Of Mice and a Man

Never a dull moment in the downtown apartment… Yesterday morning, 8 a.m.

“Ya’ gotta lotta papers ‘round. Whadya doin?”

“Writing a book, testing recipes,” I say, touching my topknot, firmly tying my kimono robe around my waist. Sip of coffee. I’ve never been comfortable with inquisitive workmen. A stranger—one of 8 million—has just gained entry into my very personal space by virtue of his profession and he feels he can do anything, ask anything. Questions, raised eyebrows, scratching and prying.

“I could write a book.” He adjusts the metal tank of poison strapped to his back.

“Oh, yeah?” Please stop talking, please stop talking…

“Lotta interestin’ thins I seen.” He stops spraying the baseboards, turns, waits. He feels he’s due a reaction.

“Being an exterminator must be fascinating.” Killing cockroaches and red-eyed mice is fine and well (and certainly mildly satisfying—tangible results after a fine day’s work is done). But the real joy, for the voyeur, would come with aforementioned access to private spaces, twisted sheets, piles of dishes with bits of last night’s salmon and chives. Sniff, sniff. Citrus. A gimlet with the evening news?

“Nah, not that.”

Dropping clues, building tension. All right, all right, the exterminator had a story. I’d bite. “Oh no?”

“I exhumed my mother’s body.”

Throw back the last of my coffee—sugar and grounds, sweet and textured—like a shot.

“Yeah, uncle and I did it. We got good and hammered first, I’ll tell ya that. Went out to Jersey and dug up her bones. Don’t trust those cemetery workers. They’d steal her rings and her femur. Want me to spray outside for ants?”

The Shoot-Out and Matthew Modine

“Matthew! Good to see ya’, buddy. Could I get one of you running from the police tape, holding your head, doing a Munch ‘Scream?’” Steve asked, hiccupping with excitement, clutching his camera.

“Nah, man, indigestion. The wife and I just ate. And what the fuck is going on here?”

Matthew Modine, his wife Cari, “New York Post” Steve and I look down the length of MacDougal Street to the madness on Houston. The bartender at my local pizza joint, “De Marco’s,” has just been killed, execution-style, fifteen bullets pumped into his back. Two plain clothes, auxiliary cops—in pursuit of the bearded gunman fleeing down Sullivan St—are shot and killed. The gunman is eventually killed as well. An otherwise sweet spring evening concludes as four men are taken to the morgue.

The air was light with the promise of warm weather so the city and I decided to linger at sidewalk tables, take the long way home. After dinner at “Morandi” with a girlfriend (delicious, over-priced, overpopulated by British bankers), I walked down 6th Avenue ticking off the reasons why I love the city. The energy! The culture! The dreams seemingly just a block away…  

Do I take the scenic route home, walk down quiet Minetta Lane and then turn onto Bleeker? Minetta Lane is narrow, personal—I’ve always felt that it was mine. A century ago, the lane was a small, quiet stream running through the heart of the Village. Now it is home to one of my favorite wine bars, “Bella Vitae” and a space where I dream about Old New York. I like to take the twisting lane carefully, slowly. Tonight I decide against it and stay on 6th Avenue.

Seconds later, at the corner of 6th Avenue and Bleeker, I hear gunshots. Five of them. A beat. Five more. No, maybe it was a celebration—fireworks! My optimism is swiftly defeated by screeching brakes, undercover cops pouring out of Yellow Cabs, the SWAT team and ATP materializing out of blackness, the Manhattan night. I’m a block—one split-second decision—away from the shoot-out and four deaths. 

I’m cordoned off with yellow police tape. Nothing to do but wait, scan the scene, call my parents back home in bed, talk to  my friend Steve from the “New York Post” that I spot in the crowd.

“Look at this shit! Houston’s blocked off, the streets are full of crazy, anxious people—I swear it’s the New York City blackout meets the Village gay pride parade.” I can’t tell if Steve is incredulous or excited. Casualty of the job, I suppose. We’re finally allowed to leave Bleeker Street, cross Houston and enter SoHo. Steve spots Matthew Modine and tells me this is my chance to slip the A-list actor my screenplay.

“I don’t write screenplays, Steve. I’m finishing a novel.”

“Right, whatever. But, now’s your chance! It’s Matthew Modine! He can take you places, baby!”

New York City night, another opportunity, another chance—dark hours full of split-second decisions that will change your life.

(Story Links: New York Post, New York Daily News)

Dirty Diamonds

I do love a woman that wears her diamonds while whipping up a batch of pimento cheese. The jewels—those precious, perfect cuts of carbon the size of the cubes in her minted iced tea—are smeared with peppers, lost in cheese. Paula Deen doesn’t give a damn. Priorities. We’re Southern girls, we have it all worked out. Anything for a supper, a lunch, something to make those mouths hum.

That’s it, the future, my future. Family, fine food and a handful of dirty diamonds.

What more could a girl ask for?

(Unfortunate but necessary sidebar: Paula does not roast her own peppers nor does she use the heavenly heat of Sriracha hot sauce in her pimento cheese recipe. In my humble opinion, the recipe on this very site is tastier than the recipe printed in today’s “New York Times” [see above link]. Click on Cups & Nibbles and Simply Southern in the City for the real deal. Sorry Ms. Paula.)  

Lorelei’s Book

Let’s forget that the diamonds ‘round Lorelei Lee’s (“Gentleman Prefer Blondes”) elegant neck are eventually replaced by the noose of marriage and suburbia. Let’s remember when life was a promise and she happened upon the beginnings of a book, a memoir, a pamphlet on how to use untrained intelligence, looks and energy to get the most from life.

“A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book … So it might have all blown over but this morning he sent me a book. And so when my maid brought it to me, I said to her, “Well, Lulu, here is another book and we have not read half the ones we have got yet.” But when I opened it and saw that it was all blank I remembered what my gentleman acquaintance said, and so then I realized that it was a diary. So here I am writing a book instead of reading one…It would be strange if I turn out to be an authoress.”

Let’s remember her excess and focus on the days when life was damn good and she dealt with heartbreak and the luncheon hour in the most wonderful way.

“I mean champagne always makes me feel philosophical because it makes me realize that when a girl’s life is as full of fate as mine seems to be, there is nothing else to do about it. So this morning the steward brought me my coffee and quite a large pitcher of ice water so I will stay in bed and not have any more champagne until luncheon time.”

There was a remedy for her sadness. I’ll put a bookmark there and try not to read any more for a good, long while.

Paris Education

Paris obsessed. I know, I know. I’ve been accused many times. The decadent, delightful, tasteful and luxurious mesmerize me. The men bewitch me. Remember this?

“You have a princess neck,” he says, trying to roll his tongue around the “r’s,” soften them up to suit my American ear.

“I do?” I demur, trying for a moment to be the good girl of years past. At present, I’m very busy being maudlin and analyzing my big city life across the pond.

“One meant for a string of diamonds. Pearls on Sundays.” A slow sip of the Calvados and he continues staring.

It is some weeknight in October and I am stroking the blonde hairs on my neck and the old, tanned Frenchman next to me is thankful for the breeze off the Seine and his Cubano cigar and the forgiving light cast by “Flore’s” awning. The golden hue takes ten years off and he knows it. Without a pause, he asks me to write my phone number on his crisp, linen kerchief.

“Ahh, but you won’t answer your phone,” he says, suddenly coy.

“Of course I will.”

The Frenchman and I continue exchanging lies.

Why not? Joan Didion told me that, “I could stay up all night and make mistakes and none of it would count.”

I just can’t seem to stop the Gallic dreaming. A momentary, budget-minded reprieve: The “Americans in Paris, 1860-1900” exhibit at the Metropolitan. I needed to be indulged for the price of an entrance fee. I needed to keep my old flame alive when the January days seem as quick and as cold as the end of my 20’s. I needed the fantasy before babies, marriage and all that wonderful domestic nonsense comes into my life.

I wore comfortable shoes and a “museum dress”—a black wool turtlenecked thing that can be terribly sexy or card catalogue frumpy. Depends on who you ask. Paris seemed to like it. He looked down at me from the wall, framed in gold and filigree, and asked when I was coming, how I would paint him. In a dream of concentration, I looked to the ceiling and read,

The general effect of Paris, taken through an artist’s eye, and into an artist’s brain, is to educate that eye and brain as our American life cannot.
    –Chris Pearce Cranch, 1853 

Be patient, I’m coming.

Real Again

The gin cocktails and Cosmopolitans at “Gramercy Tavern” beat the camp Kool Aid. We “Pearl Girls” know that much. And our clothes and style have become a hell of a lot more interesting (not to mention there’s simply more fabric); “Missoni” knits, snug jeans, “Marc Jacobs” flounced black skirts replace our “Gap” short shorts and tiny cotton tanks (come to think of it, the men might have offered us more free cocktails in our previous style incarnation…). The drinks and the clothes help to establish our new “station” in life, “station” being a much more palatable, refined word than “place” or “position” (the former and the latter rife with sexual implications). The Junior League wouldn’t like that. But, when you have 12 years to catch up on, where do you start, what do you highlight, what do you omit?  If you were given the chance to delete the embarrassing, the hurtful, the botched paragraphs from your life story, would you do it? Would you choose to tell a safe, forgettable, impressive tale?

Tea in Recoleta with the widowed Argentines… Kissing a sailor in Capri… “This little wine bar on a side street near Rue de Vernueille serves a breathtaking Margaux by the glass…” “Candace took a sip of her champagne, smiled and told me that any female narrator under the age of 30 was bound to be labeled as…” I throw my head back and laugh.

Yeah, I bragged and spoke of my travels and people I don’t really know and then I waited. I couldn’t wait to hear what she would toss my way. Oh, God, wait, she’s being honest? Heartbreak and failure, mornings in med school that begin at 4 a.m. and end 32 hours later, nights on bed with the “Food Network” and fried chicken?

There are friends who want the rough copy—not the red-lined, notes in the margin, edited version of me—but it’s just so hard to discern who these friends are nowadays. I feel like I’ve streamlined, becoming a jacket cover blurb of my former self. New York, sink or swim, baby! Put the best, Manolo-clad foot forward even if you can’t afford them and you’d prefer to run around in your stinky, year-old sneakers.

“Balthazar” at midnight with French fries and water—no more red wine—and I’m “me.” Lord, it’s sad that it takes the witching hour and a “Pearl Girl” to make me real again. But, it does and I begin to write the real chapters of my life on that bar stool and she reads them and likes them and asks for me to tell her more.

Jay

“He looks like the kind of guy that could sit on a toilet for hours,” she whispered.

“What?” I moved my gaze from her face to that of Jay McInerney’s. Up there, seated on the dais with Candace Bushnell, poised to read erotic passages from his novels, he looked more wizened and worn than his crisp prose and youthful witticisms betray. He sipped his vodka drink and leafed through his books and those of Bret Easton Ellis, never letting a wry smile leave his face. That’s it—he looked naughty. Jay loves the stage and, to my eyes, looked far more comfortable there than he would on any toilet.

“Can’t you just see him with the ‘Times’ splayed out, a sports magazine or two by his feet occupying a bathroom for at least 90 minutes?”

Hmmm, Jay in a night shirt with his boxers down around his ankles… not so sure. But, we all know that he can do no wrong in my eyes. I’ll always think of him as the enfant terrible of the “Odeon” and its surrounding territory. All he needs is a good farm girl to make an honest man out of him. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

“And then his wet fingers parted her… plunging inside, he… she fell off him…” Jay spoke into the microphone with obvious pleasure, hoping to offend someone, anyone. But, of course, the New York literati, socialite crowd found it all to be fabulous. Everyone gulped their drinks and laughed.

Finally, at the witching hour—the time when Fabian Basabe decides to sniff out a new venue—Jay walked toward me. I thrust my hand in his direction and took full advantage of the fact that I blocked the one major exit way.

“Mr. McInerney, I’m a huge fan. I carry “Bright Lights” and the “Last of the Savages” with me at all times. And I…”

So I got a little carried away. But he was kind and listened and talked books and, unlike so many of the men I’ve met in the city, asked about me. Sure, his vowels were a bit curious-sounding but every icon has his hiccup.

“You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute,” McInerney wrote in “Bright Lights, Big City.” And I’m the kind of gal that believes miracles happen all the time. Here’s to Tuesday night, vodka cocktails and conversation with Jay.

Oh, and I didn’t see him leave the room once to use the bathroom.

The Hotelier

He was a famous New York hotelier—flagrant with his affairs, drug use, bisexuality, homegrown pornography (up here, tomatoes aren’t the only thing cultivated at home) and propensity to talk down to anyone and everyone. But, when he spoke, he did so with his head bowed in modest submission, his voice lowered. In his mind, the tall balance that he had accrued with his actions was to be paid off by the humble stance of his short, muscled body and hushed, I-can’t-believe-the-Concord-has-been-retired tone. His wife’s office—and namesake empire— was just across the narrow SoHo hallway, within earshot of the conference room where he dabbled in so many of his Big City sins. Ego maniacs and kept husbands think differently than you and I.

I worked for this man right after the News Channel, just before my writing classes (and myriad other temp jobs). Why? 25$ an hour. That, and I had to believe in something. My New York was humid and moody and persistent—I didn’t think that I could handle it all alone.

This story will be told just so. There won’t be one post, but many. Let’s call the “Hotelier” a mini-series in the cinematic life of Belle. What didn’t kill me, made me… well, you know.

“I have a very important job. And, from what I see, you might just be perfect for it,” the short, Jewish “head hunter” said, perusing my face, hair and jacquard suit. She resided deep in cubicle nation, high in the sky. Of course, Karen wasn’t an actual head hunter—she was a mere staffing company gopher that dealt in the currency of starry-eyed young things from Alabama and Iowa. The girls came to the city, the plan didn’t pan out, they made their way to Karen or someone like her.

“You’d be working for A.Z.” she said with the lift of a brow and a look of both intense expectation and satisfaction.

Never heard of the man. How was I supposed to react? Karen waited for a gush and toothy grin. I had nothing.

“I’m sorry, who?” I asked, trying to quell my bewilderment, feign excitement.

“Well, I suppose he is only known in certain circles,” she replied, splaying her fingers against the paltry expanse of her chest. “He’s the wife of K.D.—head of her namesake agency, “D Models.”

Interesting indeed…

“A job like this will require the utmost discretion. Do you think you can keep those pretty, red lips sealed?”

What an inappropriate question… and fascinating proposition.

Tales Into The Blue

It was probably better when I was afraid of New York. Then, I observed and appreciated everything. When you’re petrified, you don’t opine or pose or spend time wishing you were elsewhere. The present consumes you. I would have written pages upon pages about this cloying, dangerous heat instead of staring blankly at a screen wishing that I were by the sea with all the lucky people.

But, now, a breeze of reality, naivete. A fresh perspective is moving to New York in the form of my completely unspoiled, small town boyfriend. He’s THRILLED to be here in August, not thinking twice about far-flung islands—Egadi, Balearics—in the blue.

“I thought that when I get up there on Sunday we could do some planting,” he says, his voice heavy with anticipation.

“I don’t do flowers. And I really don’t garden in August.” I sigh, cradling the phone to my right ear, rewinding “Il Postino.” Third time this week. Maybe I could write there, I think, on the island of Salina. Pablo Neruda’s character in the film was quietly invigorated by the isolation, uninterrupted sky, sequined sea, simplicity.

“Herbs, honey! What if I did a great-big window box full of basil, rosemary, thyme, chives, mint—you name it. Think of my roasts, your caprese salads, Mom’s mint iced…”

Five years ago I tasted the capers of Salina, drank the sweet Malvasian wine and sunbathed on the sand where Massimo Troissi courted Maria Grazia Cucinotta. Thinking, thinking, thinking while Jamie is busy making plans for the two of us, our kitchen, OUR New York.

“We’ve come a long way, baby,” he says, cutting off my thoughts and reminding me of those cigarette ads.

He’s right. We’ve done well over the past year. And I want to think that this time—tonight—when I watch my postman court his country girl, I’ll plan a trip for both of into the blue.

The ‘Fitting’ Explained

(a recap for those of you just tuning in…) 

“A fitting? Are we talking about your bridesmaid’s dress again?” Confusion and warm wine—tasting of jam, minus the childhood satisfaction—were my companions after a day of literary solitude in the apartment. PAGING: Algonquin round table. PAGING: New York intelligentsia. Where are you? 

“Not a dress, a guy—my new guy. We’re discussing my new guy,” she said, looking exasperated. 

“So what’s a ‘fitting’?” 

“You know…” she said, peering into the great jammy depths of her cheap Australian import. 

The wide eyes and pursed lips meant that she was either searching her liquid crystal ball for a modicum of restraint or about to start in on her favorite subject—sex.

“The guy in the white shirt at the table wants you to have this,” the waitress interrupted, slamming down a Corona and lime on the table in front of me, effectively ‘singling out’ about 17 men in my direct vicinity. It didn’t matter—the cool carbonation was a godsend. I needed to get to the bottom of this “fitting” phenomenon without drowning my confusion in buckets of warm Shiraz.

“So is this a Long Island thing or something that is sweeping the nation?” I queried, leaning back in the high metal chair, hoping my sarcasm would inspire a concise reply.

“Where have you been? No, this doesn’t have to do with the Island—this is about dating in the city and making sure that everything is… no one wants their ‘number’ to go up so… there are things that gotta be…”

“Come on girl, you can do it, you can do it…” My God, what was I doing? Eliciting poop from a puppy?

“You’re going to make me explain it?” she said downing the last of the wine. “First date, dinner. Second date dinner, half a dozen cocktails and a ‘fitting.’ Third date, back to his apartment. You don’t let the latter happen if the former isn’t juuuuust right.”

Visions of Goldilocks and a different kind of porridge—“pourage”—crept into my mind. Is this what had happened during the year that I had been off the Manhattan meat market cum dating scene?

“He can’t be too big because that’s just no fun. Too small and it’s pointless—hello, I gotta ‘Rabbit’ in my bedside table! Somewhere in between is what we’re all looking for. And why wait too long to find out? I for one don’t want to fall in love with a gherkin—”

Slam. Another Corona and another waitress with an apologetic look on her face. “He told me to keep ‘em coming ‘til—”

“Until I’ve had approximately six beers, nothing is too hot or too cold,” I said, veins popping, face reddening, “and I want some ‘pourage’— that side of a gherkin, this side of seedless cucumber?”

“What? The guy says he knows you from the gym.”

Right. Too many mixed metaphors for one night. Time for bed. Alone.

City Streets

The streets soothe me.

Today, I've walked and I've paced and I've rounded the city blocks as many times as my heels will allow me...

A martini now and notes tomorrow... xox.

Mrs. Child and Her Sieve

If your life were a blurb on the back of a book jacket, how would it read?

Don’t think of this as your high school comp. teacher asking you to write your own obituary. Consider it an exercise in sifting life down to its little moments of ecstasy. What--and who--are you going to remember? The Foreword and book jacket cover of Julia Child’s, “My Life in France,” simply states,

“This is a book about some of the things I love most in life—my husband, Paul Child, ‘la belle France’ and the many pleasures of cooking and eating.”
A man. An emotion. The daily joys of life.

Mrs. Child began her book (along with Alex Prud ‘Homme) at the ripe age of 91. I’m sure there were innumerable moments, delights and people to consider. They all beg for a mention in her culinary memoir. The people that she eventually chooses to write about are immortalized in culinary circles. And the others, well…

My “quarter life crisis” (courtesy of the imitable, ingenious singer, John Mayer)—my mid-20’s—have been a sentimental sieve. I’ve cut people out of my life. I’ve added a few new faces. I’ve met men that I adore. I’ve met many more men that I abhor (at least, I detest what they stand for). And, still, there are those people that float in that nebulous world of personal purgatory—do I like them, trust them, really know them? Rather, after reading some of Mrs. Child I can ask, “Will they be part of the book blurb?”

God willing I’ll figure myself (and my needs) out by age 30. Until then, I’m still searching for that one sentence that sums up me, who I love and my life’s ecstasy...

At the "Gulf"

The gas station was the sexiest—most real—place in town. Puttering up to the “Gulf” gas sign perched above the bayou, Mamma checked her blonde hair in the rear view mirror, dabbed at her lipstick and finally exhaled. The delicate little wrists dropped into her lap (palms facing skyward) and her head— full of recipes, dry-cleaning stubs and “to-do” lists— tilted back, relaxing into the black, pleather head rest.

The air was thick with humidity but, finally, light with worry.

Mamma liked being served—she was quite good at it. Even at age 6, I enjoyed watching the men tend to her, put her at ease, buzz around the car to fill up the tank, wash the windshield, dip into the special cooler and offer us 6 ½ oz bottled Cokes. Peppery and alive—everything tasted and felt better on those afternoons. My favorite attendant at the full-service station was the owner’s son, with eyes as calm and blue as the gulf water just beyond the bayou. I learned how a man could make you feel. I learned about chivalry. I learned that a woman really could do everything on her own, but why would she want to?

Strong Hope

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any realized joy could be.

--Nietzsche

I’ve been bad by not writing this week but I promise that I’m up to something good… As soon as things are more concrete, I’ll let y’all know. Big City Life musings to recommence!

Metamorphosis

“Rien n’est perdu, rien n’est cree,’” said the chef.

“Nothing is lost, nothing is created,” repeated the assistant, pausing along with the chef so that these words might be recorded in the small, spiral-bound notebooks that each student held on his or her lap. Puckering his mouth to complete his thought, the round little Gallic despot contintued.

“Tout est transforme,’ he said.

“Everything is transformed,” said the translator.
Molly O’Neill, in her fun, fabulously well-written foodie memoir, “Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food and Baseball,” writes not just of the chef, but of the writer, painter, musician… See where I’m going with this, my dears? Every creative soul has to struggle with the reality of repetition, reinvention, recreation. NOTHING is new. Your perspective, however, can be unique.

I'm a young woman living in Manhattan, a stranger to its social systems, hierarchy and nuances. Yes--of course this story has been told before. If the point were to impart completely new information and small-town-girl-hits-the-big-city revelations, it would have been imperative to give up after the publication of Ms. Didion's earliest essays on the subject. When people look at me over their cocktails or communicate with me through the gray wires and say, "It's soooo over... A single girl living in Manhattan recounting the travails of dating and media madness? Please." I want to ask them what completely original artistic project they have accomplished to great critical acclaim? What dreams have they realized on a grand or small scale?

And, yet, the dissidents might be on to something…

Metamorphosis. Ms. O’Neill uses this powerful word to describe what she underwent with the aforementioned chef in the venerable city of Paris. Maybe it’s time for me to finish my thoughts in Gotham, fly the coop and move with my Chef to the City of Lights… Paris.

"Like the other thirty students, I tried to scribble down everything the chef said. Unlike my fellow students’, however, my notebook did not also contain the telephone numbers of potential lovers, the addresses of dance clubs or the train schedules for weekend jaunts to the Loire Valley or Burgundy. I had neither the money nor the time for such frivolity. I was twenty-six old… Paris was serious business, and I recorded every sight, every taste, and every word. 'Everything is transformed,' I wrote carefully in the same felt-tip marker that I’d formerly used to write poems."

My Royal

(My American Royalty continued...)

Land of the free, home of the brave—there is no aristocracy, you say. Oh, really? Tell that to the maitre d’, the bouncer, the seasoned bartender at “Bemelman’s.” A new world lays itself at your feet when you date a Groton and Princeton grad that just happens to be directly related to the ex Commander-in-Chief.

Merc Bar. A finger of Jack and Coke left in his tumbler and I stroll in the door. Turn left, turn right. This is a set-up, you see—a blind date scenario that would make our Baby-Boomer parents proud. He’s searching the crowd; I see him searching. Even though I know next to nothing about the boy—except that he is President ______’s great, great grandson and President ______’s second cousin once removed—he’s easy to spot. Like a good British aristocrat, my date has a slightly inbred visage (flat face, broad nasal bridge, bug eyes) and a grating guffaw. The chortle is a nervous tick of sorts that is emitted at random and inappropriate moments—like after saying, “Nice to meet you.” He’s short—vertically challenged enough for his line of vision to be breast high. Lucky man.

Fact: I’m bigger and blonder and just plain more than any of these northern things he’s used to dating (or screwing after the Met’s Costume Ball). Indeed, the boy has two mighty POTUS’s in his family and at that moment I still fee like a Brigitte Nielsen running the show. Lord, was this New York society? I imagine all the Upper East Side girls clamoring for his prestigious last name, praying at Café St. Bart’s over lunch that he would be their ticket to a permanent listing on the Social Register. “No more Jimmy Choo’s! No more Christian Louboutin’s!” they solemnly vow. “For him, I swear to don ballet flats from here to eternity!” The lithe ladies also tuck away all sexual desire as they resign themselves to focus on his back pocket (wallet) instead of his front fly (errrmm, never went there).

Me? All I want is a dirty martini and an even dirtier conversation about the gilded faces that fill the pages of "Vogue" and the "Times." He orders another drink and I set in, ready to refine my journalism skills...

American Royalty

“You’re hedgin’ on the vulgar up there,” Mamma told me some time ago. I can’t pinpoint how many months or years ago she said this because, as Didion might reflect, much feels to be the same in New York after you can name the bridges, tunnels and rivers. Yes, things are better when you’re just a touch ignorant…

My big city life was negotiating good and bad taste, or so I’ll claim for Mamma’s sake. My precarious employment and dating situation had her worried that my magnolia had not only lost its bloom, but that its petals were browning, decomposing under the Yankee sun.

What’s a newly minted New Yorker to do? Date American Royalty, of course.

Land of the free, home of the brave—there is no aristocracy, you say. Oh, really? Tell that to the maitre d’, the bouncer, the seasoned bartender at “Bemelman’s.” A new world lays itself at your feet when you date a Groton and Princeton grad that just happens to be directly related to the ex Commander-in-Chief...

Liberte', Egalite', FIDELITE'?

French women fascinate me. The freshness of their chevre is just as important—if not more so—than the fidelity of their husbands. The women are utterly precise with their appearances, casual with their sexual affairs. I can’t quite decide if I admire these sexual libertines or pity their lack of judgment…

I once wrote that my Granddaddy had a way of presenting the modern-day, American South as if it were 19th century Gallic society—albeit a bastardized version.

“For Granddaddy, it wasn’t just the pace of life or rhythm of speech, but the social structure. Money wasn’t so much earned as it was maintained in estates and property. Staying in his good graces would be far more lucrative than chasing a Northern dream…”

Naturally, this Dixie laissez-faire attitude would transfer over into the sexual, the social—like their French counterparts, right? Wrong.

In general (in general, for those of you ornery blog readers), Southern women are fiercely protective of their partners and husbands. I’d venture to say that equal time is spent loving them as is spent watching their every move, searching for clues of infidelity and betrayal. What a waste. But, yet, I can’t seem to resolve these two sides of my heart. A little play was necessary…

With $10 in hand, I walked my Southern sensibility and Francophile proclivities to see the French movie, “Nathalie.” Bernard (Gerard Depardieu) cheats on his wife, Catherine (Fanny Ardent), and offers no explanation other than, “One day it dies.” Of course, he’s referring to marital passion, not the desire to have a perfectly executed 4-course French meal on the table night after night. Catherine very coolly accepts the blame for his infidelity and sets out to find a hooker who will report back to her and, in detail, describe what Bernard likes in bed, what his darkest and dirtiest sexual practices are when the other woman isn’t wearing a wedding band. I won’t spoil the end of the movie because I think each and every one of you –married, committed or otherwise—should go see it.

I left the theatre and did my usual walk down Broadway, past the imposing brownstones and the patisserie gems in the window of “Le Pain Quotidien.” Finally I reached the north side of Washington Square Park and walked through it’s own Arch de Triomphe. France in New York. A Southerner in the City. I suddenly realized that I did’t have to ascribe my beliefs to one side or another. That’s the beauty of my chosen home, the Big Apple. I can take the best of all my influencing worlds and begin to form my own system of beliefs. Elementary, really, this sudden thought that seemed so brilliant at the time. But, just as it came to me all at once, it made me quite happy.

Next time Chef and I are enjoying tartare et frites and escargots at “Balthazar,” I'll tie on a silk scarf (tres, tres parisienne, mes petits), keep a cool watch over my love and our surroundings and ever so subtly keep a warm hand on his cuisse...

How French. How Southern. How South-of-Houston.

Midnight Cowgirl

She’s a beautiful, fresh-faced journalist that covers the cop beat in the Bronx, frets over the fate of displaced Sub-Saharan African tribes, forgets to eat on Saturdays (too busy getting her sea legs in the city to grab a turkey on rye). Her accent is from nowhere though her sensibility is distinctly mid-Western. The girl is strong, intrepid and possesses a deep reserve of calm. I imagine that cool to be like the Grotta Azurra in Capri—deep blue, bottomless. My tranquility and patience, meanwhile, run about as deep as a crawfish ditch in back bayou Louisiana.

I like the girl. I decide over the first glass of bad white wine that I want a daughter just like her. Of course, this means that a piece of me wants to be her but I’ve already given up on that end (I never forget to eat on Saturdays). Her apartment is in Times Square. This appeals to my James Herlihy (“Midnight Cowboy”) notions of Manhattan and blind faith—anything can happen once you’re inside the City walls. Just, for God’s sake—make the journey, breach the gates, get inside! Times Square means you live in the hum, there’s no escape, you don’t give a damn about the cache’ of TriBeCa or Clinton Street. You simply care about being part of IT—the City.

What will happen first for this raven-haired ingénue? Please, Lord, let it be a Pulitzer and not a hedge fund manager. She doesn’t eat; she falls asleep to the white lights of Broadway–give her a break, a slice of the golden pie. Dessert first, and on Saturday–wouldn’t that be nice?

Flash Fried, Not Slow Roasted

An excerpt from a past life, my future novel...

What in God’s name had I been thinking? I was twenty-five years old. I had to face facts: being with a man R.’s age was fast, bland, uninspired— I would always be the fresh catch of the day that had been flash-fried instead of slow roasted. He reminded me of a fisherman out in the Gulf, fighting ten foot swells and the merciless Florida sun to catch one prize snapper. It’s finally on his hook, his aging cronies congratulate him—a gleam of envy in their eyes—he can almost taste the sweet, clean flesh. Problem is, by then, his 43 year-old body is exhausted and just a touch resentful of the damn thing.

“Why don’t we lie here and the maid can bring us champagne and strawberries in bed? Hmmm? What do you say?” R. smiled sweetly as if all men compensated for their sexual ineptitude with overpriced champagne and Chilean produce. A silver strand of hair lay atop my right breast, a souvenir of his good intentions.

“Twenty-five is the best year of a young girl’s life,” I heard Mamma say as I lay in R.'s bed, somewhere out in Southampton. He stared over at me from his pillow with those startling, cornflower blue eyes. “Three hundred and sixty-five days of glamorous living,” she liked to say. Since I was a girl, birthday candles served one of two purposes—as vehicles for licking Mamma’s chocolate-buttercream frosting or a means to subtract from that magic age, looming in the future. Twenty-five, twenty-five… there was something that made it the year of singular beauty and opportunity. By then, my profession, my sentiments and my social circle had to form a flawless sphere—a shape as perfect as a hen’s egg...

(don't worry-- much, much more to come...)