For reasons of Bram back from Hong Kong, last night a Pink Party uptown.

There were pink streamers criss-crossing the ceiling. A pink flamingo. Pink balloons on the walls, on the floor, on the sofa. Bowls of pink jellybeans. A rummy pink punch. A plate of pink wafers. A PYRAMID OF PINK SNO-BALLS. I’d never had a Sno-Ball before, and I eyed the tray for several good minutes before I said, “Mmmm. Maybe I need a Sno-Ball,” and Tom edged his way through the crowd ’round to the snack table to get me one, and I said, “You’re my favorite,” because it’s true.



Me, I was in a pink dress, and arrived brandishing a bottle of rosé. The wine store guy’d been trying to sell me his favorite Spanish Grenache, but I had to tell him I wanted the bottle of Californian Ca’ del Solo because the label said “Big House Pink.”

Matt Z marveled at my sticking to the theme, but the thing is, when we are talking about the conjunction of me and a Pink Party, it is not hard to stick to the theme.



Matt Z himself was in a two-dollar pink shirt from a DC thrift store. Pink shirt was a deep, bright pink, with Santa Fe silhouettes of horses and also, possibly, cactii across the chest. Matt Z wore it with pride, which is the only way to wear such a shirt.

Chad was in suspenders and a bowtie and the furry bottom half of a pink bunny suit.

Sally was in a pink bobbed wig and gold Chorus Line shoes.

For a sociology professor, Duncan sure is built like an action figure. Under his sociology-professor clothes, no one is aware of this. Squeezed into a small pink T-shirt that says “Itty Bitty Kitty Committee” across the front, he is a sociology professor action figure who makes the ladies swoon and the boys’ jaws drop.

Jake and Scott came in a full-body pink pig costume and a full-body pink dinosaur costume. Later, Mateo absconded with Jake’s headwear and found me and Tom in the hallway. He was yelling something about something, I don’t know what now, it was just words, and muffled, and it was dark, and he had on a large furry pink pig head, and we couldn’t stop laughing, and all I could think was “Mmm...bacon.”



Tom was wearing a red shirt. Tom! But then Bram came through for him with a preppy pink tie.

And, oh, Bram. “You can get anything made in China,” he said, and clearly this is true, because Bram was in pink with white piping, a breathtaking miracle of custom suit-making. When he peered in through the curtain of pink foil strips, I may well have shrieked a little shriek before jumping up to hug him hello.



There was drinking wine out of the bottle, and ex-girlfriends galore, and a guy trying to score some pot. There was talking with Gregory about an upcoming motorcycle trip around the world, about boats, about understandings between bikers. There was making plans with Ryan to maybe find each other in Paris this summer.

Somewhere in the one o’clock hour, I found myself in a conversation with some guy in architectural glasses, who lunged toward me saying, “Kraftwerk, they’re fucking genius.” It was time to go, then, so Tom walked me down six squeaky flights and out into the night. We were arm-in-arm to the train, and there was a drizzle, and a little shiver, and the smoke from the boy’s cigarette. Something about it was the good ol’ days, but something about it, too, was everything changing.

I told myself I wasn’t going to blog tonight—there has been too much out and very little in over the last few days, and altogether not enough sleep, and I kept nodding off on the trains today—but I like the exercise.

Just home from a Cedar Tavern burger dinner and belly laughs with Jason and the NYU crew. We like these people, quite a bit actually, Jason and Maud and Camille and Philippe and Greg. Everything is funny, even—and we are sorry for this, really we are, in between the heaving laughs and the tearing eyes—even Helen Keller.

This morning I woke up just in time to go meet Kevin for lunch. My mum called while I was brushing my teeth to read me Hokkien rhymes from her childhood. Unexpected, but welcome.

The flurry of the day’s activities included a stop at the STA travel agency by school to finally book my summer itinerary (JFK-CDG-SIN-SYD-LON, call me Agent Stellou). And, man, it took just forever before the travel agent girl offered transits in Qatar and Bangkok and a one-night stopover in New Delhi for the bargainia student price of TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY DOLLARS. Oh, AND TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. Actually, the way it went down was, after clicking and clacking into the machine for ages, she said, “How much would you like to pay?” Hello, is this a fucking game show? But I thought I should play pleasant, and after all she was very nice, nice in that nice cow-like way, so I said, “Um, maybe less than a couple of thousand dollars?” And, without saying a word, as if she were a middle-aged Chinese salesman in a blue-and-white-striped button-down and a pleather belt in the electronics paradise that is Sim Lim Square, she turned her computer screen to me and tapped at the number. That number again: TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY DOLLARS AND TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. So I said thank-you, then came home and booked it online for somewhere around half that amount.

But half that amount is some amount all the same—(you know how in Charlotte’s Web, at one point the message Charlotte weaves about Wilbur is “Some Pig”? This was Some Amount.)—so then I had to pop in at Café Regular for a cappuccino to calm me down.

And then there was the Cedar Tavern, and the burgers, and the belly laughs. I returned Jason his copy of Durkheim’s Règles de la méthode sociologique and he gave me the new Benjamin Biolay and Keren Ann CDs. Everybody be quiet and maybe he won’t notice he got the bum end of the deal.

And now I really have to go to bed, because I have an early-morning breakfast date tomorrow. Non mais vraiment. Le truc c’est que life is good. And I remember now that I was talking to Tom this afternoon and he said, “How’s it going?” and I said, “Everything is incredibly good,” and he said, “Oh, do you have a boyfriend I don’t know about?” Non mais BRAVO.

Kat was surprised I wasn’t ordering the pizza, but the thing is, when the menu includes ramekins of mushrooms or roasted beets or English peas and prosciutto, and when the salad of the day is dandelion, then, come on, I think the choice is clear. To wrap up the night, a rhubarb coppetta, which was just the kind of miracle ice cream cup to challenge my sister’s genius sundae creations. At the bottom, fine slices of sweetsour rhubarb; then a creamymelty layer of exquisite rose-rosemary gelato, with small, crunchy cubes of toasted pound cake tossed in; and the whole wondrous thing covered, as if after a generous snowfall, with fragolini zabaglione. That the zabaglione tasted almost exactly like Pop Rocks was extra treaty.

I walked Kat to Fourteenth Street, and then I walked and walked and just walked. Ten o’clock and the post-rain night breeze, a blue stripey dress and pink rain boots. I bypassed the Fourteenth Street subway station, and then the one at West Fourth, and then the Broadway-Lafayette, the Second Avenue, the Delancey. My mind sang Moacyr Luz’s “Jogo Rasteiro.” South and east and east and south. I klick-klacked my umbrella against a wire fence. I dawdled under a row of trees, their branches curving overhead, heavy with pink blooms.

On East Third, a girl with panda-eyed sunglasses knocked about with a boy with a fat cigar. On MacDougal, shops still open and lights still on, it came upon me suddenly, a feeling of rue de la Roquette one night eight years ago. On Mulberry, the wall read, in chalk: sun sun Kiss the Sun. On Houston, the sharp, sweet smell of burning tobacco made me close my eyes and remember a boy. On Ludlow, the bouncers were out, and the air vibrated with thick bass beats. On the left, El Sombrero Hat Restaurant. On the right, 24 Hours Good Luck Car Service.

At the East Broadway subway stop, it occurred to me that maybe I needed to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I paused for the briefest moment to think about it while the bridge lights in the distance winked and grinned between city blocks. So then it was south and west and west and south, and then there was City Hall, and the entrance to the bridge, and I smiled quite widely in greeting.

Halfway across, a muffled thump in the cotton-woolly sky. Because I am good at sensing fireworks and lion dances, I knew to peer round the curve of downtown Manhattan to see the show. Red and white and gold and green while the Statue of Liberty stood watch over the harbor.

There was a tinkling behind me, and then a long-haired girl on a red bike rode by, a windchime hanging from the handlebar, sunflowers in her basket, and a feather in her hat. Clearly a bridge fairy. She cycled off ahead and into the night on the wooden slats, and then the tinkling disappeared, too.

I am reading a marvelous book. I had a feeling I was on to something on page one, and I was hooked by page seven—which is what I told Leonard the other afternoon at Café Regular, when I had the seat by the door for maximum sunlight, and was hooked on page seven, and he came in with a friend and a dog, and asked what I was reading. I didn’t know then he was called Leonard; we exchanged names over large, cold glasses of pulpy orange juice the next time we were in. Also, I don’t remember now what kind of dog made up the entourage, but he was smallish, and glossy black and maybe white. If you held your hand in the shape of a gun and pointed it at him and said, “Bang-bang,” he would lie down and roll over on the scuffed wood floor. I suppose it is possible he was rolling over only to hide the fact that, really, he was rolling his round doggy eyes at this foolishness. He looked as if he could just as easily have been called Max as Chauncey, but I remember only, in the end, that he was called neither.

But.

I am reading a marvelous book. It is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which I picked off my bookshelf because I like a travel, and because of the Cardigans. They have a ditty called “Travelling with Charley,” which sings of a dashing but an ineffectual (and possibly amnesiac) private eye. It is a charming tune, but I realize now it has very little to do with Steinbeck.

Travels with Charley is Steinbeck driving across America in a souped-up camper-truck with space for, among other things, notepaper; a fishing rod; whiskey; a stove for sausages and coffee; and Charley, his French poodle. The book is good to read: sitting cross-legged in my zebra wood chair at home; in bed, with a pillow against the wall; perched on a bench at Café Regular, one leg tucked under me, the other one dangling, and a thick cappuccino waiting on the table; on the steps of Low Library, stretching my legs out in the sun.

I was on the steps of Low Library this afternoon, stretching my legs out in the sun, and reading Travels with Charley when Kevin walked by and said Hullo. We like Kevin, so all of a sudden “Hullo” was a conversation that couldn’t end but with plans for a lunch date later this week.



I hopped the 1 train downtown, then, to meet Maud and Camille in Chinatown. The directions to Camille to meet at Kam Man were like so: the shop is called kam man, on canal between, i think, mulberry and mott. well, it is just west of mott, in any case. the window on the right has porcelain, the window on the left has, like, roast duck. mmm.

It’s like Maud and I have the French tourist thing down pat. Between Motel Mojo and Motel Stellou, we know where to bring the French visitors, and, oh, we know what we are going to order when we get there. At Great N.Y. Noodletown, always the eggplant and the kang kong and the Mixed Seafood in Taro Bird’s Nest. Maud says she has une petite faiblesse for the MSTBN, and we act like I am humoring her, but the secret is that I have une grande faiblesse for it myself.

(The Great N.Y. Noodletangent is, the thing about speaking French to French girls and then Chinese to Chinese waiters is that all of a sudden your tongue is making you speak Chinese to French girls and French to Chinese waiters. It is amusing, but also stupid, because you sound like this: “Attends. Wait. Deng yi xia. Um, li mian, no, il y a...”)

(The other French-language hijink is, “placard” in English is not really “placard” in French. Normally I know this, but today, in the excitement of talking about a protest, it just popped out. Maud tried to explain about pancartes and banderoles, but I got distracted by pancakes and profiteroles.)

Over lunch, Maud started to say, “So I was thinking of bringing my knife on the road trip,” which made me think that maybe she had some other kind of killer road trip in mind that we hadn’t discussed, but then it turned out she was talking about in the case of picnics. Very well. Carry on.

We were hankering after Chinatown Ice Cream Factory ice cream all winter, and today the doors were propped open to sunshine and spring, and the banana ice cream was calling our names. I am pleased to announce, in addition, that the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory does a damn fine job of the black sesame flavor. It is, and this is no small claim, BETTER THAN THE BANANA.

Treats in hand, we walked back to the crush of Canal Street, and Camille led us to Fashion Mall for five-dollar kung fu shoes in all the colors of the rainbow. It was clear to me I needed the pink, but then there was the chilli vermillion, and then it was clear to me I needed the chilli vermillion. (Quit the nitpicking, this is a special kind of rainbow we are talking about.) The store auntie was pleased to find that she and I are kaki lang, and started breaking it down Hokkien-style with me, saying I should buy both pairs because they will inevitably break. I was like, Um, auntie, this is not your best sales strategy.



Poking around in the shops and then standing on the corner of Broadway and Houston pretending to say good-bye gave me just enough time for a stroll through Nolita and the fringes of the Lower East Side before getting on the F to dinner with Juana. Oh, you betcha, with my MetroCard and my twelve-dollar cotton skirt from This Fashion last summer, I can socialite it up anywheres.

It is quite lovely to refind a friend after not having seen them for two years or somesuch. And it is strange, also, because then you see yourself as they must see you, the changes in your person—seemingly imperceptible to you as you live them from one day to the next—suddenly magnified. There was a duck salad, and stories about lives, and then Juana showed me the trick where all the cabs come down Clinton Street.

The walk back to the York Street F train from Brooklyn Heights was shorter than the original in the opposite direction, but that was because that is how it should be. As my grandmother explains it, the way heading out somewhere takes longer because all the birds and bugs and trees and flowers keep asking where you’re going, and you have to pause to tell them. On the way back, you see, they recognize you and wish you well.

I have been going through a jumble box of keys.

Jumble box has been sitting in the thing drawer for months, untouched, and it seemed it was about time I figure out what’s what. Jumble box is a red cardboard box that once upon a time contained thirty-six delectable squares of chocolate. On the front, in gold and embossed, it says: Cailler ~ Frigor ~ Recette Originale. There is a small drawing of a dark-haired man in a black suit embracing a blond woman in a red dress. She has red earrings, too. Her eyes are closed and her face is turned up to him like bliss and abandon. The inside and back of the box explain: Frigor, le chocolat passion.

The box of chocolate was picked up two or three years ago from this one candy stand I know to go to when I am trapped in transit at the Frankfurt airport. Other things I know about the Frankfurt airport: There are free Internet terminals, and often a queue; being plugged into one’s iPod helps with the queue. The McDonald’s upstairs plays the same five songs on a reel; being plugged into one’s iPod helps with the same five songs on a reel. The pharmacy on the main floor sells lipbalm in kitschy packaging. The newsstands sell Magnums in many wondrous flavors, including Yoghurt.

So,

but.

The jumble box of keys. How did all these keys get here? Why so many? And do they have answers to all my questions? I have been in and out of my apartment testing all the locks. There is a grand feeling of success when a door opens. On the other hand, it is a little discomfiting when I find a key that corresponds to no door. One such key is stamped, unevenly: 33 99. Color me perplexed, I don’t know what to do with myself. Somewhere there is a door that opens to this key—but where?

There is another key, a largeish one, that is helpfully labeled ALL OTHER DOORS. We like this one a lot. It has a tingly weight of potential.

You think a tart dinner party is a good thing, wait till a surprisingly chilly afternoon two days later when you want something good for lunch, and then you open your fridge and find two neat foil packets of leftover tarts. Now that’s a good thing.

Also, now that I have mentioned the surprisingly chilly afternoon I am reminded that yesterday when Jeff and I went for a gander in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it was coldish and many of the cherry blossoms hadn’t really bloomed yet, and Jeff said, “I was expecting more of April.”

Which also reminds me that at some point in Cherry Esplanade I turned around and Jeff was standing on the lawn between the rows of pink cherry-blossom buds in dark Gucci sunglasses and a black jacket, fighting with a map. I was about to write, “like the Angel of Death,” but I seem to think the Angel of Death doesn’t need a map to get where he’s going.

I couldn’t help it, I ate an ear before the photo shoot.

Once upon a time, it seemed, there were parties all the time at my little house. And then there was only thesis writing all the time. And then there was the e-mail from Maud sometime last week, titled “more parties for us,” in which she gently suggested, two or three times, that I do a thing at my place. Hence, this afternoon I popped on the Roxette greatest hits CD and got to work slicing three pounds of onions for a pissaladière. (I am now qualified to say: that thing about lighting a candle nearby to prevent the eyes watering and stinging?, it’s true.)

Maud came and—oh my god, Maud, truly we have come far, because—Maud came and stood around and talked while I cooked.

When Camille arrived, I got to opening the gifts she’d sent ahead with Maud—a jar of grandmother’s apricot jam, a totem pole of chocolate studded with nuts, and a white chocolate mouse. Ahem. A WHITE CHOCOLATE PRALINÉ MOUSE WITH A PINK ICING NOSE AND PISTACHIOS FOR EARS. We like Camille A LOT.

Jason brought Aaron and Duane from D.C., who were stylish and funny. “Your friends are stylish and funny,” I said later. “One is stylish and one is funny.” Somewhere, a drum beat: “da-dum.”

Jeff brought three knives—“the good silver”—because I’d invited more people than I had cutlery for. (It was just one of those dinner parties where you want to see this person and that person and that other person, and you don’t really know how many persons exactly are showing up till maybe sometime in the midafternoon, at which point you are very pleased, but you also scratch your head and do a search in the house for chairs.)

And Sarah came, and Kat, and Andrew, and Gabe. And the pissaladière—from a Googled recipe on a Côte d’Azur Web site (thank you, Master’s in French literature)—the pissaladière was tasty. And even though the ricotta-tomato tart was too brown on the top and not done enough on the bottom, and even though the chocolate-walnut crust on the lemon tart was denser than I’d wanted, altogether the blueberries were plump and sweet enough, and the wine free-flowing enough, and the company lovely enough that it didn’t really seem to matter.

This was the company:

Kat acted out a DeLorean.

Jason tried to show how French people clap at concerts. Maybe this summer we will go to Paris and go to a Johnny Hallyday concert and see French people clapping.

Andrew told about trying to find transportation in the wee hours of a Washington, D.C., morning. This is a story that included such highlights as (a) paying homeless people to find a cab, and (b) the phrase “Yo, yo, yo, Sherell.”

And here I’m sorry if this is no good to some of you, but, dammit, some things can’t be explained and I just need them here so when I reread this in some months I will be able to sit about and laugh till it hurts like we did tonight while the rain came down outside:

“She’s cool, but she’s not a deejay.”

“Touch me in the morning.”

“Que je suis con.”

“Well, I actually know a deejay, and he’s not that cool.”

“French rev.” “What?!” “French rev.” “What?!” “French rev. Look, it was Brecksville High School, Ohio.”

“A hundred and eighty percent? She means one hundred degrees.”

Everyone was excited about Maud’s and my road trip. “Who’s going to be Romy and who’s going to be Michelle?” “Who’s going to be Thelma and who’s going to be Louise?” “Who’s going to be Harry and who’s going to be Sally?” “Who’s going to be Michael J. Fox and who’s going to be Christopher Lloyd?” “Who’s going to be Chewbacca and who’s going to be R2D2?”

Kat’s road trip tips were: (a) Starburst candies will keep you awake and, if you try to unwrap them in your mouth, will let you practice kissing. (b) After a while it is nice to drive barefoot.

Jeff’s road trip tips were: Go to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

People left and people stayed, and then it was just the good ol’ college crowd with a pot of tea and a honey tangerine. I cannot help it, there is a sense of the end in ’most everything I do these days. And I don’t mean to be maudlin about things, maybe I need to just hit the stop button on the Benjamin Biolay album, but there it is. There were no tears when Jeff and Kat left sometime around two-thirty, but I hugged them very tight before they walked out into the rain-shiny streets of the night.

The day is muted and gray. I took a nap curled up on the ottoman, then headed down Eleventh to the deep red warmth of Café Regular. At moments it was silent but for the longing guitar. Other times there were the visitors from Boston, dropping their r’s all over the shop.

A day that is muted and gray is best for bumping into Bella on Ninth Street, with her bag yellow like sunshine. A day that is muted and gray is also good for three little girls running down the street like candy.

I’ve been to a bunch of book readings, and the thing is, the best ones are the ones where the authors don’t actually read. Sure, the death of the author, the text stands on its own, but me, I want to know about the person who produced this work. And I’m not saying the secret scandals, the tawdry love affairs...mm, okay, maybe the tawdry love affairs, because sometimes nothing shapes you like a tawdry love affair. Just tell me a story, and not the one in the book. Maybe a couple of years ago, Mikael Niemi, tall and thin, stood before a packed space in Coliseum Books on Forty-second and told about the time a thick, dour bear-hunter of a man knocked on his door in his little northern Swedish town, in the silent, brooding night.

Yesterday evening at McNally Robinson—

well, yesterday evening at McNally Robinson, I saw the glint of the raised silver platters, and, Jill and I, we quickened our steps in anticipation of cake. Up front, we found that everything was labeled “vegan.” I said: “Hm.” Taking matters into her own hands (and maybe hoping for some contraband behind the scenes), Jill went up to the counter and said, “We’re antivegan.” “Somewhere,” the counterboy said, “I heard a cow shriek.” But what I meant to say was—

last night at McNally Robinson, Yuri Rytkheu was perched on a wooden stool telling, in Russian, stories of a Siberian life. But maybe they were fables, rather, and we sat there woven into his spell as New York City walked by the big glass windows on Prince Street. He talked about being descended from the whales, about love as the light falls. He talked about being eighteen and sailing to a city market: “We had read books. We knew about apples, pears, all these berries. But we were unprepared for the watermelon. We were astonished. It was huge. Gorgeous. It promised wonderful things.”

There was hunger in our bellies, then, so we headed up to the Russian Samovar. It’s nothing from the outside, the Russian Samovar, but inside it’s maroon tufted leather booths like secrecy, and red and green fringed lampshades hanging like seduction from another time, and a white baby grand by the bar. There is a waiter who looks like he should be on a Rodchenko poster with fiery eyes and his sleeves rolled up. Yuri broke it down in Russian with the servers, and a carafe of raspberry vodka showed up in no time.

“What’s that page?” Melanie asked me, gesturing toward an extra list tucked into my menu. The list, in English and Russian, included strawberry and pineapple, but also garlic, horseradish, and dill. “It’s just...things,” I said. But then we flipped it over to where it said “Vodka menu.” Mm. Yum...yum?

And then there was more food than table, the borscht, the beef pirozhok, the spicy lamb dolma, the hot blini, the Russian Baltic Fish Platter. Everything was jolly, we were taste-testing each other’s plates, and Yuri was telling us of Graham Greene’s appreciation for vodka, and of watching “Emmanuelle” with François Mitterand. Soon, too, he was inviting me to Saint Petersburg, where a sable coat awaits my arrival.

Roman, who owns the restaurant, dropped by our table. Hair cut close and his beard clipped tight, he looked like a sea captain. There were familiar smiles, and Russian spoken, and an illicit cigarette waved in the air.

Later, there was a melody in a minor key, and tears in old eyes. It was time, then, for glass cups of strong tea with sour cherry preserves on the side. We asked the waitress to bring us something good (“just one thing”) for dessert, and, utterly charmed by Yuri, she brought us a plate of honey pie and Natacha apple tart, and seven forks.

A waiter came out from the back and handed a package to Yuri. “Here is the vodka,” the waiter said, “to take back to Moscow.” He shrugged, palms up and open. “I don’t know, it’s from Roman.” A heft, wrapped in a white plastic bag that said “Have a Nice Day.”

I walked east on Fifty-second to the F train. An hour before midnight, Times Square to my right was red lights and alive.

Jeff was over for a surprise weekday drop-in yesterday. Not to make light of your situation, Jeffy, but we sure like friends without jobs. We sat around in sunglasses (the boy in vintage Gucci) until we were hungry, and then I was sad to discover very little food in the house. Still, it’s some kind of miracle what can happen with some penne, a couple of handfuls of grape tomatoes, some herby goat cheese, and a lot of black pepper. But, now, truly, there is nothing to eat, and I have a hankering for chicken soup.

Turned left on the street where the white petals twirled and fell like midday magic.

Man, sometimes a CD is so good you just play it over and over again with the windows open, and you know the neighbors love it, too. Said CD is “Road Trip 3,” the third in a series of compilations Maud is putting together for our drive out West. Said CD opens with “Best of My Love” and closes with “Baby Love.” Said CD weaves through The Supremes and the Temptations on “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” which I’ve been falsetto-ing for a good part of this afternoon, and Bowie on “Oh, You Pretty Things,” which is the kind of song to which, the moment you hear the opening bars, you are compelled to say, “I love this song!”. There’s Diana Ross’s “Touch Me in the Morning,” which makes me shimmy, every time; Prince’s “Damn You,” which makes me laugh because it such a perfect and an unabashed sample of musique pour niquer; Finley Quaye’s “Even After All,” which gives me goosebumps a little, and makes me stop whatever I’m doing to close my eyes and feel the heat on my arms and the road that’ll all too soon be rushing by beneath us. (Well, all fingers crossed for not closing my eyes while I’m behind the wheel.)

Maybe when we hit L.A. we’ll sign recording contracts to be backup girls. Thing is, this girl also likes to play drums.

I don’t mean to sound like an old lady, but sometimes I hang out in Brooklyn for days, and then I go into Manhattan and it’s some kind of mindblowing whirligig, and I am reduced to standing to the side, saying “What is this?!”

In Union Square this afternoon, the wind blowing up Broadway thought to blow up my skirt, too. I would have shrieked, except I was silenced by all of a sudden devoting all facilities to reinstating my modesty.

(The public service announcement is, I just went to Merriam-Webster to check that I was using “whirligig” correctly, and I have just learned about the whirligig beetle:

any of a family (Gyrinidae) of beetles with two pairs of eyes and clubbed antennae that live mostly on the surface of water where they swim swiftly about in circles.

I will repeat, just to be sure that you are paying attention. TWO PAIRS OF EYES. THEY SWIM SWIFTLY ABOUT IN CIRCLES. People: the world is an amazing place, full of amazing things.)

In the Village, ’ino was packed full with people talking very loudly to each other in close proximity. The barkeep was rakish, with grins and a wink, oh, it is just not possible to not like boys. (Hé, Maud, are you reading this?, that double negative goes out to you.) We had a table by the open window and the flowerboxes, me and Kat and an antipasti plate, with panini to come. Everyone likes an antipasti plate, especially if one is of that ilk called noncommittal, because here is a dish with caponata, sweet onions, roasted red peppers, marinated fennel, olives, sopressata, on and on and on.

There was a walk later, for the night was made for that sort of thing, and then cake, for cake was made for that sort of thing.

When I got out of the subway back home, the storm was picking up. The treetops were rustling somethin’ fierce. Cold pinpricks of rain on bare skin, and my skirt billowing about my knees in the dark.

After the last three months or so of lockdown, it’s a funny thing now that the days are wide open free sky springtime in bloom.

The feeling is quietly nervous, silently fidgety, as if I don’t quite know where to put my hands. I’m not complaining, really, I’m just...still figuring out how to deal with the rest of my life. All this time I’d been excited about moving to London, I’d apparently forgotten that moving to London means leaving New York. And that leaving New York means leaving America, this America where I’ve lived and grown up over the last ten years.

Still, when it’s time to go,...

* * *

I was in this morning till I couldn’t be in anymore, and then there was an outside cappuccino and a chick magazine at Café Regular, a funny phonecall with funny Lurlene, and then a walk up Fifth to a fish sandwich and a fizzy Ribena at the Chip Shop, O how I love my neighborhood.

Easy like Wednesday afternoon meant poking about in the new schmancy Union Market, wondering at which point a yuppie grocery store becomes laughable. Laughable, and yet, so tasty-smelling.

I was out till I couldn’t be out anymore, the sun beating down on shoulders already tanned. In the cool shade of inside, having downed several stripey glasses of cold water, I see that the world outside is vast, and calling.

The thing is, I kind of knew it was going to go okay when I put on the Mosquitos this morning, and when, in the middle of singing “Sunshine Barato,” I looked in the bathroom mirror and said, “T’es prête?” and then I looked back at me and said, “Ouuaaiiis.”

I got to school in no time at all, I hung out with the department secretaries and laughed off the residual nervousness, and then it was showtime and showtime was fine. I pretended I knew what I was talking about, and then it turned out I knew what I was talking about. And then there was shaking hands all around, and grins and best wishes for the future. Now I can safely unpack the cap and gown I picked up at the university bookshop a couple of weeks ago.

I guess I should feel over the moon or something, but I’m not sure what I feel. Kind of afloat, maybe. I was on the phone with Maud just now, and I think the closest we can come to describing this state is: “Yeah but no but yeah but no but.”

I went to the park and put down my blanket in the middle of the lawn, and it was good to be at the level of the grass. With my back pressed against the ground, it seemed that things were stable, somehow.

After hemming and hawing for weeks, trying to decide if I want to get a new computer while I can still coax a student discount out of the Apple store, I realize I don’t actually have a thousand (or two) and something dollars to blow on a new toy. Plus, I like my little iBook anyway. Hence, the upgrades to Old Faithful. Three hundred fifty-six dollars and twenty-nine cents later, two hundred and fifty gigabytes of external hard drive are winging their way to Brooklyn, and I’m carrying home a slim silver packet of AirPort card in my Jack Gomme basket bag. Hot damn, this is almost better than new clothes. A little delicate operation, holding my breath and observing precautions for electrostatic discharge, and HOLY CRAP, I AM BLOGGING VIA SOMEONE ELSE’S WIRELESS CONNECTION AND THIS FEELS LIKE FLYING.

The park and the sun and the day were calling our names. We walked and we sat and we walked some more. The horses were out, gorgeous and silky, and I wanted to touch.

Down Eleventh Street, a grin from the video store boy. I just want to say, not to say anything about anything, and especially not to say anything about anything that anyone might actually have done, but, oh, it is too bad when you turn around to check someone out and they are standing right there watching you check them out.

In the deep red cool at Café Regular, there were magazines and perfect coffees. My subscription to “Vanity Fair” ran out last month, so of course all of a sudden I am desperate to read every last page of the current issue. And, damn, now that I write this, I realize I forgot to check out my horoscope.

We took an evening stroll through the neighborhood, our feet light with the anticipation of fish soup, maybe, or p’raps the skate and bacon and shrimp, or, why not, the banana split for that feeling of summer holiday. But then we got to Fifth Avenue and there was the crowd pouring out onto the sidewalk from the front door of Blue Ribbon, and it was clear things were not going to work out as planned. In fact, surprise!, where normally Jeff and I are able to swan in and get the best table in the house, last night Kat and I found ourselves turned away because of Restaurant Week promotions and a full house. Actually I guess we weren’t turned away so much as kindly told we’d be able to have a table in a couple of hours. I mean, what?!, people, this is MY HAPPY BROOKLYN, not the GODDAMN LOWER EAST SIDE.

We turned and walked south, then, till there was the smell of fried in the air, and then we pushed open the doors to the Chip Shop, where Ribena and fried haddock were served up, chop-chop. (Maybe I mean chip-chip, but maybe if I said that I’d have to apologize and show myself the way out.) There was a stewed berry stew with custard after, and you know those stewed berries were a taste sensation, but you also know it’s the custard that makes things happen.

At home, we put on “Zero Effect,” the most brilliant movie I’d never heard of. Up till “Zero Effect,” I had no idea Bill Pullman really is a genius. Listen: A few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.

Martin was sitting right by the door, blue shirt and big smile, when I walked up to Café Regular. He made me a cappuccino, tops, which I drank by the bar, daydreaming. Josh was telling me about the dogwoods in bloom on Fifth, and then two guys and a dog told me about “Umberto D.” I had a book, but life was more engaging.

Pouring coffee on my keyboard somewhere around page twenty-eight: check.

Having poured coffee on my keyboard, screaming: check.

Anxiety dreams of nakedness: check.

Putting on a summer dress and gold earrings and turning up Aretha Franklin and dancing to just one song for a break, okay, two, no, wait this is a great one, too, okay, stop, stop, get back to work: uh, check.

Printing and binding and handing in L’alchimiste du souvenir et la mémoire des mots : L’ethnopoésie du soi dans “Biffures”: oh baby you’d better believe it, check.

Man,

just,

man,

I don’t know what to say. I can’t talk about it. It’s done, it’s off my table, there are parts I think are really good, and there are parts I think are kind of sketchy. Everybody cross your fingers for nobody noticing the sketchy parts. The defense is Tuesday morning, and the image playing in my mind on a continuous reel is this: I’m sitting in front of the two professors across from a large table. They look at each other, then they turn to look at me, then they shake their heads, slowly, simultaneously. They put the thesis down on the table and gesture at it, and say, “What is this?”

And the thing is, they’re not about to Zoolander.

But so there it is, all these months of whining come to an end. There were the midnight walks to the Tea Lounge. There were NO PARTIES. There were the three hours on the phone with Maud over cold tofu (me) and radishes and cigarettes (her) while she rehauled the first third of my paper. (Maud, you’re amazing. Your rise to the top is gonna rock. Call me when you get there, you know my number.) There was sitting on the stoop somewhere around four in the morning, listening to the birds wake up in the trees.

Wednesday when I handed in my thesis, the sun and everybody were out. All afternoon I kept running into people, Kevin and Matt Z and Sarah and Jason and Kevin again, and everyone was happy and congratulatory. Matt Z said, “Wow, you wrote all of this.” “I know!” I said. “In French,” he said. “I know!!” I said.

And then I walked from 116th to 72nd, and then I took a bath, and then I dreamt I was hanging out with you and it was nice.

In the morning, I baked two loaves of banana bread.

I texted my mum in the morning and said I might head to the park. She wrote back: “Enjoy the park but be vigilant for muggers and sun.” You just never know what my mum is going to say; she is a winner, that one.

Jeff came over as I was reading the The City section in the Times—

(I almost never buy the paper, I just don’t have the time for it, but because I am WILD with the prospect of the end of thesis-writing in sight, this weekend I am NO HOLDS BARRED.)

(Clearly the episode of “Girls Gone Wild” starring me would be a different beast from the DVDs they currently shill on late-night television.)

—Jeff came over, and I was in the middle of reading a story about a Chinese-food delivery guy who got trapped in an elevator in the Bronx for eighty-one hours. The story was titled “Please Get Me Out Of Here. Please.” Man, I heart The City. (Hector, tu lis ? Je te fais un cacedédi : I coeur The City.)

And it was good to see Jeff, because we like Jeff, and because I haven’t seen the boy in ages, but the thing is, it was really, really good to see Jeff because Jeff brought me a present of cookie cutters in the shapes of Helicopter, Dress, Vespa, and Rocketship. I think maybe the rocket one is the best, but I’m not sure. When I look at the dress one, I already see the cookie with pink icing on top, and maybe even a white Peter Pan collar. I told Jeff as much, and he, because he is full of good ideas, suggested I also get silver balls for pearls.

We grabbed the emergency go-to bag—

(Emergency go-to bag sits by the front door in all seasons. It is a three-dollar rattan basket from a Marrickville market, with red rattan patches in apple shape sewn onto the front. It holds a light green Ikea tablecloth that has been appropriated for park blanket use. In the winter, emergency go-to bag is a fond memory of good times. In the spring, emergency go-to bag is a handy thing to have by the door.)

—and went and got sugary treats at Two Little Red Hens, and then parked ourselves under a tree in full view of a baseball game, and laid out our sugary treats. Jeff unpacked a chocolate cupcake and then an M&M cookie, the latter “for dessert,” he said. Jeff is a little bit my hero.



On the first warm Sunday of spring—

(I am not sure, because for days, maybe even weeks, now I have been indoors with the curtains drawn for No Distractions, so maybe there have been other first warm Sundays, I don’t know.)

—on the first warm Sunday of spring, the park is full of interesting things, like:

a very small girl in a very pink dress kicking about a football as big as her head;

a skinny woman with dreads and a double pram of matching twins, yelling for Justin. After the third or fourth time she called out his name, we knew Justin’s in trouble now. We couldn’t figure out if Justin is her son or her dude, but he sure isn’t her dog, because people call for their dogs in sweeter tones. She was walking about, and we couldn’t see her any more, but every now and again we heard a “JUSTIN!!!” ;

so many dogs, big ones and little ones, attached to so many owners, big ones and little ones. The most unexpected pairing was maybe this one guy with a pot belly and a shaved head with a tiny Yorkie. I smiled at a very cute bulldog and then followed the line of his leash till I came to his very cute boy owner, who, (Jeff, this goes out to you), OMG!, smiled at me;

a teen-age boy in a studded leather jacket with a teen-age girl practicing ballet moves, who’d come to watch their friend in the baseball game. Said friend wore a Guns n’ Roses T-shirt under his baseball jersey;

a small boy with with no parents in sight, who seemed to be whining about something in Czech. He was all big eyes and messy hair and cheeks grubby with tears wiped away. I said, “What’s the matter, cute?” and then he stopped crying and quite seriously muttered about something something with very few vowels, and then he said, “Numbers are fun.”



And then we had to stop getting distracted because I was trying to make Jeff read the amazing top story in the The City section. (Ryan, the ex-dude, used to call it “The Shitty,” which I think is just unnecessary, because there are really all sorts of amazing things in the The City section.) The top story was not the story about the delivery guy. It was a story about how things are tough for single women who live on Staten Island. Jeff was concerned that I didn’t have anything to read myself, but I said it would be okay because it is the kind of story where every other sentence makes you stop to say to the person who is with you, “Wait, you have to hear this.” And he picked out all the right parts, the parts I’d been reading in the morning wondering why there wasn’t anyone around to say “Wait, you have to hear this” to.

For example,

While Ms. Shammas may long for a family environment, her sunny one-bedroom apartment in the North Shore neighborhood of Silver Lake is a shrine to female singledom. Snapshots of her and her girlfriends primped for a night out plaster her refrigerator. A pair of black dishwashing gloves cuffed with plastic pink roses sit by the sink. The toilet seat is covered with decorative green shag. The only whiff of testosterone is Mr. Wonderful, a talking doll that sits on the bedroom dresser. Mr. Wonderful is just 12-inches tall and requires double-A batteries, but he knows how to treat a woman. (“The ballgame isn’t really that important; I’d rather spend time with you” is one mantra.)

Also:

Dominick Casazza, who has shoulder-length black hair and likes alternative music and creative writing, echoed Ms. Gardner’s frustration, albeit from a different perspective. “There are a lot of ‘Staten Island girls’ with the overly tan skin, the velour jumpsuits, the sunglasses and the furry boots,” he said.

And, please, I promise, this is the last one, even though you know I could go on:

Not that dating men who don’t live on the island is easy, either. “I would definitely say that dating a guy in the city would make it much harder for a booty call,” Ms. Shammas said. “Not to sound trashy, but you know? You have to pay $8 on the Verrazano and $6 on any of the Jersey bridges, so you can’t get off this island for free unless you take the ferry.”

And then Jeff pointed out the story about Smokey, a horse who pulls a carriage through Central Park. The story included such sentences as “Mr. Villanueva said Smokey believes he is too good-looking to be handled.” The caption accompanying the picture read: “Smokey, who doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks.” But so you see what I’m saying? The The City section is amazing.

I went and got a hot dog from the hot dog cart, sometimes you just need a hot dog from the hot dog cart, and man, that hot dog, with ketchup and mustard, was worth every nitrate and sketchy animal part implicated in its savory tastiness. It even made Jeff say, “I wish I weren’t a vegetarian.”

And then we lay about like layabouts, and then we thought maybe we’d take a stroll. We couldn’t find the boathouse, but stopped in the filthiest no-lock Port-a-loos in the world, and then got lost some eastward. It’s weird how I think I know the park, and then every now and again I find I’ve taken a turn into potential Blair Witch territory. We knew we’d stepped into another universe when, off a deserted dirt path, we saw a solitary fountain sparkling on the green, and a group of people walking around in circles banging on drums.

But then Jeff had a feeling about Grand Army Plaza, and we hung a left, and all of a sudden there were people again, playing cricket even, and Grand Army Plaza just like the boy said.



Walking home from Union with a detour at Steve’s C-Town the Supermarket for Savings means being able to dawdle on Fifth Avenue for window-shopping and look-sees. The queue at Uncle Louie G’s was longer than my desire for an Italian ice, so I stopped in at the Chip Shop for a Ribena to go.

On Ninth Street the guy who sits on the stoop to smoke a cigar was sitting on the stoop smoking a cigar.

The sun is out like crazy in love.

When I woke up this morning, I thought I’d slept in till noon, and then I found out it was just 9:38, which means I’ve saved almost two and a half hours today.

My house smells of clean, the windows are open, and spring sounds like the Strokes.

I have the beginnings of a tan from yesterday, hot damn summer is going to rock.

It appears I have eaten everything in this house except the last few baby carrots in the bag of Grimmway Farms Bunny-Luv. No, wait, I think there is a small aluminium container of dried scallops in the pantry. Also a last bit of cauliflower pickles and half a lemon and three out-of-season strawberries in the fridge. Whatever. No bloody time for poking around in grocery stores. Some dinnertimes come on the tail end of a week of freakishly focused thesis-writing; a week through which ran a constant and tensely quiet undercurrent of panic; a week of not more than five hours of sleep per night—and that culminated in last night’s power nap between four-thirty and eight this morning.

The strange thing is how well my body seems to be taking this abuse. This regime is far from misery or oppression. I work contentedly into the wee hours of the morning before getting under the covers, at which point I say, into the darkness, “Let’s wake up in five hours, okay?” and then, miraculously, quite refreshed, without the alarm clock, I do.

And then I sit and I sit, and I read, and I write; and sometimes it is frightening, in the buzzing silence, how blank a mind can be; and sometimes the writing comes and then hot damn it’s flying it’s jubilation it’s exhilaration and I am Miracle Genius of the World. Non mais merdeuh ça fait du bien and I think I’m close to done, except for some sort of brilliant conclusion. I got the Freud in there, the Benveniste, the Lacan, the Mauss. Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Sarraute, Perec. Am I dropping names? Hell yeah. And I might even give Montaigne a shout-out to wrap it up.

I gave my pages to Maud this afternoon for a grammatical go-over, (everybody likes a French friend), and if all goes well, tomorrow she will call to say, “I doff my hat in your direction, for your thesis is amazing.” Maud, are you reading this?, no pressure!

We met up at school, lured Jazon out of the library, then sat in the sun and ate toasted bagels and marveled at the shirtless undergraduates with the nipple rings. Like an advertisement for America-Land-of-the-Free, campus on a sunny day is all boys and girls and frisbees and ball games and glowing health and hair in the wind.

And then Jazon left us for the irresistible wiles of Queen Latifah in “Beauty Shop,” and still we sat, me and Maud, and then we sat some more. Saturday afternoon is the warm sun on the wide steps of Low Library, and a homemade Brazilian compilation on a Discman. We solved the problems of the world six times over while moving west with the light every so many minutes till it got too cold and we couldn’t chase the rays any longer, and then one of us went uptown and one of us went downtown.

Which brings us to dinnertime, and the bag of Bunny-Luv in the fridge.

Up till about an hour ago, it’d been months since I’d ordered in a meal. The delivery menus were jammed in behind the foil and the Glad Wrap and the Ziploc bags in the top left drawer. So... many... crumpled... choices... and me... so... hungry. I was paralysed by indecision—

(I originally typed “I was waffling over my options” and then I thought, “Mmm...waffles.” Had there been a menu with waffles— oh, no, wait, crap, the menu I barely glanced at from the twenty-four-hour Donuts Luncheonette would’ve had waffles. O, how I shake my fist at, oh, well, myself, really. Nevermind.)

— I was paralysed by indecision—hunger and indecision—until I thought about what I might be able to cobble together from the can of hearts of palm in the pantry and the frozen walnut agnoletti in the freezer, then called Tofu on Seventh. And truly their Delivery is Fast, because in a matter of minutes (like twelve, not, like, a hundred and twenty-eight) all too soon I had a thing of eggplant and beansprouts, and a thing of tofu and scallops, and even some dubious orangey duck sauce and two fortune cookies. And then, because, shit, just because I felt like it, I sat cross-legged on the floor and read the “Sunday Styles” section of the Times and ate with a Chinese soup spoon. Sometimes some things are just the things you need.

It occurs to me now that there are other things I need, and they are (a) to put on some Benjamin Biolay and Chiara Mastroianni and (b) to get into a hot bath, the kind of hot where you step into the water and your skin prickles. Achieveable goals, people, achieveable goals.

I am so happy to go to sleep tonight.

After four breakfasts, one per hour from seven to ten this morning, I e-mailed Jeff, because Jeff likes to go on Web MD to check for afflictions:

i am wondering if i am diabetic because (a) i am thirsty all the time, and (b) i am hungry all the time. (well, i don’t actually know that those are necessarily conditions of diabetes, but the disorder—is it a disease?—popped into my mind.)

Because Jeff is Jeff, I heard back in minutes:

i did a little research into diabetes, and, while hunger and thirst can be symptoms, they can also be caused by stress.

So, hooray, I am only stressed, not diabetic. Probably. To celebrate my new lease on life, lunch.

Walked home along the park in the rain, relentless. Rivers rush down side streets, and we all have umbrellas for heads.

It’s not so good when you meet with your thesis advisor and one of the things he says about your work is, “Well, that’s a problem.” First: like an overwhelming desire to vomit, the panic rising in my throat. Then: going back to the library to take care of bizniss, because, crap, bizniss has got to be taken care of. Heading up to school late in a Friday afternoon turned out to be not so depressing after all. The sky was still light when I got out of the subway, and, when I got onto campus, the sounds of the too-loud drums and the twangy guitars of a good ol’ college band playing somewhere on the green were floating in the evening air. I headed upstairs in the library thinking, “Maybe I’ll see Jason, and that’ll be great,” and then I saw Jason, and it was great. We sat together and ate chocolate like study buddies in the big room until they turned out the lights and the man with the little bell came round.

At six p.m. Mallarmé sounded like a sweet biscuity treat. At ten p.m. I am starting to see how to tie the Symbolist poet and his treatment of words into my take on Michel Leiris and the revelatory nature of language. Sometimes things get done just because they need to get done.