It Has Been Documented

Here is an equation:


Phone breaks

+

Bike breaks

+

Computer breaks

+

Relationship breaks

=

I have been in bars.

He Asked Me My Name; I Said, "What's Your Name?"

The big boss of TV hit on me last night.

He thinks I have nice legs. I will refrain from telling the entire juicy story in detail, since Mr. X. seems like an upstanding fella. But you shoulda heard the shitstorm reaction when I told him I'm a reporter. Ha ha ha.

Hi, J.!

Remembering Meat

I recall the texture of gristle. The nubs of white fat in the ground-up mash of hamburgers. The pulled-fat feel of striations in steak. The soft middle whites of otherwise crispy bacon. I remember my revulsion.

“Eat your steak,” my mother would tell me. “Gordon, tell her to eat her steak,” she commanded my father.

“Eat your steak,” my father would tell me.

Tears would drip from my eyes.

“I can’t,” I’d whine, a child shackled to a butcher-block kitchen table by a hunk of cartilage.

“Gordon,” my mother would say.

My struggle felt Greek in proportions. I would plead with my eyes with one of our two dogs: Please, Ellie. Please come let me pet your head and give me something to do other than not eat this meat.

“Leave the dog alone,” my mother would say.

Twenty years after I ingested my last meat on purpose (a hot dog at summer camp; a hippie/arts project founded in the 1940s as a war-effort farm and cannery), I can watch a man rip apart pork ribs with his teeth and be fine. Until I hear him crunch it.

That’s what happened last night, and that’s when I spoke out loud about how clearly I remember meat. It was the sound of gnashing in his mouth that flooded my brain with meat memories, and also memories of anger, yelling, suburban doom and desolation.

“I can’t crunch bones with my teeth quietly,” he said.

“That was the best sentence anyone’s said to me all week,” I said, going on to suggest ways to muffle the sounds of his chewing: Stuff cotton wool in his gums. Line his mouth with soundproofing of some kind.

Chew more quietly.

"No," he said.

~

Stay tuned for the next chapter of “Remembering Meat,” in which a little girl cries more and a grown woman examines “the yank of meat away from bone.” There may also be violence. And possibly fish.

Fudgie the Whale

There is a whale in the Gowanus Canal.
Home of the filth and the gray.

As a reporter in the newsroom just said to me, this would be our lead story for tomorrow...if the world weren't quite such a fucking mess otherwise.

The last time the canal hosted anything other than petroleum ribbons was 2003, when a sad, scabrous harp seal called it home for too, too many delirium-heavy days. Gothamist says we locals apparently named it "Gowana."

I'm pretty sure that was as in, "Gowana, crazy little seal, get outta here."

I hearby name our new whale Fudgie. Gowana, Fudgie, get outta here. Brooklyn is no place like home for a whale.

Some People Believe in the Devil

My heart hurts for the shooting victims at Virginia Tech. Thirty-two people are dead. Thirty-three, including the killer.

My soul aches for the Columbia J-schooler who was brutally raped this weekend. She is 23. He slit her eyelids.

These are just kids. And these are the most brutal kinds of humans.

Hanging It Up, Moving Along

Sometimes I feel like anxiety is a coat. Not in the obvious "wear it, take it off way" (although, annoyingly, that works too) but in the way that it needs to be hung on different hooks, depending on where you are in the world. Or in your head.

Sometimes you can hook it onto things related to work. (Briny, spiky hook.) Sometimes you sling it over a lover (snakey, slithery hook). (They hate that. It's hard to breathe or move under there.) Other times you can just shake it off and throw it on the corner to eat dust with the bunnies. (Bunny dust hook.)

What the hell am I talking about? This I do not know.

I do know that this end-of-days deluge has possibly flooded my brain until I can't see the moon from the clouds and don't know when I will ever see the stars or the blinky-blinky skyline again. Oh, wait. I think doing taxes has rattled my brain matter. Forget that crap about record rains.

For various reasons, I haven't told you about how many friends I have in strange parts of the world right now. Two in India (separately), a bunch in Taiwan (performing in their geek-rock band), One (1) played a joke on his friends and family, sending out "An Important Message" declaring he is following the path of his lotus flower and will spend the rest of his "physical existence" in somewhere called Rishikesh. Yeah, his parents didn't think it was so funny either. Mostly, I wondered if my friend had lost his mind, and decided, hey, cool, maybe he did and...so?

Another traveller (2) is one of my former grad school professors, who has taken her out-of-shape, low-center-of-gravity body to the south of India. She is remarkable. Not only because she eats paper and has see-through skin that will certainly get crispy in the baking sun over there, but because she has been more of a mentor to me than I'd ever expected. She told me once I reminded her of her when she was young. (I hope I didn't audibly gasp. Likely I did.) I couldn't see then what a compliment this was. I do now. Thank you, former grad school professor. Thank you for believing in me. And for going to India.

And to the Taiwan freakazoids (3): Rock on with your geeky selves. They have been staying in a Wild West-themed hotel over there and having all kinds of wacky Americans-in-Asia encounters. Witness:

"Rabbits and deer hopped around on the opposite side of a wooden fence (seriously), and a display of Native American teepees lined the camp grounds. (What? Oh right, the wild west.)"

They showed a local a postcard of their band:

"At first he was confused, and then he was thrilled. He showed it to everybody in the vicinity, including a small child who had been watching us eat while blowing up a plastic glove to look like a cow's udder. The man ran back to his clothing/liqueur shop, and then returned a minute later with a bunch of bananas. "Eat Banana!" He said, "You need to be strong to play music, yes?" "Yes," we said."

Yes, they said. Yes.

I Am the Keeper of the Strange

In the space of eight minutes today, I received two text messages from two different people.

No. 1, from Lula. 2:38:

“Do you think [radio show I’ve worked for] would be interested in a Lord of the Rings themed wedding between a sixty year old monarchist and his fat twenty year old woman?”

No. 2, from the Welder/Octopus Eater (name still in progress). 2:46:

“Vroom.kaboom.Burning rubber! Gasoline! Blood, checkered flags and sluts”

(What, you want context on that second one? Well, hell. I’ll only say he was being literal. Suck it.)

And now this missive from OMiB, who is in New York these days:

“The world needs more women — they are the only good thing about the place. this could solve many problems. This could reverse gravity or produce limitless energy from garden rocks — anything we need. trust me.”

I’m going to have to remember that line: “produce limitless energy from garden rocks.” I’m totally pleased with the use of “garden” to modify “rocks.”

And finally, the Beastie Boys really make work go faster. The Welder recently played me “An Open Letter to NYC,” which was written after Sept. 11: “Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten, from the Bat-ter-y to the top of Manhattan…” It takes me down into the subway, shooting past Cortlandt Street station on the 1/9 (still closed after its total collapse five years ago.) The lightning pain of seeing wood boards blocking off wreckage; orange netting; trains slowing down as if in mourning. Still.

My skin leaps and teems, both, when I listen to it.

Working

I am in the No Man’s Land of Lower Manhattan watching a man weld a lamp. We are in a building surrounded by truck bays and warehouses. People still live in cavelike spaces here; not all of the area has become sweetly residential. There is still some grit. Some secrets. Like in this building.

The man is converting a 1930s truck lamp that ran on DC to an AC (large) desk lamp. He had stolen the circular hollow piece of metal along with the disk of thick striated glass that rests over it from a nearby closed-up truck-repair place. He stole a lot of things from there. He stole an entire lathe.

I wear a welding mask to watch his sunlight-bright torchlight become green and moody as he joins a hexagonal joint to the post. Solder pools.

A few minutes earlier, I had wandered across the hall—from loft to shop, passing the zooming sounds of a carpentry studio perpendicular to both. I see the guy with curls of blond hair, one of the men I see every day these days as I head off to work, usually walking by in a skirt and black boots, feeling very much a woman in a man’s space. I wave and smile; he waves and smiles. I hop down some stairs, turn the deadbolt and squint out into the day.

Last night the welding man and I ate octopus. He ate octopus, specifically, I watched him slice tentacles off the twisted-looking creature and put it in his mouth. I ate mozzarella di bufala. He chewed.

Just now he walked back into the apartment. I confirmed for him that reviews I read today of this restaurant agreed with his assessment of the octopus.

“It is great octopus,” he says to me. “And I’ve had a lot of octopus.”

He empties a bag of coal into a stove and leaves to continue working on the lamp.

When I wandered into the metal shop before, I caught him focused, head tilted over a series of worn-in thumbscrews. The air was chilly. There was a chemical smoky smell and I watched him, arrested. Watching someone absorbed in their work is bracing.

I hear it is snowing out.