I was watching Dr. Boyfriend try on pants in the Banana Republic dressing room last week
and in my boredom, decided to try on his glasses:
So what do you think? When I get my new pair of glasses (say, this weekend), should I get the exact same pair?
WOULDN’T WE BE TOO ADORABLE FOR WORDS?!
Kamran: I got salad, but I got too much.
1.5 lbs worth.
Defeats the healthy point a little.
me: Dang!
Kamran: I know, right?
me: Well, you’re a growing boy.
Kamran: Yea. I’m growing a strong gravitational field with all the mass I’m accumulating.
me: You keep pulling me into you.
Kamran: I got you in my orbit.
me: Along with a bunch of dust and metal.
Kamran: You’re my favorite orbital debris.
Things aren’t as joyous around here as I’m used to. I’m blaming the winter. I’m hoping it’s the winter.
On Saturday night, I went out for what was supposed to be a wild girls’ night involving all six of my closest NYC ladyfriends. One by one, though, they had to work or had delayed flights back from business trips or had to “pick something up in Brooklyn” (what?), so it ended up being just Emily, Sonya, and Jessica. We went to dinner at BonChon for chicken that is both “tasteful” and “nutritiously enriched”. I don’t know what either of those words mean, but it was a damned fine chicken wing they were serving. It was so weird, though–the place was on the second floor of an unmarked office building, yet it was crowded with greasy-fingered eaters. It’s funny how Asian people somehow convince white folk to sneak into secret rooms for designer knockoff purses and into elevators of seemingly empty offices for sesame-glazed drumsticks.
After not even finishing one plate of wings and rosemary French fries, we went to Karaoke Duet to sing our hearts out in a private room. Karaoke usually means Emily doing the humpty dance, Beth–the whitest person you know–somehow knowing all the words to every Kanye song, and me . . . okay, I always sing sad 90s songs. But this time, EVERYONE was singing sad 90s songs. We actually kept apologizing to each other for choosing them, but we couldn’t stop.
I stood up at one point to take a picture of the three of them leaning back against the mustard-colored vinyl couch, completely sullen, but as soon as they saw the camera, they all became totally fake-animated:
The really depressing part of the night was that karaoke had been half price before 8 p.m., so we’d gone to dinner at 4 to give ourselves plenty of time to sing for cheap. Which meant that we were finished hanging out at 8:30. Sonya went off to see crappy Asian movies with her boyfriend, Jessica went to meet up with her similarly-German friends to eat some weiner schnitzel or something (wait, is that Austrian?), and Emily came back to Kamran’s with me to gel her hair before a hot date. I had really wanted to go dancing, but when we got to Kamran’s and found him already in bed with his pajamas on, I lost all energy.
On Saturday, we watched Brick, which I didn’t know was a neo-noir when I added it to my Netflix queue. Despite hearing good things, we were both set to hate it and had pretty well succeeded after ten minutes, but once the story started making sense, we found ourselves warming up. Halfway through, I said, “I don’t hate watching this movie,” and he agreed. And then we ended up liking it. I don’t quite think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually needed to impersonate Humphrey Bogart during the last ten minutes for us to get that it was supposed to be a noir, but the interesting–sometimes annoying, but always interesting–wordplay throughout the film made us forgive that. Still, total bummer.
On Sunday, we watched the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence, and I pretty much cried the entire way through it. I thought it weird when we paused it so Kamran could go to the bathroom and I found myself lying down on his couch and leaking a couple of tears into his red satin pillows, but by the time an hour had passed, I was in full-on sob mode and had to ask Kam to stop staring at me so I could concentrate on not killing myself. It was seriously the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s what Revolutionary Road was trying to be and totally failed at. You don’t know who to blame for everything that happens in it, and you want to give all of the characters a Valium. We debated abandoning it with thirty minutes lef but decided we had to know what happened. When we finished, I said, “Let’s watch it again with commentary!”, and Kamran said, “I’m not watching that again. EVER.”
On Monday afternoon, my Internet randomly went down at work–only mine, mind you–and that’s when I found out that my laptop had 13 viruses and had been banned from the network by my IT guy. I spent two entire days without access to my photos, my music, and my smut. I don’t check my blog visitor count every ten seconds like I used to, I don’t have the motivation to write for Examiner.com, and I find myself unable to listen to anything but super-poppy songs like this:
On the bright side, what had better be the last snow of the season just passed, and soon it’ll be warm enough for me to wear the PINK SATIN COAT my sister bought me for Christmas:
This is the only thing keeping me going.
My best friend, Tracey, recommended a couple of weeks ago that I apply to write for Examiner.com as one of their restaurant reviewers. I was dismayed to find that they weren’t hiring any more food types, but they were looking for articles about public transportation, which I ride every day in the city where it’s most necessary.
I didn’t know if my stories about kneeing old men in the groin to make sure I get into a crowded train were what they were looking for, but I gave it a go, and they actually liked me. Here’s the article I posted today:
Every bus stop has its own special asshole, but I think mine should get a crown for his assholiness.
Whenever there’s someone running from the very end of the waiting line to be first at the bus’s door . . .
Whenever there’s someone racing to get a seat on the bench to ensure some old lady can’t . . .
Whenever there’s someone rushing from the bench to the edge of the sidewalk the second the bus comes into view . . .
It’s him.
I sort of feel sorry for him. He’s a nondescript man of a nondescript age in a city where being descript is the only way to not get lost in the throng. He cuts his hair not to be stylish but to be practical. He wears modern shoes but pairs them with pleated pants rolled up at the hem. He’s not thirty but not fifty, not attractive but not deformed.
It seems that his only goal in life is to get one of the single seats that lines the driver’s side of any bus. And it’s widely recognized that those single seats are where it’s at–you can let your love handles spill off the side without anyone complaining, and you don’t have to deal with anyone else’s love handles spilling all over you. I don’t hate him for liking that.
What I DO hate him for is being audible about his disgust for the rest of us during the ride. After living here for a few years, I’m used to crazy people talking to themselves about pills and Jesus and the white man keeping them down, but I’m not used to people groaning about
• how annoying being stopped at a red light is.
• how they wish the bus driver would hit pedestrians in the crosswalk.
• how disabled people shouldn’t be allowed on the bus because they take too long to board.
There’s more to life for me than sitting by myself, so being polite to those waiting for the bus with me is worth it even if it means missing out on a single seat. Sometimes my waiting gets rewarded, though, and I end up with a single seat, anyway. Like this morning, when I struggled on with a huge bag and was delighted to see that I could slide right into the second single seat back.
I didn’t notice, but the jerk behind me had his foot stuck way out into the aisle, so of course I accidentally stepped on it. I immediately turned around with a genuine, “I’m sorry!”, and who was it but The Guy. He said, “Oh, God,” in his most perturbed voice, so I said mockingly, “Oh, Jesus, sweet Lord, she stepped on my unfashionable shoes, and I simply don’t know how I’m going to make it through the day!”
I sort of expected him to pull my hair or flick my ear or something, but no such luck. He just sat quietly throughout the remainder of our time together and then checked out my rack when I got up at my stop.
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