Warning: Undefined variable $show_stats in /home/molly/www/www/wp-content/plugins/stats/stats.php on line 1384

Jacoby and the Eggcream

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.

Where a Man Goes to Become a Gentleman

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.