![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Friday, January 31, 2003
So I was going to go on a rant about being single in New York, but really, even though I've been dating since I was a zygote I've also always, really, been single, so why is New York so different? In the end, it's not really.
Tonight I went to a suprise birthday party for a very good friend at work. I absolutely rejoiced in seeing so many people I love loving each other. Arms slung around, hands on smalls of backs, so very wonderful. And thinking about my lover, who in the end is... well, I don't know, it's not simple. There is a man I know and love, in my own way, and in that knowing I struggle in the undefined. There are a thousand things keeping us apart and very simple things pulling me to his apartment once or twice a week. It can't be and yet it is, and most of the time it is terrific. Once in a great while it makes me terribly sad but for the most part it is, well, lovely. It's not often that I meet a man smarter than me, and even if he isn't smarter, he knows things that I don't, and that, folks, is sexy. He is hot and cold and sweet and distant and delicious and frustrating. So you see why I'm still there.
But I digress. I left the party, reluctantly, untying the ballons that had been wrapped around my pigtails all night. I walked to the subway at Union Square and ambled down to my beloved Q train. I am in the middle of a passionate love affair with a train. My sweet Q, who delivers me from Park Slope to Union Square in five stops, fifteen minutes, who sails over the Manhattan Bridge, who skips all the boring streets and leads me to my second home. I have a great love for Union Square as well. My job near there has made all of the difference since moving to New York. It supported me through one of the worst breakups in the history books, helped my pass my EMT class, gave me beautiful people to love, the people I saw tonight. It was also a place of gathering after 9/11. I love it.
So I'm down in the subway with about 150 other late night New Yorkers, all of us yearning for our beloved Q. I can't pull out my book because I'm still too lost in the party, so instead I wrap my arms around one of the pillars supporting the network of concrete and wait. And then I start my favorite subway game: rat-watching. Sometimes you'll see a whole family down there. I waited for at least fifteen minutes before spying a lone rat, a smaller one, dashing around the innards of the subway rails. Finally, in the distance, I see my lover, my speed demon, rushing towards me, "Q" all ablaze, and I actually say aloud, "sweetness, you've come". And then whisper to the rat, "Shoo, fool..."
And then I get on the trail, fall into "Kavalier and Clay", and find my way home.
A warning to you all: these will be my blogs when I have Newcastle swimming in my blood.
Tonight I went to a suprise birthday party for a very good friend at work. I absolutely rejoiced in seeing so many people I love loving each other. Arms slung around, hands on smalls of backs, so very wonderful. And thinking about my lover, who in the end is... well, I don't know, it's not simple. There is a man I know and love, in my own way, and in that knowing I struggle in the undefined. There are a thousand things keeping us apart and very simple things pulling me to his apartment once or twice a week. It can't be and yet it is, and most of the time it is terrific. Once in a great while it makes me terribly sad but for the most part it is, well, lovely. It's not often that I meet a man smarter than me, and even if he isn't smarter, he knows things that I don't, and that, folks, is sexy. He is hot and cold and sweet and distant and delicious and frustrating. So you see why I'm still there.
But I digress. I left the party, reluctantly, untying the ballons that had been wrapped around my pigtails all night. I walked to the subway at Union Square and ambled down to my beloved Q train. I am in the middle of a passionate love affair with a train. My sweet Q, who delivers me from Park Slope to Union Square in five stops, fifteen minutes, who sails over the Manhattan Bridge, who skips all the boring streets and leads me to my second home. I have a great love for Union Square as well. My job near there has made all of the difference since moving to New York. It supported me through one of the worst breakups in the history books, helped my pass my EMT class, gave me beautiful people to love, the people I saw tonight. It was also a place of gathering after 9/11. I love it.
So I'm down in the subway with about 150 other late night New Yorkers, all of us yearning for our beloved Q. I can't pull out my book because I'm still too lost in the party, so instead I wrap my arms around one of the pillars supporting the network of concrete and wait. And then I start my favorite subway game: rat-watching. Sometimes you'll see a whole family down there. I waited for at least fifteen minutes before spying a lone rat, a smaller one, dashing around the innards of the subway rails. Finally, in the distance, I see my lover, my speed demon, rushing towards me, "Q" all ablaze, and I actually say aloud, "sweetness, you've come". And then whisper to the rat, "Shoo, fool..."
And then I get on the trail, fall into "Kavalier and Clay", and find my way home.
A warning to you all: these will be my blogs when I have Newcastle swimming in my blood.
Monday, January 27, 2003
Last night I went to bed at 10PM, so I could be relatively fresh when I got up at 5AM. There was an Equity call for a Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and the unwritten rules dictate a brutal day. Surprisingly, I fell asleep immediately, only to wake at 11PM when my new upstairs neighbors decided to have BAND PRACTICE. Drums, guitars, bad singing, the works. I prayed for it to end, not wanting to be the scroogy neighbor who disallows fun, but by !2:30 AM I had had enough. I grabbed my broom, climbed up the ladder to my loft, and pounded on the ceiling. The music stopped.
I climbed into bed, and thrashed around for a full three hours more before falling asleep near 4 AM. At 5, the alarm went off, and I was out and in the bitter, bitter cold by 5:30. The Q took me to Union Square, where I hopped onto the R one stop to 23rd. I skidded across Broadway, still in full dark, and wound my way to Chelsea Studios. 6 AM, and there was already a line. I plopped down and started swapping stories about bad community theatre productions of Fiddler. Mine topped them all- having my brother as a romantic lead, in a barn, with planes flying overhead, and a woman having a heart attack in the audience. (She lived.)
At 7 we were all kicked out into the cold, because our numbers created a fire hazard, and we stood shivering as the sun graced the very tops of the buildings. I don't know that I've ever been so cold. Half an hour later we were herded up to the 7th floor, where we re-formed our line, waiting to get slots. At 9 AM, they called us one by one, and I got an early afternoon slot that would leave me time to get to work. I left the studio, went out to breakfast and to my gym to shower and slather on makeup. Back in the early afternoon, I waited in yet another line for my two whole minutes that could make or break my future. When it was finally my turn, I sang one of my mom's songs, but it had been over a year since I had gone on a theatrical audition. The accompanist was fair, and the auditioner looked down at my resume for all but the final two seconds of my song, which sadly, was when my cool deserted me, and the money notes weren't all that money.
Alas, I just need to get back in the saddle.
Now, I'm home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, freezing and sleepy, dreaming about a tax return large enough to finace a new road bike and a trip to Italy...
I climbed into bed, and thrashed around for a full three hours more before falling asleep near 4 AM. At 5, the alarm went off, and I was out and in the bitter, bitter cold by 5:30. The Q took me to Union Square, where I hopped onto the R one stop to 23rd. I skidded across Broadway, still in full dark, and wound my way to Chelsea Studios. 6 AM, and there was already a line. I plopped down and started swapping stories about bad community theatre productions of Fiddler. Mine topped them all- having my brother as a romantic lead, in a barn, with planes flying overhead, and a woman having a heart attack in the audience. (She lived.)
At 7 we were all kicked out into the cold, because our numbers created a fire hazard, and we stood shivering as the sun graced the very tops of the buildings. I don't know that I've ever been so cold. Half an hour later we were herded up to the 7th floor, where we re-formed our line, waiting to get slots. At 9 AM, they called us one by one, and I got an early afternoon slot that would leave me time to get to work. I left the studio, went out to breakfast and to my gym to shower and slather on makeup. Back in the early afternoon, I waited in yet another line for my two whole minutes that could make or break my future. When it was finally my turn, I sang one of my mom's songs, but it had been over a year since I had gone on a theatrical audition. The accompanist was fair, and the auditioner looked down at my resume for all but the final two seconds of my song, which sadly, was when my cool deserted me, and the money notes weren't all that money.
Alas, I just need to get back in the saddle.
Now, I'm home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, freezing and sleepy, dreaming about a tax return large enough to finace a new road bike and a trip to Italy...