This Fish Needs A Bicycle

do not speak to me

Amanda was only two and a half. Pint-sized and fierce, she commanded attention and a vocabulary more advanced than any kindergartener.

We sat in her bedroom under a painted ceiling of blue sky and clouds, footless Barbie dolls and old He-Man figures on the floor between us. My mother had left the grown-ups (I’d abandoned them hours before) and joined the playdate. Maybe she asked too many questions. Maybe she talked when she should have been dressing Barbie for the beach. Maybe Amanda was simply tired. It’s really hard to say.

Amanda put her dolls down, walked to the toy cupboard and pulled out an old Fisher Price cash register -- decades old. I remembered her older brother, Jared, playing with the same toy when we were kids. I’d been jealous then. But Amanda wasn’t going to play store, like we did. She had other motives. Setting the register down in the middle of Barbie Mania, Amanda stared down my mother and said,

“When I ring this bell, you will go away and never come back.”

Ring! went the bell. My mother looked like she’d been slapped.

“What? Why?”

Amanda raised a small finger to her rosy lips. “Shhh,” she said. “Do not speak to me.”

And thus went the banishing. My mother frowned, left and we could hear her tell Sandy and the others in the living room about her exile. They laughed. I looked at Amanda and asked if I could stay.

“Of course. I did not ring the bell for you.”

Some days, I feel like pulling out my cash register. Banishing anyone who doesn’t play by the rules that I’ve outlined in my head. Maybe they ask too many questions. Maybe they talked when they should have been listening. Maybe I am simply tired.

When I ring this bell…

once, i kissed

Once, I kissed a man and he sighed. He sighed like someone who had been thirsty for a very long time and I’d just given him water from my canteen. Siiiiiiigh. I decided right then I’d kiss him a hundred times just to hear that sound.

Once, I kissed a man and learned to hate the sound of my refrigerator. I cried all the way back to Connecticut, mourning, because I knew that kiss was burned into me. Tattooed. Cigarette on flesh. And I knew that we were destined to fail. I kissed him a hundred times after.

Then we failed.

Once, I kissed a stranger. Sangria and beer laced with Jack Daniels. Hostel common room. Belt buckles and a foreign name like I was praying.

Once, I kissed him in the third row of a movie theater, and then decided I would rather watch the movie. I kissed her passing Jell-o shots. I kissed him and didn’t feel a thing except saliva and dry skin and the need to go home right now. I kissed him while the credits to Clueless rolled. I felt adored.

I wasn’t.

Once, I kissed – I was kissed – in front of a map of the world. Here, I said, is where I lived. Here, he said, is where I’m from. Spain. Lebanon. I had to sit down on the bed, dizzy and overwhelmed. He had the most gorgeous hands I’ve ever seen. We failed, too.

Thank God.

molly ringwald's cooties

“You are not a golden god!”

I cringe watching Ben hover on the roof above us. He puts his hands to his hips and my brain starts chanting, please come down, please come down. You are not a golden god! Had I put acid in the guacamole? I think not. I shoot a quick glance at his mother; she can’t even watch him up there. This I understand. Beer plus climbing on roofs has never equaled anything good. And I’m thoroughly relieved when finally, lights arranged, he comes back down. I won’t have to hyper-worry again until Langhorne perches on the ledge a few hours later during Truth or Dare. I go back to my guacamole and conversation.

That’s when the patio begins to swim in front of me.

First Tanya’s red beads blur and I feel my stomach drop. Sweat runs down my cleavage and my mouth goes dry. I excuse myself. Trip to the drug store, ginger ale, cold compresses. The rest of the evening is sort of a blur of non-party activity on my part. Somewhere between woosy trips to the air conditioned haven of Ben’s bedroom, Goldner makes his diagnosis.

I have caught Molly Ringwald’s cooties.

This makes perfect sense. Earlier in the evening while dining at Blue Smoke, we made restaurant friends with a wee one. She toddled around the tables and eventually stopped to give G an extra gooey high five. I do believe she actually licked her hand first. Cute little imp. Goldner, who is genuinely smitten with anything small and/or furry, was completely oblivious as to who exactly the little imp was. Until her red-headed mother came to collect her. Small talk was made and the little one fitted with a white bonnet and toddled out of the restaurant.

Goldner held up his hand. “I have Molly Ringwald cooties!”

That, he did. And apparently, he’s passed them on. By 1AM, Tanya and I are big-spoon little-spooned on Ben’s bed. She, hammered and me, cootied. We make quite the pair. By the time the fellas wake us up sometime around 3, I’m feeling like I could really give that Parker Posey a run for her money.

I am such a party girl.

Speaking of party, join me tonight at Pianos. 8-10 pm. I will be awake. There will be music. You will love it.

par chance

For the second time tonight, I have stripped down to my skivvies, hung my jeans on the back of the bathroom door and climbed into bed. This time, I intend to stay put.

I’d spent the day in and out of sleep, doing penance for a night of hard drinking (and pasta making – but that’s a story for another time) and still wasn’t feeling up for a night on the town. It seemed to be epidemic; first Ben then Rachel stole off toward home for an early night in. Sometime before 11, I left Stephanie & co. and made my way uptown toward home, following the siren song of bed and Netflix.

But it was not meant to be.

Around midnight, my phone rang. Five minutes later I was dressed again and meeting my old boss, Susan on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I hadn’t seen her since I left Boston, so the reunion was definitely worth getting my ass out of bed and down to a local pub for one last round.

We asked the standard questions -- how are you, how’s work, who are you dating – and then Susan told me a story:

Back when we were working together at the Monkey Firm in Boston, I wrote this post about Sue and her tricky relationship with her then-boyfriend David. It wasn’t until much later that she, and then he read the post. By this time, he was already gone and they both wondered whether it was really as simple as it had sounded in writing. So, shortly after, Susan grew tired of wondering, flew to England and proposed. In the end, it wasn’t as simple as all that for the two of them, but she said she was so glad she took the chance to find out. I can’t help but marvel at the balls that must have taken. But then again, Susan’s bravery has always been one of the things I liked best about her. That, and she tells the best dirty stories.

It has to be one of the better, This is How You Know I love You stories I’ve heard in a long time. And I think I like it so much because of its imperfect ending.

quickly

One of my girl dates on Tuesday night was singer/songwriter Elisa Korenne. This coming Friday, Elisa will be throwing a CD release party for her new album, Favorite.

Read a review of her album here. Have a listen here. Then join me Friday night here:

Pianos
158 Ludlow St. @ Stanton
8-10pm Friday, June 24

How about it?

i am we todd did

Hormones
The moon
Those really hot California winds that make people go extra crazy in that one episode of 90210

That’s just the beginning of my list of possible explanations for the current rash of wacky dreams I’m experiencing. As you can see, I’m really grasping.

Too many foreign films
New sheets

I haven’t been eating any strange foods before bed so I’m having a hard time understanding why, suddenly, all the kissing dreams?

Oh yeah. I’m having kissing dreams. Not hot, steamy sex dreams. Kissing dreams. The ones that, when you wake up, make you want to get back to sleep and finish the deal. Or at least get someone’s clothes off.

Last night, I dreamed that I was kissing Todd, aka Indie Rock Boy from days of blogging yore. And because Todd’s the kind of guy not to take that thing too seriously (i.e. worry I’m pining to have his babies) I dropped him an email to let him know he was… on my mind.

H: Dude, I had a kissing dream about you last night. Awesome.
IRB: Solid. Was it hot?
H: Yeah, it was pretty hot. But you know, chaste. All involved parties were clothed.
IRB: Chaste? That doesn't sound like my style at all.
H: Please. You know chaste. We made out like, SEVERAL times in cabs and everyone still went home to their own beds. Wicked chaste.
IRB: Such a gentleman. Those were some fun days. It was so worth it to be immortalized in your daily fishy chronicles.
H: Daily fishy chronicles. You mean, it wouldn't have been worth it otherwise?? You bastard.

Todd and I had a relationship based on… well, making out. We worked together for a spell, which outlawed anything more than email flirting and lunch at the river. But as soon as he took a better job at a firm up the street, it was game on. Frankly, I’m surprised we weren’t blacklisted from Boston taxis. It’s true what they say. All good things must come to an end. But I guess what’s why we have blogs. So guys like Todd will always feel like an extra in a short-lived tv sitcom.

IRB: That's the stuff that Legends are made of. The ENIGMA that is or was IRB. *Sniff* I'm a Tshirt slogan.

Indie Rock Boy: he'll make you miss your stop.

this is how you know i love you

My sister has always been self-conscious about her stomach.

I’ve always thought she was gorgeous and pish-poshed away her hyper-criticisms of photos (Do you see my gut?!). I thought she was crazy, but at the same time, I understood. If it were possible to suck in my hips, I’d have done so. All the time. Because, although genetic products of the same parents, the two of us were clearly built by opposing craftsmen. Pear and apple. My weight settles into my hips and tush and she’s got a tummy she’s often trying to hide. At the beach, I hid behind a sarong. And she refused to wear a bikini, lest the world see her less than perfect tummy.

She was just as modest around the house.

The evening that J and I ended for the first time (there were at least a half a dozen times after), I tossed my cell phone onto the living room futon, sat down on the floor and cried. My sister looked stunned. I had never been an outwardly emotional pear and in twenty-something years, I bet she’d only seen me cry a handful of times. Immediately, she went into crisis mode.

She offered ice cream. I declined and cried some more.

“Alright,” she said. “You asked for it.”

Up went the blue tank top she was wearing. She grabbed either side of her stomach, squeezed them together, pursing them into what resembled a toothless mouth. The mouth began talking.

“It’s okay, Heather” the Stomach Mouth said. It had a voice like Fezzik, deep and dopey. “Come on, don’t cry. Boys are dumb.”

It doesn’t matter what it said after that. I stopped crying. Granted, I exactly didn’t laugh right away, just stared in disbelief as the Stomach Mouth kept right on talking, trying to cheer me up. Then I laughed, and let it talk me into taking a walk for frozen yogurt.

I knew right at that moment that my sister loved me. I mean, she was my sister – of course she loved me. But I got a sense that this was more than the obligatory love that runs through familial veins. She loved me, she liked me and she was willing to abandon her own comfort to show it.

That’s the part about love that’s always been hard for me – stepping outside of my own security, to take a chance at humiliation to show I care. But I’m learning as I get older that it’s not about me. It’s about dropping defenses (or lifting up tank tops, as the case may be), exposing previously hidden faults and letting people hear me say, “this is how you know I love you.”

angry cigarettes

For a solid week that winter, I survived on nothing but gin and cigarettes. I’d never been a smoker and gin wasn’t even my liquor of choice, but what the hell? I wasn’t sleeping and food certainly held no temptation. I had to do something.

I carted home the bottle of Sapphire I’d expensed for a work function earlier in the day, stopping at the corner store to buy tonic and limes. I dragged my bounty out to the sun porch, where I sat, wrapped in a thick winter quilt, drinking hastily mixed cocktails and chain smoking.

I’d bought my first pack of cigarettes in the liquor store that afternoon. My shocked coworker offered her lighter as we stepped outside, peeling off the mittens of our right hands. Three cigarettes were gone and my fingers numb when we finally went back to work.

I was upset, in the way that only someone you care about can make you. Mindless and furious. I couldn’t eat, only smoke until my hands shook and my fingers smelled permanently toxic.

Today at lunch, per usual, Justine pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up and set the pack with the rest of her belongings on the grass. Then she picked it back up.

“You want one?”
“Actually, yes I do.”
“I figured if I offered, this would be the time you’d want one.”

I lit my cigarette with hers. Angry cigarettes, the only kind I ever smoke (aside from the occasional drunk cigarette) have usually been Camel Lights. Nothing about a menthol cigarette tastes angry. And Justine smokes Newport Lights. I filled my mouth with cool, minty smoke, leaned back on the wet grass and exhaled.

“I hate to see you upset,” she said and patted my shoulder.
“Eh.” I took another slow drag. “I think I’m just tired now.”

We smoked and watched children chase each other in circles on the lawn at Bryant Park, while the sun popped in and out of the light gray cloud cover.

I had just one and then went back to work.

girl on girl

I have never been one for picking up strangers -- in bars or anywhere else. But lately, it seems I can’t walk away from a night out without the phone number or business card of some new interest. Last week it was Elisa and Ingrid at Ben’s roof deck party. Last night, Penny at a charity function at Cipriani. Laughs were had, cards exchanged and plans made to get together “very soon.”

That’s right. I’m pickin’ up chicks. It’s Girl Dating, and right now, it’s giving the real thing a run for its money.

Girl Dating is everything I grew up thinking dating dating would be (you know, minus the heavy petting. Rarrr!). It’s breezy! It’s fun! It’s compliments and coincidences. I loooove your skirt, and Get out! I used to go there when I was a kid!

It’s laughing and eating and talking – about real life, the things that matter. Small talk gets abandoned even before brunch plans are made, and promises of, I’ll call you next week for drinks are meant and kept.

There’s even flirting. Women do that with each other, you know. It’s all for a different purpose, of course, but we still display our charms like peacock feathers, meant for enticing the other to like us even more.

As if that's even necessary.

These are smart, strong, gorgeous women. They have ambition, common sense and unbelievable flair. Were I meeting men of this caliber, I’d be head over heels, humming wedding marches and plucking the petals off of daisies in the classic, he loves me, he loves me not fashion.

So, where are the men that match these women in status, intelligence and looks? Oddly enough, I do not care. The big white wall calendar behind my desk is filled with hastily scratched notes: Drinks with Stephanie. Brunch with Penny. Elisa CD Release.

Who has time for real dating, when I’m spending my evenings in complete social comfort with people I already know I like? Don’t misunderstand me. I love men. LOVE them. They’re just so… complicated. And I will get back to that racket one of these days. Because if not… well… I mean, I can just see my future unfolding before me.

I’ll end up a spinster, dying alone with my cat… and more girlfriends than The Fonz.

Heeeeeey!

gently down the stream

Lately, my father spends his days watching a nest of newly hatched osprey. He writes his children emails about fuzzy-headed chicks straining their scrawny, pencil necks, craning for food, their mouths open wide – almost too wide to in relation to the size of their tiny heads. He worries that the neighbors will think he’s a pervert. But the binoculars are for the chicks – the feathery kind.

My father has always loved birds. When we were young, he spent hours in the aviary he’d built onto the garage, rotating eggs in the incubator, making mash for young cockatiels and quail. And that he’s taken an interest in these young ospreys relieves me. It has been a very long time since he’s expressed an interest in anything.

Over the last couple of years, I have felt my father become a much different person. The divorce altered him, hip replacement surgery nearly defeated him, and there were times he’d call only to choke a sob into my voicemail and hang up. I worried.

I worry. Present tense.

When I was younger, it was a physical handicap that set my father apart from everyone else’s. No longer the breadwinner after spinal arthritis ended his career as a forest fire fighter, he played Mr. Mom to the five Hunter children. Laundry duties, carpool and dinner on the table at six. It’s complicated what that will do to a man – the way changing his role so completely can change the way he sees himself. And while his self-image suffered considerably from fate and circumstance, he still says that those years of fathering were the only thing he’s ever really done right.

Were it the only thing, it would be enough.

That he’s taken to signing emails to his children, Love, SmeagleDad says a lot about his state of mind. It says a lot about the way he chooses to address the mental illness that now separates him from others – and even from his former self. And were that sort of levity constant, I might worry less. But it is not. Geography has kept him out of sight for the better part of the last eight years, and selfishness (mine) makes me wish that sometimes, it would keep him a little more out of mind. Only because knowing that I cannot do anything to combat his depression, much less truly understand the newer evidences of paranoid schizophrenia, is heartbreaking.

As a child, I went fishing with my father a number of times. We’d sit, a cooler of grape soda and ding-dongs between us, on the seats of his beat up tin lizzy, or on the bank of a stream too cold for swimming, and wait quietly for red and white bobbers to jerk below the water. I remember it being very still and peaceful.

I like to imagine that he still finds that sometimes. I hope that in those quiet moments, with a pair binoculars pressed to his face, keeping watch over that nest of babies, he finds the parts of him that he’s been so afraid he lost in all the chaos.

saucy lady

Armed with plastic forks, wet wipes and our appetites, the four of us launched into a three hour tour of epicurean heaven. We tasted everything. Well, everything but the pig snoots.

“The snoot is pretty intense,” Ron said before we’d even begun. I looked at Goldner and then at Rachel. There weren’t any objections to skipping the snoot.

I met Ben’s friend, Ron Lieber at the release of 2 Do Before I Die, an inspiring collection of essays about, in simplest terms, making the most out of life. While chatting at the party on Ben’s roof deck on Wednesday night, we got on the subject of the Big Apple Barbecue. Ron, who is something of a barbecue expert, was going to be speaking on one of the event’s panels (going head-to-head with the infamously temperamental food editor from Vogue, no less) and would I like to be his guest?

Would I!

Sunday afternoon, I rounded up my two partners in BBQ love and we headed down to Madison Square Park. Ron’s panel was sold out, so the three of us stood outside waiting, trying to ignore the smoky siren song. I practically needed a leash for Goldner. And when Ron emerged from 11 Madison Park, it was game on.

Spare ribs, pork shoulder, beef brisket and sausage, baby back ribs and beans, beans, beans. And when there shouldn’t have been space for anymore, there was strawberry rhubarb cobbler.

Drool.

When I got home, I made myself hike the stairs up to my apartment (penance, you see), where I promptly collapsed into a food coma. Eight hours later, I haven’t really budged. Or eaten. I imagine it’ll be a while before I feel at all hungry again. Unless you’re talking about strawberry rhubarb cobbler, because I seem to have some appetite left for some more of that.

Mmmmmcobbler.

web-footed babies

When summer time comes to New York, the city reminds me an awful lot of the Texas State Fair. Bunches of rural folk in matching t-shirts, shuffling around, gaping and saying things like, “Sure is big, huh Ma?” Minus Big Tex and turkey legs, it’s roughly the same experience.

I’m sure I’ve just offended someone with the above, but I don’t care. I’m from rural Texas; I know of which I speak. And if you are from rural anywhere and you’re reading this blog, the above statement probably doesn’t apply to you. Unless you take family vacations in matching t-shirts that proclaim your hometown and/or family name, then you have problems way beyond being offended by my generalizations.

Tourists are equally frustrating as they are fascinating. They take up far too much room on the sidewalk and move far, far too slowly, but I could watch them for hours. And in places like Rockefeller Center, where I met an old coworker for lunch, that is possible. I sit, watch, take in the details, listen to conversations (it’s the glorious stuff that OHINY is made of), and sure, pass a judgment or two.

Baking in the sun today during lunch, my friend and I were surrounded by good material. A family of nine – every single one of them with cornsilk hair and wearing grass green shirts emblazoned with Johnson Family New York 2005! – stood close by snapping tourist photos. You could almost smell the alfalfa.

“You sound terrible, you want some cold medicine?” My friend was sniffly and having just recovered from The Cold myself, I was carrying an arsenal of relief.

“Nah. I’ll take some Zyrtec when I get back to the office,” she said. “Sure, I’ll have web-footed babies, but it works.”

It seems that one of the blonde Johnsons happened to be watching and listening just then, because she scrunched up her face and I distinctly overheard her share with her sibling, “…web footed babies.”

They did not think this was funny. This was made obvious by the I’m-fifteen-and-thus-find-everything-lame look of disgust on her face.

I wanted to throw my gum in her hair! I wanted to yell, Stop judging me! Look what you’re wearing you… you….you who probably hang out at the carwash or the Dairy Queen for fun! What do you know of web-footed babies?!

You’d think that herein would lie the moral of the story and that I would feel really bad for being so judgmental. Nope. Tourists are not people. They want to be made fun of or they would learn to walk single file and not wear socks with their sandals. So I returned to my office, still hating blonde Johnson and hoping that her visit to New York left her with blistered feet and just enough pollutants to have her own web-footed babies one day.

That’ll learn ‘er.

feminine & masculine

The sharp snap of a heel on concrete will turn a man’s head.

Snap! Turn.

Bells ringing, dogs salivating.

When he says, “I like your dress” what he really means is – well, he doesn’t know what he really means, except that the swish of a skirt and the curve of her calf have made him feel… different. Different from before she came in the room and different from her entirely.

It’s Me Tarzan, you Jane -- simple and inarticulate – her femininity as mysterious and compelling for him as the breadth of his shoulders is for her. Or the uncompromised way he uses space.

She touches her neck, maybe her earlobe. His hand rests on his jaw. I know that I'm watching what amounts to a bar room dance.

Snap! Turn.

Science has exposed this choreography, dragged it out into the light and explained it by measuring the width of his pupils, the number of times she tosses her hair -- almost ruining it.

But only almost.

The smooth, shallow dip of her collarbones. The density of his limbs. I also know that very best mysteries transcend their explanations.

Snap! Turn.

who loves ya?

The question was written in familiar handwriting on a yellow post-it note and stuck to my very own copy of MacGyver, the Complete Second Season. Who loves me indeed! When the package arrived at my office Thursday morning, I’m pretty sure I squealed and did one of those one-legged, hoppy cheerleading moves.

Wheee duct tape!

My affection for Angus MacGyver is paramount. He is challenged only by Thomas Magnum in the fight for the title of Manliest Man Ever, and I’m convinced that any woman who will swear that those fellas don’t make her weak in the knees has to be dead inside. I mean, when MacGyver cracks that top secret military base by constructing a telescope out of the sports page and a watch crystal, even the uptight military scientist lady was all over that.

Swoon.

“I’m pretty handy with a paperclip and bubble gum, myself,” Ben said when I thanked him for the gift to end all gifts.

I laughed. “Yes, I’m sure you are.”

My tone may have hinted ever so slightly at mocking, but that doesn’t mean Ben isn’t useful -- just perhaps not in the same way. When a girl needs help in an elevator shaft, she’d have to go with Angus, for sure. But when it comes to business advice, or cookies and company on a Saturday night, that’s where my TV stud falls decidedly short.

Looking at our rather rocky beginning, it would seem very unlikely that Ben and I would end up as we are. It’s something we acknowledge (though not without the smallest twinge of regret at past errors) and appreciate. I count our friendship among the more worthwhile and important that I have.

And in the end, to be asked the question, Who loves ya? and to know that the answer is, You do! is really something. Something I’ll gladly take over the uncertainty of romance and the headiness of tawdry afternoon affairs. Not that those were a bad way to spend time (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). But it all just seemed so precarious and temporary. We’re stable and reliable and comfortable. And ever the more likely to be around for the Complete Third Season of MacGyver... and of us.

Who loves ya? I do, dude.

* The author apologizes for the extra high sap quotient of this post, but it is very late and she has just seen Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

got crabs?

Mood music provided by Bon Jovi swells in the background. A handful of burly men suit up in rubbers. And everybody's ready to get crabs.

Opilio crabs, specifically.

In the last few days, I’ve found myself getting sucked into the most unlikely of television shows. Alright, I suppose it’s not that unlikely. I did spend an entire Saturday sacked out on my living room floor watching the Frontier House marathon. Twice. And now it’s The Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch that has me hooked. (pun bizarrely unintentional)

And boy do I get into it.

“Oh man! Only sixty-four crabs in that pot! They’re never going to catch up to the Northwestern.”

The Northwestern is a crab fishing vessel. As is the Retriever and the Lady Alaska, whose ultra Christian captain will most likely not appreciate my clever little innuendo involving his crew. They, and several others, are out in the Bering Sea in the middle of winter, their crews working day and night without sleep, hauling in cages of the stuff your crabcakes are made of. It’s no easy task and I can’t help but get frustrated when one of those poor bastards pulls up an empty pot.

“Well, yeah. Of course it’s the salmon. Everyone else is using cod and they’re catching crab. So much for divine inspiration, dude.”

Goldner is absolutely thrilled by my affinity for the object of his TIVO’s desire. He may have been less thrilled that I ate all of his jujubes in that tense moment where it looked like maybe, just maybe, the Maverick would not make it to port in time to unload their catch forcing them to wait until morning, and possibly causing them miss more than twelve fishing hours when the season could end any minute. But they made it! They did! And I ate all the red jujubes.

Reality thriller. I swear. I haven’t been this worked up over reality TV since that afternoon Ben and I weren’t sure if Brittny Gastineau was ever going to land a spot in a runway show during Fashion Week -- which is like, the biggest thing ever for models and like, it’s totally her dream to make lots of money as a model.

What with crab fishing in the Bering Sea being somewhat more dangerous than modeling, I’m even more compelled and anxious. I’ve even dreamt about it. So next Tuesday night, you know where I’ll be. Camped out on Goldner’s couch, watching intently with high hopes that a bunch of rowdy fishermen get lucky and catch crabs.