When my bathroom sink clogged, I approached it as I do most life crises. I doused the thing in Drano and hoped for the best.  When the now-fluorescent waters remained several hours later, I knew I was in for a ride.

I’ve never had much luck with water pressure. (Or men.) (And wouldn’t that be a great first line to a novel?) I grew up on a farm. We were fed our water from a spring across the road. I spent many a summer day padding barefoot through the dark, musty springhouse and feeling girlishly apprehensive about the silt settled at the bottom of our water tanks. I spent many a summer night standing impatiently under a dribbling shower waiting for enough precipitation to clean my dusty feet.

My nervousness about country water was only furthered by what happened many years ago, while I was away at summer camp. I was told all this later, but it’s never left my consciousness and serves both to prove our family’s rurality and my father’s age.  One year — I imagine in early June, when the grass was still cool in the mornings and the snakes hadn’t yet come down the mountains — my mother noticed that our water tasted funny. She mentioned it to my father, who flagrantly brushed aside this comment, along with others like ‘We should get a lock for the front door’ and ‘I’m not sure spinach quiche is supposed to have mandarin oranges in it.’

A few weeks later, she found the water tasted more strongly. Not bad, exactly, just off. Maybe a little metallic? Maybe it was cloudier than usual? Again, a pooh-pooh from the peanut gallery. A few weeks more, and my father comes into the living room and asks my mother if the water seems funny. They investigated and found a large (dead, bloated, rotting) salamander stuck in the water pipe. My parents had been drinking dead-amphibian water for nearly two months. They had, literally, lizard in their gizzards.

This is what runs through my head as I stand over my white sink in Queens, willing the drain to suck. I pray for the underwater tornado to appear. I fret, I wring my hands, I read the back of the Drano bottle obsessively.

Eventually, I call my mother.

“Hey, sugar, how are things in the big city?”

“Stagnant.”

“Don’t worry. You’re a tough country girl, you can fight off whatever’s bothering you.”

“It’s more of an unseen enemy.”

“Well there’s always MeeMaw’s old cure-all.”

“Which is?”

“Give it a good slug of bleach. That’ll fix anything.”

And that’s exactly what I did. I poured half a bottle of bleach into the bright green ooze in my porcelain sink and closed the door so the cat couldn’t get anywhere near the muck. Two hours later, I donned goggles (to help my eyes with the burn) and a swim cap (can’t hurt to put another layer around my brain, I figured) and entered the chlorine sauna.

Lo and behold, the water was gone.  I’d eliminated yet another problem and filled in the gap with a small sense of loneliness. I found myself quieted again –  just a city girl, standing in a bathroom.

This week, New Yorkers seem more bitter than usual. (It’s like the difference between a tidal wave and a typhoon, but what’s a good lunarial shove between friends, eh?) Might be the summer winding down or just the fact that we’re between seasons of Real Housewives.  I know I’ve been feeling unsettled.

I’m planning to spend the month of September working from my home in the mountains of Appalachia. This is a source of great joy and great stress. It’s also causing me to look too far forward; I find myself buying one orange, thinking I won’t eat more than that before I have to leave. I should say that I’m the kind of girl who can eat an orange per hour, so this is quite a cutback, since I have a full three weeks before departing.

Along with my trip home, I’ve been feeling the urge to travel abroad.

Last year I visited a friend living in the Netherlands. I came away with an appreciation for canals, a slight fear of Belgium and knowing the Dutch word for garlic. (Knoflook.) What I remember most, though, was my first night there. I arrived about 6 a.m. in Den Haag, having been up about 24 hours. She deposited me at her house and toddled off to work, and I promptly fell asleep. When she got home, we went out into a beautiful early fall sunset and walked round her lovely city. I, like any good tourist, nearly collided with a bicycle every chance I got. I also dropped the little plastic fork I was meant to eat my pommes frites with and had to ask for another. My most bourgeois moments.

That night, my hostess went to bed, but I was wide awake. I stood in her living room and looked down her beautifully narrow European street into an open square. I saw the fountain being turned off.  I watched the moon hang over nearby apartments. I took this photo.

I flipped through her foreign channels and found reruns of an old Australian show called The Secret Lives of Us. It was one of those elusive television moments when you stumble upon something that will become so much a part of your psyche that you can no longer remember if it was you or the protagonist who developed an opinion or preference or catchphrase. Forget instant play, this show and I were instant friends.  I sat on a creaky Dutch couch and ate stroopwafel with thick strawberry yogurt and chunks of real, rich European chocolate. Everything was dark and still and quiet, and I couldn’t have been happier.

This is what I envision when I think of living abroad, the sense of newness and satisfaction that comes with traveling outside your comfort. It’s so much easier to imagine a different version of oneself with a drastic scenery change. I’m reminded of stage managers calling for a bath of blue lights, then red, as people dressed in black scuttle around, pushing fiberboard cutouts around.

My mind knows this is not the reality of moving out of the United States. I can convince my brain of the obvious problems and setbacks. But, right now, my angsty New York feet are aching to be somewhere else, though I know I’m home.

Slowly, I rock.

side

to

side

I feel the base of my back against the deck’s wood. I feel my right-hand fingers scrubbing slowly up and down on my pocket’s zipper. I feel the salt drying between my toes. It is a buttery night, and this boat and I are gliding through the waters off Rhode Island.

There are seven of us lying on the deck, all looking up, all silent. We’re tired in that beachy way and thirsty and tender from new sunburns. Swirling just below the ocean breeze is the milky ghost of my teenage dreams, of kissing on ferris wheels and late-night visits to someone else’s couch. I know without asking that all of us feel it. Swift and searing New Yorkers, just this once we allow ourselves to revert back. To relapse to humanity. My god. How we are romanced by our surroundings. I think of Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy.”

Next to me, Andrew rolls himself over. He is short and a little doughy (though English, which makes it make sense, I tell myself). His blond hair is soft and clings to my hand, like I think a baby’s would. I wish it were fuller, but then I notice how serious his eyes are, and I laugh to cover my anxiety. Andrew is new to this group, a favorite ex-boyfriend of my friend’s and ought not to be touched. I try to think of the most un-comely thing to say.

“I wish I were a mermaid.”
“What color would your shells be?” he asks.
“Not shells. Hollowed out sea urchins, so certain young mermen don’t get fresh.” A smirk. Damn. I decide to try to frighten him with honesty.
“I think I would be the happiest I could be if I was swimming alone through some beds of kelp.”
“Don’t divers get snagged in those and die?”
“Yep,” I say and watch a constellation finally pass out of sight as the boat flows on. “An element of violence is necessary to every important action. Surely you know that. And just think how quiet it would be.” Andrew leans and lets the rocking carry his weight back until he settles flat again.

Later, when everyone has paired off or gone inside to do the dishes and have a few more beers, I am standing at the railing, feeling the ocean slip by. I don’t really think of Andrew. I am too interested in myself at this moment, of what I’ll think and how I’ll feel. It is one of the times when I am all I need, though I am not perturbed when he stands next to me. Just surprised.

“Hallo, mermy.”
“I cannot believe you just interrupted mon reverie with that.”

Soon he puts his hand on my elbow. It is a strange feeling, his warm skin cupping my cold and neglected joint. We are like this for miles and miles. Later, once everyone’s cigarettes are crumpled and the yellow cabin light extinguished, I tell him the story of Oscar Wilde’s grave.

“It’s in a cemetery in Paris, and there’s a big gray statue on top of it. It’s a winged figure that’s arching up to take flight. One of the first statues that gave me any real sense of movement. Anyway, it’s beautiful and a little simple, but the best part is that women from around the world come to his grave and kiss it, so all over the monument there are red lip marks. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I thought he was gay.”
“He is. And that’s sooooo romantic.” I am tired now. I take a big breath and lean forward on the boat’s railing. His hand falls from my arm and as I turn, I hear Andrew quote from Wilde’s “Wasted Days”:

“The boy still dreams: nor knows that night is nigh:
And in the night-time no man gathers fruit.”

In London, Roald Dahl called it the witching hour. The dark pitch of night around 3 a.m., when evening animals fall asleep and morning ones haven’t begun to rise. It was when the Big Friendly Giant went roaming the streets and ultimately met Sophie, a small English girl with grit and curiosity. It was the type of meeting that could only happen during that special time.

New York has its own witching hour, and it’s between 11:30 and midnight, when I’m riding the subway home from Manhattan. I’m tired, but I don’t close my eyes. There’s too much to see; the train is packed. After all, Astoria is both a neighborhood destination and a going-out location. Some people will soon be flirting with a bartender while others are lancing towards bed.

There must be a reason why some of my most memorable New York moments happen at this hour. I’m usually exhausted, after being social for some time before. It’s a relief to not have to speak to anyone and allow myself to look around the subway car and introspect until I’m satisfied. There’s the sleepiness of having a full meal of a day. I often listen to this song Raised by Swans’ “Violet Light”. (Editor’s note: the song will open in this window. I’ve written this post with the idea that you’ll play the song while reading, so you may have to disable pop-ups and pull up two pages to get the full effect. It’s worth it. Promise.)

A year ago, the train car was full. I was standing, looking out the dark window and trying to scope the people sitting below me without being seen. I was too tired to truly disguise my curiosity at the two women there. Each was wearing heavy makeup and glittery lipstick. One had a black satin shirt and the other silver sparkles. I knew immediately something was different about them. After a few stops, I decided they were likely transvestites, or at least cross-dressers. (Not like the bearded man in a dress I saw at Penn Station last week. This pair was aiming for similarity, if not authenticity.) As I continued to consider their imagined lives, the one in silver looked up at me and smiled. It was a dinner-party smile. The kind you give when you’ve met someone you immediately like and something funny happens. You create an unearned intimacy, but it makes you both feel good. That’s what she gave me.

The ride continued. Every so often, I would look down and she would roll her face up to mine and smile that smile. I returned it, but tentatively. It was late, and I didn’t want to encourage unwanted attention or send the wrong signal. (Sometimes New York is like being in a foreign country, where I can’t automatically figure out the cultural implications of my acts.) As our interaction continued, I became more curious. Her smile never changed. There was nothing sexual, no come-hither. It never got any more or less intimate or involved. I felt safe and content in her friendliness, which surprised me. When I got off the train I stood outside the window as it revved and then rumbled past. The other passengers streamed around me like water, but I waited silently until she looked my way.

I waved, and then I walked home.

Jacoby met me at a beer hall somewhere in alphabet city. It was a spring night, March 2009, cold enough still for jackets. He had a gap between his front teeth, a feature I find both repulsive and alluring. He was tall. I was with David and his wife Isabelle, on our way to see David’s band. He came to my table and sat with my friends.

David is the only person I know who’s actually making it as a musician in New York City. Sometimes I get angry at him for contributing to the overall noise in this place but his really is different from everyone else’s. Whatever notes he plays, they feel round and good to me. Like cherry tomatoes. Both David and Isabelle liked Jacoby. He paid equal attention to them as to me, which I appreciated. I liked that I felt a little jealous of it too.

We walked to the gig and he carried an amp. Then we didn’t talk much because I felt ridiculous explaining my theories on religion and classism and my family history in the 30 seconds between songs.

“I like the way David holds his guitar,” Jacoby said. “He’s protective. You can tell he respects it.”
I looked up at him and smiled.

Afterward, we went for eggcreams at Belgium Fries in Tompkins Square Park. I read about eggcreams when I was 12, I think in a Judy Blume novel, and they’ve haunted me ever since. When I learned they were originally created in New York, my obsession with foamy, fizzy chocolatey milk became intimately mixed with my sense of self in this city. Jacoby offered to pay. As we walked out of the shop, he told me about his ex-girlfriend, who he’d dated for six years. He described her as a bitch. I could tell he was hearing the impression he made, so I gave him a pass on it. I reminded myself that I know a few people I’d describe that way.

David and Isabelle made excuses about taking his gear to their car, leaving us standing on a street corner. He slurped while I chattered out a few more jokes. Then we kissed.

“You taste like chapstick,” I said.
“Not eggcream?”

I laughed because it was a strange thing to say, and we kept kissing. On the ride home, from the back of David’s bumpy car, I texted Jacoby that I’d had a great time. He asked if I wanted to get together the following day.

The next morning, in my gray pajama pants and light blue t-shirt, I asked what time he wanted to meet. He said he’d come down with something and felt awful. I wished him well and spent the day eating cranberries and Greek yogurt in bed, winding my way through a Jane Austen novel while the sky outside never got brighter than a dark gray.

I never heard from Jacoby again.

I work the early shift. I wake up at 5 a.m., am in a car to the office by 5:15, at my desk with both hands on the keyboard and a mic at my mouth by 5:45, and I leave promptly at 2 p.m. This allows me more afternoon flexibility than the normal working New Yorker, though my evenings in da club have been severely curtailed.

This afternoon, instead of going to yoga as I normally would, I decided to get a manicure. And a pedicure. And a ten-minute massage in one of those cushy chairs with the rotating iron fist behind the leather.

It was a pleasure made sweeter by the fact that everyone else was on their way to or from a meeting. There’s a line in a fine movie, Priceless, where Audrey Tautou says to her beau, “I love drinking in the afternoon. It’s like you’re keeping a secret.” That’s how I felt.

As I was rubbed and scrubbed, I couldn’t help noticing (as I always do) the sense of surprise when someone touches my hand. I believe that hands are the window to the soul. (I’ve never bought into that whole eye thing. My main complaint is that the eyeball itself can convey very little. The pupil can dilate, which expresses either “I’m on cocaine” or “I’ve just seen the doctor.” It seems to me that most expressiveness is really from the eyelids or the upper cheeks. Anyway, I’ve never met someone and seen more in their eyes than color.)

We touch many things with our hands each day, including each other. But it’s a rare instance when another hand directly touches ours in a non-romantic setting. And when it does happen, the mind is brought back from its wanderings in an instant. Shaking hands takes only the briefest of moments, but think how much stock we put into the exchange. There’s something intimate about it. I think I developed this idea in high school.

I’m not a big Shakespeare fan, though I appreciate his contribution. (Perhaps this is because I just don’t like the word ‘bard.’ It sounds to me like someone vomiting.) But one thing we agree on is the power of the hand.

I was in ninth-grade English class when I first saw Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in Romeo and Juliet. And with them, I was able to transcend the snoring around me and do exactly what I was supposed to do. Despite the grainy film. Despite the sounds of other teenagers shuffling by the open classroom door, slouching towards detention (our own Bethlehem, in a way). I shall never forget their ‘holy palmers’ kiss.’

I suspect the other contribution to my theory is my mother. When pressed to list her favorite things about my father, says she knew he was a good man because she liked his hands.

And he’s never even been to get a manicure. He has no idea about the massaging chairs.

Fashion and I intersect at the crossroads of “I half-wish that I could do that, but haven’t got the interest, the money or the time to really try it, though maybe I ought to wear more belted dresses.” I do, however, love fashion photography, particularly the old Hollywood glamor shots and some of the more contemporary underwater photos, but my interest peaks there. And here, at a fashion blog run by Scott Schuman called The Sartorialist.

In one of his recent posts, Schuman describes a store in Brussels full of canes, cufflinks, fedoras and all manner of high-class (if somewhat forgotten) male fashion paraphernalia. He describes it as “the kind of store where a man goes to become a gentleman.”

That got me thinking… where would a woman go? (Not where would she go to become a gentleman, but the rough equivalent of a cane-and-suspenders store. Ahem.)

When I started this blog, I made a conscious effort to avoid topics that would prompt comparisons to Carrie Bradshaw, the fictional sex columnist/protagonist in HBO’s Sex and the City. Sex made up a large part of what Carrie discussed, and I doubt we’d intersect there. (Ever since Paul Theroux said, “There’s a lot of self-revelation in the way a writer describes sex,” I’ve been terrified to try it. I do not want to self-revelate in that manner.) Many of Carrie’s musings could overlap with mine, though. She talked about making her way as a writer in New York, balancing passions with necessities, understanding herself enough to know when things were right and when they were wrong.

For instance. There’s a scene in one episode where her toilet breaks and she struggles to fix it. Her boyfriend ultimately rescues her, a poignant moment because it’s the last thing he does before they break up. I was reminded of this scene today as I struggled to put two air conditioners into my apartment windows. I finished the task with two stubbed toes, sweat drops on my glasses, one trembling tricep and a stream of curses. Would I have liked a man to do all that for me? Sure, but what I would have liked more was another pair of hands, just to help. As a modern woman, it doesn’t have to be all-by-yourself or doublemint twins. There is a middle ground. It’s right where the window comes down onto the top of the AC box.

I saw a media screening of the new Sex and the City movie last week. I described it afterward as “offensive, shrieky and trite — with cute hats.” I won’t get too involved in reviewing (not getting involved being the most SATC thing I could do), but I will say the characters felt like shadows of their former selves. The four women in this movie were stick figures compared to the Rubenesque goddesses they used to be. Their situations, dialogue and problems were lacking in zest and intrigue. (Not sex, you might note.)

It’s as if the writers forgot the character’s depth. Or maybe the girls lost their way to the shop where they became women. I wish they hadn’t, because now I’ll have to find the way on my own.

My writing goal is to become a humor columnist, most of you know that. There’s no clear path to get there, which is why I’m working as a full-time headline reporter and blogging here once a week. This is the place to hone my skills and test my wits and enjoy my father’s weekly commentary at the bottom of each post. He, by the way, has for some reason decided to pen-name as Briggsie, our dead family dog. One wonders.

I don’t plan on being in New York forever. I’d like to spend some part of my 20s in at least one more city, hopefully abroad. With this in mind, I feel pressure to meet and learn from other writers. I should say that, so far, I have met no other humor writer. Nor have I met any writer doing what I want to do or who appreciated, particularly, what I had to offer. This is very discouraging to someone who thought she had plopped herself in the bosom of a million other writers who’d at least get her jokes. Not so.

I tried to network through friends. I researched writing groups. I signed up on mailing lists of book groups. I tried to go to one storytelling event at The Moth but it was rained out. Apparently insects don’t like to get wet. I’ve been to a few journalism networking events and have met some lovely (and kooky and unemployed) people, but no one I thought could teach me more about being funny. Very disappointing.

Last week, wavering between calm desperation and desperate calmness, I attended an event hosted by the Paley Center for Media. The evening featured a panel of women who write for late-night comedy shows like The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon. I arrived with five minutes to spare, having spent half an hour waiting for Obama’s motorcade to pass my blocked-off street. I finally cut towards the park and slipped under some Do Not Cross lines, reciting in my best David Attenborough: “The intrepid journalist moves along the forest edge, trying not to disturb the other creatures around her as she stalks her prey.” In any case, I arrived. And I very much enjoyed the discussion. I…. aspired.

I was fascinated to hear the experiences of women “in the writer’s room,” creating gags and monologues for our most revered comedians. Some of them grew their humor through improv comedy and one (the funniest, Morgan Murphy) regularly does stand-up. I have no interest in either of those genres. I asked a question at the end of the panel about whether any of the women also did humor writing for print. None did.

I left feeling more inspired and energetic than I’ve felt in a long while. So much so that I signed up for a sketch and sitcom-writing class as soon as I got home. I fell into bed feeling happy, content and on my road again. Moving forward.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned there was a waiting list and it could be months before I ever get the opportunity to bomb a joke in front of peers. I shall endeavor on, one titter at a time, until I’m famous or knock-knocked out. Which brings me to what I really want to know: who’s there?

My soul is designed for few things. I’d make a wonderful sharkologist, baker, basketball coach or (let’s hope) writer. I consider this a decent spread, all told.

Two weeks ago, on a balmy weekday evening, I sat at my desk in the darkening room and parsed my life enough to see that I could benefit by adding a thing or two that would make me happy. Suddenly, my soul’s skills came together, like blurring streaks of light, like Captain Planet, and aligned in the sky, shooting down to me through cracks between the windowpane and the sill. Whispering together in a silvery, harmonized voice, they hummed three numbers into my ear: 826.

826 National is a nonprofit co-founded by Dave Eggers, a flopsy-haired writer best known for “A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius,” a quasi-memoir about the semi-sudden deaths of both his parents when he was in his 20-somethings and the subsequent bringing up of his eight-year-old brother. Though I find most of his writing to be self-indulgent, high-handed and too stream-of-conscious for my taste, Eggers has become the mermaid adorning my literary generation’s ship. He’s prevalent enough that I force myself to read one of his books every so often if only to remind myself what I want not to do. 826 National is the overarching name for Eggers’s seven-or-so writing and tutoring centers aimed at students from six to 18. It’s an extremely well-run nonprofit and my job there would be to work with kids on their creative writing skills. As I faced my soul and my computer screen, with the whipping winds of my leanings circling round me, I realized I had to get over my prejudice. I had to volunteer. And it was to 826NYC that I sent my application to work for free.

Maybe it was the heady scent of my abilities or maybe it was just poor judgment, but I decided, since I was applying to be a volunteer writing tutor, that it would be appropriate to have some fun with the application. Whe asked for any non-English language abilities, I wrote “Southern; Spanish-ish.” Under the extra skills section I proclaimed proficiency in knitting and said I could grow a mean cactus.

Now, before you judge me completely clueless, know that I did consider whether this was appropriate. 826NYC seems like a fun, open environment, but it isn’t unprofessional. I worried that my joking would be misunderstood but figured other writers would be reading the application, so why not put the creative in creative writing.

It’s been two weeks, and I have not heard anything from 826 National, 826 NYC, 826 Topeka or any other branch. This potential rejection ranks almost as highly as that one summer when I applied to two McDonald’s, a Burger King, three Hardee’s and one Carl’s Jr./Long John Silver’s and was rejected from all. Clearly I haven’t become more marketable.

So I sit, 14 days later, in my darkening room and laugh as my soul’s true talents fly back out the window and into the New York night.

There is something to be said for not knowing yourself. The lesser-touted quality of self-unawareness has its benefits. For example, if I was less hyper-aware (and less a product of parents with Too Many Degrees), I’d probably be a bit happier. I won’t say ‘ignorance is bliss’ for fear of throwing too many cliches at you too early into this post, but as long as I know you’re thinking it…..

Which brings me to say, I’ve noticed a pattern in my New York life. I can tell when I’m upset about something or too rundown or too hyped up because it manifests in my kitchen. The place of so much joy for me and others becomes a direct representation of what’s happening in my heart. The word I’m looking for is fester.

I am a tidy person. My house is clean and things have their place. I don’t ordinarily let dishes sit in the sink overnight, with the exception of a pan or two that I can justify soaking. But when I’m having a hard go, cereal bowls and water glasses are allowed to percolate in that aluminum rectangle for days on end. Once I realized this pattern, it began to be a reason in itself to be upset or put-upon. I imagined the scum covering my forks and spoons sliming over my head as well. My brain sponge smelled like mildew. My spinal drain was clogged. (This, I discovered, is how cycles begin. And I don’t mean wash cycles.)

I won’t bore you with tales of recent life difficulties — mainly because they’re the same ones as before — but I will tell you my dishes aren’t getting washed. One pan lately reached a full six days in my sink. I relay this information not to disgust you or embarrass my parents, but to express the full amount of stress inflicted by last week. Just so you know what I’m dealing with.

There’s something almost flagrant about a pile of dirty dishes sitting there, staring saucily at me as I drag around the house, getting ready for the next draining day. It’s offensive. The nerve those knives have! It feels like a jeering crowd reminding me of all the things I didn’t finish.

One great side effect of having a direct dish-to-emotion metaphor is that I’ve noticed it goes both ways. If I’m having a bad day and I do my dishes before I fall asleep, I feel better. It perks me up. And so, a year and a half into our journey, I’ve learned not to blame the forks and spoons but to view them as an impartial barometer for my mood.

After all, it’s not the flatware’s fault.