That's My Bix!

In another lifetime, I might be calling myself a New Yorker right this minute. At 18, the plan was to get through college and move to NYC and work for a magazine or something in publishing. Something. Anything. I loved New York and it was, I had decided, where I belonged. And then I met Esteban and there was an engagement ring on my finger by the time I graduated college. And so it goes.

Countless trips between now and the last time I was here have shown me that La Guardia is a subway station rather than an airport. It makes O’Hell look like a bastion of comfort and convenience. Outside of security, a cockroach is demanding to know why the TSA won’t let it go through with a loaded .38 and a bottle of tequila corked with a tampon.

In the time it takes to cross the TriBurrough bridge and traverse the FDR, my cabbie has given me a weather update, a Must See List and given a few of his tried and true remedies for my gravelly sore throat. His name is Miklos and he has been a New Yorker since 1968 and he tells me that I am going to have a wonderful time. My hotel is across the street from Radio City, across the street from a giant crystal star, across the street from the most famous Christmas tree in the country and across the street from every tourist that ever was. I check into my hotel and am disappointed to learn that there are no upgrades available, or rather, there are upgrades available, but they are ridiculous and I’d rather use the money for souvenirs. I mean, for buying clothes. Except that I really mean that I want to spend it all on vodka. And maybe boys.

My mystery illness is still kicking my ass but I pretend that it isn’t. It’s all about a fantasy existence in NYC anyway, so why not pretend that I’m healthy and rich and maybe thin enough to be a Sex and the City girl. Charlotte, at very least.

I unpack and nest my new pink suitcases, not out of any kind of unusual fastidiousness but because there will be no walking in the non-upgraded room if I don’t stow them between the bed and the wall. I go out and catch a cab to Chinatown, where I walk around and chat on the phone with Jake, who is a few hours from jumping his own jet pointed at Gotham. I am still feeling too sick to really enjoy myself while walking around, but I do stop at a little restaurant and order some of my favorite things in all the world: steamed pork buns. Steamed pork buns are probably the only reason I haven’t eschewed red meat all together. And also bacon. And also proscuitto. And I should probably stop deluding myself about this wanna be vegetarian thing, non?

I head over to Century 21, which is supposedly the place for bargain shopping. Except that walking in brings about the worst Day After Thanksgiving shopping anxiety attack ever. I did a circuit around the store, through the purse aisle and barely made it out alive, or without kicking someone in the groin. And the prices weren’t even that good. TJ Maxx has better deals, sadly enough. Totally not worth it. Maybe if I had been in more of a shopping mood, but the pretending health thing wasn’t really working out.

I stopped by Kymm’s day job and we chatted for about an hour until she had to go teach folks how to do accents. Back in Tourist Central, I get accosted by a Krishna, who makes strange and unusual comments, complimenting me on my outfit (all black, pretty nondistinct) and calling me a pretty brunette and then asking if I wanted a spanking. What the hell, Krishna? Maybe the idea is to be so off-putting that you shock people into giving you money for your cause. It works because I give him money just to have an exit for the situation. I eat dinner in a darkened restaurant, a glass of wine that I can barely taste through my stuffedness, and then go back to the hotel and stand under a cold shower until I stop feeling feverish and my core temperature gets back into the double digits, then pass out in bed for strange dreams punctuated by the rushing sound the air makes whooshing through buildings when you’re twenty-two stories up.

In the early hours, the phone wakes me. The eagle, it seems, in the form of Jake, has landed. He can’t get into his room yet, so he stops at my wee little cubby and then we go out for coffee under Rockefeller. The skating rink is glossy from the early morning Zamboni, and the air is warm, unseasonably warm, crazy Atlantic weather pattern warm. I am already sweating in my wool sweater and thick tights. We head over to Central Park, for the one thing I want to do at all, which is take a carriage ride in Central Park. Only, instead of being crisp and sparkly, with hints of snowflakes and frosty clouds of horse breath, it is muggy and looks a bit like rain. There are tiny fruit flies waking up, buzzing around. We both feel robbed for our January in New York experience, robbed of stories about freezing to death while walking from store to store, robbed of the comfort in a good hot cup of Starbucks mocha, robbed, I tell you, we was robbed.

Just the same, it’s sort of delightful, the carriage ride. Our driver is Irish and points out movie shoot locations like a pro. After our semi-muggy buggy ride, we go to the Cooper-Hewitt and spend a lovely morning looking at eye candy. Then we hit midtown again to follow the example of our literary forefathers and have a very witty and somewhat drunken lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. The lighting in the Algonquin is fantastic. Time has stood still. Also, people were shorter during Prohibition because the couches are all very low. I suppose the better to fall off of them. After a very dangerous episode with a wasabi pea, we settle into our own little round table and have a yummy lunch of sandwiches and pommes frites and also, more vodka. The menu items are a bit annoying, though, Dorothy Parker this and that.I doubt Dot would have appreciated having a burger named after her, to tell the truth. In fact, I wish she were around because I’d love to hear what she’d have say about it. Our waiter is from Turkey and starts to reminisce, misting about farms and homeland and for a second, it seems as though we have walked onto the set of a movie, because he’s straight out of central casting. We both are at a loss as to what to say when his eyes glaze and he is just nodding and thinking about his motherland, but luckily we are saved by the head waiter and can make our escape.

We shop for a bit, but then the vodka wears off and my fever overtakes me and I realize that if I’m going to be any good for the evening’s reading, I must send Jake off into the city on his own so that I can take another cool shower and maybe a nap. Which I do. And it is good.

The nice thing about being sick, as I mentioned earlier, is that I was saved from any impending anxiety attacks. Saved, that is, until the moment I needed to get dressed for the reading and then suddenly, it was all very real and very now and holy shit, hyperventilating, except that my chest is congested and hyperventilating makes me cough and holy shit, I have nothing to wear. Everything is too sexy or too warm. Everything. I ended up with black trousers and a black sweater that really was both warm and sexy but whatever. Gah.

I sort it out and then we are off to the Village, where we find the place and it is tiny and at the end of a very steep staircase and also, it is hot, holy shit, it is so hot. I collapse into the corner of the bar and pretend to be witty, talking with the other writers and the editor of the lit journal and man, totally failed because in my head, I am screaming “OH MY GOD! I am such a PHONY! I write nothing! Ever! I suck! Jesus christ, I’m about to stand up and read what is essentially CHICK LIT! Run away! Flee! Must flee!” Except that I don’t. I just go into a mental fugue state as the place filled up and then there are no more seats and then it is even more filled up and oh my god oh my god oh my god there’s no escape even if I tried. Fuck.

Kymm and Sasha arrive and stand mid-way into the bar, as it was as far as they can get, but luckily, I’m opening the second half of the reading and there is room next to us in the corner of the bar. They crawl back to us and then the editor signals me and I crawl out of the corner and then he reads my silly bio and then I read my story, trying not to be too ready and too acty but also trying not to go too fast and be too apologetic and I fumble over my favorite bit in the whole story and then get so mad at myself that I fumble five times in the very next sentence and then, then it is done.

After that, we walk around the Village, chasing the smell I could smell while I was reading, a smell wafting into the third floor window, a smell that smelled a bit like garlic and maybe also Brazil, a hungry kind of smell. But at street level, we cannot locate the smell, and decide that it must have been a lovely smell from a resident’s window, someone on the fourth floor, perhaps, or higher even still. Fucking resident. We end up at someplace called Moonstruck, where it is eight million degrees, but they make a mighty fine meatloaf. We have a lovely dinner, the four of us, and discuss the worst bathrooms we’ve ever used (the bar had one doozy of a bathroom) and also the best ones and whether or not it’s reasonable to switch teams every ten years or so and it seems unfair that we can only hang out together this one night. Kymm is always full of a million stories and when I hang out with Sasha, I always feel a bit as though I’ve just encountered an angel, as she’s ethereal and perfect and gorgeous and also wears fucking awesome shoes. But it had gotten very late, so finally we jumped into a cab and dropped Kymm at Grand Central and dropped Sasha at her hotel and then we went back to our hotel and cashed it in for the night well before midnight: Jake because he had taken a redeye and had had very little sleep and me because my cold medication was wearing off. We are boring. But judging by the next day, it’s a good thing we conserved our energy. More soon.