A Wedding Awaits - For Better or Worse

(Written on 12/12/2008)

It’s my birthday and I’m sitting at Gate D2 waiting for my tin-can to roll in. If the plane goes down, I’ll have lived exactly 26 years – well, probably not to the minute.

My mother didn’t think that was funny. My sister made fun of me for trying to be profound. It would make one local news reporter very happy – front-page, sob-story material.

Airports aren’t so bad; this has to be the most relaxed one I’ve ever been in. All the restaurants serve red beans and rice and Jambalaya, although they’re a sad and expensive reproduction of what you get when you take a taxi 20 minutes south into the Big Easy proper.

Last year on my birthday I think I worked and then went out to a local wine bar with family, friends, and my then-new, brash, Australian housemate (when I still liked her).

After I went to my boxing teacher’s house and watched a match as his girlfriend glared a hole into the front of my head.

This year I took a morning jog down Elysian Fields, which turned into aerobics as I tried to dodge my way around all the dog shit on the ground, I took a $35 taxi ride to the airport (my taxi driver told me that you could take the highway that we were on all the way to Los Angeles), and I paid $12 for a salad which annoyed me more than it should have.

Not bad so far. I’ve come a long way in a year.

More from my taxi driver: If you put salt in your beer during these choking summers that everyone keeps warning me about, you’ll sweat your beer out faster and you won’t be as dehydrated. Plus, it allegedly makes the beer taste better. He wondered what I’ll drink this weekend in Vermont to stay warm. I do too.

The Remanants Cling On

I was sitting in the front seat of my boxing teacher's truck driving back from my boxing lesson last night.

I love learning boxing from him (he's a great teacher and loves to make fun of me) and I love his stories and insights.

I think he's becoming one of my favorite people here.

So we are having yet another discussion about race and he notices that there's been a cop car in front of us for a few miles, going just the right speed to stay a few feet in front of the truck.

"You know, he just might pull me over and ask me what I'm doing with this white girl," says my teacher.

I laughed and thought he was joking.

I should have known better, this is New Orleans, where sarcasm stems from reality more often than anywhere else.

Thanks Ana and Hank

Ana Dane, once again, reminds me of New York's filth, in a blog post discussing tea nonetheless.

When you are frustrated with people, listen to the song, "I'd Love to Knock The Hell Out of You," by Hank Williams Jr.

It will satisfy your urge to knock the hell out of someone without landing you in jail. A beautiful thing.

My Thoughts Exactly

Ways to Show You've Got

Here's the New Orleans Guide to proving you're privileged, tailored to your specific lifestyle:

Young businessman: Buy two cars -- a sensible one to go to work and a flashy piece of sports machinery to park outside of clubs on the weekend.

Middle-aged businessman: Join a cheap gym and take every opportunity to tell the young, impressionable women at the gym what you do, and, by implication, how big your paycheck is.

Old Businessman: Drive around in your convertible with the top down. If it's cold, suck it up -- do this until the temperature drops below 40. Whenever possible, dangle a cigar lazily out of the side of your mouth.

Musician (successful): Mention your label and how supportive it is as much as possible and especially when in conversation with a female. (Keeps the label and your sex-drive happy.) Talk a lot about all the leisure activities you can partake in while the squares work 9-5.

Rapper: Simple. Get a gold grill installed on your front teeth. Same for your car.

College Student: Live in a part of town that's expensive, but to the naked eye, passes as bohemian. Only mention that your father owns the three blocks you live on to "certain" people. Buy sweatshirts with your law school's name on them in five colors, but avoid mentioning your parents are paying your tuition.

This Bears Repeating ...

This is very funny and very relevant to N.O.

Almost Like New York, But Not

Couldn't sleep last night. Some asshole was playing the violin outside my window.

Heavier Than The Humidity

A new friend said there's this constant violent tension here: "You can feel it in the air."

It's talked about over beers and in cafes -- though more so by angsty newcomers; it's written about clinically in the Times Picayune; and it's aftershocks are mourned with second-lines and memorial concerts.

New York had a jangled, nervous twitch, but a feeling of motion. New Orleans has the same nervousness, but it's stagnant, permanent, and more serious.


This place's surreal beauty works as Xanax to the anxiety. (Mint Juleps and grits work too.) But, like Xanax, it only treats the symptoms.

But just as the feeling in the air is heaver, the fun I have and the people I connect with feel like small, brave victories.

You Interrupted My Song For That?

St. James James Infirmary is one of the most covered songs down here and my favorite. It's about a guy that sees his girl dead and laid out in the morgue.

My favorite lyric : "Let her go, let her go, God bless her, wherever she may be. She can look this wide world over, but she'll never find a man like me."

So the three-piece jazz group was wailing this out to an audience of about 9, when my listening was interrupted by a drunk guy who is a friend of Diana's.

He shook my hand and thanked me, vigorously and repeatedly, for moving to New Orleans. I mumbled "no problem" or something equally awkward.

"My girlfriend (he said it just as matter-of-factly as he had thanked me) just got pushed down in front of her apartment."

Then he told me again that he was drunk and to be careful.

They did a Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover next, complete with expert manic laughter. We all joined in.

She's the Raid to My Nostalgia

In my previous post I admitted to some NYC subway nostalgia. Ana Dane has offered me a cure:


"oh, dear. look, all i can recommend: take a plastic bag. fill it with those sweaty gym clothes, still steaming, then take a piss on them. let the bag sit in the sun for two days, then empty it out, and cut an air hole and let it sit loosely over your head for an hour while you stand next to a jackhammer on one side, and a crying infant on the other. throw away $4 from your wallet at the end.

if that doesn't make you feel a tiny bit less nostalgic, i don't know what will."

What Happens When You're Lonely

-You buy an overpriced lamp.

-You're glad to come home to said overpriced lamp.

-You have coffee with people you find unsettling and narcissistic.

-You begin thinking of people as potential acquaintances or not worth the conversation.

-You spend too much time on the stationary bike at the gym.

-You get too upset when hipsters at bars stare at you.

-You become too diligent with your dishes.

But worst:

You get nostalgic about the subway when you find an old Metro card in your wallet.

I Don't Like This City's Obits

When someone dies here, they have a second-line parade. People dance/march with a brass band to the funeral.

I think their white hearses put Cadillacs to shame, but it's a matter of taste.

On my first Saturday here, my friend Diana said, matter-of-factly, that she was going to a second-line for a girl from our neighborhood who had been murdered.

Diana wasn't sure how she'd been killed, but she said she probably lived in the a higher-crime area of our neighborhood. I wondered where, exactly, this high and low-crime line is.

Last night I stopped in at a cafe to get some of the strong coffee I needed and an idealized-hippy-punk chick handed me a flier about a show that night to benefit the family of a girl that got shot.

"Oh they had a second-line for her today," I said.

"No, that was someone else," she replied.

I looked at the flier with the murdered girl's photo on it. It looked too familiar, like something off of Myspace. The flier named the cross-streets where she was found with a bullet in her head. I didn't know the streets, or what crime lines they crossed.

Later I showed Diana the flier. "She shouldn't have been in that area," was all she said.

The Times-Picayune police blotter lists all the crimes that happened the previous day. Most are robberies (house) and assault (not ending in murder).

The next page is the obituaries. A third of today's deaths were people below 35 (no cause of death listed). I'd feel more comfortable if they were all above 60.

I've never read New York's crime reports, so I can't compare. I've also never assessed how close to my home a murder occurred.

Here are the cities with the highest murder rates (from 2007), per the FBI:

1. Gary, IN – 73 (pop. 97,048)
2. Richmond, CA – 46 (pop. 102,471)
3. Baltimore, MD – 45 (pop. 624,237)
4. Detroit, MI – 44 (pop. 860,971)
5. St. Louis, MO – 40 (pop. 348,197)
6. Birmingham, AL – 38 (pop. 227,686)
7. JP/NOLA – 38 (pop. 683,000)
8. Newark, NJ – 37 (pop. 280,158)
9. Baton Rouge – 31 (pop. 228,446)
10. Oakland, CA – 30 (pop. 396,541)

Diana reads the crime blotter every morning. I wonder how many New Orleaneans do.

Sweet Sweat

I've been able to put aside the mind-fuck that is relocation twice since Sunday.

One: having Cajun food with my parents at a place called Crocs.

Two: Peddling on a stationary bike from the 1980's in a balmy gym with a red lit-up sign flashing "boxing" over the door outside.

Mike, the owner, is a New Yorker and a New Orleanean all in one. Sure the rafters shake when I hit the bag and we all have to share one shower, but that makes it all the sweeter.

Thank you Freret Street Gym.

The gym sits just on the border of where I'm not supposed to go. I went and got Gatorade from a convenience store on the "wrong side of the line" -- the owner of the store was a Mexican woman who asked me about my workout and called me sweetie.

Some kids said hi to me on the walk back. Mike was waiting for me with a concerned look.

Peddling my bike through the French Quarter on my way back, I was almost sideswiped by what looked like a well-fed gentleman in a sports car.

The Big ... Sort of, Maybe, Not Sure Yet, Easy?

Your biggest aspirations never turn out exactly how you think they will. I'm taking that with me from now on.

Culture shock is real and it creeps up on you -- so do dashes of stinging loneliness, even though I mainly communicated with my friends via G-chat in New York as well.

Here is some good and bad New Orleans at first glance:

-It's no lie that you don't want to make a wrong turn, but I have yet to see if the danger is exaggeration. I don't like taking people's word, but don't want to find out the hard way.

-The cockroaches are huge and nasty, but they're flushable. You often, I've learned, have to flush twice.

-Nobody seems to get pissed off in traffic. There's a lot of, I wouldn't call it traffic ... slow-moving vehicles creating this sort of lava flow with the occasional streetcar clot.

-Ass kicking music and bars of the same caliber are everywhere. When you want to work or stay healthy, that's a downside. It's becoming like a game to me -- can I peddle past all the seductive bars and brass bands on my way to the gym? Victory was mine today.

-Yes, this city has "groups." E.g.: Rich, poor, black, white, Mexican, people who were born and raised here, people who are "not from around here," etc. This gets me; I hate groups. I'm battling not to be in one.

- Even the tomato soup at a tourist-trap cafe is stunning.

-People don't walk around on cell phones -- I'm the only asshole that does.

-You can jump into conversations easily, but it's not rude to just cut out of one and leave. This is probably a survival instinct -- otherwise New Orleans would be a 24-hour conversation.

If I Have to Work, It Might As Well Be in Paradise

Somewhere around Mississippi I think my brain went to sleep.

I've cried from happiness three times in my life. Crossing Lake Pontchartrain and entering New Orleans was my third.

The color of my new house (and this morning's chicory coffee) woke me up a little.

Bye Bye New York, Be Good

It's a soppy, windy, dark New York morning. Everyone in the subways is miserable. The exception, for once, is me, because in New Orleans today, it's 83 degrees with clear skies.

I couldn't think of a more perfect send-off.

Small Shorts Don't Squeeze Your Finances, Or Another Reason Why I'm Ready For N.O.

The shorts turned out to be two dollars. I had to look around to double check that I was indeed in the East Village.

The drag queen who took my money told me: "You know, honey, they come in bigger sizes as well."

Her comment wasn't offensive, as the shorts I had selected were meant for a toddler. "Oh I like them tight," I told her, not mentioning that they'd be the crown jewel of my gogo dancing outfit later tonight.

She smiled affectionately and handed me the bag.

Sometimes New York still has a kick to it. But it's more in dashes, like this one.

Five minutes later at a cafe, with a book on "the precarious financial lives of American families," I watched people dragging shopping bags past the window, and more shopping bags, and people outside of expensive restaurants ashing trendy cigarettes, and the occasional sports car pulling up to get attention.

Maybe more people have stable jobs than my book suggests, I pondered. How else can they afford to live in an impossibly expensive city and still be able to shop for nick knacks at Pottery Barn on the weekends?

Then the guy next to me tells an attentive girl about his newest freelance gig that won't pay that much, and how he's going to see his astrologer this afternoon.

Okay, so everyone here is living on credit.

Courtesy of Ayn Rand

You never see confident people reading self-help books.

These May Just Be The Lunatics I'm Looking For

At my job today, I posted a "bleg" (a blog post asking readers for advice on something) about my move to New Orleans.

I was expecting either a flood of crime statistics and essays on how global warming will increase hurricane frequency, or some sensible but cautious advice mixed with the former.

Instead, the comments built a testament to New Orleans that almost matched my wild (slightly "enhanced") rantings to my friends about it. They even got into prose:

On your first morning there, get up early. Go down to Cafe Du Monde, order a cafe au lait and one order, to go - this will cost you about four bucks and net you a cup of strong, milky coffee laced with chicory and a bag containing three beignet and a lot of icing sugar.

Walk away from the street, toward the Moonwalk, but over it, not along it - keep following the paved path back toward the river. Keep the statue of what’s-his-name at your back. When you’ve gone far enough, you’ll see a set of railroad-tie stairs that lead straight down into the Missisippi. Late at night it’s often well populated by sex workers and runaways, in the early morning it’s usually empty and, regardless of your company, quite peaceful.

Uncover your coffee, and use the icing sugar in the bag to sweeten it. Drink it slowly. Eat two of your beignet. Watch the river hurry past to meet the ocean. Listen to the city wake up 100 yeards behind you and yet so muffled it could be last year.

When the coffee and two beignet are gone, roll up the bag containing the last one. Scrawl ‘Enjoy’ on it, and leave it on the steps for when the thrown-out/took-off queer boys roll out from their temporary night’s digs looking for a breeze and a smoke. Go back home to unpack. Be glad to be in New Orleans.

— Posted by S. Bear Bergman

Of course, there were the occasional killjoys:


As a geologist, I gotta say that the single most important thing a new New Orleanean should know is that the ground under the city gets further away from sea level every year. I love New Orleans as a city, but in the medium-term (and definitely the long-term), it’s not a sustainable location unless you want levees that are four stories tall. Until it floods, enjoy it!

— Posted by Callan Bentley

Also plentiful were phrases like, "gets into your blood," and "you'll never leave," which would creep me out in any other context.

Yet I still can't completely believe in the existence of a whole city of people detached from the American norm -- hopefully, it's just because I've been walking around in Chelsea too much.

I also got a lot of congratulations, like I won something.

I'm jumping up and down, to be sure, but no premature ecstatic squeals until I see for myself what's behind Door Number 1.

The Straw In My Guinness Doesn't Bother Him

In a city where the music is rarely honest anymore, my Irish bartender at The Queys -- the only New York bartender I can truly call my own -- means it.

There's Something to Astoria's Square Faces and Beady Eyes

After some cajoling, I got each of my friends to show me their sex faces -- some obviously more authentic than others.

Really Keren?



What does the way you portray your sex face say about you? Probably something, but the internet isn't rich in that sort of information.

I have noticed that the men chasing the short skirted D&G girls around Astoria's Euro-club circuit tend to have the same square features, beady eyes and leathery skin common to the weight-lifting section of my gym.

A study I just found when looking for sex face information confirmed that there's a pattern here:

It found that men with squarer jaws, larger noses, and smaller eyes tend to opt more for casual flings, whereas "casual women" have more oval faces, larger eyes, and smaller foreheads. In short, the uglier men are more "casual" but the uglier women are more into commitment.

Some more obvious conclusions:

"The study also found that men and women are looking for opposite things when it comes to relationships, with men seeking women who are open to casual or short-term flings while women look for potential mates."

Subway Stairs Were Never So Condescending

I don't like sports fans, (especially the obese ones) mostly because they're living vicariously.

I box. Boxing isn't a sport -- it's my nervous and sexual tensions mixed with a strange psychology experiment and flung into a ring. Even while panting through my third mile every morning, I feel no bond with my athletic brethren (only envy for their intimidating calf muscles).

Right about when the Olympics began, my infinite stubbornness caused me to run my right leg into the ground and I was sentenced to prescription Motrin and the Chelsea Pool.

As I was wobbling home on swimmers' legs last week, a sudden respect for Usain Bolt, the running sensation I had been forced to read about all day, washed over me.

His face in a Times photo I saw earlier oozed an enormous amount of body and willpower combined in just the right way.

For a second I saw the athletes of the word standing in the sun, exalted in their victory over mind and muscle. Then a sharp pain in my bum knee snapped me out of it (and I got scared that my next move would be to grab a Coors Light and start yelling at the nearest flat screen TV.)

Bolt doesn't need anyone else to join his glory party. I don't want a party either -- just the ability to right-hook a bag again.

There’s the Real World and Then There Are Near-Misses, Histories Repeating, and Unprecedented Events

After a long Monday of searching meteoriolgist’s facial expressions and then relief over holding levees, I settled into bed with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and read:

“If you make people perform a noble duty, it bores them. … If you make them indulge themselves it shames them. But combine the two – and you’ve got them.”

Even after New Orleans’s “dodging of the bullet” was announced by the 20th news outlet, the Katrina parallels were still being deployed en masse.

How much was it REALLY almost Katrina? The non-meteorological world may never know.

But I do know that giving a New Orleanean sleeping in a gas station in northern Lousiana a hasty (and sloppy) Katrina comparison is the equivalent of telling a cancer survivor that the mole on his back looks exactly like that malignant one that led to all the chemo last year.

Per Rand’s observation, past tragedies work wonders to sex up positive, boring news. My point is not so much that it's cruel and tactless (which it is), but that it doesn’t stand out.

It's just part of a barrage of unprecedented but spineless clichés that I’ve allegedly never seen anything like.

Here's a sampling:

(The AP)

• Gustav to test lessons of Katrina (CNN Money)
• Hospitals use lessons from Katrina to prep for Gustav (CNN.com)
• A Prophet of Katrina’s Wrath Returns to His Storm Vigil (The New York Times)
  
• Is Gustav Katrina the Second? (Bellaciao, France)
• Evacuees compare Gustav, Katrina ordeals (USA Today)

New York Can Always Make You Smile

A sign in the Bronx- sent to me at my work email.

Please Tell Me You're Only Sensationalizing

Mayor Nagin called it the "mother of all storms."

People wouldn't be hauling ass out of N.O. if he'd called it a "potentially bad storm."

News reports are also using monster terminology. (Though the word devastating has only yet appeared in reference to Katrina.)

I told my friend Christina about my new weather map obsession. "I'm an engineer, I can tell you they're just using a model," she tells me.

The news reports are freaking me out, to say the least, especially when the Katrina/ Gustav parallels are drawn.

But what channel wouldn't draw them? This is their business boom and they milk it expertly, with raw hurricane hunter footage and video bloggers making "eerie" Katrina comparisons from the French Quarter. (I've visited the Weather Channel's site 15 times in the last 24 hours.)

So this is all just caution from a lesson hard learned and good ol' media opportunism. No potential disaster here.

Per the Washington Post: "Gustav is projected to hit the Gulf Coast region near Louisiana Monday or Tuesday, though forecasters cautioned that the track could vary."

I can stomach that. ... Time to check the satellite image.

Shit.

I've never looked at a projected path so many times -- as if staring at it long enough can make the cone move more west. Who cares about Texas.

I hate that they talk about the hurricane as if it's some interesting and fun natural phenomenon with "impressive" high winds and "amazing growth in the last four hours."

What is impressive is how smoothly the New Orleans evacuations seem to be going (from what's being said on the news) -- and how many times the Weather Channel can create videos reporting on the same situation, with a new fact thrown in here and there for variety.

It's got worried saps like me glued to its web site.

When I called Diana, who lives down there, on Friday, she sounded rushed but not shaken. She said she was at work and they were talking about their evacuation plans. She made it sound like something they do every Friday.

I don't know where she is now.

You can't reason with a hurricane, you can't threaten to sue for damages. I wish I could at least plead with him to leave New Orleans alone.

Otherwise I have to move to Brooklyn -- and then I'll be in purgatory.

No new videos up yet on the Weather Channel. Just some photos of impressively ominous clouds from Florida.

Tuesdays Are Just As Bad

The next stage in the pre-moving cycle:

Listening to a Mississipi blues show on the radio hosted by a New York DJ, trying not to have another glass of some really soulful wine while wondering whether my humble air conditioner will hold up against what they're telling me is jungle heat, and hoping everything will stay together at the seams until the last weekend in September.

I Don't Like Manifestos

A while ago I made a rule for myself:

I have to be involved in some kind of volunteer work because I can't justify living strictly for myself; it's boring and not good for the psyche.

This is not like the misplaced zeal I felt in college -- when I let a group of kids with titles like "green punk," get me indignant about bike lanes.

My altruism is simple and personal: I see people that need help and I find ways to help them.

When I Googled "volunteer, New Orleans," I got the expected Habitat sites but also loads of "green New Orleans" sites, like one whose mission it is to replace all light bulbs in New Orleans with energy efficient bulbs.

What?! I indignantly envisioned pot-smoking college kids trying to promote green living to people barely surviving in FEMA trailers.

Why are so many green programs surviving down there? I thought green activism was the domain of bored middle-class towns and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Then I take the time to read about the energy efficient bulbs and discover that they actually help the poorest reduce their energy costs. Another organization, the Green Project, salvages building materials and resells them at low cost to help people cheaply rebuild houses.

But then I come across a gardening workshop in the French Quarter and I smell patchouli again.

I'm guessing that there are so many green organizations in New Orleans because they do some very practical things for those most in need. Otherwise, I couldn't justify handing out pamphlets about environmentally healthy bulbs.

Just in case, I think I'll build houses.

That Choking Feeling

I experience life two ways lately and I’m not sure which of the two is sane.

The first way, I look at everything through a veneer of cold logic. The spurts of elation I occasionally feel seem childish to me, like cartoons that you notice aren’t real once you grow up. For example: I don’t let myself feel like a badass when I listen to Lil Wayne on the subway because I know I'm a girl in a dress dragging along a laptop case.

The second way, I let Lil Wayne convince me that I’m taking over the world -- that, in fact, I’m already in the process. This is the way I felt when I stepped off the plane in New Orleans last summer and something glorious gripped my throat.

... and also why I got choked up by Dan Baum from The New Yorker:

A long time ago, David Freedman, the general manager of the listener-supported radio station WWOZ, described New Orleans to me as a kind of resistance-army headquarters. “Everyplace else in America, Clear Channel has commodified our music, McDonald’s has commodified our food, and Disney has commodified our fantasies,” he said. “None of that has taken hold in New Orleans.”

NYC and New Orleans represent my two mindsets. Insane or not, I think it’s time that I let the latter go for my jugular.

Keeping Me Honest

I remember studying the 4 stages of culture shock in college sociology class. They are (according to this site):

1. The Honeymoon Stage


Everything about the new culture will delight and stimulate the new arrival. The language will be studied with enthusiasm and great progress will be made. Memories of home are still close to mind and this has a protective value on the individual.

2. The Disintegration Stage

This stage can arrive without warning and can be triggered by a small incident or without any cause. Cultural differences will no longer be celebrated but be viewed as a source of conflict. A person may feel confused, isolated and depressed whilst missing familiar supports.

3. The Reintegration Stage

At this stage a person may begin to compare the new culture unfavourably with home. He/she begins to reject the differences encountered. Feelings of anger, frustration and hostility to the new culture begin to surface. Comfort food from the person’s home country may be sought and consumed with delight. This is quite a healthy reaction. The person is reconnecting with what he/she valued about themselves and their own culture.

4. The Acceptance Stage

A kind of equilibrium is attained in this stage where the person learns to accept both difference and similarity. The individual becomes more relaxed and confident as he/she becomes more familiar with situations and is able to cope well. Most experiences become enjoyable and one is able to make choices according to their own values and preferences.

Here's my own pre-moving cycle:

1. The Elation, Champagne Toasting Stage
2. The "Oh this is actually real" Stage
3. The "Maybe New York isn't so bad and I'm making a huge mistake" Stage
4. The "I'm a Nutbag" Stage
5. TBA...

I've recently passed through Stage number 3 and am entering Stage number 4. It's amazing what we get attached to without even knowing it. The prospect of moving made me admit to myself what I really value.

Boxing turned out to be as important to me as I thought it was, Burlesque maybe more than I thought, my friends-- about what I thought, and a new discovery: I might gravitate more toward responsible choices than I thought.

The "I Must Be Nuts" stage involves a lot of self reproach for being so silly. But the fact that my good friend Keren (who is moving to Israel) is still in Stage 3 helps me not to feel like a lonely nut job.

My prediction for Stage 5: Holy Shit, I Still Don't Have an Apartment!

A Street Map Named Desire

This map is the result of speaking with many people in New Orleans about where I should live.

IMPORTANT: The quotes are not my own, nor do they reflect my sentiments/opinions. They are merely a sampling of what I've heard from people in the last two days, which I find interesting, unsettling, and humorous.

KEY:

Red- not safe for me.
Yellow- relatively safe.
Red Dots- areas I'm considering living in.

The dilemma this map brings up: Whether to live in the Marigny (Google just taught me how to spell that) or Magazine Street. The former is more charming and has better "atmosphere." The latter is a bit safer and closer to two very important things to me: boxing gyms and food stores.

FEAR: The idea that the only thing heating my apartment in the winter will be an open-flame heater that spews carbon monoxide and might set my place on fire.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: Paying a $60-per-month gym membership. Observing a Gospel yoga class.

What I Might Miss

This is Bruce Silverglade, owner of Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. This photo says so much about boxing and a little about New York.

Rising Sun, Here I Come ... In Two Months

A week ago I got the email at work. In it, my boss stated simply "I decided to give it a try."

... meaning that something I've talked people's ears off about for four years is actually happening. I held on to my ergonomic office chair and fanned myself like a girl who just won her local beauty pageant.

Maybe, being in the New York Times office, it was because I didn't have the immediate opportunity to jump around and scream, or maybe longstanding dreams finally becoming reality take a while to sink in, but I didn't experience the full effect from what this email implied until last night.

I had gone over my ex-editor/boss's house for a delicious diner and we talked about doing interesting things, and New Orleans (her sister lives there).

She didn't look at me funny when I said I love damp heat and helped me revel in my memories of soggy blues bars and New Orleans grit from last summer.

In the taxi on the way home, I actually smiled at the cab driver and didn't roll my eyes when he accelerated over a pothole. Through my Pinot Grigio buzz, I realized where I'm going and I like it.

I Was Homeless For a Day Too!!

I was talking to a bartender from Croatia. His personality has a warm and genuine quality to it, like he knows what he's about.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guy next to me start looking over and doing the "I want in the conversation" nod. I ignored him until it was too awkward and then grudgingly turned my head. I had just mentioned my job. "Hey I work there," he tells me. Wonderful.

Of course he has superstar status there and I do not.

"I was just in Croatia," he adds, now slurring. He was sent there by his job. He told me how he was around people who were shooting real guns.

"Yeah I fought in the war there," interrupts my bartender. It was mandatory service.

Silence ... Crickets.

Reminds me of those activists that sleep on park benches for a day.

My Excuse for This Glass of Wine

... and the tear.

My fish, Lono, has passed away.

I expected to be upset. You can get attached to an inanimate object if you've had it for long enough, even more so for a fish. And a damn good one.

I'm relieved too. He was a fighter until the end, but today it just hurt to watch him.

He was my first grown-up pet. He was with me when I met my last boyfriend, with me when I dumped the asshole, with me when I moved to Queens into a sweltering closet of a room, when I moved a week later, when I was unemployed (and maybe talked to him a little too much, though he never judged) and when -- recently-- the possibility of the Big Easy finally presented itself as more than a dream.

A toilet burial would be sacrilegious.

Here's to my fish. I will deliver him into the East River by my house tomorrow morning.

Nudity Isn't Cool- But Could It Be For Kids?

Burlesque is my dirty hobby. I want to keep it that way.

It pleases me to watch the bridge and tunnel audience at the Slipper Room, (whose most naughty experience with nudity until this point was seeing the sex scene in Brokeback Mountain), watch agape, blush even, when I pull rosary beads out of my ... use your imagination.

That's why I hated the first time I performed in Brooklyn. The cool people there try so hard, but it isn't cute.

They try to be chill and relaxed about nudity- psh, as if they've seen the rosary thing before. Shock and shrill screams would expose them for the naive midwesterners they are.

When every one's cool with it, there's just nothing in it for me. And scaring people with my private parts is why I started this hobby in the first place.


Now kids get it right.

I performed for an audience of yuppies in Woodstock last weekend. The birthday woman was turning 40 and she had a lot of friends that were okay with letting their 5 year olds watch me get naked in their backyard. Maybe it was because the jazz band backing me added some culture, or is this the horrible thing that happens when hipsters grow into parents?

After my initial shock at twirling my pasties for a row of enthralled children, I can admit that they were one of the most responsive, and shocked, audiences I have ever performed for.

The hi-light: A little boy yelling, "That's gross but kind of cool!"

There's the spirit.

What You Think About When Going Blind

Surprisingly shallow things.

I was running through the "how can this happen to me dailouge, was yelling that it might be stroke, and was afriad I'd never again get to strip in stage to the Rolling Stones or try to throw a hook in the boxing ring.

I made a feeble attempt to take everything in for the last time, all the while hoping for a passing fire truck.

Then I looped back to the fears of stroke. I began praying for the blindness option, because a world without hot firemen and computer screens is better than no world at all.

Jose told me to smile. I didn't want to, but I did. Both corners of my mouth raising into a weird grimmace -- stroke threat is gone.

I wonder if pre-death thoughts are similarly inane. It's not like you have time to prepare some profound thoughts. ... I wonder how many people died thinking about how the green hospital wall doesn't go with the tiles or whether their favorite American Idol star will get a record deal.

I went to the eye doctor two days later. Just your run-o-the-mill occular migraine. Just to be sure, I'll ease up on the self-love the next few days- causes blindness you know.

In Heaven There Is No Beer

My mother told me about a funeral she attended yesterday. My father's colleague died of cancer.

"It was strange," she said. "So cold, sad." Well, what did she expect? It's a funeral.

The family, she told me, wasn't even religious and it was strange to see them going through the motions. The funeral directors where disturbingly friendly.

It's funny how people deal with death. Some like cold ceremony, maybe to quiet their own turmoil or grief. A minority, at least in the U.S., like a lot of wailing, crying, etc. And an even smaller minority use the opportunity to throw a party celebrating -- depending on how religious -- the person going to "a better place" or being a crazy bastard/ alcoholic.

The funeral of my friend was cold and Lutheran with a touch of wailing which I found refreshing. But we had an after party with booze and dancing because in life, he was a crazy bastard.

I Don't Know If It Felt Constructive

Criticism. We all say we can take it, but none of us really can.

I Left My Heart With Shane McGowan

I never thought I'd make it back there to where Shane McGowan was eating lasagna with his bucket of booze. But besides the I Heart Shane t-shirt my fan girl naivete didn't shine all the way through- more so my appreciation for all the night and evenings of Irish waltzing he's given me- all the times when I needed to kick some world's ass and that was just the music to do it to and not care at the same time.

Shane Mc Gowan is exactly as they all say he is- not an ounce of exaggeration- which is scary and refreshing and exalting and sobering all at once. (well "sobering" metaphorically speaking) He said- waving a tomato sauced finger at me- "What's your name?!" I said- "Annika" He said- "Well sit down." and I plopped myself on the black leather couch next to the closest thing to wizard genius this world has ever spit out, but also someone I just wanted to take in my arms and hold.

If I told him this he'd probably emit one of his signature hiss-laughs and offer me another gin and whiskey- nasty stuff- not very delicate. But, according to Shane- the tonic bonds it all.

Ah Shane, I miss you and arm wrestling your band. You reminded me that the honest firecrackers are still out there. That not everyone has an ego and that deadpan honesty and straightforwardness will still be honored by somewhere or someone.