Boots

Remember this story? Now I have to call all cobblers "shoe jews." Then Grace gets made at me. Even though she started it.

Anyway, I took my boots to the shoe jew around the corner, because they were too wide in the calf, and I was pretty sure he was going to tell me "I can't change the width of the calves of a pair of leather boots are you effing crazy?" but instead he just said "fifty dollars" to which I tartly (no, not tartly... piteously) replied "forty" and he said "forty-five." The next day he called because they were ready already, and I raced over and they had been transformed. I put them on and paid and immediately ran home to see what they looked like, except not home because I don't have a full-length mirror, but to the mirrored panel on the side of the sex shop next door. Perfect.

Study time. With hot dogs

SSSSSSSSSSh

My radiator makes really loud noises. Boiling and hissing noises - REALLY loud. When people come over, they stop what they're doing and look around and ask What the hell is that? And I have to roll my eyes and pretend to be annoyed and say "It's the stupid radiator, I know can you believe it?" I used to get woken up several times a night, now I have learned to ignore it, though it does incorporate itself into my dreams, usually as some disaster or emergency which I am unable or unwilling to respond to.

If this place ever catches on fire or some shit goes down in the middle of the night, I'm so going to roll over and sleep right through it.

Fashion Party

So my friend invited me to some designer's end-of-year holiday bash, which meant I had to go and buy all new clothes, since I dress like I am

• homeless, and
  
• twelve.

I went to Century 21, because it is close by, even though the slow-moving tourists and the interminable lines and the obstinately uncooperative (read: grossly underpaid) staff make me want to cut someone's head off. But I ended up finding the perfect little Calvin Klein coat for super cheap, and some perfectly ridiculous shoes, which were so uncomfortable and teeteringly high that within 20 minutes of arriving at the party I had to grip the walls as I minced around, making me look like a lush.  It didn't matter though, because the entire party was pretty drunk, with the free booze disappearing fast while the lavish food spread remained completely untouched.  Natch. Eventually I found a third glass of champagne and a nice settee on the penthouse's terrace, took my shoes off and got a foot rub, and forgot all about how inadequate the 20-ish fashionistas make me feel.

Six days of social hangover

I don't blog about my lost weekends, cuz no one needs to hear about that ish. All we do is get altered and talk about German idealism anyway. Which is what we talk about all the time, but when we're drunk we're more convinced of our points.

Last Friday's potluck house party, however, was something else. Luckily none of us remember much about each others' obnoxiousness. Although now I have some kind of mouth perdition - a fat lip and a swollen gum, maybe paying back my intransigence about Hegel and the outside.

I brought chicken.

Vulnerable to assassins

My coffee guy only bothers to collect from me every couple of days, and the security guard at work gets offended if I try to show him my ID. Upstairs in my office the admin and I wait for the bosses to leave for their budget meeting. Then she watches I Love New York and I write term papers. At 12:30 we grab lunch from the deli across the street. I get spicy tofu and green beans and pollock.

SMS highlight reel, vol. 7

[____] just put an E in his butt.

Mkay maybe we can go get a drink or four. i miss you terribly ma dear. coffee cigs and sex gossip is lagging in my life since our separation.

The english language is a bit like an autopsy on a tranny crack whore; I just manipulate the sample.

Tu es Aimee!

I'm thinkin of tryin this drinkin fad. And you?

I'm so effing glad to be a high functioning depressed person.

Mr. Noodle and a grapefruit.

Allah?

So i passed out on the train and got saved by an evangelical christian- how appropriate is that? amen.

Calculus. Pilates. Eating. Darwinism and emergent complexity. Lookin for a job. Welding. Not fucking. That's about it.

Ugh dont know if ill make it up to study tmrw, just gettin home now. ill cak u when im up [4:45 am]

Lazy, broke, hungover shut-ins can't be choosers

In terms of demographics, all restaurants in New York are really Mexican restaurants, except for Mexican restaurants, which are for some reason Chinese.

Like this place, which is so cheap I have trouble accumulating a $6 order - their free delivery minimum - but the quality of the food makes up for it. This guacamole tastes like coleslaw, but made with lettuce instead of cabbage.

Hannukah

You know, I would think I would at least get asked by the Mitzvah Tank in Union Square whether I was Jewish (unlike the friend I was walking with, who was asked and is also a gentile), what since just today I was told by my boss to light the office electric menorah. And by "light" I mean screw in two of the light bulbs. Middle one first, obvs.

It's my shiksa hair, I know it.

PPQ

That's a picture I had to draw for work. It's so bad I had to zoom in on it so that you couldn't see how the perspective was waging war on the proportions of the chair.

New iteration of readers (shout out yall! :) ;) xoxo), plus the fact that really, honestly, all I do is work and write papers, so the noose around bloggable material feels a little cozier. What is left to blog about? Is it time to turn things right around and get batshit emotional on this internet?

18 hours of lecture / 3 days

It snowed

Besotted again.

Us girls, catching up, leave the crowded dive in the West Village - not before friend tells me about the trader she met from Jersey while waiting on the platform for the PATH train. He has a tattoo, on his bicep, of an Italian flag overlain with a shamrock.

I find my own future ex-husband at the next bar - my friend's neighbourhood place. Owned by two brothers from Queens; one used to be the drummer for Blondie, and the other is working tonight. He's mid-fifties, wearing a turtleneck, and he's a fucking show the way he single-handedly holds it down in this diveish bar in Chelsea. I mean, just as an example, this 20-something woman walks in, and goes up to the bar for a drink. He leans over as though about to listen for her order, and without breaking stride, says "You've got about two seconds to leave this bar." In her crack haze, it takes her about that much time to process, and she bee-lines for the door.

Grace and I need food. Friend tells us there's a diner four blocks uptown. We get there, and there are xmas mini lights on the counter, and peel-and-stick snowflakes on the windows. Christmas carols are playing faintly in the background, but the sound is also up on a violent action movie playing on a 13" tv. We eat eggs benedict and potatoes and tea, and take the A train home.

Tired

A shift, a job interview, an immigration meeting, and two classes, on two hours' sleep.  But I got four shirts for $20 and stole a bottle of white wine from an empty conference room.  Call it a draw, Wednesday.

Housebound

I am in love with my house. To the point where some city agoraphobia is kicking in, and I refuse to go out as emphatically as I relish staying in, and the fact that Manhattan has delivery-- I take turns taking care of myself and giving myself license to put off work some more, be anti-social, stay in bed.

Housewarming

Us gals broke it in with ginger sours and pop music and smack talk. And accidental kissing, right Katherine? I have chairs and stuff but of course in a studio everyone ends up partying on the bed.  I love having people over to mine.

1 1/2 oz. citron vodka
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup
3-4 ginger slices

Muddle ginger. Shake with rest of ingredients with ice.

Thanksgiving

Christ, I am so weepy this week. I think the Americans got to me with the Thanksgiving stuff. It is, as Grace said, "equivalent to the superbowl multiplied by christmas." Everyone is home with their family, or here with their family. I went out to buy lightbulbs on Thursday and everything was closed. Y&R wasn't on. Everything stopped.

Of course, New York is very unfamily most of the time. Everyone is single and crazy and gay and trying to get an acting job and living four to an apartment. I think they've made a sitcom about this. Anyway, when my mom was here, she continued on being her mom self, but here. So every time I turned around she had washed the dishes and wiped the countertop, or put some fresh flowers in a vase, and instead of my apartment being the abused crash pad that it is, it was suddenly a home. Even when we went down to the garbage room, she made a point of turning the light off after us. Little stuff like that. It lingers, it's nice.

About time

I used to always notice these cups on Law and Order before I moved here. And then, after I did move here, I noticed that I never got them. So for a while I tried seeking them out - buying my coffee from different places, etc. They really are a NY institution, after all - the MoMA design store sells ceramic versions. Anyway, today for the first time I bought hot coffee instead of iced from my coffee guy. And look at that.

Content

If I go to prison or the hospital tonight, and they have to reconstruct my identity on the basis of what I am carrying around in my bag, they will have the following to work with:



1. a bunch of books on Kant.
2. a hammer.
3. tarts.

I have no problem with the picture that paints.

Okay, I won't spoil this with a sarcastic title. Okay, I will.

I took the 1 train first thing this morning. It was half-full, yet very quiet. Like a bad movie montage, I kept cutting out to flash back to moments of this past year that I am thinking about. I got off at 168th, which is definitely my new favourite station. It's very... underground. Seems older than it probably is. Then a bus along the parkway, to "Orangeburg" (allegedly), NY. I didn't know there was a county west of Westchester - that north of the Bronx, New York state swung left and annexed land west of the Hudson from New Jersey. Then a bus back nine hours later, stuck in weekend tollbooth commuter traffic, listening to a sweet friend of a friend go on but unable to engage. Over an unfamiliar bridge, down the island on the east side, and dropped off close to the East River. The whole day was canny/uncanny - in my city but in completely unfamiliar surroundings and streets, and all day I didn't see a face I recognized.

"Get your free Daily News!"

Or today: "Get your free goddam daily news!" Yeah, that's got to be one of the worst jobs, handing stuff out on the street.

Being poor

I've eaten for free every day this week. Leftovers from meetings and student events, vegan activists dishing out fake meat entrees, a disgruntled cashier who refuses to charge customers at the end of his shift. I've scoped it all out.

Bitches, look at what I am having for lunch today.

Lobster sandwich, crab bisque, prime rib on foccacia, waffle chips with chipotle mayonnaise, eggplant couscous, berry tartlets, chocolate truffles.

I know, shut up

My furniture arrived, and some of it was wrong, and I signed the waybill and tipped the bitchy delivery anyway because I am a suck. And my friend came over and helped me put it together and she laughed continuously at how ugly it is. Haha, okay that's kind of funny. Fuck.

Let's see... I'll call this one The unfamiliar familiarity of the quotidian

Every morning I buy coffee from this coffee truck near work, and the guy who runs it pretends to remember me. I figure it's an overenthusiasm he thinks is good for business, but he always gets my order wrong, and we have the same conversation every day (he's from Egypt; he got here only 7 months ago; he doesn't work weekends; he's looking for a girlfriend). Today he was away from his truck, talking to hotdog man across the street. He saw me from across 5th avenue, and yelled in recognition, "You want coffee?" And then he dodged through four lanes of cabs to make it back to his truck to pour me some, and got it right. Danger. Aw.

q w e r t and sometimes y

My friend Eric and I have discussed this: the only way to write a blog, one other people can read, and not die of exposure is to never say anything in it. And this is a guy who gets naked in public regularly.

Hence why I don't blog when things happen, because I have to find something else to talk about. Which begs the question why I blog at all, I guess, and the answer, besides the redoubled voyeurism, the narcissistic attention-seeking (no one has a blog and doesn't track visits to it), etc., is because it provides a little trail of breadcrumbs for my life. All those little evasions are great mnemonics.

That's a picture of my filthy keyboard at work.

Giuliani

People here hate Giuliani. I cannot overstate this. I didn't know that before I moved here, so I'm filling you Canadians in.

Take today. Sitting in the ER at St. Vincent's hospital, filling out someone else's forms I brought in but barely know because she's near-unconscious (it occurs to me that I have done this exact thing before with three different people), chatting with the little old lady ER docent, who a propos of nothing (well, the election) gets onto this tirade about him. She even repeatedly called him "evil". "Huh. Can I put a work address for this? So what was so evil about
him?" "Well you know he refused to meet with Virginia Fields, the borough president, because she was black, but even before it came out that he was a racist just the audacity that he would run for president..."

Food, flora, etc.

So the poverty. Yeah. Always looking to score free food. Jk - I did that when I wasn't poor. Anyway, Union Square is a good place to try. Always granola bars and cans of iced tea and random calories like that. But the other day, it was flowers. While friend and I sat on the steps and cried about boys, this kid came up and asked us if we wanted a flower. I accepted; friend declined but asked why they were handing them out. "Because it's cool."

And I carried that gerbera all over town and then home in a plastic bag, crushed between my new frying pan and air mattress, then abandoned it all Thursday night while partying at a friend's, then finally placed it in a cup of water on Friday. Five days later it's still looking good.

Apartment: decorated.

Volna

I mean, roe and blinis and solyenka, in the enclosed patio, on the boardwalk, at Brighton Beach, with my Mom? Well that's about the best goddam Sunday I've ever had.

Curb stuff

Thursday night I was baking, so when I noticed all that furniture on the curb across the street, I had to wait a few minutes before rummaging and as a result lost out on that fantastic white full-size filing cabinet, but I did score this Sony Trinitron tv. Yes.

How do I teach it to go above channel 13?

Is it laying or lying?

Laying in bed, wishing I had a baseball bat, or at least that there were eggs in the fridge, because that car alarm went off last night from 4:30 until 7:45 I shit you not.

SMS highlight reel, vol. 6: Phone.. Sex.

So yeah... I've been drinking. So what? You coming out or what? You should. I'll be sure you have fun. Text back with a decision (the right one).

I don't know which one of you smacked me in the ass. I'm just glad it wasn't Chris.

Do you have any desire to go to a swingers club?

I fucking miss you.

I wanna smoke cigarettes (of my own) with you and walk you to the subway. Wink once if you assent.

You know I like it rough.

Marianne i am a whore. bangover. slept w another stranger. way to go!

Let's get married.

.

Thursday night is late night

That's the second time some suit has commented on how I walk faster than him. More: that he can't understand why or how I walk so much faster than him.

Relatedly: you cannot not give our your number in NY. That is, if you are not in a decisive "Fuck you" mood. Because just as how anywhere, the phone number game is to pretend that the acquisition is innocent (viz., for a later platonic meet-up), here - as I suppose anywhere - the magic of cell phones allows that person to immediately text/phone you their own. If it doesn't ring, you are a liar.

Which means that you not only have to give your number but take theirs, and enter it into your directory, under a name, so as to know whose calls not to take.

Today, on the other hand, I met no one

I have two days a week straight through til Friday, then I have half a day, then no day at all on Saturday.

Witness: I didn't even tell you people about going for drinks on Monday with...
my friend M gave me a book because a chapter (short story) in it was titled [me-and-then-swain]. The whole book kicked my ass. So Monday I went for drinks with M and the author.

"Marianne, this is Sheila."
"I fucking love your book."

By the way, read The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti. You will cackle.

Damn you passing 4/5 train!

(You have to imagine this conversation taking place between two very classy, heavily-accented Long Island girls)

"Okay so you know how he had a black eye, right? And he tsold me he got it at work. Well yestaday, my brothah says to me have you seen the paypah? And I say no, why? And so he showed me and there was this story about how Rick had .............. with .... because..................................... And that's the real reason he had a black eye."

"Don't even tawk to that guy. Why do you tawk to him? Just don't tawk to him anymoar."

New Amsterdam

This is a map from 1660. I of course had to combine my internet research skills with my I-temp-in-an-architects' office-skills and figure out exactly where my house is. It would have been beachfront property. And it would have been inside the wall. That's how old my patch of Manhattan is.

Field trip

I run a feminist reading seminar in the philosophy department and today we took our bra-burning selves up to midtown and held our discussion in the courtyard at the MoMA. That's a nice way to spend a fall afternoon.

Someone needs more B12. Or something.

I can't buy vegetables because I am never home and they will rot before I eat them, so my main source of vitamins is vegan buffet with guy friends. And by that I mean it's happened twice in the past week. And at the one today, there was this woman sitting alone at the next table. My age-ish, put together but not in a fashionable way, lean but solid, eatin alone all confident-like while texting on her iPhone. I noticed her because she is what I hope I look like from the outside.

Hahaha - okay, and then she turned to my friend and I and asked, "Hey, do you guys know those microwaveable poaching cups?"
Friend: "No."
Me: "Um, maybe - are they sort of shallow little plastic cups?"
Her: "Yeah, yeah."
Me: "Okay."
Her: "Right: How do you spell poaching?"

Fashion is my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suzanne is in a fashion show and wants us all to go. As advertised on Gawker. Yay! Friend and I get there right at 10 and the lineup is around the block. Boo. I go to buy cigs and when I come back, friend has found some underage NYU students who have just realized they won't get in willing to sell 2 of their 4 tickets to us. We immediately get to the front of the line to join the other two people buying their tickets. Yay! The BITCHIEST GAY MAN IN THE UNIVERSE at the door tell us we can't use someone else's tickets and literally tries to use the velvet rope to sweep us out of the line. Boo. But the other door woman, whom we had checked with first, says that we can, and waves us on. Yay! But then some other door guy -- ok, I will just say that this was the worst organized event ever. While the fashion bitches argued, I quickly pushed friend through the door. (The other two people who had bought the NYU students' tickets never made it through.)

Yeah, that's way more interesting than the rest of the night. I drank. Suzanne's team made it to the second round of the Style Wars. She also sent me this SMS: "Im like fucking dying in these shoes lol!"

Rat

Okay, I don't know if you can tell what this picture is, but it's a rat - holy shit I can't believe I was able to take this, it was so effing gross - that has been completely flattened onto John St. That's its curlicue tail top left, its head bottom right. It was so thoroughly flattened that its tiny bones were actually spilled outside of its body. I think I just stopped believing in the three second rule. Obligatory joke about the streets of New York being paved with rats.

Koronet pizza, UWS

My work phone speaks Spanish; I merely transcribe (poorly)

Hey Carlos it's Jorge
Today is Thursday it's about 9:45
Ela pa selecte recomendari tedela photo
I didn't know if you had received them yet
Sorry I missed you
telajo

So hungry today

How hungry were you?

So hungry I had to leave in the middle of critical theory class and get a hotdog from the Sabrett's on the corner, stand there on the street and eat it, and then go back.