too early to wax elegaic but fuck it
Jul. 18th, 2013 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mistersmearcaseThings are about to change a lot. I'm going to be 40 and I'm leaving all my friends and I might leave my field. This is mostly making me feel terrified and unequal to things, so once in a while I try to redirect.
I'm thinking about my favorite days in New York after a conversation about those days where everyone is happy and together, and also about how they are infrequent.
A hard thing to give up, in preparing to move, is your history in a place. Another hard thing to give up is your fantasies of what your life was going to be like in a few more years in that place, even if they're totally unrealistic. (I was going to live in a neighborhood I like some day, and with enough space that I didn't feel like a gerbil. THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. New York will always stay ahead of you.)
Oh but so yeah. Favorite days.
-Far Rockaway, must have been two summers ago. I managed to get on the same train out as WB and our friends going from Brooklyn. We walked through some still pretty shabby looking turf (Far Rockaway: middle class Jewish suburb, then disastrous site of poverty and neglect, then burgeoning beach scene with some problematic gentrification vibes, then hurricane bait. This was during the beach scene period) and got to the bungalow B & E were renting for two weeks. I had brought vodka I infused with grapefruits. C grilled a bunch of stuff. We went to the beach and floated around in the waves and got pecked at by these weird tiny transparent jellyfish. Back to the house to sit on the porch and bullshit. B & E are urbane and good hosts. We waited forever for the train home and talked about the guy who became locally famous for posing as a subway conductor. There are pictures of all of us on the porch looking remarkably relaxed. There's a picture of our feet around a subway pole, unless that's from a different beach day.
-Brooklyn, three summers ago. I would spend Saturday nights at WB's place in Gowanus and then we'd go somewhere for lunch and sometimes meet C, and then I'd go home. Except this was during the World Cup, and we sat at Brooklyn's one true Tex Mex joint for hours watching the game and drinking orange/cinnamon margaritas, precisely a thousand of them, and then we were all terribly drunk. We went to Park Slope's lesbian bar and drank until we realized we really had to stop drinking. God knows what we were talking about at that point. By evening, it suddenly seemed inevitable that we should go to Brighton Beach, so we got on the F train and did that. C and I ran into the ocean in our underwear because it seemed funny to do so right then. We had pelmeni and Russian beer at Tatiana or Volna or one of those beachside cafes and C and WB argued about which of them was an anarchist, or something, but it wasn't very serious. I was just too worn out to say anything, plus I'm definitely not an anarchist.
-The night the junior Times critic, who read my blog, saw that I wasn't going to opening night of Gluck's Iphigenie because I was sick of sitting in terrible seats and offered me his +1. Later on I would sit in good seats a lot, but I hadn't yet, and I was sitting near Baryzhnikov and Isaac Mizrahi and it was frankly as glamorous a thing as I'd done in New York. The production was beautiful and the singing was world class and I had a sense of belonging to a scene, however ridiculous. After that there were fun post-performance drinks on a number of occasions where everyone seemed awfully witty, and everyone seemed to think everyone else was awfully witty. At one, D and I ended up laughing uncontrollably when someone asked us how we knew each other, because it's a woeful tale of obsession and deceit.
-My first night at Marie's (the piano bar where everyone belts along) with Boris. We must have stayed 'til 2 and Boris is a terrific singer and I can't say how giddy I felt.
Well, those are a few.
I'm thinking about my favorite days in New York after a conversation about those days where everyone is happy and together, and also about how they are infrequent.
A hard thing to give up, in preparing to move, is your history in a place. Another hard thing to give up is your fantasies of what your life was going to be like in a few more years in that place, even if they're totally unrealistic. (I was going to live in a neighborhood I like some day, and with enough space that I didn't feel like a gerbil. THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. New York will always stay ahead of you.)
Oh but so yeah. Favorite days.
-Far Rockaway, must have been two summers ago. I managed to get on the same train out as WB and our friends going from Brooklyn. We walked through some still pretty shabby looking turf (Far Rockaway: middle class Jewish suburb, then disastrous site of poverty and neglect, then burgeoning beach scene with some problematic gentrification vibes, then hurricane bait. This was during the beach scene period) and got to the bungalow B & E were renting for two weeks. I had brought vodka I infused with grapefruits. C grilled a bunch of stuff. We went to the beach and floated around in the waves and got pecked at by these weird tiny transparent jellyfish. Back to the house to sit on the porch and bullshit. B & E are urbane and good hosts. We waited forever for the train home and talked about the guy who became locally famous for posing as a subway conductor. There are pictures of all of us on the porch looking remarkably relaxed. There's a picture of our feet around a subway pole, unless that's from a different beach day.
-Brooklyn, three summers ago. I would spend Saturday nights at WB's place in Gowanus and then we'd go somewhere for lunch and sometimes meet C, and then I'd go home. Except this was during the World Cup, and we sat at Brooklyn's one true Tex Mex joint for hours watching the game and drinking orange/cinnamon margaritas, precisely a thousand of them, and then we were all terribly drunk. We went to Park Slope's lesbian bar and drank until we realized we really had to stop drinking. God knows what we were talking about at that point. By evening, it suddenly seemed inevitable that we should go to Brighton Beach, so we got on the F train and did that. C and I ran into the ocean in our underwear because it seemed funny to do so right then. We had pelmeni and Russian beer at Tatiana or Volna or one of those beachside cafes and C and WB argued about which of them was an anarchist, or something, but it wasn't very serious. I was just too worn out to say anything, plus I'm definitely not an anarchist.
-The night the junior Times critic, who read my blog, saw that I wasn't going to opening night of Gluck's Iphigenie because I was sick of sitting in terrible seats and offered me his +1. Later on I would sit in good seats a lot, but I hadn't yet, and I was sitting near Baryzhnikov and Isaac Mizrahi and it was frankly as glamorous a thing as I'd done in New York. The production was beautiful and the singing was world class and I had a sense of belonging to a scene, however ridiculous. After that there were fun post-performance drinks on a number of occasions where everyone seemed awfully witty, and everyone seemed to think everyone else was awfully witty. At one, D and I ended up laughing uncontrollably when someone asked us how we knew each other, because it's a woeful tale of obsession and deceit.
-My first night at Marie's (the piano bar where everyone belts along) with Boris. We must have stayed 'til 2 and Boris is a terrific singer and I can't say how giddy I felt.
Well, those are a few.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-14 02:41 am (UTC)