actually become pretty neat while my back was turned. It was a tight-knit group of budding musicians, poets, artists, actors. Perhaps a little self-consciously hip, but not self-consciously “outsider”. For the most part, these guys were socially adept and also self-confident.

I forget how, but J and I had become pretty good pals over the summer. Maybe it was because we were both in the pilot year of our school’s Peer Group Leadership program. Anyway I seem to recall driving around in his teal station wagon, getting coffee after hours at various local hot-spots, or climbing onto the roof of the shed at the house my family was going to move into come fall. We reminisced about our childhood crushes on each other, how I figured it was all over when he left that message on my answering machine. “It came out like that because I was nervous!” he insisted. “I always liked you. I was sad you didn’t call me back.”

“And in middle school, when you gave me chocolates on Valentines day?”
“Yeah, I liked you then too.”

We decided that if we were both still single come spring, we would go to prom together.

Speaking of relationships… well I of course unloaded on him a bit about my heartbreaks up until that point. J was sort of intimidated by my experience with matters of the heart—
he was always the friend, never the boyfriend. “Why do you think that is?” he asked me. “And what about us?”

“Oh, us? Like you and me? Honestly, J… I just don’t see you that way.”

I was far too world-weary to date such an innocent, I thought. It would never work. J was a boy, I needed a man. Plus his eternal positivity, his sunny disposition… where was his dark side? Did he even have one? Because I was basically one big dark side. How would he ever understand me? Happily I can say that I was far more cynical (and dramatic) at seventeen than I am today.

A week or two after this conversation, J and I were sitting in the parking lot of the Jacob Burns Film Center after seeing some cool new indie flick. He was playing the game where he counts the freckles on my face. I told him my favorite was on my mouth. He kissed me. I pulled away, saying I wasn’t expecting that. He gave me a look like “Are you fucking kidding me?” and there it was, the slightest glimmer of a cynical edge. That was all I needed.

Are you ready to puke yet?

What ensues is more or less the montage you’d expect. Rides home steeped in The Shins, fighting over who would hang up first, illicit make-out sessions before our parents got home from work. Every holiday we had some sort of surprise for each other. More inside jokes than I can possibly recall. Notes in lockers. Nicknames galore. He was the director of his a cappella group, I was speaker of the Campus Congress.

J’s best pal was E, and they shared a glorious and profound brotherhood, the depths of which I could never fully comprehend, probably because I didn’t have an equivalent childhood best friend. Like I said, my girlfriends since first grade ditched me in late elementary school, and Ashley O’Bryan moved away. J and I would double date with E and his girlfriend, who was unbelievably gorgeous and, for whatever it was worth, “popular”.

On a peer group leadership retreat, E played banjo while J and I sang back-up harmonies on a cover of Such Great Heights. Keep in mind, this was the year Garden State came out.

OK, now you’re ready to puke.

We had our share of problems, too. J was always so on the bright side and I was always so on the dark side. I think it was exhausting for both of us at times. This was J’s first relationship and he was maybe not ready to hit the ground running as hard as I was. He directed a one act and didn’t cast me because he was afraid it would look like he was favoring me and like I didn’t earn it. Plus there was his relationship with E— neither E nor I were used to sharing J. And sometimes J’s life-plans seemed to include E in a way that they didn’t include me.

J’s friends teased him for spending too much time with me. I was a part of the greater “group”, but once the group divided into girls and guys, I was left out in the cold, because I wasn’t truly close enough with the girls to be in their inner circle, and obviously couldn’t hang with the dudes. This left me feeling excluded and vulnerable.

I even remember feeling a certain dissatisfaction with how “perfect” my life was at that time. Afternoons I worked in a third-generation family-owned department store in pretty much the quaintest hamlet you can imagine. I was held in high esteem by the administration of my high school and held multiple leadership positions. My mom was engaged, so maybe we were even going to have a new “normal” family. And I had just about the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. Even I was ready to puke.

Because I had pretty much defined myself as an outsider ever since my parents were, as far as I knew, the first to get divorced. I was the youngest in my grade. I had a weird name. My birthday was on Christmas. I was the girl who hung out on the bio-dome, remember? So what was I doing behaving so goddamned normally all of sudden?

But, and maybe this is hindsight speaking, I think our relationship came down to more than the montage. In the spring it became apparent that, against all odds, I had actually only gotten into my safety schools. One of which, after a second visit, I had decided I didn’t like. It looked like it was Oberlin or bust. Ohio? My plan had been California. Was I really going to Ohio? After a hysterical phone call prompted by yet another rejection letter, J showed up at my house with applications to every top school that offered rolling admissions. He was determined to help me see the bright side. And in the long run, I really think he did.

We kept our prom promise, obviously. He wore Converse sneakers. We danced our faces off. Afterwards, instead of going into the city as planned, our whole crew decided to go back to Katonah and play flashlight tag. It was genuinely exhilarating. At the end of the night, J and I had sex in his car before crashing on a pile of comforters on his living room floor.

Of course summer came to an end. We were very practical children, we knew it would. And we knew that he was off to Bates, and I was off to Oberlin, so there it was. As a going away present, I gave him stationary I had designed for him, along with envelopes that were pre-addressed to my college mailbox. And that was that. Neither of us wanted to get each other’s way.

By October I was up to my old tricks. I had a boyfriend who was a fifth year, and five years older than I was.

In February J and I were both home on break. “I wanted to give you a sort of Valentines Day Present,” he said.
“But J, you know I have a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, I know. I just wanted you to have this.”

He proceeded to play me two songs on guitar, songs that we had listened to together a lot. “Happy Valentines Day, Annika.” I was simultaneously touched, sad, guilty, and embarrassed.

That summer J and I saw each other again. I told him how the college boyfriend had graduated and was leaving the country at the end of the summer, and I had become involved in an affair with a man who was twice my age and lived upstate. J and I didn’t talk much after that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's been nearly seven years since then. Recently I was performing a workshop version of a one-woman play I had written at a festival in Tribeca, and Katie S. showed up. She filled me in on our old friends, including the fact that J was going to be in town soon. Things had been kind of hard for him lately, she said. There had been some life altering events to bang up against.

A few days later I typed a facebook message to J. Facebook because I didn’t even have his current email or phone number. I told him how I know it had been forever, but if he wanted to hang with someone in New York, I was around. And if he didn’t answer not to worry, because who really checks facebook anyway. He did answer. We agreed to meet the next day, his last day in town, for coffee.

J looked tired, and had come from the hospital. He was wearing a hat and I could tell it was more to hide his unwashed hair than for warmth or fashion. He wore a small Buddha necklace, a vestige of who he was already starting to become that last summer we were together. Something about him spending time in India during college nagged at the back of my mind. It was all so long ago….

We talked about what was going on at the hospital. We talked about J’s brother, how J believed that the cosmic reason he had moved to L.A. was to save him. We talked about New York (where he had lived while I was in Boston). “Do you want to get a drink?” I asked him. “Do you even drink? Last we talked, you didn’t drink.” “Ha, yeah, that’s probably true,” he chuckled. “I drink.”

Around the corner I downed a Manhattan on the rocks while he drank something that involved gin and lavender. “Sorry I drink faster than you do, too much time in nightlife.” He laughed and assured me he would catch up. “Oh, I love this song,” he said, before he had fully recognized what was playing. It was the Shins. We blushed when we realized why he loved it. Next up was Modest Mouse. “Did they steal my ipod from 2005?” I joked. We only touched on high school for perhaps five minutes before he realized he had to go back to the hospital. “I have to get back up there because I have to be back in Westchester tonight so my dad can drive me to the airport early in the morning.”
“Oh, you’re flying out of Westchester?”
“No, JFK.”
“Well, why don’t you stay at my place and I’ll drive you to JFK? That makes way more sense geographically.”

It was a plan. “Is bourbon OK?” I asked.

He got to my place a little before midnight, where I introduced him to Ian, my roommate and best friend. Ian and I met during maybe our second week of college, at a time when J and I would have still been talking on the phone every few days. In a way they represented a sort of changing of the guard in my life.

For some reason I started telling the story of Sarah K., Ian’s childhood love. The conversation turned to mutual friends we didn’t know we had. We discovered that Sarah K., the Sarah K., had been in acting classes with J in New York. My childhood love was in acting studio with Ian’s childhood love. “There are like, six people in the world,” J declared.

When we were (more than…) half way through the bottle of bourbon, J and I tumbled down the slope of childhood memories. It was just as he recounted the tale of “my favorite freckle is on my lip” that Ian declared he was going to bed. “You know what’s funny about that?,” I mentioned as Ian sleepily roused himself from our cozy carpet, “I don’t have a freckle on my lip.” “Of course you don’t,” J was staring straight at me. “Alright, you two, I’m going to bed.” Ian stumbled into his room, closing the door rather finitely.

I couldn’t really tell you what it was. Maybe it was spending two years in a city like New York, getting beat up by the real world a little bit. Maybe it was because he was now essentially the vice-principal of a high school and had learned to exude authority. Maybe because of what was going on at the hospital. Maybe because he weighed probably twenty pounds more than when I had known him, and no longer had his Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo haircut. But this was not the boy I dated in high school. I mean, it was, but he had somehow grown into the best version of himself I could have imagined. And somehow, I sensed he felt the same way about me. He made me feel better about myself in six hours than the Chef had made me feel in a year and a half.

Now, this had very little to do with anything he said. He was not lathering me up with compliments, be they based in the past or the present. It was something far more fundamental. His blatant positivity was now tempered with an edge of “I know what it’s like, and I still mean it.” And I remembered that night he had shown up at my house, showing me all the schools I could still apply to. And I realized that J had always been the MVP on Team Annika. I was essentially warming the bench, and for all I know, Chef was on an opposing team.

This is not to say that I blame Chef. I may not have been ready to let him on my team. Because on some level he came to represent all that is rough and harsh about this city to me. And J comes from a place that, even though I wasn’t always happy there, is part of me. It’s safe there.

When I look back on high school, I see a series of frustrations and embarrassments. The stupid things I said and my weird outfits and really crappy decision-making, the overwhelming disappointments, the personal and academic failures, the drama. If you asked to see a photo of me from high school, I probably wouldn’t show it to you. But J saw all that, and somehow still thought I was coolest girl in school.

When I look back on my first year-or-so in New York, I see… well I see pretty much the same things. But I think I’m a little better at hiding it. Taking things in stride. The fact remains, however, that Chef has seen all that. The late nights and the professional rejections. The bad days. But if he thought I was the coolest girl in school, he never let me know.

Cosmically speaking, J moved to L.A. to save his brother. Maybe he came to New York that week to get me off the bench and back in the field, playing on my own team. For a long time my embarrassment around who I used to be made me glad to have few ties to my pre-college self. But those hours we spent together changed my mind: I hadn't felt that OK in a long time.

Ian sees Sarah K. around Brooklyn, I see her too. I don’t know if he experiences the same overwhelming comfort in her presence. Their love was unrequited, so perhaps not. I’m not sure if there’s an objectively heartwarming experience about reconnecting with your high school sweetheart– if it’s all just a societally constructed load of whatever, or if maybe J and I genuinely had something kind of neat and special. Maybe we’re buying into some idea that has no bearing on reality. Maybe I’m so fucked up about the end of my relationship with Chef, and he’s so fucked up about the things that are going on his life, that we’re just begging for some sort of emotional cluster fuck.

That said, it is important to bear in mind that J is perhaps the only boy I ever loved who was really, truly my friend first. Ashley O’Bryan and I had prioritized friendship over our mutual crush 31 because friendship was a more familiar sensation. And when J and I had these fifth grade crushes on each other, what did that really mean? Friendship was still the more comfortable territory. And even when we initially agreed to go to prom together, it was as friends. Maybe what this means is that it felt really nice to have my old friend back. Someone who can know all that crap about me and see it, judge it, not as a boyfriend or a lover, but as a friend.

I have friends from college, I live with one of them. I also have a lot of new friends, New York friends. They’re great, and I love them. But they come and go. And there’s a lot about me they don’t know, things that they probably don’t actually care to know. Maybe what I needed was someone who had known me for just that long. Who knows my mom and remembers what my brother looked like before he got so tall and had facial hair and tattoos. It’s sort of like if Alice had found her best friend down there in Wonderland. Wouldn’t that have been even nicer than a Cheshire Cat?

Now whether or not he could stomach all of the new baggage I’ve accumulated in the last seven years remains to be seen. Something tells me he could handle it, it’s no worse than the old stuff. But I’m not sure he’ll get the chance. And as we were very practical children, we remain practical adults. No emotional spears have been lanced. Nobody’s getting on any planes. But one thing I do know: just like the summer of 2005, I did not want him to leave.

Everyone Needs their Thing

-->

Hey guys so like, I think I need a new thing. You know? Like, everyone has their thing. Like besides their job or whatever. Ian’s job is that he plays the piano but his thing is old man cardigans, you know? Or Rebecca is an actor but her thing is that she was in the Peace Corps in Mozambique for two and half years. Like that.

So obviously I need a thing. When I was in high school it was the color green. When I lived in Paris, it was doing my laundry in the sink. When I got back from Paris, it was that I had lived in Paris. Did you guys know that I lived in Paris? Yeah… you did… OK so obviously that can’t be my thing anymore….

I tried to make it clear plastic umbrellas for awhile but I just kept losing them, plus my sense of irony is a little too cultivated to pull off something that twee….

Anyway, here’s what I think it’s going to be. I want my new thing to be: photos of lamps.

Yeah. I’m going to just start taking photos of lamps. I’m going to have a whole instagram devoted to photos of lamps. Except maybe not instagram because that’s sort of the obvious choice. But I’ll put them somewhere. Maybe a tumblr. Photos of lamps. That I take.

And that will be my thing. That will be who I am. Not who I am like an actor or a waitress because that stuff is so surface level, this will be like, that little detail that you think is just a detail but actually it defines me. Like a unicorn in the wild where you can’t look at it directly but when you sort of let your eyes go off to the side, there it is. A fucking unicorn. And you get it.

That will be the pictures of lamps. For me. It’s like when you sign into your account on the student loan website or wherever and it shows you a picture that you selected three years ago or whenever and it’s like STOP do you recognize this photo? And somewhere deep in the recesses of your nostalgia-addled mind, you do. You do recognize that photo.

Because part of you selected it. Your past self gravitated towards it, for whatever fundamental reason, and your present self feels that same tug. Maybe because you maintain the same general aesthetic leanings, but maybe just because your present self honors and respects your past self’s choices. In a sort of bittersweet way. It’s like, oh yeah, my 2009 self did like that sunflower, and you know what, I would fucking hate that sunflower today, but I can’t, because that person I was in 2009 liked it. And you sort of want to go back to 2009 and give that person a hug.

Like how I’ll never really be able to not like Matchbox 20. Or how I got a tattoo when I was eighteen because I thought it would be a good idea to remember that I was the kind of eighteen year old who was down to get a tattoo. And I did. And I still have it. Do I still like it? Who can say! I mean really who can objectively say. But I respect it.

So my photo when I sign on to look at my student loans account, well it’s a picture of a lamp. Because for whatever reason that’s what I picked in 2009. And I see that picture of a lamp, and it’s my student loan identity, and it’s me. That picture of a lamp represents me in that database. And to myself. To remind me of myself. It’s like a mirror. Or a time-warped mirror. And that’s who I am. I am the lamp. Because I was the lamp. Because I decided to be the lamp.

So yeah, it’s going to be a series of self-portraits, really. These photos of lamps I’m going to take.

And that’s gonna be my thing. Taking pictures of lamps. Because everyone needs their thing.

Concrete Skills

-->

Dear Almighty Generic Potential Employer,

As a supplement to my resume and cover letter, I have chosen to furnish you with an easy-to-read list of my concrete skills.

Here are the things that I know I am good at:

 

Reading

Text analysis

Typing

Writing professional-yet-cheery emails

Pretending I speak French

Telling other people what is wrong with their writing

Crying on command

Making my roommate laugh

Making kale salads

Ordering food at restaurants

Sleeping

Carrying a tray

Watching Breaking Bad

Impersonating Alanis Morissette

Faking descriptions of wines

Making out

Being jealous of Zoe Deschanel

Here are things I’m sort of good at:  

 

Creative problem solving

Opening wine bottles

Watering my plants

Carrying three plates

Wearing lipstick

Making friends feel better about their shitty jobs

Making beds

Writing academic papers

Faking intellectual discourse (note: if I’ve had three glasses of wine, this skill gets bumped up to things I know I’m good at)

Spelling

Flirting

Coming up with plots for movies that I will never write

And in the interest of full disclosure, here are areas in which I most certainly need improvement:

 

Walking in heels

Keeping track of my metrocard

Calling my family

Not eating ramen every day

Keeping my computer organized

Not checking facebook all the goddamned time

Staying focused on my “life” as opposed to my “relationship”

Spanish

Laundry

Responding to text messages

Knowledge of dessert wines

Singing

Tactful self-promotion

Avoiding awkward situations

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Notes from Underground

Or My Life in Nightlife

Fashion Week

 

Restaurants love opening during fashion week. Especially places that fancy themselves fashiony and want to attract a fashiony crowd. Personally, attracting a fashiony crowd sounds like a bad way to run a restaurant to me, but I guess that should have been my first hint that [MexicanRestaurant] was more beast than restaurant.

We still don’t have uniforms, so I show up wearing the same thing I wore for the Fancy Tequila Dinner. Much to my surprise, some fashiony gentlemen are there to adorn me, because they are displaying their line at the party, and I need to look like I am in some way affiliated.

They ask if my name is Russian and comment on my insoles, revealed when I take off my boots.

It’s a men’s clothing line, so our options are sort of limited. They have me try on a striped button-down. I look like a five year old wearing my dad’s nightshirt. But they didn’t call me big foot in the fifth grade for nothin’, so we find a pair of shoes that work, and they tie a sort of belt-type-thing around my waist, over the shirt I had shown up in. They all take a step back and look at me with their chins in their hands, and their expressions say that I’m that short, frumpy work of art that’s just not quite coming together.

“Yeah, that’ll do,” they say, and walk away.

Other First Hire, however, is completely outfitted, and though he is griping, actually doesn’t look half bad.

AGM is there and she looks simultaneously fashiony and awesome in some blue transparent-net-dress-thing.

We were supposed to be open as a restaurant by now, but so far it’s just been training— the date for friends and family keeps getting pushed back. I hear murmurs about an issue with the liquor license, but nothing concrete. GM jokes that every night of fashion week we should just pay someone to stand outside and say that we’re closed for a “private event”. Not a bad idea.

Anyway all I know about this event is that we’ve got a bunch of models and donated alcohol. Go!

Oh and that Lady Gaga is rumored to show up.

In the kitchen, Chef explains what each tray of canapés is. I’m not terribly familiar with the food yet, as we’ve only had one tasting, and most of the ingredients are foreign to me. This isn’t Mexican food like I’ve ever seen before— what I would have thought was an empanada is in fact a quesadilla. Things like gorditas, flautas, and tostadas all appear to be part of a greater category called antojitos… he keeps talking about epazote and huitlacoche but I have no idea what those are… there’s not much time, the food is hot, and Chef’s accent and eccentric English make it difficult for me to grasp his explanations over the din of the kitchen. So I pay it forward and mumble some things that sound vaguely like what he said as I offer up my tray, and smile politely in the face of people’s confused stares.

There is a line of male models posed along one wall sporting the fashion label’s latest looks. I’m passing canapés amidst a flurry of camera flashes, and one of the designers pulls me aside to request that I make sure the boys get some food. I’m about to drop them a tray of something-that-I-think-are-gorditas when I spy Cute Scruffy Investor, formerly known as the one in the Henley tee. I ask if I can get him anything and he says yes, he’ll take a Brave Man. I know enough to guess that that’s one of our pulque cocktails, so I drop the tray of probably-gorditas in the PDR for the boy models and rush off to the bar.

Encountering AGM on the way, she asks why I’m not passing food and I explain to her about Cute Scruffy Investor. “Ah, yes,” she nods wisely, “that’s his drink. Just make sure he has one in his hand at all times tonight. In fact, maybe you should cocktail for awhile. I’ll tell Other First Hire to worry about the food.”

After bringing Cute Scruffy Investor his tomatillo-pulque-brave-whatever-the-fuck I walk around with a tray of other pulque cocktails, which were briefly explained to me by the surly bar manager, after the story about how his father taught him how to make pulque when he was a child. Cool. Pink is watermelon, yellow is corn, white is jicama, and green is tomatillo. Got it. Gracias.

“Excuse me, what is this?”

“That’s the Two Rabbits. One of our pulque cocktails. It’s made with jicama.”

“Oh, um… so what’s this one?”

“That’s the Inebriated Monkey. Also one of our pulque cocktails. With watermelon.”

“I’m sorry, pul-what?”

“Pulque… it’s… um, it’s made from agave.”

“But is it like, alcoholic?”

“Yeah… these drinks also all have tequila in them.”

“Oh! Great. Thanks.”

But after doing a lap my tray was still full, so I just stood in a corner, hoping someone would lighten my load.

After standing there for a few minutes with an increasingly weakening forearm, I heard someone whisper my name from inside the coat check.

It was Bald Girl Server, who had somehow gotten on AGMs bad side and was therefore relegated to taking coats for the evening. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “You know what helps me when I’m passing drinks? I just stand there and think about something really nasty that I did in bed. Your tray will be empty in one minute. Try it.”

I went back to my corner and followed her advice. God damn it, she was right. As I walked back to the bar to replenish my tray, I caught her smiling at me knowingly.

When I went to bus the plate that I had left for the boy models, I caught one of them stuffing the last probably-a-gordita into his mouth. He was all alone in the PDR, probably eating his feelings. Or maybe just hungry. I laughed. He laughed.

The space got more and more crowded to the point where it was difficult to move. But boy-oh-boy did I keep Cute Scruffy Investor supplied in Brave Man Cocktails. He was nearly drowning in Brave Men. So much so that he may have even tried to remember my name at one point.

I was keeping half an eye open for Lady Gaga, but she was nowhere to be found. However, AGM did send me to insure the contentment of several VIPs on table four. The group, which included Rose McGowan, complained that they had been unable to battle the crowds at the bar. I fought through hell and high-water to bring them their cocktails in a timely fashion. “You’re a star,” Rose thanked me upon receipt of her vodka tonic. You hear that, everyone? Rose McGowan says I’m a star.

Passing back by the PDR I caught the lone hungry model solo-eating again. I laughed. He laughed. We talked about how he is from Australia.

But my time to chat is limited because now things are really getting out of control. I feel like I’m playing the Sims: Restaurant Edition and I can see everybody’s anger levels rising as their booze level falls because the bar is so slammed. I cut through the kitchen because I can’t carry a tray through that crowd, and I find two other servers sharing a bright pink cocktail which I identify as the Inebriated Monkey.

“Whatever,” Sassy Server says, “we fucking deserve it, putting up with this shit.”

She hands me the mug and I drink, it’s sweet but probably would be refreshing if it were cold. Unfortunately it is not.

The boy models have now been liberated from their post and I find the Australian one back in the bar. There was just enough tequila in that cocktail to make me think it’s a good idea to talk to him, so I saunter up. “Still hungry?” I put on my best flirtatious affectation. “No… but can you bring me a glass of water?”

Ah. OK. Walking away I realize that there are two kinds of customers: Those who see you as a means to an end, and those who see you as a person.

Sassy Server catches my eye as she heads back into the kitchen with three tequila shots and I follow her.

Just as I put the empty shot glass in the dish pit, AGM rushes through the door, her arms full of glasses, eyes panicked. “Go bus every glass you can find. Everything.”

I rush into the bar and am nearly run down by a bartender carrying maybe ten bottles of tequila into the basement. The others are anxiously pulling everything from behind the bar. Guests are milling about confusedly, drunk but concerned.

A slightly wobbly girl grabs my arm while I’m filling my tray. “Why can’t we exit?” she demands.

“Excuse me?”

“Why can’t we go outside? What’s going on?”

“I… I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry.”

Sassy Server comes back into the bar from the dining room, muttering something like “Do we even have our fucking liquor license?” under her breath as she passes close to me.

I flee the scene and start grabbing glasses that have been left in the staircase. From above on the street I see red and blue lights and hear shouting. AGM comes down through the staircase, seems initially angry when she perceives somebody in the staircase, but then sees my tray. “Oh thank God, that’s a good idea.”

“Do you need me to do anything else right now?”

“No… just… what you’re doing. And don’t let anybody up these stairs.”

“OK… and, um, why exactly are we doing this? I mean… with the bar, and the bottles, and….”

AGM inhales, sizes me up through narrowed eyes, and then exhales wearily.

“Don’t repeat this. It’s just that… we may or may not have secured our liquor license at this point…”.

“Ah. I see.”

If you have ever had a nightmare about being trapped in a Mexican Labyrinth… well, I have lived that nightmare.

Worming my way through the crowd trying to clear the evidence of just how much potentially illegal alcohol these people have consumed this evening, I overhear murmurs of “What the fuck is going on” and “I don’t think I’ve ever been told I can’t leave a venue…”.

One of the bartenders loads me up with the last of the bottles and sends me downstairs into the basement. On my way back up I find Sassy Server freaking out in a corner at the top of the staircase. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“I… no. No idea. I… I think the police might be upstairs.”

“Do we have our liquor license?”

“I don’t know. I would assume so…..”

“Because if we don’t, then we could all be held responsible for serving alcohol without a license.”

“Yeah.”

“Which would be bad. Like, really bad.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I’m asking you, do we have our liquor license?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Five minutes later I saw her with her bag, the other girl following.

“Guys, no one is supposed to go outside…”.

“I don’t give a fuck. This is so ridiculous. Whether we have it or not, I’m not gonna stick around to find out. Either way, we’re so far over capacity… Honestly, I’ve been waiting tables for ten years, and I’ve never seen such a shitshow.”

In the back server station I find Other First Hire downing a shot of tequila. “Dude, come on," I start to lay into him, "we’re supposed to be getting rid of all of that stuff.”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

AGM comes back and says that the cops are gone. People start trickling out. Somebody taps me on the shoulder, I turn around to find Rose McGowan. She is miniscule.

"Oh, yeah, it's OK," I tell her, "you can exit now."

"No, just..." she fishes in her purse. "You were helping me before. Here." She hands me a fifty dollar bill. Nice.

Back in the bar I find the Australian model.

“More water?”

“No, but… well, my friend wants your number.”

Ah ha. Maybe I am a person.

“Which friend?”

He points down the bar to one of the boy models who looks like he just may be over twenty-one. Boy model clearly knows what conversation we’re having, he smiles sheepishly (read: adorably) and waves.

“Well then, tell him to come ask me.”

Australian Model motions at Boy Model to come over.

“This is Boy Model, Boy Model, this is…”

“Annika.”

“Hi.” He has curly hair and what promises to be a sick body under the artfully-half-buttoned shirt the designer had dressed him up in.

Six months later he was still texting me, and still in my phone as Boy Model.

The only thing is, I was wrong about the whole over-twenty-one thing.

After an hour I'm still cleaning up. The liquor has been restored behind the bar. As it turns out, because we weren't charging (everything was paid up front by whoever was throwing the party), we were never really in danger of having a liquor license issue. But we destroyed all the evidence in the interest of playing it safe.

“Where’s Other First Hire?” I asked AGM when the place was mostly closed.

“I sent him home…he didn’t seem like he was helping much.”

“Fair enough. How much longer do you need me?”

“I think we’re done here. Do you have plans?”

It was three in the morning, so my only plan had been heading back to my twin-sized mattress on the floor.

“Not really…”.

“Cool. Let’s go drink upstairs.”

[Mexican Restaurant] is next door to a speak-easy style bar, operated by the same owners. AGM led me up a back staircase, and we emerged behind a gorgeous marble bar covered with antique-style bottles filled with what appeared to be potions.

Cute Scruffy Investor was lounging on a divan, and Male Co-Owner was smoking a cigarette in a wing chair. Mustachioed bartenders in lab coats were breaking everything down. A large doorman in a black overcoat came in from the street, locking the door behind him. AGM pulled up two leather ottomans for herself and me next to Male Co-Owner.

“So?” she asked him.

“She was here,” he replied.

“Oh yeah, I know. She was so incognito. I loved her dress.”

“She was fucking here.”

“Wait,” I interjected, “Who?”

“Sefani Germanotta,” Male Co-Owner replied, “Lady Fucking Gaga.”

“What?” I was astonished.

“Yeah, crazy, right?” a shorter guy who seemed rather underdressed for the evening had joined us. “Hi,” he shook my hand, “I’m I.T. guy. I live upstairs. And I do the computers for [Mexican Restaurant].”

AGM lit a cigarette and leaned back against the elaborately upholstered wall, removing her shoes.

“I didn’t realize we could smoke in here.”

“Eh, you can smoke anywhere after hours.”

Male Co-Owner stood up and started doing a sort of jig.

“Stefani Germanotta. Lady fucking Gaga. Was. In. My. Restaurant!”

“You did it. Congratulations. Now all you have to do is show up for your court date.”

“Court date?” I asked.

“Male Co-Owner gave the police a bit of a hard time…”.

“It was worth it,” he smirked.

AGM went up to the bar and poured us each a glass of wine. We toasted.

“Happy Fashion Week.”

I'm Cleaning Out my Room from High School...

... and I'm getting rid of a few things.

Does anybody want these Hello Kitty stickers?

No? How about this Audiovox cellphone accessory?

OK, well, perhaps a Diskman?

Novelty compact mirror?

Fight Club on VHS?

Old Navy gift cards?

Russian cough drops?

List of all of the boy I've ever made out with... last updated circa 2008?

Expired condoms?

Origami frog?

Promise ring?

Spice Girls cassette?

Incense?

No?

Your loss....