i think i’ll take brooklyn

When I waited tables in Manhattan, the following exchange was common:

Customer (waving): Hi, hi, yeah, we’re ready to order.

Me: Okay, great. What can I get for you?

Customer: Mmmm, I think I want….

Me: …

Customer: What do I want?

Me: …

Customer: Wait, Bob. Bob? What did you get that time with the tomato and the arugula?

Me: Why don’t I give you another minute?

Customer: No, no, no, don’t go. We’re ready. Noooowww, what do I want?

While working at restaurants in Manhattan, I frequently heard things like:

Can you describe the eggs benedict?

I don’t know what I want to drink. Something strong?

What’s the burger like?

Can you turn down the music?

I’m a regular here.

Now that I’ve been working in Brooklyn for six months, I don’t hear stuff like that so much. To be fair, I’m working in a bar and restaurant that cater to a younger, much more local crowd. I don’t deal much with tourists or gallery owners, I wait on people my age heading to band practice, I pour beer for guys who tip too much and laugh at my jokes and have been wearing the same t-shirt for six months (I’m not being hyperbolic– I think one of my favorite regulars will get married and be buried in the same crusty ass Iron Maiden shirt).

It’s a relief. Sometimes when I worked, I felt like I was dealing with customers who were trying to have every lifelong need met during a single dining experience. Hand me this, I need more of that, where’s my, oh wait this isn’t, can you please, we need the, but you said this cost, doesn’t this come with spinach? I was a short stroll from the ding farm dealing with customers and their needs and wants and demands.

Now I don’t huff and puff as much as I work. There are the occasional rogues– some princes and princesses who sneak in and try to tell me they can only have grass-fed this or that, and I smile, offer them a Miller High Life, and keep walking. I don’t mind doing a job, I don’t mind supplying info or being accommodating, but life has been a little tricky for a while and when I approach a table and someone launches into a litany of no this and do you have that, I just want to say shut the fuck up and eat your burger like everyone else and if you have some desires that need tending to, put your energy into finding a therapist or do what I do and go home, listen to the Counting Crows Pandora station and cry into your pillow. Now do you want mayo with that or not?

can’t wait to read

I’ve been snuggled up with Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for the past week. Now that I’ve gotten into it, I don’t/can’t/won’t put it down. The best part about the book is its reminder of how much I love reading and books and stories. Books like this make me love books everywhere.

Once I finish The Goldfinch (and I’ll be sad to put it down), here are a few that I want to follow up with:

• Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan
• Night Film, Marisha Pessl
• Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward
• Building Stories, Chris Ware
• Keepers Cookbook, Kathry Brennan and Caroline Campion
• Treasured Recipes from the Charleston Cake Lady, Teresa Pregnall

*The last two are wild cards for me. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not much of a cook. I love to bake, I just never do it anymore. But I really love reading cookbooks. And lately, when I can’t sleep, I page through recipes or browse baking blogs. One day, when I have a little more money and lot more time and a roomy kitchen, I’ll make use of all this food data I’ve been storing up.

elsewhere

This house is renting for $1800 a month. It has four bedrooms and three bathrooms and lots of woods and trees and a whirlpool bath solarium. That’s $650 more than I was paying for a jelly jar-sized studio in Brooklyn with a leaky ceiling. And I know this place isn’t in the city, it’s in Connecticut, which, well, maybe everyone doesn’t want to live there. But it is a little seaside town with vineyards and I bet there are parades along Main Street for July 4 and a cute little library. But it might also be one of those insulated little places that doesn’t take kindly to outsiders, especially ones that look like me, and I might get the side eye a lot as I buy groceries and magazines and beer. And I would wave and smile at my neighbors and try to become a regular at the local watering hole, but I might just get a chilly head nod back, which isn’t totally atypical for Connecticut, or New England in general, but I would be uncomfortable and start to hate leaving the house. And I would hole up that large colonial, albeit one with four bedrooms, but all that room wouldn’t be a comfort, it would give me more space to be paranoid and imagine that the sheriff and a gaggle of townsfolk will march to my door and throw a brick through the solarium window and shatter my dreams and hopes of a life with space outside of the city, far from the subway. Okay, maybe teeny, tiny, dumpy Brooklyn studios aren’t so bad. Not a ton of physical space, but maybe there’s more room for other stuff.

missing my friends

A few weeks ago, my friend Sam posted a beautiful picture of her bookshelves on Instagram with the caption “A house that has a library in it has a soul.” I commented on her picture three times, writing about how out of sorts I feel being so far away from my books. I’ve been out of my apartment for about ten months now, and couch surfing has its ups, it has its downs. A definite no-no, poopie bummer is not being able to have access to my books. I wish I could be someone who has little to no attachment to material things, but I’m so sentimental about some of my stuff. I can look at an item of clothing and be reminded of where and when I bought it, how drunk I got while wearing it the first time, what vacations I’ve taken it on. My books are like little time machines– they remind me of my past, call to mind old obsessions and concerns, make me remember how captured I felt while reading them. I miss poking through my stacks of books, I miss remembering a passage and finding the book and re-reading an entire chapter, I miss going through pages and seeing paragraphs I’d underlined and pages I’d dogeared. Eventually I will get an apartment again. I’ll settle down and buy sheets and dishes and bookshelves. I’ll be reunited with my boxes of books, my old buddies, and I won’t leave my house for three weeks.

weekly endorsements

I suggest!

• Roxane Gay has become one of my favorites. She has a novel on its way, a blog, and an absolute white-hot burning love for Channing Tatum. Here is a recording of Roxane Gay reading her short story “North Country.”
• Brewster. Please read this book. I find it heartbreaking and beautiful and recognizable.
• Always on the quest for frozen drinks. Reunion Surf Bar in midtown was a surprising find and they boast quite the frozen drinks menu. And Bill’s Bar and Burger has milkshakes that you can add booze to. Heaven, I say!

crazy annie

Last week I went up to visit my friend Emily on her family farm. Ryder Farm is a 126-acre spread in Brewster, New York, and I think the whole place has been bathed in that perfect golden light that doesn’t usually show up until sunset. It’s a beautiful farm near a lake. There are wild turkeys and stacks of hay. The main farmhouse made me think of all the Little House on the Prairie Books I read as a child, and I found myself yearning for a bonnet and wondering if Papa had smoked the hog yet.

Emily’s farm reminded me of camp. I spent ten summers at a sleepaway camp in Sussex County, New Jersey, and I can’t go to any woodsy area without thinking of Fairview Lake YMCA. It’s the way gravel sounds underfoot, how a dock bobs on the lake, how morning smells when you’re out of the city. Emily gave me a tour of the grounds and we passed a shed with “Keep Out” etched into its door. It made me think of horror movies and ghost stories. I asked Emily if Ryder Farm had a scary monster who lurched around at night, ready to eat babies and children. Sadly there are no tales of death and mayhem at Ryder Farm, but that warning to keep out made me think of Crazy Annie, and I’m 33 and pretty far from both my youth and my camp, but don’t you know my skin started to tingle and my chest got a little tight and I smiled at Emily but it was a forced, pressed kind of grimace, and I hope my hand wasn’t shaking as I suggested we keep moving and see the rest of the site.

I think most summer camps have a ghost story. If these camps are anything like Fairview, there will be an end of summer campfire around which the tale is spun. An older counselor or perhaps the camp director will relay, in bowel-loosening detail, the story of an old ghoul who haunts the grounds and kills the kids. For us, the resident psycho wildling was Crazy Annie– a jilted lover, a scorned kitchen cook who catches her sister kissing the man she loves, and while in a rage, while she’s reaching for a butcher knife to gut the treacherous pair, she bumps into a meat grinder, grinds up one of her hands (I think it’s the right one, but my lingering fear has made many specifics hazy), and runs off screaming into the woods, sans one hand, leaving a trail of blood and heartache behind her. And so the story goes: Annie’s sister and former lover are ripped up by a howling Annie, who now has a hook instead of a hand. And then dismembered campers start turning up in the bug juice, and counselors go missing, and limbs are hacked off, and if you hear a scratching on your cabin window screen at night, that’s probably Annie out there letting you know your ticket’s about to be called, and if you find bloody daisies on your pillow, that’s definitely it for you, the jig is up, start your goodbyes now.

The story is beautiful and ludicrous at the same time, and you could drive a Toyota Corolla through some of its holes (“How,” I would counter, “could Annie run into the woods and put a hook on her hand and not bleed to death or get an infection?”). But any attempt to graft meaning or logic onto the story was, in my mind, purely a defense mechanism; a way for my terrified, young imagination to protect me against the thought that someone out there would chop me up, would slit my belly and laugh as I held my intestines in my hands, somebody would do me harm for no reason other than my sheer existence, my vitality made me a target, and that scared me to death. I heard the Crazy Annie story my first summer, as a camper at ten years old. By the time I reached my last summer at camp, as a counselor at twenty years old, I still couldn’t walk around Fairview at night by myself. If a branch creaked, if a rock tumbled, I knew it was that crazy, murdering bitch coming for me, and I just didn’t have the stamina to face her on my own. Even now, even now– thirteen years since I’ve been at Fairview Lake, twenty-three years since I first heard the story– if I’m in the woods at night and some unexplained noise creeps out from the trees, my insides start roiling and my throat is in a knot. And it’s not because I think it’s a bear or an actual psychopath who might want to do me harm. It’s because I know that it’s my biggest fear from my youngest days coming to finish a job she tried to start long ago.

gulp

Oh drats. I read this Wait But Why article reposted on Huffington Post and the checklist began.

• Do I belong to Gen Y yuppie culture? Check!
• Do I feel unhappy and constantly plagued by a vague feeling of sorrow and loss? Check!
• Do I believe that I’m special and unique and the only reason for aforementioned unhappiness is that the rest of the world has yet to catch on? Check!
• Do I have expectations that don’t correlate with reality, ones that make me feel chronically dissatisfied? Check!
• Do I look at other people’s lives (on Facebook, Instagram, in the check out line at Trader Joe’s) and think they’re better off and prettier and smarter  and richer and having better sex and are all around better people than I am? Check!
• Will coming face to face with said arrogance, entitlement, “special” thinking make me feel lousy and even more understood and cause me to find solace in True Blood reruns, further perpetuating my feelings of being cheated out of what’s owed me? Check!

how to have fun

• Quit the job you hate. You’ll be worried about money, but quit anyway. You’ll spend so much money and time on your misery that even though quitting makes you panicked, it might make more fiscal sense in the long run.
• Say yes to cat sitting for your friends in their lovely new Park Slope apartment, wait, no, it’s really more like a house. It has a back patio, ceiling fans in every room, a washer and dryer, an ice machine in the fridge, and a lower level that has that wonderful smell of “house” as opposed to “apartment.”
• Meet your friends for a drink at a new bar in Gowanus and get relieved when they tell you that they are planning to stay in New York. They aren’t like so many other folks (you included) who fear that the hamster wheel of big city living will make it too hard to raise kids and not go bonzo coco loco.
• Take advantage of your free phone upgrade. Stop using your 4 year old phone that takes fuzzy pictures and get that new one with emoticons and a better lens. Get excited for the texts full of little drumsticks and smiley faces that you will send. Don’t transfer over any contacts or pictures, because then it will feel like your old phone. Add a few of the important numbers and then play a little guessing game with yourself and friends when you see numbers you don’t recognize on the screen.
• Crack open a blood orange Mike’s Hard Lemonade right before bed. Drink while finishing your book and leave the empty bottle on the kitchen counter to remind you how good life can get in those in between moments.
• Listen to the “Girl from the Ipanema” Pandora station. Enjoy how its easy listening vibe makes you feel like you’re sitting in an airport lounge.
• Don’t feel like a mooch when your friends and family offer to treat you to things. Generosity is the name of this game, and everyone in your life has opened up their hearts, homes, and wallets to you since being back. Say yes and don’t ever forget the trip to Montauk, brunch at Northeast Kingdom, lunch at Cafe Henri, Sleep No More, frozen cosmos and Schiavone at the U.S.Open, late lunch at the Olive Garden, mojitos at Native, and lobsters in New Jersey.
• Take an impromptu trip to the beach with your cousin and aunts. Snap pictures like the one above. Eat fried clams and look at Instagram all day and laugh at your belly pooching over your bikini bottom. Have chowder for dinner and then spend the night at your cousin’s. Laze on the sofa, get cozy in her air conditioned bed, rub your feet together under the sheets. As you fall asleep, try to remember your favorite parts of the day, the week, the month, this year, this lucky life you have, these people you love and need, these little pockets of home and fun you’ve created. Get ready to do it all again in the morning.

wahoo!

Up until last Sunday, I’d been feeling a little bumsky. I was hating my job, sleeping a lot, and eating nothing but candy and egg and cheese sandwiches. Then I quit my job, and my aunt and cousins treated me to a weekend in Montauk, and Leah and Amber took me to the U.S. Open, and I went wedding dress shopping with my sisters and my mom, and I spent a lovely day at Island Beach, and I met up with Carly and Erik and we laughed like loons about baby names, and I went to see a free play, and I stopped dreading evenings because I don’t have to go to work, and yes, I’m about nineteen steps away from the welfare office, but I’m smiling and happy and saying yes to everything and having lots of fun. Bumsky no mas.

thirty-seven things i miss about los angeles

I’ve been back in New York for thirty-seven days. It’s been really great being home (the only exception, the only black spot is my new job; my bosses talk to me like I’m bowl of ratatouille– slow to move and incapable of comprehending English), but there are things, so many things I miss about Los Angeles.

1. My little Fiat. It was my last rental car and had my total heart. That little car could’ve kept me in LA,  I adored it so much.
2. The crunchy french toast at the Standard Hotel.
3. Ray. It goes without saying. Me miss you.
4. Afternoons at the Beverly Hills library.
5. Target in Glendale. Best. Target. Ever.
6. Lucky moments: waiting in line for the Stanley Kubrick show at LACMA, not really wanting to spend $20 on a ticket. Someone from behind me shouts out “Anybody want a free ticket?!” Yay, me, I do!
7. Listening to audiobooks in my car.
8. Driving along 3rd Street.
9. Lynn. I miss my buddy like whoa. I miss our food adventures and long, long, long talks.
10. No rain. Tony! Toni! Tone! was right. It never rains in Southern California.
11. The windy, slopey, scary, make you wonder if you’ll ever see your family alive again right angle roads in Topanga Canyon. But the view. Boy, those views.
12. Hanging out with Bridget and Emily and little cutie pie Finley. They made me happy, they made me laugh, they made me feel like I had family close by.
13. Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway.
14. My route to work– west along 3rd Street, left onto La Cienega, right onto Wilshire Blvd.
15. Donuts at SK Donuts. Thanks, Ray! I really needed to gain those extra ten pounds before leaving.
16. Walking through Larchmont Village early evening– the kids would play in the streets, the smell of jasmine was everywhere, it made me want a house with a tire swing in the yard.
17. Happy hour margaritas at Tortilla Republic. Thanks for the heads up, Ray!
18. Book Soup and Skylight Books were my favorite book stores.
19. Late night toasted plain bagels with cream cheese and tomato at Fred 62.
20. Veggie Grill— missing the Caesar salad with buffalo “chicken.” Thanks for the suggestion, Lynn!
21. My coworkers. The customers were ten tons to deal with, but I loved everyone I worked with. When I get sad at my new crappy job, I just hear “Mister, mister, sir” and “Thank you for your cooperation and support,” and I get happy again.
22. The Landmark movie theater.
23. Buying one bottle of Perrier at a time at the 7-11 on 3rd and S Vista.
24. Going to the Grove right before closing time.
25. Getting lost.
26. Listening to KROQ 106.7.
27. Hunting down the cheapest gas prices.
28. Randomly catching the smell of the ocean. Once I was on Fairfax just east of 6th and smelled salt water for no reason, because it’s not near the beach, but I got goosebumps and nostalgia.
29. Discovering new old places. Casey took me to the Dresden (a restaurant that’s been in Los Feliz for damn near sixty years) and we listened to Marty and Elayne (lounge singers who have been playing and singing there since the Civil Rights movement probably) and Casey requested “Cheek to Cheek” for me and I swayed on my bar stool and drank tequila and club soda.
30. The Marie Callender’s salad bar.
31. Anything and everything involving Damon’s Steakhouse. Ray, you changed my life. I’m having my wedding reception at Damon’s.
32. Late night trips to Von’s. Any trips to Von’s, really. I liked that grocery store. The one on Melrose had a little table with books for a dollar. You took a book and put a buck in a huge, empty water jug.
33. Beer and fish and chips at the Reel Inn.
34. The weather– mid 70’s, constant sunshine, no humidity.
35. Recognizing parts of the city from movies I’ve seen. You get that with New York, too, but it’s different and more novel to me in LA.
36. Wonderful long lunches with Luanne.
37. The feeling you get that California really is a majestic place, as beautiful and historic as you expect it to be. The past feels actualized somehow in the weather, the architecture, the landscape, you feel rooted in something that feels simultaneously very right now and very back then. Which of course is true for most places, but there’s something about the space, the odd circus people, and the range from ocean to mountain that makes it feel singular. It makes me feel like I can’t wait to go back.