Naked

I saw the Naked Cowboy in person for the first time yesterday. I didn't get too close a look, but I could have sworn that he was using his trademark briefs as advertising space. Naked Cowboy, presented by Charmin? What other symptoms of a sick society do we need to see before someone (other than Cameron Crowe) shuts down Times Square entirely? That place is what selling your soul would look like if it were embodied in city blocks (Legally Blonde is about to be a musical, by the way), and yet somehow I found myself in the middle of the day wandering through the place I typically avoid like the Plague.

The very well-lit, crowded Plague.

The thing is that, in addition to being a clear sign of the impending apocalypse, a trip through Times Square changes your day. At the very least, it changes mine, because it tends to break me of my habit of being oblivious to the absurdity around me.

Every time we walk down the street, Nick tries to point out interesting people. Being a polite man, he typically waits for a few moments after we have passed the person in question before sarcastically shredding them. In addition to making it slightly less likely that he is mocking someone who is right there, this ensures that I will have no idea what he is talking about. That's right: in the middle of one of the craziest cities in the world, I tend to notice none of it. I'm busy thinking, or some such nonsense.

After my pilgrimage through Times Square, though, I began to notice. Like the guy on the cell phone on a ritzy Midtown street who sounded like he might actually be having an aneurysm--apparently he had written the thing, then attached the wrong file, can't you FUCKING UNDERSTAND THAT?? He was seriously turning purple. And the woman in the trench coat leaning out to see if the train was coming (because we all do that, as if it will help) who managed to look just like an old photo of my mother when she was pretending to steal newspapers. And the two college students on the train who had both worked making cold calls, and were swapping horror stories that probably should have made me feel compassion, but mostly just made me wonder who first decided that it would be okay to call a total stranger and ask them for anything.

Seriously. The Do Not Call list is all that prevented me from becoming a raving sociopath.

Does the irony of resenting my hypothetically invaded privacy while eavesdropping on people and then writing about them on the Internet appeal to anyone else? Take a walk on 42nd Street, and all that pesky moral ambiguity will clear right up.

Déjà Vu

Having Nick here makes everything a little different. Made. You know what I mean. I got to see the sun rise this morning; that's different. And I have the sudden extra floor space that seems to just appear whenever he's here for more than 20 minutes, as well as the massive pile of dishes that I am starting to suspect works in some kind of direct proportion--he has this mysterious way of straightening up while simultaneously destroying my kitchen. He does this all without my actually seeing it, but it happens like clockwork.

The one real surprise, actually, came on Saturday, when Nick--brace yourself--voluntarily stayed out late. We're talking, remember, about a man who is thrilled to have jet lag to blame for his habitual early bedtime. Not to mention that feeling that sets in at a certain point in the evening, when you can't imagine that anything will be compelling enough to be worth the effort of getting yourself out the door, which we are both highly prone to.

Naturally, then, I was quite impressed that we even made it out to dinner, much less to Mary's friend's band's gig at Ace of Clubs, about a million miles from my cozy Washington Heights nest. Considering that his head was actually nodding while we were waiting for a table (and given his visceral reaction when I played ten seconds of the band's music off their MySpace page), you would have been impressed, too.

And while they weren't bad (although they haven't really mastered playing to their strengths yet), it was the "Let's stay for a few minutes of the next band" that really floored me.

Who are you, and what have you done with my boyfriend?

Actually, staying turned out to be a very good idea, since said next band was called Big Baby Ernie, and they were awesome. Way too good to be playing to an empty house at a so-so venue, even (or especially) in a prime weekend time slot. We stayed until Nick nearly passed out; apparently that whole jet lag thing isn't just for show. Who knew?

And then he left, slightly before first thing this morning, and I am here with my freshly upgraded technology, my empty wine bottles and full trash, my cleaner floors and messier sink.

Just like usual.

"You're coming in a week and a half," he pointed out. "For twelve days, and then I'll be back a week after that. We'll be seeing each other more than if I still lived in the States," which, don't even get me started on where that argument breaks down.

Isn't it a comfort to know that we can still have the same points of contention?

Man of Leisure

"Where did all these people come from?" Nick frets.

"This is where we keep them," I say, because otherwise I will be tempted to point out that it has been less than an hour since he was bragging about Paris's superior ability to draw tourists. Paris, however, has neither Fifth Avenue nor fallout from Black Friday to offer, so score one for New York. If you're into keeping score about incredibly annoying things, I mean.

Honestly, since he's gotten back, all he has wanted to do is shop. Following his amusing stint as The Foreign Guy at my family's Thanksgiving ("This is real wine. Nick, did you bring this?"), he has been on a consumer bender.

I get it, though. Snarky observations about the robust performance of the euro aside, there are some things that home (or even this rough approximation thereof) is just better for. Here, he can ask fifty questions about rolling garment bags; in France he has to think to remember "durable," and is entirely out of luck with, "Could you show me the thing with the snap over the zipper on that inside pocket again? And is that lined?" Not to mention that "Ou se trouve le Shuffle?" just sounds stupid. Throw in English-language books minus the 80% markup, and who wouldn't be sold?

The most memorable, of course, was the trip to CVS. In his new home country, Nick cannot buy NyQuil® without seeing a licensed pharmacist. Not aspirin, either. There is no such thing as OTC medication; the highly-trained professional listens to the list of symptoms, and then sells you whatever she feels is best. It is extremely disconcerting for someone like me--I pop ibuprofen like it's candy, and I am extremely choosy about what I take should I have the misfortune to actually fall ill.

Apparently, Nick feels similarly, because our basket was full to bursting by the time we reached the cashiers, where he rang up a total previously unheard of at CVS.

Whatever. It's probably, like, 73 cents in euros.

Parisian Roulette

Now

Okay, brace yourselves: Nick is coming back. For three days, but still. ("Five days. You know it's five days, right?" he says anxiously, but his "accuracy" is not the point right now.)

Of course, we are forced to deal with logistics in a way that we never have been before. "So, when should I come in on Wednesday?" he asks. "As early as possible." He has to ask? But here's the punchline:

"So, you can pick me up at JFK whenever on Wednesday? Great."

Um.

What makes this weekend unlike all other weekends is a combination of factors, none of which would matter in the slightest if he hadn't gone jetting off to a foreign country in the first place. Because if he were still living in the U.S., Thanksgiving would still be a holiday, and he would be able to get time off more than about a second before it, and the shorter and earlier trip might 1) mean I could meet him in the city before I went to CT, and 2) make him more amenable to (gasp!) public transportation. And anyway, you can lay the blame wherever you like, but the simple truth is that it has never occurred to him to ask me for a ride from the airport before.

If nothing else, Paris has obviously made him more casual about his own death.

The main reason he has never asked is probably that I do not have a car. So say it with me: who asks someone who hasn't owned a car for over three years to drive them out of a major international airport the evening before Thanksgiving? Obviously the guy with the death wish; thanks for playing.

Actually, it wouldn't have been that smart even back when I had my sainted little Civic, and drove constantly. "You're a little hard on cars," my stepfather once tactfully observed, and that's not the half of it. The half is what happened the last time I drove through New York City on the day before Thanksgiving. I made the news.

Then

So picture it: there I am, in my tiny little Civic, heading over the upper level of the GW Bridge around 5:30 on Thanksgiving Eve. After an ill-advised lane change (I swear I didn't see the sign) just barely past the Bridge, I had to merge back into the stopped-dead traffic to my left. As any serious highway driver knows, semis are your best bet, merge-wise: they have huge following distances, take longer to start moving, and tend to be nice to girls in tiny Civics. So I found one, pulled over as far as I could in my empty lane, and waited for traffic to move.

Now, I did notice that the truck kept inching forward, and frankly, I thought the guy was being pretty rude. I obviously wasn't going anywhere, and by then I had clearly gotten almost half of my car out in front of him, so was the little macho display really necessary? It's not like any of us were one carlength from home; we might as well get along. So he inched, I inched; we had a grand old time.

Then the car in front of me moved.

And so did the semi behind me.

Apparently, he never thought to look down and to the right, since he had been stopped for so long. And he continued not to do so as his grille dug a six-foot gouge up the side of my car, coming to a rest about a foot from my face.

The best part was when he hopped out, scratched his head at the Honda fishhooked on his cab, and then figured it out. "You just drove right into me!" he declared. Yes sir. And then I reversed. For kicks.

The second best was my stepfather, who received one of my fifty hysterical phone calls once we had pulled over further down the road. "Yeah, the traffic is awful. I was just listening, and apparently there's something on the GW, a car and a semi, blocking two lanes. So it's not just you, kiddo." Not just, no.

And a sentimental honorable mention goes out to all the guys who stopped to stare at the wreckage and call out variations on, "Hey, baby...need a ride?" with a little leer to the girl who just had to climb out of her own passenger side door. You are special.

And Now Again

Anyone who asks me to drive during a holiday rush will get this story again. And then again.

Nick had hired a car service by the end of the second sentence, and we can add to the list of reasons why I adore him.

La Fourchette

There is a very good reason why you will almost never bump into me in the Meatpacking District. It's not because it's overpriced, overcrowded, and over-pseudo-trendy in a very B&T sort of way. It's not that the easy access to Magnolia is a very real danger to my waistline. It's not even that I am one of those snarky sarcastic people who are skeptical of anything the moment it becomes popular.

It's because every time I go, something happens that I just can't bring myself to explain the next day. And now, for your entertainment, I am about to try.

Yesterday, a fabulous menu distracted me from checking the address, and I wound up at Vento, which was well worth any absurdity that followed. What followed, naturally, was that after about a gallon of truffle oil and some excellent pinot grigio, we did a foolish thing, and went out to find a bar.

After dismissing Too Empty, Too Crowded, Too Loud, and Too Over-Forty, we sidled up to the bar at the two-for-one special of Too Expensive & Way Too Much Attitude. The bartender sneeringly denied the existence of a wine list, which we later found multiple copies of at the tables, and the restroom attendant snapped at Andrea for not tipping her, and then lied about it. By the time Tina's food arrived, we were irretrievably snarky (even though the table staff were much better).

That's when Andrea started about the silverware. And that's when I jokingly slid the ornate fork up my sleeve. And left it there.

See what I mean about inexplicable? I'm the girl who once returned to a store because I noticed that I had been undercharged by ten cents. I have a conscience so hyperactive that I get made fun of for it, and not by people who are especially shady themselves, but rather by normal, ethical citizens. And now I'm the girl with someone else's fork in her purse.

To punctuate the absurdity, at our next stop we found ourselves in a bar with two obvious prostitutes, who, it turns out, were also promoting a vodka that had little to distinguish it from rubbing alcohol. When I say "obvious," I understand that people might be skeptical. But I am sure, and I can prove it.

1) I live in New York. I see women all tarted up all the time. I know clubwear. This was not that. ("I feel like I just walked into Pretty Woman," offered Andrea.)

2) Nick will verify that I never notice prostitutes. It has become sort of a staple of our relationship: walking through Pigalle (the district with Moulin Rouge and much, much more), he keeps up a constant stream of "To your left!" and "She just turned the corner, " and "That woman three seconds ago who asked me for money in exchange for sex while you were standing right next to me. How do you miss these things?"

I just don't notice, so if I do, you can be quite sure. And if you still have doubts, ask Tina for the photo.

I'm not judging, though. I'm too busy trying to figure out what to do with my new fork.

Other People's Blogs

I have started using my iPod a lot less. It was starting to make me feel misanthropic, and that's Nick's job.

I get to notice a lot more now: the 90-year-old woman muttering about the 80-year-old woman in front of her ("Could we move it along, now? Sometime today?"), the two announcements on the 1 train stopped in the tunnel for 10 minutes (something about explosives at 72nd St.), and the anxious commuter who complained about how they never even make announcements (how do you politely suggest a hearing test?) and then commented that I was overpaying for groceries after seeing the WholeFoods purchases slowly spoiling at my feet (and then I felt less concerned about tact).

The point is that I'm feeling more and more curious about what other people are doing, and now that has naturally extended to what they are writing. So, lately, I've been spending some time hitting the "Next Blog" button up at the top of the page.

Stop.

Damnit.

Ignore the button until I'm done.

I have found a few distinct categories, and was surprised by most. There are informational blogs, which confused me. I'm talking about the ones with a couple of generalized entries about, say, fitness, or heart health, or astronomy, or what have you. I wonder if these are created by people who are working their way up to either the money or the design knowledge to create their own website, although I am the first to admit that there may be aspects of ecommerce that escape me. Either way, it's always jarring to see them next to the intensely personal poetry of depressed teenagers (not to mention middle-aged men who are just now realizing that they, too, have a vulnerable side).

Actually, that brings me to an announcement: there's someone out there with a blog with "Loneliness" in the title somewhere, with a black-and-white falling-feathers skin. There is a note telling us to click on the feathers to see more, but they aren't clickable. If you're out there and you're reading this, sir, that can't be helping with your loneliness.

There are blogs that are all images (personal snapshots or professional designs), and I'm still trying to figure out why they're not on flickr instead, because the one-long-column-with-no-thumbnails thing is not ideal for display. Also, blogger seems to have drawn a huge volume of highly religious people, a lot of very organized people (I found one that is essentially a date book), a couple of terrifying conspiracy theorists, a bunch of folks trying their hands at news analysis as well as movie/music/book reviews, and at least one site devoted entirely to photographs of and discussion about hot cops. More power to you, ma'am.

Many were interesting to glance through, and there was even one that made me want to read the whole thing. I won't say which, so that everyone can think it might be theirs, except for the Lees, who can know it.

It is a wonderful and relatively new phenomenon to be able to express so much of yourself, while retaining complete control over what form "you" take. And I think that part of my surprise was at seeing people reveal absolutely everything, while others chose to use their platform to shine the light elsewhere. And, inevitably (because an online community is much like any other kind), now I have this nagging worry that I won't fit in.

Nuance

Then

The first time I traveled to France, I was sixteen. To make up for her various cruelties (or perhaps this was just another of them), my French teacher wrote such a glowing recommendation to the exchange program that they placed me with a family that spoke no English at all.

It was fine. My host sister and I could talk about differences, interests, families; we could go to the beach and to a heavy metal concert and to a bar with my host sister's friends. It was fine.

Well.

If I had one complaint, it might be that there is a substantial difference between being able to say things in a language and being able to speak it.

I couldn't get into the dynamics of my bizarrely blended family, and I still don't fully understand the deal with the gay couple living with her parents above their store while she stayed alone at their place on the beach.

I couldn't explain why "Hollywood Chewing Gum" wouldn't sell in the U.S.--at least, not on the jaded and sarcastic coasts (this, of course, was when just being U.S.-themed was still a big selling point practically everywhere else).

I couldn't explain why I nearly died laughing when the "heavy metal band"--which turned out to include a young man playing a saxophone--started playing Pink Floyd's "The Wall." Which they sang in heavily-accented English. Instead, my host sister's friends crowded around me to ask for a translation of the lyrics.

Which I also couldn't explain.

And Now

Nick is stranded in a country where he has no access to nuance.

Can you imagine trying to buy a full set of kitchen appliances without nuance? We went to get a toaster oven, and wound up with a mini-oven that, it turns out, has no toast feature. You have to turn the temperature dial and set the timer before it will heat up at all, and I have so much guilt over it (even though Nick swears that it is still very useful) that I was relieved to be out of the country for things like the refrigerator.

Would you want to be responsible for picking out a refrigerator in a country where you cannot for the life of you tell the difference between a shower curtain and a fabric shower liner? Or where an elderly woman off the street basically calls you a liar when you are unable to adequately explain that, while you understand her in general, you didn't catch the first thing she asked you? Or where you can say, "I turned the key and opened the door," but never "I unlocked the door?"

Think about it. Think about never saying "I unlocked the door." Then go price washer/dryer combos.

Domesticity

Yesterday I found myself in the exciting position of having a few free hours and some leftover pizza dough.

Anticipating a nice meal, I inventory my fridge. So...it will be a little odd (cheeseless, with mushrooms and ground veal), but fine for people like me, who came to pizza later in life and are open to the unconventional.

I even remember to preheat the oven, noting that when I made the first half of the dough, it was a snap. Because I've been steadily getting better at it, right?

As soon as I take the dough out of the bag, I sense something wrong. I shake it off, and start stretching the dough--which promptly tears. And tears. And tears. I reflour, I reknead the dough, I'm doing everything I can think of, but all I have is flour everywhere, hands coated in sticky bits of dough, and a crust that just...isn't.

Wait, I think. This is only half the dough, but I'm trying to make it the same size as the last pizza. Shouldn't it only be half the size? I am cheered until I recall that the other pizza in question was made with the first half of the dough. By which I mean to say that both balls of dough were, well, the same. And it doesn't matter anyway, because the only thing I can create that doesn't have a hole in it is a giant round sphere of dough. The second it deviates from that shape, it tears.

After about 15 minutes and some increasingly inventive language, I drop the thing on the foil and roll it out by force with my hands--I'm not playing around anymore, particularly now that my entire apartment is rapidly approaching 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

I hastily spoon some marinara over the mess, using a too-small spoon for the nearly-empty jar, so that my hand gets covered in it. My hand is not alone: I manage to get sauce all over the foil I'm using as a pie pan.

Around then, it occurs to me that I have forgotten to pierce the dough to keep it from bubbling. This is particularly problematic since my stubborn crust is over an inch thick in places. I stab it half-heartedly through the sauce.

Next comes the veal (by the way, although I love that a supermarket near me sells ground veal, I am mildly terrified that they sell it for less than $3/pound). I almost pick up the bit that drops on the table before I recall that this is the Contaminated Table*.

*When something such as a pigeon flying into my apartment and sitting on my dining room table occurs, I cannot imagine that the table will ever really be clean again. The table has, of course, been disinfected. Repeatedly. In time, I might even be ready to eat off of it again.

Now for the mushrooms. This has already been such a disaster that I decide not to cause further stress by dragging out the cutting board for something as minor as a few mushrooms. Moments later, as I contemplate the tiny beads blood welling up on my thumb, I consider the possibility that my agitation made free-handing mushrooms unwise.

My subconscious concludes that the only way to round off this experience is to overcook the whole thing dramatically. Apparently, I am okay with turning dinner into a Frisbee®, but I would sooner starve than be inconsistent.

The 4:00am Thing

A few weeks ago, I was wrapping up a conversation with my mother. "It's almost ten," I said. "I should call Nick, anyway."

I could hear the wheels turning--she travels. She knows. "Honey, it's...do you know what time it is there?"

See how parent-y that is? It's calculated underreaction; it's wonderful. I wanted to reward it by making it clear that her concern for Nick, while very sweet, is unnecessary. "It's four; I know. He asks me to call then, so that he can fall back asleep after." It sounded plausible.

"Oh. Well, that sounds..." (she's trying, she's trying) "...like torture." She's only human.

The thing is that Nick insists on this. Seriously! He gets all petulant when I don't call him in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, on nearly all of those occasions I did call, but he didn't wake up fully enough to remember it. This, of course, has led to an ugly escalation where I have been forced to find ways to make sure he registers the conversation. (Some might urge me to just refer him to his cell phone's call logs. Those people are clearly amateurs.)

What works best so far is drilling some random thing into his head. The next day, when he accuses me of not having called, I'll ask him about the thing, and bask in his confusion as recall kicks in. But we certainly experiment: the other night he wound up singing the alphabet to me for about five minutes. "I'm really glad I didn't just dream that," he said the next day. "That was a weird one."

The trouble is, I can never tell when he's just giving me a hard time. Don't bother asking him. He'll say he would never do such a thing. Then he will add that it's a shame that I feel compelled to spread rumors about him--like it's not bad enough that I constantly wake him in the dead of night.

"Why didn't you call me last night?" he demanded yesterday.

"I did. Remember? Your phone was having trouble?"

"What kind of trouble?" Even to my jaded ear, he sounds genuinely curious, rather than mischievous.

"The call kept connecting, but we couldn't hear each other. You woke up and called me back." I am not crazy. It's not my fault that he is an evil genius.

"Huh," he says. Blankly. Maddeningly.

But here's the payoff, a few minutes later: "You know, I'm really tired today. I don't know why."

Evil genius.

From the Migraine Files

Nick: Apparently my cooking gas hasn't been turned on yet. I'll have to call the guardian.

Me: Huh?

Now I dimly recall seeing an on-site "guardien" as a selling point in most of the apartment listings.

Me: Oh. Honey, you mean the super?

Nick: Guardian.

Me: But there's no such thing, so there must be a different English word. Isn't it like the super?

Nick: Guardian. That's just what she's called.

Me: Honey, I think this might be one of those "cave" things, because "guardian" isn't an apartment thing.

An aside here: "cave," with an "ah" sound, is French for cellar. "Hey, this apartment has a cave!" Nick exclaimed early on in the search. Because this is how we are, I gave him a hard time about it, and now he constantly talks about caves in French buildings. And all I can do is seethe, because I just know that he's picturing something with bats.

Nick: Well, she's not a super. More like a concierge.

Now, I saw the trap here, I did. But...

Me: Okay, so the concierge.

Nick: Well, except that would be a concierge. So she's something else.

Damnit.

Nick: I see her outside sweeping leaves all the time, and she's the one who delivers all our mail. She's a lot like a doorman.

Me: Okay...so a doorman.

I am happy for about eight seconds, until I recall his building's dark, empty entryway.

Me: Except for the part about being near the door and letting people in. Which...is kind of a big part.

Nick: We can call her a doorman anyway, if it'll make you feel better.

Couldn't you just kill him?

No, YOU Go Vote

I'm sorry. I think it's important, and I really intended to, and Eric, I know I promised. But then I got all worried that I would be arrested.

Last year, around this time, I found myself "between apartments." This is a Manhattan euphemism for "you will not believe what you will settle for by the time this is over." Particularly if your only recourse is to move in with my parents, a deceptively easy commute away in CT.

Now this is where it gets sticky.

A few months before my lease ended, I got a jury summons. And deferred it, because I was scheduled to appear on a day when my newly-purchased plane tickets said I should be in Barcelona. I did have a pang of guilt about deferring it until after my lease would end, since I didn't think I would renew, but only a small one. See, I believe in jury duty. I think it is a cornerstone of our democracy, and I had every intention of honoring my responsibility as a citizen, even if I had to do so from a bit further away.

But...Connecticut?

I did the math. I would have had to leave by 4:30am. Have they met me?

So my thinking went a bit like this: I had now moved out of state. Who cares that it was just the next state over--I could have moved to Iowa. What would they have done then? That is actually an interesting question, you see, because the you-have-already-deferred-once-and-huge-men-are-waiting-outside-your-door-to-escort-you-now notices are pretty terrifying. There are simply no options for not appearing; they do not even provide a phone number to call with questions. They are not interested in your questions. Just. Show. Up.

I did my best, you know. I circled the 100% genuine USPS forwarding label. I wrote "Moved Out of State" as large as I could. I mailed it back. Even so, no one seems to be able to say for certain that there is not currently a warrant out for my arrest.

Normally, I would have voted even so. I mean, I live yet somewhere else now: further proof, if any were required, that I was no longer a resident of my old apartment last November. Clearly, no big deal.

This morning, though, I realized the implications of never having changed my voter registration. I was about to trek over to my old neighborhood to cast my ballot in a district that my continued freedom may depend on my not having lived in for a year.

It's not as if I really believed that the police would be waiting for me at the polling place. But think about it for a minute: what if I were ever mistakenly accused of murder or something? They dig into crap like this; I've seen Law & Order.

Little Italians

For the best pizza this side of the Atlantic, you must go to Giovanni's, on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

I am aware that this is a controversial statement, and I am not making it for the purpose of begin an argument. If you are inclined to argue, first go to Giovanni's. Then we can talk.

Even better, across the street is the Madonia Bros. Bakery, which sells "cannolis filled while you wait." The first time I saw that sign, I was with the wonderful friends who had just moved me into Washington Heights. We mocked it--wouldn't you? Until, that is, Andrea bought a cannoli, which they did, in fact, fill while she waited. And the thing is, everyone who tries one of these things is irrevocably converted. I personally have never much liked cannolis, and I adore these. The shells are flaky and buttery, and the filling is creamy, without the dull glueyness that sets in when the moisture starts leaching out into the shell. I would take them over Magnolia cupcakes; can you imagine?

The point of all this is that my relentlessly New York weekend continued on Arthur Avenue on Sunday. It was an integral part of Project: Diversion, the point of which was to keep Andrea away from the marathon she trained so hard for that she developed a stress fracture.

"I had pizza tonight, too!" said Nick, but I can't help but think that it had to be a little different.

I fret on Nick's behalf when he misses especially good episodes of Iron Chef America, which is one of the handful of shows we both enjoy. I sincerely appreciate living in a country where people stress over good customer service, even if I have to call out of my city area codes to talk to most of them. A country where you can find rabbit in any grocery store makes me tense, as does the ever-present danger that ignoring one unfamiliar word could be the difference between ordering a nice steak and ordering some kind of gland from a cow's brain stem. Seriously. It very nearly happened once.

More than that, I love subways that run all night, taking an attitude about the outer boroughs (except for the parts that have perfect pizza), having the number of an unlisted speakeasy, giving good directions, and venting about the absurd living conditions we all put up with just to be able to say we live here. I never expected to live in NYC forever, but what is long "enough" to live in the place you love?

Plus One

Mr. Big's friend hit on me last night.

I'll back up.

I had an extremely New York night last night: I had VIP passes to Chris Noth's bar/lounge/club.

Naturally, none of this is nearly as glamorous as it sounds. My stepbrother's band, The Ruse (see left), was playing at the Cutting Room, guest-list only. So I hopped on the subway, which was a bona fide full-moon Saturday night ride, complete with random stops, sudden service changes, loud and inappropriate remarks, people all in my space, and a bottle opening that sounded like a gunshot, setting off a small panic. Apparently, Mary, coming from the opposite direction, had a very similar experience, so we suspect that the ugliness was widespread.

Fortunately, we ran into Jim (aka: my stepbrother) a few blocks from the bar--apparently, all three of us were looking for another bar to go to first. I say it was fortunate because the Cutting Room bouncer later confessed to me that he had lost the list; meeting Jim got us the nifty passes. More than that, it reminded me of just how much less neurotic he is than almost anyone I know. I got to see how a person could walk into a bar without trying to decide if it is really a good fit for them, find a place to dump coats before the rest of us are even inside, and be holding three beers before we're done setting the coats there. It's all very rock star.

So, after all the inevitable reunions and cattiness outside the Cutting Room (the cattiness was me--there was this bitch who...never mind), we wandered into the charming lounge, and within five minutes were bumped into by the famous owner. In fact, he bumped into me three times over the course of the night; swoon if you are so inclined. Adorably enough, the first time he walked by was right after Mary remarked that she never saw famous people in New York. The second time was as she was remarking that it is particularly pretentious to display massive photographs of oneself in one's own bar.

We don't think he heard.

Thinking that that would be our brush with fame for the night, we headed back to the bar just before the Ruse went on--and found ourselves right next to Mr. Noth and some friend of his named Julio, who was quite taken with the two of us. "Watch out for that guy," he yelled in my ear, pointing to his better-known half. "He's delusional...thinks he's some kind of actor or something."

"Probably thinks he owns the place, too," I deadpanned, making the poor man blink furiously. New York is not about seeing celebrities; it's about faking unphased by them. Which is why I will not mention that Mr. Noth is ridiculously attractive in person, nor will I ever admit that Mary and I giggled like schoolgirls every time he walked by. (Speaking of that--oh hell. Someone else was there, too, but it's too overeager to say so now. Never mind.)

Oh, and the show was great, too, although far too short. The last two shows have been, actually--at both, people were chanting for an encore for a good long time but never got one.

I blame Big.

The More Things Change...

I've been thinking a lot about all the changes Nick faces--in fact, I have been thinking about them ever since the first time he called me as a Parisian. "No one will talk to me," he wailed. "I don't speak French!" Now, strictly speaking, this is not true. Although he never formally studied French until pretty recently, for as long as I've known him he could convey information well, and his comprehension is substantially better than mine.

I knew what he meant, though--it's different when you're thrown in to something entirely new without a net. All you can see is what is unfamiliar. Sooner or later, though, you start to notice that there really are universals. (Sorry, Andrea, but Mentos Cassis aren't on the list.)

Furniture Delivery

Okay, so in Nick's case, it's appliances, but the premise is the same--it's all one with getting cable installed, in a very Platonic sort of way. I'm sure that Nick had his own little shiver of genetically-coded recognition when he heard that his kitchen appliances would be delivered tomorrow. Between 8 and 1.

Neighbors

I have 2 1/2 problem neighbors. The half is the woman upstairs whose place I accidentally broke into last week (yes, both of our locks have now been changed). She wouldn't be a problem, except that my building (and, charmingly, Nick's as well) is built with super-solid walls, paper-thin ceilings, and creaky floors. So while we relax, trusting that the wall construction=great soundproofing, we are all driving the person below us insane. Plus, she uses something that sounds like a blender every night around 1 or 2am.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where the other two live (my windows open onto an echoing courtyard; they could be anywhere), which is inconvenient for sending the police their way. On the upside, I am now an friendly terms with my local graveyard-shift 311 guy. Actually, I have only ever called them about the person who blasts Spanish torch songs at 2am (only every so often, but with disturbing consistency--same music, same time, same duration). The porn star, on the other hand, is far too entertaining to shut down.

Nick has just the one, so far, and at least it isn't malicious: his upstairs neighbor is mostly deaf, and loves television. Remember what I said about the ceilings and floors? Every morning she creaks over to the TV, and turns it on loud enough to be heard in the lobby, three floors down. It's charming, say I, because it will make him less homesick.

Right?

Thugs

I came of age in one of those suburbs where we laughed at the kids with the baggy pants who listened to hip-hop and acted like it was their lives. I'm sorry, but we just don't have "hoods" in Connecticut, and the teenagers who pretend otherwise are just sad.

Apparently, they have those same teenagers in France.

"They must have some sketchier areas," I say, as some 16-year-old boys with piercings and chains harass a girl on the Metro.

"It's France," Nick argues.

But the thing is, I was sitting on the NYC subway the other day on the way out to Washington Heights, and I was watching this kid with a 4-karat chunk of plastic in his ear yo-yoing into his tricked-out cell phone (you get reception around 125th St.). And I caught myself thinking, "Who is he kidding?" And, really, if that isn't the place to find the real thing, then what is?

Is There an Electrician in the House?

The Backstory

As I may have mentioned, French apartments come mostly without light fixtures. Nick's actually had three: two in the bathroom and one in the WC, plus three more hideous dangling bare bulbs where others might go. Naturally, we picked up some during our epic IKEA trip (I love any excuse to linger in the lighting section). And they were among the first of the things we unpacked to assemble.

And then the ugliness started.

Apparently, two of the fixtures required hooks. And two of the ceiling spaces where the fixtures would go already had hooks. Naturally, those two spaces were not the ones for which we intended those two fixtures, so we needed one new hook, and to get rid of another that was firmly embedded into the plaster.

And speaking of the plaster...

We bought a hook for the really cool kitchen fixture, and then learned some very unfortunate things about the ceiling composition. Specifically, it begins with plaster that flakes off in massive chunks under any stress, and it ends with something too solid for our drill. So we had plaster everywhere, and no way to drill a hole that was even deep enough, much less one that would grip the hook.

At the next spot, we couldn't get around the unnecessary hook, and at the third the wires were too short to thread into the fixture. As a bonus, the tired old wires made it impossible to reattach one of the aforementioned hideous dangling bulbs, so our efforts resulted in a darker apartment.

Nick did not take this well.

And Now

One of the bathroom fixtures burned out today. After two trips to the hardware store, he discovered that fraying on the old wires had caused them to cross, and so the light kept blowing its fuse.

Nick did not take that well, either.

On the plus side, the hardware store confirmed that wire extensions are a real thing (I had theorized them at some point during the frustration). As a result, Nick actually broke even on lighting, because while the bathroom fixture is dead for the time being, he was able to hang the one that he only agreed to get because I like it.

He did not consider that a fair trade.

The Question

Obviously, some of these issues are the direct result of the condition of the building. But other people live there, and they need light, too. In fact, there are old buildings all over the city, and it is hard to imagine that all of them have useless wires dangling from the lightless ceilings.

Has living 25+ years in the USA made us soft? Have we been taking our cushy equipped kitchens and installed lights for granted, and has it made us incapable of fending for ourselves? Is this something we should really learn to do, or something that should simply not be necessary?

In other words, would it be okay to call an electrician? Or would it be a character flaw?