She sti

I breathe in

The first moments of falling happened on your father's porch. You told me how special it felt to have someone to bounce your travels off of like a radar at home base...and I'd never thought of myself as someone's home before.  And I faintly recognized the humming in my ears and the surging fullness as signs that I was now irreparably changed by you, come what may. Everyone thought I was crazy as I floated through the city high on you and the prospect of our future.  And maybe a part of me believed them and knew that we hadn't yet earned this kind of reckless abandon to love and move and make the big decisions.  We thought we were fooling fate; that we were more than, better than, different than.  But we weren't.  We were human.

The holes in us revealed themselves as they're wont to do with any two strangers discovering each other in life for the first time.  But instead of embracing our unknowns and unraveling our uncertainties, we each built our walls and committed our crimes. 

And now this flood flows from a ride with your album.  Dark winding roads are lining up with your dark winding lyrics and they fuel my hatred and my desire to forgive and my deep sadness from this loss. Have you lived through this specific destruction before, or am I just willing the instruments and the pain in your voice to sound like us?  I'm choosing to remember this same car ride with you on this very road at this very hour just 5 weeks ago as happy, but my memory is a liar lately.  Our fray had already begun.

I've since woken up morning after morning and braced myself for the waiting.  The waiting for someone to falter so we can once again pinpoint the wrongness that validates our own decisions; each of us clinging to our martyred identities to assuage ourselves or to use as incriminating evidence in telling friends and family of our failure.  Will we speak today and battle through our weighted pauses, or will I fling an accusation at you just to see how it feels when it leaves my tongue - a tasty victory until the emptiness behind it hits.  Will we remain silent, I in my determination to forget, while you move slowly through the streets, sitting in your bed sparingly to avoid the corner of your room where the wifi is shitty, writing... or thinking of writing and finding nothing there.  Or maybe you find too much. Maybe your head is heavy with the Next step, unsure of what shape Next will take, who Next will be, where Next will exist; selfishly indulgent in your well-being, but not knowing it's face.  

I'm struggling to remember you and forget you at the same time.  Like the quiet sadness in a layer of your being veiled by your eyes...the same place where I imagine your music is born ...that little untouchable part of you that was always just out of reach to me.  Maybe I was selfish to want all of you - to leave no stone unturned.  Because maybe there are things humans are incapable of sharing, and we have to just trust and love the things we can.

 The tearing of myself from limb to limb in the process to process has made me realize that it's not about wanting all of you, it's about a truth in wanting all FOR you. Because even if I can't be the one to remind you up close every day of the beauty you offer the world, I still believe in it.  And I'll continue to send love to you from wherever I stand.

New York, BRB

Three years ago I arrived in New York City with $250 to my name.  I've just left with $39.86 in my checking account.  And although I’ve evidently lost from my gamble on such an unforgiving town, I’ve come away with a few other counted items.

I’ve gone through roughly 26 debit cards over the course of my existence there.  

Wont to lose them at every graceful taxi exit, late night bar visit, or in every deep-pocketed tote bag, I’ve come to be on good terms with the employees at the Union Square Citibank branch, and have batted my eyes and begged MTA employees shamelessly to allow me through the turnstiles while  waiting for my latest temp card, aptly leaving me temp dead broke.  As time wore on, rather than face my identity as a raging imbecile who can’t hold onto a piece of plastic, I blamed the city.  It was unpredictable and malicious, and that indisputable fact made it the perfect villain on which to place all my own shortcomings.

I’ve had 6 places of residence; 5 of which I called home within 3 months of each other.  

I lost my hair from the stress of moving from a friend's couch, to my cousin's couch, to a stranger's studio to the bed bug-ridden place with the 2 guys from Craigslist to finally my true New York home.  And then my hair continued to fall out from walking 15 miles a day since the amazing deal I found in my apartment was not so much a steal due to it's 20 minute hike to the subway...and also most likely from mercury poisoning thanks to my sushi addiction.  I moved everything I accumulated for 3 years into a new apartment in the heart of the trendiest trendster hood - spoiling myself with a deli, a laundromat, AND a real live bar within steps from my door.  I lived there for a total of one month before leaving - and leaving behind most of what I owned.

I’ve had 5 jobs during my status as New Yorker. 

There was the glorified internship “assistant” position where I first learned how to discreetly cry at work over my first failed attempt at relationships in the city of on-to-the-next-best-thing.  I thought I loved Elliot – ginger-haired and carrying a little extra around his middle that I proudly admired in bed like a Girl Scout badge for mastering sexual attraction to the less than sexually attractive.  (In badge form, this logo would be a man with a campfire on his head.) I pointedly ignored his arrogance and his hesitation to be seen with me in public, and barreled on until I learned of his OkCupid indiscretions, indiscreetly revealed to me via text . During this first job I learned that sexual harassment in the workplace was a tightrope that all women are forced to walk and should be navigated with care, and I was introduced to my best friend on the face of the Earth.  

There was the corporate advertising job where I met the humans that showed me the meaning of New York nights and nurtured my youth (read: fed me alcohol in all corners of the city at all hours on all days of the week).  I went to an album release party for a supposedly popular country singer whose name I can’t remember, but whom I offended by confronting him on his lyrics insinuating women are glorified hood ornaments on his 4x4.  I cried at a Bon Jovi concert.  I sang a lot of karaoke.  I was happy, I was bored, I was underpaid. 

There was the “dream job” that I obtained through perseverance and flat out stalking.  I lasted exactly a year amongst the misogynistic litany of the cult that was my workplace.  I wore all black paired with red lips – the obligatory uniform of "chicks" in the office – I threw $3 million parties and jet-setted to Puerto Rico on business to drink and swim on a private island with Kendrick Lamar and Ellie Goulding for 4 days. I spoke fluent hipster.  I was cooler than you. And you and you.  I was less happy, I was overworked, I was underpaid.

Which leads to the underlying job that held my life together: the restaurant job. 

There’s a minute or two every day toward sunset on Union Square West when the light reflects off the opposing buildings on Union Square East and could blind a man.  I stood at my post as Hostess at an Asian Fusion restaurant (for white people who want to attempt watered-down culture and overpay for it) for 3 years of my life and waited for this fleeting moment every shift.  It was sometimes the only sure thing I saw in a week.  Despite all the pulsing and turbulence, the sun would set and that reflection remained a constant; through broke or broker, single or pining, driven or driven into, it was there.  Sometimes during a shift I even ordered a Pad Thai and immediately regretted it for a week.  But that restaurant was my family.  And when we lost a member too soon to a ravaging illness, I never felt so broken, but so wholly part of something truly transcendent; capable of healing powers.   The day I could finally leave the hostess stand and still feed myself didn’t feel like goodbye.  In general I now smiled less on impulse thanks to the droves of demanding mouths belonging to tourists and locals alike craving gluten-free noodles, but there was a hardened strength gained and living in me. 

And lastly, the agency position that gave me a tribe and brought back the Kiki.

I've had countless dates; good and bad and weird and forgettable.  All with good and bad and weird and forgettable men.  There was that time I got out of a cab crying from my long time crush rejecting me, and I was stopped by a woman on the street who told me to never forget that my "pussy is prime time".  She yelled this to me from across 14th street, and I vowed make sure it's included on my headstone someday.  I remember slow-dancing by the Hudson River with ginger Elliot before Brooklyn became the Brooklyn that made you want to take up chain smoking and basic bitch shaming as recreational sports.  That time I cried the ugly cry in the middle of dinner on a first date after he asked where I was from - because I still wasn't over ginger Elliot and all of our romantic dances by bodies of water.  I went on a few fun dates with a semi-famous dog trainer (he's HUGE in Korea...I think.  He's obviously very effective...have you met my dog, Kujo?  ...I mean Leo?).  When I dated the lawyer of my company and he drunkenly yelled to me at a corporate event that he was the pretty one in our relationship.  I met the love of my life on a stage at Williamsburg Music Hall...and kissed him the next night off-stage at the Bowery Ballroom.  I've truly hated dating in New York (and that's an article for another time entitled, "You Look Nothing Like Any of Your 13 Tinder Photos" or "Oh, You're an Investment Banker? My, Look at the Time." or "Your Nose is Whiter Than Whiskeytown on a Friday Night"), but I wouldn't trade these horror stories for anything normal.

There have been many nights I couldn’t hear my own thoughts for the rush of the streets, the constant run or be run over mindset causing my whole body to hum with expectancy - expectant for what, who knows, but one must always be ready nonetheless.  It was that same mindset that buried me in debt and pushed me to my emotional limits. I stepped over homeless people as if litter while I was running late to work - the humanity slowly draining from me in the haste to survive.  I drank wine for dinner.  I bought candles instead of doing laundry.  I let myself be taken over by the impossibility of the possibility that only New York can give.  

But if New York has taught me one thing (other than mastering the most convincing resting bitch face) it’s that nothing is guaranteed, but anything is possible.   Rain and tax may be the only sure things in life, but the souls who guide you through the storm and belatedly face H&R Block with you on April 14th are what makes it all worthwhile.  And I've been honored to have had such driven, soulful, oddball, loving humans in my New York world whom have altered me in the most beautiful ways.  And though relentless in her pursuit to rid you from her streets, New York will always reward you with the perfect piece of magic just when you feel like quitting her.  Whether it comes in the form of the human-glue of a man who brings people together and has created a family in the name of fitness, and without knowing it truly saved me, or just a stranger with a smile and a compliment.  It makes her hard to leave.

I’ve just taken part in my final running of the bulls in Penn Station to my appointed train track that will lead me back to my hometown and eventually back West.  And as I now watch the city fade from view, I’m watching the life I’ve built for myself – the only adult life I’ve ever known – leave with it.  It’s scary to start over.  Especially because New York is a part of my identity.  It's ingrained in the fabric of my being for better or worse - and anyone who's lived and fought and loved and mourned in this wild and limitless place will know what I mean. 

I married Joe...ish

Last night I dreamt I married my friend Joe*. Joe's a good guy.  Joe's a dependable sort who cracks one-liners that dangerously border dad-joke territory in the most attractive way.  Suddenly the prospect of yelling at the Volvo's recalculating GPS on the way to Sea World with this man and your 3 whiny imaginary triplets (Quinoa, Mason and Adelaide) in the backseat unconsciously nudges your ovaries toward him like some sort of 21st century mating call.  He's worked at all the hot start-up-turned-mega-cool-tech-grassroots-grass-fed-free-range-chicken-skinny-jeans companies, but you're not sure exactly what he does. His job has something to do with Excel?  There might be emails involved?  All that matters is that he wears glasses while he does it.  He lives perched on a San Francisco hill, and you call him to announce that you're flying in from New York the next day and that you'll be staying with him for an unidentified amount of time.  He asks no questions and platonically splits his bed with you for what turns out to be only one night before you run off to San Jose with the dude in the band that you think might be The One.  He wasn't The One.  Pending one police report and this realization, you hole yourself up on a diet of cream cheese, Keith Urban's greatest heartbreak hits, and Bravo ...and as you spiral into the 5th stage of grief: text-shaming your recent ex - Joe's existence inspires your mother to plaintively beg, "Why aren't you with someone like JOE??" 

So it was only natural that last night my dream featured Joe as my husband.  The UNNATURAL aspect of it all was the picture my subconscious painted of marriage.  I'm going to interpret this dream as the recipe for a lasting relationship...cuz like, we seemed pretty happy and everything - and obviously I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to the care and cultivation of love.

The key to a successful nuptial as outlined by my dream:

1. There were SO MANY piggyback rides.  Everywhere we went.  There I was. Riding around like baby koala.  We went for a hike with friends.  Piggyback.  We were at the grocery store where I could reach the super high shelves. A bar crawl turned into a bar haul.  It was magical.

2.  We made meatballs.  Self explanatory. 

3.   We hung out with his super amazing parents!  I've never actually met Joe's parents and know nothing about them at all.

4.  I met the Pope.  I'm not Catholic. 

5.  We adopted a caterpillar.  Compact, quiet, requires little to no walking and very affordable vet bills.  

In reality, Joe and I will continue our friendship marked by me texting him every 3 months to tell him various pieces of useless information and dropping in unexpectedly wherever he may currently reside. 

*Name has not been changed. At all. His name is Joe. Hi, Joe!  AND! In real life he is not my spouse and is in fact SINGLE! Ladies, get at it.

The Book of Life

Last night in a fit of insomnia, I created chapters that would populate the book written on mine and my friends' lives right now.  Full novel to come.*

*but probably not.


Chapter 1: On texting beautiful men
 
Chapter 2: Range Rover etiquette; or, the how-tos and just the tips to car hook ups
 
Chapter 3: Best friends are for kissing
 
Chapter 4: If Ohio is for lovers, New York is for cat hoarders
 
Chapter 5: Fresh coat of single, Fresh coat of alcoholism
 
Chapter 6: The only person to contact me while my phone was off during the movie was my mother
 
Chapter 7: Tugboats, Gingers and Homosexuals: a guide to dating all the Right Ones
 
Chapter 8: Tell me where we're going 6-12 hours in advance
 
Chapter 9: What's that and where do I put it?
 
Chapter 10: My dog's an insta-whore
 
Chapter 11: Where'd all the wine go and why is my mouth so purple?
 
Chapter 12: Basic Bitch litmus pop quiz
 
Chapter 13: That cabbie has my iPhone and I'm not mad

Chapter 14: I don't always fall in love, but when I do it's on the subway 

Chapter 15: Your girl she so thirsty. But really, do you have bottled water? I'm parched.

beach night

Sitting on the couch after everyone’s gone to bed.  Locusts and waves the only sound – the week behind living in you.  Your skin’s new shade the only outward proof.  Your favorite book has been on a shelf here all along, and as you pick it up and reacquaint yourself with the old friend, the stillness sets in.  The wholeness, the culmination of it all.  This is what you break your heart for.  What you lay awake for. What you put on a face and go to battle every day for.

It’s all worth it for this moment right now – sitting next to coolers full of leftover food waiting to be crammed back into cars traveling north.  Next to trash bags full of bottles and cardboard awaiting the curb.  The signs of having lived a week with the most important humans in the world.  The luck of it all.  It’s the calm before the storm – but also the ending really.  Because nothing will ever be this way again.  And even more than the melancholy that brings, there’s a beauty in it.   A unique truth to it; that next year won’t and can’t be the same.  Nothing ever will.  This moment in time is all its own.

Someday you’ll look back at pictures and something will spark in your being.  And maybe you won’t remember the exact words spoken, but you’ll remember the feeling.  You’ll remember the fears.  What you wanted.  WHO you wanted – and you’ll take comfort that you were.  That you are.  That the two versions are existing simultaneously right now, and by all means will continue.

We require such landmarks in life.  To bring us back.  Away from subways and spreadsheets and bars of strangers.  To ground us with the large smallness of nature and familial love.  But also to serve as a stake in the ground when we’ve lost our identities in the noise and motion.  Our minds scanning backwards…skipping over the anonymous moments, we land on this quiet little pocket when we really were.

2015 is a babe

Every Jan. 1 we're all guilted into taking a long hard look at our lives over the past 365 days.  It's as if we've collectively decided that the year is a package deal and all events within its time frame are very neatly related and easily quantified and can be evaluated accordingly.  Although this idea is a complete pipe dream, we all need a sense of beginning and ending to provide the sanity-stabilizing guise that we're in control and our lives can be gauged.  And so we're issued a new number.  We buy a fresh calendar and start at page one, and we write vows to ourselves to make the most of the twelve months ahead of us.  

 I don't want to make a change in my life just for the sake of a date seemingly unlike any other, but I have taken a closer look at my happiest moments and biggest regrets of the past year and have compiled a small list of REMINDERS to myself to check back on every once in awhile. 15 for 2015...preeeeetty smooth, eh?

1. "The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them." — Maya Angelou

2. Avoid vodka.  But drink wine by the box-loads.

3. If it looks delicious, eat it.

4. If you feel awful, take a shower.  If you still feel awful, consume the contents of your fridge. If you STILL feel awful and now your stomach is angry, go to sleep.  Everything makes more sense after 8 hours of unconsciousness.

5. Go home and visit your parents and remember where you came from and remember who you are.

6. writewritewrite!

7. Nothing good happens after 2AM. Except 2:30AM $1 pizza.

8. Nothing is black and white.  Get comfy with the gray.  THRIVE amongst the gray! (*Also, maybe go see 50 Shades of Gray in the theater by yourself and deny til you die if questioned on it).

9. Don't wait around for someone to fall in love with you.   

10. Moisturize.

11. Stick with your gut...other than the final resting place for your beer, it has a helpful purpose.
12.  Take a zillion pictures and don't delete any of them.  Someday when our faces are unrecognizably wrinkly and we're covered in spider veins, we'll consider that photo from 2015 with the accidental double chin something to show off to the great grandkids.
13.  Kanye is a terrible person.  But adopt Kanye's I'm-the-shit attitude. Dial it back to a strong 3, and you'll for sure make a decent rap album without pissing off everyone you know.
14.  Speak up.  If you're unhappy, say something. If you have a great idea at work, tell someone.  If you're in line at CVS behind Justin Timberlake, scream. 
15.  The universe is unfolding as it should.