Adrenaline and Strangers

A hand tugged lightly at my shoulder in a gesture I felt on a neuronal level: “Move back.” The bus was flying along Sixth Avenue at a faster speed than usual; when it honked in alert that it was zooming at those of us who were hanging off the corner of 23^rd Street, I didn’t move. Or look. People in New York wait in the street to cross, huddled near corners. Buses make diagonal, curb-aimed trajectories to arrive at their stops. This one did it like a maniac.

The arm that reached for me may or may not have saved my life.

Warmth flooded me as I looked at the man who’d done this. He was handsome in a Javier Bardem way—well-polished glasses and gray scarf. And he’d done this gesture likely out of reflex, just as my father did whenever the car stopped short when I was a child, even after the mandatory seat belt law went into effect. I smiled at him and said thank you. I said, “I heard it, but didn’t think it would come so fast.” “I know,” he said. Then we crossed the street and I watched him veer uptown as I walked straight ahead and down into the subway.

Nasty, Nasty Subcicles

They are disgusting and they drip fetid water and they are underground on the 1 line at 14^th street. On the up side, it’s a little like nature is asserting its primacy in the New York City subway system: a cavernous stalactite-ridden series tunnels assaulted by bestial metallic bullets. Woot.

Everything You Need to Know About Our Lives

So I’m talking to Mza about her friend I’ll call Boy. Boy wants to hang out with Mza, and with me too, I guess. Which is convenient since Mza and I live together.

Here’s a bit of the conversation:

McBickle: I feel like Boy is one of us. Like, could sit on the couch and be ooky with us.

Mza: Yes. Indeez.

McBickle: Like, I feel no need to be "pretty" around him.

Mza: Maybe I should invitz him over for brunch.

McBickle: There could be brunch.

Mza: Aka pretzels.

I Have Other Choices; I Blame Myself

Welcome to the Ghetto Pharmacy, my friends. The Ghetto Pharmacy, where more unctions than medicines are sold and ashtrays are for sale next to off-brand cotton swabs. Slender bottles of Florida Water hawk themselves above plastic tins of Splenda.

This is the Ghetto Pharmacy, where the Ghetto Doctor sends me whenever I mistakenly see him. As for this Ghetto Doctor…

He has surveillance cameras in his office.

He does not take blood. “The insurance companies, they get so mad if one of the girls screws up and labels something wrong and it just became easier to send patients to a lab…”

He says this upon my entrance on my last visit: “First we each have sex, and then we have to deal with the consequences of that action…” What? I hadn’t said a word yet.

And during said last visit, he picks up his phone for the third time while I sit on the other side of his desk in a “consultation”:

“Yes, blah blah blah blood scans on Monday, blah blah blah…”

By now I am worn and put my head down on his desk (with my hand underneath—no way, no how am I going to let my face touch that disgusto-wood, germy surface) and I peep up to say, “Please, please get off the phone.”

“Ma’am, ma’am, please call me back in a half an hour.”

“Tell her you have a patient here in front of you,” I interject as he jabberwockies.

“Ma’am, I have a very sick patient sitting right here. Call me back in 15 minutes. No, please, ma’am. Call me back in 15 minutes. Fine.” He looks at me. “You tell her.” He punches “speakerphone.”

In disbelief, I raise my head and say, “Lady, I’m sitting in the [Ghetto Doctor’s] office and you won’t get off the phone. Can you please call him back in 15 minutes, please?”

I feel my dignity slip through the blisters in my throat as I lay my head in my palms and swear, swear, I am done with this circus.

Fucking Ghetto Doctor. Fucking fuck. Fucker.

She Felt Like Bean in My Lap

My sister made a baby yesterday.

Freja!


I told her Danish baby-making husband that she has an amazingly formed human face for a 3-hour-old human.

“I know,” he said. “I was hoping she’d look a little bit more like an alien.”

I cried all over her. She cried like a tiny little crying bean and strangely would stop as soon as I said, "Shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhh."

I told her a few things.

I told her she’s pretty lucky; she has pretty cool parents who love her.

I told her she’ll probably be pretty smart, that it seems unlikely she won't be with parents like that.

I told her it’s going to be great.

And, I told her, at the very least, she doesn't have to worry: It's going to be interesting.

Me and Judy Miller, BFF

In other news, I have been asked to turn over my notes to a lawyer on a federal case prompted by a story I did two years ago. What to do. The ethical and legal issues involved in this question are boundless. Step 1: Call a lawyer. Step 2: Decide where I fall on the ethics of reporter's privilege and turning over notes. Step 3: Take a nap and dream about rotting in a jail cell because I have refused to hand over my notes. Realize my new best friend is named Big Mama and do whatever she asks so as to not get cut by a shiv made from a plastic spork.

That and my shirt is making me dizzy.

I Am a Venetian Blind

The pain of the hangover is…crushing? Boring through my skull? Exhausting? All of this and every clichéd way to describe it, which is the only way I can describe it right now. There have got to be better ways. Like a pile of sludge behind my eyes? Oh, god. That only made it hurt more and turn my stomach.

The highlights of my night seem to have included a photo booth, a series of drinks on the old boss’s card, and a gay, blind man from Venice.

Here went the recollection of that this morning:

“That was a gay, blind Italian last night.”

“He was from Venice.”

“Oh. Oh my god ... he was a VENETIAN BLIND.”

Wait, it’s coming back now. The reason I started this entry was this line I got last night:

“You’re looking pretty bangable. Do you have a boyfriend?”

And this, my friends, from a man I know. And even like. And no, it was not a joke. I hadn’t seen him in a few months, and this was the first thing he said to me. Men are amazing. You, men: you are amazing. You amaze me.

We Like to Throw It Down When Possible

So I’m going to a party to say goodbye to some old colleagues at my old newspaper. Then I talk to my reporter friend who is going to a party distinctly nearby at as-distinctly a dive bar for a distinctly different newspaper. So I tell my friend Tab.

McBickle: [REDACTED TABLOID] is having a party at [REDACTED DIVE BAR]. We should attack.

Tab: Oh, really?
That’s funny.

McBickle: I know

It's a social thing—[REDACTED FRIEND’S NAME] is going
and it's so close.
I feel like we should battle.

Tab: Yeah, we should swing by.
[REDACTED DIVE BAR] is our joint!

McBickle: It is?
Hmkay.
Let's roll up newspapers and swat them.

Tab: We have hung out there more than a few times.
So it’s ours.

McBickle: Hmkay.

Tab: Hmkay your ass.

McBickle: Hmkay.

Tab: What is that expression?
It’s very smarmy.

McBickle: What expression?

Tab: Hmkay.

McBickle: Dunno, it just came out of my SMARMY ASS.
HMKAY?

[scene.]

In other news, I just heard that my friend had her baby today. She totally named him “Rocco.” Welcome to the world, Rocco! One of the crime families shall surely be yours! Or, like, Madonna!

As Tab just wrote to me: “He's gonna kick so many Dylan, Skyler, and Taylors' asses!”

Seriously, welcome. Now start training.

Aloha From Chelsea! (Chelsea-ish. Whatever.)

That my Google ads are “Procrastination” and “How to Kill Procrastination” is really too much. I’ve been debating the fate of McBickle, since she is so clearly half-crouched in a corner with only one eye open these days, but I have come to the decision that she will not be put out of her misery. If only because I finally saw this again:

But it was 66 degrees yesterday when I saw it. Because it is actually a framed photo in a place that has changed my life over these past 10 years:

I walked down 28^th Street yesterday. It’s pretty much the only remaining street of the flower district. And it begins on 7^th Avenue with these palm trees…OR DIE.

Last night I saw a woman with perfectly drawn, perfectly horizontal eyebrows. Like worms with rigor mortis. She looked Brazilian. She was standing behind the sales counter at Sephora with a phone in her hand and an orange tan on her face. Beauty—she sells beauty.

This morning I saw a woman I know on the N train. We both had wet hair. We were a few seats away from each other and talked a little on what was a very quiet but semi-full car. Then she read a book and I zoned out to NPR podcasts (I Know). But I felt her there and negotiated the fine line of not looking at her for most of the rest of the ride while still feeling tied to her by thread of recognition. Don’t. Look. But do! Do look! You know her! Christ. Close your eyes. Listen to your iPod. Look at her! Look!

I closed my eyes.

Then I looked at her.