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.

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.

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.

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?