So, I wrote down (and photographed) the contents of my bag!
Last week’s New Yorker
Violet sunglasses
A few Equal packets
LG Plum cell phone
Card case for business cards and coupons
Make-up bag (its contents could be a-whole-nother photo)
iPod Classic
Notebook, two pens, Chapstick, and C.G. Bigelow Menthe Lip Shine
Sephora by OPI nail polish in Caffeine Fix
Purple wallet
Inside a royal blue hobo
Happy now?
I was applying Champagne to the crease above my left eye when Jonathan appeared beside me, a little pinched in my squinted sight line, on the F-train platform.
“Hi.”
“Heeey.”
What was that; did I just hear a locker slam? Instant flashback to high school, when I would put on make-up in the unflattering fluorescent hallway lighting while we waited for the first bell to ring.
Jon and I rode the train into the city together. Five or six stops in, I said, “We must be the most vain people on this train, because you’re too vain to take off your Ray-Bans and I can’t stop staring at myself in the lenses.”
“So it’s working out for both of us, at least,” said The Only Living Hipster in Park Slope.
Jonny, I’m really glad we’re neighbors again. I like rolling with you.
So, here’s what I’m listening to this week:
Lousy Lullaby by Marry Me Jane
No Hay Igual by Nelly Furtado
Red by Sara Bareilles
Wait a Minute by the Pussy Cat Dolls
Late Night, Early Town by Lloyd Cole
“Just another bunch of would-be desperados . . . Strung out on semantics, Holiday-Inn vigilantes, late night, early town.”
What I love the best about my friend Al are his patience and his impatience. He gives me encouragement when I most need it and a hard time when I deserve it. Sometimes I’m after some pity coddling and he surprises me with tough love. But before I can pout about my hurt feelings, I realize I needed that dose of tough love after all. And then Al lets me pout a little anyway.
He can tease me and console me in the same sentence. I’ll never figure out how he does that; how he knows just the right thing to say when it really counts. Maybe he’s just a good guesser.
Take today. I called Al to ask, “what’s the difference between you,” a sexy, sharply dressed architectural plumbing engineer, “and like, the other kind,” the greasy-fingered lug with butt cleavage?
Al pauses for modesty’s sake and then concedes, “there’s a pretty big difference.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, “that’s what I thought.”
“Why are you asking?”
I’m leaning against the bathroom door jamb, bracing the phone between my cheek and my shoulder while I rub slick gray tub gunk off my fingers.
“My shower drain is clogged.”
My shower drain is clogged. My bathtub right now contains a plunger, a tea kettle, a bent wire shirt hanger, and a pair of pliers. A pot holder, a funnel, a flat head screwdriver, and a coil of coaxial cable are scattered on the tile floor beside the tub. The drain stopper mechanism lies crookedly in the sink.
I tell Al every idea I’ve had and tried to coax the clog either up or down and out of the drain. The plunging, the baking soda and white vinegar chased by boiling water, the wire hanger down the drain and then down through the hole under the faucet where the drain stopper used to be.
“Finally I tried—and I thought this was genius, and no matter what, I deserve a little credit for it—snaking some coaxial cable down there and I pulled out some gunk but when I tried to go back in for more it got stuck.”
I step into the tub and hold the phone with one hand while I jiggle the tail of coaxial cable leading into unseen depths of my drain.
“That . . . actually sounds like it would have been a pretty good idea,” Al offers, just a playful hint of reluctance in his voice.
“Thank you.”
“If it didn’t get stuck.”
“Exactly. But now I couldn’t even call a butt cleavage plumber because I’m too embarrassed to let anyone see that I’ve got coaxial cable stuck in my bathtub!” I make sure to keep calling it ‘coaxial cable’ because I’m pretty proud that I know the technical name for TV-hookup-wire.
“Riiight, right.” Sometimes Al laughs with me and sometimes he laughs at me. I like times like this, when we both laugh at me together.
“Hey, I’ll call you later. I gotta go do guy stuff.”
‘Guy stuff’ turns out to be setting up a new flat screen television. While I sit on the edge of my tub with my phone tucked under my chin, listlessly tugging on the TV-hookup-wire stuck down the bathtub-drain-pluggy-thingie.
With a flashlight and the deformed wire hanger, I manage to free all foreign bodies from the tub. All except for whatever has caused my drainage problems in the first place. There are two inches of standing water in the tub while I wash my hair, but I did undo all the bonus damage I caused by myself. And I can’t wait to tell Al and hear him laugh at me again.
Wednesday afternoon. Gmail.
Subject: pizza
Me to Jonathan: Tell me not to go eat the pizza in the kitchenette.
Jonathan to Me: DON’T GO!
Me to Jonathan: But I want it. And nobody’s watching.
Jonathan to Me: BUT I’M WATCHING.
Me to Jonathan: Okay. FINE. I’m going home. I had a bad day.
Jonathan to Me: I did too. Let’s pout!
Thank you, Jon.
“Sometimes you need someone to tell you that it’s okay . . . that you messed up—even if you’ve done it before . . . someone to shake you out of your weariness.”—on Snow Day
Thank you, too, Lisa Loeb.
Lauren: EM LOCKE
Lauren: I have discovered that I have no pictures of you
Me: I don’t have any of you either!
Lauren: it’s so sad
Me: gosh, I wish I’d said yes when you suggested we snap a quick picture that first night we went out for drinks in DC…
Me: oh wait, other way around
Lauren: hahaha fine fine
Me: yeah that’s what I thought
Last night my roommate and I met a friend at Gottino, a still newish wine bar that was recently lauded in New York magazine and therefore was packed—candelit faces were lined up along a brick wall with a ledge and gathered around bistro tables no larger than the stool seats at the bar.
Hooks and fake spigots were fastened every here and there for hanging handbags and coats. I love pretty, practical things like that, but I held my gold sequin snap clutch in my lap so I could gaze at its impractical prettiness. We all kept our coats on, even after we got drinks and seats, because it was bitterly, hatefully cold out and we were reminded of that every time someone came or went through the window-paned door right behind us.
Almost everyone was wearing a coat or cold weather accessory. Our corner of the bar was crowded with wicker and wire baskets of walnuts and bread and quince and pomegranates and the menu of glasses and small plates was written in chalk on the wall, so when I got my “craft beer”—a Hennepin, which I chose in keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to order something new every other time I’m out—I sort of felt like I was attending an elegant autumn bonfire spirit rally.
The waiters were passing plates of crostini and cheese and garlic sausage and butternut squash bruschetta through the harvest on the bar to the head chef (wearing a jacket and scarf over a hooded sweater), who was standing on our side to serve the food. She brushed against me a little whenever she reached for a new dish. She kept apologizing and each time as I forgave her, I apprised whatever morsel she was sliding beneath my nose.
At 1:00, the crowd had diminished. Caitlin, Amy and I had room to put our elbows up on the bar and brandish silver nutcrackers at the complimentary walnuts and chestnuts. Eaten plates began to return from the tiny tables. I found myself eyeing a torn-off bread crust beside a mason jar of pâté just yearning to be scraped clean; most of a dollop of whipped cream and two strawberries that had been pushed off the top of a pastry and left behind—leftovers. Leftovers are my favorite foods.
The thing is that I have a taste for texture. I crave the taut chewiness of pizza crust and the brittle crisp of burned cheese with the pulpy, viscous tomato sauce in between more than I crave the flavors.
I like hot food upon its return to room temperature. I like the edges of things, the crusts and crumbs that normal diners brush away. I like the way a bite of bruschetta dances across my tongue and the way whipped cream sings between my lips. And the last few “I couldn’t eat another” bites that other people forfeit at the end of a meal are just about the right portion size for me.
It was pathetic and a little sad and pretty icky, the way my mouth was watering over someone else’s leftovers. When Amy asked me, “are you hungry? Why don’t you order a plate?” I said, “because I’m not really hungry. I don’t want my own plate. I want what’s on that one.”
Caitlin’s used to my grazing. She just glared at me and pushed the plates out of my reach, away from my sly, grabby hands. “Finish your beer, Em. Crack me another walnut.”
I’m used to associating the sound of heels on the back deck stairs with special occasions of the refrigerator corsage, photos in front of the fireplace, breath-a-lizer variety. Because when else did I wear heels? I feel older when I hear that sound. I’ve been feeling older, in an unsettling, exhausting way, all week, after hearing from Jill that her dad died, making plans to go home for the funeral, realizing that I’d have to sit by myself at the church.
I made the no-mascara call before I’d even gotten out of the shower, but I’d also passed up one of those pocket-sized packets of tissues—the ones I go halfway through and then save in a drawer somewhere forever. I couldn’t find the drawer full of half-used tissue packages, so I rushed out the back door without any sort of drop cloth for my face.
I heard my own shoes on the deck and I thought about going back because I felt the nerves in the roof of my mouth trembling. I paused on the last step, pinching one eye shut, biting down on a chunk of my cheek, trying to tell if my nose would start to run, wondering “what was I thinking, no tissues?”
I got in the car anyway, after a moment. I don’t know how to attend funerals. I guess that’s lucky.
The ‘older’ feeling settled and faded later, at the Rumpf’s house. I felt like I was taking a dare when I splashed rum into my Coke. We studied a picture of our Girl Scout troop at our last meeting, our senior year of high school. I swear it seemed like I was looking at a photograph of something that hadn’t happened yet, because all the five years since then haven’t changed anything.
(Nothing important, at least—I’m glad I’m not still straightening my hair to the quick.)
I’d forgotten how quickly time passes in that house. Hours go by and I just assume that all the clocks are wrong because it can’t possibly be 5 or 8 or 11 already. I could hardly remember what all had gone on, I just knew that I’d been distracted, delighted, thoroughly warm despite that chilly thermostat setting for . . . hours, apparently.
By the very, very end, when I hugged and held on to Jill and her mom and then her brother at the door, I felt like my own clock had been reset. I sort of patted myself down, assessing my emotional state. Still older and still a little sad, but absolutely settled. Jill and her family and her home have always restored me to me. It’s comforting.
As I felt my way down the driveway, toeing for the path in my dress shoes, I thought, “didn’t I come to do the comforting?”
