Nil by Mouth

For A Long Time I Used To Write A Blog

It’s official. The blog/journal/etc is going on sabbatical. Possibly, likely, it will turn into early retirement. I just haven’t had it in me to do much here anymore. It’s easy to to blame it on the recently acquired fulltime writing gig, but really I haven’t been that involved in it for awhile now.

I’m keeping the archives up. And the whole thing will stay in tact since I don’t have the heart to redesign it as a closed book or whatever. It’s, like, embalmed. For her pleasure.

Meanwhile, the new home page. Meanwhile I’ll be writing here. Meanwhile I’ll be accepting freelance writing and web work. Meanwhile the nyc summer marches on. Meanwhile I’ll be cleaning my kitchen.

• Aug 8
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The Scoop

Well folks - things are gonna change around here. In a big way. Now when I say “around here” I mean, around my life. I’ve been offered a full-time reporting gig with the Queens Chronicle. I haven’t officially worked out the details yet. The details being quitting my new freelance gig with the fancy schmancy agency, getting the cheapest car ever, and saying yes. But I’m pretty much a zillion percent sure i’m gonna take it. The salary is 24K a year, the lowest I’ve ever been paid in New York City. And obviously this ain’t much to live on anywhere in the USA, but in NYC I’m pretty much joining the ranks of the working poor. In this way I suppose I won’t be a patronizing liberal when I vote for the Kerry/Edwards ticket and hope to god they raise the income on food stamp eligibility.

What this means for the website I’m not sure. I may be writing so much (since it will be my job - WOOHOO) that I won’t have anything left for Nil By Mouth, or maybe I’ll write tons here since I’ll be in the grove. Who’s to say, really. What is for sure is that the party’s over. Tonight I had a sushi dinner which will likely be my last for quite awhile. There will be no more expensive shoes, or shoes of any kind. My pick-me-ups at the Apple store are absolutely finito. And I will not turn on the AC which i finally installed, ever.

I will brew my own coffee, and never buy it on the street. I will not get jolly ranchers and/or a Ritter Sport when I’m a foul mood. I will think of things I can sell on eBay. I will take on any and all freelance web work you might have in the evenings. I might babysit for extra cash. If I ever decide to go out to eat because my friends make me I will order an appetizer and drink tap water. I will go to the library, and not Barnes & Noble for reading materials. I may cancel my land line. I will take good care of all the things I currently own, because I will not buy new things to replace them. I will diligently look for a real boyfriend so he can move in and split the rent and utilities. And I will never ever take a cab again.

So that’s the story. I’m alternately thrilled and terrified. But here’s to suffering for our dreams. Yes?

• Jul 7
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Mix Up at the Coffee Cart

Yesterday I wore my first ant-war T-shirt of the season. It’s a drawing of soldier smoking a cigarette with some lyrics from Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” in graffiti next to him. Then there’s a red circle with “War/Peace” knocked out in white. The most obvious thing is that red decal and the words “Baghdad”. Now I can’t explain exactly how this t-shirt is anti-war or how that Outkast song is anti-war, but I’m almost a thousand percent sure that it is.

Outside the new office I ordered my small black coffee no sugar, one glazed donut from my usual coffee cart guy. It’s only been about three weeks, but the coffee cart guy and I are pals. You all know how it is. The coffee cart relationship is a treasured and delicate one. He knows what you want. Sometimes he jokes around. You nod in a daze cuz it’s early and you’d rather be in bed. It’s like the last stop of freedom before the claws of office work.

I remember one really great coffee cart guy who one day told me he was moving 5 blocks away. I was sad. Five blocks out of the way is too far for a coffee cart. We both knew that, and wished each other the best. Maybe we’d meet again, but most likely not. I have a friend who told a sad story about a souped up coffee cart that sat outside his office on blocks for a whole year, until one day without warning it was gone. There was just a pale rectangle where morning comfort used to be.

So I was wearing my anti-war-but-I’m-not-sure-how t-shirt. And my coffee cart guy peered over the little counter, “Does it say Baghdad on your shirt.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I pulled open my sweatshirt so he could see better.

“Bombs over Baghdad,” he read slowly. “Oh, that makes me sad.”

I asked him if he was from Baghdad. He said no, that he was from Afghanistan, but that even so my t-shirt made him sad. He used that word twice, sad. I felt terrible immediately. I tried to explain that it wasn’t like that. It was from the Outkast song. Did he know Outkast? No, he didn’t. Had he heard the song? No he hadn’t.

“Bombs, it’s just sad,” he said again. “It is,” I agreed. I didn’t know how to explain.

I’m pretty sure I totally offended him. Sometimes he gives me 2 donuts for no reason (not exactly that great considering all the teeny clothes I want to wear this summer, but it’s the thought). In fact I’d be psyched if he started selling yogurt, but whatever. He always ends with the same dumb joke, “Have fun at the beach!” But I like it. It’s sweet. And now I’ve totally offended him. Thinking about it later he must have thought I was one of those people with a flag sticker on my door and Osama toilet paper or something. [Sigh].

Today I had a t-shirt with a cat on it, and things seemed fine. Though I thought I could detect a note of antipathy in his beach joke today. If he only knew I’m so not like that. I need to get a no nonsense literal ant-war t-shirt. Someone here suggested Hanes and a sharpie. Maybe.

• Jun 25
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Tree Rain

For sure it’s been ages – but fear not, I’m still here.

Someone typed into the assignment-o-meter, “summer rainstorm” quite awhile back, and my word if there’s a huge one right now. I missed it twice while in the train today, but then, on my way back from the headshrinker my luck ran out. Out of that last train home I bought an umbrella and a six-pack of Sierra Nevada for the four-block walk home. I fortuitously caught a bus for three of the four blocks, but I got soaked to the teeth on the last longest block. I prayed a shallow prayer: “Please don’t let my obscenely expensive lambskin Prada sandals that are my only outward display of filial connection to the big fancy ad agency I’m now freelancing at get ruined.” I don’t think they are ruined – but they’re wet. And yes, a precious little baby lamb is dead so that I can sell Tylenol to unsuspecting octogenarians and pregnant ladies in a style that matches the minimalist decor of the office. The rest of my clothes are my usual hippie garb. In fact, I was telling my hairdresser about the fancy ad agency, and she said, “and you’re the little hippie girl right?” And I sighed cause she was right. So yes, the sandals are a ridiculous use of funds. But they are beautiful and I could probably walk from Brooklyn to Detroit (damn Lakers) in them without a trace of blister.

So anyway, the wind is blowing rainwater off the trees. I remember, a long time ago, when my first boyfriend took me home to his family in Princeton, New Jersey. It was fall, and quite lovely in that part of the country. We were walking in the midst of trees – I can’t remember if it was a park, or just a nice street, as all streets are in Princeton. A gust of wind blew across our path and suddenly we were all wet.

“Tree rain,” he mumbled.

And I said, “What’s tree rain?” (Cause we don’t get that in LA)

“It’s the rain that rains from the trees when the wind blows.”

Some tree rain just got on my arm through the window. And it all reminds me of the list I’ve been making in my head of all the real reasons that I need a boyfriend. Fuck the intimacy, and the sharing, and the having someone to drag to that show you swear will be good, or at least good fodder for a later anecdote. Fuck the fucking and the kissing and the birth control too. That’s not what I’m after. It’s been a full year since I was coupled, and there are some serious boyfriend things that I am missing in my life. In order of importance and consequence, the real reasons I need a boyfriend:

1. To install my air conditioner, which is collecting dust in the hallway outside

2. To steal cable for me

3. To make sure I don’t get screwed buying a used car (I’m buying a car!)

4. To carry an old PC monitor down the stairs, also collecting dust in the hallway outside and messing up my feng shui

5. To work out this knot in the right side of my neck courtesy of my mother

6. To eat all the not-yet-bad-but-going-to-be-soon food in my fridge so I don’t feel wasteful throwing it out

7. To buy the beer and cigarettes so I don’t have to do it and feel guilty for being such a slacker

In other news, I’m freelancing for a newspaper that has a website:

Youngsters Feel Thrill Of Victory At Fl. Meadows Soap Box Derby Read it and be charmed!

• Jun 17
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If I have any readers left…

If I have any readers left, he’s one bored-ass motherf@%*er. And friend, I’m sorry. But if someone wants to e-mail a topic, better yet, just put it in this form right here. Yeah, that’s what I need, an assignment-o-meter. Perhaps I’ll make it permanent…

In other news, it’s Wednesday, which for me means Friday, since I only work Monday through Wednesday. As much as I like to complain, I can’t overlook the downright cushiness of this arrangement. But still, I find it hard to take my day-job for many reasons that I’m going to refrain from listing here, since we all learned our lesson about that ages ago from lovely ms dooce. Don’t worry though, if we hang out for more than two minutes I’ll list and explain every last one.

So for today, and later days, why don’t you (my one dear reader, and 10 or 12 bots) send me an assignment? I’m gonna be real free and easy like and not ask for your name, or addresses, or any thing.

Go ahead, abuse me.

• May 5
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Villa Baghdad

I had this dream last night that I was on vacation at a resort in Iraq with my friend Gina. We had to move from the hotel room to the pool in a heavily armed tank. I was wearing a white bikini with a t-shirt over – and I was trying to decide if it would be more culturally sensitive to wear the white bikini with its’ shorts-like bottom, or a black one-piece that covered my tummy but showed more leg.

This just goes to show you can take the girl out of LA and make her listen to a lot of NPR, but you can’t take the swimsuit-worrying, SPF-using, iced-blended-drinking LA out of the girl.

I blame this ridiculous dream on the warm weather yesterday. I played a pick-up game of tennis in Fort Greene Park with this guy who seriously kicked my ass. He plays in a lot of tournaments and teaches, and is like 18 I think, so I wasn’t that embarrassed. The ball was coming so fast at me over and over again, I was thinking to myself this is what it would be like to play against Andy Roddick. I held up ok considering – I got everything back (mostly).

I was walking home, tired and hot – and it occurred to me that I just didn’t believe the weather. It was like a lie, or a ruse. Tomorrow it would be a “slushy mix” and I’d have to trot out my big black parka.

I also blame the dream on Morning Edition, which I switched on at 8:30AM but kept on sleeping through. If things could get any worse in Iraq, it’s hard to imagine how.

I woke up from the Iraq vacation dream thinking I needed to arrange another game today, and maybe lay-off the peanut MM&Ms so I might look okay in the white bikini or the black one-piece (neither of which I own in waking life). Also, I’m cancelling the Carnival Cruises half-price Persian Gulf vacation.

In any case – I haven’t a lot to say. I am not working at the PR place until further notice. I wrote a piece for the newspaper on anti-wrinkle creams which thoroughly creeped me out. I noticed there’s a Denzel Washington movie coming out called Man on Fire. Isn’t it funny how the title Woman on Fire has a totally different feeling to it? I wrote the biggest check of my life to the federal government and now feel significantly poorer. I’ve been hanging around Gorilla Coffee perhaps too much…

• Apr 8
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The New Americans

I have a grave admission to make. One that will probably surprise a lot people who know me. And it’s one that may have something to do with my languishing funk. I’ve been watching a lot of prime time television lately. It starts innocently enough, with The News Hour, so I can recap all the suffering in the world that I’ve already listened to all day via WNYC. But then I’ve been moving on to reality shows, inane sitcoms, and relentless reruns of Law and Order SVU on USA network. Let it be noted I don’t have cable except for sporadic appearances by USA, VH1, and The Superstation). I’ve been particularly riveted by The Apprentice. In a comic twist, at the end of every episode my dad, without fail, telephones from LA, and I, without fail have to say, “Dad I have to call you back – someone’s getting fired.”

But last night I stumbled on two of the most moving hours of television in memory, The New Americans. It followed several newly immigrated families as they navigated the strangeness and difficulty of American life. I particularly loved the Palestinian Grandmother (who bears an uncanny likeness to Rudy Guiliani). She was visiting Chicago for a year for her daughter’s wedding. As she watched TV she opined how old people sit inside and do nothing all day here. And then there was the hilarious part when she was criticizing all her daughter’s wedding dresses, and her older daughter pleaded with her mother in embarrassed whispers, “Mom, why are you doing this to us?” Granny said something like, “God spit on me for opening my mouth ever.” (Has someone ever thought of just getting the Palestinian and Jewish grandmothers togther to draw up a peace plan?)

The show also follows 2 families of Nigerian refugees, a Mexican family whose father works in a slaughterhouse in Kansas, two Dominican teenagers playing baseball in Montana, and next week an Indian technology worker in Silicon Valley.

I felt myself relating to some of the alienation inherent in being in a place you are not from. And the constant fear that someone will find out you’ll get exposed for the infiltrator you are. Though I assimilated and Americanized at lightening speed, there stayed with me for a very long time the fear that I was always donning an identity that wasn’t mine. I remember as a child in Southern California hearing right-wing politicians opine on the evils of immigration (since it was southern California they were either directly or indirectly attacking Mexican immigrants). I remember the scared feeling at the pit of my stomach, that I was the one (at age stealing jobs and money and sunshine from the more deserving Jennifers and Brians of my classroom. And that somebody would find out and throw me into a damp and dirty jail where I belonged. I have another memory of hearing a similar speech in the lounge of my college dorm. I remember thinking the white-haired head onscreen was an asshole, but I no longer took it personally. There was no fear in the pit of my stomach. My papers were legit. I no longer had to wake up at 4am to stand in lines with my mother that wrapped around a dingy immigration building, praying that none of my friends would drive by on their way to soccer practice and see me with the huddling masses.

But what was most striking about the show was how all the stories are simply stories about family. Though I related to some of it by way of being an immigrant myself, most of it was far from my experience. We weren’t poor, we weren’t refugees, and I was too young to feel much attachment to my native culture. They are just good stories about people trying to get by. I’d like to say I laughed, I cried, I learned. I did do all three - but it sounds so lame and unironic. It’s hard to believe that television like this gets made. Try to check it out – you won’t be sorry.

• Mar 31
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A Small Crack in the Writing Block

Cripes. It’s been three plus weeks since I’ve written anything. Anything at all, save for several weepy tracts on why New York City is driving me to total despair. At the very bottom of this despair pit I decided to myself, “Fuck it. I’m leaving New York.” And just with saying that, it was like a black cloud lifted and I felt better. I told a few of my friends, and they were supportive, if somewhat hesitant. I had only a vague idea of going out to the desert in the southwest, and no idea of how might get a job or secure myself some friends. But still I felt better. I felt like I was making progress.

Then, as quick as the decision came, I woke up at 3am on a Tuesday night and had an anxiety attack/revelation. See, I felt this same way before, about two years back while living in Paris. I hated it. I was lonely, out of place, and developing a troubling relationship to $2 bottles of white wine (red left tell-tale stains on my tongue). Sometime in the early spring, about 9 months into my stay, my mom was there for work and a visit. The weather was just beginning its turn into spring, so all the tables were set up outside the cafés, and I would sit shivering in patches of chilly sunlight. I was crying constantly. My mother finally said, and I remember it well – we were at a corner café outside the Pompidou and I wanted to see a show there but she was tired and irritable huddled in her too-thin coat (and I think I was crying inexplicably) – she said, “Why don’t you just go back to New York? You don’t have to stay here. Just go back.”

I had had this idea in my mind that I wanted to stay a year. I had a date, July 1st 2002, fixed in my mind as the day I was to leave, as if it was my release date from prison. And in early March that date seemed like two lifetimes away. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could cut out early, that I could jump the wall and disappear back into my old life before spring hit New York. It took a few minutes of digestion, but I got it. I would leave, and suddenly the air felt warmer, the sun brighter, and everything better.

My last month in Paris was the second best of my time there. The best being the second month I was there, August-ish. The hopelessness lifted. I had a limited number of days to take advantage of. I reclaimed my status as a visitor to the city, instead of a prisoner of it. I visted the South. I saw Berlin. I went shopping. I ate at my favorite restaurants with renewed relish. Then I came home to Brooklyn, and after a few months of happiness, the old malaise set in.

And what I realized last week is what I realized about my escape from New York to Paris, my subsequent escape back to New York, and my current dreams of escape to New Mexico – none other than the old cliché that you can’t run away from yourself. Which is at this point (and was then), what I’m trying to do.

As devastating as that is to my desert plans and the temporary happiness they provided, I am a little comforted at having stripped away at least one thin layer of The Problem That is Me. Stay tuned for breaking updates.

• Mar 29
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