Two Year Anniversary

I trudged up my four flights of stairs at around 11 PM, having left work very late due to Gala season and having trudged due to my absence from spin class. Spin class two times a week is the only way I can get to my fifth floor walk-up apartment without stopping for a break.

I ate left-overs and poured the last bit of Syrah into my wine glass. My sister, Caitlin (not to be confused with "avid-reader" Lindsay, another wonderful sister who recently complained that I have not been posting anything), is visiting this week (she is staying at our "C&C", or "Couch & Coffee", because that is all we offer), and I proposed we finished the movie we started yesterday. We didn't finish it because it was scratched and at one point it froze and we had to start it over again. Unfortunately, this DVD does not allow you to fast-forward through the previews, and so while the previews were running, we watched a TV show and never got back to the movie. Believe it or not, we are watching "Up All Night" while the previews were running, and we may not get back to the movie tonight either.

"Ken!" I shouted, remembering that today is Monday, September 26, my former roommate's birthday, and therefore, a day that I could call our anniversary because (avid readers) this is two years to the day that Ken met me in the city the day after our first "get together" at hometown's local wine bar and we walked in the rain to the steps of the Museum of Natural History where Ken serenaded me with his guitar and "awesome" (Ken's words) voice.

"It's our anniversary!"

"Really? I thought it was October 1."

"Well, that was the date we picked last year because it was more convenient." I told him. "Where you waiting for me to remember to surprise me with a gift?!?"

"Um..."

"I know! You can open a bottle of Merlot and pour me a glass! That would be the best anniversary present!"

"Sure," Ken agreed, and went into the closet to get a new bottle.

While he was pouring I stopped him, "Wait," I said. "Maybe I should save this gift and pour it myself."

In the end, I let him pour me the wine, and bring it over to me on the couch (where Caitlin sleeps). It was a special night.

And now, we three are not finishing our movie, but watching a second episode of "Up All Night", as I suspected we would.

Various Outsiders Views on Riding the Subway

We were visiting our friends live in Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes from Philadelphia and 30 from Villanova, their Alma Mater. "We describe you as our hipster friends," they told Ken and I. That seems inaccurate, I thought.

"Why do you think we are hipster?" I asked. Ken is currently trying to get back to his hipster roots, so I can almost agree with describing him as such. He is growing his hair and at that moment was wearing a t-shirt with skinny jeans and a Jason Mraz hat (which is a straw fedora from Urban Outfitters. I assume Jason Mraz wears this hat. However, this is coming from a girl who doesn't know for certain that Jason Mraz, Josh Grobin, Dave Matthews, and probably about two others are not the same person.) But me? True, I was wearing a bird shirt (also from Urban Outfitters), but this was recent purchase. I have since purchased two more t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, and am now the proud owner of exactly three t-shirts, but I mostly wear clothing from Anne Taylor, Loft, Banana Republic, or other like stores, and the recent influx of t-shirts marketed to girls 7 years younger than me happened within the last three weeks and could not have influenced my friends' impression or description of me.

"You guys dress cool, and you take the subway," they told us. I found this interesting, because the reasons they cited for us being hipster are the same reasons (minus "you guys cook!") that Caitlin, my 28-year-old sister who has a husband, a PhD from Stanford, a job at Google, and her name on her own mailbox, finds me and Ken to be very adult. (I think Caitlin is very adult for the reasons listed above, not to mention her car and the pool at her apartment complex.)

I am starting to get the sense that people who don't live or work in New York think that taking the subway is very impressive. I know that the subway system is intimidating; I grew up on Long Island and didn't really understand how it worked until I went to NYU, but what these outsiders don't understand is that I have to take the subway. I can't get around otherwise. But it's nice that it makes me look cool.

Sexy Gel

The word “sexy” caught my eye from where I stood in the bathroom.

Is it possible that the name of Ken’s shower gel includes “sexy”?

Ken’s last few bottles were Old Spice, a brand he thought was pretty cool because of the commercials (“He’s on a horse!”), but for the past few weeks, and maybe even months, he had been using something out of a sleek, teal blue container. I had never bothered to look at it carefully before, but today I picked it up and sure enough, there it was: “Very Sexy: For Him.”

I cannot imagine that he 1. chose this abomination off a shelf that included a wider selection, and 2. carried it in his own hand to the register and paid for it, thereby admitting that he found Very Sexy to be the *best option that that particular establishment had to offer. I hoped there was a better explanation.

Being the modern girl that I am, which includes both impatience and a plethora of high-tech means to find the answer to any question I might have, I responded to Ken’s text of how much he loved me (it’s a lot, by the way) with an inquiry about his soap.

“I finally noticed the name of your shower gel,” I typed on the touch screen of my iphone. “Sexy something? I hope you were embarrassed making that purchase.”

(That is an appropriate response to the “One reason I love you” text that he sent me, right?)

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I haven’t waited for anything since 1990, and I certainly don’t want to start that up again. I won’t make you wait, either. Ken let me know that his mom bought the shower gel for him, but he is not sure if that is better or worse than purchasing it himself.

Karaoke II

Even though I recently swore off ever performing Karaoke again, I was at a Karaoke bar in Boston and thought that it would be a good idea to have another go at it. I wasn’t much better this time around, but I didn’t drive away any suitors.

But more interestingly than my recent comeback is the story of the Taylor Swift singer coverist.

The reason that I was in Boston was to see my former roommate in his play, Shear Madness. Though he has been in various plays in New York, I have forgotten to go to every one and it was becoming embarrassing that I had never seen him perform. Around the same time that I was contemplating my friendship neglect, my mother told me she had hotel points that were going to expire soon and someone needed to use them. Finally, I have Friday’s off from work in the summer, and most people don’t so I didn’t have a lot of Friday plans. It was the perfect storm. I would go to Boston to see my roommate’s Friday night performance, while *erasing any of my mother’s guilt over what was almost a wasted hotel stay.

I spent the day sightseeing in Boston by myself, which was one of my top 5 summer experiences, and in the evening, attending Shear Madness. After this, I joined my roommate, his friends and other cast members in the theatre’s bar that was also a karaoke lounge. “Didn’t I just swear this off?” I thought, but after absolutely no need of convincing me to come out of retirement, I began looking through the book of songs, hoping to find one of the three that I know well enough to sing publicly. I ended up with “Walk Like an Egyptian.”

I told my karaoke tale of woe to the group, and a very pretty girlfriend told me her “trick” to karaoke. “I always sing a Taylor Swift song,” she said. It seems that people like Taylor Swift enough to enjoy her performance, and I guess it isn’t done all the time, like Queen is. Also, a fair amount of Taylor’s songs are fast, and fast is always more fun to listen to.

The Taylor Swift-singing girlfriend was a petite and completely adorable girl-next-door type who everyone should be jealous of. Not to mention, she is a successful karaoke artist! I was looking forward to her turn, while thinking, “I wish I had chosen Taylor Swift!” and also, “I wish I was half as pretty as her.”

When her name was called she proceeded to the stage area, looking dwarfed—and all the more precious—by the empty space around her and even by the microphone in her hand. She began to sing, “I was riding shot-gun with my hair undone…”

Oh god, she was terrible. She awkwardly spoke-sang, like a child would, and on top of that, missed half of the notes. She wasn’t a belter or anything, so it wasn’t painful to listen to, it was just sweetly awful.

“Oh honey,” I thought, “it isn’t your ‘trick’ that makes people like watching you sing.” And regardless of how terrible she was, I was not alone in encouraging her to go up and pick another song.

Karaoke is rarely sexually attractive.

A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco, the city of love. And let me tell you, the residents still like to love. I was hit on not once, but THREE TIMES in one evening, which is well above average. In New York, I am hit on about once every four months, and I don’t think that it is only because I am usually with Ken or because I avoid eye contact with the entire city. I think SF just has a different bar scene. One that is really into hitting on the ladies.

The reason I was in San Francisco was to meet up with my college girl friends who were going to see a guy friend and his band perform. Actually, the real reason I was in San Francisco was because I decided to go to California on my way to a family party in Oregon, but the reason I was in the city that night was to see this band. The band was super, but when they finished playing, the night was still young(!) and one of my girl friends had the idea going to a Karaoke bar. Now, I was with friends from my college a cappella group, so presumably we could all sing. I was all for going, but nonetheless, I was scared of singing Karaoke and took my sweet time selecting a song. I enjoy believing that I am capable of singing and spent a while debating whether or not I wanted to risk shattering this illusion by having to prove myself in front of a live audience.

By the time I talked myself into submitting a song to the DJ, my friends had already performed a Kelly Clarkson number. As I was waiting for my name to be called, a young suitor came over and asked if he could look at the book of song choices we had on our table. He then started talking to me because apparently everyone in SF thinks everyone else is far game and likely interested in them. Also, I was looking quite lovely (see below).

He was dorky enough for that I felt in no way guilty talking to him, and he was normal enough for me not to feel uncomfortable. He asked me for advice on what to sing, etc (etcetera being what I did for a living, why I was in the city, blah blah blah), and eventually said he wanted to sing something by Meatloaf. I know exactly one Meatloaf song, so I said, “You should sing ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Lights,’”

“Do you know the girl part?” he asked.

“Yes.” Fortunately, I had named the exactly one Meatloaf song that I knew, and he invited me to sing the duet with him. We continued to talk, which to him was probably flirting. However, nerdy flirting really just comes across as polite chit-chat.

Some time later, I was called up to sing the song I had selected. I asked my friends to dance behind me while I sang Sarah Evans’ “Born to Fly,” a country song that I often sing alone in my car in preparation for my Karaoke debut. “Really,” I asked myself, “how bad could I be?” I have sung all my life, and I wasn’t even drunk! I had only had two drinks the whole night (though one was a Long Island Iced Tea, and let’s face it, that is more like three drinks with a little bit of sand added as garnish). But to my astonishment and despite years of practice on the Interstate, I was not good at singing this piece in the loud bar in front of a live audience. I was appalling, and I made the wise choice to abandon ship before the song was over.

Back at our table, I saw that our friends from the band had turned up at the Karaoke bar, apparently just in time to see me sing.

“Oh God, I embarrassed myself more than I thought.”

Singing poorly in front of two of my close girl friends from college who were far drunker than I was is one thing (and not really a bad thing. They have both seen me embarrass myself far worse than a bad Karaoke night.), but I didn’t really want to embarrass myself in front of additional friends and acquaintances. The band members were polite and told me I did a good job, but oddly, my young nerdy suitor avoided eye contact with me and did not reconvene our conversation. Ashamed, I left without saying goodbye, and he let me leave without putting up a fight for our promised Meatloaf duet.

Josh Groban?

I was in Central Park yesterday, sitting on a bench practicing the French I would be singing in my upcoming voice lesson and watching a co-ed adult softball game. A dog altercation to my left caught my attention. A passerby and his dog had approached an older woman and her dog, who were standing near an adjacent bench, and though both owners probably hoped that the dogs would become friends (as did I!!), they did not.

Moments later, a young hipster type walking his Wheaten Terrier approached from my right, on the far side of the path. As he neared the woman and her medium sized white beast, the woman kindly said, “He might bark.”

Why she assumed the man would cross the path and thus provoke her dog, I am not sure, but maybe dog owners share a special bond that the rest of New York’s citizens do not. Maybe dog owners, through their dogs and their dogs’ desires to befriend other animals, are good natured and go out of their way to interact with others. I don’t know. I don’t have a dog.

“Okay, I’ll stay over here,” hipster man said, and continued walking on the far side of the path, as I expect he would have regardless of the woman's warning. But again, I am no dog owner, and maybe the man would have brought his dog over to socialize.

“Oh, Josh Groban,” the woman then said, “I love your voice!”

“Thank you,” Josh said, and continued walking his dog.

I did not recognize him, but I guess he looked like what I think Josh Groban looks like. So, I got up and followed him for about 5 minutes, because I knew that nothing that would happen for the rest of the day would be cooler than following someone who could be a celebrity and what might be a celebrity’s dog. Nothing.

Why don't YOU have an accent, a**hole?

Are you from Long Island? When you tell people that you are from Long Island, do they invariably ask you why you don't have an accent, and do you invariably want to tell then to shut the hell up?

Growing up in Northport, my Long Island town, no one had accents. I did not know that I was expected to have an accent. When I was young, my response to the question was, "No one in my town has an accent."

As I grew older, I learned about the accents of Long Islanders and which people have them. Though I rarely heard them, I was told (mostly by my parents) that the residents of the south shore are the ones with the accents. That became my response to the inquiries on my speaking patterns.

After I went to college, came back, watched the Jersey Shore, and observed young 20-somethings going to bars, I learned that anyone who stays on Long Island too long and who patrons trashy bars become susceptible to developing the accent, either by choice or through osmosis. My newest explanation for my absent accent was a too-long description of this phenomenon that no one cared to listened to, but provided a welcome opportunity to comment on the Jersey Shore.

But deep down, I have known the true answer for a long time, as would anyone who lives anywhere with a stereotypical accent. Or, for that matter, anyone who has watched a movie like "Good Will Hunting." Accents often reflect a class distinction. I mean, which characters in "Good Will Hunting" have the strongest accents? However, I don't usually cite this as my answer. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

I am tired of people asking me why I don't have an accent, and the questioning has become even more frequent and persistent in recent years. I fear this is mostly due to reality TV shows showcasing trashiness, and I would like a break! I don't walk around Boston asking every resident why he doesn't sound like Matt Damon.

Last week when socializing at a bar in Portland with my cousins, some of my cousin's friends asked Ken (my boyfriend) and I why we didn't have accents. Why must I explain myself?!? Especially for something as mundane and nonthreatening as sounding like everyone else? I snapped, and yelled, "Because we aren't poor!"

Probably not the best response, but at least is was more concise than my explanation of how people develop the accent over time due to bar-patronage and shopping at Target too often.

But still not the best response, because it was easy material for the drunk frat-type friends of my cousin to take way too far. After loudly repeating what I had said a few times, they started saying something about how we were all rich and finishing it up with how they were glad they were white because being Caucasian historically gives you the upper hand. I did not say anything like that.