on flirting. and being really, really, REALLY bad at it.

It is generally acknowledged that I am the world’s worst flirt.

The truth of this becoming increasingly real with each passing day.

(And age).

When I mentioned this to my good girlfriend Alisha, she cocked her head, smiled, and said, Yeah, we’ve known this for a while now. (And by we, she meant me and her and, I’m assuming, everyone else.)

I—I just, well, I thought that was just something we said.

Oh. Yeah, no. No, we were being serious, she responded, chuckling as she sucked down a bit of frozen margarita through a straw.

A guy at work—a lovely man with a wife and two kids and a keen sense of honesty, recently said to me—Oh, you’re that girl who, when you like a guy, has got the car in reverse.

Which is about as true a thing as anyone has ever said to me.

Flirting in reverse. My particular specialty. (And also what is sure to be the title of my first book of essays, so don’t anyone take it. I’m claiming the title here and now, on this, the 30^th day of May in the year 2014).

What is so tremendously frustrating is that I am not without skill. I know what to do and how to do it, but only—and this is key—when nothing is at stake.

Because in front of a man with light eyes and superbly fitting pants (oh, the pants)—the composition of his face such that it’s hard to look at, and harder not to, I am inept. Befuddled. Bumbling and wordless.

I am eight years old, wide-eyed, and mute.

And occasionally mean.

Very often mean. Unfriendly, unkind, and un and un and un.

And, the thing is, none of these things is an appropriate response when a man flips your stomach. Because life is hard enough—for all of us—without assholes like myself giving all the wrong cues, to all the wrong people, at all the wrong times.

I have spent my entire adult life living and dating in New York City.

Which is a fate I would wish on no one.

This city is ruthless in so many ways. And love and dating are no exception—the rules of both being unwieldy and unclear and mostly capricious.

(Or so I thought).

Sitting in Tom’s office recently, I was detailing the many, many ways in which I manage to flirt-in-reverse, which is to say act-as-unfriendly-as-possible-to-the-men-I-am-attracted-to/sometimes-act-unfriendly-and-sometimes-not-which-may-actually-be-worse-because-it-is-confusing-and-unfair-and-has-everything-to-do-with-those-crazy-making-things-known-as-MIXED-SIGNALS!!

So there I am, sitting in Tom’s office, lamenting how unfriendly I am (because come on, I’m a puddle around a handsome man) and he looks me squarely in the face, So what you’re saying is, the only guys who end up approaching you are the one’s who disregard your signals entirely.

Oh, oh, OH—those are so not the guys I want!

And Tom looked at me, half-smiling, You think?

Because all I really want—what I imagine what so many of us really want—is to feel like I am both seen and heard.

Because, well, that is a big fucking deal—THE DEAL, maybe.

Over the years I’ve dated a few different guys—a strange sampling of the population. Varying religions, careers, upbringings. And because they were so seemingly disparate I couldn’t understand how time would invariably, unfailingly, INFURIATINGLY reveal how very much the same they all were.

So many different shades of…not-good.

And then Tom went and pointed out something so obvious as signals and a person’s response to them! And I found out I was the problem—which is THE BEST sort of news.

(This is why Tom gets the big bucks).

You see, I was, without realizing it, weeding out anyone who might actually be worth my time.

(Easy fix).

And this is how we shoulder the universe forward two inches: easy fixes and small leaps and little bit of courage.

Except that it wasn’t such an easy fix. Mostly because I’m a deeply fearful person and the notion of that first big bridge—that moment, or collection of moments when a person you like actually sees that you like them—well on the other side of that bridge is either crazy good things or…Dum dum DUM…rejection.

And I am not so great at rejection. (I know, I know).

And so I’m sitting there, hashing it out with Tom and bumbling on about how I’m scared and if I’m still so scared after all this time, and all this experience, is it because I’m not actually that keen on myself?

Because, well, I thought I’d gotten to the point where I was pretty okay with myself. And, shoot, are the miles betwixt here and there so innumerable?

And Tom, in typical Tom fashion says to me, I don’t think it’s as complicated as you’re making it. Any feedback you’ve received in the past is inherently distorted because you weren’t putting in any input—or at least, any appropriate input.

Which I gotta tell you, feels so rational and so right, that it might just be the game-changer I was waiting for (without knowing I was waiting for it).

There’s such a thing as a feedback loop and it has to be fed.

Which brings to mind a certain Noah and the Whale lyric: But if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

If you give.

If, then. Causation.

Sometimes things take effort. Sometimes, smiling or speaking up is an uncomfortable jaunt up a very steep hill. Sometimes what comes so naturally to some, doesn’t come so naturally to others.

But finding out that we are the problem is so incredibly good—so incredibly empowering.

It is the beginning of a totally different ever-after. Or rather, the beginning of a totally different pursuit.

The ever-after will take care of itself.

memorial day weekend + the importance of a good costume

My flight to Virginia was canceled on a Friday night. No explanation. Just a small email.

And then a thunderstorm rolled through New York and I found myself zigzagging through the streets of SoHo, absolutely drenched, ducking every time the sky lit up, and laughing all the while (totally relieved I wasn't in a small plane moving through those clouds).

The funny thing about a really big storm in a place like New York is that suddenly people actually look at each other. And smile. It's amazing--nothing like shared experience to bring people together.

I am a person who laughs in the rain. Which I'd sort of forgotten. But hell if Friday night didn't remind me. You see, I've been mired lately in a bit of not-good-enough, not-smart-enough, not-going-anywhere muck and it was good to be reminded that yes, in fact, I like to get a little wet. I like the zigzag and the adventure and the inconvenience of a good rain storm.

I often think of Dr. Maya Angelou's very good and very simple words: I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Well this weekend, holed up in the mountains of central Virginia, I thought of something I'd like to add to that list: what a person does with a costume closet.

Because, for myself,  I'll take the people who dress up--who dress up with flare and gusto and absolute abandon. The people who ask no questions, who turn on their heels and ascend two flights of steps, and piece together a costume with a nod to the absurd.

Life is short. But one of the great blessings of this very short life is that we have the ability to choose the people we sit around a dinner table with. And I couldn't be more grateful that the people I know are willing to sit around said table, after a very long (very hot) day, wearing ridiculous hats and dresses and Civil War jackets.

There are things to be learned from thunderstorms. Things to be learned from missed flights and day-late- drives in oversized pick-up trucks. From mountain views and frigid swimming pools.

And from costume closets. Where the best of us is hidden, and then found.

details

photo.

I mostly have a nearly impossible time imagining the future. Like big-picture-future.

But then I think about all the nights still to come that’ll see me don my gold-glitter heels and stay out way too late.

And I think of the Sunday mornings when, in nothing more than an over-sized t-shirt, I’ll read the Times and attempt the crossword and drink three lattes in a row.

I think of late evening strolls in those deep summer months when the city is quiet and the only respite from the heat comes hours after sunset.

I think of the times I’ll wear a bikini for reasons having nothing to do with how I look in it.

And of bike rides and rich meals and mornings that’ll tangle sheets. Tuesday nights and too many margaritas and Wednesday mornings paying the price.

I think of long glances--their genesis being, as of yet, unknown. (Maybe).

And I think of the small leaps that bring two people together—held-hands and fumbled language.

I think of the many collared shirts yet to be unbuttoned.

The discussions and the fights. The words you give to a person and the worlds you let them in on.

I think of the vibration—the frequency— of a child’s laughter and how that’s maybe the only answer I’ll ever need.

And how the rest will sort itself out. Big picture brought into focus by the mess and blessing of mostly ordinary and nearly perfect details.

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home, home, home, home, home

The very first thing I hung in my new apartment was the Dear Sugar poster. At the head of my bed. Just above where I lie my head each night.

“Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

“Every last one of us can do better than give up.”

“The fuck is your life. Answer it. “

I moved from Brooklyn back into Manhattan. Into a tiny two bedroom apartment in a tangle of streets in the heart of Greenwich Village.

After so many apartments over so many years I worry about little more than light and noise. So on a breezy day in mid-April when Lauren and I walked up the one flight of stairs at the back of the building and into a tiny apartment with large windows and quite a lot of quiet we both knew it would do just fine.

And so a few weeks later, when my new space was little more than boxes and a bed, I pulled out a single nail and hung that Dear Sugar poster above my bed, knowing immediately, that it would live there alone.

I went back to Ms. Strayed’s book, Tiny Beautiful Things, a few days ago. I was in search of a very particular essay right at the start of the book.

“My mother’s last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love. “

How often I think of these words. And the clank of my very own iron bell: home, home, home, home, home.

Love by another name.

Time keeps hurtling forward—somersaulting over itself.

And because it does, and because we cannot change this, we must move, at the same time, in the direction of our choosing—into the thick woods of what has meaning for us. Which is very often a dark and treacherous and tangled place. Where roots grow sideways out of soil and it’s a steep and slippery slope to the waters below.

The notion of home clangs around in my body, banging me up a bit. Mostly because it’s an ever-moving target that resists my desperate efforts to wrangle it into stillness.

Home is not today what it was the day before, nor what it will be tomorrow.

And I am caught in the thick underbrush of discovery.

Which, is as it turns out, a prickly place to live.

But the soil here is thick and rich and awfully fertile.

When I moved across the East River I said I’d never move back—if I could help it, I wouldn’t move back.

But sometime, in the space of those two years, the clanging of home changed.

And suddenly home became shorter subway rides and lower rents and the awareness that this phase of my life is ephemeral at best. And so instead of trying to change that, I’d dive into it. Accept that the beauty was in the impermanence. And that perhaps moving back to Manhattan would be the beginning of a long and sweet goodbye.

And that, maybe, in order to move on, I’d first need to live here in a way I never before had. Which is to say, right in the middle of everything.

Brooklyn was so good to me. The backdrop to such a magical, and deeply personal time—belonging only to me. Already it feels half-imagined. I fear I maybe found it too soon.

But I’m quite sure I had to leap-frog to a phase of my life that saw me living so totally alone, and in a place so different than Manhattan, in order to return to where I am now: still quite young, still with a bit of fight, growing roots into the air.

Still searching for the meaning of home. Still reaching for the brass ring on the moving carousel.

Not where I thought I’d be. But where I am. Nonetheless.

Home, home, home, home, home. Love, love, love, love, love.

There’s a large windowsill just next to my bed. I’ve placed five small succulents there.

I’d move back to the city and I’d get plants--that was the deal I made with myself.

I had meant to get them way back when I lived in Washington Heights.

Was absolutely sure I’d get them upon moving to Brooklyn.

But somehow I never managed to.

Until now.

Ten tiny succulents in all.

Ten succulents, and me absolutely terrified I will kill each. and every. one. of. them.

Lauren has told me to stop touching them.

But I fuss. Because each one is helping, in its own small way, to answer the hanging question of home—and what it is now... and what it will be tomorrow.

When my father came to visit last weekend he asked where I would write. The apartment is small--there's not room enough for my desk. Currently I've tucked the pieces of it away beneath my bed.

Tom had asked the same question.

I don't know yet, was all I could think to say.

But here I am writing, cross-legged on my bed, looking up toward two frames with a split photo of a building in Paris.

Two photos I didn't take. Because I have yet to go to Paris.

But two photos as a window to what comes next, I like to think.

Which seems like the perfect place from which to write.

A view of home and love and its many iterations--both present and future.

I can’t wait to get to Paris.

And yet, I can. And that is now an immutable truth in my life.

Paris will wait.

For the right person. For the right time.

It too is a question in search of an answer.

And the thing is, I’m okay with the questions.  And I’m okay with the slow unfolding of answers.

I’m okay with waiting for something better—moving towards something better. For the refusal to accept anything less. And I won’t apologize for the trajectory of my life. For my many mistakes and missteps. For spending so much time in the thick woods of discovery.

Because home is the pulsing belief that there is still more to unearth. And love is the iron bell of my own heart.

And the gold ring is just an inch beyond my fingertips.

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on forgetting

 

I had nearly forgotten what it was  to feel beautiful. I knew when last it happened. It was a night early in December, looking at a man who months earlier when I saw for the first time I had but one thought, Well, fuck. Because he was handsome in that way that buckles the knees--that way that feels perpetually just-beyond-reach. No one should be that good looking. And I was dating a man who became less and less attractive each time we met. A man who in the following months would break up with me twice and then invite me to Paris only to leave me at the airport. A man who never wanted to see me naked. And I became so angry. Not with him. It wasn't really about him, he  just happened to be driving the story in a very particular way. It was that I didn’t walk away sooner. That I didn’t say no to Paris. That I didn’t say hey, you, not.good.enough.

I should have said it on so many occasions.

Because he was not good.enough.for.me.

I can’t quite forgive myself the experience of him.

Did he not think me beautiful, I would wonder. When really the question was, did he not think me worthy?

And frankly, who gives a fuck if some so-not-worth-it-guy thinks me worthy or not?

But these are the questions. And because worth is a really, really heavy question and really, really hard struggle—until of course it becomes the lightest, best thing in the world (but that takes time and I'm not there yet)—but because worth is at the heart of what-this-here-life-is-all-about and thus LARGE AND TERRIFTYING I ask instead about beauty.

Did he not think me beautiful?

Am I not beautiful?

And I began to answer that question outside of myself, searching the eyes of men everywhere—at work, on the subway, in restaurants, in past-lovers. I began to cobble together an image of what I looked like based entirely off of what I read in the eyes of mostly strangers.

Which. Let me be frank. Is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea.

Because it meant the image of myself was distorted and inverted and tenuous and totally turned-around because 1. what the hell do I know about what any man sees when he looks at me and 2. what the hell do I/should I care?

I always get a little riled up when people give me a hard time for writing about the fact that I think life is hard. Because, I do, I do think LIFE IS HARD (and what rock are they living under that they think it isn’t? or maybe they're just more skilled at it all; that's a very real possibility).

But I have never once said that I don’t think it’s worth it.

IT IS SO WORTH IT. And worth it precisely because it is so hard.

Which means you have to keep showing up. (and sometimes--very often, actually--I forget this).

You have to constantly rush headlong at the things that scare you most. Which means you have to take risk after ever-loving risk. And you have to remember that the reward is in the leap itself, not in what comes of it. Because when you take risks you add value to your life. Or when you ask for what you need and what you want—no matter how hard or painful OR TERRIFYING it may be—you learn about your worth, about your extraordinary value (damn if Tom isn’t always right).

It’s about movement. It’s about constant movement.

I had forgotten. I had really, really forgotten.

I had forgotten that I have the ability to forgive myself. I 've been so busy walking around with clouded eyes worrying about my value and beauty that I forgot that I get to forgive myself. For worrying about those things which are so not the point. For all those so-not-worth-it-guys. And for all those moments I’ve been so-not-worth-it myself. And I’d forgotten that I have a pair of polka-dotted pants that feel incredible to put on. Which is so stupid, I know. And yet, IT’S  NOT—it’s a thing. A REALLY, REALLY BIG THING. Because for more time than I care to admit I couldn’t bear to wear pants, couldn’t bear to exist in my own body. And now I can. And I do. And so yeah, I have a pair of polka-dotted pants that on a cool April night I wore out into this city that I don't often like, but occasionally do and how did I forget that? That it’s occasionally really okay. And I had forgotten that for the past few years now I have been lucky enough to live in a small studio apartment that, though way too expensive, is in a neighborhood that is almost entirely magic. Forgotten that, every night, someone in this city is making music. Good, sweet, redemptive music and that I have a body to feel it.

I think you have to live life really hard, but with great levity. You have to be okay with clomping around and making a bit of noise and doing it all totally gracelessly. And when you go down really hard you have to figure out how to get up lighter than you were before. Levity and will and strength. I’m not particularly good at any of this. I’m still working on it.

I will never know what I look like. Reading my image in other people’s face, or in the mirror, or reflected back by a camera, I will never actually see what other people see when they look at me. Which is something my mind has a hard time sitting with it. Until I back up a bit and recognize that it’s part of a divine humor and yes, actually, it is a bit funny.

I felt really beautiful riding the train to work the other day. And then I thought, well, that really doesn’t matter does it? And not in a fatalist way, but in that way that’s like well, I lost six years of my life to an eating disorder and enough of that--it really doesn’t matter. And then I thought about it a bit more and I thought, well actually, yes, it does matter. But it matters because I feel valuable.

When I feel beautiful, I feel valuable. How's that for a simple, pretty perfect equation?

Worth is the point. Always, always, always. And maybe I’m supposed to be better at all this by now, but I’m still learning and I’m okay with that.

I am really, really, REALLY okay with that. In this moment, at least. Tomorrow, who knows...

photos by Jason Baker