Watching Harlan County, USA, Austin and I got into a fight. It was over something small, but it scratched at something fundamental, as fights always do. Four years ago now, just a couple days into the pandemic and suddenly living together for the first time, I made chili for dinner and we watched Children of Men. Both were my ideas, and Austin ended up not liking either one. Discussing this during therapy that week, over the phone and one room away from said significant other, Bushwick’s walls never feeling thinner, my retelling of this domestic slight made my therapist laugh and laugh. I loved making him laugh. But soon enough, of my own volition, our weekly sessions became every other week became unceremoniously never seeing him again. Though I feel like it’s just a matter of time. Not until I’m with him in treatment so much as bump into him in Brooklyn. Between his cultivated unibrow and Bianchi bicycle, we’ve got to run in similar enough circles. For example, the G. It’d take all I have not to approach him and say, “Okay, so, me and Austin? You remember? We’re watching Harlan County—you’ve seen that, right? So good. Such beautiful mountain faces on those men. I was shocked. Is that bad of me? Anyway…”
I’m becoming an early riser, particularly on days when I need to do laundry, specifically so I can avoid all the parents depositing their toddlers downstairs. There’s a $35,000-a-year preschool in our building, down on the first floor. If I’m up by seven, I’ve realized I can finish all the washing and drying before nine o’clock drop-off. Back when I thought I didn’t want to have children, I always used to say, “It’s not because I don’t like kids, it’s because I don’t like parents.” And while I’ve admittedly regressed to thinking I might not want kids after all, the rest still rings true. I try my hardest to stay out of their way, I really do, sympathetic to the difficulties of getting a three-year-old off to school. But I do sometimes have a job I need to get to. The teachers and the guy who runs the place, they’re all great. And there’s one or two moms who always smile as I sneak past, playfully rolling their eyes, as if to say, Take it from me—don’t. But the buck stops there. Or, really, the bucks start there. “They’re all a bunch of rich homophobes,” I said to Austin recently, regarding all the other Clinton Hill parents too busy with their wailing children to acknowledge me the way I’d like. As I recall, Austin said, “I actually don’t think that’s true.”
So close, I think to myself, each and every time I ride NJ Transit, and yet so far away. I got off at a station in this beautiful, little, north Jersey town, where Lindsay picked me up for an afternoon with Nana. Getting settled in Lindsay’s car, still another hour until we’d get down to Toms River, we called our mother. “What good children I have,” Kristine purred, not so much praising us as herself. Apropos of nothing, she started talking about smoke detectors. It was—once we pulled the right teeth—apropos of something. The house almost went up in flames last month while our father, three days after his hip replacement, was hopelessly immobile on the living room couch. Cooking eggs that morning, she forgot to turn off the burner, and eventually set down this huge, heavy, custom-crafted wood block on top of the stove. Hours went by. And when a cloud of thick, white, noxious smoke finally wafted in from the kitchen, my dad had no other option than to scream “KRIS!” loudly enough to get her attention down in the garage, where she was—what else—furniture flipping. She could laugh about it with us but that seemed like a recent development. Telling the story to her coworkers, she cried. “Some nurse I am,” she said to us. “Here I think I’m not gonna be attentive enough because I won’t want to make him sandwiches or something, only for me to go and burn the house down.” Telling this story to Nana that afternoon, she said, cackling, “See! This is why I don’t cook.”
I love Nana’s house. Pops of deep purple all over. Ceramic rabbits and roosters in great abundance. And always so nice and neat. My mom has this memory—as a high school senior, no less—of waking up to use the bathroom early one morning and, by the time she got back to her room, Nana had already made her bed. I wonder if my mom felt the same way I do, being in such a well-kept house. If we feel the same kind of peace. At one point in the oral history we recorded last year, my mother told me, “Nana was home everyday when I got home from school. Sitting on the couch, reading one of her ‘crotch novels,’ as she calls them. So, yeah, home everyday, which was nice to see. Because, I don’t know, for you guys, I wasn’t home everyday. And I know it was such a feeling of comfort when I…you know…so…” A teardrop in her throat, all choked up, she couldn’t finish that sentence. Asking what was upsetting her, she said, “Time goes so fast. I just hope that you guys are happy. I wish I had those days back again. When you were little. And just thinking about what Nana went through. With that unhappy marriage. It’s not fair.” Nana got really sick last summer and spent several weeks in the hospital. She had visitors, of course, my mom driving down from New Hampshire at one point, my Aunt Karen and Aunt Patti dropping by and sticking around as much as possible. But still, she was often by herself. And after hearing my mother tell me her mother’s story, after coming to understand more about this woman’s life, I wasn’t just sad that Nana was all alone in that hospital room—I was furious.
No more than ten minutes into watching Swept Away, I turned to Austin and said, “I don’t think I can do this.” Like most of Madonna’s star turns, I’d never seen it before. But it’s currently playing on Criterion as a part of their “And The Razzie Goes to…” program. Cruelly enough. And cruel it is. Looking like Carmela Soprano in Cruella de Vil quick drag, Madonna spends the first half of the film sucking villainously on cigarettes while espousing the free market and willfully mispronouncing “Pepe,” her leading man’s name, as “Pee Pee.” Operating on a plane of bitchiness that only actually exists in the castrated male imagination. I had to take a deep breath, several times. Madonna is not a bad actress. Biased as I may be, I really believe that. It’s just that she was all too often in the hands of a director who, at best, feared her or, at worst, wanted to punish this wicked, wicked woman for her wicked, wicked ways. Her own husband included. It’s all Guy Ritchie’s fault. Print that on a shirt, I’d wear it. Worst of all, he doesn’t even photograph her all that nicely. Fucking the director and for what? Austin had just finished the colossal Madonna biography that came out last year, written by a proper historian who treated the subject with the exhaustive, scholarly reverence she deserves. He was sad, he said, that Madonna changed so much about herself for Guy. I don’t disagree. And yet during those years when they were married, those years of concession and tea length dresses, she made some of the finest, strangest, and most self-possessed music of her whole career. What’s that about?
Our landlord emailed us. He’s raising the rent. At this time last year, when he—again—raised the rent, he told us, “I hate doing this. I know it affects lives and I don’t do it lightly.” He lives in Australia. As I often say, “My landlord lives in Australia—how’s that make sense?” All told: it’s a manageable increase and we’ll still be living in a very expensive neighborhood for a steal. Relatively speaking. All of us, me and Austin and Emma, not since our childhoods have we lived in one place for this long. But come May, when our current lease ends, Emma will move out. She’s the coolest girl with the greatest taste. Always going somewhere with someone, albeit to a different place and with a different person than the day before. It’s amazing. She’s amazing. She’s also, ultimately, a roommate. Journaling in my bedroom, I was writing about something she’d recently said that irritated me. Her remark was trivial, my irritation was nuclear. Diplomatic with her at the time, I clearly spared all my rage for the diary, scraping this diatribe of mine over, embarrassingly enough, several pages. Nursing my wrathful right hand, all gnarled up into an arthritic fist, I stopped writing just long enough to start feeling bad. Thinking of the many attributes that’ve made her a lovely person to live with. And so, with closed eyes, with fingertips grazed over mind, heart, and body—I said a prayer. Expressing my gratitude and acknowledging my faults, with an Act of Contrition for good measure. It made me feel better. Not thirty minutes later, out in the living room, I heard something crash, followed by Emma yelling, “Ow!” She was taking a seat at our table when the chair suddenly collapsed out from under her. I took my time walking out to the living room, figuring—I promise—that it would spare her any additional embarrassment. Still dusting herself off from the tumble, she was fine. With a consoling touch, I said to her, “You poor thing.”
Sitting across from Weixi in the breakroom, I held out my hand so she could read my palm. I’d been told before, by two different palm readers no less, that I’d live to be specifically 87 years old. She didn’t echo that same number, but it appears I’m still in it for the long haul. “Look! Wow! It goes all the way to your wrist,” she said, thrilled for me. Not unlike the classic “may you live in interesting times,” I wonder if a long life can be just as much a curse as a blessing. Either way—I’m knocking on wood. Admitting she’s not confident enough in her skills to interpret my career, I made the obvious joke that it must be bad news. I’ll have one child. A daughter. There’s a scar on my palm, right where the children lines are, but I didn’t tell Weixi. I got it from cutting open my hand on a shard of glass while dancing around the kitchen to “Open Your Heart” at 13 years old, knocking over a vase mid-twirl. If that tipped the scales toward my having a daughter one day—it had to be fate. She told me I’ll get married only once, and that it will be a long, happy marriage. After telling Jarod about this, sensing my ambivalence, he said, “All any of us want is one, long, happy marriage!” I know. I know.
Blond and breathy and grinning, Cloris Leachman gives one of my favorite Academy Award speeches of all time. “I’m having an amazing life,” she said, accepting her win for Best Supporting Actress in 1974. “And it isn’t over yet!” I think it’s perfect. Her audience, however, did not. Poor girl, she really floundered up there. At times sincere and at times ironic, and presumably because of precisely that, she rubbed the crowd the wrong way. Been there. I feel like I’m so often this same way on all my tours, straddling this very same line. Dewy-eyed with tongue-in-cheek. And it works, most of the time. But of course I will have the occasional group of visitors who refuse to like me. Total strangers nevertheless united in their disdain, not so much as cracking a smile on my behalf. Dying on the hill of their withheld endearment. Can’t win ‘em all. It’s our favorite night of the year, Oscar Sunday, and Austin and I both take it very seriously. Shannon texted me from this watch party she was attending, where the host talked through Kimmel’s entire monologue and announced to the room she’d never heard of Robert Downey Jr. before. “I’m about to book you a hotel room,” I told her. It was a great year for movies, with a great broadcast to show for it. A Sandra Hüller surprise could have been fun, and I would’ve loved for Ruffalo to win Best Supporting, and Mica Levi’s actual best score of the year wasn’t even nominated. But again: can’t win ‘em all. We fill out a ballot every year, guessing all the winners beforehand, with a “will win” column and an “upset” column. One point for the former, two for the latter. We tallied up our points as the credits rolled. With locked eyes and in perfect unison, Austin and I said, word for word, “Three…two…one…26 points!” A regular old Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. As far as who’s who—I choose my battles.
“I just know he’s behind on his alimony,” I said to Austin, as we took our seats for Dune: Part Two, cocking my head in the direction of a fellow regular at our go-to theater. We’ve seen so many movies alongside this guy and he’s always, shamelessly, in the row designated for wheelchair users. Of course, so are we. It’s got these great twosomes of seats, perfectly distanced from the screen, with these big spacious gaps ensuring your nearest moviegoer is a cool eight feet away. Unless, of course, an actual wheelchair user were to show up. We’ve thankfully avoided the hot-faced shame of ever giving up these seats to people who actually need them. What we have suffered, however, is this fellow Regal Unlimited Member. Because I do truly hope he’s only spending $23.99 a month to see all these movies, considering he hasn’t actually seen a single one. Middle-aged and sloven but always dressed, bafflingly, in expensive, even cool clothes, he stays awake for the trailers but as soon as the lights go down, so does he. I could usually care less about people falling asleep, what with the far more egregious displays of incivility I’ve witnessed in theaters these last couple years. But this man snores. We were watching Dune, for God’s sake, the sonic equivalent of being trapped inside a steel drum rolling through the streets of Damascus for two hours and forty-six minutes and he’s out like a light. Like a baby—with sleep apnea. Hans Zimmer no match for his snores. At the end, Austin shook the man awake and chewed him out, telling him how inconsiderate he’d been of all the other people who came to see this movie, all the other people who were pretending not to stare at this confrontation on their way out the theater. Austin can be so fearless. Bleary eyed and horizontal, still totally reclined in his seat, the man looked up at Austin and said, “You should’ve woken me up!”
A friend of a friend’s mom went missing. Her family had no idea where she was for over 24 hours. Thank God, they’ve since found her. She was safe and sound all along, albeit a little off her rocker. But even before Austin and I learned about this resolution, in fact as soon as we heard about all this for the first time—we couldn’t help but laugh. “Isn’t it amazing,” I said, “that one of the most devastating and stressful events in this person’s life can be totally hysterical to us?”
On a 70 degree evening, I met up with Isaiah for drinks. He was in shorts and a t-shirt while I had my winter coat draped over one arm. Overshooting the mark, both of us, in different fashions. But we were perfectly comfortable inside. Pushing in my chair, I bumped into the table leg and made our beers spill a little. By the time I noticed, Isaiah was already up on his feet, rushing to the bar to fetch some napkins. Months ago, our beloved coworker Ruth came back to work after a couple weeks away, convalescing after a serious illness. I was standing at the kitchen sink when she walked into the break room with open arms, looking so amazing and healthy and herself. I could have cried. Not thirty seconds later, she dropped the coffee in her hand and it spilled all over the floor. “Well,” she said, “That breaks the ice!” We should all be Ruth. Having swapped screenplays with each other, Isaiah and I were here to talk shop. And we got to it—eventually. After discussing our key Virgo placements. And realizing we have pretty comparable solitary streaks. That and a complex with money, as informed by our parents and their, again, comparable work ethic. We had nice things to say to each other about our writing, and I meant every word, and I hope he did too. Walking to Delancey-Essex together, we were at the turnstiles when he realized he forgot his bag in the bar. I would’ve been so embarrassed if I did that, but I really don’t think he was. And of course—he shouldn’t have been. Waiting for the train, I got a message from my mother. “Please text me and dad. We read about the shooting in the subway in Brooklyn.” That was news to me. I hadn’t looked at my phone in hours. I told her I was all good.
Springtime is a busy season at the museum and management offered all the part-timers the chance to add a fourth day to our schedule. I’ll be working Fridays now too. Don’t feel too bad for me. Every Educator has their own unique set of days at the museum, which means every day has its own unique cast of characters, some of whom I rarely, if ever, see. For example: Lin. That said, Lin and I go way back, hired at the very same time and for the time being, each and every Friday, I’ll be seeing her. Close your eyes and listen to her talk, you’d think Debi Mazar was leading your tour of the tenement. Lin’s lived in the same house out in Queens for, basically, her entire life. A house that possesses an interdimensional portal down in the cellar, where the spirits of two nuns and a mad priest long ago came home to roost. Her birthday was this month, turning 60something, and—come the following Friday—she told me all about where she went and what she did and the friends who made it all so special. “But uh, hit a little speed bump in between plans,” she said. “I stopped by the house in the afternoon? And waiting for me on the doorstep? A card and dozen roses. So, uh, yeah—my stalker’s back!”
My mom’s got this new side gig, a couple hours a week spent offering samples at bars and liquor stores, most recently on St. Patrick’s Day at the Irish pub in our hometown, giving out shots of Guinness. That sounds like my hell. And hers, too. But—anything for a buck. Calling me one morning, she told me all about it. Within moments of showing up, the bartender yelled at her, “Okay, you need to get away from my service bar. And Guinness samples? Really? Today’s the one day when everyone’s already drinking it!” Takes a hostile bitch to know a hostile bitch, I suppose, because Kristine didn’t bark back. She saved that for the patrons. Namely all the old fogies fiending for some free swag. Most people just want a t-shirt, she explained, but this one old man swiped an entire sheet of temporary tattoos right under her nose. And then had the gall to come back up and ask how he can win the other prizes. “Well, we’re doing trivia soon,” she said to him. “Maybe you’ll win and we can swap out a shirt for that whole thing of tattoos you took!” And who hosted said trivia, one might ask? A woman’s work is never done.
Grabbing the microphone from the live band’s lead singer, my mother took the stage. Half the crowd was too drunk to pay attention while the other half shouted that they couldn’t hear her. “Yeah, said no one ever,” said my mother, quoting her own quip, cracking both of us up. It was an informal thing, my mother asking the crowd a dozen Irish-related questions and passing out swag to whoever answered first. Or whoever answered correctly first. The three leaves on a shamrock are said to represent “faith, love, and hope” or “The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” My mom would’ve accepted either one. Meanwhile, from somewhere in the throng, a woman guessed, “Live, laugh, love!” Witheringly, I’m sure, my mother said, “No.” I only wish I’d seen this for myself. Landing jokes and busting balls, in charge and center stage. My mother, right where she belongs. I hope she felt like a star.
A visitor asked one of the Educators about wedding traditions for Irish Catholic couples in the 1860s. A fun question that, alas, she didn’t have an answer for. Back in the breakroom, consulting one of our many content binders, she read aloud her findings. “Okay, typical marriage proposals at the time included ‘Would you like to hang your washing next to mine?’” We gushed. “Or ‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’” We screamed.
I had a dentist appointment. Six months ago, when I showed up to this Chinatown building for my first visit to the office, I boarded the elevator, pressing the button for the seventh floor—and went nowhere. The doors would close and the doors would open and I’d get spit right back out to the ground floor. I tried it again. And then again. Directly across from the elevator, there was a man working behind the counter of a pharmacy, a captive audience to my repeated failings. It was clear he would not be coming to my rescue. Trying the stairs, I hoofed up and down seven flights to no avail. Finally, I called the office and, laughing, the receptionist said I was their first appointment of the day and that they needed to flip on the elevator switch for their floor. Learning my lesson, I called ahead this time. That man was right where I left him last summer, sitting behind the pharmacy counter. Indoors and unabashedly: he was smoking a cigarette. I love New York. It’s a very efficient office. During that first visit, I completed intake forms, got x-rays, received a cleaning, and had a cavity filled—in 33 total minutes. About as much time as it took me to finally get up there. And yet the dentist and hygienist never seem rushed. Always making small talk with me, and in English, which is imaginably on my behalf, given how stilted they can occasionally sound. I’m grateful for that, obviously, and so charmed. Clearly very familiar with each other, their friendliness takes on this almost campy irony once it’s played out in, presumably, their second language. They really had me giggling. The hygienist got to the office an hour early that morning and, after making sure she didn’t clock in an hour early, the dentist asked how she passed the time. She ate some food she brought from home, an extra serving of the lunch she’d prepared for her daughter, who doesn’t like the cafeteria food. Last year, her daughter’s school only served meat one day a week. Chicken on Thursdays. But now, due to budget cuts, she said, there’s no meat at all. “That’s because we feed all the migrants,” the dentist said. “We pay our taxes and they give it all to the migrants and it’s budget cuts at our children’s schools.” There wasn’t any residue left from my cleaning but I took another sip from the plastic cup in my hand. Because even if I had something to say to that, how could I, now with my mouth all full up with water? I leaned over and I spit it out.
In maybe ten seconds flat, as my newest round of strangers assembled before me, it was clear I was about to suffer, and I quote, “the occasional group of visitors who refuse to like me.” It was a sold out tour, 12 people in total, and not a single soul picked up what I was putting down. I could almost smell how badly these people wished they’d had some mousy, easily-interruptible, quick-to-apologize brunette instead of the Educator they actually got. A barking, towering, increasingly prickly homosexual. Getting them inside, I explained that a family of six was the average size for these 325 total square feet—but that we also know of a single apartment that housed a family of twelve. “We’re twelve people right now,” I said, my delivery long ago perfected to all but guarantee laughter and surprise and thoughtful remarks from the more enlightened visitors about families who still live like this today. Like a herd of cows, they merely blinked. Never one to quit while I’m ahead, I said, “And what a happy family we have here! We gonna get along? I’m not so sure about that! Okay. Look around. And don’t touch anything!” There were some warm thank yous at the end of the tour, not to mention cash tips, but—too little too late. Waiting for me down on the sidewalk, one of my visitors said, “You know, that was good, but I gotta say—you really romanticized tenement life.” I laughed in his face. For the last hour, I’d talked about desecrating the Sabbath and 146 workers dying in a factory fire. The fearful precarity of being undocumented and a woman who cried sad, bitter tears upon seeing this dump of an apartment for the first time. Husbands who died leaving behind widows with young children. And a 19-year-old girl who left home and never saw her mother or father again. But I guess he didn’t catch any of that. Only ever listening to me when I dared discuss the togetherness and humanity and fleeting joys of these families. So many people come to the museum desperate to confirm all their beliefs that life back then was nothing short of wretched. It’s pornographic, I swear. This desire to know that everything was so miserable for these people, for these immigrants, but that they were raising children who—ta da!—all became doctors and lawyers. And I said all this to him. “Because if that’s your family’s story, God bless you,” I said. “But I’m just not gonna give that to people. Okay? It was never that simple.” He apologized but, as I walked away from that tour, I can’t say it felt like an accomplishment.
“Today, March 22nd, is my 41st birthday,” said a man, announcing himself to all of us F train commuters as he began his trek down the car. “Last year, on my birthday, this guy ran from the other end of the train just to kick me in the face. My birthday before that, I was sound asleep and I woke up to some guy pouring a bottle of water all over my head. If you can believe it. Anyway you can help me, folks, please.” I got off the train without giving him anything, but I should have. March 22nd, it means something special to me too. It’s our anniversary. Austin and I, together, for five years now.
During my walk to work that morning, for whatever reason, for a couple reasons, I put on “Express Yourself.” You deserve the best in life/So if the time isn’t right/Then move on. But come evening, meeting up in Midtown for dinner and a show, I listened to “I Deserve It.” A similar sentiment, as it turns out, albeit a changed tune. Standing out on 53rd Street, I saw Austin before he saw me, walking up the block in my direction. It’s not often that I get to see him like that, guileless and unaware, like a character in my own little movie. It’s like how it feels to watch him sleep. He’s never more beautiful to me than when he’s asleep. It only lasted a moment. Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about our very beginning. Back when we were just friends. All those nights when we had so much fun not doing much of anything, little did I know, Austin was developing a crush. Feelings of my own would come later but that’s a story for another day. Because there I was, like some character in his little movie, being totally myself—uncompromising and, if you asked me, unattractive—and he was still finding something to love. Anytime I’ve had a crush, I’d fashion myself in his image. Growing out my hair like his, dressing like him, pretending to like his music. Becoming my beloved. And it never worked. Or at least not how I ever really wanted it to. For Austin, I didn’t change a thing. Many hearts, many years have unraveled/Leading up to today/And I thank you. Looking my way, he smiled, finally.
So, uh, yeah—my stalker’s back! 😂