Wednesday, 28 January 2004

Sometimes, while I'm telling someone who doesn't live in New York about some of the inconveniences of living here, it occurs to me that s/he might wonder why anyone would, in fact, want to live in New York. It is easier for me to list specific examples of sacrifices than examples of benefits, but I love this city for some reason anyway, and have no plans to leave it in the foreseeable future (which, admittedly, isn't especially distant).

On Monday evening, after walking around in the cold for several hours (unsuccessfully helping Martin find a winter jacket), I had the brilliant idea to do grocery shopping in Manhattan. Grocery shopping, especially when far from home, is an exercise in realism. For each item you put in your basket, you must determine if you both need and can afford the item, as well as whether you're able to carry it.

Using a basket rather than using a cart helps determine if you can carry your groceries, even if it drains you of the energy you're going to need for the trip home. It doesn't seem to help me anyway; I always get more than my arms can handle, just like I pack too much when I go on vacation. When I finally left the store at 10 p.m., I was saddled with the two bags I'd brought with me (one of which contained a computer) and three overstuffed bags of produce, cans of soup, and I have no idea what else.

As I walked down the stairs to the subway platform, I heard someone yell, "No trains!" for the benefit of the newcomers, like me. A minute later, a different guy asked, to no one in particular, "Who's been here more than an hour?" A few people quietly raised their hands. Everyone seemed calm and accepting, as if in tacit agreement that broken subways are an understood part of life here.

How much longer can the train take, if it's already been an hour? I reasoned. Forty-five minutes later, and I was stepping onto a crowded subway car, after forty-five minutes of staring down a dark hole, of listening to a street performer produce (and repeat, I think) Chinese twangs that echoed against the tiles, of observing the people immediately around me (including the obnoxious businessman with the loud voice and slicked-back hair), and of chaperoning my plump plastic bags of food, which surrounded me like a small fort.

The train moved slowly; the typical 7-minute ride took 30, and I could watch the walls and tubes of the mysterious underground tunnels creep by recognizably, not the fast blur of gray and black that I'm accustomed to. The obnoxious man was telling jokes to people he'd befriended on the platform. "This one is a little dirty," he warned his audience.

We stopped prematurely, one station before mine. The platform filled up with bodies as soon as the doors opened, pouring out like liquid. We stood there, stuck, draining out of the holes that led above-ground, a few drops at a time. Another 10 minutes of baby-stepping forward; me, carrying my bags on stiff, sore fingers. It occurred to me that I was a fire or gunshot away from getting trampled, but it was more of a contemplation than a worry.

Finally, I sifted through to the brisk, open air, where I was pelted with giant snowflakes until the bus arrived. I walked from the bus stop to my cold apartment on sidewalks partially covered with thick, shiny ice.

Which means, of course, that New York has a million virtues.



Two things I feel pretty sure of at the moment: I am going to have a cold for the rest of my life, and winter is never going to end.

Also: today the office was closed due to weather, which hardly ever happens. (In North Carolina, in contrast, life comes to a standstill at the mention of the word snow, and, somehow, bread and milk automatically vaporize from grocery store shelves.) Mollie came over, which meant Oreos, hot chocolate, temporary tattoos (which she got in a laundromat gumball machine), and me discovering that I can use my wireless card in my apartment. More snow days, please.

Sunday, 25 January 2004

Most of the things I own are either old or have noticeable imperfections. My $25 couch is sprouting foaming cotton at the corners like a rabid dog, in exchange for keeping my cats' claws in good condition. The walls of my apartment are decorated with several slightly damaged paintings and posters (mostly because it's stuff I found rather than bought). The furniture I painted years ago is starting to molt like a snake, and my (used) bike is scratched and has mismatched handlebar grips. Many of my clothes are either second-hand or have seen too many laundromat dryers and have shrunk or faded; in some cases, they've been awkwardly repaired with thread (and even glue) rather than discarded.

My car (which lives in NC and is almost 300,000 miles old) is dented and unbathed and has a host of quirks, like needing its dashboard banged for the clock to work and its window shoved for the window to close. My SLR camera has a hairline crack, only half of my stereo's tape deck can be trusted, and my VCR has an eating disorder. My cell phone and computer are from another age, before color screens (cell phone) and CD burners (computer) became standard. My stereo speakers were a gift to my parents at their wedding, in 1968.

Out of those items, the only things I would replace without hesitation would be the VCR and the tape deck (although I would probably feel some guilt about both, as they were given to me by my parents and brother, respectively). The rest of my stuff I'm fiercely attached to, even if I'm the only one able to recognize its appeal. Replacement is hard.

I don't like my new laptop. It came in the mail Friday, and immediately I found it strikingly big and ugly (and too new). It's blue (I didn't know to expect that), and its AC adapter is literally the size of a brick. I've been setting it up this weekend, adding programs and files and customizing the menus, which has helped, but I'm very drawn to my old machine, which still commands the desk and still gets lots more attention (like right now).

I'm willing to admit that it's due, in part, to an element of sentimentality (for a MACHINE, yes, I know). It has occurred to me that virtually everything I know about computers has been taught to me via this 7-pound box of wires and chips and bizarre little parts, and this is the beast that I have stared at for hours and hours while learning how to combine words and pictures and web design.

Anyway, it's going to a good home; it's going to live in Berlin, with Ingo's parents, despite its American plug and its smaller alphabet. Tomorrow, I think, I'm going to gut it—delete all of the things that make it mine—after I have finished the transfer. I'm certain I'll like the new one soon enough, or at least I hope I will. It's nicer, technically.

Tuesday, 20 January 2004

I think because it's the new year I'm supposed to have some new unbridled motivation, but lately I haven't felt like leaving my apartment. When I do leave, I haven't been taking (or even seeing) pictures, or wishing that I'd brought my camera or that its batteries weren't dead. My camera is with me, and its batteries are fully charged, because it isn't being used. I haven't felt particularly productive, either; in fact, this weekend I watched more TV than I did in all of 2003, including a belligerent episode of The Peoples' Court. I'm 95 percent sure it's the direct result of the bad weather, so it isn't bothering me too much, yet.

So even though I hate the thought of stacking on layers of clothing and wrapping cotton around my head until only my eyes peek through, I do it anyway. On Saturday night, part of my motivation was to see a band I'd won tickets for. I think I've discovered a way to (consistently?) win tickets to some pretty decent shows, although that's totally presumptuous of me to say, as I've only tried it once so far. (I tested the method again today but don't yet know the results.) I'm trying to save money, so I figure the best way take advantage of various un-free New York events is to enter silly contests sent to me by a weekly email magazine. I'm 100 percent sure this plan is the direct result of buying a new laptop last week.

Spending so much money at once always makes me feel a little sick. (Like when I pay rent, for example.)

Monday, 19 January 2004

I picked up a lost phone sitting face-up in the snow, dusted off the flakes it had collected, and stuck it in my bag until I'd heard from whomever it belonged to. As it turned out, I knew the owner's roommate. Odd.

Yesterday the owner (Jena) and her roommate (Lacey) came by my apartment to retrieve the phone, which had a high-pitched ring and reminded me a little of a poodle. I never knew whether I should answer it, whether I should make it stop barking.

A cockroach the size of a rat scurried across my kitchen floor just before they arrived. When I opened the door for them, I immediately briefed them on the situation; I figured there was no way for me to act "normal" with a missing rat-roach in my apartment.

"Wow, that's a big one," Jena said, upon review. "I'll kill it for you for keeping my phone." She said it with confidence, and I was immediately impressed, immediately glad I'd picked up her phone.

It was the first time either of them had been in my place, and rather than getting any sort of tour, they instead were crouching on the floor with a flashlight, peering underneath my refrigerator and couch.

There have been only two other rat-roaches in my apartment since I moved in a year-and-a-half ago; one got crushed by another brave visitor, and the other took me five hours to kill. (I wasted a third of a bottle of glass cleaner on him before desperately borrowing a can of Raid from my upstairs neighbors; I spritzed him with poison until he lay completely still.)

I took Jena up on her offer.

I watched at the edge of the room, taking the role of wimp, directing Jena and Lacey at a safe distance. There he is! He just ran under the couch!

They were laughing and scrambling and screaming. Jena repeatedly beat the roach with the plastic base of the broom, after which the roach would skip away, undamaged. After more broom whacks and the dislocation of the couch, Lacey somehow maneuvered the roach into the dustpan, held it down with a miniature broom, and sped off toward the toilet.

My bathroom is small, with standing room for one person only. Lacey ran in the bathroom while securing the roach with two hands, and discovered that the toilet seat was down. In order to deliver the roach to the bowl, she had to leave the room again and communicate the problem to Jena while keeping the still-alive roach in place. The process was an awkward dance full of yelled commands and exaggerated movements.

Success! I felt like my team had just won.

After Jena and Lacey—still out of breath—put down their weapons, I properly introduced myself to Jena, on what felt like the wrong side of a rather intimate moment. "Nice to meet you... So, yeah, this is my apartment..."

Thursday, 15 January 2004

"What crime would you like to report?"

Jessica looked at me and asked, "What should I call it?"

"I don't know...assault?"

He led us to a large wooden desk, one that was full of nicks and scratches that showed its age like wrinkles. She began her story. I stood awkwardly by and looked around the room.

There were too many American flags to count—hanging on the walls, printed on posters, sticking out of pencil holders, sewn in the form of patches on navy shoulders. There was a flag shoved in the mouth of a fish mounted on the wall.

I offered the cop some details that Jessica had filled me in on, and then I took a seat in a stained plastic chair while she filled out paperwork.

The signs around the room were written in cop language. "Regulation navy blue uniform is required for BSTVB for all MOS. CDs issued for noncompliance." (A sad face was drawn in the body of the capital D.) A bulletin board full of lists: Homicide. Burglary. GLA. Assault. Shootings. Terrorism Awareness Bulletin. A handwritten sign on the bathroom warned, "Don't use this bathroom to search prisoners. Use bathroom in cell area." None of the signs were meant for me.

Another cop, whom I suspect was merely curious, started asking me questions about Jessica's case. While I spoke, he stared at me and munched on cookies, making it hard for me to tell what he was thinking. "I'm the Cookie Monster," he'd later say. After I'd finished the story, he wiped his mouth and said bluntly, "I'd beat his ass."

The building was a rectangle made of smaller rectangles—white bricks and windows and door frames; there were no round edges anywhere. It was dirty, old, and cluttered; it had cold white floors, and reminded me of a public school classroom. Overweight men charged around, making jokes and smiling, belts squeezing bellies out over the tops of pants. I think I saw two other women there besides me and Jessica. One was a cop, and the other was in handcuffs and crying.

"I'd just gotten off the bus and was talking on my cell phone to my friend, who was supposed to meet me there," Jessica began. "I saw the guy standing there, and he seemed to be minding his own business."

I could see the holding cell through another door toward the back. It looked more like a cage than a jail cell. I couldn't see much; just bodies standing around, and fingers poking out of the holes. I wanted to walk over there, but only invisibly.

"Then he came up to me, reached under my coat, and grabbed my crotch," she continued.

I could hear a woman's voice on a squawky intercom, reporting a stolen car. Phones ringing. Oddly, an electronic version of the theme to 90210 playing in the background, until someone turned it off. People zig-zagging the floor, going here to there and back. A man saying, "Ah, lookit this," as he poured a tarp full of DVDs and CDs—maybe a hundred of them—onto the floor. A few of the men gathered around and sifted through them, laughing, holding them up and pointing.

"I yelled some profanities at him, but he didn't do anything. He just stood there. I had a bag of apples in my hand—I'd just bought them—and I hit him in the face with the bag of apples, three times. He didn't react at all." Jessica had shown me pictures of the apples, which had broken into pieces.

A gray and white cat coldly threaded its way through the room. It was aloof and confident. I asked the Cookie Monster its name. "Jonesy? I think it's Jonesy. I don't really deal with it. Yeah, I think it's Jonesy."

The cop assigned to Jessica was concerned, friendly, and very distracted. He kept apologizing for interrupting, for taking a call, for answering another cop's question, for inexplicably walking away.

"I saw him again the next day," Jessica told him. "He rides my bus. I could tell he was staring at me the whole time, but I didn't look at him. I didn't get off until after he did, because I didn't want him to see where I was going. He got off in DUMBO."

The cops offered us orange wedges, colorful gelatin rolled in sugar. "Would you like one-a these?" They looked different from Southern cops, somehow.

They told Jessica to come back in a few days to look at pictures to see whether she could spot him. They told her the next time she saw him on the bus, to call 911, describe what he was wearing, get off the bus where he does, and watch where he goes. "That's what you're here for, right? To get 'im."

She's agreed to do it.

Wednesday, 14 January 2004



I'm scared to leave my apartment tomorrow. I have no idea how to dress for the predicted -30 degree wind chill (plus snow) that every local news station is going on about; there are only so many layers of clothing I can put on and still move my limbs. (Ironically, tomorrow is the day I'm going to go hear Al Gore speak about global warming.)

I did not purchase anything from the Americana Everytime! machine.

Monday, 12 January 2004

My physical therapist said that I may not be able to naturally straighten my arm within the remaining 17 visits permitted by my insurance; she said I should check to see if I can't get more physical therapy sessions.

My surgeon said that there's no reason for me to straighten my arm completely, as long as I can function in society. The only reason I want it straight, he told me, is for cosmetic reasons. He said that as long as I could manage 160 degrees, I should be happy.

My physical therapist said that if I were to force my arm straight, that it's possible the pins holding my arm together would fall out of their designated places (and rattle around in my arm, I guess, like a bowl full of change).

My surgeon said that, in a week, it would be okay with him if I tumbled down an icy mountain (i.e., went skiing), but I might want to wear an elbow-pad. (Currently I clamp my teeth if I even lightly bump my arm.)

I'm totally ignoring my surgeon.

(By the way, my physical therapist swears I straightened my arm completely at my last session, just for a second. I don't fully believe her—measuring the angle is never exact—but I really want to. Also: I can now feel the pins in my arm with my opposite hand. It feels something like the metal piece found on the back of a picture frame, the piece that ultimately rests on top of the nail. It doesn't bother me that it's in there, but I find it strange that it will be part of me as long as I'm around, and even afterward, holding my skeleton together in the earth.)

Sunday, 11 January 2004

The emergency room wasn't clean. Underneath his gurney alone, which was framed by a yellow-white wall and a curtain poised on metal tracks, there was an abandoned crutch, an unwrapped (and unused, I think) maxi pad, and a pool of watery blood that had landed there while they were washing his beat-up face. Whenever they moved his gurney, the crutch got in the way, but rather than pick it up, they just rolled over it, or left the gurney at an angle. I watched as one of them kicked the maxi pad further under the bed.

We walked to the hospital after he did what I'd thought of doing a hundred times—he fell down concrete subway stairs, catching himself with his face. He lay there motionless for a moment, face-down, until I flipped him over and made him talk, his mouth full of blood and his voice gurgley. I used his phone to call the friends we'd just left and they met me on the stairs.

He looks like a boxer. His upper lip is swollen like a Hollywood collagen dream, his left eye is puffy and rimmed with a red streak, the skin on his chin has been peeled away, and his orthodonically straight teeth have been pummeled; one of his two front teeth now resembles the tooth of a shark. His forehead, swollen and red, has a patch of Frankenstein stitches, which I watched get tugged through his skin. With each tug, his feet helplessly shifted in response.

His boxing opponent barely looks any different, beyond a smattering of blood stains that are not its own. I imagine the stain will draw quiet attention, making commuters wonder whether it was violent blood, if it had always been there and they'd just failed to notice.

The medical student who put the thread through his forehead and lip did not appear to know what he was doing. He kept asking passers-by to confirm his actions, and he carried a book around with him titled Emergency Medicine. He wore rubber gloves but constantly coughed on his hands, and kept asking me to help by handing him this or that. "Be careful not to touch the sterile part!" he warned. He was nice, and he was fond of calling his patient "buddy."

Before we would leave at 11 a.m. on Saturday (we'd arrived at about 3:30 a.m.), I would make beds out of several of the least comfortable chairs on the planet. Because they anticipate sleepers, they purposely make the chairs sleep-unfriendly, by adding arm rests and building the chairs out of cold, hard metal. Before we would leave at 11 a.m., I would hate everyone.

For a meager but semi-pleasant thirty minutes, I found a reclining home on an unused gurney I spotted in a quiet hallway. I eyed it for a while before answering its beckon, sure that I would be told to move as soon as someone saw me. But instead, the only comment I heard was, "Aw, she found a bed." Just before I moved to the bed, I was contorted on a high counter top with a sink. (Before that, I'd just given up trying to write, and I'd picked all the fuzz off of my warmest winter coat.)

He's going to be fine, eventually. It's not clear what bad news the dentist will have for him, but I'm not worried, because dentists are magicians. I imagine they turn shark teeth into human teeth every night in their sleep.



Apparently there were a record number (4,500) of heat-related complaints throughout the city yesterday; certainly at least one of them was placed using a telephone within my building. Although the radiator has been much louder than usual (imagine how it would sound if someone repeatedly struck the metal radiator casing with a hammer), my apartment is currently 47.5 degrees. (Is that legal?) When I bought a pair of fingerless gloves, I had no idea I'd get the most use out of them while inside my apartment.

Tuesday, 06 January 2004

New Year's Eve, at around 11:30, I had a necktie wrapped around my head like a blindfold, and I was playing an odd game in which I had to determine who everyone at the party was by feeling their knees. There were about 10 people there, and only three of them I'd met outside of that hour, so keeping names straight with faces was enough trouble, let alone keeping names straight with knees. (Plus, of course, they'd all switched seats after I'd been blinded). As I went around the room feeling soft, round cat-friendly knees, and bony, skeletal mountain-peak knees, I was worried that I'd call a girl by a guy's name, or vice versa. Knees can be deceiving, you know.

I don't actually know how I did; I am the only one who played, and the scoring system was totally arbitrary. "Three hundred and eighty-three points for Lisa! Lisa, what team are you on? Okay, 383 points for Team 1!" People congratulated me.

Afterward, I threw on my coat to make it to the next party down the street before midnight, but not before the room insisted on granting an early countdown. Numbers were everywhere—they started at a minute, went directly to 20, and then, somewhere in the teens, skipped to the final ten.

It was better that way, somehow.



Resolutions for everyone. (courtesy of Radiohead)

Sunday, 04 January 2004

The Soup Nazi was somewhat of a disappointment. As I'd been warned, the line wrapped around the edge of a Midtown block, composed mostly (I'd guess, based on the overheard conversations) of people who'd never been there. There was a group of us, maybe six?, plus Matt, who'd agreed to come along and ask confused/repetitive questions in order to purposely get jettisoned, so that the rest of us could hear the Soup Nazi say, "No soup for you!" or whatever the real-life Soup Nazi says in real life.

The line moved slowly. From the point I could see the menu, I had several minutes to commit to a soup choice, albeit one that I wasn't happy with. As I inched closer to the cash register (which is operated by the Soup Nazi himself), I repeated my choice in my head and held onto my money, which I'd readied by removing it from my wallet in advance.

The soup was expensive. The lobster bisque was priced at $11 a cup, which made my $9 cup of soup appear comparatively cheap.

I'm good at ordering food, for what it's worth. My father, on the other hand, is not. He thinks aloud, changes his mind, and neglects to notice the proper order in which things should be said. He is (apologetically and obliviously) the customer who inspires the cashier to call the manager to help "undo" the numerical mess that's been entered into the cash register as a result of my father's indecision.

Despite my "special ordering skills," however, I was nervous that I'd mess things up for myself, that I'd somehow otherwise offend the Soup Nazi, that (ultimately) I'd be sent away soupless.

I easily blended into the machine, however. I ordered, watched him curtly wave the "waiting" line into a more compact unit, handed him my money, and stepped to the left, in accordance with a faint yellow arrow painted on the sidewalk. When I had my lunch in-hand and was standing far enough away as to not have it snatched from me, I felt somehow liberated. I peeked in my bag and discovered a few other food items: a log-like wheat roll, a piece of chocolate, and a random assortment of fruit.

My germ-brave friends and I impatiently tried each other's soups on the subway platform. I didn't especially like any of them.

some pictures, taken on the sly:
the awning
Soup Nazi on the awing
line around the corner
the [incomplete] menu
the yellow arrow
the Soup Nazi
my lunch

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