I received a phone call from a number in Seattle on Friday afternoon. Given that I had been officially ‘jobless’ since that past Monday, my normal propensity to ignore any calls from unfamiliar numbers had dissipated- anything could be a potential moneymaking opportunity, or at least an interruption from the day’s monotony. 

“Hello?” I said, not wanting to give to much away- as in, “Hello, you’ve reached writer/bartender/wedding officiant/travel advisor Liz Norment, how might I be of service?”

“Hi, is this Liz, with Have Lover, Will Travel?” a voice, from the other side, said.

“Have Lover, Will Travel” was the wedding officiant/honeymoon travel planner arm of my most recent ventures, and the one I was most excited about building at the present moment, despite the fact that every potential block built within the industry was falling apart. If I was to have the words to unite bride and groom, forever, I presently needed to have just the right words to comfort those brides who were realizing that their dream weddings were indefinitely postponed.

“Hi! Yes, hi, this is Liz,” I said. 

“Hi, my name is Dan. I was wondering if you’re available to officiate a wedding tomorrow,” he told me.

Knowing that the city would be officially under quarantine by Sunday night, or at least some American version of what we’d seen happening in China and Italy, I understood his urgency. “Yes, I’m available,” I told him.

“This would be an elopement?” I inquired.

“Yeah, our wedding has been postponed… so we were hoping just to do something small now while we still can,” he explained.

“I love this idea,” I told him, suddenly filled with more hope than I had been in the past bleak week. “Let me send you an email with my general ceremony ouline and a few questions for you and your partner, and we can go from there,” I told him. “What time are you thinking, for tomorrow?” I asked him.

“I don’t know, how about 2:30?” he asked.

“That sounds great,” knowing that really, I would make any time work.

I sent him and his partner an email with my ceremony outline and also the specific questions I liked to ask couples to help recite their love story, create the personalization of their vows, and offer suggested readings. This exchange usually took at least 3 weeks, allowing an in-person meeting with the couple so I could come to understand how best to deliver what would become their union, forever, unto those who they deemed most loved ones.

I would have less than 24 hours, no formal meeting, and was told that their most ‘loved ones’ would be present via FaceTime… I imagined myself as the nightly talk-show hosts who somehow necessarily gleaned energy from a now crowd-less audience. Would my lines hit with the same impact, given the very apparent lack of a grandmother’s trembling hands, a bridesmaid’s audible sob, a father’s hesitant tear?

While I worked to adjust the set of questions and preferences I sent to couples, altered given the current, urgent, and fragile landscape, I received another phone call from Dan, who I now understood lived in Brooklyn, via Seattle. “Hey. Sorry. Are you still interested in making this happen? We just don’t want to miss our chance to get an appointment at the courthouse…” he told me. 

“I’m just finishing up the email. I’ll send it to you in a few minutes and we’ll go from there,” I told him. “Trust me, there’s nothing I want more than to make this happen tomorrow.”

After I received each partner’s responses around 9pm, I went to work writing what I hoped would be a ceremony that would bring hope amid despair, and closeness amid apparent distance. 

Given my emailed proposal, the couple let me know that they preferred not to read or approve of the ceremony I would create. This was an ideal approach so that we could experience the most natural reactions from those physically, or virtually, present. This made my interpretation of their every typed word all the more prescient.

 I first met Dan and his fiancee Sam after at the edge of the park, as I, along with my boyfriend, exited a cab. He had been recruited as the on-site photographer, videographer, and the one who would help keep me calm. At this point, he knew nearly every word of their ceremony, after at least 30 ‘rehearsals’ in our apartment the night before.

Sam and Dan were bright-eyed and young and contained all the hope I myself needed at the moment. I wanted to hug them both, of course, but couldn’t. We walked over to what had been designated as “the altar” of sorts and went over a few basic questions before their two designated witnesses arrived. 

“You must be James,” I said, to a curly-haired bow-tied man. 

“Hey! Yes! Hi!” he said, before measuring his relative distance to me, to Sam, to Dan. As Sam bent down to try to change into her bridal shoes, a young girl in a pink fur coat came walking up, waving excitedly. 

Oh my god, I’m already crying,” she said. 

“Olivia?” I asked the other witness. 

“Yes, hi!” she confirmed. 

And that was all of us, physically.

We briefly went over when the witnesses’ readings would take place, while we used all the iPhones present to connect with 36 family members and friends from all over the country. There was a father doing dialysis in Ohio. A sister in Boston- “I just put my dress on over my pajamas!” she told the group. A mother and son who looked exactly alike, with their faces squeezed together within the 3×5″ screen. 

When we were ready to start, the two witnesses and my boyfriend all stood 6 feet from each other, and a safe enough distance from the couple so that the family could still hear their ceremony over the early March wind.

I began. 

We were brought here today even knowing, that perhaps, we shouldn’t be here. The entire city has been shut down in an unprecedented mandate to avoid the very prevalent invasion of an unfamiliar virus. Yet we were brought here, despite this warning, in the name of a very coveted, yet familiar, feeling- we were brought here for love.

I looked out, beyond the couple, at the cherry blossoms just bursting to life, for what would be a temporary moment of perhaps unnoticed beauty. The Spring would go on, it seemed, without our bearing witness to it.

Standing here now, even amidst temporary chaos, we are confident that this moment will undoubtedly withstand the test of time.

As a small crowd gathered beyond the fence that surrounded the six of us, standing there below the towering oak trees, the inability to contain, repress, or quarantine certain feelings was palpable.

I mentioned a quote that the groom he had emailed me the day before. ‘

Dan has said, “Once we met, I just knew that I had found something so unexpected and special. There was never a thought that anything could be better than this.”

The air between them seemed to stand still as it was so apparent that they couldn’t wait to embrace each other.

Irrepressible. It’s what brought these two together, a feeling that they could neither deny nor contain, and what brings us here now, despite all odds, and current circumstances. Some things are too strong to hold back, or to wait for what can be thought of as a sensible amount of time. It’s simply, and quite knowingly, irrepressible.

Their witnesses were called individually to ‘walk up’ and stand, while still maintaining a 6-foot distance from the couple. There were tears and laughs and more than a few admittances of “this is just so you guys…” all meant to solidify the bond that these two would share forever, upon the rooted, gnarly soil and uncertain earth of a park in transition. Winter to Spring, social gathering area to legally enforced distance, tranquil greenspace to quarantined chaos. There, with a few words, two would be transformed from engaged, to married.

And now, feeling this foundation beneath us, within us, and the future of these two before you, I ask you, present loved ones and those with whom we are virtually connected, to join hands with the person beside you. Dan and Sam, look out and feel all of the love that surrounds you now, this moment, within the historic landscape that we find ourselves. I now ask all of you, do you give your support for this union?”

I heard enough clapping, cheers, tears, and muffled affirmations to confidently proceed. 

They exchanged rings. They exchanged vows. They solidified their love in a bond, forever, amid two witnesses, through the authority of one stranger, with the virtual blessing of 36 faces trying to transcend the miles of separation, before a haphazard congregation that had been stopped in their tracks, less than 24 hours before the city would be ordered to stop completely.

Dan and Sam, having been present here to witness your vows of marriage with all who are assembled here in support of you, and by the authority vested in me, it is with great joy that I can now pronounce you husband and wife. Dan, you may kiss your bride.

As the words hung in the air, the world seemingly stopped. The moment felt untouchable, irrepressible, eternal.

The two newlyweds waved to the assembled crowd, all who had appeared to cheer for and congratulate them, these two strangers who were now one. Most of the faces on the other sides of the collected phones were wet with tears.

Champagne was popped. The marriage license was signed. Elbows were tapped. We said goodbye and then went on with our lives for the next day until we were told that we no longer could go on. And now, we wait.

Greenpoint smells of coffee shops and laundromats, and it’s never more evident than when biking down Manhattan Avenue just after the rain. My favorite laundromat was called Corner Frenzy, although I never went there. I just liked how immediately upon reading the name you put yourself in a washing machine. You felt the craziness of the spin cycle. You could not tell which way was up. Outside of Corner Frenzy was the complete insanity of life in this city; a locura so encompassing that is was nearly impossible to stay afloat, to keep your head above water long enough to find the horizon.

Corner Frenzy forced you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. To put yourself into the shoes of your clothes. Running around with you all day, all night. Being tossed carelessly on the floor of whatever small box you deemed a home just to be thrown on again, to run around and around. At Corner Frenzy, for once, you thought about what that must be like; to exist in this city just to help protect someone you didn’t choose, and you didn’t really know. At Corner Frenzy, you stopped for a moment to appreciate the close you chose. The current closeness of your choice. And maybe, just maybe, you’d fold said clothes with extra care next time. You’d spring for the branded fabric softener. You wouldn’t forget the dryer sheets. You’d give yourself, and your sweater, a little hug as you walked out the door. Stay with me, you’d think. That’s what Corner Frenzy was. Although, I never went in there. 

Nothing fits in a Brooklyn apartment from the moment you move. Everything is out in the open. You have no storage. You begin to actually hate your sweaters- how can they take up so much space? You store weird things in the kitchen cabinets. Along with the dishes and dry goods I have in my kitchen storage, you’ll also find shoeboxes of old photographs, along with “the linen closet”, and what minimal holiday decorations we have… and when I say minimal, I mean all the decorations are stuffed into one stocking. You store things in the oven- all of the bakeware, wooden cutting boards (I know, I know…) and that planter you’re definitely going to profligate soon. 

You consider getting rid of the fridge. You look at that deep, rectangular nook longingly, thinking of all the things you could slide in there, like that armchair you planned to use for reading but as it’s right beside the bed, it’s just used for the nightly tossing-of-the-clothing. You could read in that nook. You would read in that nook. You’d be a better person if the fridge was gone. You know this.

And because almost everyone in New York suffers from this same problem, the sidewalk becomes a clandestine item swap on a nearly daily basis. Nothing makes my bike brakes screech more loudly than the sighting of a cardboard box with a sign that says “Free” above it. I’ll shuffle through old books, clothing, art supplies, jewelry… even knowing I’m at capacity in my apartment. I especially love it when these free finds are themed. I once set out a sequined mini skirt, some conspicuous jewelry, a few condoms, and an airplane bottle of shitty vodka- Party-themed. 

I once came across a pile of DVDs and scoured through before selecting Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces. I took it home and my boyfriend and I watched it on my laptop. I returned it to the same trashcan lid a few days later with a note attached- We loved it! Thank you! This trashcan felt like all we had left from the Blockbuster days… and trust that if it was a VHS, I would have been kind. I would have rewound.

I even once considered an open container of yogurt left on the steps of a front porch with a note that read “This yogurt is still good, I just didn’t like it very much” on it. In the end, I just walked back to my office and to the wilted salad I knew I had waiting for me as my lunch, but I felt a little lighter feeling the palpable trust that this neighborhood had between its residents. I’m sure they were fine people with no bad intentions, just the desire to share and no one present to share with. If it was something less creamy, I would have partaken. I would have eaten their crackers with zero hesitation, even if I wasn’t that hungry.

My friend has an Eames chair just sitting in the middle of the living room. She found it in the Lower East Side from a rather wealthy couple who simply didn’t have space for the $6000 leather-clad symbol of the mid-century modern design movement. It sits in the middle of her at-capacity living room, perhaps receiving the homage it deserves. No one will sit in the middle of a room. No one will intentionally put themselves in the stew pot. Somehow, she saved it from what could have been a life of asses plopped carelessly down upon it. It’s a piece of art. That chair is to be gazed upon, and respected, indefinitely…

 Unless, of course, they get rid of the fridge.

This friend of mine was particularly scrappy and that’s why I liked her. We were trash pandas, she and I. We were always up to no good. We worked together in a rather chic restaurant in North Brooklyn, one that within which we shared so many simple, yet profound, happenings every single shift- the slightest eye roll when some customer blatantly treated us as “the help”, a slight eyebrow raise eavesdropping on a first-date conversation, both holding back and not holding back tears, but mostly trying to see just how far we could push the rules to have fun and make money without getting fired. We would accomplish this in a variety of ways. We perfected the art of hiding small cups of white wine in the low-boy fridge at the bar. While one of us would keep watch, the other would squat down and manage to drink the wine, head back, in one gulp. And just in case you are tempted to find this crass or overly hedonistic, you should know that we always took the time for a quick, silent cheers before the ceremonious squat out of respect for each other and the wine and the (very brief) moment.

We would give each other weird little gifts during service by quickly holding out a fist, which meant “I have something for you… quick, take.” and the other person would take it and keep moving. Sometimes it was a piece of warm focaccia bread. Sometimes it was the refined, semi-sweet chocolate bits we now knew where to find in the walk-in. Sometimes it was a saucy piece of filled pasta, a dense little meatball, half of a scallop, a small baggie of white. It was kind of a game, a challenge not to react, just to take and figure out the proper form of consumption later, but it was always with the intention to help us keep going.

 As scrappy as she was, I always had a feeling that once it would be a cockroach. But we both knew if that happened, the gig would be up.

One Sunday we had a particularly rowdy group of adults celebrating a birthday. Halfway through their dinner, the one who was arguably having the most fun, dropped a pillbox out of his pocket, strewing a variety of countless pills all over the floor. His entire party couldn’t stop laughing. I went over to help him collect the pills as he tried to apologize and thank me between laughter. I came back to the bar. My friend looked at me, disappointed. “Come on dude, you didn’t grab any for us?” I held out my fist for her to take. We both laughed. The two little white square pills seemed harmless enough, but the birthday boy who I unintentionally procured them from seemed to be on another planet… and we had 4 hours left in our shift. And the owner was to appear any minute for his Sunday duties. And it was a Sunday.

  We did a fair amount of Googling to see if we could figure out what we had gotten ahold of, both eyeing the pills suspiciously as we passed behind the bar. Finally, I poured us some white wine, “We’ll do it at the same time,” I told her. “Down the hatch,” she said. We did a small and hesitant little cheers and then, down the hatch they went… after which we both immediately regretted what we had just done. “You think everything is going to be ok, right?” I asked her. 

“Yeah I mean, just let me know if you start feeling weird.”

“Ok, you too…” I said. And then the door opened and we both said “Ciao!” cheerily to the very Italian owner of the establishment that was our main source of income.

In the end, we think it was Adderall. And we also realized there was almost nothing we wouldn’t do together just for a little more risk, a little more excitement, a little more anything.

Sometimes, instead of white wine, it would be tequila that we would sneak, sip, gulp. And sometimes, on tequila nights, we would go out for “just one more.” And after how ever many one would become, sometimes we wouldn’t remember how we got home. On those nights, sometimes, our boyfriends got mad at us. We would text each other from “the dog house”, which in my railroad apartment, was the tiny bathroom- the only room with a door. For her, it was usually on the way back to her apartment from his. The messages would usually read some garbled version of, “I don’t think we were that bad…” “No man, we definitely weren’t.” The next day’s recollection did not include said messages or occupancy of the aforementioned dog houses. 

We were that bad.

A couple came in one night who lived in the nearby luxury apartment building at the waterfront. They were both younger than we were- which is to say, in their late 20s- and were probably the most gentle and soft-spoken individuals I’d ever been around. They were the exact opposite of trash pandas. She was pregnant and showing, and he was of course not drinking out of solidarity and was also constantly concerned about the noise level, the temperature, or any slight sensitivity that might affect her and Baby. “Is there any way you can turn the music down?” and “Are you sure the heats on? Honey, you must be so cold…” They were sweet but lacked conviction. I wondered if they’d ever raised their voices, if they’d ever fucked in the kitchen, if they’d ever felt real shame or blind passion.

 I had told my partner-in-crime earlier, “This couple drives me kind of crazy. They’re so gentle, I just kind of want to shake them and say, ‘raise your voice! Yell something! Let just ONE hair fall out of place!” She looked over and agreed.

“We have some news,” they told me. “We’re moving, to have more space for Baby…” I wondered just how big they thought “Baby” would be, to already outgrow their massive apartment that overlooked the Manhattan skyline. I knew that there were the kind of people who never had to consider getting rid of the fridge to make space for a piece of furniture they found on the street.

“We’re moving to the West Village,” he told me. 

“Oh no! Well, we’ll miss you here.” I didn’t not mean it, I really didn’t. 

“We actually move tomorrow,” she told me. “It happened so fast.”

From there, they proceeded to gently mark a two-story floor plan with a pencil to note where furniture and artwork would be placed. “Do you think that painting will be too disruptive for Baby?” he asked her. 

“Do you think we should get rid of the coffee table? And those shelves in the living room? I don’t think they’ll work in the new place,” she told him. And my little trash panda ears perked up.

 When it was time for another sneaky wine, I told my PIC, “Hey, so, quick update- the gentle couple is moving out tomorrow. And I know where they live. And you know they never fight, so none of their furniture will be dented.” We set a plan to go the next day to scavenge.

The next day we arrived at the site fairly early, in case any other trash pandas were hot on our heels. In the end, I took a nice rug that I rolled up and strapped to the rack on my bike, making my vehicle way too wide to fit safely in the bike lane, which was all part of the rush. My PIC was tempted by a corner shelving unit… “Remember, the Eames,” I told her.

“But maybe, the fridge?” 

“The Eames…” I repeated. She left empty-handed, but the search for everything and nothing and anything continued, always.

There is a tipping point. There is an extremely rare circumstance in which a guest is so out of touch, so deliberately rejecting the norms of dining socially and the respect of the service behind it that instead of getting angry and masking your bitter reaction behind a saccharine sweet smile, you embrace them for reasons even unbeknownst to you.

This is the Wasco’s. A couple that is so deliberately ignorant to the proper way to behave inside of an establishment that it’s actually endearing. And captivating. And I somehow have the beleaguered opportunity to serve and observe them nearly every week now, and I equallly wish I did and did not have this honor. 

They arrive around 6pm. “In time for the music,” he tells you with a grin. 
The music, of course, starts at 8:30. 

“We like to dance,” she says with a wink. You know this of course. You know them.

“Sounds lovely,” you say, and you mean it, somehow. You do.

They sidle up to the bar, inevitably at the most prominent and desirable seats around your pristine and rather seductive round marble structure. They mark this coveted territory first with their preferred dining companions – a thick stack of noticeably rumpled New York Times sections, a bright book of crosswords, a romance novel that you have an ominous feeling is part of some omnibus of which the 8 that preceded it and the limitless number that will follow it all were waiting at home; all with the same plot lines and characters; all with no twists or turns, just the shudder of a seductive curve being traced by a hesitant finger; all that she would find herself lost in again and again. 

Sometimes, on special nights that you either presume or hope are as such, they also bring Scrabble. The travel version, the one made with the rigid plastic grid usually reserved for bumpy car rides or for swaying train cars along foreign high-speed railways, but in this case, these speed-resistant grids only slow them down as they tentatively place tile after tile in its painstakingly designated container. 

They get settled for what seems like an hour and then look to you confusedly as you try to hand them menus. “No, no, we like to eat late.”

Very late. You know this.

“Ok, would you like to have a drink at the bar while you wait for a table?” You ask, recognizing that you sound a bit too eager. Because not waiting for a table means they’ll be there with you for the next 5 hours, before which they’ll plan their next move. Which, of course, I’ll get to later. 

After thumbing unnecessarily through the few pages of your drink list, he gently gestures for her to put it down before giving you the same familiar response. “We’ll start with a bottle of Pinot Grigio,” winking at you, as if it’s a special varietal reserved for just them. That same varietal you’ve reserved just for them, every weekend every Saturday, always reluctantly. And then nearly before you respond, they are shuffling through the evening’s chosen paper materials and coughing or clearing their throats, peering over their thick glasses and trading papers and grunting or coughing then trading back. 

Once they finish this odd elderly mating ritual from the human species of Long Island, you say, “May I?” as you try to find a paperless landing place for the stemmed wine glasses as they peer back at you over their sordid papers. 

Shuffle, shuffle. You read his hand cues for where to place the glasses. You’re learning, as she has, as they have.

“Would you like to taste the wine, ma’am?” She seems both bashful and complacent. She points to his glass. He taps it twice. You pour a sip. You’re learning. 

“It’s nice,” he says with an air of dignified victory.

As she eagerly takes another sip, you admire the fact that once again, she’s chosen to wear nearly every piece of statement jewelry in her arsenal. And you are confident this wasn’t from indecision, this is simply her statement. Every statement. All of the statements.

“I love your jewelry tonight,” you hear yourself say, and mean it. You mean it, somehow. It’s refreshing to be in the presence of someone so boldly disobeying every rule of accessorization in North Brooklyn these days.

She beams. “Oh! Thank you.” You can tell she means it. She likes you, and this has taken a while.

After the Scrabble grid is unzipped, they position their travel-sized letter sleds and thick, worn Scrabble-official dictionary so as to cover at least 5 spots in your 10-seat bar. On a Saturday night.

As they select their letters and get down to business, you realize that all these years of marriage neither yielded a particularly confident vocabuary nor competitive sense of trust as part of every turn requires a smug shuffle through the tattered pages of said word dictionary. 

“Are you sure that’s a word?”

“Bob,” she says, slightly exasperated and with a significant eyebrow raise as she lowers her very strategic move into its chosen receptacles that will somehow propel her into first place and just noticeably a bit out of her barstool.

When the music starts, Scrabble becomes the second priority of the night. Instead of listlessly looking over her letters, she’s watching his eyes and waiting for the slightest signal that it’s time. Which, I imagine he defines loosely based on the rhythm, the beat, the song, and perhaps of some memory of them on a cruise ship once in the late ’80s. And when he gives the sign, one that even the shrewdest poker player could never identify, her eyes, always at half-mast and caked in a shoe polish-esque interpretation of eyeshadow, meet his, and without another word or a slight nod or a missing of a beat, they are entranced in the kind of waltz that is learned after what I imagine must be 52 years of moving together. 

The music stops at 10:30 and Scrabble aways wraps up around 10:45, somehow. At this point you drain the bottle of Pinot Grigio but only once you have her attention, waiting with the inverted bottle just above her glass so she knows it’s empty. If not, she’ll ask you to take it back out of the recycling bin. “I think there’s a little left…”

And this is the part where they begin to separately scroll through a digital rolodex of local restaurants that are supposedly welcoming to people who “eat very late!”, and go through one by one and call. “Hello!! This is Sue Wasco! What’s the latest we can come for dinner!” after a pause. “What! Oh. Ok!”

He recites the phone number of their next victim. 

“Hello!! This is Sue Wasco! What’s the latest we can come for dinner!” a pause. “Ok! You aren’t going to rush us, are you? We eat very slowly and we don’t like to be rushed.”

At this point I have no idea why anyone on the other end of the line would say yes, come on in. Because once every few months, they get rejected by every restaurant in their rolodex, and they reluctantly ask me for a food menu about 3 minutes before the kitchen closes. “We would have eaten here anyway but your wine is too expensive,” she tells you. 

“We have a bottle in the car,” Bob explains. You aren’t really sure how this fits into the narrative or how after 2 bottles of wine and more in the car and a thick eyeshadow regimen that visibly inhibits visibility, they’re able to drive back to Wherever, Long Island.

“We usually go to Oregano, but they’re closing early tonight.” Yep. I bet they just happen to be closing early and likely armed with a new failproof caller ID system on their restaurant phone. 

And Oregano closing early means they take their food menus to the first of all 3 recently emptied booths, previously occupied by the rest of non-Spanish society who like to eat dinner before 11pm. 

If they stay, they’ll order a red. They’ll order 3 courses that they wish to be coursed out. They will not share. They will not speak.  He will, unknowingly, slump the newspaper too far into the candle before tamping it out with an air of what could be nonchalance or a very disciplined control of his own shame, it’s hard to tell. They will not notice that no other patrons have been in sharing the space with them for nearly 2 hours. They will not care that the lights are all the way up and the music is off. They will let the food get cold. They will refuse every offering of, “Can we box up the rest for you?” 

“I’m still eating,” she’ll explain, again and again. 

“She likes to eat slow,” He’ll say over his newspaper. 

They will fall asleep at the booth. You will have to wake them, and tell them that the food has been boxed up, and that yes, the wine has been finished for a while now. You will watch the fairly deceptive dream of them dissipate into a cloud of frustration and evaporated Montepulciano and swear you won’t be so sweet next time they come in. 

But this of course only happens every once in a while, the late-night dinner dance. And that is why you can still say with conviction, “I love your jewelry tonight Sue.” or “Bob, tell me again how you two learned to dance so well?” because thankfully, the wine you purvey is slightly more expensive than that at Oregano. 

Usually, you are left to watch them leave, Sue with her black-caked eyes at half mast, waiting for Bob to bring the car and her to Oregano.

You wonder about the you at the other end of the deal; the girl who works at Oregano who doesn’t get the evening portion of the Wascos, the oddly charming and barely tolerable pre-dinner antics. She has to suffer through the dinnertime Wascos, every time. 

You wonder, sometimes, if she’s ok, as you bike past the unassuming little Italian restaurant on Berry Street. You imagine stopping in and striking up a conversation about the Wasco’s, letting her vent a little. And as you’re tempted to stop, one day you swear you’ll stop, it will only be to tell them their wine prices are far too high for the neighborhood. 

We focused on ambiguous, approachable signs of domestication because anything too aggressive didn’t fit our still-rowdy-in-our-30s approach- Non-takeout-sourced tupperware containers, more than 4 rolls of toilet paper purchased at a time, cookbooks not just for decoration, fabric softener, the very idea of “meal prep”, a 401k. These were all things that I felt nearly allergic to. 

I still had flashbacks of a “girls’ dinner!” in my hometown with the 3 people I still talked to from high school. They were all complaining about the imminent expansion of a two-lane road and consequent property devaluation of their homes. Not recognizing, of course, that it was the appearance of countless and thoughtless cookie-cutter palette-home subdivisions that required such a need for these expansions but alas, they had already moved on to the next riveting topic; who sells the best furniture and storage solutions for their husbands’ home offices. I sat and challenged myself to say something as I mindlessly and in vain pushed my soupy refried beans around my plate, thinking these formless legumes also seemed to have no regard for my wishes or presence.

We always had Girls’ Dinner! at weird “Mexican” restaurants off the highway because one of the girls, the one with the biggest house and the most stuff and thus most pressing need for storage solutions, didn’t like to drive her SUV down the narrow streets in the city. She also had trouble ordering off menus that weren’t Applebee’s or nameless “Mexican” restaurants off highways. She was the kind of girl who still asked for the kid’s menu, the one that would turn her nose up if chicken tenders weren’t an option everywhere. The one that asked for pasta with butter and parmesan at my going-away Girls Dinner, which I insisted on having downtown at my favorite Italian spot. She got a ride with one of the other girls, of course. She was the one that at a recent friend’s wedding which we all had a plated meal, grabbed her husband’s wrist before he dug into his surf-and-turf, cutting her eyes at him and saying, “Dan…”.

“Oh, sorry babe. Um, does anyone want my crabcake?” We were in Maryland. Someone asked this question aloud at a plated surf-and-turf dinner in Maryland, with his fork quivering in mid air, the slight red of his wife’s grip fading from his wrist.

“You don’t want your crabcake?” I asked as I happily absorbed mine, bite by bite in between savory segments of steak. 

Sarah interrupted. “No, he likes them. But he knows that if he eats any seafood, I won’t kiss him for the rest of the night,” she paused for a moment, beaming, before cutting into her dry chicken breast. 

Someone else’s husband grabbed the crabcake and slightly muttered, “You should really just eat the crabcake man,” without making eye contact with anyone, knowing you choose your fights, but godammit, this was one to choose.

The girls’ domestication had reached an intensity that I could no longer feign participation in. And that was 5 years ago. I wonder sometimes what kind of banal conversation I’m not participating in now and if the soupy beans miss my gentle pushes. 

This was far from the lifestyle I had with my lover. We focused on ambiguous, approachable signs of domestication. “We should be like those people who leave the butter out,” he told me, as I pushed an unwieldy cart around the IKEA in Red Hook.

I agreed. “I’ve always wanted to be those people!” I said honestly. I felt like a refrigerator-less dairy dome was something that could only be purchased through a gift registry and for others. You don’t decide it’s time to leave the butter out; others recognize that your commitment allots this type of societally misconstrued negligence. You were settled. You were two. You can leave the butter out. 

But to me, this to me communicated a European lifestyle. A stone-floored kitchen, bare feet and a linen dress. No screens on the windows as the breeze blows in, his arm around my waist and lips on my neck as I cut the fruit we chose at the market that morning. I’d arrange it loosely on a plate with a few pieces of crusty bread, smoothed with fresh butter from beneath a glass dome left intentionally on the solid wood chopping block. 

This was the life I wanted. And the butter felt like the gateway. 

My sister visited a few months after we moved in. She had seen me shuffled from thin-walled-apartment to optimistic shoebox spaces, all with a slew of hardly palatable roommates and one cat, and so to see my renovated railroad* apartment was a noticeable upgrade.

We ducked into a vintage** shop in the warehouse district*** of Greenpoint to escape the cold. Within the confines of the naturally-lit space and Happy Folk! playlist, I felt immediately aware of the previous night’s substance abuse. “You’re a grown-up,” I told my shaking hand as it uncertainly gripped my iced coffee. “Get it together.”

I perused through the row of hanging kimonos and wondered if my ass would work in multiple pairs of vintage**** Levi’s. I wandered back over to my sister’s side and watched as her hand decidedly chose something amid a table strewn intentionally with crystals and palo santo and clever matchbooks and unused coasters. 

She held up a marble-based dish with a glass-dome top, almost exactly the size of my boob. “How about this, as a housewarming gift?” she asked happily. “You can be like those people who leave the butter out.”

We will be. We are. 

We are. 

*glorified studio

**second-hand

***up-and-coming

****third-hand

I found myself upstairs at the Whole Foods in Union Square, looking out of the massive floor to ceiling window upon the park that I used to look out a 7th floor window upon when I worked in fashion and was usually contemplating suicide, either by mini stapler or window. I was here now waiting for my boyfriend who had a doctors’ appointment of which in nature required an escort of sorts to help you woozily battle the underground train commute to wherever home is, which, arguably, everyone could use an escort of sorts to help battle this often unnavigable sea of misdirected straphangers and tracks, but of this certain nature I will not explain because I respect his privacy. And this simply isn’t the place. Stop wondering. You’re so annoying.

I found myself upstairs at the Whole Foods in Union Square, nibbling on a smattering of nut-based snacks and sipping a coffee that was way too big but still refusing to gulp it, which is the only way you can finish a coffee of this size while still maintaining its integrity. I recognize that I chose to order this size. I thought medium seemed sensible given the hour I was out and walking around in public. I overshot it a little. 

The wall adjacent to the glass window was adorned with a message that read “Our PURPOSE is to NOURISH PEOPLE and the PLANET” in a noticeably antiquated font. Adjacent to this wall was another wall lined with a microwave, a water fountain from the 50s that I hope no one ever leans over and puts their mouth near, and two industrial sinks. My eyes were led to said sinks after hearing industrial-powered stream of water emmitting from one for what I deemed longer than an average hand-washing. Standing in front of the sinks was a man with wild hair and a wide smile, washing a long patterened sock under the public nourishing spigot. He was filling the porous sock with water and smushing it out, smiling and looking around, filling it with soap and smiling and looking around, wringing it out and patting it with dry paper towels before washing it again, visibly entertained that this luxury was available to him. As I observed this activity, surprised that no one was stopping him, he was clearly surprised that his one pair of socks would be clean, for once. I noticed that his bare feet were half sticking out of a pair of very weathered sneakers. 

He wrung the sock again and then swung it around, flopping flotsam of god knows what upon the oversized coffees of onlookers who seemed to be too absorbed in their own devices to notice his presence, nor any unfamiliar flotsam upon what they probably thought were aptly sized caffeine habits before consuming another thoughtless gulp. 

I was secretly begging him to put said socks in the microwave for some speed drying that could end in flames, but also could end in his own fleeting feeling of entrepreneurship for the rest of the dirty-socked occupants of the second floor in Whole Foods. 

At some point in my onlooking I met eyes with another sane set of eyes across the communal tables, closer than me to the communal sinks yet still reasonably out of reach of the flotsam flinging. He put his head into his hand and scrunched his hair slightly to say, only in New York, right? And I smiled and shook my head, looking down slightly. Only in New York, I confirmed with my eyes. 

I returned my gaze toward the park and I was pained remembering so many times I looked desperately from the 7th foot upon the same park, when I was working in fashion and contemplating suicide via stapler or window. 

I scrunched my toes in my what I felt now were comparatively dirty socks.

I saw the clean-socked man return to the sink area and wondered what I would be watching him wash next but instead he was holding a small paper cup and grinning from ear to ear. He turned on the high-powered industrial communal sink and filled his cup, drinking happily while the ominous water fountain stood perched beside the sink, dry and untouched.

We all have our standards.

It’s been a year since I quit my job to start “living my life,” and my intention to spend time reflecting on all I’ve learned this year instead reminded me of a rather shameful day last Summer. And while I’m appreciative of how far I’ve come, relatively, I’m not so sure it’s fair to measure my small victories when comparing to midday petty theft than I convince myself is the only way to get my life together. But I suppose I have to start somewhere. I suppose I’ll start by coming clean.

I stole my meditation candle. One day last summer. It was just two days into my supposed “freedom” from the chains of corporatism and into the unknown and I felt completely and wholly unhinged. I couldn’t be in the house anymore. I was nervous. It was day 2. I went to the grocery store and wandered around, standing in front of the meat section and thinking that nothing looked good and that maybe we, as a society, should start exploring other meats and then feeling bad about that thought and then wishing that rabbit meat was as common in the US as it was in Spain and then realizing that in reality, I just missed Spain. I decided to move on and place my dissatisfaction somewhere among the produce. I put a 6 pack of bananas in my basket knowing that I wouldn’t be able to eat them all before they went bad but realizing that I’d rather waste money than break up the banana family. I’ve never been one to do that.

I wondered if children of divorced families all share this strange, anonymous but sincere practice of compassion.

I tried to gather my thoughts and focus on anything. I realized my hands felt shaky and then shook off that voice in my head that said, “why are you always fucking hungover you’ll never amount to anything.” I shook off that voice because there isn’t anything I can do about it when I’m in the hangover stage. Hey, voice, why don’t you just help convince me not to go out at night. Pipe up then, ok?

I realized that to control said voice, I should start meditating again. During the 2 months that I was waking up early to meditate before the job I hated made me feel centered and in control and mentally stable and I needed that right now. And so I needed a meditation candle. I felt relieved that I had come to the grocery store with no real direction and now, suddenly, I had a purpose. Meditation. Candle. Centered. Whole.

Banana families.

I found the soy-based candles nestled among the organic cleaning products and smelled each one, imagining what flavor profile would best color the harnessing of energy and thus restructuring of my entire being from here on out. Geranium, perhaps. I inhaled deeply with my eyes closed and had to stop myself from exhaling in an “OMMMMM.” Yes, yes. This is the one.

I turned it over to see a happy little $14.99 price tag winking back at me.

What! Fifteen bucks for this thing??? My lofty hopes dissipated immediately in a very haphazard huff of air. I had a handful of crumbled bills stuffed in my bag that likely amounted to $9. I could tell by their collective weight. I didn’t have the heart to put the bananas back after all we’d been through together and also, I needed to eat and the soy-based candle, while environmentally conscious, was likely devoid of nutrients.

Swiftly and unintentionally, my days of shoplifting flashed into my head. I devised a foolproof plan: Hide candle in basket, under bananas. Walk around a bit, shake them off of your scent. Serpentine near the soups. Shimmy around the frozen foods. Go back to the meats, maybe. Then pretend your phone is ringing. Search for it in your bag, candle in hand. Answer phone. Talk for a bit. Do not look up, do not look around. Then toss candle and phone into bag.

Then pay for bananas.

I mean hey, what kind of thief pays for things after the crime has been committed?

Thieves who are also shit humans. You are a shit human, the voice tells you as you leave the supermarket. You are a shit human.

You go home and realize that you can’t meditate because the candle now smells like shame instead of Geranium and in your head there is an uninvited mantra repeating “what the fuck is wrong with you” over and over again as you eat banana after banana after banana. And then pour yourself a glass of wine. It’s 11am.

A year later, that candle has thankfully burned out and I’ve been perpetually paying my regretful penance to that supermarket through the continuous compassion I give to the banana families.

Thank you, bunches.

I stole my meditation candle. One day last summer. It was just two days into my supposed “freedom” from the chains of corporatism and into the unknown and I felt completely and wholly unhinged. I couldn’t be in the house anymore. I was nervous. It was day 2. I went to the grocery store and wandered around, standing in front of the meat section and thinking that nothing looked good and that maybe we, as a society, should start exploring other meats and then feeling bad about that thought and then wishing that rabbit meat was as common in the US as it was in Spain and then realizing that in reality, I just missed Spain. I decided to move on and place my dissatisfaction somewhere among the produce. I put a 6 pack of bananas in my basket knowing that I wouldn’t be able to eat them all before they went bad but realizing that I’d rather waste money than break up the banana family. I’ve never been one to do that.

I wondered if children of divorced families all share this strange, anonymous but sincere practice of compassion.

I tried to gather my thoughts and focus on anything. I realized my hands felt shaky and then shook off that voice in my head that said, “why are you always fucking hungover you’ll never amount to anything.” I shook off that voice because there isn’t anything I can do about it when I’m in the hangover stage. Hey, voice, why don’t you just help convince me not to go out at night. Pipe up then, ok?

I realized that to control said voice, I should start meditating again. During the 2 months that I was waking up early to meditate before the job I hated made me feel centered and in control and mentally stable and I needed that right now. And so I needed a meditation candle. I felt relieved that I had come to the grocery store with no real direction and now, suddenly, I had a purpose. Meditation. Candle. Centered. Whole.

Banana families.

I found the soy-based candles nestled among the organic cleaning products and smelled each one, imagining what flavor profile would best color the harnessing of energy and thus restructuring of my entire being from here on out. Geranium, perhaps. I inhaled deeply with my eyes closed and had to stop myself from exhaling in an “OMMMMM.” Yes, yes. This is the one.

I turned it over to see a happy little $14.99 price tag winking back at me.

What! Fifteen bucks for this thing??? My lofty hopes dissipated immediately in a very haphazard huff of air. I had a handful of crumbled bills stuffed in my bag that likely amounted to $9. I could tell by their collective weight. I didn’t have the heart to put the bananas back after all we’d been through together and also, I needed to eat and the soy-based candle, while environmentally conscious, was likely devoid of nutrients.

Swiftly and unintentionally, my days of shoplifting flashed into my head. I devised a foolproof plan: Hide candle in basket, under bananas. Walk around a bit, shake them off of your scent. Serpentine near the soups. Shimmy around the frozen foods. Go back to the meats, maybe. Then pretend your phone is ringing. Search for it in your bag, candle in hand. Answer phone. Talk for a bit. Do not look up, do not look around. Then toss candle and phone into bag.

Then pay for bananas.

I mean hey, what kind of thief pays for things after the crime has been committed?

Thieves who are also shit humans. You are a shit human, the voice tells you as you leave the supermarket. You are a shit human.

You go home and realize that you can’t meditate because the candle now smells like shame instead of Geranium and in your head there is an uninvited mantra repeating “what the fuck is wrong with you” over and over again as you eat banana after banana after banana. And then pour yourself a glass of wine. It’s 11am.

A year later, that candle has thankfully burned out and I’ve been perpetually paying my regretful penance to that supermarket through the continuous compassion I give to the banana families.

Thank you, bunches.

<3L.