I was heading up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to Maud’s yesterday, and a store uncle standing in his doorway watching the world go by—

(Question: is any older uncle type “uncle,” or do they have to be Chinese? Because it occurs to me that if he were Indian, he would be “mama,” and if he were Malay, one might qualify the term as “Malay uncle.” But if he’s black? Or white? Or Latino? Are all uncles “uncle”?)

(How come Carrie Bradshaw, sitting in her Village apartment in little heels and fancy bloomers, never types these sorts of questions on “Sex and the City”?)

—said, as I walked past, “Welcome to Harlem, Beautiful,” which was, if you’re going to get heckled when you’re out and about, probably the best way to get heckled when you’re out and about.

When I got to her street, I’d forgotten which house exactly her apartment is in. I stopped in front of a familiar building for the slightest of moments with a question mark over my head, and then the scent of orange blossom water in the air confirmed I’d arrived.

Upstairs, there was freshly baked gingerbread and homemade applesauce and tea in a gold teapot. There was also a new French girl, and, soon, a French boy. And we likes French girls, but we likes French boys.

At one point Tom called. “I’m at Maud’s,” I said. “We’re having tea.” “Already?” he asked. “What d’you mean ‘already’? It’s like five o’clock; it’s time for tea.” “Isn’t it too early?” he said. “Um, maybe you’re thinking of beer,” I said. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “I get them mixed up.”

I was sitting, legs crossed, on a chair in the small kitchen, facing the wood chopping-block table and a rack of salt and spices. And Maud was talking in the next room, and Tom was talking in my ear, and there was a sense, the gingerbread smell and the gingerbread light curling and swirling around me, that this was home.

He asked later if I was still moving to London. “I just don’t know,” I said. “The thing is, if I move to London and something goes wrong and I feel bad, I can’t just call you.” “Well,” he said, “you could still call me.” “Okay, yes, but then we wouldn’t be able to immediately meet for a drink downtown.” “Yes,” he said, “your moving to London would preempt the drink.” “Damn.” “So, okay,” he said, “so don’t move.” “Mm.”

By the time the sun set, Maud and I were delirious with blowing off schoolwork midweek. We hopped the 2 train, me and Gab and Maud, heading for junk food and a movie. At Big Nick’s, there was a table outside in the cool evening, and an Aloha Burger that arrived with ham and a slice of pineapple and a paper demitasse of sweet macaroni salad. Inside, the crush. Under handwritten signs touting clams and chips and a one-pound Sumo Burger, the grill spat and smoked. On the lunch counter, shielded under plastic domes, portions of layered cakes, fat and smug, leaned over from the weight of thick, white cream.



On the way to “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” Maud let slip that Jude Law is, apparently, s-h-o-r-t. Not that that’s a problem to me and my hundred-and-fifty-seven centimeters of pot-calling-the-kettle-black. It was just a surprise is all; dude has an air of height. Over a bag of Sour Patch Kids on my right and one of peanut M&Ms on my left, the movie was all gunmetal-shiny and Russian-avant-garde and “Metropolis” and the-future-is-now. There was Gwyneth Paltrow in the plane doing loop-de-loops, her hair swirling blond about her head, underwater in the air; there was Angelina Jolie ejecting from her submaplane and rocketing off into the sky like cool; there was action and adventure and style enough that I only wondered four times if Jude Law was standing on a box.

There is this one tree in the park that, when the sun smiles behind it like gangbusters, lights up all peachy pink and lemon yellow.

I thumb my nose at you who insist that my birthday must be over by now, because, ha-ha, who’s the one who came home today to a birthday package just arrived from Sydney, a jolly box stuffed with champagne chocolate and a delightful pink Turkish delight, all nestled in packaging shiny and gold like merriment and gaiety?

He was sitting there already, among the Saturday afternoon crowd, when I got to the arch in Washington Square Park. Skirting the Village, we made our way through SoHo and its sidewalk sellers and its weekend throng before fortuitously becoming hungry for lunch as we approached Chinatown. At 69 Bayard, where the walls are papered with defaced one-dollar bills, I tried to do that thing with the waiter boss guy where it’s like, Dude, you’re Chinese, I’m Chinese, I know that you know that I know that there are dishes that can be had that may not be on the menu. “Dou miao?” I ventured. “No,” he said, “kang kong.” “Um, xiao bai cai?” “Kang kong.” Ah, okay, sure, sounds good.

We continued downtown downtown after, past the row of pigeons on a wire fence, past the wrinkled Chinese shoeshine uncles sitting on a street corner shooting the breeze, past City Hall Park and Trinty Church and the old stone buildings that make me think of that Crimson Permanent Assurance scene in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” and then we were by the water, with the breakdancing boys and their boombox on high; the skater boys with impatient eyes, lining up to grind a bench; the makeshift stands hawking black-and-white prints and “I heart New York” T-shirts and miniature yellow cabs.

On the ferry to Staten Island, our boat honked that mournful boat honk, and we were off, the city skyline behind us, and a wise old seagull perched up high to navigate the seas. And I thought we were just going to ride there and back, because that would have been adventure enough, because who doesn’t like a boat?, but then we got to the ferry terminal on the other end and the boy made a move to debark. “Wait, you actually want to get off at Staten Island?” I said. “Sure,” he said, “why not.” “I guess— well— I mean— okay, cool.” And, really, I was excited, because I’ve never actually gotten off the boat at Staten Island. “Maybe Staten Island will be full of Italian cafés serving good coffee,” he said. “And cannoli!” I said. And, oh, how the gods must have laughed. Because we got off the boat to an underwhelming bus station and the browngreyness of what looked like abandoned train tracks, and, twenty minutes later, having walked by the Chinese restaurant and the shop selling Exxxotic Toys, the empty carpark and the green house leaning to the right, the Sri Lankan Grocery and Videos and the hairstylists specializing in braids and buzz cuts, we were on the 62 bus back to the terminal. On the ferry to Manhattan, the setting sun painted a watery yellow stroke over the horizon.



And then it was dusk and cobblestones, and we’d been on our feet all day, and what we needed was a sit-down. At the Wall Street stop, the 2 train arrived like a present as we reached the platform.

Heading to the Pavilion down Prospect Park West, we swapped dreams of skiing, and of spiderwebs, and of swimming through the air. Two Rasta jellyfish and a box of Milk Duds later, it was cold enough when we got out of the cinema that I danced silly shivering steps down the block.

There was toast and butter and raspberry jam for a late snacky dinner. Les Rita Mitsouko. He tasted of tobacco and chocolate.

Well, it’s just that if you’re at the grocery store and you find yourself in front of a whole tray of cauliflowers dressed up for an elegant night out, then the only thing you can do is pick one up for dinner in a chicken curry.

Maybe it’s because I hardly make my way to the Upper East Side or something, but the night before I was supposed to go over to Nicole’s for dinner, I had this mad dream in which I had to cross the All Hong Kong Bridge linking Beijing and Shanghai, infiltrating the underground Hello Kitty office along the way to hack into its network of international spies. At one point a bomb freefell in an apocalyptic sky. Following its trajectory with terrified eyes, a bystander shouted: “No! That’s where the Dior show is being held!” And still I had to get to Nicole’s, and I was late, and now it was raining, too.

Happily, the reality of getting to Nicole’s involved very little more than hopping the F to the 6, calmly reading Flaubert the whole way. And when I got there it was warm and welcoming, and I was swiftly handed a glass of champagne, and the house smelled of good food to come. Over a mushroom-and-red-cabbage salad and plump, fluffy couscous with zucchini and sweet, tender shrimp—

(Because of a small matter of an unfortunate allergy to prawns, I was concerned when I saw that shrimp was going to be served—only because it pointed to limited consumption. As allergies go, mine is a minor one: what happens when I eat soft-shelled creatures is that my mouth and throat get itchy—so I usually proceed warily, watching out for when the itching begins, at which point, regretfully, I stop. And I know maybe the solution is so simple as to just not eat shrimp, but the thing is, it is so tasty. Anyway this time when the itching began after shrimp number two, I just moved on to shrimp number three, and four, and five, and finally the itching went away, which just goes to show that sometimes if you have a food allergy, you can beat it into submission. Um, I guess if you don’t stop breathing and fall over first.)

—Nicole told us about a recently deceased Texan relative named Uncle Brother; and Suzanna told us about her farmhouse in Iowa with a barn made of trees in such a way that its roof is a lace of treetops; and Bill told us about when he and his band “toured the West Coast” with one gig in Seattle; and Nicole is going to give me her recipe for chocolate pecan pie. “I like a chocolate-covered graham cracker,” I said. “Is there anything chocolate-covered you don’t like?” Bill asked. “Um. No, I suppose not,” I said. “Chocolate-covered bugs?” he said. “Chocolate-covered rocks? Sticks?” “Bill,” I said, “that’s just not nice.”

We sped downtown in a cab on the FDR around midnight. Over the East River, the Pepsi-Cola sign was lit up like jollity.

Later, walking home on Ninth Street, I saw a wooden door, blue like a bird, lying on the pavement, and it occurred to me that if I were to turn the old-timey glass knob and open the door, I might step through the sidewalk into anyplace, it was that kind of night, and that kind of light, and that kind of silence all around. Thing is, the only place I wanted to be at that moment was in bed, and bed was just around the corner, so I continued on, me and my heels, click-click-clicking past the sleeping brownstones.

This just in, from Tom, guest blogger:

bootleg track from last night:

maud opens her eyes. it is dark. how long had she been there? voices come from downstairs. a woman’s voice, animated, breaking into laughter, other voices racing ahead and tumbling over the first, and collapsing in a big heap, laughter. somebody having a party; the sound of friends in love. party. wait, hadn’t she herself been at a party that night? she had. but wait, when had she left the party? hang on—SHE WAS STILL AT THE PARTY. except instead of telling funny jokes and smoking cigarettes she was ASLEEP ON THE COUCH. nice, maud.

When it’s been grey for days, and cold like the whiteblue tips of icicles, it is best to have people over for soup. Yesterday evening after booking it home from class, I was peeling pumpkins in an awkward way, trying to keep track of all my fingers, thinking, “If Maud were here she would point out that this is an accident waiting to happen.” And then she did arrive, and she took over the knife, and, like magic, none too soon all the pumpkins were peeled and chopped and ready for a soup—and I still had all my fingers.

Later, India came by with an apple tart in a cake carrier with her name and phone number on it; and then Vio, with a mint vase and pink flowers; and then it was time to eat, even without Tom, because when it is time to eat it is time to eat. Especially when time to eat means pumpkin soup with cream swirled into the pot at the last minute; and an arugula–green apple–parmesan–mixed nuts salad; and cheeses; and concord grapes; and sweet, sweet, out-of-season strawberries (does “Driscoll’s has its own Research and Development Department to create and breed its own, unique varieties of strawberries” mean “genetically modified”?); and New Norcia pan chocolatti; and India’s apple incredible with a great big red bowl of cream thick and white like dreams of clouds.



The night was good like discovering the first red leaves of the fall; like wrapping my Swans scarf round my neck on a windy day; like fluffing out and burrowing underneath the down comforter for the first time since the winter past. Gab tried to teach me the finer points of opening a wine bottle; Tom gave expert footrubs to girls with cold feet; Maud opened a bottle of Staud’s raspberry jam because she thought it said “Maud’s.” We bitched with gusto about anyone who wasn’t in attendance; we interrupted Tom’s stories seventeen times; we lay about, oh, there was just so much lying about—upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, we are just a bunch of layabouts, and that is how we like it.



(The thing about the outside is, Tom wanted to have a smoke, which led to the official delineating of smoking areas in this house, which is as such: If you are Maud, you can smoke by the kitchen window. If you are Gab, you can sit in the downstairs window to smoke, but you really have to fit in the window. If you are Vio, you can stand in the courtyard for a smoke while you shout through the upstairs kitchen window to Astella. Eventually we all proceeded outside, where the boys lay on the ground while others of us spread out on a blanket, on n’est pas des animaux.)

And I guess it’s just like in Totoro when there’s the big storm and Satsuki and Mei are all wide-mouthed and laughing and the soot sprites fly off into the night, because this morning when I rolled over in bed, the sun was back in the sky.

Sluggishly, I was getting ready to leave for class when Ren and Amy phoned from Croatia, and then there was screaming and laughing and whining and more laughing and the day improved by about twenty-eight times.

I’m weary of this dampness all about, and every now and again the disconsolate sound of tires on the wet black outside. My feet are cold. There will be Bright Eyes before bed.

Three cups of tea over three hours tussling with Leiris. When there are no actual comestibles to accompany the reading, the happy treat is tripping and then lingering over this tasty list while flipping through the dictionary:

moule à brioche = brioche tin; moule à cake = loaf tin; moule à flan = flan dish; moule à gaufre = waffle iron or nitwit; moule à gâteaux = cake tin; moule à tarte = pie pan

Um, excepting the nitwit—oh, yes, please!

Woke up to the rain this morning, and it’s raining still. All around it seems wet and quiet and slow-moving, like I’m walking, in goggles and a blue-and-white-striped swimsuit, arms pushing through the thick water in front of me, at the bottom of a swimming pool.

There’s a baby!
There’s a baby!
There’s a baby!
And she’s sooooo cuuuuuute!!!

Sometimes it seems as if there is not much worse than sitting in class watching the clock, telling yourself like a mantra to listen and concentrate and make it through ten minutes at a time. When you have a stomachache coming in waves all day, what is really not needed is two hours of Chateaubriand followed by two hours of structural poetics and Russian formalists. What really is needed is an impromptu get-together with Tom, who blows off reading the Odyssey to sit with you at a quiet table in the back at Café Noir, where, over wines and tartares and coffee, he talks with you and makes you laugh. After, he walks you to Broadway-Lafayette, whereupon you walk him to Second Avenue, and before you part there is a hug and a kiss, and he tells you that everything will be okay.

I was concerned Saturday evening when I heard the thunder and the rain, because thunder and rain do not go well with gold shoes for a DaNCe pArTY. Happily, the sky cleared in time for Jeff to come pick me up and for us to F-train it to Mathilde’s, where there were two kinds of chocolate cake, and a DJ direct from the dance-party nation that is Paris, France. Thirty flights up into the sky, the neverending twinkly pinpoint lights of New York stretching out in all directions into the night, there was singing and dancing till three. “This is all very Bret Easton Ellis,” Jeff said, “what with all the French people and the drugs and the dancing and the view.” Not having actually read Bret Easton Ellis, I could only nod and smile, and hope Christian Bale wasn’t going to come out from the bedroom revving a chainsaw.

Now, a dance party is a good thing; and a dance party where they play “ABC” and “Muddy’s Club Blues in Weinheim” and “Oye Como Va” and “Trick Me” is a very good thing; but a dance party where, at the end, you get to have a quiet dance with a sweet boy before you kiss him good-bye, well that is a very, very good thing.

Sunday morning, feeling the five hours of whirling and shimmying and general boogie-ing from the night before in my butt, the best way to unwind is to take a walk through the neighborhood and the cool autumn, visiting the cheese shop, the fish shop, the fruit shop, the bread shop.

Over dinner, Gab introduced me to the Shadoks, which are a bunch of cartoon characters that used to be shown on French TV in the Seventies for one minute every evening before the news at eight. The Shadoks are some kind of incroyable. I’m not even sure how to begin to explain. It’s a story of spaceships and a planet that is thin and flat; of a professor and a troop of Shadoks heading for earth; of containers that can hold noodles and water, or noodles but not water, or water but not noodles; of such brilliant aphorisms such as “S’il n’y a pas de solution c’est qu’il n’y a pas de problème.” and “Quand on ne sais pas où on va il faut y aller—et le plus vite possible.” and, of course, the pithy “Je pompe donc je suis.” I mean, really, who doesn’t like French people.

We went up to the roof later, opening the door to a dark sky spotted with diamond stars. Beyond the low, somber roofs and muted streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan was lit up like a birthday. We watched the planes queueing up over JFK to fly out and away over our heads. The thing is, on a chilly October night, it is less chilly when you are two.

There are days that are wet and grey like melancholy, when the words melt on your tongue before they can be spoken, when you think you almost feel yourself dissolving into molecules as you move through the city. If you are lucky, a boy pulls you close so you can bury your head in his scarf and breathe him in. Later, walking down the streets on the Lower East Side, the cold, plump raindrops on your face are not unpleasant.

After two consecutive mornings of my head inexplicably waking me in the cool dark of six, it sure is nice to roll over at nine instead, and stretch through the blankets pulled tight all around me, and not have to be anywhere anytime soon. Floating in a half-sleep, a girl can lie about and think about things and nothings.

The best way for class to be over is, it’s over and you know you’re skipping the next one that starts in ten minutes, and you go outside Philosophy Hall, and you look around and you think, “If I were two French people, where would I—” and there’s Maud and Gab having a smoke on a concrete bench over on the side. Soon, dinner plans are set, the downtown train is pulling up as we hit the platform, and we’re combing the Upper West Side for teatime treats, c’est l’heure du goûter quoi. My fancy raspberry jelly donut at the Levain Bakery was lame, but Maud’s chock-a-block cookie was tasty, and Gab’s dark chocolate chocolate chip cookie was some kind of merveilleux.

Because we are lucky, we got to grocery shop for dinner at Fairway. Now this girl likes a supermarket, and my Steve’s C-Town for Savings down the street is nothing to sniff at, but, man, Fairway is somethin special, and it brings back memories of when Kate and I lived in Harlem the first year I lived in New York and we used to go to Fairway, and memories of living with Kate are always a great thing because Kate is the kind of girl who makes it so that television snacks are, like, artichokes and homemade mayonnaise, and she is the kind of girl who, when you say, “Let’s make some brownies,” and offer to go out to get a box of brownie mix, will shake her head and say, “Brownies are so easy to make anyway, there is no need to do it from a mix.” Then she will say, “Here,” and show you the recipe for Katharine Hepburn’s brownies, and then, as she is melting the chocolate over the stove (the chocolate in a little pot, and then that in a pan of water, because of course you don’t put it directly over the flame), she will tell you about how chocolate is made and how that relates to how it melts, and all too soon all you are aware of in front of your eyes is rich, satiny, dark brown swirls like desire.

As we weaved our way through the post-work crowd and lost each other and found each other and lost each other again, Fairway, ever-faithful, did not disappoint—except for the egregious lack of Count Chocula in the cereal aisle. I was trying to explain Count Chocula to Gab: “Il est un vampire, et il est fait du chocolat...” The boy, and this is why we like him, was sold.

We trawled Times Square as the sun set, carried along by the madness that never fails to somehow catch me, mouth open, head tilted up toward the neon landscape. Past the party-flavor pink-and-blue NYPD stand and the glitterfabulous razzle-dazzle “Chicago” sign, Maud led us to the Hershey’s shop, where we were confronted, the moment we walked in, with that singular plasticky smell of compound chocolate. Nyup, nyup, nyup.

On the 7 train to Tom’s, Maud said, “I know what is going to happen is, you’re going to stand around talking, and I’m going to end up cooking everything.” “Well,” I said, in my defense, “this shouldn’t be news to you.” “Well,” she said, “you should be glad I still think it’s funny.” Ah, touché. (That’s French.)

After the tastiness of smoked trout and beets and spinach and tomatoes (Maud cooked while I stood around talking), there were smokes and wine in the dark garden out back. We were well-fed and happy with the knowledge of ice cream in our future. “The thing is,” Maud said, “life is good.”

We went in to watch the lookalike candidates on the presidential debates after, Tom talking to the television, and giving it the finger. Then we tried to watch the like six thousand cable channels, but there was nothing on.

“Well,” Tom said as we left into the nippy air and quiet streets, the streetlights glowing orange, “I really think this has to be the end of your birthday.” And I guess he was right, because a week of birthday kind of is plenty.

But then I got home and there was a package from Hong Kong, and Brams had sent me a bag shaped like a panda’s head. Panda-head bag is a dome-shaped affair with sad bean-shaped black patches marked with silver rivets for eyes—so you understand that the bag is already, in itself, a miracle of bag-making.

But then there’s the tag that’s attached to the handle: It’s got a photograph of a guy and a girl, the girl’s in a red T-shirt and jeans and sneakers, the guy’s in a button-down shirt and darker jeans and sneakers and, on his wrist, a silver Rolex-y thing, and he’s got his arm around the girl, and they’re posing in front of a Chinese mountain landscape, whatever, and they both have panda-head bags for heads. And the girl is carrying a panda-head clutch. That, people, is the glory of Hong Kong, and that is the glory of Bram, and that is the glory of birthdays. And I want to say that this is the last you’ll hear about my birthday this year, but the thing is, you just never know with me.

Because Tom walked me down the midnight streets of Long Island City looking for a cab, and when we found one, he opened the door and put me in and said, “Happiest birthday ever,” and, really, this girl couldn’t disagree.

It is a really, really good day when an out-of-town boy becomes an in-town boy.

Almost a week later, the birthday celebrations continue—and that’s the way we like it. Saturday p.m. found me and Kat at Giorgione, with its luscious dessert tray in the center of the room, and where a bad meal has never been had. The tastiness it kept a-comin’, first the bellinis, and the radishes in olive oil and minced anchovies, then the roasted radicchio, the bacalao, the risotto and grilled quail, the pear stewed in wine and cinnamon. Oh my word, sometimes you just eat like kings. And even though I’d said I didn’t want any presents, the girl worked her way around it and got me exactly what I didn’t know I wanted, which was Nina Simone’s “Pastel Blues” and “Let it All Out” and a Jacques Pepin cookbook in which one of his recipes calls for Nutella.

On my way to the restroom, this guy who’d be played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie version of my life stopped in front of me and said, slurrily and deliberately at the same time, “I. like. your. metallic. shoes.” “Thanks,” I said, “I like your, um, metallic glasses.” I couldn’t get past him. “Are you from Korea?” “No, are you?” “No,” he said, “I’m from Hungaria.” “Really.” “Mm.” “That doesn’t exist.” “Are you Chinese?” Sigh. “Yes.” He was directly between me and the bathroom door. “Hong Kong.” “Huh?” “Hong Kong.” “Um.” “They have a lot of wealthy entrepreneurs in Hong Kong.” “Hm. Okay, I’m gonna go to the loo now.”

Deeper into the night, we had occasion to walk by the Meatpacking District, jesus, so that’s what goes on in the Meatpacking District on a Saturday night, all these thick-necked boys and dainty-shoed girls spilling out onto the streets. A petite blond in a small skirt and kohled eyes barely gave me a glance before she stepped in front of me and soldiered on in search of good times and big fun.

We escaped on the number fourteen bus, heading east.

Jeff is a winning date for a Friday night, because he only takes me to the best places, like the restrooms at the Mandarin Oriental—where they have Molton Brown hand lotions and fancy thick paper towels nestled in a basket by the sink—and opening night at the Kiehl’s on Columbus—where the nice Kiehl’s girl will give me a bunch of sample sachets full of the promise of rejuvenated, luminous skin—and the luxe Loews theatre on Broadway and Sixty-eighth, which is decorated in gold and crimson and elephants, and has a heavy aureate ruched curtain over the screen like extravagance and a mezzanine like we are in an old-timey cinema. (The gold elephants were a little misleading, actually, ’cause I kept expecting cute Thai waiters to come round offering us green curries or red curries on a silver platter, and the boys never showed, and hungry we had to stay.) It was almost like when Annie goes to the movies, except without the dancing girls.

We raced up the stairs to the mezzanine and sat down in the front row so we could put our feet up on the banister and Jeff took a giant bite out of his bar of Lindt. I said, “I hope there are good trailers,” and, after the insufferably long Magic Johnson HIV medication ad, there were great trailers, and man oh man I cannot wait for “Alfie.” We watched “I heart Huckabees”—is everything connected? Is nothing connected? I don’t know, I’m still figuring it out. But Lily Tomlin is some kind of amazing, and the scene in which Isabelle Huppert is trailing Lily Tomlin down the street is genius, and all the bits of Jason Schwartzman cycling made me want to hop on a bike illico. Illico!, j’ai dit.

The thing about New York City is, it’s New York City: it’s crawling with famous people (also, subway rats. But that’s another story.). At some point or other, you’re going to cross paths with some celebrity. Bono. Warren Beatty. Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman in happier times. Seth Green, Julia Stiles, Heather Graham. Liv Tyler, hello, like fourteen times, just chillin’ out around the Village. Big deal. You don’t miss a step, you keep talking to whomever you’re talking to, you remember you need to pick up a carton of milk from the corner bodega before you go home.

But then one day you find yourself in a coffee queue with Colin Goh, and all of a sudden, you’re Keanu faced with a bus that can’t go below fifty: What. do. you. do.

The thing about Colin Goh is, in one of his columns in 8 Days, he wrote that if Harry Potter and his little wizard friends went to wizard school in Singapore, they would learn in Potions class that there are two kinds of potions: heaty and cooling. I recognize that this is understandable by like maybe six of you reading this, but that doesn’t take away from how extremely funny this is. Over summer, the last time I was back in the tropics, Yumei said, “You know, Colin Goh lives in New York now.” “Shut up!” I said, hoping she actually wouldn’t. It turned out (I am not stalking the man, this information is totally offered on his Web site) he lives in Brooklyn, probably not too far from me. “Whoa, maybe one day we’ll be on the same subway train home and somehow we’ll start talking and end up being BFF,” I said. To which Yumei probably replied, “Mm,” because she is kind and humors me and knows when to leave well enough alone.

So okay. Months ago, this giant, gleaming mall opened at Columbus Circle, and it was kind of big news I guess, but who cares, because who goes to a mall in Manhattan, and who goes to Columbus Circle. Well, well, “who” is me, because this afternoon I found myself heading up there to kill some time at the Borders bookshop while waiting for Jeff to get off work at his midtown job.

I was in line at the café getting the $1.75 paper cup of house blend that would allow me to sit and read Benjamin Constant undisturbed for a couple of hours when I heard someone several people in front of me order a cup of tea, and—I don’t know, it wasn’t an overly Singaporean acccent or anything; really, I think it was the unassuming politeness of tone that struck me; in any case—I found myself craning my neck to see who this guy was. And I saw him, and I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling. And I stood there and wondered and wondered, and then finally, when he passed me on the way to the milk thermos, I said, “Um, I’m very sorry to bother you, but are you Colin Goh?” It was all very “Excuse me, are you a model?”

He took a startled step back, truly he did, and then, holy crap!, there we were, me and Colin Goh, face to face. He introduced me to his wife, who asked if I played mahjong, and like a fool, an honest fool, I said no. Three minutes too late, I realized that of course the correct thing to do was to have said “yes” and then, after being invited to their next mahjong game, immediately sidestepped to the self-help aisle to look for a copy of Mahjong for Dummies. It would have been like when Keisha Castle-Hughes was auditioning for “Whale Rider,” and they asked her if she could swim, and she couldn’t, but she said yes. And look at her now, the little liar, and look at me now: When she is not riding whales she is wearing fancy dresses and going to movie premieres, whereas I, I am not playing mahjong with the Goh family. And, apparently, she still can’t swim, which means I might not even have had to flip through Mahjong for Dummies, I could have just shown up at the Goh household with a box of mooncakes and a tin of Chinese Restaurant Tea from Kam Man, and I could have simply paid my dues talking all night in Singlish, and yelling “Pang!” every now and again.

Anyway, we chatted for a bit; and they were lovely; and when Colin Goh asked what I was studying and I said French literature, he said, “Oh, thank god you’re not doing an MBA.”

Just before I stepped away, I told Colin Goh it’d just been my Quentin Tarantino moment, which I think he appreciated, and which, really, it kind of had been.

S.L. brings his black moppet dog to class and tells us stories about hanging out in a striptease show on Forty-second Street with Alain Robbe-Grillet. “The stripteaseuse was late, and already it was a complicated story because I was there with Robbe-Grillet and his wife and his girlfriend. Well, really,” and he smiles, and the creases at the corners of his bright blue eyes deepen, “I should say, their girlfriend. But anyway. Where were we?”

Yesterday, on the patio, under multicolored Mexican cut-out garlands, the magaritas and piña coladas kept coming. There were moments when we laughed till there were tears in our eyes. Outside on the street, Philippe said, “We like you.” “Well,” I said, “we like you, too.”

When I got to Maud’s around six-thirty Wednesday, her neighbor across the street—who has a penchant for standing by his window in not so much more than a white thong distinct against his dark brown skin—was standing by his window in not so much more than a canary yellow thong distinct against his dark brown skin. While I waited for Maud to buzz me up, he moved closer to the window frame. Maybe he just wanted to wish me a happy birthday, who knows with people. Then I got upstairs and I said, “Maud, your exhibitionist neighbor is—” and I peered across the street, and “—oh. Um. Apparently, at this point, bending over and taking off his thong.”



The apartment smelled of gingerbread just baked and orange blossom oil on the incense burner. Fairy lights strung around the kitchen shelves were small warm glowings of quiet celebration. Soon, there was a gold teapot of spicy tea, and lounging, and sprawling on the low sofa, and eating round, purple grapes one by luscious one. When Tom got there, there was wine, too, and more lounging, and more sprawling around, and, while wisps of cigarette smoke swirled white in the air, we talked baseball and looked at our veins and discussed moving to Cairo and Maud told a joke about a French guy wanting to learn English. We planned parties for the next month: a Wong Kar Wai movie festival, a World Series party, an election night affair, a Thanksgiving feast full of foreigners.

(The movie festival tangent is, Once I told Jeff we were going to have a “Ghostbusters” movie festival, and I said, “And we’re gonna stay up all night, and we’re gonna watch the ‘Ghostbusters’ trilogy, and it’s gonna be great!” and he said, “Oh, you’re so cute,” and I said, “Uh-huh?” and he said, “There are only two ‘Ghostbusters’ movies.” Oh. Well.)

Outside, dusk turned into a clear dark, and a blimp lit up like festivity circled high above the brownstones in the north.



Later, after the rice and carrots and toast, after the avocado and grapefruit, Tom and I walked down the creaky staircase into the night, thick slices of foil-wrapped gingerbread like secret-treasure weights in our bags. Maud waved from her window three flights up. And on the way home, the trains kept coming with no delay.

It’s funny, good funny, but I’m feeling A-plus and kind of excited about my birthday tomorrow, which hasn’t happened in a long time. I don’t mean a long time since a year ago, I mean a long time since I don’t know when. I haven’t tended to make a big deal of my birthday in recent years; really, I seem to live it at a remove. So I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s reading Leiris all day (the man’s amazing), maybe it’s the ripe Bosc pear I just savoured with a dollop of ice cream and a sprinkling of chocolate rice, maybe it’s the unexpected delight of an hour-long phone chat with Jill, I don’t know. In any case, things seem good, like a crisp morning, like a mint car, like my shoes click-clicking down the quiet of Ninth Street after a late night out, like Nutella spread generously on warm toast, like sliding across the parquet floor in my socks—arms out, smile spreading. Something like that.

Holy crap. I was just on the phone, sitting at the table by the window, and hot neighbor Eric walked by with his dogs, and he glanced in and waved.

Of course then I had to get up and look in the mirror to make sure I’d looked alright.

(Oh, that makes me remember that night when Maud and India were over, and Maud opened the door to go outside for a smoke, and HNE opened his door across the hall at the same time, so of course with eyebrows raised and eyes wide open our initial reaction was to shut our door illico and giggle furiously behind it. Ah, girls.)

Saturday night I was talking to Matthew while we waited for the F train at Fourteenth Street. He had one hand in his pocket, while the other held a folded umbrella. He scrunched up his nose and furrowed his brow and said he had too much to do. “I wish everything would freeze for two days so I could get caught up,” he said. “I’m just two days from happiness.”

Uhhh. Dreams. There was a question of a freezer frosted over, a foam of soft ice covering the edges of the door; large slabs of glistening fish sitting on a white platter in the fridge; little yellow and red ladybugs that at first looked like yellow and red robot cherry tomatoes; all the bulbs blown; a drippy ceiling; and—no psychoanalysis, please—me sitting cross-legged on the floor, screaming at my mother: “Listen to me! Just listen to me!” I woke up way too early, curled up tightly under my blanket from the cold. That’ll learn me to keep all the windows open at night.

Or maybe that’s just the effect a pre-bed rock-n’-roll outing has on a girl who’s been reading Michel Leiris all day.

Yesterday evening, after dinner in the garden at Five Front, Jeff and I took a stroll down to the Fulton Ferry landing pier to swoon at Manhattan lit up across the dark water. There were all sorts of things in the sky, planes and stars at first, and then, surprisingly, fireworks. “I wonder why?” I said. And Jeff said, “Just ’cause,” which is one of the best reasons for fireworks. Later, when we walked away from the spectacle, the colored bursts behind us and blocked by buildings, the deep, muffled thumping in the sky sounded like war.

At the Roseland, we managed to stand behind the eight tallest guys there (it is a singular gift of mine to always be behind the eight tallest guys there) (at 157 centimeters, it’s not difficult), one of whom triumphantly waved around a urinal tablet. The urinal tablet was in its packaging, unsullied, but still. We moved, eventually, to stand behind a couple who couldn’t stop making out. It’s hard to say which was worse. You know how when you book a plane ticket you choose aisle or window? When you book concert tickets, you should get to choose if you want to be behind, like, the eight tallest guys there, or the couple making out, or the long-haired girls who won’t stop flinging their tresses about. At one point I said, “Wait, look, there’s someone shorter than me.” “I think he’s younger than you, too,” Jeff said. “By at least half.”

Then the backdrop banner unfurled, and Franz Ferdinand hit the stage, and there was screaming and whooping, and, well, everytime I could see any of their little Scottish heads bobbing up and down, it was good. Drummer Ferdinand was sharp in a black-and-white-striped T-shirt. When the lights were green, the boys looked like sea creatures emerging from the deep. Rock-n’-roll sea creatures. When they were bathed in red light, it was like Franz Ferdinand, live from hell. On the main floor, a group of four messy fifteen-year-olds rocked out, each in a new Franz Ferdinand T-shirt from the merch counter. One played air drums, two air guitar, and the fourth, well, he was just shakin’ it.

All night the guitars were vigorous, the beat was unrelenting, there was jaunty and jolly and an undercurrent of uneasy all at the same time. I will be listening to the album for days.

In white on blue, planes in the sky spelled out WISH YOU WERE HERE.

In a matter of days, this blog will be a year older. As will I. Last year on my birthday, my mum called with birthday greetings and then said, “Well, make sure you enjoy it, because after twenty-seven it all goes downhill.” Ah, bravo, thank you, Mowmy! A year later, everything’s the same, everything’s different. Sometimes it seems like I’ve spent a year just cataloguing food and downtown debauchery. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

There are days when you wake up to perfection—blue-sky days that sound like Stevie Wonder on “Sir Duke” or the Eels rockin out on “Saturday Morning.”



Days like that, you take a walk through NoLIta and end up, at lunchtime, in the garden out back at Bistrot Margot with Schmio. Today, the fuzzy green caterpillars are shy. The waitress brings lentil soup and crusty bread, a croque madame, a dark macchiato.

(The fuzzy green caterpillar story is, the last time I was at Bistrot Margot, a fuzzy green caterpillar fell from an overhead vine onto our table. India picked up the little guy, but then he fell off her finger onto the pebbled ground, where he lay, unmoving. “I think he’s bumped his head,” India said. “Aww,” I said. “Um, which end’s his head?” Then we laughed and laughed and said we’d remember not to step on him. And we didn’t.)



After lunch, Schmio decides she needs to blow a week’s salary in a matter of minutes, so even though she has a job and you a thesis, you both go next door to Sigerson Morrison, with its gorgeous white-tiled floor, where the girl will decide between a pair of purple shoes and a pair of purple shoes and a pair of black shoes. You admire the blatant green patent leather kitten-heels across the room. “Go try them on,” she says. “That’ll make me feel better about what I’m doing.” “No,” you say, “I’m so beyond that. All I care about these days is, uhm, politics.” She barely pauses between admiring the purple-shoed left foot and the black-shoed right one. “Don’t make me laugh,” she says. “Ha-ha-ha.”

You drop by the old office for a hello, and sit on the loading dock with the late afternoon sun sweet and warm on your back. You propose a milkshake excursion to Lars and Tom, but they say, “Milkshakes? More like beershakes,” and, shortly after, reach for the remaining bottles of Brooklyn Lager from last night’s party. Ah, boys.



With a handful of yoghurt candies, you breeze through SoHo pitying the fools stuck in rush-hour traffic, then you take the train home from Broadway-Lafayette to Seventh Avenue, standing the whole way, in heels, reading, and not having to hold on to the pole once.

We were hanging out on the loading dock Thursday p.m., George and Mars and Anna and Phoebe and Chris and Tom and Schmio and Maud, and the moon was round and bright in the sky. Later a baby came by, and a punk rock kid on a plastic tricycle, and a fairy ballerina with a red ribbon and sparkle shoes, it was that kind of night.

It was the kind of night where the party spills out onto the street, because—even though inside is where the bottles of wine and trays of fancy nibblings are—the night air, delicious and crisp and inviting, is irresistible. And after the fundraising auction’s over and the paying crowd’s gone, we’re still hanging out, picking at the last bits of cheese and bread and hard green apples. Eventually, we’re sitting on the big wooden table, half-lying even, and we’ve said good-bye maybe four times, and we’re still there.



Afterhours, our end of Watts Street is a beauty. Windows glow warm into the dark, and you can’t see the used condoms lying wrinkled in the road.