Best of 2013

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
- Zora Neale Hurston

I've always like that quote. It's just so...accurate. Especially as I get older. I'd like to add, though - it might be a while before you know which years are which.

2013 was kind of a weird year. Intense. One of those slow burns, where you don't realize how much has changed until it's over and you do, suddenly, realize - how much it's all changed. It can take a while to comb through all the Qs and all the As. Some things might belong in both piles, some in neither. Some might make their way from one to the other over time. I'm grateful for all of them, though - even if, in the moment, my feelings were more akin to 'Are You Fucking Kidding Me?'

It'll be a minute before I dig into that deep shit. Also, I just got back from visiting my parents and my dog isn't home yet (sometimes we holiday separately), so I'm somewhat emotional, and I don't really need to hop aboard the New Year's Crazy Train of Emotion right now. It's a local, making frequent stops for tiny tearful outbursts. It's fine, it just takes fucking forever, that route is exhausting. So, for now, some lighter - but no less true - fare:

Hotel Experience I Only Need Once: The Yotel.

Almost every hotel I stayed in this year was purely lovely. It was an utterly charming year in hotels. Even the Holiday Inn Express near Penn Station - the bed was apartment-sized, and I had a view into a kids' fencing academy across the alley. I didn't even know that was a thing!*

The Yotel was...different. I think the concept was 'The Future' - specifically, the future envisioned by people in the year 1995. Which included a lot of purple track lighting and pod-like spaces. Man, we really toned down our cultural expectations in the 90s. In Back to the Future Part 2, everyone was like '2015: Flying Cars, Hoverboards.' By the Clinton administration, we were like 'purple, smaller.'

Bathcorner adjacent view

So, in the future, New Age Murphy Beds are a thing. Your tiny couch will extend into a bed, extremely slowly, via a vaguely hospital-looking button installed into the leg of your tiny desk. When extended, the bed will touch the wall, bathing your feet in the warm glow of the giant television, allowing you to wonder if your whole life is occasionally a terrible Truman Show performance art piece. (Note: I was basically standing in the bathroom when taking this. Excuse me, the bathcorner. It was not a room.)

Watching tv from the shower was pretty cool

In the future, you can see your toilet from your bed. I don't like that. It makes me feel like I'm in jail. Fancy jail is still jail, people. Also jail-like (clearly I have never been to jail): the body wash and shampoo/conditioner (a 2-in-1, SHUDDER) were in dispensers, bolted to the wall. I'm not sure, but I feel like this takes innocent toiletry-hoarding into misdemeanor teritory. Yotel: the airport-jail experience. Of the future.

Salacious Yet Inspiring Memoir: Pam Grier's Foxy: A Life In Three Acts. Do you want to read about the time Richard Pryor's mini horse destroyed in the interior of Pam Grier's Jag with its mini horse pee? Of course you do.

Trip I Will Make My Assistant Take Next Year: The answer to this question should be Buffalo, because Buffalo is the worst. (Sorry, anyone from Buffalo. Sorry on several levels.) We should just give it back to Canada and see if they can do better**.

Even getting to and from Buffalo is an exercise is late industrial depression. My flight was supposed to leave at 10:10am. At around 10:15, myself and the other sad individuals making their way to Buffalo on a Tuesday morning were permitted through the gate and loaded...onto a bus***. I'm pretty sure it was the bus that transported Andy Dufresne to the penitentiary in The Shawshank Redemption****. We were driven to a 'plane' with about eleven seats and nine seat belts. I don't think I heard an engine, we were just catapulted into the air and piloted on like, air currents and hope. The lone flight attendant was a cranky 80-year-old man who immediately reminded everyone aboard that alcohol was available for purchase. (He was Hall of Fame. I asked for seltzer water and he kind of rolled his eyes. He asked if I wanted ice and my affirmative answer earned a double roll with a side of 'of course this bitch wants ice' airs. I LOVE HIM.)

It didn't get a lot better from there. It was snowing, then slushing, and I spent much of the trip was sliding around in a filthy white VW Beetle trying to avoid hitting rogue Buffalonians trudging down the middle of unplowed streets like refugees from a nuclear holocaust. Outside the tiny historic district I was visiting, the city was ringed with big-box dollar stores and fast-food joints; relics of once-lovely early 20th c. architecture, now host sites for methadone clinics, windows boarded across the upper floors. Mega churches that could double as indoor stadiums, schools easily mistaken for 1980s courthouses. I got lost and the sliding was unsettling, but the streets - and the stores, and the buildings - were mostly deserted. Except, of course, for the refugees We failed you, Buffalo. My lord.

That said, everyone I met in Buffalo was so nice. Like, absurdly, ridiculously nice, the kind of nice that makes me sort of nervous, but that can more than compensate for a shitty snowy afternoon and road zombies.

So, my actual answer is New Rochelle. Holy shit. I was there for less than an hour, and I'm pretty sure I stared directly into the face of evil about four times. It was like that movie Fallen, except the evil spirit was just being passed around to wherever I was likely to look next. One guy looked exactly like Laura Palmer's dad at like, the height of his possession. I realize none of this is specific or seemingly based in reality, but believe me, it was deeply unsettling. And absolutely the place I visited this year where I felt most in danger of being kidnapped and organ harvested^. I was terrified it was all going to downward spiral into a Mouth of Madness situation, I'd never be able to escape the city limits, and some old lady would chain me up behind the desk of the Trump Tower (which HAS to be ironic, right?) and eat me. Also, I had a vicious hangover for a portion of the trip, which is not New Rochelle's fault, but  it really didn't help impressions.

Okay, sorry, the actual answer is: Buffalo and New Rochelle. Both. My assistant will have to do both.

Repeat Offense: One afternoon, late in May, I sat at the window of a tiny restaurant in Woods Hole with a perfect taco and a glass of red wine, watching the ocean turn indigo as the sky grayed. I had an hour and a half to kill before the next ferry to Martha's Vineyard, so I went to get lunch. I've made this trip three years in a row. In 2011, my father and I had a talk about families and mortality, surrounded by noisy teenagers en route to a varsity baseball game. How strange to grow up on an island. In 2012, Kyle came with me. We sat inside and made a list of the most efficient ways to cross water, depending on distance. I still have the list. Across the top, the game ending answer: 'Like Jesus: Walk^^.' In 2013, I went alone.
It wasn't raining, but it was more than fog, and from the window I watched the ferry pull in and thought about those trips, about those years. We all have our unexpected places, rearview mirrors we stumble across, angles that have become our own. I have this corner of this street, this hour before I get on the ferry, the air full of water, water everywhere.
You can learn a lot in three years.

Happy New Year, everyone. May it bring you love, and laughter, and plenty to remember.


*Maybe it was a YMCA class and not an academy but WHATEVER, those crazed little beekeepers just delighted me.
**I know it wasn't part of Canada. Actually, I don't know that at all.
***I am not even going to get into the passengers. Okay, briefly: they included an Australian lady who I'm pretty sure was lured to Buffalo in an organ-harvesting scam, and a noticeably drunk guy in a rumpled suit who was 'in the perfume business' and planned on 'starting his life over'. In Buffalo. 
****I will admit to asking myself at this point 'are we just going to drive there?' Given my limited handle on American highway geography and like, physics, this thought probably generated more pondering than it warranted.
^And...the second organ harvesting reference I've made in the footnotes to a blog post? What the hell is the matter with me?
^^Which is certainly not the most efficient way, but it made us laugh. We'd also listed 'scuba walking' and 'water skiing tubing' (short trips only)'. While we were on a boat with cars inside of it.

I Can't Forget the Lyrics, Holiday Redux

I've been meaning to write this forever, but sometimes...life, man. Whatever. It's pretty boring. I got a promotion! Because my boss moved away, but I'm sort of killing it regardless, so it counts. Anyway, I've been distracted. Until now! I've been compiling my Year End Spotify Playlist, which I just capitalized the first letter of each word like it's a fancy thing I do each year. It's not. But it is a wonderful opportunity to revisit some lyrics I loved, loved to hate, or absolutely did not understand.

My Story -  R Kelly f/ 2 Chains
Problematic Lyric: This is my story/yeah I'm from that Chi town dirt/I went from being broke/To sleeping in Versace shirts.

I don't so much have a problem with this as I do a question: Does R. Kelly own a drawer full of Versace nightshirts? (Are there Versace nightshirts? Can someone get Kanye to design theVersace nightshirt?) Or does he simply end most days by passing out in the Versace top he'd been sporting all day? Either option is delightful.

Also, his new album is amazing, if simply (like most things R Kelly related) for the mere fact of its existence. At one point he claims that every baby in the 90s was conceived to his music. Which might not be entirely off-base.

Fine China - Chris Brown
Problematic Lyric: It's alright/I'm not dangerous.

I hate Chris Brown. And I REALLY hate that he makes catchy ass music that I car-dance to a whole bunch before I realize what's happening. This track is like, particularly wrong, though.
He's just lying. Look at that - I'm not dangerous.
Oh, really, Chris Brown? You're not? Are you not the same dude who beat up your girlfriend and then got a COMMEMORATIVE NECK TATTOO OF THE EVENT? Fuck you.

How Many Drinks? Miguel f/ Kendrick Lamar
Problematic lyric: How many drinks would it take you to leave with me?/Yeah, you look good and I got money/But I don’t wanna waste my time/Back of my mind I’m hoping you say two or three/You look good, we came to party/But I don’t wanna waste my time

This song raises like, a host of red flags. First, as Kyle and I have repeatedly discussed: ladies love Miguel. Like, we love Miguel. And why shouldn't we? He makes jams. His hairstyles are consistently creative. When he was a guest coach on The Voice, he seemed like a legitimately lovely young man. He is the best. And he knows what ladies like! We like him. Anyway, this song has me wondering if he realizes all this. Also, if maybe he needs to look elsewhere for ladies. And also like maybe when he's at the club he's sort of a panicky jerk. Let's break this down:
a) How many drinks, Miguel? Zero drinks. It will take zero drinks to get that lady home. It sounds like you're in a club, so she's probably already had a drink. You're fine. You're Miguel! No one needs to drink to want to spend time with you. I bet your shoes are amazing.
b) Are you on a schedule, Miguel? Time management seems like an issue for you. Not money, though. I don't really understand this dynamic.
c) Miguel, this seems like a terrible strategy. Biggie told you: let that other guy go buy the wine, then creep up from behind and ask her what her interests are, who she's there with. You know - things to make her smile, and what numbers to dial. Don't make her guess at a magic number of drinks like it's a fucking carnival game. And what if she wants four drinks? Is that okay? What if she's like 'five drinks'? Besides the fact that she's drunk now, is that a deal breaker? She needs to know beforehand, exactly how many drinks?
d) Wait, is this normal? Do people walk around the club assigning How Many Drinks to other patrons? I am so happy I never go out anymore.
e) I don't know. Miguel says he came to party, but I really wish he would just like, hang out and enjoy the night. This all sounds really stressful.

Bad - Wale f/ Tiara Thomas
Problematic Lyric: Not the lyrics - just the metal bedspring that creaks in the background throughout the entirety of the song.

WTF is happening in this song. Are they in an abandoned house? Is this mattress from the 70s? Wale. Aren't you a rapper? DON'T YOU HAVE A POSTUREPEDIC?


BEYONCE*.
There is a new Beyonce album. I haven't bought it yet, because I think iTunes is stupid and I won't watch any of those videos more than once, but it's fine because Beyonce can do whatever the hell she wants. It is a completely true fact, that every emotion you've ever had about a boy, Beyonce has a song for. EVERY EMOTION. I love her. She completes me.

I'm sure I'll love the whole thing, but for now I've only heard what they've played on Hot 97's morning show:

Drunk in Love f/ Jay-Z: I have no idea what's going on here, other than Beyonce and Jay have a fucking WEIRD TIME when they drink, and they seem to enjoy the hell out of it. From what I can put together, they wake up on the kitchen floor post-blackout, continue drinking, retire to a half-filled bathtub for some adult time - for which 'surfboarding' is apparently the chosen euphemism in the Knowles-Carter household - then Jay Z eats her boobs for breakfast.

Obviously I prefer the Jay of a simpler time, when he boasted about acquiring Magnavox television sets, rather than his personal art collection and Twitter beef. That said, dude is a grown ass man and has nothing to prove to me. But it is really nice to know that even if he isn't popping Molly (ugh**) he's still down to occasionally get inappropriately drunk with his wife and make what sounds like an ungodly mess for the staff to clean up the next day.

Mine f/ Drake: Is this a song about post-partum depression? An emotional trial I've never had! Beyonce is a GENIUS AND WE'RE LUCKY SHE SHARES HER EXPERIENCES TO BETTER PREPARE US FOR OUR OWN LIVES. Also, I suppose if I were to pick any male artist to collaborate on a song about post-partum depression, it would totally be Drake. Well done, Bey.

Merry Christmas and shit!



*That Beyonce and R Kelly released new albums within two weeks of each other is my Christmas Miracle.
**I think my deeply judgy attitudes regarding Molly can be chalked up to some old lady hater issues, since it really came on the scene after the time in my life where I'll be trying any new drugs. Like, that's it - I'm not going to be trying any new fun shit. My body simply can't take it. My body recently brought to my attention that I can't even drink through hangovers anymore. That's off the table. Getting older is sort of like slowly realizing you're a superhero, except your abilities are only revealed as you lose them. I think Molly represents all of that for me. 

Big Pissin Up In NYC*

*My dad came up with this title. Months ago. He won't stop reminding me that I haven't written 'the most important thing' yet - a post about places to pee. Anyway, the title is brilliant. So, here you go, Pops. (This is also your birthday present.) 

A significant portion of my job entails scooting around* Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn taking pictures of gorgeous old buildings. I've mentioned this. I'm led on weird micro-tours of insanely luxurious interior spaces. I get lots of reading done on the subway. I meet pseudo-and-actual celebrities in surreally intimate environs. It's pretty great. Except when I have to pee. That part can be a bit of a bummer; I have to pee all the time.

It's my own fault, because I am absolute freak about hydration. I understand that skipping one of the eight (or ten or twelve, stop counting) glasses a day won't immediately transform me into shriveled and flaking cornhusk-doll version of myself. I know that's not true But...what if it is true? (What if I turn in to a scarecrow???) It at least sounds like a slippery slope. So I drink fucking tons of water all the time. Which is fine, since bathroom access isn't usually a serious issue.

Except when it is. When I'm running around all day, and my water bottle's empty, and my bladder's full, and I am nowhere near my hotel room, and won't be for hours. Then I have to find somewhere to pee. Those times, I wish I had a George Costanza app that would tell me the closest, cleanest, accessible bathroom. Then I remember that would require me to own and operate a smartphone, and I'm all 'blech, nope', and give myself a baby high-five (right -I clap softly) for my unmatched self-reliance. I have scouted these locations on my own. You're welcome?

Starbucks:

 My boss told me that Starbucks gets a tax break for allowing complete public access to their bathrooms. The tax break may or may not be real, but the access thing certainly is. This is good, because there are approximately three Starbucks locations on every block. This is bad, because 97% of those bathrooms are full of people already hip to this. Including people in various stages of homelessness. Not judging! But if you're waiting in line for more than a few minutes, be aware than you might be waiting on someone to finish washing their armpits in the sink.

Of course, they're not all overrun with people making the best of a hygienic apocalypse. Just use your judgement: avoid Starbucks bathrooms proximate to subway stations. Or in the Village. The Christopher Street/Sheridan Square location (YEAH I KNOW THEIR FORMAL NAMES) is a fucking horror show. It's staffed by the nicest people ever - seriously, so pleasant, all of them - but the line for the bathroom, which is constantly five people deep, is like a slow-moving human conveyor belt of impending tragedy. Everyone exiting the bathroom looks like they were just forced to slaughter a childhood pet to survive a famine. Avoid.

DudeBros seem to be an antidote. DudeBros must be some sort of bathroom-dweller repellent. I get it, I also find them fairly repellent, but I'll take a minute to appreciate their contributions to my bladder relief. It doesn't matter what neighborhood  you're in, if you notice a Starbucks packed with DudeBros, just run in and use the bathroom, even if you don't have to go. They're immaculate. It's weird.

Restaurants: This is a better move, but you might have commit to a story. At least have one prepared in case someone tries to seat you. 'I'm looking for someone' is usually enough. Then on the way out just be like 'Sorry, guess they aren't here! I even looked in the bathroom!' and run out. The best play is to not even make eye contact with the host and walk in there like you were out having a cigarette or something and you need to wash your hands before you eat. Pick some place midrange, and it's likely no one cares about their job enough to stop you. This applies to bars, too - I'm just too likely to get waylaid in a bar, it's not an efficient time-management option for me.

Large Retail Stores: 

Large retail stores are so much better than restaurants. You won't have to interact with anyone, you won't need a story. They're rarely crowded. You might get to spend some weird time in a store you'd otherwise have no use for. My personal favorite is the Babies R Us in Union Square. Why there is a two-story Babies R Us in this location, I have no idea. There's no parking. Are you going to stock up on cribs and strollers and manhandle them onto the subway? That seems awful for everyone. It does help explain why the whole store is always empty. Especially the bathroom! Sometimes you'll wander into my favorite species of human: The Confused Male, holding like, a breast pump and a mobile, just looking absolutely terrified, but don't make any sudden movements, and they won't bother you.

Whole Foods are also great for bathrooms. Except the one, interestingly, also located in Union Square. This bathroom is basically a bare toilet semi-concealed behind a Venetian blind in a rectangular room that allows way too many people inside. It's like being pee-interrogated in front of a firing squad, it's awful. But most of them aren't like that.

Note: Bathrooms in large bookstores are basically the same as a Starbucks bathroom. There's always weird puddles inside and somebody's lost grandpa is standing by the door trying to figure out how to drink out of a dirty water fountain, it's horrible, don't use those.

Hotels: So hotels are my favorite way to go, and I highly encourage you to seek out the bathroom in the lobby or ballroom and maybe get a little lost and explore in there. These bathrooms are ALWAYS the nicest, and have the best soaps and mirrors and lighting, but I implore you to MAKE SURE IT IS A HOTEL. And not a named apartment building. One afternoon this spring, I ducked into a lovely, grand old building somewhere near the 72nd Street subway station and found myself tangled in a conversation that hopped an express train to Crazy Town. When I walked in, a doorman asked me who I was there to see, as was his job. Rather than just admitting my mistake like a normal person, I MADE UP A NAME. But not a whole name, I just said "Mark". When he responded that there was more than one Mark in the building, I said "I have to make a phone call" and just ran out the door. I didn't reach for my phone or anything. Dude was legitimately trying to help me, and I created a situation where - best case scenario - he thinks he kept a Craigslist prostitute out of the building. I bet the bathrooms in that joint were amazing, though.

Portapotties:  NO HAHA JUST KIDDING NEVER.

This is a picture of the last time I used a PortAPotty for urination purposes.

That is the face of a person's whose sensibilities have been so deeply offended, she's afraid they might never recover. Honestly, I don't know if they did. Note the sadistic joy on Farid's face, as they awaited my exit. (Kyle took the picture, they'd used these filth chambers already.) I hate PortAPotties. Loathe. I find them vehemently uncivilized. I don't like peeing on top of other peoples' pee. It's disgusting to me. And I know there's no way the mix of filth below me will like, travel up my pee stream and infect my urethra but that's all I'm thinking about when I'm in there. But we were at a beer festival, it was literally a hundred degrees outside, there was nowhere else to go, and I was dying.
Next time, death is an option.

Anyway, stay hydrated! It's worth it, honestly. Your skin will look great.



*I can scoot on foot. I'm like the housekeeper from The Jetsons.

Gravity: Underpants and Confusion

Okay, so I owe my dad a post about peeing in New York (that was weird to write) and it's coming, I promise - especially since I have another travel week on the horizon - but first: my review of the critically-discussed movie Gravity. Massive spoiler alerts. Sort of.

As a disclaimer: I'm not really into space. I actually think space is pretty stupid and don't understand why anyone would want to go there. Did you run out of amazing places on Earth to visit? Yeah? Liar. It takes forever to get NOWHERE in space. There's no wine. You can't bring your dog. I'm pretty sure there's no internet. No bookstores. Space is literally infinitely boring.

So the whole premise of the movie - some lady like, falling out of her spaceship or whatever* - is not that sympathetic to me. If you fall out of your spaceship, that is your fault. For being in space in the first place. I feel much the same about people who get eaten by bears while camping in remote areas. Do you know that we invented hotels? People bring you new soaps every day. Nice soaps. And towels. You want to sleep in dirt, fine. But don't blame the bears. You failed a Darwin test. There are no bears in hotels.

Anyway, you're like 'so why the fuck did you go see Gravity, you joyless harpy?' Fair question. Kyle had two free movie passes, and we'd heard Gravity was kind of visually ill when viewed on IMAX/3-D, and that was happening at the theatre near Kyle's house, and the idiot government is still shut down - you might have heard - so no museums are open, and it was rainy, so we were like 'let's just do that'. Everyone likes George Clooney. Even if he's in stupid space.

Before we left, we spent a moment with the new inhalation contraption favored by cool kids and people like Action Bronson. Kyle took a shot of E&J in the basement, because that's where they keep their E&J. We had weird/great/unnecessarily strong mango margaritas at a Mexican place near the train station. This paragraph kind of explains the rest of my review.

We got tickets to the 5:30 show. It took forever to get popcorn and Junior Mints, and once I was out of the line we walked through the first door we saw with 'Gravity' scrolling across the marquee line. Inside, the ONLY seats left were in the middle of the very front row. It didn't seem like we had much choice, so we just sat.

It was close to 5:40 - figuring three to five minutes for previews, we didn't think we were in such bad shape. But everyone was SUPER SETTLED IN. No shuffling around or anything; it was sort of intimidating. I was a bit put off. How seriously can you take any situation where every person in the room is wearing the same silly glasses? On screen, Sandra Bullock was deep into some existential crisis, and I was like, Jesus, space movies are IMMEDIATE bummers.

But whatever, we were there, so I tried to commit. Even though the first row of a 3D IMAX movie is unpleasant as HELL. It should be illegal to sell tickets to those seats. If you have any kind of seizure disorder, I am almost sure you could sue AMC for triggering the shit out of you.

After ten minutes, I was pretty bothered by the lack of set-up. Was this movie just throwing conventional narrative structure out the window? That seemed unlikely, given the target audience. Something was wrong. Kyle was on the same page.

"Do you think this is maybe the middle of the movie?" It seemed possible. We had no idea what was going on. Then George appeared. He and Sandy already seemed familiar. He dropped some knowledge. I elbowed Kyle: "Yo, let me look at the tickets." He handed them over. They said 5:30, and it was only 5:58, so this must be the beginning. It took another five minutes for me to realize the movie might be playing on several screens.

"This has to be the middle of the movie." We agreed. "Should we leave and find the right theatre?" We could not decide. Kyle'd become invested. That more or less settled it. And it was cool, I kind of was too, and we'd likely have similar problems in the right theatre at this point. I was mostly just annoyed that no one seated around us had the decency to be like 'hey, morons, this is the middle of the movie' when we walked in.

Anyway, onscreen: Clooney gives Sandy a pep talk, justifies her child's death-related depression, then disappears. I assume George died earlier in the film and that was his space ghost or something.  The talk works, because he's George Clooney, and Sandy's inspired to live or whatever. So she punches a LOT of buttons in an attempt to send herself back to Earth - like honestly, she gets out an instruction manual and just presses a ton of shit randomly-  it's exactly how I approach every DVR/cable set up I've ever encountered, so now I'm pretty confident I could be an astronaut. Then she blasts back to Earth and lands on a tropical beach, and gets out of her pod and lies on wet sand (gross) and cries, and she's wearing a tank top and underwear and I was like "When did she take her pants off? Did they burn off on re-entry? Is this Bali?" And those remain my biggest questions about the movie. Because then it ended. Also, Sandra Bullock is like, 50 years old and looks AMAZING in her underwear. Just wanted to shout that out. Hot-ass middle aged people in this movie, if that's a drawing point for you.

I asked Kyle if  we should  find someone and explain what we did wrong and see if we could watch the beginning parts that we missed, and he replied "I don't really feel like I need to, and now we have time to catch the Sox game." Which - word. Because it was probably better with more George Clooney, but even the parts in space that we did see were pretty boring, because they were in SPACE and that shit is boring as hell. So then we both went home. On my way, I bought some brown rice sushi at the Foggy Bottom Whole Foods and it was terrible. But there was still a whole box of Junior Mints and half a bottle of wine in my purse, so I'm chalking it up as a win.

Overall, pretty great little Saturday.

*My confusion regarding the premise of the movie will become clear in a moment.

Mr. Jackson If You're Nasty

The summer before my 2L year, I walked into the New Orleans LSPCA a little after 4:00 in the afternoon, looking for a puppy.

My roommates were still gone, and would be until right before classes started in a few weeks. I was lonely. (I've never denied being emotionally impulsive.) Besides, I'd wanted a dog all last year anyway, I lived a five minute walk from school, in a big, wonderful house with a little backyard - it might never be a more perfect time for a puppy. And it didn't feel right, living in a house without a dog. I'd always had dogs, I was a dog person.

That's what I was looking for: a dog, some charming mutt of unknown provenance, a puppy that would grow into a hefty canine, one that would take up space in my car, on the couch, in my life. There had always been a dog. My parents adopted Onyx, their pointer/lab mix three years before I was born. She guarded me when I crawled around on my baby blanket, wouldn't let strangers too near without my parent's permission. Simon, the massive Rhodesian we adopted the summer before ninth grade, slept outside my mother's bedroom door nights my father was working in Boston, keeping an eye on all of us, on the street outside, from the top of the stairs. We had our own special thing, too - he protected the hell out of that house, but never blew up my spot when I snuck home late. That's what I was looking for.

But it's not what I found, those puppies were a mess, either sickly-looking, oddly-tempered, or like they'd grow up to be about purse-sized. No, no, no. That wouldn't do at all. So I turned around and started back. You can try again in a few weeks.

The puppies were at the back of the building, so I had to walk through a full row of the adult dogs to get to the door.  I kind of said hi to them all, but didn't pay them much mind - I wanted a puppy, someone I could know from their start. I was three-quarters of the way down the line of kennels when, on my left side, a stocky brown dog who'd been sitting patiently, stood up on his hind legs, and pounded the cage with his front paws. Not aggressively, just a 'Hey! Over here!' Then he sat back down, and looked at me.

He was adorable. Chocolate brown with a white streak down his chest, big liquid eyes, a face shaped like something between a heart and a square. He didn't bark, he didn't pace. He just looked at me. I read the card pinned to the cage. His name was Hershey, he was about a year old. He was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix. I'd never even heard of that before.

The staff starting coming out through the kennels - it was almost dinner, time for everyone to go. One woman saw me standing where I was and stopped. Her face lit up, slowly, almost cautious. 'He is a great dog,' she said. 'Great.' I nodded. 'We're closing now, but come back tomorrow, take him out.' I said I would, said goodbye to the dog, and left. I don't think I'd planned on coming back, but the next afternoon there I was.

I took him outside, and he was friendly and sweet and all, but kind of...aloof. He wasn't fawning all over me just because I happened to be there. It was cool to meet me, but let's all be reasonable. It was weird, but I kind of respected the hell out of that. And, let's be honest - there's nothing I love quite like an emotionally unavailable man.

The staff was thrilled. They were all in love with him. He'd been there for months, after being left in the parking lot with a chain around his neck. They'd put him in a children's camp program, brought him around as a breed ambassador dog. They could not figure out why no one had taken him home.

And that's the story of how I met the dog we now call Baylor Jackson, canine homie extraordinaire, the oldest soul I think I've ever encountered, and every single thing I was looking for the day I walked into that animal shelter. We had to spend too many months apart that next year, because I went a little crazy, and then nature went very crazy, but otherwise, we've been together ever since. I picked him up in Houston, after Katrina - a friend's aunt had taken him in, one of the greatest kindnesses I've ever experienced, for which I am eternally grateful. She fell in love with him too, of course. When I showed up that night he was fat as a pig, she'd been cooking him his own dinners, full plates of food. She gave me a gallon-bag of frozen turkey on our way out the door: 'he loves my turkey.' He sat on my lap the whole drive home. My legs lost feeling somewhere outside of Lake Charles, but I didn't care.

In the end, it didn't matter that we didn't know each other from the beginning. I'll never know what happened to him that first year. There are clues - he still has scars on his ears, and one on his head if you know where to look. He's not a big fan of tall men, and he hates it when people give daps. HATES it. There's something about knuckles-hitting-knuckles that upsets him deeply. So no, I don't know, exactly, but I have an idea. And it doesn't matter. The day we met was it's own kind of beginning, for both of us. You can start over anytime.

We made his birthday August 12 - exactly a month between my brother's and mine. Which means he will be ten this year. Ten. He's grown in a grizzled bit of old-man beard, but otherwise he's largely the same. People on the street regularly ask if he's a puppy, actually don't believe me when I tell them, which is hilarious to me, that would be the weirdest thing to lie about. And now, nine years down the line, I think about that puppy lesson all the time. You can have the grandest plans, you always think you know what's right for you. But you probably don't. There's probably someone who knows better than you. And it's okay to trust them.

Happy Birthday, Baylor Jackson. Thanks for picking me.

A Post Apocalyptic Year In Review

"That's all right. I like to have my heart broken." - Kurt Vonnegut

***

"Getting my heart broken was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

I said that to a friend last night. We were standing in the kitchen, talking about boys*. Technically, I was crouching in front of the fridge, trying to find a spot to shove the broccoli, so she didn't see my face. I'd had the thought before, but I'd never said it out loud. And I'm glad it was a weirdly semi-private moment of revelation, just me staring down some hummus and a giant rogue beet, because it almost bowled me over, how true it was. I didn't say it to comfort, or provide perspective. I said it because it was goddamn true. I don't think I could have made it through the last twelve months otherwise.

It's a storm at first, of course, and you're just one tiny person alone on the open ocean, in a terribly leaky raft. In the dark. Shit looks pretty dire. It's like all the scary parts of 'The Odyssey', but with cheaper wine. It's fine, though. You'll get through it. Because you can get through anything, you know. And once the sky clears, and the churning stops, there's a gratitude: I didn't know I could do that. A clarity: you can see again. It looks different, everything's been rearranged, this new landscape is totally unfamiliar, but all these new things: caves and craters, majestic gnarly trees along the shoreline, sea boulders baked in the sun - they've been there all along. All this upheaval has simply allowed them to reveal themselves. Get acquainted. Explore it all. You'll only get better for it.
Here's what I found:

Tardy Hardy: Sometime in April, while scrambling to make an early morning appointment in Brooklyn, I realized my perpetual lateness (understand that I am referring to not only PERPETUAL tardiness, but also, in many cases, extremely exaggerated tardiness. Sometimes I show up literally hours late for shit, and no one is surprised) was a primarily a twisted attempt at keeping a stranglehold on youth. Via staggering immaturity. That it was sort of complete bullshit to be all 'Oh, I just don't understand how clocks work' (WHAT? I know! I SERIOUSLY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME) while actually never having missed a flight in my life**. Including morning flights. And those early morning appointments in Brooklyn. Because I apparently do understand levels of consequences, and if I can navigate those, I can probably figure out rudimentary time management, right? All this dallying to way-beyond-the-last-minute, followed by tizzies and scrambling was just ME creating unnecessary hoops to jump through, with the sole purpose of making myself crazy, because youthful people are harried and crazy, and old people are calm and boring. Then I was like 'LOOK AT THAT CRAZY TRAIN OF ILLOGIC, YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE TO PUT MUCH EXTRA EFFORT INTO KEEPING THINGS NUTTY AROUND HERE, ALSO, WHY ARE YOU YELLING, THERE IS NO REASON TO YELL. CALM DOWN.'

Then I remembered that I like being really calm and I sort of hate young people. That a hundred times in the last six months I've said "You could not pay me to relive my twenties" and meant it all the way down to my core***. That my constant commitment to unreliability is not proving anything to anyone. That it's actually pretty selfish. Not that I've actually done anything about this, but it was a new perspective to consider: I can hang on to my immaturity as long as I'd like****. It will leave my youth in the dust. And I get to be completely calm about it.

Puff Puff Pass: Related, I quit smoking. Considering I will basically hold you down and slather you in sunscreen if you so much as think about exposing your bare face to a UV ray, it started feeling hypocritical to be so actively contributing to my own dermal wrinkling*. It's the same misguided immaturity bullshit. Again, my rampant disrespect for my own little lung sacs is not proving anything to anyone. No one cares. Why does this need to be part of my identity? Because when I got down to it, that was the whole attachment: 'This is something I do'. That's an ivy-and-vines way of thinking: such a nice contrast at first, a highlight to the whole, some lovely organic decoration that will, if left unchecked, eventually obscure everything underneath. That will, eventually, tear apart the very thing it's anchored to. Cut it off, man. There's nothing to be scared of. You're still you under there. So, yeah. I quit smoking. Cigarettes**.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, In the Summertime: That was my mother's personal jingle for summer vacations when I was a kid. She'd start singing it before we even pulled out of the driveway, before we'd even packed up the car. She was so excited. My mother is not exactly the emotionally effusive sort, so it just kind of radiated out of her, this sincere joy. On the highway, my brother and I would cast semi-withering glances at each other across the backseat: Calm down, lady. We are not even close to there yet.

It wasn't until this year, this grindy year of work travel, emotional mountain climbing, coupled with the steadily amplifying atmospheric DC grime, and the undeniable reality that I am getting fucking OLD and all this shit tires me out in ways no one adequately prepares you for... Of course we did not understand my mother's elation back then, I'm pretty sure I only have the most basic comprehension of it now, considering she was like, a full-time nurse with two full-time children and car payments and shit, and I take pictures of pretty houses, and am responsible for solely my astonishingly well-behaved dog. I have a SmarTrip card. That like, never has money on it. And yet - the weeks leading up to vacation were like the first three weeks of December when you still believe in Santa. I might be old now, but I can still recognize that sort of anticipation, the kind that oozes all through you, drips over your heart like honey.

And goddamn if it wasn't one of the best vacations I've ever had. I have a habit of tempering my expectations, lest I be disappointed by the end result, but I didn't here, and I'm glad - because I wasn't. Fuck man, Maine. That whole 'Vacationland' motto is NOT hyperbole. I've been to Maine before, I've loved Maine before, but not like this. This was like a balm. In the kayak, collecting mussels off the rocks, water so blue it was black in places, cold like only ancient things can be, I told Kyle: "Whatever is wrong with me, this makes better." It is a simple thing to say, a tremendous thing to realize. And it's inside me now, I can go back any time I want.

Later that week, after midnight, sitting around a table with two of my favorite people in the world, I laughed so hard I cried (for a variety of reasons), so hard I had to get up and leave the table. I walked the five steps to the bathroom, slid my spine down along the door frame until I was laughing and crying on the linoleum, sitting and rocking and laughing and crying and eventually just straight up crying, these pure love tears, straight from this well of joy I can't always get to on my own. I wish I'd thought to taste them at the time - I know it's impossible, but part of me believes they wouldn't even have been salty. Then I pulled myself together and rejoined the boys at the table. We went outside and sat on the dock and watched for fireworks - there were fireworks almost every night that week, like exclamation points, like confetti, like even the sky was as happy as we were and had to let us know. We were quiet, and we sat in a row, and looked up at the stars until we almost fell asleep.

So I get it, Momma. I get the song now.

Love you guys.



*'Standing in Kitchens, Talking About Boys' is an alternate working subtitle for 'The Katie Neuner Story'.
** ...because I got there too late. I've never missed a flight because I got there too late. I have missed two flights due to distractions in the airport bar. Statistically, this is sort of amazing.
***Unless we're talking about a LOT of money, and only my late twenties. What? I've got loans, bitches.
****Boom Pow Surprise! That probably wasn't the conclusion you were hoping for. Whatever, it's honest. 

* Remember that early 90s PSA where these girls get their friend to quit by appealing to her vanity and crumpling up a photo of her face? That works, PSA people! It just takes like, 16 years.
**The caveat to this being: if I lose any of this hard-earned smoky vocal seasoning, I will suck down packs of Parliaments until it returns. I mean, duh, it was sort of the whole point. That, and being able to duck out of any social interaction whenever I got bored.

Happy Mother's Day

My boss and I had a meeting at our lawyer's office the other day. We met with my favorite one - she's smart, and funny, and warm, and genuine, and a whole lot of other qualities you look for in a human being, generally, and I think are undervalued in lawyers, specifically. Walking us to the elevator bank after the meeting, she mentioned she'd just finished 'Lean In': 'It's pretty universally applicable'. She and my boss - both professionals and mothers - discussed the working mom balance, that maybe the tides are finally really turning, equitable division of responsibilities in households is more and more the norm...I fell back a little. Not because my only contribution would have been along the lines of 'My dog is amazing at cleaning up food I drop on the floor, and he can tell if someone has evil in their soul, both come in handy.' Well, not only because of that. But because, also, I was thinking: 'How strange that any of this would be a foreign concept. No one had to suggest any of this to me. I just watched my mother.'

Four years old, leaving a department store in the rain, sulking and whining because I didn't get something I wanted. Stomping: "It's not fair!" My mother did not break stride. "Life's not fair, honey," she said. "Get used to it." Oh, that ALL PARENTS were this honest from the gate. Because it isn't, is it?

Thirteen years old, the first time I wore foundation, I put on entirely too much. Probably everyone is terrible at makeup in the beginning, you get better. And now people are surprised, given my near religious devotion to mascaras and sparkly eyeshadows and tinted moisturizers, that my mother doesn't wear any makeup at all. She doesn't. I say: 'I figured this shit out on my own'. But that's not entirely true. That night, she took me into the bathroom. As I washed it off, she told me 'it should look like you're not wearing anything'. The second most important thing you can tell a girl about her face. She didn't have to say a thing about the most important part, I learned by example. Her facial care routine has always been on point.

Sixteen years old, in the hospital, feeling the worst and saddest and most unloveable, like a garbage wretch of a child, like I deserved anything awful she, anyone, everyone felt about me. In the depths of that, my mother sent me a stuffed lamb, the softest, loveliest thing, it fit in the crook of my elbow. In the card attached, in her gorgeous, delicate cursive - my mother's handwriting looks like it belongs in a Jane Austen novel - she told me how much she loved me, the way she loved me, in a way that made everything seem, if not immediately better, then hopeful - like there were wonderful things ahead that I couldn't imagine yet, but she had ultimate confidence in. Hope is the purest gift. And, she was right. I kept the lamb; she helps me remember.

Twenty-one years old, melting down over something impossible, some insurmountable challenge. My mother: "You know, human beings can't remember pain accurately," she turned a page, considered a point in the distance. "Otherwise, no one would ever have a second child." It is the most brilliant advice I've ever received. This seems so bad right now, but pain ends. Eventually it's not even a memory. It is amazing what we can get through, what we are capable of becoming next.

Twenty-two years old, my mother takes me on a tour of HHC's new heath care center. She started there when I was in high school, an organization scattered across two offices, now consolidated into a spectacular renovated factory building downtown. It was of course an effort of many, but walking through the building, Sally introducing me to contractors and architects and administrators and doctors, I kept thinking 'my mother did this. My mother did this.' There are people with giant hearts, and then there are the people with giant hearts in action, who do things that help innumerable people that they will never meet, will never thank them, and who don't care about that. Lean in? My mother hoisted that shit over her head and ran with it.

Twenty-four years old, I'd spent the summer having a slow-burn of a breakdown in my parent's house, they barely got me back to law school. Barely. I'd been back in New Orleans a week when my mother called me. Hurricane Katrina was still all speculation and hypothetical disaster. It was a Friday night. "I'm buying you a ticket," she said. "No," I told her. "No, it'll be nothing. We'll go to Houston if we need to, like for Ivan. I just got back." (What a fucking brat.) "I'm buying you the ticket," she said. "You're coming home tomorrow morning." And I did. And everyone knows what happened next.

Twenty-nine years old, sitting on the back porch in Scituate with my mother and KH#1, drinking red wine out of sparkly little glasses in the sun, my mother tells us the story of how she and my father met. I'd never heard it before. Later, when I get a little too emotional at dinner, stand up and cry-toast KH#1, my mother pats the seat next to her, suggests 'No more wine' and pats my leg. It occurs to me that there might not be an ounce of judgment in this woman.

Thirty years old, days from thirty-one, I call my parents and my dad picks up. I ask 'Is Mom there?' and he pauses. "Is everything okay?" It has been an historical rarity, an issue I can bring to one of them and not the other. I take a weird little half breath. "I need to talk about boys." The most insanely reasonable, comforting conversation about matters of the heart follows. I think: 'is there anything she doesn't know?'

Momma, thank you. For being you, showing me everything you've shown me, teaching me everything you've taught me, and mostly, for letting me be myself, for believing in me and always knowing when I need a boost the most, for surprising me into believing in myself. You can ask anyone, I say it all the time: "If Sally thinks it's good, if Sally believes in it..." Thank you for showing me that there isn't a thing I can't do. Thank you for being my mother, and thank you for being my friend. I love you so much.

Happy Mother's Day,
kk

I was waking up from a nap when I heard. S texted me something about bombs in Boston, and I rolled over, bleary eyed, put the phone back on the night stand. Then I sat up. Wait.

I cried in my hotel room, big, hot, little kid tears that surprised me with their pure sadness. I suppose it was a grief some parts of me recognized before others: Marathon Monday can never be the same. How many of us woke up yesterday and thought 'Aw, Patriot's Day'? My brother and I, each three years since living there, three-quarters of a country between us, thought the same thing. It is a holiday that means nothing to most people. It is something very special. "How could you?" I said, to no one. "It's just so fucking mean." I had to get up and go to an appointment. I sent out messages, everyone was fine. I got to tell a lot of people I loved them, some I hadn't told in a long time, so there was at least that.

Boston is provincial and insane. It's strange and windy and grumpy. And I am so, so lucky that so many of my memories, the backdrop to so much of my life is that beautiful, charming, storied city. I may never move back, but it is half of my heart.

At dinner last night, A told me: "When you see those videos from now on, I want you to think of the people that ran towards the blast, all the people who went to help." That helped.

I care very little about who did it. I don't have much of a palate for revenge, it's just not in my constitution. I think we get what we give in this life, and others, if that's a thing, and the responsible parties will face something terrible. I assume they have already, you must be rotted to the core, infected with something deep and awful that haunts you permanently, to do something like this. That does not explain or excuse or comfort. It probably just is.

There is a part of me, of so many of us, that feels utterly violated. So I am thinking of all the people that ran to help. I am thinking of everyone I love, wherever they are. I am thinking of bricks and flowers and sunlight on water, Fenway at night, old men in undershirts playing Bocce on those courts off Commercial Street. I am remembering the insanity of the wind whipping across City Hall Plaza in the winter, the Baylor-faces of the seals outside the aquarium, sitting on rocks in the Public Garden as the sun goes down, tripping down sidewalks on Beacon Hill.

I am remembering that IM Pei designed the Hancock as a tower of glass to reflect its surroundings in Copley Square, because he couldn't make anything more beautiful.

Travel Tips for Post Modern Women

I like this time of year because I travel for work, and 80% of my work travel consists of 'walking around New York in the springtime taking pictures of lovely old buildings'. Honestly, it's pretty great. Even when it's exhausting, or cold, or I'm lost in Brooklyn on a subway that's basically a Jurassic Park Ride of Underground Trash, it's still pretty great. There's a lot of takeout sushi and trashy television and fresh towels and other such things sorely lacking in my everyday life. And all this work travel actually improves me as a person. After weeks spent with someone else emptying your garbage cans and replacing your toiletries when you hoard them in your suitcase, it gets that much harder to tolerate your own filth and disarray*. But there are challenges. I was going to tell you about all of them at once, but that post was so long I didn't even want to read it, so I'm separating it into three parts. This part is about subways. The next parts will be about peeing, and hotels. Aren't you so excited! Okay, Part One:

On The Train: Avoiding A Terrible Fate

Subways are a great invention. They allow you to zip through subterranean parts of a city like some kind of PowerMole. They allow for delightful multi-tasking, like reading en commute. Sometimes there's cool views. They reduce your obscene American carbon footprint, if only somewhat. You're exposed to an interesting cross-section of the population you might never encounter otherwise.

Subways are also HORRIBLE. You're trapped underground with thousands of other scrambling assholes like some Escape From NIMH gone horribly awry. It's too hot, or too cold. It smells like...something unidentifiable, with whiffs of human stink, rat parties, desperation, and poop. You are occasionally crammed next to and up against the very worst humanity has to offer - by whom, I mean, PEOPLE WHO DON'T TAKE THEIR FUCKING ENORMOUS BACKPACKS OFF.

In the end, though, it doesn't really matter: subways are a necessity. And there's almost nothing that makes you feel more competent and self-actualized than being able to effectively navigate a subway system. And it's a skill that translates! To other cities! It's an awesome skill. But there are things to watch out for.

Don't Be A Statistic
When I was little, my mom told us not to stick our arms out the car window. When we persisted, she informed us that, were another vehicle or stationary object to collide with our outstretched limbs, they would be sheared off, likely mangled, and unsuitable for reattachment. I've never stuck so much as a finger outside a moving vehicle again without recalling that warning. I've passed it on - to children under my supervision in at least one instance, several adults in others, and have noted it's immediate effectiveness. On the children. The conclusion here is that adults are incredibly stupid. Because the last year has been filled with stories of people FALLING ONTO TRACKS AND GETTING RUN OVER BY TRAINS. The simple solution here is 'not standing too close to the tracks'. Especially if you're drunk or physically unstable in some way. It's not hard not to fall down there. In the getting pushed scenario...I suppose a crazy person could drag you from by the wall and push you, but that's a lot more effort. And if they're really intent on you as a target, you might be able to buy yourself some time by like, yelling for help. Which you can't do if you're basically standing on the yellow line, dude, just STEP BACK.

Listen to Your Rape Alarms
Some of my friends laugh at me because I'm insane and we'll be going somewhere when all of a sudden I'm like 'my Rape Alarms are going off' and we need to turn around. I am not embarrassed at all about doing this because we live in a horrible world where horrible things happen to everyone, and this COMPLETELY includes small women who wear giant headphones and tend to be lost in their own worlds. Knowing this about myself, I try to be extra-aware of even the faintest alarm bells. As my mother told me (years after the limb-shearing warning) 'If you stop at a rest stop by yourself, you will get raped'. She is totally going to deny saying that, but F was standing in the Hunter's Hill Circle kitchen with me when that bit of knowledge was passed down. When we got into his car and pulled down the driveway (she dropped that right before a road trip) he was like "The scariest part of that was how sure she was. I'm scared of rest stops now, too."

So anyway, sometimes my rape alarms go off in subway stations. This is because subway stations can be hella creepy. Especially isolated tunnels and stairways. ESPECIALLY THIS COURT STREET STATION ENTRANCE FOR THE R TRAIN. Holy shit.

I've been to other entrances, but I sort of stumbled on this one after taking pictures of a building across the street and thought 'Oh, I'll just jump on here' and went down the stairs. When I got into the station, surprise: it was one of those weird entrances that are primarily for elevator access. I HATE being in those giant elevators with strangers, I always think some Lord of the Flies shit is going to break out, so I look for the stairs. There are always stairs. Although sometimes...they're horrible creepy. Like this time. It was a really long, narrow staircase. I'd gone down about a flight and a half thinking 'Yo, this is an incredibly rapey stairwell' when I came upon THIS:

Oh fuck, is that a CARDBOARD RAPE PAD? Jesus, okay, that's weird, just keep going Katherine, deep breaths**.

HOLY SHIT WHOSE PANTS ARE THOSE? At this point I seriously considered turning around. Like, it was noon on a Wednesday in fucking Brooklyn Heights, and I assumed I must be halfway down the stairs already and I had an appointment to make, so despite the CLANGING alarms, I pressed on, down the next flight: 

OH MY FUCK WHERE DOES THAT TINY DOOR GO? IS THIS LIKE RAPE NARNIA? I still had no idea how much more of a descent I was in for, and I couldn't run, because everyone knows when you run  down stairs in a horror movie, you fall down the stairs and Kevin Ware your leg in half and then have to drag yourself down the grimy ass steps all wounded and dirty, but I will tell you: I have never walked so swiftly and carefully in my life. 

Of course everything was fine, I realize it was just an odd collection of possibly-homeless items on a stairway. I caught the next train and made my appointment on time. An appointment at which a crazy old guy showed up on a bike to let me in, and then offered me champagne, and he seemed kind of drunk already, so it wasn't clear if he was joking or not. I declined, politely Note: the only time Katie Neuner declines free champagne is when a crazy old man offers it to her while she's essentially locked inside his house. Even if it's Veuve. Which it was. (YOU DID SOMETHING RIGHT, MOM AND DAD!!!)

The irony is not lost on me, that much of my job entails entering strangers' super expensive houses where large wooden fortress doors close behind me and pretty much no one knows where I am. But sometimes I guess you have to figure on the good in humanity, and assume that most people don't a) have a torture dungeon and b) want to trap you in it. I, at least, have to figure that, or else I'd never leave the house. Just stay out of abandoned stairwells, kids. 

Of course, later that day I was exiting another subway station and came across this: 

So, wtf, everything, maybe we should all just totally stay inside.

*For those of you who know me well, this something of a mind-altering shift. Filth and Disarray have been my homies for a long, long time. Shh, don't say too much about it, I might get scared.
** I call myself Katherine when I need to steel myself, or get my shit together. I use my Mom's voice and it is a SUPER effective motivational tool.

Good Friends and Squirrel Bombs

The week before Christmas was unseasonably warm this year. Remember?

Everyone left town early, until it felt like it was just G and myself, the rest of Glover Park entirely empty. Smoking on my porch before bed one night, I thought: even the lights on the horizon look dimmer. We took to the porch again the next night, finished a bottle of wine nestled in second-story beach chairs. We went inside, then away for our holidays. I left the bottle out there for months.

I am the kind of asshole who clutters a perfectly lovely back porch with unwanted furniture, disintegrating cardboard boxes, discarded books, bags of clothes for Goodwill. Why bother with a table and real chairs when we could just sit on this old desk? You're too good to sink your ass to the floor into one of those terribly awkward canvas chairs? Of course you're not, I'm just kidding. I'm aware it's a terrible system. I've thought about changing it, about throwing all the shit away and making it a pleasant space to sit and chat. I think about it for two minutes before declaring: 'Isn't it already a pleasant place to sit and chat simply by virtue of being a porch? Just let it be a porch!' So it stays how it is, and yes, I see that's pretty bullshit and mostly a function of my general laziness and because sometimes I am a shit friend who does not care about your comfort. You know who is not a shit friend? Kyle.

A few weeks ago we were standing out there while I determined the proper outerwear, and Kyle, as he has done in the past, handed out the gentlest of porch shamings: 'It's so nice out here; 'Chairs would be awesome'; 'I could help you take the boxes down'. Wonderful, kind hints to which I typically respond "Come on Kyle, then I couldn't throw my garbage out here" because I am the kind of person who will regularly throw a bag of garbage or empty box of wine out onto the porch rather than carrying it down to the cans. Then, as usual, he left it alone. There are only so many times you can ask an adult to throw her trash away properly before you start wondering why you're still friends with this lunatic.

I had to go to New York last week for work. The Saturday before I left it was sunny and kind of nice and I opened the porch door hoping maybe it was reading weather. It wasn't. Even if it had been, the environs weren't exactly conducive to relaxing. Unless broken pieces of ashtray, scattered dead leaves, crumbling boxes and mildewing bags of clothes are part of your preferred spa experience. I picked up the months-empty bottle and accompanying glasses, took them inside to the kitchen. Got a garbage bag. Went back and swept up the leaves, the shattered bits of lacquered ceramic*. I pushed the broom under the a/c unit in the window, and noticed something protruding from the largest bag of Goodwill clothes, an enormous black canvas duffel bag, characteristically unzipped.  What initially looked like a stick, was, after closer inspection, clearly a leg. A small, furry leg.

My first thought: How did one of Baylor's toys get in there?
My next thought: Oh that is not a toy that is not a toy that is not a toy that is a dead fucking squirrel and it is super dead, super dead, all the way live dead, how do I get it out of...do I reach in...are there more...OHMYGOD NO, OH MY GOD DEAD SQUIRREL TOUCHING CLOTHES THAT USED TO TOUCH ME. 

I went back inside and had some wine and decided it was time to start packing. And I did. And I shut the squirrel out of my brain for the rest of the afternoon.

A few hours later, Kyle came over. We were hanging out, deciding where to go for food, and I actually considered not saying anything, but then I did: "Want to hear something really horrible that happened to me today?"

I finished telling him, and I think I assumed it would be like confession - once it was out there, the squirrel would magically disappear. I said "I didn't know what to do about it, so I just did nothing." Without judging the ridiculous words that just came out of my face, he said, clearly, reasonably: "Okay, you have to do something." He was right. I did. He helped.

What happened next was Dennis the Menace masterful, something I never would have thought up on my own. It was Kyle's idea to put garbage bags on our arms, Kyle's idea to position the giant outdoor trashcan directly below the porch, to maneuver the monster duffel over the porch rail together, heave it at the can. When the bag failed to land as aimed, crashing face down onto the patio stones a foot away, scattering clothes but concealing the squirrel carcass, I want to say it was my idea to get the snow shovels out of the utility closet and scoop the clothes into the trash can, but that was probably him, too. I invented the term 'Squirrel Bomb', although I also invented the situation that created said Squirrel Bomb, so I'm not sure what kind of pride to take there. Regardless,  the squirrel bomb was successfully diffused. And then we went to Surfside.

And my goodness, if the porch doesn't look so much better without that giant bag of unwanted clothes! And their attendant dead rodent limbs! Who knew? I'm thinking about getting rid of all the boxes now. I'm even considering a table and chairs**.

Happy Birthday Kyle!

*Sorry, D, I really did love that ashtray.
**Where do people get tables and chairs?

Alive and Well

"Chivalry Is Dead." - Ladies, all the time, everywhere

"I was never really much of a romantic. I could never take the intimacy." - Kanye West

"It's insulting to give someone dead things." - Pops, on flowers

"Speaking of Ghost, I'm going to see him on 5/9 at the Wang.  Olson and I are going.  If I get kicked out, I'm taking him with me.  No chivalry when there are no ladies to protect." - Mitch

***

I started my second Real Grown Up Job in January of 2009. As is my custom, I was generally unfriendly to everyone for approximately the first four months. It's primarily a defense mechanism. There are just too many social anxiety tripwires in Office World: navigating elevator small talk, sharing just-the-right personal details to appear engaging and normal, remembering children's names and activities, bringing in baked goods to share - I just can't. I'm not interested in the weather unless we can talk about the Apocalypse and I don't watch the right TV shows. My life is weird, and seems even weirder in tiny snippets. I cannot bring myself to care about the World Cup, so Tommy's soccer game iszzzzzzz. I can't bake, and even if I could, why would I whip up an extra batch of whatever to haul into an office full of people who'll scarf them all immediately?  Wait until the afternoon! Brownies in the morning upset me!

So I'm skittish and standoffish the vast majority of the time, save the rare instances I can't keep something to myself and I engage fully, before I remember where I am. Half surly toddler, half shelter dog: you have your moments, but no one really wants to take you home. It's a pretty effective system.

A person like this turns a lot of things down. What you don't know is complicated, so stick to what you do. So why, on that Friday afternoon in May, after spending months as the least adoptable pet, did I accept M's invitation to join everyone for a beer after work? Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was thirsty. Maybe I was curious. Maybe even the toughest Pound Puppy has their weaknesses. So I went inside the bar. 

You make a thousand decisions every day, and most of them will never matter. If I'd left when I first thought to, after the first beer, that might have been one of them. But someone bought me a second beer, and I stayed for a third, and then we went outside to smoke. It was that perfect part of late spring in Boston, the leaves the greenest they'll be all year, the sky the bluest, all offset by the ruddy brick in the courtyard outside Sweetwater. Even the late afternoon sunlight is brilliant. The bar had been so dark, I was still squinting when I stubbed out my Parliament and realized these were my friends. By the time we made our way to the Common, I wondered where they'd been all this time, how I hadn't noticed before. 

There was something in the air that spring, something different about me, like I'd grown all these new branches. I started the year scowling from the corner of my playpen, and ended it with all these new people in my life, people I realized almost immediately would be there forever, now, people I love so ferociously sometimes I wonder where they end and I begin, scattered as we've become, there are these titanium heartstrings connecting us. 

That sounds a lot like being in love, doesn't it? I can get there, despite the fact that I largely eschew romantic love, the person who refuses to 'date', the whole concept absurd, those tiny job interviews all shot through with the vaguely concealed motives of sex and high expectations*. But I do, believe in love, and in a certain type of romance, even, although it skews to the non-traditional. And there's chivalry everywhere, if you pay attention, those two concepts are alive and well. Thriving, actually. You find them watching terrible television on a rainy afternoon, doing the tiny thing you wanted without having to ask, without having to even think it on your own. It's a lingering dinner in a divey New Orleans burger joint, when the tables beside you have turned over twice already, but the waiter knows better than to say anything at all. A glint of sunlight, a smile meant only for you. It's a moment inside a cone, everything else is outside. Like the pyramid in that episode of Six Feet Under when they go to Claire's art show. Like sitting on a bench by Crystal Lake with J and S, watching the reflections of trains in the water, souls totally bare. We were the only three people in the world. Those are the moments to write poetry about.

And chivalry is not a jacket over a puddle, or opening a door, or flowers to mark a date on a calendar. Chivalry is the little boy on the bus who worms off his mother's lap, tugs her hand, offers the seat to newer mother who just got on. It's the stranger who can see something is wrong, and gives you the cab at the end of the night. Chivalry is November, 2009, the Ghostface show at the Paradise. Mitch was nice enough to provide party favors**, and when a disapproving security guard came over, he took the whole fall. When the security guard asked him if he knew me, a confused and generally unhelpful me with whom he was clearly acquainted, he denied it. Mitch spent the rest of the show in a grimy Allston Chinese joint next door, texted me a photo of the black 'x' marks Sharpied on the back of his hands. He waited until it was over. We joke about it now, but it was, to this day, the most chivalrous act I've ever witnessed. Maybe you had to be there. It was a really good show. 

Thanks for taking me home, everyone.


^I did a Google Image Seach for 'Pound Puppies Ghostface' and was rewarded with this AMAZING picture of Usher and this adorable puppy. So, enjoy that.

*Of course, 'not dating' is equally ludicrous, confusing on all levels, from the person who made an effort at what you predetermined to be a carefree hangout, to the years I've spent 'technically single' without being able to remember the last time I was actually, completely all on my own. It's a habit I'm trying to break.
** Sorry, Mom! This detail is kind of integral to the story. Also, it was a fucking Ghostface show, come on.

Dive Bars and Door Handles

A hundred years ago, I dated a guy who worked at my favorite dive bar.

I met him on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon. I was with M and F, we'd come from brunch to kill time before a movie. Or maybe to stretch out the day. I don't really remember. We just wanted someplace dark and cheap.

Inside it was empty, save a scatter of professional drinkers who'd been there so long you took them in like the wallpaper, or the pool table, all part of the whole. This place opens at 8:00 in the morning; aside from vending machine snacks sporting last-generation packaging, it never serves food.

The Wire was playing on the television behind the bar. I can talk about The Wire all day, and that's what I did, or would have done, if it wasn't time for the movie before I knew it*. He told me to come back for trivia night and I did. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

He was smart and funny and weird and probably not quite as outstandingly handsome as I remember. And best of all: he was wholly, resoundingly, viscerally damaged. The first night we hung out, he told me, on the way to buy papers, about his terrible adoption, concluding with "so I really can't trust anyone". At 31, I'm yelling 'Oh, honey, NO' at the computer. At 25...you might as well draw in cartoon hearts for my eyes in whatever mental picture you're painting.

Our schedules were entirely incompatible. We'd meet for breakfast dates in the middle of the week, lovely suspended early mornings in fancy restaurants, playing pretend, baby grown-ups in leather booths surrounded by people on real business.

On weekend nights I went over to his place after the bar closed. We'd lie in bed smoking, watching the clouds float silvery across a navy ceiling. I'd think about the ocean at night, trace the outlines of tattoos on his arm while he told me things that made me sad, made me feel bad that inside my head all I saw was a glorious sleeping ocean. We could do this for a very, very long time. He'd talk over the movie playing as background noise, some 80s romantic comedy he'd act offended I hadn't seen, before putting it on purely for pretense. I've seen Lover Boy half a dozen times; I have no idea what that movie's about**.

In the mornings, I'd walk him to the bar, where there'd already be at least one greasy-haired man in a rough cloth army jacket leaning against the wall outside. It felt weird to kiss goodbye in front of them, we'd both laugh and he'd get his keys. I'd walk home, across the Common, picking my way over the loose bricks in City Hall Plaza. I'd go home to get Bay and we'd wander North End side streets, and I wouldn't feel happy, exactly, but like I'd helped someone else be less sad, and maybe that was important.

There were some red flags. I mean, in addition to the four paragraphs of red flags preceding this one. I didn't even notice. It's almost charming, in a nostalgic, Horror Home Movies sort of way. In the end, I learned some important things about myself, about life. I learned that any conversation beginning with the words "Baby, I have a third job I haven't told you about" is not ending any place good.

It really didn't last long. One weird thing happened, then another. We both acted like children. Like I said, it was a hundred years ago - we practically were. It was over by the summer, and I never saw him again.

The job I started a few months later involved a new commute, one that required me to walk by that bar. (Of course, it wasn't a requirement, just the simplest way to get from the T to the office.) It was three months before I took the direct route in the morning, six months before I'd walk by at night. I'd duck my head, scurry by the green door, try to steal a peek through the window. It was almost a full year before I worked up the courage to go inside. Of course, once I finally did, he wasn't there.

It's been a long time. I still go back to that bar when I'm in town, it's still one of my favorites. The same woman owns it, and she's always behind the bar. Every time I'm there, at least a little part of me wants to ask 'whatever happened to...' I'll never ask, though. He's vanished, essentially, the kind of person you can't even find on the internet. Who's nowhere on the internet? It doesn't seem like a great sign. I've made up my own ending to that story, and I hope it's close enough to the truth.

I don't have a lot of regrets, but I do think about that green door sometimes. The one I skittered past in the evenings. I think about what would have happened if I'd opened the door earlier, if he'd still been there. I've had the conversation in my head a hundred times, a hundred different ways, but the core is still the same. Nothing changes - there was nothing to fix, and no way to fix it, it was just the end. But we both say 'I'm sorry' and we hug. Then we laugh about something, and he makes fun of me and I swat at his arm, and then we're both quiet for a second, and then we smile. And then I say 'I have to go', and I go. And it's better than it is now, and it's better than the other way it ended.

Q: Wherever you are, I hope it's wonderful.

Everyone else: Open those green doors.


*I remember now, it was before the movie. We saw 'No Country for Old Men'.
**Patrick Dempsey's a teenage gigilo, right? I'm pretty sure that's what it's about.

Fuck You February Part Eleven Million

A big part of achieving my goal of 'not falling apart in the face of every fucking thing in my life' this year has been 'being uncomfortably honest about some personal shit on the Internets'. My parents seem to be okay with it, and the only person whose real name I use is Kyle's (dude, I don't know why I have like, no concern for your privacy? I'm so sorry. Love you!) so I suppose I'll just continue in this vein.

Most of my time in the next 30 days will be consumed by The February Project. The February Project consists of 'not getting completely, utterly, soul-crushingly depressed in the month of February'. Which is REALLY HARD, guys. I know, 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...but the dread leading up to this month is unreal. Stuff REALLY DOES GO TO SHIT. In the last 90 hours I've had fights with two of my closest friends, and another is MIA, when I really need them not to be. Another one flipped our shit completely. My computer keeps threatening to die. I don't fight with friends! Friends don't disappear on me! (I disappear on them...recognizing a taste of your own medicine makes it no less bitter going down.) Flipped shit makes me cry a whole bunch. And computer, I need you. I need you to watch television shows I steal with my brother's HBO.GO password when I literally cannot work up the mental strength to do anything else.

Two of the hardest things to describe to people who've never experienced them are depression and anxiety. Normal people get sad, and normal people get nervous, but they don't seem to get the cloud that penetrates every pore, all the way into your bones, pumps through your blood, chanting; 'don't, don't, don't' when you should, should, should; 'it's not worth it' when it most definitely is; 'why bother', when there are so many reasons; and 'you are, forever, undeniably, a piece of shit', when that is certainly deniable, and nothing is forever.

Depression is a heaviness that settles into every crevice of you, your body, your brain. It makes everything simple seem impossible: getting out of bed, getting in the shower. You actually congratulate yourself for walking the dog, and this makes you feel worse, although he seems to appreciate it. Food loses its taste in your mouth. You think 'maybe seeing people will make me feel better' but then you don't want to see anyone, anyway, because you are just a little grey cloud personified, and there's a yogurt stain on these sweatpants, and oh my goodness, just the idea of finding other, relatively clean sweatpants is too much, please can I just hide in bed and find a marathon of some HBO programming that I've already watched twice? Yes? Okay.

In no way is this relaxing. Because the entire time you're submerged in your little foxhole of dread, currents of anxiety zap you at irregular, unpredictable moments. And anxiety demons are judgmental as shit. Anxiety is like a spider. She spins webs all through your body, settling wherever she sees fit. She never commits, never announces. She likes to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible, always, right in your own skin.

The worst part is knowing not everyone feels this way. Lots of people do, but not enough so you can call in: 'I can't come into the office today because the world is too awful'. So you take a lot of deep breaths, and try not to cry at the bus when it's late. Try not to cry in the bathroom at work when you can't find a file. Try not to cry on the walk home for no reason at all.

I always want to go back to New Orleans when I'm like this. Isn't that strange? Maybe it's not strange at all. I suppose it's a place I associate with being crazy, and a place where being not-quite-right is okay. A lot more okay than it is here. Here: 'there's medication for that'. I know there is. Meds are a good thing - a great thing, the best thing - for a lot of people with wacko brain chemistry, but they aren't for me. So instead I'll peruse Craig's List every day, finding all the adorable apartments I could rent for so much cheaper than anything here. I'll watch Treme and cry a bunch, because they're always in my favorite bars (but why is no one ever in the park?) and David Simon can make you miss a place like you miss a person, the heart, the soul, the good parts, the terrible bits.

And for perspective, I'll read 'The Awakening' again, because as long as I don't feel like my only option is walking into the ocean forever, I must be doing something okay.