Saturday, March 29, 2003

 

ENTRY 002


Today was odd. Not the "this morning I was laid off, then told I might have gonorrhea" kind of odd (which has happened, but we're not going there yet), just an "everything is a real effort" kind of odd. I decided to head to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, since it's the last weekend of their big orchid exhibit. I phoned Hamilton to invite him to come along; he called me almost a week ago about getting together, and it's been so crazy I hadn't gotten back to him and felt bad about it. But he wasn't around. I walked a few blocks to the subway to catch the B, waited for half an hour while I read my New Yorker, then finally started to get impatient and looked at the signage carefully. It said "B on weekdays only." So I had to catch the bus up to 125th Street, and when I disembarked I wasn't sure where the D station was (the D would also take me where I needed to go). Anyway, before this story gets even more boring, I ended up walking another half-hour all the way to the 4 against a heavy wind; the 4 was out of service above 149th Street, so I had to take a special shuttle to 161st Street, which was a madhouse since everyone else had to do the same thing. Once there I made my way anadromously through the teeming masses to the D train (a stroller ran over my foot, a minor catfight broke out, seasons came and went) and finally reached the Garden after 2 hours. I was so tempted to just hail a cab and be out a small fortune, but I'm such a strict self-budgeter that I would never have really done that. (You're reading the blog of a guy who, while living unemployed in Manhattan, allowed himself a $30 grocery budget per week. Yes, I lost weight, but I'm recovering nicely from the rickets--thanks for asking.)


To get on with it, the Garden was lovely, particularly the orchids, which were housed in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. It's billed as the largest Victorian-era glasshouse in the country, and I'd believe it. I'd also deem it the loveliest.





The flowers themselves were marvelous. There's something sort of sentient about orchids, the ornateness of them. It's like they're dressed up finely in all sorts of intricate patterns: mottled and streaked, striped and stippled. A truly lovely exhibit, and so warm inside the conservatory that I had to take off my jacket and was very comfortable in a T-shirt. It's been so long since I've gotten to do that. (I didn't stop wearing long underwear until a month ago, and it still feels decadent. When I can wear shorts I should probably expect multiple orgasms.)





All in all it was a lovely day to be out, despite the hassle of getting there (the return trip took no more than 40 or 45 minutes). I was back in time to do my laundry before the laundromat closed. I talked to Jane, who's taking Britney Spears to some toga party in the Bronx. I'm wary of toga parties--to me they smack of Jell-O shots and date rape, but I've only been to one. Actually she didn't really invite me to that party anyway, but they're going out to some 18-and-over places after that. I don't know which would be scarier: a bunch of 17-year-olds with fake IDs, or the lechers who prey on them. I'm not too keen on finding out. Looks like it might be another SNL evening. Besides, I'm having brunch with Zeke in the morning, and I want to look well rested. Cross your fingers for me! This is his first time seeing me in the A.M., and that's not always pretty.

10:42 PM

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ENTRY 001


Okay, so the last entry was what you might call the Pilot Episode of this here little blog. (God, I can't believe I'm going all blogger on the world's ass. I'm such a writer--introverted, yet exhibitionist.) Overviews are so bland. By the way, my name isn't really Frank Beekman. That's an allusion that shouldn't be too hard to track down.


The past couple of weeks have been stressful, what with Hamlet away on vacation. He's on this remote island in the Atlantic with his girlfriend. Uh, must be nice. (Cue the Burt Lancaster/Deborah Kerr beach scene in From Here to Eternity.) In the meantime, he basically left me to handle the details of these two big book deals, and I had the feeling of being in way over my head. Maybe because I was? It sometimes seems that Hamlet and I just aren't communicating. He has this problem with tuning out whatever I'm saying, and he gets totally impatient when I try to explain something using more than one sentence. It can really piss me off if I let it. Anyway, I'm taking the day off on Monday to recover; it was Hamlet's suggestion, so I can't say he's a complete ingrate, can I? Actually, I'm very fond of the big lug, even with his flaws. He raves about me behind my back--I hope he never realizes people tell me that. And he's even stopped making all those jokes about firing me.


Tonight was kind of lame. Jane's 18-year-old cousin is in town from Texas, and she's a bit more Hicksville than I anticipated. We had dinner at Tavern on the Green (ugh--overpriced and chintzy), and I swear to God, when I walked in, I thought for a second that the cousin was Britney Spears. She wasn't quite as tan as Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (and trust me, that was one disturbing sun-job), but close. And I had next to nothing to talk to her about. ("So, what classes are you taking?" sounds so condescending.) Plus, she's as indecisive as Jane, who's so wishy-washy that sometimes she makes me crazy. Today Jane called me to get restaurant suggestions, and gave me no fucking input. After she shot down a few names, I just sat there at my desk tapping on the phone receiver while nothing was said. I am always the one who's supposed to come up with the bright ideas. Tiresome. But we're friends. Jane has many good points: she practically supported me when I was looking for a job; she is a total bibliophile, even if she hardly ever reads any of her books entirely; and she's been around like no one else since I moved to this nutty burg.


Zeke and I have started corresponding by email during the workday. It's kind of cute--he loves using exclamation points, but I think he's totally trying to tone it down, since he knows I'm a novelist and he wants to make a good impression. I'm being cautious for now as far as what I say about myself. I think the best part of getting to know someone is that initial phase where there's mystery, and you second-guess everything, and every nuance of what they say that you think means they might not like you drives you crazy. Soooo much fun, at least if you're a masochist like me. He has a 9-5 job, but outside of that he's a (theatrical) writer/actor. Next week he's in a show to which I'm invited. I just hope he's actually good, so I don't have to stretch the truth when I comment on the performance. Last year my friend Rebecca invited me to a play in which a friend of her friend had a role, and it was fucking awful. It was so bad that I busted up laughing--and it was a drama. Rebecca was mortified and kept apologizing to me for days about inviting me to it. Fortunately I was a stranger, so I wasn't asked to give my critique. But I must say that I want Zeke to be good. I'm the first to admit that I'm suspicious of actors--one of them is my soon-to-be former roommate (not Bertha, the other one), a pretty-boy model type who's so self-centered that we had a total of two conversations the whole time he lived here. He thought I was a student at Columbia, even though I'm sure I'd told him before that I work in publishing. ("Uh, I graduated from college in 2000 and I've been working for months at this publisher." Nope, not awkward at all.) But I have a good feeling about Zeke. He has this amazing smile that lights up a room, he's outgoing and puts me at ease and makes me feel, like few people do, that I'm not actually an isolated freak in this world--in that sense I'm reminded of Neil. But I'm certainly not in the market for a Neil II, and Zeke is really almost nothing like him, anyway. After all, I'm not so dumb that I don't learn from my past. Right now Zeke and I are in that first ambiguous phase where things might be romantic, or might be just friendly--and we both know that, and we both know that we both know. Damn, I love this part.


What I don't love is how I question my own attractiveness and whether I'm really boyfriend material. I hate that self-defeating bullshit, but maybe you never really get that out of your head. Maybe all you can do is bring in so much positive stuff that the negative is drowned out. It can be hard to stay positive in a city like this--New York can slap the good mood right out of you like no other place I know--but hey, I never said that living here would be easy.


So I guess that means maybe I've really earned this.

2:22 AM

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ENTRY 000




DRAMATIS PERSONAE:


Me: also known as Myself and I. Assistant to an editor at a major book publisher in Manhattan. Novelist (published) in my spare time. Also, the pro bono editor-in-chief of a scholarly journal for a nonprofit organization.


Jane: my most frequent companion in NYC. I knew her back in Austin, where we worked at the same bookstore.


Hamlet: my boss. Editor at a major book publisher in Manhattan. Somewhat deranged, in a loveable way.


Roger: a friend I met right before I moved here permanently. A marketing executive, an expert on theater and opera and film, and a genuine sweetheart. Also, the object of my secret crush, which waxes and wanes. Obviously he's unaware of this, as is his current boyfriend.


Peter: my best friend in Austin. He's moving to L.A. to pursue an acting career; my big gamble of starting my life over in New York inspired him, he told me, to take a drastic step himself.


Marc and Cleo: my (older) brother and sis-in-law, respectively. He's a lawyer; she's a former teacher exploring her options. They're currently in Philly, but are soon moving to Houston, where he will begin working at a large firm and she will try to conceive my first nephew or niece (yes, it's all about me).


Hamilton: my former boss and former something else (lover? boyfriend? extended dalliance?). I love him, but he's trouble when it comes to the romantic thing. He got all freaky and moved to the West Coast, then showed up in New York on less than a week's notice (via cryptic email), and I suspect he still wants me back. Sometimes I'm worried that I'd be open to it.


Neil: my Most Significant Ex-Boyfriend. It was truly one of those cosmic things in which we were separated for five years (I had had a crush on him, but he didn't know I existed), then we met again completely by chance and, this time, sparks flew (it was totally Sabrina--you know, the old Audrey Hepburn movie). He woke me up, he gave me hope.... I'm starting to nauseate even myself, so I'll shut up now.


Bertha: the woman from whom I rent a room in my rathole apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She's an alcoholic and she overcharges me on the rent, but since the apartment is rent-stabilized, I'm still getting more space for less money than I would be likely to get anywhere else. The down side is that sometimes we don't have hot water, and I have 3,537,636 roommates if you include roaches in the tally.


Zeke: my current crush. It's all kind of frightening, because he's the first guy I've met since I moved to NY who might really be a possibility. I'm so trying not to self-sabotage here. This is the one thing I don't want to fuck up.




N.B. All aliases are culled from literary, filmic, theatrical, televisionary, and anal (i.e., "pulled that name out of my ass") sources.




THE STORY SO FAR:


Since my dad was in the Navy, I led a peripatetic childhood. I was born overseas, but subsequently we lived strictly in the States. After twelve years in Texas, I moved here from Austin in March 2002. It was like this: in the aftermath of 9/11, the company I worked for in Austin laid off 60% of my department, including me. Since I'd already been thinking about moving to New York to pursue writing and publishing careers, I considered my change in circumstances to be an affirmation that it was time to take that kind of risk. When my lease ran out, I packed up everything I own, sent almost all of it to my parents' house, and stepped onto a plane with three suitcases to come to Manhattan. That was by far the scariest thing I'd ever done, but I wasn't willing to spend the rest of my life wondering, "What if?" So I left behind pretty much everything I've ever known--the people who love me, my nice apartment, all my various comforts--for a strange city, bewilderingly big, not the most welcoming place on Earth, and one of the worst economic locales in the U.S. these days--to start over and find a job.


I'm not sure I believe in miracles, but if they exist, then my moving here, finding a job, and making ends meet would qualify as miraculous to me. Maybe it's not as hard as people think--or maybe I'm tougher than I give myself credit for being.


My job can be really frustrating, with long hours and crappy pay, but it's also interesting and, in its own way, important. The one thing that really bothers me is that it's so hard to find time for my writing. Half a person's time in NYC seems to be spent trying to "take in all the culture," and the other half is spent trying to pay for it, and the other half is spent trying to hail a cab.... Yes, I know I'm already up to 150%, or the equivalent of a 36-hour day. NY is fucked up like that.

1:05 AM

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