Blog post: Sound, Silence, Me and Everyone

Everyone likes to talk about themselves, writers more than anybody. There’s something satisfying about describing the painful process of shoveling through the thoughts in your mind, flinging handfuls of sludge over your shoulder and hoping nothing good flies out with it.

Maybe it’s just because writers like to talk more period. (Talk in the sense of communicate — some of the very finest writers were mouth-shy. One of the best craftsmen I know stutters when he has to speak to an answering machine.)

New York has forced me to refine my tendencies to speech and silence. I natter less and glower more. I’m also more aware of the efficiencies — and deficiencies — of it all.

My work requires that I be on a conference call (which I secretly refer to as The Neverending Gory) with anywhere between 10-15 people, every day. For eight straight hours. We have a very high pressure job that’s time sensitive down to the hundredth of a second and a non-stop buzzing of noise in both ears that can’t be tuned out or you’ll miss critical information. The amount of chatter and our intense focuses occasionally lead to someone’s (my) joke falling flat or a question (mine) being unanswered. This is a very unusual situation. Imagine having 10 bosses monitoring you constantly and never knowing if they would answer when you asked an important question.

As a humor writer, I have some of the instincts of a stand-up comic. When I make a noise and I hear silence, something in my heart breaks off and goes tinkling to the floor. Being ignored at work (if you can call it that because everyone has a legitimate reason to focus on something else) has taught me to speak only when it’s really necessary. I’m less myself, but it makes everyone else’s life easier.

I called a girl last Sunday. We used to be best friends until we had a falling out my last year of college. In the four years we haven’t spoken, I got a Master’s degree and my first live-in boyfriend. She started teaching ninth-grade algebra at a school for inner-city Boston kids returning to class after dropping out, having babies or any number of disruptive things.

She’d deleted my phone number (I’m ignoring that, having kept hers all this time), so I had to identify myself when she picked up. I used my first and last name, to the person who helped me zip my fat-suit Halloween costume two years in a row. At that moment, more words were strange.

We recited paragraphs of our lives back and forth, taking turns, cracking innocuous jokes — the kind you’d tell your dentist or tax lady — and it felt a little stiff until the end, when I had to go.

“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m sorry too.”
“Things have really changed for me, especially since I got to New York, and I really miss you and I think you should be part of my life again.”

She was silent.

“I’d like to be friends again, if that’s ok with you.”
“That’s ok,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah…. I’m sorry, you have to give me a second.”

She was silently crying.

When we hung up, we used our names, full first, not our old nicknames, but not our last names either. Fewer words were better.

The art of the wedding gift, similar to the knack of composing the perfect greeting card, is an area in which I consider myself fairly expert. My two rules: never buy something on the registry and never get anything new.

I haven’t always been fond of the antique. When I was 14, I chided my parents for their mismatched house decor. (You may feel more sympathetic if you saw the sousaphone hanging above our fire-engine red leather couch.) My exasperated mother asked just what I would like to change and after a few moments of thought, I exclaimed, “Well, at least have matching dishtowels!”

I can’t figure what changed between then and now, but in my own house, I’ve taken a more relaxed approach to decorating. And the other day, I looked around and noticed most of my favorite items are old. I have a 1956 Underwood typewriter that I adore, despite the fact that it hasn’t technically worked in a few months. (A user error — I loaded the tape incorrectly and now every two letters, it falls below the keystrokes. I’m sure it can be fixed, just not by an engineer like myself.)

Many of my books are old, including the 1962 Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor. The record collection I’ve built is mainly of my parents old vinyls. My mother contributed Blood, Sweat and Tears and Joe Cocker and my father let me have his Cruising ‘58 as long as I swore to give it back someday. (This column is also about the pleasure of possession.)

Yesterday I met a friend at the Brooklyn Flea, which is a three-story amalgamation of young t-shirt designers who all try to look like Elvis Costello and batty hoarders selling broken costume jewelry. I like flea markets and antique fairs, though I can never find a happy medium between haggling the seller until I feel guilty and being ripped off completely. I spent about $200 on two beautiful pieces of art, one of which I believe I’ll give to a pair of friends who are going to be married in November.

If I were getting married, I would want gifts like a washer and dryer, or other expensive houseware items. The rest I’d like to be fun pieces that reflect me and the person who gives them. I think this is much more meaningful than that set of stemware from Williams Sonoma. (But what do I know…. I drink out of something that half resembles a sippy cup.)

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I do believe that something of yourself remains in the objects you use. When you buy a new cooking pot, you must first season it or the things you make taste bland. They lack depth and personality. But once you’ve used the pot for a few years, you build a relationship with it and you trust each other and the end result is a better collaboration than something new and sterile could have produced. (That and you ought to have learned to cook better during all that time.)

The one thing I’d hesitate to buy used — wedding rings. I love the idea of an old piece that’s been worn before, but I fear the other marriage’s problems would come along with the diamonds.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not the groom in any of these weddings, just an attendee who comes bringing great gifts.

For a full week I have been lying on the couch, drinking Koolaid spiked with so much Emergen-C, it’s the texture of wet concrete. Coughing, moaning, sneezing, dribbling, shuffling, croaking. (Not THAT kind of croaking. Still here to blog, thanks.) During that week I have also begun playing a game called “Test the Cockroaches.” It consists of me, in my helpless state, leaving things on the floor for days and fearing the appearance of a roach but never mustering the energy to clean up.

I’m not a messy person. I’ve raised a few dust bunnies, but I really run a pretty tight ship. My friends always compliment me on the status of my home. And only one of my skirts has a soup stain on it. (It’s paisley, you can’t even tell!)

Nevertheless, I do live in New York. In an apartment building. And though I’m clean, I did have my first roach experience over the summer. I was eating watermelon and watching television. I left the rind sitting on a paper towel on my floor while the program finished. Shortly thereafter, my cat, James, started acting very strangely. (Which isn’t noteworthy for either of us, but well, stranger than normal…) I saw a black cockroach dart out from under the couch and onto the watermelon. James and I leapt in unison, him towards the exoskeletonic threat, me from it. I skittered into my bedroom. Then I laughed at myself, grabbed a shoe and went back. No roach in sight. Fearing to sit on the couch again, I cleaned things up and got ready for bed. James was still lurking near the couch but seemed quite frustrated at having no sign of the bug.

There was nothing left to do. I took a deep breath. I stood in the doorway of my own living room, James curled around my feet. I said, “Roach. I don’t want to hurt you. You can do whatever you want in my house, as long as I don’t see you and you don’t scare me. If that happens, I’m going to try to kill you. Ok? So keep to yourself and I won’t seek you out.” It’s the same speech I’ve been giving spiders since I was 12.

I turned on my heel and went to bed. A few hours later, I was awakened by James thumping around in the other room. I sat up, flicked on the light, sprang to the window and threw open the sash! I saw the roach zoom from the living room into the hallway and then into my bedroom. James was frantically swiping at it, while it hid in the dark space created by the door’s shadow. I got up, grabbed a shoe and together, James herded it towards me and I smashed it.

I know that it’s pretty impossible to live in New York, no matter how clean you are, and not have a few cockroaches. But in my current sick state, frankly, I’m not sure I have the energy to survive another. Edward George and his exquisite neatness be damned.

Just goes to show.

One habit I’ve never been able to trace is one that has also been the subject of many conversations. Each time I get serious about a man I’m seeing, I buy a new perfume. The idea is to have a scent associated exclusively with him (and by proxy, that period in my life). I’ve done this as long as I can recall. It seems strange to many people, but to me, it’s a way of consciously setting myself up to remember.

Occasionally I take the fellow with me to choose the perfume. And actually, to be honest, sometimes it’s a lotion or a scented soap. Once I chose a wax balm. (Wouldn’t recommend it. The fragrance didn’t linger, and neither did he.)

I can feel you starting to judge me. You see this as some kind of bizarre reliance on a man, a sort of nasal-born separation anxiety. It isn’t. But I admit finding a perfume when I’m single is a bit trickier. I never know whether I should buy the one that smells like me or the one that smells like the person I want to be.

Walking into the perfume section of department stores must feel something like what Kipling experienced in his first boat ride down some jungle river. The sights, the noises, the smells, the ticking and chugging of the brain suddenly palpable… the scene overwhelms. And I assure you, no tribe of hostile natives could be ever more intimidating than an army of shiny-shoed Bloomingdale’s sales clerks, all bent on wringing your last dollar from you. And, as they expected, you will spend it lustily on a bottle of Vitamin C Pre-Liner Primer Tonic for the Eyelids.

I went on scent mission today, looking for a solid perfume for several upcoming trips. Solid perfumes come in small jars with screw tops, and they’re great for taking on airplanes. They feel like a thicker version of honey, and as I was instructed, all you have to do is dab a dot onto your “pulse points,” wherever they are. (I stared at my particular sales clerk, thinking I must have left mine at home today…)

After an hour standing at a white counter with Janis (who does not appreciate Joplin and does not know any song lyrics and does not want to talk about it), I was convinced that choosing between 30 different scents would throw anyone into an identity crisis. I liked tuberose, but it reminded me of the word tuberous. Wild orange smelled like cider on winter nights, but also like a grandmother. My neck hurt from craning to sniff. I kept dropping the thousands of white paper strips that Janis handed me after spraying them with something I just had to try. Dazed and blurry, I clutched the counter for support. Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here? And more importantly, what smell expresses me?

I settled on a beautiful round jar comprised of bergamot, gardenia, iris and white musk. Still not sure exactly what that says about my personality, but I’m fully convinced that any man would be lucky to catch a whiff.

It is a gold book of haikus with a lacquered cloth cover. It says “Lotus Blossoms” in clear silver type on the outside and “To Molly, Happy 2008!” on the inside. It came from some family friends, and I cracked its back about a year ago. Not having much of a taste for poetry (and being even less interested in cryptic absurdity), I am surprised by how often I turn to it for advice or inspiration.

Tonight, these lines, by Buson, seem appropriate:

Icy winter night…
I unfreeze the writing-brush
with my two good teeth

Last week it snowed in New York City. Oh, we’d had spritzes in early December, but these fat flakes were the season’s first real snowfall. It started while I was at work. I sit by a large window, and the blinds are controlled automatically by our facilities manager, who has them timed to go up and down based on the amount of glare we have on our computer screens. When the blinds and the snow began falling at the same time, I was ordered to sprint down to the manager and request a clear view of the windows so we could watch.

The first snow I ever saw here was the day I arrived last year. I was staying with a friend who lives in Turtle Bay, a small neighborhood in Manhattan. She took me for a walk through the city at night. Some of the Christmas decorations were still up, and we went from couture feather dresses at Lord and Taylor’s to glittery gummy bear statues outside the Gap. But my favorite part was the Diamond District. We turned down a sidestreet and were surrounded by stores devoted only to diamond jewelry. I looked down and noticed that suddenly the sidewalks had a high content of mica, making them sparkle. At the same moment, it began to snow icy crystals, the kind that burn when they hit your skin, but look beautiful passing by.

Between the shimmering jewels, sparkling sidewalks and flashing snowflakes, I felt truly overwhelmed. For me, being overtaken by curiosity and joy while teetering on the brink of not coping is a New York-only experience.

It’s a city that feels like it’s seen it all. There’s no crime gruesome enough, no sound loud enough, no street busy enough to really blow a New Yorker out of the water with novelty. But when it snows — when it really snows — the sidewalks get covered. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can make the first set of footprints on a few squares. And when that happens, you are a pioneer. You are thrown back to New York’s first days, when people tramped, instead of shuffling. I’m prone to romanticizing the past (who isn’t?), and I’m at my blissful worst when the snow stills the city and I can break my own path.

It’s almost as satisfying as a great winter haiku.