My weekend by decades

Another silent weekend on the blog. Whoops. I've been busy doing things.

Friday night I went Dutch Kills for a few gimlets and to catch up with Lauren, who I haven't seen in a few weeks. I really like that bar, its nondescript facade belying the warm light and high spirits of what's inside. Also, I like the idea of Long Island City way more than the actual neighborhood. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I feel a pang of jealousy at the impossibility of my living there. I hearken back to the memories I have of LIC being a shitbox of a neighborhood and how easily I could have accessed it; I am adept at being too early for some things, too late for others and pretty much always tripping on one shoe lace or other.

I spent Saturday working my occasional library job, which also happens to be my favorite one and caught up and checked in and enjoyed the relative silence of a less dense population with fewer computers and accompanying issues and, amazingly, way more staff than where I usually am.

I spent the night at my parents' house and it was a strange series of events, none of which I'll elaborate in a public blog that has left me pondering whether or not everyone's parental relationships are as fraught with roller coaster conversations and layer cakes of history as mine seem to be. Or do most people just like, watch TV together and not talk at all? I only know for certain that I grow up a little more every time I come home from a weekend at the folks.

Sunday was a lovely, if chilly afternoon spent a a christening/birthday party for Marianne's sons. There was a ton of food and booze and babies and falling leaves and wood smoke in the air and it was a pleasant afternoon spent chatting and enjoying the 80s playlist that permeated the backyard.

That party really made me feel older than I am. Like I was in my 40s but only because I was drinking wine by a fire pit, talking about work and there were kids running around who belonged to people my age or younger and everyone was paired off or had been or wanted to be. It was a different feeling from the night before at my parent's house when I felt 18, still searching for an answer from someone who still sought the answers herself but not knowing it. Or the night before when I felt 27, when entering the warm light of a bar on a Friday night in autumn could augur stumbling home alone in a clumsy tumble of angst or stumbling to a strange home in a clumsy tumble of limbs. I guess I'm like Whitman: I am large, I contain multitudes. Except mine would be: I am old, I contain decades.

That's all I got. Whachu got?

Percentages

There is perfect weather just outside the walls of this library. I can see 40% of it from my seat.

See?

But just like that odd, trapezoided view, I am trudging through a work day. I am thankful I have the weekend to look forward to. Though I feel 90% better, I'm still not 100%, physically. Then again, I don't ever feel 100% unless I'm lying down, reading. I digress. It is a beautiful morning and my commute was perfectly timed.

All the public transportation greeted me on time and pulled into the stations/bus stops as though to say GOOD MORNING YOU FABULOUS BITCH! Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit. I just feel ok because my voice is, like 80%  back. (I still go to talk and 50% of the time it comes out as a whisper but whispering makes me mysterious.)

This morning in La Coronita was the farmer's market and I had about 20 minutes to kill before I had to report to work so I walked it. It was only a block long but jam packed with mounds of beautiful, fresh produce and freshly baked products. There was also some kind of event at 9am that had people dancing in the street, not unusual for this neighborhood. I didn't have time to investigate. I then got talked into buying a kale, onion and cheese msemen from the Moroccan bread vendor and I was not disappointed, though her suggestion to eat it with a fried egg makes me want to buy a mountain of them and take them home with me. I just know I'd love the food, architecture and history of Morocco but I had to scrap my dream to visit when I read about what it is like for female tourists there. I suppose I'll just have to taste it here in NYC. (There is actually a pretty good Moroccan restaurant three blocks from my apartment.) So then I just felt wistful as I got to work, where I just became aggravated and just like that was gone my 90% better feeling. But I'm fighting it. With closed fists.

I'm meeting a friend for a drink in LIC later and if there is anything that makes me feel 60% better for 40% of the time I'm doing it, it is a fancy cocktail.

I'll be spending the rest of the weekend on Long Island catching up with my tribe out there. It is 20% work related and 80% friend/celebratory related. I am 100% looking forward to it.

MATH.

Ignoring Superfoxes

Whenever I do these blog every day blah blah blahs, I inevitably check the online blog I kept starting in 2002. I used to blog every day over there without even really thinking about it. I've always kept a journal but I'm really quite glad I kept an online one for so long during most of my 20s because I can conjure up a memory that is easily searchable. This is in contrast to the journals I kept pre-computer (I am that old) when I generally sit on the floor, surrounded by a bunch of marble and spiral notebooks filled with horrendous handwriting and dumb adolescence. The journals I kept in my 20s and early 30s were only ever filled with deep, eloquent insight and significant observations on the nature of humanity. Ahem. Behold this entry from October, 2003:

went to sin-e last night. had some beer. the band i went to see was good, as expected. when i arrived, there was singing a young man with such an amazing fucking voice. his name was tom mcrae i believe. lovely.

i did learn a lesson last night... never remember or acknowledge anyone MORE than they would you. in other words, be careful with my regard for veritable strangers. my sexual attraction for an unnamed individual led me to esteem him greatly. this was a mistake, as, due to the fact that we have exchanged only a few conversations, i barely knew him at all. i received not so much as a head nod last night and perhaps i am just miffed but still... why give credit where it is not yet due?

having typed out that convoluted paragraph, i would just like close by saying what a shame that i set my expectations so high and not have them met,as he is a fucking superfox.

no more of that.

today i will be mailing via snail mail a crapload of resumes. i am in charge of at least looking. perhaps my foray into staten island this weekend was a precursor, and introduction, if you will as i am applying to a position there. the commute would be a bitch, but i simply cannot tolerate where i am any longer.

my head feels not unlike a chilled head of lettuce. i need a shower.

I have a few things to say about this:

• I miss Sin-e. It was a great venue to see bands.
• I have no recollection of Tom McRae, nor his singing voice, nor anything of the kind and a quick Google search of his music doesn't help me remember either. 
• I have nothing but embarrassment at my dramatic takeaway from whatever happened at this show. I have spent the majority of my adult life both remembering and acknowledging people way more than they did me for awhile, until I got older and stopped tallying that and realized I only surround myself with nurturing, giving people. So I'm giving myself a point for that.
• I have less than zero recollection of who the object of my affection was at this time, making him likely not worth the angst I put into my projection of whoever I thought he was. Does that even make any sense?? 
• I'd be interested to remember since I described him as a superfox. I was 27 at the time in NYC so I was, in fact, inundated with access to superfoxes (superfoxii?) making the candidate pool for this particular evening, large.
• There is a lot of cursing in my old diaries.
• Lmao "mailing resumes"
• Lmfao "moving to Staten Island"
• I really can't recall why I hated my job so much back then. I had access to a lot of independence and I liked my boss a lot; we are friendly to this day. Plus I got a lot of great anecdotes from that time period. Sigh. Someday I'll look around and see little bits of silver in the gray.
• In a shocking coincidence, my head today also feels like a chilled head of lettuce. The more things change the more they stay the same.
• This entry was during an October I dubbed "Rocktober" (how droll) due to the insane amount of concerts I was attending that month. The entry that follows it has a list.

Sept. 23 -- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Oct. 3 -- The Realistics

Oct. 7 -- Tom McRae

Oct. 10 --Radiohead

Oct. 15 -- Interpol

Nov.1 --Walkmen

These were all shows at smaller venues mostly in lower Manhattan because Brooklyn wasn't that much a thing yet. Or was it? I can't remember. I loved that music scene during those years. I remember seeing so many bands in venues no bigger than a Knights of Columbus hall. I'm pretty sure it was around that time I saw The Strokes at the now torn down Vanderbilt in Long Island which was where people used to have proms. Six concerts in a month and me broke and all. I kind of miss being 27, but only because of energy levels and following bands around and having like nothing to fucking worry about except my latent existential panic about September 11 and ignoring superfoxes. 

My youth was wasted on me, as, I suspect, will be my age. Onward.

The Initial Smell

As weekends go, this past one was right up my alley in that it contained many of life's little bonuses including but not limited to friends, cleanliness, booze and television. Here's a recap because this is my blog and you arrived here somehow so I assume you want to know about this non?

I count Thursday night as my weekend beginning because I didn't have to go to my second job and whenever that happens, an angel gets his wings. My friend Dana and I had heard about a wig party happening at a local bar on Saturday so compulsory wig shopping and dinner eating had to happen despite the cyclonic weather we were having. Going to a party supply/Halloween costume supply store three days before Halloween is not the smartest thing I've ever done in my life. I picked up a geisha girl wig that was really random but the randomness was offset by the fact that it was $10. The long, long wait to pay combined with the long, long line of people waiting to get their "custom" costumes drove home the fact that Halloween is like Mardi Gras for me: a once magical and amazing day of the year that has since been muddled by the boozy fakery of it all (booby fakery if we are talking about Mardi Gras). In my memories I don't ever see the brassy falseness of Halloween wigs and the lame, lame things people try to sex-FY. But there under the fluorescent lighting, the grown ups buying their own versions of cat suits and the candy stealing toddlers, it was all on blast, so to speak. Most people love Halloween. I love the idea of Halloween and the way my brain conjures up a filtered version of the past. So sue me.

On Friday I made plans with an out of town friend, Sylvia, in from Houston for the week and as previously stated in this blog, I will take every single opportunity to hang out in NYC. My sister also joined us and found out about this incredible speakeasy (strangely they still exist) right in the middle of Chinatown. Though I lived in the city for about 10 years, I think I only ever really went to Chinatown about three times, each time to eat. And if I recall correctly, each of those three or so times, I got lost. Apparently when the city becomes anything more intricate than a clearly outlined grid, I'm hopeless.  Friday, however, was different due to the fact that I simply followed the exact opposite of what my instinct told me to do (made a left when I really felt I should have made a right) and I ended up on Doyers street, a street which is really an alley. Apart from the clear signage of the post office on that small street, there were quite a few unlabeled/ unnumbered buildings and I was the first one there so I kind of stupidly walked up to nondescript doors only to discover they were closed. As I stood there waiting, two women walked by looking very confused. I asked if they were looking for the same place I was and they told me about a "secret" Mexican restaurant on that same block. Ok, so a speakeasy I understand but a whole restaurant that is hidden? I felt so exclusive. And yes I acknowledge the falseness of that "exclusivity" but I've already explained that my brain makes things more fun after they are over. Can we move past this?

Sylvia arrived and we spent some time catching up and walking around Chinatown while we waited for Lorraine. Among other things we talked about how much we miss the city. My first apartment in Manhattan was with Sylvia and that was many, many moons ago. Walking around chatting with a good friend with no schedule or aim to adhere to is truly one of life's pleasures.  Eventually we made it back just in time to meet with Lorraine and we decided to try out the "hidden" Mexican place before drinking expensive cocktails at the "hidden" bar. It was the right choice. The food was delicious, authentic Mexican and I tried a cocktail I've never had before (perish the thought) called a pulque. Honestly I didn't much care for it. It was rather viscous for an alcoholic drink. I think I will stick to nectar when it comes to agave.

And after dinner was the piece de resistance, a visit to Apotheke. For my birthday this year a group of my friends and I went to a show called Sleep No More that was a whole experience in itself but this particular bar we went to on Friday night reminded me so much of that show in its design and in its concoctions. I could visualize the Lady Macbeth of Sleep No More downing one of their cocktails.
And oh, what cocktails they were. Lorraine got this amazing beet cognac based cocktail that I will never forget. I drank the "Violet Hour", each sip of which was like an event. There were layers to it that you could experience separately on different parts of your tongue. Lorraine kept saying "I love the initial smell you get from each cocktail." For a drink to have an initial smell is both hilariously put and really kind of incredible. It being the weekend of Halloween, the bar had the smoke machine going, the lights dimmed (there is no natural light in this bar) and the bartenders and wait staff were wearing ghoulish face paint. It was positively Victorian. But you know, dirtier? I wish I had the capability to explain it.

I crashed at Lorraine's house and made it home early the next morning due to an impending nor' easter we were bracing for and pretty much just scrubbed my apartment clean, nursed a slight hangover and endured the cancellation of the wig party plans due to inclement weather. Because I am loathe to stay at home (only when I'm told I should do exactly that) I decided to go see a movie. I originally wanted to see Anonymous but when I arrived at the mega maxi extreme ultra multiplex it was sold out. (!) A film about Shakespeare selling out in suburbia blew my mind. And though the sensible thing was to go home I decided to watch 50/50, again. Yes I enjoy watching an attractive young man as he suffers through cancer. Twice. No but it is a really well acted film. With a very attractive lead. Did I mention that?

Sunday I helped Marianne do some wedding shopping for the wedding which is unbelievably next week We had an early dinner which involved a lot of wine and not nearly enough food to be the foundation for all that wine. As a testament to that, I started writing this blog on Monday and am now just finishing it on Wednesday.
I expect the rest of this week will be uneventful as weeks often are in the buildup to a big event. I'm working on some poetry that I'd like to share here but that is turning out to be way more torturous than it used to be. I'll keep at it though.

You keep at it too. Yes I'm talking to you.

Vodka, taxidermy and the weekend that was...

So since starting this blog, it appears I have already fallen into the "I want to write about x,y, and z but I'll do it later/what's on my DVR/I'm too tired to write about anything/it is summertime and people actually want to hang out with me/let's go eat an italian ice" trap that I normally fall into. You know that trap? It is a tale as old as time, really.

So today I'm going to talk about how this weekend may have put me off vodka and dive bars for awhile. For a long while.

This weekend my brother and sister-in-law (well, she will be eventually) had their joint birthday bar party on the lower east side. My brother turned 23 and his gf 24 so although the crowd at their party was varied in age, most of them were youngins...in their 20s. Let me preface this by saying that I spent the better part of my 20s on the lower east side, inside its bars, restaurants, on its sidewalks, romanticizing the heyday of the neighborhood that I *just* missed by being born 5 years too late, etc. But really just inside its bars. I used to go there often and I used to drink there often. So when my brother sent out the invite I was excited. I haven't spent any significant amount of time there since I jumped the ship called NYC four years ago. Whenever I encounter resistance in myself about how NYC has changed for the worse, I really know it is just me regretting ever leaving and being marooned in my nostalgia. Actually, that's not entirely true but I digress.

ANYWAY, my brother chose a pretty divey place, the kind with no sign out front, no natural light possible and really old hand me down taxidermy everywhere. You know the kind. From the outset there were three major signs that since the last time I spent any time in that atmosphere, I had changed:

Sign 1: The music was so loud that the same image of a single, continuous blood drop trickling out of my ear kept replaying in my mind (and the image had those weird horizontal lines that one saw when a VHS tape was worn out, so, you know, strike 2 on that). (The old me would have happily settled in and been prepared for a night of shouting and drinking).

Sign 2: When my mother, also in brief attendance at the party entered and said "I keep picturing a rat running across my feet" I believed and understood her. (The old me would have pish toshed that and laughed at all the old people in the world).

Sign 3: It took a very, very long time for me to decide what to drink. There are so many factors that, after 16 or so years of drinking socially, I have learned need to be considered before ordering a drink at any bar where there is a choice. (The old me would have said "what is the cheapest beer you have?" and called it a night.)

As it happens, even after 16 years of practicing the fine art of knowing my limits and which alcohols to avoid, I had not yet reached a conclusion regarding vodka. Whenever I think of vodka and my experiences with the liquor, it is sweetened with memories of juice or coke....cacola, or just flavorless, scentlessness so it seemed like a good idea...at first. I'm also perpetually in a state of watching my weight and vodka seemed clear enough to be low fat. So I went with a vodka tonic. Which was made by a bartender who didn't know how to make a vodka tonic apparently because it was all vodka. Though, you know now that I'm thinking about it, that used to be a boon for me at those bars. A selling point of going to a bar in that neighborhood was always "oh the mixed drinks are strong." So that's sign 4 then, I guess.

Anyway, I gulped it down, determined to get a better drink the next go around. Through some form of miscommunication I think, I ended up with another vodka tonic. Then another miscommunication got me another vodka tonic. And then the twelfth miscommunication ended up with me and a vodka tonic. The good news was that they started to taste better (there were roughly 100 bartenders there); the bad news is that when I say I drank so many vodka tonics through miscommunication, I am lying through my vodka hole.

It being July during a heat wave, a windowless, airless dive bar is like hanging out inside the mouths of sweaty, tobacco chewing overweight men, and that's experienced through the eyes of a sober person. After many vodka tonics, and over the age of 30, it is Malebolge.

Prudently deciding that the air had become unbreatheable, my sister and I left in a taxi. During the taxi ride a few shameful things happened, namely I passed out only to awaken and nearly vom all over the city. Thankfully my sister was sober and had gum. Vodka makes you think gum will stop you from vomming. In this case, vodka was right. I was able to hold it together and make it into my sister's (unairconditioned) apartment which happened to be housing four other people that night, necessitating that my poor sober sister share her bed with me.

You might think that aforementioned gum was just a blip in the annals of my personal drunken history. And it would've been had it not somehow fallen out of my mouth and ended up in my sister's hair.

So there you have it. The real reason I will stay away from vodka and dive bars is that I am old.*

*The REAL real reason is that my drunken stories have,  over the years, become very, very pathetic.

Happy birthday to A and K!