Books I've Never Read

Hi. 
I realize that I have not updated this in several months. Formal complaints have been lodged*. And you have my sincerest apologies, Seven People Who Honestly Care**, but I just haven't been struck by the bloggiest thoughts of late. Which is probably a good thing, considering the archival abundance of sad-blogging. 
I am super not-sad right now. 

But never fear! This one's totally got sad. Even if it's not totally true. Parts are completely true in that they happened. Parts are completely true in that I just re-read about them in an old dream journal***.  And parts are completely made up. 

Anyway, I might do more of this. Stories about books I've never read. We'll see.

*******

I've never ready any Jane Austen.

I told that to someone I thought I loved once, and they whispered 'me, neither', and I thought that meant something. 

There's a cultural assumption that women love Jane Austen, and that's probably why I never bothered. Besides, plucky heroines aggravate, pining is a bore, matchmaking is gruesome. I gave Bridget Jones a shot, but watching someone whimper their way between a snooze and a sleazeball tries the nerves. Of course no one likes the singles table.

At a reception I regretted attending as soon as I arrived, a woman spent twenty minutes complaining: “I am so hungry. I might literally faint. Do you think they have any bread? Honey?”

Because of course there was a Honey, a dead-eyed hunk starting into his beer, counting the seconds until he could have another without her asking if he shouldn’t slow it down some. She pawed at his elbow. “Honey? Can you ask if there’s bread?”

I signaled the waiter for another and told them about my morning: While emptying the bathroom wastebasket into a larger bag, a roach tumbled out. A giant roach, with what looked like a second roach emerging from its rear end. By the time I realized what it was: a giant egg sac, engorged with a billion little pre-roaches - it had maneuvered its way to the outside of the metal basket, which I tapped against the toilet until it fell into the bowl, and I flushed it away.

Hungry Woman was silent for a gorgeous moment before she asked why I would tell a story like that. I finished my wine. It was really good wine. The waiter appeared at my shoulder. Honey got up to get another beer.

I said: “I bet you’re not as hungry now.”

Do you want me to tell you that’s where I met the man I thought I loved? Of course it wasn’t. I didn’t make a single new friend that night. I don't live in a very Austen world.

One night, I told the man I thought I loved that I loved him. He'd said it first. I thought that meant something, too.

But then I started having these dreams.

In the dreams, we: myself, the man I thought I loved, and my dog, ran through absurd, Dali-esque airports, everything melting or turning into mountains. We were trying to find something: the gate, the plane, help. In the end, someone had to choose: the flight, my dog, each other - the situations varied. But every time, he left on his own.  

It is probably unreasonable to hold someone accountable for things they did in your subconscious. But he left us, every time. So maybe I got a little cold after that. Maybe I let things get a little strange.

He moved. Not far, but far enough.  

A friend told me, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

I said: “Bullshit. Absence only abstracts.”

I wondered if any of Ms. Austen’s characters understood that love can exist, yet mean absolutely nothing at the same time.

A few months after I was pretty sure it was over - mostly over, at least - I started having a different dream. We’d be in a classroom, or a prairie house: me, some other people, and my dog. We’d pass a lovely afternoon until funnel clouds appeared on the horizon. Everyone scattered. Some took off through the fields, some went in search of a basement. Other people stayed in the classroom, the prairie house. My dog and I always stayed. We hid under a table, he laid across my chest and I covered his head with my arms, his eyes with my hands. When it was over, we crawled out through the wreckage together, to see who else we could find.

There’s a lot of love in a life, in a person. I don’t think we’ll always know what to do with it all. You might have to let some of it pass. Like books you’ll never read. Pining’s such a waste of time.

*Seriously. Three people have lodged sincere, formal complaints.

** I really really do appreciate anyone who reads this, ever. Even if you only hate-read it just to be able to tell me to shut up in your head, that is still totally cool and I recognize it is a legitimate vital brain function and am honored by your selection.

***Of course I did.

When It's Over

I don't want to do this any more. Any of it.

I want to meet a guy who works on a farm. No, owns a farm. Owns a farm, but looks like he lives in Brooklyn. Plaid shirt, sensible jeans. Maybe a beard, but a well-manicured one. He has a dog, and it's a mutt, with a human name and a white patch on its chest, and it does something cliche-amazing like bring you the paper or your slippers.

I'm exhausted.

I want to live in a little city - a cool one, one populated by post-hispsters, where concert venues host shows that begin at reasonable hours and play at reasonable decibels. Never on Tuesdays. It's a little city, so you have to leave your house to meet people. It isn't overwhelming out there, yet there's plenty to do. There are little dive bars and little coffee shops, and woods nearby, and it's way less twee and annoying than that all sounds.

I'm hollow.

I don't want to help rich people anymore. At least not like this. I don't want to soothe them, coddle them, sweet talk them out of making stupid, tasteless decisions with their stupid, tasteless money; console them for making poor decisions in the pursuit of getting richer.

I'm stuck.

I don't want to do this anymore. At least not like this. In Cobble Hill the other day, I saw the back of a brownstone next to the one I was photographing - 'protecting' - and this neighbor building had its back blown out, created this glassed-in Zen garden situation, and it was fantastic design, modern rear juxtaposed with historic street facade and it was lovely and amazing and inspiring and nothing I could ever allow based on guidelines I'm required to enforce. And just like that, my internal compass went Bermuda Triangle.

I know better.

I suppose it's okay, because I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and it's not this, anyway. This is a way to pay the bills, which became a way to stall, to keep an arms length from the things I most want, and am most frightened by. This is a necessary evil simply because I've made it necessary. I've been doing that my whole life.

So now what?

The guy on the farm (dude, I don't know) the little city, the early shows, getting paid for something that doesn't suddenly make my skin crawl - it's not like there's a door somewhere, I find the right key, and on the otherside: everything. Right? Or is there? It's not like I want to pretend the last four years never happened, but lately everything's become so heavy. Like it needs to be shed.

My move.

Recycling for the Reluctant Adult

Do you ever think about the new people in your old spaces?

I do. Mostly in the fall. Winter, too. Mostly at night. Mostly in regard to boys I used to love - some of them I still love, but differently; will always love, but differently.

Their roofs, their balconies, their fire escapes. Stoops, backyards. Private outdoor spaces, places that make the universe seem like maybe it belongs to you. Walls covered in graffiti. Tree tops. Twinkly blankets of stars overhead; skies so clouded with people and their lights, it's all a dappled purple above. Radios playing, rain falling, sirens squealing. Or quiet. So quiet you can hear the breath move through your lungs.

Places you will never go again. Places that would never look the same, even if you could. Perspectives shift, they do not play.

New people on those balconies now, occupying those barely-outside spaces; drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, considering the bricks across the alley. Hearts breaking out of their chests, bored out of their minds. Lost to everything, desperate for anything. Falling in love, falling out of love, hiding from love entirely. Always feeling like they are on the verge of something.

Just like you, just like you, just like you. Just like you.

Girls you will never meet. You're all connected, though, right through. Through the railings you've held, the stairs you've climbed. The tears you've shed in bathrooms; the smiles that come when there's not even a reason, the moment just takes you, it's too perfect, it's fleeting, and you know it. We miss those moments all the time, sometimes just seconds after it's too late. But when you manage to catch one....I don't surf, of course, but I imagine it must be something like catching a wave. I can see how they might be transcendental the same way.

Memory is a double edged sword. It can be sharp on one side, dull on the other. It cannot be trusted. But it is infinitely valuable. A moment you couldn't wait to get out of ends up being one you return to over and over again. The lessons you didn't enjoy learning: how to admit to yourself that you're wrong, how to recognize you're making a mistake in the middle of it. That's probably the shit that makes us better able to jump up and catch the next one. To see it coming, to appreciate it while it's happening. Metaphorically speaking.

I don't know what even made me think of all this. Other than it's winter, and I started writing this at night, and I'm thinking of people I've loved.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Neuner Christmas Carol

I've been accused of being something of a Grinch in the past. I suppose it's not entirely untrue: I really don't care about Christmas. It's not that I want to ruin everyone's good time - despite my staunch opposition to holiday mandated gift-giving, I'm not trying to take toys from kids or cancel the celebrations. I love toys, and encourage festivities.

I like the lights - the lights are my favorite part - although I do abhor Christmas music. Lately I've been keeping my headphones on in Whole Foods because if I hear Zooey Deschanel's version of 'Baby It's Cold Outside' one more time I am going to straight up throttle the next person who stands in front of the cheese samples for half a second too long. And it's cool that everyone's happy and charitable and shit, but I hate receiving Christmas cards from the whole office. I'm the only person that doesn't send any back, and it's super awkward. I just don't do Christmas cards. Because I don't care about Christmas. I'm sorry! I just don't.

And this isn't a war on the Magic of the Holiday Season. Guys, I love magic. I believe in ghosts for goodness sake. When unexplainable shit happens to me, I usually think 'Irish Voodoo' and that is seriously an explanation I'm satisfied with. When I was four, I swear I heard Santa and the Reindeer on the roof. I have never been so convinced of anything*.  So it was a mega goddamn bummer when my parents let me in on the truth about Santa. (It created some trust issues. Most of which I've worked through.) And although I really like Christmas movies (repeated viewings of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' have convinced me that Charles Schulz shared many of my utopian humanist dreams) most of the real-life celebratory aspects just seem a little...ridiculous, to me.

My parents' interest in the holiday waned around the time we stopped asking for cool toys. As we got older, the whole tree rigamarole became such a hassle**, they downgraded to a small, relatively festive Christmas plant. It totally worked for us. Around then,my brother and I realized we could get each other much better presents if we just waited to buy them with our Christmas money. And so began the grand tradition of Sibling Christmas. In Amherst, it was held at Goten. In Boston, Chinatown. One year, we didn't even leave the apartment. And it was just so much nicer this way, without stress about gifts and travel, no exorbitant price tags, no one-upping a prior year's performance. Just a day off, man. With festive lighting.

All of this serves to explain why I figured spending Christmas alone would be no big deal.

I moved to DC in October of 2010. My parents made their final trip from PEI to Florida over Thanksgiving, and stopped here along the way. We ate Lebanese takeout in their hotel room, and it was awesome. When Christmas rolled around...I don't know. It didn't make sense to go to Florida. My brother was still in Vermont then, and Sibling Christmas can happen whenever, so that wasn't really a concern. And I thought: 'the city will be empty, just how I like it.'

I took myself to museums. I went to the National Gallery two days in a row. I got my super nerd on. It was awesome. The cold made my hands sting, but I took a walk along the mall, which is blessedly quiet at 4:30pm on December 23rd. The lights started coming on just as I was ready to head home, and I thought: 'I'm really glad I moved here.' It was perfect. Who cares about Christmas?

The next day, I decided on the Natural History Museum. I don't know why, but it seemed like an exceptionally charming thing to do for Christmas Eve. I was really excited about the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! (Seriously, I love dinosaurs. If you want to hang out and talk about your favorite dinosaur, this is something I'm into.) It was cold again, and the creepy silence of my empty house was gnawing at my edges a little, but I'd bought myself some ill new boots as a Christmas present, so there was plenty to be positive about. I got to the museum around 2:30 - lateish, but enough time for some thorough exploration, followed by happy hour in a part of town I never went out in. Maybe I could even find a fire to read by. And a burnished leather chair to sit in! Visions of hot toddies danced in my head.

I assumed the museum would be mostly empty. I wanted something tomb-like, intimidatingly quiet. Just myself and people like me, nerds alone on Christmas, and totally cool about it. As it turns out? The Natural History Museum on Christmas Eve is pretty much ENTIRELY THE OPPOSITE OF THOSE THINGS. The joint was full of families. All kinds of families. Moms and Dads and kids, Aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. Grandparents and grandchildren. Foreign students goofing around, tourists unabashedly snapping the most touristy of pictures: ‘One with my arm in the shark’s mouth!’; ‘One where it looks like the mammoth is going to step on me!’; ‘One where it looks like I’m about to do this Neanderthal lady from behind!’. Couples, friends, people all in love, one way or another, with their companions. The museum was bursting with love. I'd made a mistake, coming here.

Back when we were roommates, F and I spent a frigid November afternoon at Harvard’s deliciously vintage Natural History Museum. We spent an hour looking at the gems and stones, at least twice as long in the Great Mammal Hall, browsing the animals behind the 70s-era glass cases, noting the expressions taxidermied onto their faces: alarmed, bemused, stoned. We took pictures of at least a dozen examples of 'stuffed balls' with our phones and sent them to my brother. We laughed all afternoon.

I snapped out of the memory, back to myself: alone, standing in front of a Triceratops. The corners of my eyes and the sides of my throat got a little sore, felt a little full. I got out of there before the tears came. 

Outside, I didn't feel like drinking in the company of strangers anymore, so I went home, and tortured myself with the Ghosts of Christmases Past: watched 'A Muppet Christmas Carol' and thought of the one present we'd been allowed to open on Christmas Eve as kids, the one we fretted over for a week beforehand, poking the wrapped packages and weighing them in our hands. Thought about my Dad grabbing up our discarded wrapping paper and stuffing it in the trashbag before it had a chance to hit the floor. Thought about the year Beetle and I selected 'Avatar' as our Christmas movie, the silent moment when he leaned over and whispered: "How come only the male avatars have nipples?" I laughed so hard I almost had to leave the theater. 

You see what I'm getting at here. No, I don't care about Christmas. But it's not about the holiday. It's about love. And maybe it should be just a day off, but it's not. It's not like I was loved any less because I wasn't with my family. But the presence of love is a powerful thing. And it's even more powerful in the remove. 

This year, I'm going to Florida. I'm meeting my brother and his lady in Miami on Christmas day, and then we're spending the rest of the week with our parents in their adorably weird little golf course community, places that exist by the hundreds in Florida - and seemingly only in Florida, although I bet Arizona has a bounty of these joints, too. I haven't bought presents for anyone, and I'm sure no one's got presents for me. I'll spend the majority of my holiday flying, I'll be late to meet everyone, I'll annoy at least one person by repeatedly asking where the dive bars are in this town. My dad will have trouble finding the hotel the next day when he comes to pick us up, and someone will yell at me for dawdling/getting us lost/being generally unhelpful. I cannot wait, I could not want anything more. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

*I did hear something that night. My adult explanation? Irish Voodoo. Or raccoons, whatever.
** Putting up the Christmas tree is pretty much the only time I've ever seen my parents really hate each other. They didn't like, say it or anything, but the air was pretty thick with an 'If this tree falls on you, I hope you die' vibe.

Failures in Existential Homecomings

I went home for Thanksgiving this year. It was wonderful. It was weird. It was interesting.

Home is a strange concept for me, given that I don't really have one. Not in a tragic way, of course, but in a way that makes 'the Holidays' somewhat emotionally complicated. Especially as I get older and messier. And wiser. (Somewhat wiser.)

Amherst is one home, certainly, It's where I grew up, the place that exists in a dozen dimensions stacked on each other, perspectives of my world at 8, 12, 16, 20, 25, 30...But I've left, and my brother's left, and our parents left. So it's still home, in a way, still the place I started, but all my time there is woven through with this faint, constant anxiety. It's a whimpering, underlying loneliness, a mild love panic - whatever it means, it's a specific kind of emptiness that I don't feel anywhere else: This was home. But I have to leave soon. This is not my base anymore.

Every place has had it's moments. In New Orleans, I felt like a kindred with an entire city, its whole spirit, like everything strange and terrible that I was was true, and real, but also beautiful and fascinating, and that all that twisted chaos was probably just fine.

Then Boston, the strange little second adolescence I threw myself into because I apparently never tire of late nights and melodrama, excessive introspection and cheap wine, skating along the poverty line between champagne brunches. And I love it there still, I have family by blood, and families we made up just with our hearts, and being back there is the best mirror, of how much has changed and how much is the same and how much we can love each other, and how much of that is forever. But it's not home anymore, either. There's no place that is just mine, all the way through.

My parents live in Florida, my brother lives in Colorado. When I'm with them, I'm home, because that's my team, but underneath all the best parts is the same low-level hum that buzzes through the base of my brain when I'm in Amherst: This was home. But I have to leave soon. There's nothing permanent for me here.

I used to hate the expression 'Home Is Where the Heart Is', because fuck you, my heart is everywhere.

Baylor and I got back late last night, to an empty apartment that smelled like roses and sandalwood from the incense burning when Kyle picked us up on Wednesday. I spent half an hour in the shower steaming the car-ride stiffness out of my muscles and rubbing my sides where they were still sore from the night before, when F and I stayed up belly-laughing over a decade's worth of memories, photos and videos capturing hundreds of stupid, tiny, wonderful moments, dozens we'd forgotten about, all of them we were so happy to have remembered. And it occurred to me that was home, too, inside those images were my parents, and my brother, my friends, place we've been, things we've seen, the people we were, a whole record that doesn't register any less deeply simply because it's not a physical place.

Earlier that day, I sat in the basement of Bartlett Hall with two of my favorite people on the planet, people I didn't get to meet until well into my Boston days. One of them is at UMass now, teaching classes in the building where I spent days of my undergraduate life, books spread out across beat up wooden desks tucked into the second floor landing, baking in the greenhouse heat cooked up by window panes and winter sunlight. I hadn't been inside in the better part of a decade, but here I was again, for the simple reason that two of my worlds happened to bump into each other on the same day. There was a time when that would have upset me greatly, a time when I favored strict compartmentalization to all other life-love organizational systems, but I'm not really like that anymore. Now I like it when my edges blur.

This ended differently than I intended. This morning, I thought I was going to write about how I sort of understand some things that terrify me - commitment, responsibility, regularity, maturity - much better when I think about them in the context of Home. Someplace to go back to. Some place that is all yours. But it was going to be something of a backhanded compliment, and I don't want to do that now. Now I just want to say that I think maybe we spend our whole lives coming home, and that's not nearly as depressing as it sounds. It gives us something to aspire to.

When I got out of the shower last night, I put on an old Temptation's album I stole from my brother and emailed my parents to let them know we got back safely, albeit without my phone charger (hence the email). Baylor was passed out beside me, purring in that way unique to Staffies, exhausted in that way unique to small children and animals after long days of travelling. When I got into bed, that humming was still there, the one that never lets me forget that this good thing will end, too. They all will! But maybe that's not the best way to think about it.

That hum tells us that things will pass, yes. But it's sure there a lot. So maybe it's not there to bum me out. Maybe it's there to keep my eyes open. Like an appreciation alert. Like there are too many good things wherever I go, and I'm never going to get to them all. And that's probably just fine.

Pay My Automo' Bills?

I talk with my friends about lots of things: love, family, books, other friends, music, food, dumb shit you've done, dive bars, vacations, and of course, money. Inevitably, someone says something like "I might have to dip into my savings," and I'm like "What the hell is that seven dollars going to save you from?" And then it's like, 'Oh, man, I am super fucking poor.'

I mean, no, of course I'm not actually poor, I realize what a great situation I do, in all reality, have, with my job and roof and groceries and health insurance. I also realize I got myself here all on my own: it's my swirly little signature on all those student loan papers, and it was 100% my own decision to walk away from any sort of stable, lucrative career path. So it's more like...luxury poor. Something I should feel bad complaining about.

I've never been good with money. I am an alarmingly impulsive person, which means that everything makes sense in the moment. I figured those two conditions would reverse themselves with time, but that does not appear to be the case. I've also always been of the opinion that faced with a choice between having fun, and not having fun, you should probably go ahead and see what's behind Door Number Fun, because we're not here for that long, man, and you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. You could! People get hit by buses every day. 

A few years ago, I was walking down Newbury Street, talking to my dad on the phone. It was January, and I'd just gotten out of work. It was dark, but warmer than I expected, and the lights along the sidewalks were on, and twinkling, and sometimes Boston at night in the winter is just exactly the way a city is supposed to look. I was on my way to see the Roots (and  ?uestlove DJ set!!!), and everything was perfectly right with my world, if just for that moment. And my dad said:.  "You know, it's something I've always admired about you. No matter what's happening in your life, you always manage to have a good time." Which seemed like an odd thing to say, but I get the juxtaposition now: I couldn't have afforded a meal in of any of those Back Bay restaurants that Tuesday night, because I'd spent all my money on concert tickets and a new dress. And I wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Because really, what should I have done that evening? Sat home and ate soup and watched television until a reasonable bedtime? I will always remember that show, that night, the music, my friends, and yes, the dress I wore. I have scores and scores of these memories: nights when I did not do the responsible thing, and in a thousand tiny ways that have all added up: I am so much better for it.

There's all kinds of odd happiness on this track: I don't get paid much, but my job is relatively easy and rather pleasant and I get to walk around and look at old buildings, which is one of my forms of therapy. I get to write all the time, and no one really cares how late I am in the mornings (a source of not-insignificant strife at my last job). My apartment is hilariously broke-down in a lot of ways, but there's a ton of space and a porch and Baylor likes it, and though I never would have guessed it, I've grown to love my neighborhood a little.

That's not to say there aren't days - LOTS of days - where I'm like 'this paycheck-to-paycheck nonsense needs to STOP, you need to get your shit together and get an adult-paying job and an apartment where the doorknobs aren't constantly falling off and maybe a car. At least a bed frame!' So then I look for jobs, and there either aren't any, or aren't any that pay substantially more. Or, like today, I find one that does pay really well, and I'm probably super qualified, but it's in Alexandria. I GoogledMapped that shit, and the trip takes over an hour and involves a bus AND a train. The tiny, rational adult part of me is like 'Come on, Katie, you could do --' then the part of me that inhabits my actual reality is like 'OH HELL THE FUCK NO' and I close the browser window in disgust.

Then I think 'maybe I should marry a rich old dude, or something, just to have someone take care of me'. And both the rational-adult and actual-reality parts of me take a pause to fully consider this, because I'm lazy and that sounds sort of cool. And maybe it would make my dad worry less. Then actual-reality points out that I'd be really unhappy, dependent on someone else like that. Also, that's gross. Rational-adult part chimes in 'plus, you're like, 31 now, so the dude would probably have to be REALLY OLD.' Double gross.

So I guess...luxury poor it is, for right now. Have as much fun as you can, make the best memories, and appreciate the freedoms you do have, how lucky you actually, truly are. Oh, and look both ways when you cross the street. Those city buses do not play.

ps: That said, anyone who knows a really awesome, non-gross rich old dude....we can talk, is all I'm saying.

I Swear, I Read Them For the Articles

Yesterday, one of our board members was in the office, doing what-ever-the-hell-it-is-he-does-when-he's-in-the-office, and, on taking in my outfit, said: "I don't think it's fair I have to wear a suit through this heat, and you get to run around in your fairy clothes." And my boss replied: "You know what's unfair? That women have to wear high heels." And I thought: "You know what's insane*? THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION."

Later, I was reading an article in GQ about a Spanish bullfighter who'd been gored through the eye and returned to bullfighting. Besides being pretty much the most fascinating shit ever, it was brilliantly written. By Karen Russell! Who I love. A few months ago, I read a profile - also in GQ - of James Deen, also fabulously, fabulously written - by Wells Tower, another of my literary super-crushes. Benjamin Percy writes for Esquire.  The list of incredible writers who've published short stories in Playboy - Marquez, Nabokov, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood - is daunting. And then I started to get a little upset.

It's been years since I opened a Cosmo, or any of its ilk, so I can't say for sure, but I do read their covers in the grocery store just like everyone else, and I would be straight-up shocked to find pieces by say, Zadie Smith or Dave Eggers, a new story from Junot Diaz sandwiched between articles about keratin treatments and '85 Terrible Sex Tips We've Published 300 Times, Slightly Reworded'.

There's nothing wrong with articles about fashion and make-up; listen, I personally could talk about eyeliner for a goddamn hour. Probably longer. I also love bracelets and dresses and tips on deep conditioning and looking at pictures of shoes because that shit is awesome. Being a girl is the fucking coolest. But that's why I'm upset. Because pretty stuff is super fun, but we also need content. Real, 'use your brain and dissect this weirdness of the world' content. Which I've found sorely lacking in 'women's magazines'.

And then there's the tone. The men's magazines - which I am literally 'reading for the articles' because sometimes there's like, a four-page spread on tweed jackets and scarf pairings - just don't seem to have the same pall of negativity. Women's magazines are mostly a list of shit you're not doing right because of stuff you don't have. Men's magazines certainly do that, too, but you can skip those parts and get to the...wait for it...content.

I don't know man, people much smarter than me are out there analyzing this shit right now, with results they didn't just completely make up, but I think it has a lot to do with the general culture of sickness and self-hatred that is like, frustratingly pervasive among women. You can't just tell people what's wrong with them and call it a day. You have to feed their brains so they have weird, fascinating things to think and talk about besides purses and mascara (which are FINE to talk about sometimes, I actually want to talk about my new mascara a lot). And skip the parts that tell you how you have to be. I don't know about that whole suit thing - that seems to be some cultural craziness that everyone's signed up for, but sweethearts, you don't have to wear heels. You don't have to do anything.

Demand more, ladies. I think it'll make us all feel better.

(Also, if you want sex tips, put down that inane Cosmo already and just consult a slightly older, slutty friend. Boom. You're good for life.)


*Also insane to me: that man spent more on lamps last month than I'll make in a year and a half. And can we PLEASE with the fairy bullshit. 

Night Moves

I want to tell you about how it's different, but I don't know how to explain the difference, when so much of everything is still so entirely the same. I don't have the vocabulary yet, for this new strangeness.

At night, I walk by myself, twenty-nine blocks back to my hotel. I love walking at night, I love cities at night, the bigger the buildings the better I feel. So many faces looking out of so many windows all day, but night comes and they're empty. The same person will look out a window for years, then leave, and some other face will be there. The window: 'Who cares?'

I stop at dive bars, in tourist areas: places full of people escaping the crowds they've been dragged into by loved ones. People likely to understand your desire to be left the hell alone.

I wonder what I will hang on to, and what I will leave behind.

Yesterday: "How great would the city be without all these people?" and I chided, because that's my role sometimes, but in truth -- yes.

I would walk forever. It is dark and I don't want to talk. I could walk through Central Park for hours, lamps lighting water, moon shadows making alien formations from rocky outcroppings. But I can't, I know, I shudder to think of the Post-Apocalyptic possibilities of the park at night. Even if they told me it was safe. Nothing can ever be entirely empty.

Twenty-nine blocks, back to the hotel; at the end I walk along Fifth Avenue, hugging the park, coveting the shadows of those lamps across the ponds. It looks dangerous like a fairy tale. I've always liked fairy tales the best.

Carts wait for passengers. The smell of horses will always remind me of childhood, and I walk as close to the edge of the curb as I can, trying to get in the way of their breath. Everything is dark, and shiny, and the sidewalks are crowded, and people are together, and alone.

On Commitment, Or: Why Thresholds are Kind of My Jam

Today was a bit of a ride. My birthday dresses were delivered by UPS in theory, but not in practice. Missing packages! I worked myself up into a bit of a tizzy. By the time I acknowledged there was nothing I could do right then, I was later than usual, and I had to take a cab. Wisconsin was a dead zone, and it started to rain, the kind that doesn't quite validate your umbrella. I was grouchy all over. But then I had this amazing cab driver - he knew all this history about the Circles in DC. He told me Dupont has eleven traffic lights. I opened the window a smidge and let the water sprinkle in. It was cooling things down. Later that afternoon I lost my wallet, but someone called me to give it back before I even noticed it was gone. I had to stay late at work, but a friend texted to tell me they'd taken Baylor on a walk, and dropped a present off at my house. And even that was bittersweet - that friend is moving away this weekend. 

Last night, he had a goodbye happy hour in Georgetown. I came from work, recovering-from-frazzled - I was far less sweaty-looking than I'd feared. We talked about his move, and then he asked me "So how much longer are you staying here?" It was a smirk, but a fair one. I've been talking about leaving since I got here. 

I left Boston because I panicked. That's literally all there is to it. My friends lives were changing in all these profound, mature ways, and I suddenly felt light years from everyone, pitched overboard in outerspace, watching their rocketship tail lights speed away. I'd wave, floating, in the dark. 

DC was close enough, people I loved lived there. I ran right to the edge and jumped: It was time to go, and now. Boston was All Wrong. Once you find the first reason to leave, a hundred others line up right behind it. 

How long after I got here before I decided it was time to find another place? This one wasn't perfect enough, either? Two months? Four? This happens to me a lot. 

I've always been more comfortable with one foot out the door.  I am never in a job, a class, a house, a city, a party before I start looking for the next new to jump into. I love knowing that I'm going somewhere, that whatever's next, I can't even imagine yet. I like being in control of my own surprises. 

That's the romantic take on it, anyway. There's other ways to analyze the situation: I cannot handle commitment. In the face of so many choices (what we might call 'life') I freeze. I am afraid of making the wrong decision. I'm afraid of making the right decision, and have it not feel like enough. In an earthquake, they tell you to stand in a doorway. Sometimes I feel like I've lived my life under a doorframe, I have never trusted the earth not to open up and swallow me whole. 

Except...life just happens to you anyway. The threshold is not a safety net, that framing will not protect you. And that's a good thing.

I know that those last few months were filled with fear, and dread, and anxiety. Burning everything to the ground and starting from ash is not without it's discomforts. But what I really remember are the last weeks in East Somerville, those enchanted nights before spring rolls over for summer, sitting out on the stoop with cheap booze, staying up too late making each other laugh, watching cop car lights flash across Broadway, playing rock-paper-scissors in our socks for no prize at all. 

I remember summer in Quincy, every night on the back porch with the dogs, walking home from someone's house down the middle of an empty street, night bugs humming, feeling more like 16 than I maybe ever had - that sense that the world is giant, but can wrap itself so small around you, that there are a million ways to be protected. 

I was saying goodbye to people I loved more than anything, and I know I cried, and took long walks by myself through places I'd want to remember: Goodbye Beacon Hill, Goodbye Bay Village, Goodbye Fort Point, goodbye to all of these spaces, these buildings that had never failed to calm me down, that had always been there when I needed them. 

I was so sad, but that's not the place I go to first. I go to Maine, the beach at night, us all deciding that the sky looked like velvet shot through with stars. I go to the Common, on Friday evening, a little circle of us spread out on sweaters and suitcoats, buzzed after Sweetwater, watching the sun go down behind the Hancock Building, the sky turning purple, then indigo. 

Was it because I was leaving, because I was already straddling the threshold...did I appreciate it more? These memories come easy, a tide of love I can feel in my chest. Because I've had one foot out the door on DC for so long, will I remember it like that, too? The nights on stoops, up too late with too much wine, talking about boys and playing with lighters. Blackout parties, (legitimate!) happy hours, the sweet strangeness of living in a neighborhood, a place where I stop and talk to people I know on the street, the oddity of living in a place I feel safe walking the dog late at night. 

This is not to justify my fear of commitment. I recognize there is tremendous value in regularity, responsibility, attachment. Maybe this is just to say: there's a silver lining to everything. Even structurally compromised door frames.