July 2010
17 posts
1 tag
Love is Fickle
Last week perhaps, or maybe last month, you sat at your laptop, leg shaking nervously as you refresh refresh refreshed your email, waiting for a missive from a man you had decided you could probably love. It had been two hours since you emailed. You had to squint to see past your hangover. Too many drinks ordered, too many hours spent discussing the distance between point A (What He Said) and...
OkCupid is on to you, you fucking liar.
On one of my first online dates, way back in the day when Nerve.com was a little lighter on the plaid, I arrived and immediately noticed something was off. Nine inches off, to be precise. My date had tacked on almost a whole foot to his purported height, and instead of being 5-foot-10 as he claimed, there he was, eye-level to all 5-foot-1 of me. When I called him out on it, he shrugged and mumbled...
For my friends who like to make fun of me for... →
“My goal is to gloriously intrude into a reader’s life: make them brew...”
– Joshua Mohr in The L Magazine
1 tag
“I try to think of the novel as a kind of garden, where I always notice slight...”
– Matthew Gallaway
Expert Dating Tip
Do not tell a lady that she is “just like a dude, but with a vagina.”
This Expert Dating Tip brought to you by: my life.
“…I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and...”
– Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
Love in the Time of MySpace
Deleting old files from my laptop just now, I came upon BreakupBlogs.txt, which apparently was a mini diary of sorts that I kept after my first Big Breakup, about five years ago. I was 19! Practically a fetus! This one in particular made me LOL:
I imagine that breakups were a lot easier before the internet became a factor. Back then, it was actually possible to break up and never see the person...
“It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so...”
– Alice Munro
June 2010
23 posts
Let's Talk About My Underwear
Today my life feels messy, so I’m cleaning. Throwing away stuff to make room for…well, I guess I’ll see. I started with my underwear drawer—I used the term “drawer” loosely; since I’ve been in New York, my underwear drawer is actually a large plastic bin—a task that always takes too long because it’s so tied to some of my fondest drunkest...
Shaming of Subway Creepster FAIL.
Subway Creepster: [series of compliments, propositions, and vaguely lewd hand gestures]
Me: You should practice not speaking directly to a woman's breasts when you're hitting on her. It's rude.
Subway Creepster: My mother neglected me as a child. Is that a good excuse?
“The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don’t live with a lover or roommate who doesn’t respect your work. Don’t lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.”
— Grace Paley, The Paris Review
Old Acquaintances
I woke up at 10am to someone banging on my window. When I blearily pulled back the curtain at the head of my bed I saw my old dealer standing out on my front stoop. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “Oh, hey! Um… I tried to call you but it looks like I lost your number.” “Nope,” I replied, “You didn’t lose it. I had it changed.”
This bad economy is really affecting everyone.
via...
“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight....”
– Annie Dillard
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it,...”
– Annie Dillard
A lesson I need to learn. I’m looking at you, incoherent.txt sitting idly on my desktop, twiddling your thumbs.
The Choice Effect →
Here’s an interview I did for Lemondrop, with author Amalia McGibbon who co-wrote The Choice Effect: Love and Commitment in an Age of Too Many Options. It’s another one of those books, like Emily Gould’s, that you’ll probably love if you’re a 23-year-old girl with a Tumblr. I am and I did (both of them!).
I used to listen to Celine Dion’s...
How Was the Sex?
Sometimes, for fun/essay inspiration/masochism, I search my Gmail for random phrases I think I probably would have written in the past few years. Like “worst date ever”—that one makes an appearance four times in 2010 alone. Searching for “the sex was” reveals that since 2007, my friends and I have been having sex that was—and I quote…
a perk
nowhere...
“Your dreams never choose to stop seeing you; instead we choose to look the other...”
– Some words of encouragement to tuck away in your pocket for safekeeping until you need them. Thanks, Abraham.
One day, when you are doing more than breaking even and making ends meet and getting by, you will tell your grandchildren about the time that you quit your job and waved goodbye to your health insurance as it skipped away into the sunset.
It will be a charming story about following your dreams. Or it will be about following your dreams but having a sneaking suspicion that your dreams are trying...
“Is it okay if I say that I don’t like the term “self publishing?”...”
– Polly Frost
“The books are the best of me. When people ask me why I write I tell them...”
– Jeanette Winterson
I haven’t read anything by her yet, but Julianne recommended that I do when I asked for good plane reading (I’m London-bound in a week—any London Tumblrs out there?), and I found this sentiment on her website. What have you read by her? What do you recommend...
Words and phrases that men should not use in their...
“typical female behavior” “vagina” “seems a bit irrational” “just the way we’re wired” “trying to stay out of the dating world”
Dating in New York is awesome.
J: Over the weekend I hooked up with a lunatic with “DTF” tattooed on his neck.
Me: What does DTF stand for? I’m scared to ask.
J: DTF stands for “down to fuck.” The other side of his neck is tattooed with a naked woman. His chest piece is a quote from “The Hours.” WINNER.
Yesterday I was at the supermarket, listening to...
May 2010
19 posts
“All young men are unhappy. That’s why they identify so strongly with Hamlet....”
– Thom Gunn, The Paris Review
When she waits until you go to the bathroom to...
Interviewer: How do you know you are finished with a painting?
Jackson Pollock: How do you know when you are finished making love?
“Let me also point out, as gently as possible, that everyone is a performer;...”
– this piece by Tim Kreider is excellent
WatchThis is part of my friend Olga Povarchuk’s demo reel. She is awesome and you should hire her, if that is the sort of thing you do.
Things I don't understand about online dating.
#176: Men who introduce themselves via an epic message that concludes with the declaration that they’re not looking for a relationship. Or to date casually. Or to meet people. Or friendship (and you know how I feel about men looking for “new friends” online.) No, they’re looking for “companionship.”
Petfinder.com, buddy. Get a dog if you want companionship.
“The other day I heard someone say, “Oh my God, I just LOVE monkeys!” And I decided that while she may or may not have been an idiot, she clearly had very little experience with real monkeys. Only someone who has never met an actual, in-the-flesh monkey could possible utter such a phrase. In fact, a person’s love of monkeys is almost always in a perfect inverse relationship to how much time...
I'm glad to finally have a decent anecdote for...
Dirty martini, extra olives: $10
Three more dirty martinis: loss of hand-eye coordination; inflated perception of own charm; increased slurring; no change to already questionable self-control and ability to keep pants on.
The morning-after realization that you’re already Twitter and Facebook friends with the guy you went home with last night and that’s why you both thought the other...
“Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes, run mad, as if mad is a different...”
– Margaret Atwood (via booklover)
On slow days, when I make tea instead of money, I like to sit on my bed and indulge my panic. I stretch and I think about the pain in my right elbow, and I wonder whether I will get carpal tunnel syndrome or health insurance first. I worry about not being able to afford my apartment and I dream about where to go next. I think about Estonia and I think about Amsterdam. I think about Astoria and...