Category Archives: true story

You Can’t Do This with a Kindle — A Tale of Love and Books

book reviews, true story, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Back in the early 1990’s, I met Craig at the Samaritans — a suicide hotline. He was a trainer and I was a volunteer.

Sometimes on Friday nights, a group of us Sams would go bowling at University Lanes in Greenwich Village which is still there but it’s now the very retro-trendy, Bowl- Mor.  Back then it was a normal bowling alley and could have been anywhere. Then we’d go to the Old Town Tavern, the one that used to be featured in the opening credits of David Letterman’ s show back when it was on NBC.

I liked Craig, and thought that maybe he kind of liked me, but he never asked me out. Then he was going to go on vacation, and I was determined that when he came back I would make my move and finally suggest that we — just the two of us — do something together.

Only when he came back it was too late. Something was now going on between him and another Sam-gal recently separated with whom he’d had a longstanding friendship.

Suicide hotlines — hotbeds of romance and intrigue. Who knew? (Years later I worked at the Crisis Clinic in Seattle,which brought more people together than E-Harmony.)

I let it go. I became good friends with both Craig and his girlfriend.

Two years later I finished grad school and  got my first social work job in Burlington, Vermont. I wanted to start fresh and was getting rid of most of the stuff in my little apartment in pre-gentrified Williamsburg. (You want to know details don’t you? Bedford between North 11th and North 12th, $250 a month when I moved in, and the neighbors thought I was being ripped off. Probably now ten times what I was paying then.)

The place was crammed with books. I would regularly shop at Strand Books where it was easy to find everything in the 5 for $2 or 48 cent each bins, so there were just too many to move. I decided to have an ongoing book sale. These were the days before Craigslist and Facebook, so I just told my friends and they told their friends and people would call me and come over and leave with boxes of books for which I might get $5 or $10.

Craig was one of those people. Because he was a good friend, I allowed him to take some of my favorites, books I was pleased he’d chosen and wanted him to read.  But I confess it was hard to let some of them go. His take included: Gissing’s New Grub Street, Peter S. Beagle’s supernatural tale A Fine and Private Place, a Flannery O’Connor collection as well as one of Grace Paley’s, a couple of novels by Anita Brookner, La Batarde by Valerie Leduc (which I never actually read but was supposed to have for a class), A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin, Up the Junction by Nell Dunn, and several more.

Cut to about sixteen, seventeen years later. Coming on Christmas 2003. Craig is between girlfriends and I haven’t had a date in years.

We are at a Pisticci’s, an Italian place up in Morningside Heights where, having returned to New York in 2001, I now live.

Craig starts talking about his dating issues. I interrupt and say, “Have you ever thought about dating me?”

It wasn’t spontaneous. I’d been thinking about broaching the subject for weeks, months, possibly years.

There’s a stunned silence that feels very, very long and finally he admits that it had crossed his mind.

In 2007, I finally told him that I really, really wanted to quit my job and while I believed I could afford to be unemployed for a bit and would find something, I couldn’t afford it paying my full monthly apartment maintenance and COBRA (health benefits). He agreed we should marry. We ran off to Niagara Falls to do the deed. It was another month to unpaper-train and properly housebreak his dog (Yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks). And then he finally moved in.

We bought a few things together — night tables and dressers from Ikea. He gave all his furniture away and some of his many books were donated to a local church. He still brought box loads to what is now our apartment. These included — Gissing’s New Grub Street, a Flannery O’Connor collection, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place, Grace Paley’s Little Disturbances of Man, a couple of novels by Anita Brookner, La Batarde by Valerie Leduc, A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin and Up the Junction by Nell Dunn which I’m just starting to re-read.

Helluva Town! Why Do People Think It’s Ok to Put Down New York?

Politics and Culture, Travel Blog, true story, , ,

Last September my better half and I were visiting Seattle. We were staying at a friendly B&B on Capital Hill where breakfast was served at a big table and all the guests could chat. One morning there was a couple across from us. She was from Sydney. He was a hometown boy, Seattle born and raised, who’d met her on a trip down under. Naturally they asked where we were from.

“New York,” said my better half.

“New York City?” Seattle replied.

We nodded.

“Come here for better life?” he asked without blinking.

Granted, Seattleites are known for a kind of  whacky boosterism completely out of proportion to their town’s place in the universe, but still. What’s up? This was not the first, or last time we heard someone casually put down our home. Why do people feel it’s perfectly ok to disrespect New York even when talking to New Yorkers? . I’ve traveled to some pretty awful places, but I’ve never said to a native, “Wow. It must suck being from here.”

Maybe it’s a popular culture thing.  Even people under fifty are somehow channeling the ghost of Kitty Genovese and the memory of the ungovernable years, but there’s something bizarre about otherwise polite folks from places that pride themselves on “friendliness” saying vile things about a city, things they’d never say about a race, or a nationality — at least not in public and to a person of that race or nationality.

Most of the gibes are complaints about crime and dirt, and of course our legendary rudeness.

New York is cleaner than many US cities, even smaller ones. It may not be Singapore but most people pick up after their dogs. It’s one of the safest urban areas in the world. It has by far the best mass transit in the US, not to mention museums, restaurants and ethnic neighborhoods that make you feel like a world traveler for the price of a metro-card.

There’s an incredible amount of parkland as well. Not just the massive Central Park but old growth forest in Inwood — Manhattan’s northern tip. You can see ospreys nesting in Jamaica Bay. My local dog walk involves a stop at the duck pond, and if we’re very lucky a sighting of the wild turkey of Morningside Park.

Mostly I love my city because there are still are neighborhoods here, distinct enclaves, filled with distinct types, and  despite the encroachment of Starbucks and the like,  independent coffee shops and even bookstores continue to exist. Unlike most small towns in America, you can go to the neighborhood hardware store and ask the owner for what you need instead of driving to Ye Ol” Mega Superstore twenty miles away.

The people, despite their reputation, are friendly and talkative. Always have been, even before 9/11. Conversation breaks out on buses and movie lines. When a tourist takes out a map, a crowd gathers to debate the best directions and where to go. Eccentricity is not just accepted, it’s expected.  We’re not rude to strangers, even those who describe “ground zero” as a must see destination and don’t realize it’s an open wound in our collective heart.

So if you’ve never been, please stop by, but leave the attitude home.

Good Advice

Politics and Culture, true story, , ,

On a social networking site that I still to my detriment visit, a friend posed a question on a thread: What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Here are two:

I. I went to an alternative public high school. The school was located in an old rectory next to a church. We didn’t have a certificate of occupancy for the church, which was almost gutted. There were a couple of doors leading there from the rectory that for some strange reason (maybe having to do with fire laws) weren’t locked. Kids being kids, and this being back in the late 70’s, we’d often sneak in and do certain things.

One day, the head of the school called a community meeting. Normally very mild-mannered, Fred seemed angry. He told us he had been leading a tour with government officials and funders from the Ford Foundation and was showing them the church when he found “THIS”. He pulled a nickel bag of pot out of his pocket and held it up. Fortunately, he’d grabbed it before they saw it. He reminded us that this was not the impression he wanted the public to have of our school, and then instead of lecturing us about the perils of the evil weed, he simply said, “Discretion, people! Discretion!”

II. Years ago after a bad breakup, I found myself in a state of constant sorrow. This was before just any GP would give you SSRIs. I was living and working as a clinician in a small city and knew most of the real shrinks professionally and didn’t feel safe seeing them. So I went to see a homeopathic psychiatrist. She was an MD who’d left that life, and believed in alternative methods. She told me to give up coffee and handed me a pill.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a salt.” she said.

“A salt? Like lithium?”

“No, like sodium chloride. Table salt. Lot’s wife. Don’t look back.”