Musings While in Hibernation

Since I’m still too ill to go out and party, I’ve resorted to the next best thing – stalking the web for photos of myself partying. Sound pathetic? It is. So I came across a bunch of photos taken on one of these recent evenings and to my dismay found that I look absolutely horrible in every single one (um, no…I’m not providing the links).

WTF?

Usually these semi-professional event photographer people take good photos. Usually I’m out in a place that’s dark enough with such an impressive amount of make-up on that I always come across looking acceptable. Usually, I pass for having a sense of style.

Not on the night these photos were taken.

First of all, I’m wearing a top and leggings that don’t match. Two, the top isn’t a top anyone should wear with leggings. Three, I’m way shiny, and silly, and look lost. Four, my hair looks drier than hay, and fake.

At the particular party where these photos where taken, there happened to also be in attendance a young woman I especially dislike. Everyone has people in this world we scribble on our imaginary hit list, either because they trash talk our friends, are clueless about proper social behavior, are extremely enviable, or have fucked the guy we like (in my case with this woman, all four). The worst part about this group of online photos is that however much I look awful, my nemesis looks fabulous. She’s a knockout in every frame! I’d say we’re tied for the number of photo opts, but while I look impressively undesirable, she’s glowing like a Victoria’s Secret model. Her outfit was also casual, classy, and…perfect.

Guess you can’t win ‘em all.

Other Discoveries…

Milano cookies. They’re great. I vote them Pepperidge Farm's greatest invention, although everything that company flings out the oven is pretty damn good. I’ve had a thing for Milanos since fourth grade. By the time I hit middle school, some crafty market analysts looking to suck more money out of the average American shopper came out with the idea of Mint Milanos, Double Chocolate Milanos, Strawberry Milanos and now in a diet conscious age, Sugar Free Milanos. I’m not a huge experimenter and I hate mint except for when in toothpaste or breath deodorizers, so I’ve been a solid Double Chocolate Milano cookie eater ever since the multi-branding.

So why Milanos and not Chessmen?

Milanos have the prefect amount of sugar in them. They taste great with milk and they’re not large, so you don’t have the mental responsibility of consuming a whole cookie. Plus the package seems to last forever. There are three layers of crunchy vanilla chocolate morsels. So your stash never seems to end. This cookie is the perfect pick me up, not to mention it’s named after one of my favorite cities. Wow. I just realized I’m blogging about cookies. I blame my Dayquil. Moving on…

Not looking forward to…

Halloween. When I got my fist New York apartment I stalked up on candy hoping to coo at some cute kids dressed up as ladybugs or Sponge Bob Square Pants.

No one came!

So staying in isn’t a fun option. Even less of a good time though, seems to be going out. The city’s a madhouse, and that parade is insane. Are throbbing crowds of drunken freaks dressed like Lord of Rings characters people’s idea of a good time? We all know I like an excuse to party, I’ve just never got on the Halloween bandwagon. I hate dressing up. I hate playing pretend. I loathe haunted houses, creepy music and I really, really don’t like being scared (Jodie Foster’s movie Contact terrified me, okay? I’m a wimp). I also feel Halloween has lost a lot of its charm (assuming it had some) and has become an excuse for girls to dress up like especially ostentatious prostitutes and not be properly ridiculed for it. For more visual costume examples, I refer you to Take a Memo’s blog entry here.

So what are you all doing for Halloween? Is anyone feeling the ‘come up with an amazing costume to get into to [insert friend’s name]’s slamming Halloween party’ pressure?

Isn’t life stressful enough?

Between Diddy’s white party, Planet Pink’s silver night and the various Italian toga parties it’s like every evening requires its own special ensemble. Doesn’t the universe know that outfit selecting process for females is intrinsically complex as is?

That’s the end of my rant for now.

Time to sedate myself with more meds…

Grey. Grey. Grey.

It’s a rainy Thursday and as I sit here with a steaming hot chocolate, complete with mini marshmallows (yes I’m still five), it seems the perfect opportunity to reflect on the other immature aspects of my life. Yep, you all guessed right. I’m ranting about grey relationships yet again. Cut me some slack. Today the sky’s grey, the rain’s grey, my sheets are grey (they used to be white, I need to wash them, I realize that’s gross). Grey is inevitably on my mind. So using my Milanese ex-fantasy man Grin as an example, I’m going to go over some of the common symptoms that stem from dysfunctional big city relationships, all of which I suffered through with him, some of which still plague me now:

1. The Silent Treatment: Remember that game you used to play at age eight when after losing a fight with your brother or sister (usually over some glossy toy or gross piece of play dough) you’d give them the ‘silent treatment’ until your bruised ego felt like it had ‘punished’ them for an adequate amount of time? While we’re no longer playing with Barbie’s (hopefully), we still treat our grey relationship partners in the same irrationally emotional way we did our siblings. By not calling them, not texting them, not emailing them you’re both protecting yourself from being hurt when they potentially don’t respond and winning in the infantile ‘silent treatment game’ sense of victory. This transitions beautifully into our next symptom.

2. Playing to Win: Often when I post about grey / faux relationships, I’m surprised to receive reader comments encouraging me to confess my true feelings for my partner, talk it out with him, take it to the next level – all reasonable suggestions if one’s goal was to live happily ever after or fall in love. I feel in all my writing about this topic, I’ve evidently failed to properly illustrate on what a high level of immaturity the grey dynamic operates. Stability, normalcy and happiness aren’t the goals here. People in grey relationships are too afraid to fall in love. They’re terrified of living happily ever after. Happily ever after, despite its charming connotations, is frighteningly final, and grey relationship participants tend to be commitment phobic. The implicit goal may be to get closer to another human being, but the explicit goal is to win. The dysfunctional relationship rule book clearly states that whichever entity appears to care less about the relationship is considered the winner. Let’s look at an example:

After five days of giving one another the silent treatment, Grin texts me for an aperitivo. Grin initiated contact (+10 points for me) with a detailed plan for getting together as opposed to a vague ‘how are you’ (an additional +15 points for me). He’s putting himself on the line.

I happen to be busy that night (+12 points for me – I’m seemingly not prioritizing him), but phone to thank him for the invite (phoning means reaching out / caring so minus 15 points for me, + 12 points for him.)

The ultimate goal is to keep both our scores equal. If one person seems to care more than the other, things get unbalanced and someone tends to freak out and disappear. The grey relationship is destroyed. Ideally, both your scores rise at a matching rate (I mean if your scores didn’t rise you’d never see one another at all.)

So while this game may seem cruel, it’s actually a process of you both nurturing for your faux relationship so it can continue to exist at a level of intimacy you’re both comfortable with. And while the whole score keeping thing may seem confusing, it’s actually not at all. Most 21st century Manhatteners are capable of making virtually all of these calculations subconsciously. Often I don’t even think we know we’re doing it, but in a grey relationship, someone’s always keeping score. There is self-imposed control. I mean, if you just let things just play out naturally you might find yourself actually being intimate with someone (God forbid!), which in the dating game of most major metropolises is a no-no.

3. Pacing Intimacy: Pacing intimacy has a lot to do with knowing how to properly keep score. It also requires obeying certain boundaries, some of which I explored in Please Don’t Be Nice. Even though you may be crazy about this person, you have to keep in mind that you’re not each other’s significant other. The grey relationship is about fun, excitement, adrenaline, and intensely high doses of middle school cattiness. It’s not about companionship. Your partner cannot become to ‘real’ to you. I mean if you start shoe shopping together you’re just a hop, skip and a jump away from him farting in your face and you no longer shaving your legs. Or as a friend of mine put it:

“If you spend more than fourteen consecutive hours together, you’re fucked.”

Fucked in what sense? You may thoroughly enjoy each other's company, but going out to dinner or brunch several days a week is just crossing a line. You might actually start to feel like boyfriend and girlfriend (again, God forbid).

4. Hide and Seek: And because there are so many questions you’d like to ask your grey relationship partner, but know you can’t (doing so would obliterate the cloudy grayness in which you both feel comfortable), you try to attain knowledge about them indirectly from other sources. Like:

My friend (casually): Hey, you know I ran in Grin the other night at Pacha.

Me (suddenly sweating bullets): Wait. When? Where? At what time exactly? Who was he with? A girl? Several girls? What was he wearing? Dressed down or dressed up? Did he ask about me? Was he wearing jeans or dress pants? What was your exact conversation word by word? Tell me Godammit!!!!

Since I’d often be paranoid Grin was out partying when he claimed to be at home, I’d go out when I’d normally stay in and go to as many Milanese clubs and bars as physically possible with our common friends, scouring each location to make sure he wasn’t there. He never would be and I’d come home, exhausted but victorious. Mature, right?



And at the end of the day, I think one of the reasons dysfunctional relationships are so common is that they allow us to recapture the joys of childhood immaturity. These adrenaline-based affairs may be absurd, but they help us feel like kids again. The relationship games we play are rarely stressful, they’re somehow as relaxing and familiar as a game of tag, a battle of hide-and-seek.

So far, that’s the only explanation I’ve come up with about why we keep coming back for more.

West Coasting It

We all know my feelings about Los Angeles. If you missed the recap of my trip there earlier in the summer you can read it here and here. This time around, I ventured to other West Coast cities: Seattle, Vancouver and Whistler to be exact.

Now I don’t mean to offend, but why every time I cross the border into Canada do I feel like I’m being repeatedly electrocuted with high voltages of boredom? I haven’t quite put my finger on why, but for me Vancouver was void of any spice, energy or flavor. I tried to go partying on a Thursday night and found the streets empty, the bars deserted.

This was the Hollywood of Canada?

Everyone’s annoyingly polite. Everyone follows rules. I also didn’t appreciate the fact that their currency had a lot of heavy coins, heavy coins that weren’t even saving me money anymore since the Canadian and American dollar are now equal.

A charming anecdote: When I was paused on the street consulting a map, a woman sidled up to me and asked if I needed any assistance. My first New Yorker instinct was to protectively clutch my wallet while beating her away with my Lonely Planet guide. Then I realized she was just a nice girl volunteering spare moments of her life to help strangers. After 24-hours in Vancouver, I was really longing for a homeless person to almost spit on my foot or for an enraged cab driver to call me a “stupid white bitch” as I crossed the crosswalk. I wholeheartedly admit that America doesn’t perhaps exemplify the qualities of a great nation (especially now), but at least no one can call us bland or void of personality.

Vancouver did have some upsides though. The city’s on the water, which means the air is so clean that it’s shocking for a Manhattaner to inhale. I felt like I had entered a pulmonary detox, and by the end of the trip my repertory system was functioning better than it had in weeks. The city’s also easy to navigate and has a lot of parking, which is great if you like being able to own and drive a car (which I don’t). Stanley Park is spectacularly beautiful and right in the center of the city. And the food is out of this world. One night I hit up a hot Yaletown restaurant called Goldfish. I had scallops in a mango sauce, duck spring rolls with mint, sautéed vegetables without tons of oil and get this: they had desert sushi! A kiwi, mango, strawberry fruit center surrounded by sweet coconut milk rice, incased in dark chocolate as the ‘seaweed.’ It looked like real sushi, and was served with a passion fruit dip in lieu of soy sauce. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Isn’t this idea genius!?

The infamously beautiful Sea to Sky road that connects Vancouver to Whistler Mountain is undergoing construction to make way for the 2010 winter Olympics. A few cranes and piles of rock here and there did not deter from these spectacular views. This drive is a must do for nature lovers, and I had no idea Whistler (consistently voted best skiing in North America) was such a pleasant summer destination as well.

Seattle is actually as awesome as it looks on the glitzy transition shots in Grey’s Anatomy (speaking of which, are we tuning in for Private Practice - yeay or nay?) The city did not disappoint. Really fresh air, seafood and a great vibe as well. Yet the more I travel in the US & Canada, the more my suspicion that New York is the best city in the world is confirmed.

I’m glad to be back. And I’m celebrating by going out tonight, tomorrow, and probably the weekend as well. Hopefully to some tasteful events, nothing too clubby or trashy (I already have a feeling I’ll be defying this statement Thursday night). And for those of you who all kindly commented on yesterday’s Please Don’t Be Nice article, I have a message for you all.

Stay tuned.

Why Colder Can be Cooler

Saturday night something magical happened. I walked to Via Della Pace for dinner (an Italian restaurant I highly recommend, the lobster ravioli’s sinful and affordable – just be prepared to pay in cash) and then (surprise surprise) danced the night away at a cheesy club. At the beginning of the night, I strolled to the east village along with a warm breeze. My body was comfortable sans jacket. Some people were enjoying pasta and red wine outside. This was around 10 pm.

A mere six hours later when I left the anonymous cheesy club at four in the morning, New York had been possessed by a different spirit. That formerly calming breeze had turned cold. The temperature had plummeted. Skimpily dressed partygoers were forced to cling to one another not just out of drunken horniness, but out of a genuine need for body warmth. I’ll admit I both hid in a phone booth and later hugged a pudgy man I didn’t even know while waiting for the arguing members of our group to disperse into cabs. The wind was that frigid. Those of us still standing at the end of the night proceeded to go have breakfast, but I didn’t really enjoy my meal. Summer was officially over. And we all know since global warming, fall and spring have practically disappeared as concepts. It’s either humid or freezing here in the city. So I don’t feel I can really console myself with the fact that a lovely autumn is in store and going to make this traumatic transition much easier. To cope with this revelation, I’ve compiled a list of why we should be excited, not suicidal, about the fact that winter is just around the corner.

1. Hot chocolate: Dark chocolate perks me up when I’m feeling depressed. It suppresses my hunger when my stomach’s growling. Melted and applied to the skin, it makes all my clubbing-incurred bruises fade in twenty-four hours. It wakes me up when I’m ready to crawl back into bed. Dark chocolate is my cure-all product. Did I also mention it’s yummy as Hell? I also compulsively consume tea like some people down Starbucks coffee. Now put the two elements of choclately goodness and steamy liquid together, and you’ve just created my own personal version of heroin. Winter means I can consume vats of hot chocolate without looking like a weirdo. And I’m totally fine with admitting that the hot cocoa with mini marshmallows is my personal favorite.


2. New wardrobe: I had so much fun getting dressed yesterday because I got to open my sweater drawer for the first time in months. At this point, I’ve recycled my warm weather closet more than twice. If I have to wear another tank top I might spit at my reflection in the bedroom mirror. The best part about getting to utilize all your stored away winter clothes (and rediscovering the discount Cavalli turtlenecks from Century 21 you forgot you had) is that you also get to incorporate your summer wardrobe as layering pieces. So the amount of clothing you have to work with doubles overnight!

3. Jackets: Every girl is a sucker for something. Some do the shoe obsession thing ala Carrie Bradshaw. Other stock up on cocktail dresses. Others have a compulsive buying problem with lingerie. For me, it’s always been jackets. I love jackets, mainly because I’m always cold. Also because when I lack the energy to get properly dressed (or decide to wear yesterday’s clothes) I just throw one of my many jackets on top of my messy self and no one can tell the difference. The fact that I’m wearing a sweater my cat chewed without a bra becomes my dirty secret. My jacket collection takes up half of my ridiculously tiny Manhattan closet. I have long, short, sport, peacoat, down, elegant, jean, suede, leather (oh my god the leather)…I’m getting too excited I better stop.

4. Cuddling: Who wants to cling to their partner post-coital when its ninety-five degrees outside and humid. Usually you just lie on opposite sides of the bed, both trying to convince your bodies to stop producing sweat. Showers are mandatory and your sheets are gross. Yet in the colder months, snuggling under feathered comforters together is actually a turn on. There are all sorts of new reasons to touch each other with the excuse of ‘warming up.’ Plus you don’t want kick your partner toward a soapy shower the minute they’ve crawled off you. Instead you can relax and pass out in each other’s arms.

5. No more air-conditioning: America over air-conditions as if it were a matter of life and death. Recycled freezing air makes you sick! Plus it’s damn expensive. In the winter my ConEd bill doesn’t only lower dramatically, I no longer have to organize where I sit in an indoor restaurant based on how far away I can get from the industrial strength air vent that’s blasting virtual snow on people. A friend told me about a colleague of hers at Bear Sterns who brought a space heater to work in the summer months to warm up her office. I understand companies wanting to keep employees alert, but think of the money they’d save if they just air-conditioned down to 75 instead of 60. In the winter we just have to bundle up, and heat is always welcome.

6. Fur: I love fur. I love the way it looks, I love the way it feels against my skin, I love the way it keeps me warm. Now don’t load your water guns with red paint and spray me just yet. I don’t wear real fur. Who can afford it? And who wants to have the guilt of having killed an innocent Bambi-like creature on their hat or earmuffs? Some synthetic fur looks great. An example: One of my favorite leather jackets has a tasteful browny-black fur collar. One afternoon at Astor Place, I actually had an executive women take her snarly lips away from her cell phone for two seconds to bark at me, “You should be ashamed!” before returning to her phone call. As we crossed the street, I racked my brain for what on earth she could be referring to. Had I stepped on her foot? Accidentally pushed her? Then it hit me, my fur looked that real. I watched the woman click away from me in her high-heel genuine leather boots (hypocrite) and smiled at the compliment.

See, even when in the midst of unjustified verbal abuse winter can be a fun season. Bring it on.