It's always midnight on Montague Street

I live in the Land of the Broken Clock, under the jurisdiction of the Broken Clock, and what's supremely funny about this is that it's a fancy one-year-old "radio controlled" La Crosse we were given as a wedding present. We tried changing the batteries, which didn't work, and now it serves as a constant reminder of how imperfect even high technology can be.

Speaking of imperfection, Robin Givhan of the Washington Post argues that Susan Boyle should get a makeover. Susan Boyle, the middle-aged singing phenom who has succeeded without altering her image one jot, should, now that she's made it, stop being so damn frumpy:

Boyle has charmed millions, in part, because she comes across as unpretentious and pleasant. But she's hardly Everywoman. She's an odd duck, a bit of a loner. She's a character. And she's living out a fairy tale.

Transformation is always part of a good story. Cinderella didn't go to the ball in hand-me-downs. She went looking her best in a glorious gown and won the heart of the prince. The ugly duckling becomes a swan.

The tale of Susan Boyle will not be complete until the shy spinster blossoms. Those who have been entranced by her story so far should let Boyle's fairy godmother finish her work.

In other words, why should Boyle change? Because the narrative demands it! In fact, why stop at clothes and hair and shoes? This "shy spinster" needs a prince, too. I for one will not rest until Susan Boyle gets boinked good and proper.

"Spinster," indeed. Jesus. What world are we living in? Maybe she's gay, Robin. Maybe she's not interested in sex. Who cares? Her personal life is her business, and she doesn't need the Standard Gift Basket of Our Approval ("Comes with lipstick, a Maserati, and arm candy for the red carpet!")

For the record, I'm not sure what Susan Boyle looks like or sounds like. I haven't watched the YouTube video (should I?) But I also don't care. Let the woman enjoy her moment in the spotlight. Her story doesn't have to be a fairy tale to be interesting, and even if this is her own personal fairy tale it doesn't have to conform to the Disney model.

Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go

THE FACTS:

• I am married.
  
• My husband wants to be a law clerk one level up in a District Court
  
• District Court clerkships are incredibly hard to get, especially in popular locales such as Washington, DC, New York, NY, and San Francisco, CA, and their environs
  
• I have no interest in leaving Brooklyn
  
• But my husband has a dream

THE DISCUSSION:
ME: How about when we're 30? I thought we agreed that when I'm 30, you are allowed to take me from New York.
HIM: 30 is a long time from now. I would really love to apply for next year.
ME: Next year I will still be less than 30.
HIM: But now is when we are still young, still mobile, still flexible ...
ME: 30.

THE NEGOTIATION:
HIM: How about we look at where I could go and you could say if one place or another would be more enticing to you? After all, it would only be for a year.
ME: Okay. Shoot.
HIM: Bridgeport, CT.
ME: My parents did not send me to Jewish Day School for 13 years so that I could wind up in Connecticut!
HIM: But I have roots there --
ME: Anyway it's too cold. Next, please.

HIM: Concord, NH.
ME: Too cold.
HIM: Burlington, VT.
ME: Too cold.
HIM: New Haven, CT.
ME: Too cold.
HIM: Come on! We're not talking about Alaska.
ME: Too cold.
HIM: Providence, RI.
ME: Maybe.
HIM: Maybe?
ME: Maybe. But probably too cold.

HIM: Okay, how about the South?
ME: Where are the clerkships there?
HIM: Nashville, TN.
ME: Too Christian. I've heard horror stories.
HIM: Shreveport, LA.
ME: The last Confederate command to surrender! Plus there's a whole Wikipedia section labeled "Churches."
HIM: Roanoke, VA.
ME: Are you crazy? People disappeared in Roanoke. It could have been aliens. They could come back. Plus there's a whole Wikipedia section labeled "Crime" with a subsection on "Gangs."
HIM: Yeah, but it's gone from 2nd worst city in VA to 5th.
ME: Next, please.

THE COMPROMISE
ME: How about you wait a year to apply?
HIM: That's fair. And in return, you'll be fine with my applying to ...
ME: Hawaii; San Juan; Columbia, SC; New Bern, NC; the Virgin Islands; Arlington, VA; Portland, OR; Jerusalem; and the Hague.
HIM: And maybe Memphis and New Orleans.
ME: Yes.
HIM: Thank you.

Green beans at the seder

As a hostess, my mother is conscientious, even, you might say, fastidious. Mr. Ben learned this his very first Passover with us back in 2001, an experience so scarring it is no surprise it took him six years to propose. His reaction could probably be summed up by a friend at this Passover who leaned over to me and remarked, "There are so many rules!" Uh, yeah. But what would Judaism be without rules?*

I don't mind rules. I'm used to them. Don't stack the china. Don't mix patterns. Don't fetch something out of the kitchen yourself. Don't eat dairy with the meat meal (even if you're a vegetarian). Don't break anything. My mother has her own version of Leviticus and even though it isn't written down, she thinks the rules are self-evident and she doesn't quite understand why some people don't immediately get it.

She also puts on a beautiful Seder.

This year however she made one mistake. Green beans. That's right, friends. Green beans are not technically kosher for Passover and she served them at BOTH SEDERS. Oh the shame.

Green beans fall under a category of food called "kitniyot," which are permitted for Sephardic Jews, i.e., those from Spain and the Arab world, and not for Ashenazic Jews, i.e., most of us. This is because Jews in Spain & the Arab world had more freedom under Islam than Jews in Europe did under various tight-ass Popes and Czars. So while Sephardic Jews got to throw parties, write poetry, and generally have a good time in good weather, Ashkenazic Jews were stuck in dour shtetls, looking over their shoulders for Cossacks, and inventing new laws to make life even more difficult for themselves.

Well, I reject this tradition of suffering for the sake of suffering. Sure, much of my lineage is based in Lithuania and the Pale of Settlement (Russia/Poland, depending on the year). But my father's family originally hailed from Turkey. The fun-loving Jews! Those are my real spiritual ancestors, and they eat rice on Passover; rice, yes, and green beans too, and soybeans, and corn. There is no end to their wild ways.

My 96-year-old maternal grandmother seems to have absorbed some of this hedonism, even though she is descended from those drab, staid Eastern Europeans. When my brother and I were arguing back and forth about whether soybeans were permissible to eat, my grandmother interrupted us. "Do you know what I ate today?" she said. "A piece of bread."

Now that left us speechless in awe.

Happy Passover everyone! Happier still: only a few days left.

----
*Christianity.

In gay news

When you're a teenager, my god, is there any issue more intense than sexuality? Love, acceptance, rebellion, identity, are you going to be an insider or an outsider, are you going to disappoint your parents ...

For me, it wasn't as simple as, Was I attracted to boys? Of course I was attracted to boys (the attractive ones, anyway, like Jonathan Brandis, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jared Leto).



I was also afraid of most of them, which complicated the matter, and starting about midway through eighth grade they weren't particularly interested in me, which didn't help either. At the same time as the boys were ignoring me, I became catnip to lesbians.

Fending off anyone's advances is difficult for me, and it was even harder when I was so desperate for physical affirmation and affection. But sleepover after sleepover, I laughed off the awkwardness or said things like, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable in your bed?" In some ways, it would have been so much easier to just be like, Yes, you're right: I wear glasses and I don't wear make up, ergo, I am a dyke.

When I fell in love with a boy who loved me back my freshman year of college, I was almost as relieved as my mother. (Oh, she had her suspicions.) The longer we stayed together, the more the issue faded and I found perfect middle ground for myself. Instead of being queer, I surrounded myself with queer people. They tended to have the right politics and not care that I didn't wear make up, and the gay boys didn't scare me at all. Plus, gays and Jewish ladies are a natural constituency: we have Sondheim and Streisand in common! Not to mention intellectual snobbery.

Today I had lunch with two old friends: my oldest-and-bestest, who's now an illustrator living in a "Boston marriage" in Park Slope (or is that redundant?); and the boy who was my first kiss and seven years later my senior prom date, who's now a gay Williamsburg hipster of the first order. Both of these individuals got way more action with the opposite sex in high school than I did, in case we need a reminder of how little what we do or don't do in high school means.

I told them excitedly about today's Midwestern bombshell ("Is this Heaven?" "No, it's Iowa"). Neither cared nearly as much as I did.

There should be a phrase that applies to this situation -- like "the zeal of the convert" but specifically meaning "the zeal of the near-miss." It's akin to survivor's guilt. Straight guilt? I can't be the only one who feels it.

Anyway, well done, corn-producing, Obama-nominating state! You get two thousand gold stars in my book.

It's here! It's here!

Forget the new address and new apartment and waking up on Montague Street for the second day in a row. The most exciting thing about today is that my April horoscope is up! These things are like farmer's almanacs in their specificity:

Venus has been in your house of fame and honors, but has been in weak retrograde orbit since March 6. Once Venus normalizes on April 17, you can more easily get help from references and high level executives whom you know and who want to help you.

Venus happens to be IN your house of career, but it RULES your house of home - so Venus retrograde has been a distraction because something involving home, property, or family seems to have tugged on you. It's very possible that you've been a bit drained by whatever was taking so much of your attention, and it may have been hard to focus on other things, such as your career.

TRANSLATION: You got an agent but since then nothing has been going your way, *and* domestic matters -- i.e., finding an apartment, securing it, packing for it, and moving into it -- have kept you harried and distracted. In a couple weeks, things will get better.

And people wonder why I find these things so reassuring.

Publishing and broadcasting industries glow for you now too, especially during the first three weeks, while Mars will brighten this area until April 22. This is a very broadening influence, and certainly you seem to be enjoying it.

One day that could be either very, very good or very, very bad is April 15 when Mars (energy or strife) conjoins Uranus (surprise developments). These two planets will meet in Pisces, a sign good for you. I would say, just don't take any chances by provoking anyone with a controversial or inflammatory remark. Those born at the end of the sign, near July 20, [ED NOTE: ME] are likely to benefit because both planets will be in the right position to send good news. Let's hope so!

Yes, let's. Because I'm tired of stress. I had my first panic attack in several months last night and for no clear reason. The day was spent surrounded by boxes, true, but also with friends, and I managed to apply to a couple exciting-looking jobs.

I guess the anxiety stems from the fact that I am over-identifying with this apartment, having put in so much energy to attain it. And though it has it charming points (it is spacious, classy, well-lit, full of storage, and well-located) it also has its pitfalls (a narrow kitchen full of appliances that date from 1983) and then its just-plain-weird points (a mirror right next to the toilet, in case you were ever interested in getting a close-up side view of your seated ass).

My guess is that an elderly woman lived here for decades, not cooking more than an egg every once in a while on the cramped, tilted range, and stocking lots of dry goods to give away to her children and grandchildren in the pantry. Soon, so I can more easily blame things like the padded toilet seat on her, I will give her a name. Shirley, maybe. It is because of Shirley that the pipes hit a high note after the hot water goes off. The fact that one long wall of the living room curves inwards? Shirley just loved that; it reminded her of her 60s commune days.

We will become accustomed to, or develop workarounds for, everything. I have confidence in our creativity. Still, part of me still misses the old place with our garden, our fridge, our stove, our heat that didn't hiss, our brand-new laundry machines.

Buck up, Ester! There is sunshine here! There are ceiling fans! I try, I swear. I try, if only because:

A sensational day awaits you: April 22.

I'm just going to push through til then.

Post #1400

Wow. That number is either impressive or depressing; I can't decide. That's how I feel about most things these days. Some mornings I wake up in a cold sweat imagining that I'll have to arrive at my Swarthmore five year reunion with nothing to show for myself but a ring on my finger.

I'll have stories to tell, God knows, some of which will appear in my upcoming book Never Marry a Short Woman: Narratives by ester, featuring the one where the priest died at the wedding, the one about being left in a coffee shop in Amsterdam at closing time with no money to pay the bill, and the one about how I lost my first job in New York because I was taken to the ER with a kidney infection.

Ha ha ha!, everyone will say. What delightful anecdotes you have, you pointless but amusing little sprite who got married at 25 (isn't that sweet). Have you heard about my advanced degrees and how I am living in a third-world country making my own tofu and biking around digging wells to provide indigenous people with safe drinking water?

They will present me with a copy of their prize-winning thesis and I will bow my head in submission before retiring to a hidden spot under one of the many labeled trees to read it, weep tears of envy, and shield my inferiority from their eyes.

"You know, you don't have to go," my mother pointed out. "The people who attend are a self-selected group of those who have something they want to brag about." True, O king, but to *not* go out of fear would be the real failure. The coward dies a thousand times before his death; the valiant only ever tastes of death but once, or so said some guy I once met at a bar.

Better to face up to my accomplishments, or lack thereof, with good humor. Also it would be good to stop comparing myself to other people, like my brother, who was sworn into the NY State bar yesterday, and my dearfriend Tamar who "matched" this week into her first-choice for residency, and the myriad other successful folks I feel I am surrounded by. Excelsior, my lovelies! Onwards and upwards! Don't worry about me; I'll always have Jesus.

My mother the brigadier general was here for three days to organize our initial packing-and-moving effort into the new place. Paid movers will be coming next weekend but we got a huge amount done in advance with the help of a small volunteer army. Maybe once I'm done being obsessed with boxes'n'bins and bubble wrap and tape I'll feel better about everything, because stability really does tend to help.

It would also help if some publisher realized that my poor little novel is NOT a satire. If it needs a label, call it a koala, okay? Publish it and put it in the koala section and I will kiss your feet.

Open wide ...

Off I go, in mere minutes now, to the Why to do what I call my slut exercises. No, I don't mean "yoga," although I challenge you to get on a mat with a rope and a couple soft blocks and not let your imagination get the better of you. I mean actual exercises.

As required by the contract I signed when I joined the Why in January, I met with my large, buff trainer again. Frankly I'd been kind of jazzed -- he had told me I had to go run on a treadmill or similar three times a week and dammit, I had done so, and I was proud. But he didn't even inquire after my progress. No, he had one simple question for me:

Upper body or lower body?

Uh. Excuse me? Can we leave my body alone please? It doesn't like to be looked at, used, or, worst of all, "toned."

With the grimace that always accompanies picking the lesser of two evils, I said, "Lower body." And the trainer led me through a humiliating series of "exercises," several of which necessitated spreading my legs. I tried to tell him ladies don't do that -- ladies should be able to hold a dime between their knees at all times, in fact -- but he was too busy using words like "abductor" and "adductor" to hear me.

One word, however, he could not remember. "Facing the mirror, you take this medicine ball and you ... what's that ballet thing?" I looked at him like he was crazy: do I look like the sort of girl who was interested in dipping gracefully while holding a medicine ball? "Plie," I said. "Right!" he said. "I gotta write that down."

And so, face aflame, off I go to the Why three times a week to "plie" through these tortures, at the end of which I can only hope my thighs with be strong enough to support my fragile and wounded spirit.

And to think that I saw it on Montague Street

I'm pretty broken up about Bristol and Levi but not as broken up as they are. Zing!

Yes, I know I already Twittered that. But I wanted to keep it around for posterity. Speaking of Twitter, I am loving this #fuckitlist thing, wherein people list things they will never do (this is as opposed to composing a "bucket list," where you make a list of things to do before you die or before you make two hours of inane, waste-of-celluloid-and-talent Christmastime pap).

Choice samples from the Twitterati's #fuckitlist:

#Fuckitlist - Learn to speak French. I mean, really, what's the point? A few well mangled words out of a phrase book and they speak English.”

“Upon my death I will have never seen all of the avante guarde films of Andy Warhol nor ever have volunteered for the Rose Parade #fuckitlist”

“#fuckitlist Eat turducken”

“#fuckitlist: learn ballet.”

“#fuckitlist Saving for retirement. I'll just shoot myself at 45.”

“#fuckitlist getting tickets to Jimmy Fallon”

“#fuckitlist Make a turducken.”

“#fuckitlist: give country music a chance.”

“#fuckitlist pay off all my debt, get arrested in Mexico, oh yeah, join a dance troup or the circus”

“#fuckitlist Read Twilight or Harry Potter, pay for cable, drink beer, eat raw meat, become a sumo wrestler”

“#fuckitlist Getting tickets to The Price is Right”

“Watch The Godfather #fuckitlist”

The hostility cheers me right up somehow. Things are basically better, anyway, as always happens: darkest before dawn, right? I mean, not in Darfur, where it's darker before the dark continues and it's like fucking Narnia over there -- always winter and never Christmas -- but here in America, for us privileged folks.

Darkest before dawn! Only hours after writing that last post about broker-monsters, I met a kind, funny, and helpful guy who found me a large one-bedroom on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights in my price range with high ceilings and laundry in the apartment. Then he convinced the owner to pay the broker's fee and didn't ask for any money for either the application or the credit check. Basically he did everything but secure me a three-book deal with HarperCollins. Mr. Ben and I are very grateful and we should be signing the lease in the next day or so.

Take that, broker-monsters!

Still no job, though.

Pro-PRO-active

There's a line between being active and proactive (good) and trying to control things you can't control (bad) and trying to make things happen just to shift the weight off your goddamn shoulders already (crazy). I'm straddling that line and it feels like a permanent wedgie. Help me, lord.

Actually this is one of those moments I wish I did believe in a higher, guiding, benevolent force in the universe. Then maybe I could lay back and think:

- the fact that I have not yet secured us an April 1 rental, despite spending every day shuttling from one middling apartment to another is all part of the plan

- the fact that, after a month, the bank has still not rubber-stamped our pre-approval so that we could forward with our potential purchase is all part of the plan

- the fact that brokers keep chipping away at my self-esteem and self-confidence is all part of the plan. Viz:

ME: My husband and I ...
BROKER: No. No! You're a BABY!


ME: I'm not sure this is quite right for us.
BROKER 2: Well, what is it you want, anyway? How many apartments have you seen? Shouldn't you know by now? Shouldn't you just commit?


ME, DIFFERENT APARTMENT: I'm not sure this is what we're looking for.
BROKER 2: (Shouts in Hebrew on her cell phone for a long time)


ME: I'd like an application, please.
BROKER 3: Mm, sorry. I really don't like giving wives applications without their husbands present.


ME: Well, for $2000, we'd like a large one-bedroom in a building with laundry and an elevator.
BROKER 4: You'll never find it.


- the fact that Mr. Ben doesn't know what he wants to / will be able to do once he leaves his clerkship in September is all part of the plan

- the fact that I keep applying fruitlessly to the sprinkling of available jobs is all part of the plan

- the fact that my father is sick and spends his days calculating the value of his library is all part of the plan

That would have to be one serious plan, that's for sure. And it could be. I just wish I had the faith.

Wonder

If you'd asked me, I would have said that there weren't people whiter than Mormons, but what do you know -- I would have been wrong. Know who's whiter than Mormons?

Seriously, guess. Guess and be wrong, like me. It's fun, almost as much fun as sitting in my living room in pajamas watching a foot of snow accumulate in my backyard. The weight of it is pushing a neighbor's tree over our fence and building higher and higher on our patio table and I'm taking bets on whether by the end of the day the two will touch.

Jews. Jews are whiter than Mormons; they are whiter than anyone in America, in fact. And the most racially diverse people in America are Muslims. This is historically relevant because it puts Jews and Muslims at loggerheads for the very first time.

But seriously, well done Muslims and well done Islam. There is virtue to being diverse. It is apparently not the virtue the lord intended for his so-called chosen people, but we will have to make do with what we have, I guess. Which reminds me of a funny story. A friend of mine recently confided that when she was young she liked watching and rewatching Yentl.

"You had a thing for Barbara Streisand?" I asked. She shrugged: "I like big noses."

We do have something in common though, you will be relieved to hear.

"The report also reveals that Muslim American women are one of the most highly educated female religious groups in the United States, second only to Jewish American women."

There. That's nice, isn't it? Those wacky Jewish American women also make more money than their female counterparts of other religions, and Jews overall are most likely of anyone to say they're thriving in America (56% -- the Mormons come in second at 51%, presumably because they have to cope with the backlash to Mitt Romney).

Yet Jews come in dead last when asked how important their religion is to their daily lives. Nope, not that important, thanks for asking. Somehow religion is a distinguishing characteristic -- generally in a good way, though I wouldn't call being the whitest people in America a positive -- and yet considered relatively unimportant. It's a fascinating cultural conundrum and I'm not sure what to make of it.

The 8th Deadly Sin (for women)

Just in time to dovetail with my musings on the propriety of lady writers having ambition, a friend of mine sent me this review of Elaine Showalter's new book. Her thesis is a variation of what you'd either call a myth or a truism, depending on your point of view: men are interested in Things while women are interested in People; and when it comes to literary prizes and recognition, Things win out every time:

She has insisted that themes central to women's lives -- marriage, motherhood, the tension between family and individual aspirations -- constitute subject matter as "serious" and significant as traditionally masculine motifs like war and travel.

Then, of course, there are those insidious doubts to contend with:

The majority of the women writers whose lives and work Showalter chronicles wrestled with the nagging feeling that they were going against nature as well as country in pursuing what was rightfully a man's work.

Which is not to say that lasses lack ambition; rather that what of it we have, we fear -- if not the drive itself, then the possible repercussions. And it's true! What's less ladylike than ambition, for god's sake? The word itself trembles with connotations of greed, heartlessness, and selfishness, none of which are laid out in the "Eyshes Hayl," a Jewish Friday night prayer extolling the virtues of the fairer sex. "Eyshes Hayl, mi yimstah?" King Solomon once asked, and we repeat: a righteous woman, who can find? No one looking through the aisles of Barnes and Nobles or the op-ed pages, that's for sure.

Her worth is above rubies. Why? Because she keeps her husband happy, her home clean, the candles lit, and there's a bunch of stuff in there about wool and flax and whatever. The point is, what wife and mother doing all that would have time to write a grand sweeping novel about the Napoleonic era?

Even now that many of us have rooms of our own and can outsource the spinning and weaving, it feels unseemly to step forward and say, "I, yes I, have written a book! Though I know the proper thing to do would be to bury it in a drawer, though I know I should be modest and afraid of outshining any current or potential reproductive mates, those I am exposing myself to ridicule for trying, I am putting this book out there for you to judge."

We try to cushion the blow by making the books either memoirs or memoirs masquerading as fiction (the literary equivalent of an "I" statement) or easy to ghettoize as "genre" (mystery, young adult, sci fi/fantasy).

This all boils down to the following summary: women write small, modest books about relationships, while men write large-scale epics about stuff, and when John Updike died half of the next New Yorker issue was dedicated to him, with another piece in the end about Ian McEwan. The only woman who could command a similar level of attention is Toni Morrison, and thank heavens she's around, if only for symbolism's sake.

Because I am an orderly person who likes charts and measures of things, I have created a handy-dandy scale for authors, ranging from 1 to 16.

1 = You really think you'd be good at this writing stuff! You read things and think, Pssssh I could do better than that in my sleep. You even have a weblog for when you will fulfill your potential and start having a go at it, at which point you will knock everyone's socks off.

16 = classics who get serious obits when they die; who are taught in graduate school; who have won at least one major international prize. 16s include Martin Amis, V.S. Naipaul, Rushdie, Coetze, Pynchon, Melville, Dickens, Nabokov, Elliot, Austen, Woolf, Orwell, Joyce, Faulkner, Tolstoy, James, Wharton, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Marquez, Kundera, Steinbeck, Morrison, and their ilk. The majority of 16s are already dead. Almost all are male, serious, and at least occasionally unreadable. Frankly, I'm not sure even Twain makes the cut, though David Foster Wallace's untimely death might push him over the edge.

In between is everyone else, from the eager blogger with several beginnings of short stories and an outline for a novel on his computer (3) to the 26-year-old with a completed manuscript who just got an agent (9).

Anyone published is an automatic 10. Whether they continue to rise from there depends on whether anyone buys/reads/respects their book (11), writes a couple other books and has moderate name recognition, at least within certain circles (12), sees an adaptation make it to movie theaters and/or wins a prize and/or appears on a major radio or TV show (13), achieves name recognition and status to the degree that s/he can write whatever s/he wants (14), and is considered Great (15).

15s: Roth, Updike, Irving, DeLillo, McEwan, Ishiguru, Chabon
14s: Haruki Murakami, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Cunningham, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Russo, and popular authors whose gold makes the rules like JK Rowling, John Grisham, Amy Tan, & Dan Brown
13s: Donna Tartt, Alice Sebold, Myla Goldberg, Yann Martel, Jeffrey Eugenides, Nick Hornby, Curtis Sittenfeld
12s: Nicholson Baker, Audrey Niffenegger, Caleb Carr

I aspire to be a 12, if I'm very lucky a 13. But even admitting that much ambition is difficult.

Mark your calendars

On March 20th, you will hear from me as to whether I have good news to share. If I have bad news, you will find me beating myself to death with one of Mr. Ben's African drums, or perhaps trying to slide behind the refrigerator to die unnoticed like my hamster did when I was little.

My book, my crazy beloved stab at a book, is going out to editors at 13 publishing houses today. This means, I am told, its fate will be decided in a month, if not before then. I can't tell you which houses, in case I'm not allowed to, but YOU'VE HEARD OF THEM. Oh mercy. Perhaps I will fall apart at the joints while I wait. Today I'll lose a foot; tomorrow the tip of an index finger.

Sometimes my brain rushes ahead of me and I can picture the New Yorker's short, disdainful blurb in its May 2010 edition: "Although this young author's premise shows some originality and imagination, ultimately the book fails to live up to the expectations generated by the idea. Not mean enough to be satire or absurd enough to be farce, A,AoG lingers in a kind of limbo of its own making."

This is for real!

I will try to remember to put on pants today. Let's see if I can do it.

Into the Lions' Den

Here I go! Wish me luck, folks.

While I'm off doing something that makes me quake in the boots I've already vomited on once, if you feel like helping me up my day's earnings -- they're at $1.20 so far, but the sky's the limit! -- feel free to check out my posts as the NY Unemployment Examiner.

ETA: Oh, wow. That went really really well. My novel about a Very Important Talent Agency has now been picked up by a real Very Important Talent Agency. If I could eat ice cream I would go through a whole pint, and if I could drink I'd got sloppy, gushingly drunk. But all I can do is send text messages and glow.

Fingersmith

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Into every life, a little queer historical erotica must fall. This book is like Wilkie Collins, only with more smut!


View all my reviews.

The Why

Roughly a month after joining the Brooklyn YMCA I finally made it down there for my first of four free sessions with a trainer, O., a tall muscular black guy who was clearly wasted on me.

"First off, can you fill out this form?" he said, handing me a clipboard.

I got through providing my name, age, and address okay. (International money laundering scam alert!! Hopefully the YMCA keeps the documents in a vault.) Then I hit my first snag.

"Um, when it says 'Activities You Enjoy,' does it mean physical activities?"

"Yes," said O.

I crossed out "Reading, Writing," and left "Walking."

"Walking's good," he said encouragingly. That gave me the strength to continue. Twice the form provided me with the option of saying I was interested in weight loss; twice I refused to check the box. Take that, societal expectations of women!

The last section mandated that I list three obstacles to my success. I wrote down two and then paused. "Is 'inertia' the same thing as 'laziness'?" I asked.

O. shrugged. "One time I had a guy here who was like 300 pounds," he said. "And he wrote down, 'Too many women.'"

"That's good!" I said. "I'm totally going to steal that."

I signed the form, agreeing to commit to exercising 30 minutes 3 times a week, which is really something for me. I think exercise is like parenthood: something responsible people do, sure, mostly when forced, but which sensible folks avoid as long as possible. Of course I have friends who exercise; on this topic, just like parents, they become gushing Patty Hearst types. Perhaps I too will become an endorphin junkie, but I'm skeptical.

Bourne's Got Nothing on Me

[RINGING]
VOICE: Hello, FBI.
ME: Hi, um, I seem to have gotten involved in an international money laundering scheme ...
VOICE: Please hold.

[HOLD MUSIC]

VOICE #2: Hello, FBI.
ME: Hi -- I seem to have gotten involved in an international money laundering scheme ...
VOICE #2: Please hold.

[HOLD MUSIC]

VOICE #3: Hello, FBI.
ME: Hi -- I seem to have gotten involved in an international money laundering scheme ...
VOICE #3: Ah yes. Email or Craigslist?
ME: Craigslist. I answered an ad requesting a tutor for a six year old girl and the next thing I knew I was getting a check via Fed Ex for $3,200.00.
VOICE #3: And you're supposed to wire that money to a third party?
ME: Yes, sir.
VOICE #3: Yup, this is an international money laundering scheme run by Nigerians.
ME: I knew it! Or I hoped it was Somali pirates.
VOICE #3: Yeah, they're still mostly boat-focused.
ME: That makes sense.

On the FBI agent's advice, I had to inform all the credit bureaus to flag my account in case some tricksy African tries to steal my identity from abroad and I had to put the whole story in writing on an internet fraud website. When I was done, it offered me a link to the helpful site Lookstoogoodtobetrue.com in order to make me feel even stupider than I already did.

At least I didn't lose any money. And hey, not everyone has a $3,200 check sitting on their desk, albeit one that they can't cash.

Aside from dealing with the feds, I've landed two PT blogging gigs, applied to a gazillion more positions, checked out several apartments, speed-read Monsters of Templeton and Free Food for Millionaires, books about other over-educated twenty-somethings who don't know what to do with their lives, and attended a rousing session of Powerpoint Karaoke. I've also had two mini-breakdowns and a migraine. Come on, 2009. Enough playing around. Let's let the good times roll, shall we?

The new Gray Album!

It really is too bad. Once upon a time, I liked Christian Bale. Newsies, anyone? ("Santa Fe? Are you there? Do you swear you won't forget me? If I found you would you let me come and stay ... I ain't getting any younger and before my dying day, I want space! Not just air! Let 'em laugh in my face, I don't care! Save a place ... I'll be there ... in Santa Fe." This is from memory, folks.)

He's the cutest singing street-urchin this side of Aladdin but he wins out in a head-to-head because Aladdin chooses a chick with a waist the size of my wrist, whereas Jack "Cowboy" Kelly marries into a nice Jewish family.

Not to mention the brilliant American Psycho where he almost kills Reese Witherspoon.


Look at that picture and tell me you're not cheering him on.

I hope he bounces back from this, in short. Russell Crowe and Jude Law, both once-loved, pretty decent actors currently in the doghouse, don't seem to have redeemed themselves yet for their public sins (throwing a phone and bonking the nanny, respectively, in case your memory needs jogging). Are we more forgiving of idiot women? Britney Spears does stupid shit all the time and still goes platinum, and let's not even get started on Lilo.

Follow up / unrelated question: If medicine is expired, do you take more because it's weaker or less because it's poison?

so much to do!

My Busy and Important unemployed life demanded that I buy a planner for the first time. So far I have lots of exercise classes written in there, which is a great first step!

I also made an elaborate color-coded Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the 63 (and counting) agents to whom I have sent my proto-classic manuscript. I should make another to keep track of the jobs I have applied to, but that would cross the line into depressing. At least the agents have been encouraging, even the ones who pass. One fellow even asked me to keep in touch and let him know what eventually happened because it was such a close call.

I'll tell you what's eventually going to happen: I'm going to get to meet Barack Obama. Yeah, that's right. Somehow I will get from here -- in pajamas in an armchair with my laptop -- to a handshake with our heartthrob president and it will be because some agent takes a chance on my book. (Maybe if I write that in my planner for sometime in the future, it will happen. That's the Secret all over, right?)

Essentially I'm trying to stay active and focused. The big project at the moment is the mortgage, because if we can actually get the pre-approval and make a bid on the apartment we want, that will address one leg of 2009's Triathlon of Major Problems. These are, in case you're just joining us, that I

1) got laid off
2) am soon to be homeless
3) heard my Dad has cancer again

Is "problems" too strong a word? Should I say "challenges"? Someone who knows the Secret let me know, please.

1) is the hardest to fix, as I feel like I'm competing with every English/Film/Humanities major in New York City for every open position. But the unemployment checks help and I'm not in danger of insolvency soon.

2) could turn out to be a good example of falling up, if we do manage to get a loan and buy this one guy's amazing Cobble Hill apartment for appallingly little money (by New York standards). Regardless, though, I'm going to sow the fields with salt before we leave. I can't believe we planted a garden in our backyard and won't get to stay here to see it bear fruit come summer.

3) is not as dire as it seemed initially, thank god. I've now been to and from Washington twice to see him (well, and to see C.J. Roberts tussle with Obama, wish my grandma a happy 96th birthday, and meet my brother's new 24-year-old acupuncturist Californian girlfriend). Everyone's feeling more optimistic now that there is a treatment plan in place for him. This time last year, he was just getting over being chemo'd and radiated; now he gets to do it all over again, after which he gets to be skillfully disemboweled for the second time. Oh, the wonders -- and limitations -- of modern medicine.

My February horoscope looks good, though!:

The year 2008 seems to have been a little frustrating for you, but planets gathering in your eighth house will hasten your transition into your new life phase. ... On the agenda will be the basic questions: What will make me happy? How can I go about creating real, lasting changes - ones I will genuinely want - that will be in place for years to come? Certainly you want stability, so that's what will be on your list of questions to answer, too.

So true. I'm very open to suggestion, friends.

think different

I'm going to write a book about counter-intuitive things to do when you're unemployed. Like, join a gym! Mr. Ben and I took this opportunity to join the Brooklyn YMCA because of the pool and the classes and because he told me he'd withhold physical intimacy unless I do something to reduce my stress levels, which are registering at somewhere between Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island and the exposure to which are threatening to turn him into a three-headed dog.

Start an IRA! I did that the last time I was booted from a job. It has since lost more than half of its value, thanks to the current economy. Still, it makes you feel grown up and responsible to have an IRA, especially a droopy one, since you can join in the chorus of grumbling by real adults about the stock market. Camaraderie is important during these dark times, and to stave off a feeling of isolation while you're spending most of your days at home wrapped in a blanket talking to your dead orchid about the book deal you're totally going to get any day now.

Apply for a mortgage! Maintaining your equilibrium is key, as is a feeling of forward motion. (We are all sharks: we move or we die.) Talking to banks about rates and assets helps you feel more in control, as well as active and connected to the outside world. If you actually get pre-approved and can put in an offer on that fantastic Cobble Hill apartment across the street from your new gym, all the better.

Advertise your capabilities on Craigslist! Just because you've been laid off doesn't mean you don't have skills. You deserve to be paid to help other people do things you yourself have often failed to do, like find a great job and keep it.

Get a fancy haircut. Gotta keep up appearances! This works well when a guy you know offers a two-for-one deal at his hoity-toity studio and you and a friend can each get away with paying only $34 each to look so fabulous no one will notice you're still vaguely green and pulsing from the radioactive stress.

Post pictures of you and your friends looking happy. This will remind you that you have friends and also that you have, at moments, been happy:

Go Inaug Yourself

While I tried to jet down to DC, my queer Brooklyn posse, which was already in the city, scoured websites and schedules and even called the Secret Service in order to plot our strategy. Around 11:00 pm, they informed me of the plan and though I yelped in protest, I gave in. So it was that after three hours sleep, I got up and got ready to leave at the house at 4 AM and met them inside the appointed Metro station. Even at that hour, Tenleytown/AU was thronged by hopped-up youngsters, many of them looking like they hadn't bothered going to bed at all. The first train that came by was too crowded to board -- and that was the first warning signal of what this crazy, historic, overfull day would be like.

The second signal came at the final station, where enough people to fill a football stadium stood paralyzed by the Metro's insistence on swiping cards again to exit. The roar of the standstill grew until some frightened Metro employee finally made an executive decision and threw open the turnstiles so that the impassioned hordes could pour through. This was 5 AM.

We made it to the southern part of the mall where the ticketless were allowed to congregate, and after doing a lap to consider vantage points we committed to a location. Only then did we realize several key things:

1. It was fucking freezing.
2. We had almost a whole workday's length of time to kill
3. No one had thought to bring a blanket

We took turns sitting on the one stool we had with us and taking walks in vain attempts to keep our feet from petrifying. On one of my walks, I sought refuge in a port-a-potty, hoping it would be a little warmer. Finally, with the memory of the Time-Traveler's Wife vividly in mind, I decided drastic action must be taken, and I begged temporary shelter from a CNN man with his own trailer.

Kind, gentle man, he let Reb W. and me both into his lair which smelled like hot chocolate and which informed us, via several screens, that it was ten degrees outside. "Stay here," he said, leaving us alone to watch one TV count down the hours til the proceedings (4:40 to go ...) until he returning bearing hand and foot warmers. We blessed him and thanked him as we bowed our way out the door. For the first time in 2009, my boldness had won Reb W.'s respect.

Back with the posse, we danced to keep warm, played games for distraction, took pictures of the ever-expanding mass of people behind us, and watched the sun rise over the capitol. Never have I been so grateful to see that busy old fool, unruly sun, which almost immediately began to help us thaw. It wasn't doing the job fast enough so my friends ended up sacrificing belly warmth to tuck each other's bare feet under their shirts.

A few yards away from our camp I spotted John Oliver reporting live from the field for the Daily Show and snapped a few pictures. I have a huge TV crush on John Oliver but in person he looked depressingly normal, so I decided not to throw myself at him, even though I'll bet he too had a warm trailer that smelled like hot chocolate and could have given my feet a hot oil massage to bring them back to life.

After what felt like the entirety of Bush's presidency had flashed before our eyes again, the festivities began. The objectionable Rick Warren made a largely unobjectionable speech, forgoing any mention of hot topics like the gays. I had to laugh when he recited the "sh'ma" in English and said Jesus's name in Hebrew. I guess that's multiculturalism for you?

We cheered for everyone related to the Obamas and glared at folks who rudely booed Bush and his henchman Cheney, looking more diabolical than ever in a wheelchair. The lady behind me put it best as she chided the crowd: "People! What would Obama do?"

We shrieked when John Roberts fucked up the oath, laughed every time the booming announcer voice said "You may now be seated," and swayed in disbelief when the smart, calm, resolute, handsome, strong, thoughtful man I have every faith in came forward at last to assure us, over eighteen and a half minutes, that our years of wandering through the desert were over. The text was thrilling enough but the subtext was even better: It's all going to be okay. This is for real now. It's all going to be okay.

And then Bishop Lowry, possibly hopped up himself, had us all shouting Amen! to his fervent prayer for a time when "black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right." That's my kind of God talk.

Later, after the festivities finally ended around 12:30, we realized the city had left the millions of us on the mall no way to get home. The parade route had blocked off half of downtown, and the subway entrances were so swamped they looked like temples directly before stampedes. We holed up on the third floor of the Hirschorn, leaning on each other for strength, as we tried to wait out the masses. But, as it turned out, that was a bit like trying to wait for a bathtub full of molasses to drain through a narrow hole.

Despite the fact that we'd been up (and literally up on our feet) since the wee hours, battling soreness, sleepiness, and the beginnings of hypothermia, we decided our only option was to walk, and walk we did, around the police checkpoints and blocked off streets, through winter-savaged gardens and on curbs, over four miles, and some of it at the pace of molasses draining from the bathtub because we got caught up with the masses and could only walk as fast as the cops and traffic would let us. By the time I made it to Dupont Circle where my parents were, I decided I would never venture outside again.

But it was absolutely worth it.

The Wistful Whining

My life is beginning to feel like something out of the Series of Unfortunate Events. After a month and a half of paralyzing anxiety, I finally find the right chemical assistance only to have to face:

• the loss of my job;
• the paltry amount I will receive in Unemployment Compensation;
• the impending loss of my apartment (the new owners of the building want to live where we do, no doubt to feast on the tomatoes we so lovingly planted and cultivated in the backyard);
• a small tumor in my father's pancreas;
• and all in the most unforgiving winter weather in memory.

I've been reacting in the most logical possible way: either by steadfastly avoiding reality by rewatching action/adventure movies and musicals, or by throwing myself into the job and apartment hunt with the vigor of a young Sabra.

The upshot of these various, often contradictory efforts is that I have a few leads, one semi-solid freelance blogging gig, one future client for my new business as a paid know-it-all, a new membership to the Brooklyn YMCA, and a mortgage application in my future, because what should one do when laid off in a shitty economy except buy an apartment?

This week will be a break from everything. I head down to DC to see Hopey get inaugurated and to hold my father's hand, and I won't be back until Friday, at which point my oldfriend Rebecca is taking me out for an Evening of Fun. This is a tradition for us: when she last had a series of unfortunate events plaguing her, I planned a Day of Fun for the two of us that culminated at Build a Bear where I birthed a koala named Krackden. The best part came at the register where the chipper lady ringing me up had me say the name out loud. With the courage of my convictions and ignoring the resulting look of disgust, I said, "Krackden." He has been a comfort to me ever since.

And so on

"How are you?" asked Dr. Russian yesterday.

"Well, I was let go from work, I'm probably losing my apartment, and I have a cold. Other than that, I'm okay. How are you?"

The best thing about doctors is that you don't have to make small talk. The best thing about Dr. Russian specifically is that, as a recent immigrant, he has a limited amount of what you might call cultural capital. I have had to define the following for him:

- catholic (as in catholic taste)
- short bus
- NyQuil

He tried to bond with me with about movies, which was a lost cause. Finally I threw out a name he recognized: Ingmar Bergman. "Oh but he is depressing," said Dr. Russian. "I tried to watch -- what is that one? With the Death? The Seventh Seal. Afterward I was almost nauseous."

Oh! Well, what sort of movies does he like?

He considered for a moment and then said, "David Lynch."


Even apart from mandatory check ins with health professionals, I've been keeping myself busy. I attended a great, free introductory class at the Gotham Writers Workshop, followed by dinner with a friend; I went to the second meeting of my book group last night to discuss Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Short answer: Yes, with an if. Long answer: No, with a but.)

I have Man on Wire from Netflix, two action-adventure movies from the library and My Fair Lady. I'm rereading Prisoners of Azkaban. And I'm trying to limit the number of times I refresh the same job pages. Overall my strategy is to be less frenzied, less angry (if possible), and to treat this break as a sort of vacation. A working vacation, to be sure, but still. Thus my compromise is I get out of bed at 8:30, but I stay in pajamas as long as I like.

Day 1 of Unemployment: Part 2

12:30: Friend calls, asks if it'd be okay to drop by. Pause Harry Potter to put on a bra. Remain in pajamas.

1:30 - 3:00: General misery & ill fortune.

3:05: Decide to go to the Coop. Get dressed.

3:10: Doorbell rings! It's the landlord dropping by to tell us that the people who bought our building may indeed want to take our apartment when our lease runs out at the end of March. We could take the 3rd floor apartment, though! Luckily it's astronomically expensive, or I'd have to feel like maybe my luck is turning.

3:30: At the Coop playing bumper carts with the thousands of other shoppers. Who are all these people at liberty on a Monday afternoon?

3:35: Rebecca!

4:30: Rebecca and I walk back to my apartment with our groceries. I rant about my general misery and ill fortune and their potential alleviations, leading to the following exchange:

ME: Wouldn't it be great if I never had to go back to work because I had to go on book tour? Be on the "Today" show? Of course, I wouldn't actually want to go on the "Today" show. They'd probably make me lose weight.

REBECCA: No, I think everyone's more tolerant of writers being weird looking.

ME: Are you calling me WEIRD LOOKING?

REBECCA: What? No! No! You're beautiful! You're the one who said you'd need to lose weight!

ME: And you're the one who called me WEIRD LOOKING!


I can only hope that at some point this day will end.

Unemployment Log: Day 1, Morning

8:30: Wake up after a solid five hours sleep. No point lollygagging about -- must get going! If 2009 is to be a Year of Wow despite this recent setback, there's work to be done.

8:45: Breakfast. Read more condolence emails. Scoped out red carpet dresses from the Golden Globes, which I more or less forgot to watch last night. Kate Winslet looks fantastic double-fisting golden statues.

9:00: Job search begins.

9:10: God this is depressing.

9:15: Why am I even bothering? There's nothing here and anyway I have no idea what I want to do.

9:30: Try to apply for unemployment. Log in rejected because the site insists I don't know my mother's maiden name. This reminds when of when my father said "Bastard" once when I was a kid, and I asked him what it meant. An honest man, he replied, "Someone who doesn't know who their father is." For a while thereafter I assumed a bastard must be someone very, very dumb.

9:35: Craigslist should come with a warning that says "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Mediabistro, Bookjobs, Monster are no better. Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms.

10:00: Abandon pathetic efforts in favor of watching the first Harry Potter movie. Will try being responsible again after lunch.

Performance review

I've said it before and I'll say it again, especially when her brilliance is too pronounced to ignore:

Georgia: Dear Carolyn, I am 21 and in my first committed relationship. My girlfriend and I have been together for about eight months and have agreed to be exclusive and to do everything we can to keep this relationship healthy and working. However, I am finding that I don't really like her that much. I love her, but I don't really enjoy being around her. Because I've never been serious with anyone before, I'm confused about my responsibilities here. Can I break up with her just because I don't like her? And if I can just break it off on the basis of the fact that she annoys me a lot, then what does it mean to be "committed" to someone anyway?

Carolyn Hax: You can break up with her because you don't like the way she looks in purple. Any reason you don't like someone is a good enough reason to break up, because people don't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with them.

It hurts to be dumped, people never forget when it happens, they feel unwanted and angry and misunderstood and a bunch of other things nobody wants to feel, but every single one of these nasty side effects is better than being with someone who doesn't even like you. The chance to be with someone who truly, deeply appreciates them is a chance none of us has any right to deny other people.

Every day you stay with your girlfriend is another day that you limit, if not outright deny, her chance at that kind of rewarding love.

As for what commitment means, at the dating stage, it means you're seeing her and no one else. It doesn't apply in perpetuity until you marry/declare yourselves life partners--and even then, it's generally understood that people do sometimes grow apart or become victims of unforeseeable circumstance.

Overall, 2008 was a mediocre year and I'm glad to be done with it. Here is its performance review, in my book.

Aspects of 2008 that did not meet expectations:

• the hormone-and-commerce driven Sex and the City movie
  
• the oppressively sub-par Burn After Reading
  
• the good-but-not-great Wordy Shipmates
  
• the overlong and a little bit obvious Dark Knight
  
• Doubt, which, though I loved it on Broadway, didn't make nearly as much of an impact on screen
  
• the reunion of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio
  
• the lifespan of my laptop
  
• the economy
  
• public behavior of the Jewish people, including Jack Abramoff, Bernie Madoff, and Ehud Olmert
  
• my ability to convince Brooklyn College's MFA program of my awesomeness
  
• my ability to convince a literary agent to take a chance on my awesomeness
  
• my ability to cope with stress (some might say "life")
  
• my awesome friend Tara Leigh staying in New York forever and ever

Aspects that met or exceeded expectations:

• "Wall-E!" "Eeeeeeva!"
  
• marriage
  
• Montauk
  
• Home and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
  
• new proto-friends
  
• voting behavior of American Jews (78% for Obama! not too shabby)
  
• voting behavior of the American people in general
  
• Nate Silver
  
• Twitter

That averages out to a B-, don't you think? But! 2009, I've decided, is going to be the Year of Wow. If nothing else, it's going to be a year in which I take chances because fuck it, right? Also, I'm medicated now, and those pills are going to be function an extra layer of blubber against the cold of this cold, cold world.

ETA: AND I'M GOING TO NEED IT SINCE MY ENTIRE OFFICE JUST GOT LAID OFF

And New Years wasn't bad either!

One of my ambitions is to become a highly paid Life Coach, in which capacity I will help people make career, relationship, and clothing decisions; learn to love their bodies; and develop a deeper appreciation of literature and film. My sub-speciality will be script-doctoring resumes, cover letters, admissions essays, theses, poetry, doctors' notes, permissions forms, legal opinions, whatever. As I did once for a good friend, I could even monitor the responses to an online dating ad, sorting potential candidates by desirability.

Chapter 43 in my sanctimonious book as a Life Coach, Living a Well-Lived Life, will be about choosing your friends wisely *and* how to recognize when you have done so. Featured in that chapter will be the following advice: reflect on your most recent New Year's Eve experience. Was it satisfactory, socially? Why or why not?

As an example, I could describe my own most recent NYE, which, as all such events should, consisted of several parts:

1) A cocktail party which included both familiar folks and new people to meet;
2) Intimate dinner at the home of close friends;
3) Meeting up with several other friends to attend a fucking wild burlesque and variety show at the Zipper Factory hosted by drag emperor Murray Hill that included full-frontal male nudity, several raunchy acrobatic routines involving a man dressed up as a horny monkey, a stripper singing cheerfully offensive ballads, including about aborting twins ("two for the price of one!"), and more. During intermission, everyone took to the stage for drunken revelry, an impromptu dance party -- with the cast members! -- that lasted almost an hour.

And bless their hearts, my friends stuck it out! Despite alcohol spillage, douchebag straight men in the audience, and the fact that one of them brought her sister who, in turn, brought her boyfriend, who turned out to be a Christian and a virgin; despite the fact that one had to work early the next morning and the increasingly drunken, sloppy performers showed no sign of slowing; even despite the cold, everyone had a great time and no one gave up before it was over. That is how I know just how lucky I am when it comes to friends.

NOTE: Five years in a row Mr. Ben and I crept away to Wanakena for New Year's. It felt strange not to be there, eating and lounging and reading and tramping through the snow and sitting by the fire, and we missed it. We did try to make up for the omission by spending the next two days playing board games with intellectual-types. That did sort of salve the wound.

Best Christmas Ever

It's a very simple recipe. Combine:

1 hotel room in a grand, atmospheric hotel,
1 TV with cable
1 jacuzzi
1 hot lava massage
3 fancy meals
1 accommodating shuttle driver
1 deserted, charming town at the end of the world
2 beaches
1 "Seal hike" through the woods for an hour to a clearing from which you could see actual seals lazing around like paunchy middle-aged men on the rocks, plus an hour trek back
2 fireplaces
1 chess game
1 sex partner
0 family members
and
1 bottle of Klonopin.

Let sit, and serve.

This was all as necessary and as it was restorative, since I hadn't been feeling like myself since that small but vital part of my brain broke on Election Night. The new apple of my eye, Dr. Russian, first prescribed me a medicine that, in the long run, will have me running marathons and presidential campaigns simultaneously, but in the short run left me under house arrest. Like Madoff! Perhaps the nausea and constant panic I was experiencing were actually *his* and he spent some of his $50 billion transferring them to me. Since he doesn't know me personally, I can only imagine he chose me because he figured the Jews hadn't yet suffered enough.

Regardless, after one really bad day where I made it into work only to collapse and have to be taken home in a cab by coworkers, Dr. Russian, with an acknowledgment that I "seem to be very sensitive to medication," cut my dosage and later prescribed an ameliorative second pill to be taken with the first. Glory of glories, hosannah, praise the flying spaghetti monster -- I felt new again. And by "new," I only mean "normal." Well enough to enjoy the misty, desolate splendors of off-season Long Island, well enough to go to bed later than 9:00, and well enough to be back at work today.

Yeehaw! Now onto New Years, and the new year, in which hopefully I will again and consistently be the master of my own brain.

The slow clap

Things aren't objectively better around here. My dad is in the hospital after turning a toxic shade of yellow -- they're looking at his liver, which was possibly affected by the Tylenol 3 he was taking for the ribs he broke when he fell over a step in South Africa. (Phew!) He likes to pretend he was chased by an elephant, so if you talk to him please claim to admire his bravery.

Meanwhile, the economy remains precarious, which means I am holding onto my job with both hands. That time that I got let go right before Christmas during the Transit Strike -- and while I was taking out the trash! -- is, as they say, burned in my brain. As I walked home to Brooklyn in the twenty-five-degree cold, I knew I would never take employment through December for granted again.

Despite all this, though, my anxiety levels have actually decreased. Instead of feeling like I'm wobbling on the edge of a black hole all the time, I feel like I'm a safe yard or so away from the black hole. It's right there, sure, but I'm not in immediate danger of falling in.

In honor of that improvement, here are two things that made me laugh so hard I made a spectacle of myself. First, Carolyn Hax's annual Holiday Hootenanny, where readers compete to submit their funniest true Christmas horror story. One contender for my favorite:

On Grandmother gifts...: Several years ago, my grandmother gave my husband a welcome statue with frogs on it. The word "welcome" is written on this very elongated mushroom held sideways by the two frogs. The elongated mushroom looks very much like you would think an elongated mushroom would look like, which is to say, like a certain part of the male anatomy. There are even two smaller mushrooms sprouting out of the base. We all laughed about it, and my husband decided we would keep it, since it was so amusing. So the next year he gets... two more of the exact same statue. And last year, another one of the same statue. We have them all sitting out on our patio. And a few years ago, she gave my 6'5 brother a floral muumuu we're desperately hoping was really intended for someone else. However, it has now become a family tradition to wrap the muumuu up and give it to another male member of the family on Christmas. Makes for some great Christmas pictures.

And, the runner up:

X-mas entertainment: We always saved my uncle's gifts for last. Over the years they have included:

1) a duck decoy missing its head 2) an ink drawing of a head of lettuce and some celery, with "salad" written in large font underneath 3) a Christmas ornament made out of a lightbulb painted lavender and with sparkles glued on 4) a stuffed plant -- as in, made of fabric, stuffed with whatever goes in stuffed animals.

For a while we assumed these gifts were expressions of hostility (in particular, the headless duck) but in fact, I think his taste just runs to the extremely odd. Turns out bathroom is tiled with the image of the Statue of Liberty, and the walkway to his house is lined with bowling pins.

I never had a holiday (or relatives) that crazy. Perhaps Hannukah doesn't inspire people to go to reach such dizzying heights? Regardless, if that's not enough giggling, check out this montage of 40 Inspirational Movie Speeches. Witness every heavy-handed cinema cliche knit together into a master quilt!:



Amazingly, it even gets better as it goes along, hitting a peak at "They'll take our lives but they'll never take our Independence Day!" It's also amusing to think of how most of these moments can be traced back to / blamed on Shakespeare, who popularized, if not created, the St. Crispin's Day speech intended to get soliders' adrenaline pumping so hard they can't hear themselves think rational things like "But we don't *want* to die."

Stumbling

Governor Blaggo, you are as transparently, hilariously, on-the-record corrupt as a James Bond villain. Thank God Obama's staff heard his offer -- cash in exchange for appointing their preferred person, apparently Valerie Jarret, to Obama's senate seat -- and told Blaggo where he could stuff the seat, if it would fit. This led, by the way, to a tirade in which Blaggo called the president-elect a "motherfucker." AND rumor has it that Obama's dreamy, morally-upright people were the ones who tipped off studly prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Yes! See, these are the kind of glad tidings that joyous-up an otherwise dreary holiday season.

Of course, it's easy for Obama to turn his nose up at a briefcase full of cash. He's like the only person in America with a positive balance in his checking account. (And yet somehow I still get emails begging me to help defray Hillary's expenses.)

The other north star in these dark skies is, of course, top ten lists and Culture Awards. I haven't seen much that's knocked me over this year besides Milk and Wall-E, though I'm excited about Rachel Getting Married, the Reader (because I am gay for Kate Winslet), and Doubt (because I am also gay for Kate Winslet-in-training Amy Adams).

Luckily I've had great TV to fill the void, in the form of 30 Rock, the Wire (which I watched in its entirety this year), and especially Mad Men. How I Met Your Mother, which has taken over lunchtimes at my office, has helped my brain take a much-needed break every workday for a while now. Thanks, Barney!

Mr. Ben and I also decided to try to shift the holidays from Bearable to Awesome by leaving civilization over the long Christmas weekend. New Orleans, we decided, was a little far and a little pricey -- but you know what's neither of those things? MONTAUK. An off-season, deserted winter paradise where they basically throw classy hotel rooms at you and stand in line to rub your feet when you're done wandering around empty, windy beaches. Plus we've never gone anywhere together just the two of us, except for that time we tried to have a honeymoon in the least romantic country on earth during typhoon season.

Sex and Death

I spent $21 on a lunch today that was mostly guacamole. Suck it, recession!

I'm so tired of bad news all the time, of the Dow tanking and jobs disappearing and low-salt diets turning third-world people into zombies and Lori Drew and Harvard going broke and college girls selling themselves to keep up their inflated standard of living, a strategy that will only work as long as people can afford to go to college at all, i.e., not for much longer. Even Milk, which was the best movie I've seen lately, is not exactly an upper. It's exhausting! I need to recuperate in a padded cell with an IV drip of good romantic comedies and Jane Austen adaptations.

At least it's been a pretty fun day in the office, spent talking about movies and vampires. This is a Twitter back-and-forth with one of my coworkers:

NYPeoplewatcher: discussion question: why do americans think vampires are hot?
Shorterstory: not just americans! europeans have been writing steamy poetry about vampires for centuries.
NYPeoplewatcher: okay, BUT bludgeoning is not sexy. why?
Shorterstory: you don't see the difference between someone sensually sucking at your throat vs. hitting you with a 2X4?
NYPeoplewatcher: point taken. but i'm upping the ante: strangling. sensual but no obsession there...
Shorterstory: Except for those people who like to get strangled while they have sex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_(novel)

When the next Fray comes out, I'll have to give her a copy.

it's december. breathe.

The wretched month of November is, at last, behind us. I'm curious how it almost always turns into such a disaster. But at least I don't have to worry about the future: it's all spelled out for me! The always-detailed AstrologyZone monthly forecast tells me to beware:

Co-workers will probably be cranky and easily provoked near this full moon, so you may need to pitch in to help them as best you can. Everyone in the department will be feeling overwhelmed and overworked. ... You will begin to see tension in the air as early as December 10 and it will linger as long as December 15.

Translation: Keep that Xanax handy. But! Once I make it through to December 21, I can look forward to really, really strong adjectives -- rapturous, blissful, life-changing. I should sign with an agent, for one thing, but who cares about that? It's the romance that's important:

the decisions you make and the actions you take in the days that follow could change your life forever. ... treat yourself to one glorious night to welcome in the New Year, dear Cancer. The fire that will burn in your heart that night will chase away any cold winds that might be blowing your way. We all need a night of pure bliss - this one has all the makings of being yours.

Sounds good! Does this mean Mr. Ben and I should go to New Orleans, which we're sort of thinking about doing?

Of course we can't fight the planets (or, as some people would have it, God's will) but simply taking action sometimes can make shit better. In that vein, I'm going to host a Turn Your Luck Around Potluck. On the appointed night, everyone will show up with comfort food and some kind of good luck totem. A story will do: some recollection of when things were bad and then something turned them round. Then we'll do a reconstituted rain dance, where "rain" = "better tidings for all."

Giggle

It's been an anxiety-ridden month for me, full of worry and sleepless nights and pill-taking, to the extent that I have to wonder, Jeez, what would I be like if Barack Obama had *lost*? Anyway, thanks to all of that, I have a head-cold and a renewed appreciation for anything that makes me laugh.

Like Charrow, and how quickly Mr. Ben caught onto this Twitter thing (sample Tweet: "There was a little white chicken fetus in my breakfast egg yesterday. Today, I opted for plain bagel") and a Jezebel editor's hilariously candid record of her attempt to follow Cosmo's sex advice. Featuring Spanx!

And, of course, Get Your War On, covering the most crucial issues of the day:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

I went back to Dr. Feelgood today and in a first for psychiatry he sent me away with instructions to take up meditation and a promise that "you'll be fine." To be fair, he also suggested a certain brand-name drug. As this was the third time he's brought it up and as I'm a smart-ass, I asked him, "What, are they paying you?" To which he promptly replied, "Yes."

Points for honesty.

Who Do You Root For?

The radical Islamist Saudi state or the radical Islamist Somali pirates?

Karl Rove or Deborah Solomon?

Hillary Clinton?

These are tough questions, but we are living in tough times. In trying to do my part for the economy, I spent $115 on clothes on Sunday! That may be a pittance to some of you but my money prefers to stay in the warm safety of my wallet, like a creature that hibernates year-round. Still, for the country's sake, I'm making an effort, and if I win this contest at work I promised my brother I'd buy these. (They're on sale!)

That led to a conversation about how I don't understand the stock market and what's going to happen now:

Adam: no one does!
kalloo kalay!
literally no one knows
it's like if you were a caveman kindergartener and you said, "what time is it?" someone would hit you on the head with a wooden club and tell you not to ask stupid questions
because no one KNEW what time it was!

me: :-)
i like how they wouldn't have time yet but they would have kindergarten
cuz, of course

Adam: i think maybe kindergarten was all they had -- i mean, fingerpainting was the most advanced art form

me: the rules must have been totally different though
they were pro playing with fire

Adam: you could run with scissors but you had to invent them first

What Not To Say

Did you hear about this hilarious Republican congressman who compared to Obama to Hitler? Yeah, he wishes he hadn't done that:

Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a 'Marxist' and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

He also called Obama "liberal." Since Communists hated liberals, liberals hated Nazis, and Nazis hated Communists, in one breath, Broun has taken history and bent it into an infinity symbol. It would literally make more sense for me to compare Broun to Stalin because they are both from Georgia.

Sarah Palin has me shaking my head in mock-admiration, also:

"But not me personally were those cheers for," she said to Ms. Van Susteren in an interview shown Monday night on Fox News. "But it was just for the representation of a woman on the ticket, a mom, somebody who loves this country so much, somebody very, very committed to policies that I believe will progress this country in the right direction."

Dan Savage got a lesson in What Not To Say after he blamed blacks for the passing of Prop 8. Though they did come out en masse for Obama and, while there, pull the lever to ban gay marriage, King Nate Silver has absolved them of any kind of responsibility: there just aren't enough African-Americans in CA for them to have made a decisive difference. Savage on Colbert last night acknowledged this, shifting his ire to "old people," who, as he pointed out, "are dying, which is some comfort." Okay, Dan! You're getting there!

On the other side of this debate, there are the comments on this topic from The Root that draw from the word of God to give their opinions legitimacy:

just because we accept people for the color of their skin, which is actually something that the Bible teaches us to do, does not mean we should let two people of the same sex get married, which the Bible vividly prohibits. ... this country was founded on the principals of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and to confuse loving thy fellow man with telling him it's o.k. for him to marry another man is not what this country is supposed to be about.

and

Interracial marriage should have never been an issue but was an issue with this country but because of prejudice it was. God never condemned interracial marriage but does condemn same sex marriage. I just hope and pray that this country stands for what is right in the site of God. God defines marriage is between a man and a woman, not between two women or two men. When it comes to immoral issues it is wrong. Again interracial marriage is not a moral issues but gay marriage is. Let us understand that there is a difference between the two. If anyone having problem with that person is having a problem with God.

Again with the wrongness. Opponents of intermarriage absolutely thought -- and still think -- they had Jesus on their side. I mean, Deuteronomy, dude: Deuteronomy 7:3-4: 'You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son, for he will cause your child to turn away from after Me and they will worship the gods of others then the L–rd’s wrath will burn against you, and He will destroy you quickly.'

Of course, that's silly, cuz that Old Testament God is only talking to Jews there and the passage is specifically about religion, not race. He wanted a strictly limited gene pool for His chosen people, possibly because He wasn't paying attention in high school genetics class, and also because He's a jealous, overbearing God who likes to make rules. Whatevs.

The judge who ruled in the Loving case in 1958 also said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no case for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did intend for the races to mix."

Sure! And the fact that He gave us Barack Obama shows us that He knows the fabulous results mixing can have.

In short, this is all bullshit. Can't we just admit that the idea of Group X getting it on with Group Y squicks out Group Z, where Group Z is those who aren't in on the fun? Let's leave religion out of it.

Aftermath

Post-election, life feels strange. It lacks urgency, lacks tension. Part of me feels compelled to stake out bars near off-off-Broadway theaters to try to find some High Drama friends to help make up the difference.

Instead, I'm joining a Swarthmore alumni book group whose curriculum is set by a current prof. You know who could have been an alum but isn't? Barack Obama. True story! This both adds value to my degree and subtracts value from it, since I *was* accepted, but who could care about having been chosen by a place with such poor taste?

It does allow me to picture an alternate universe in which Obama is a Swattie, though. He graduates, as my friend Rebecca E. put it, full of "relentless criticism and liberal despair." He spends a summer working at an alternative camp for disadvantaged city children; this inspires him to join Teach for America, where he meets a cute fellow teacher, a Peruvian-American anarchist. They get married in West Philly, where they set up house and grow food in an urban garden. Every once in a while Barack feels a disembodied itch to be doing something more significant with his life, for which his wife chides him and then asks him to remember to stir the compost.

Of course, he still has holes in the bottoms of his shoes.

Speaking of High Drama types, poor Sarah Palin. Yeah, that's right. I have now argued with one brother and two parents about this, and I'll argue with you too if necessary. (At least Flea agrees with me.) Flinging anonymous shit at a person is WRONG, no matter how stupid and possibly evil that person is. Maybe it's true that Our Sarah didn't know what countries were in NAFTA or that Africa was a continent. Our President has a pretty iffy track record himself.

As I see it, McCain's people paired an ambitious, attractive, charismatic woman with an old man to draw audiences, using her the same way Winona Ryder, ScarJo, and Catherine Zeta-Jones have been used (mostly with the same meager results). They spruced her up to get her camera-ready and fed her already healthy ego by putting her in front of adoring crowds while keeping bad news -- and the press -- far from her.

When their plan backfired, thanks in no small part to Katie Couric and Tina Fey, the gentlemanly thing to do would have been to return her to Alaska and thank her for her service, not leak blind, spiteful quotes to a Fox news reporter. "Jerks" is a kind word for what these staffers are; they should dream of being hanged by their tongues and wake up screaming. Not that I wish them any harm.

The Liveblog That Wasn't

I was supposed to liveblog Election Night, the best night of my or anyone's life, and unfortunately I couldn't. Here, as a substitute, is a reconstruction -- a retroactive liveblog! -- of the events that prevented me from liveblogging. (I know. The internets are too amazing.)

6:45 AM: Mr. Ben and I wake up simultaneously, look at each other, and agree to run to the polls.

7:15 AM: We arrive at P.S. 282, check out all the people in front of us, and hope that waiting in line to vote is as patriotic as paying taxes.

8:00 AM: I pull the lever for Mr. Barack Obama.

8:01 AM: I realize I forgot to say a little prayer while inside the voting booth. Silently, I recite the sh'ma.

9:00 AM: Go to work.

9:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Read lots and lots of coverage. Begin feeling ill. Take a break from the computer; walk around the block. Return.

5:10 PM: Yup, definitely ill. Hide in the conference room where it's dark and cool.

5:30 PM: Still hiding. Chipper McCheerful keeps me company, saying reassuring things.

5:35 PM: Mr. Ben and Rebecca appear to say more reassuring things. We watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother -- I am gambling on the curative powers of Neil Patrick Harris.

6:00 PM: NPH has failed me. We decide to take a cab home.

6:05 PM: Hail a cab.

6:06 PM: Throw up in the cab.

6:07 PM: Sit on the Union Square curb next to a pile of my vomit looking at my stained suede boots. Mr. Ben runs to get cleaning supplies. People pass by and laugh, "Hey, look! That girl just threw up in the cab!" The driver shakes his head at me and mutters about drunks. Mentally I browse through low moments in my life to see where this one ranks.

6:30 PM - 11:00 PM: Shivering on the bathroom floor in green-tinted misery.

11:05 PM: Mr. Ben checks my phone, which has been receiving text after text. "We won," he tells me gently.

11:15 PM: I throw up one last time in celebration and finally go to sleep. All night, I dream of my stomach and Pennsylvania, which have somehow fused to become one anxiety-causing entity. I blame John McCain.

why my office is amazing

NEW CTO: What is this bullshit? This is bullshit!
ME: I'm so glad we have a straight talker in our office now.
NEW CTO: I'm sorry. I apologize. I know, the language, I know. Anyone offended, send me an anonymous email ... and I'll write back to say, "Go fuck yourself."
CHIPPER McCHEERFUL: All this swearing makes me antsy, but only because I'm such a square.

Man, this is so much better than [the Very Important Talent Agency I worked at for a year]. People there were cursing all the time but it was more along the lines of, "You know that girl? Yeah, I'd fuck that girl. You think she's pretty, or hot, or just attractive? Yeah, me too. Fuck. Yeah."

Or, my favorite, overheard through a closed door: "No, Mom, fuck YOU."

Also, two of the projects that I spearheaded for my current, less emotionally-abusive office are now online. Check out the .pdf that will entrance guidance counselors throughout this great land, whispering to them seductively about the glories of the site, and the Guide to Sinners and Saints 2008 which groups 42 colleges according to which deadly sins or heavenly virtues they represent. Also, it has llamas!

PS: This post was not about the election. Aren't you impressed?

PPS: The election is less than 24 hours away and it actually looks like the good guys might prevail for once. WHAT WILL THAT BE LIKE? Will sunshine grow on trees and water gurgle with diamonds? Will I be able to eat chocolate again? Will my older brother, who was born on Tuesday, November 4th, 1980, finally be revenged for having had to share his birthday with the election of Ronald Reagan?