From "Metronome"

One time that summer, Jin had grown hard while he’d been sitting on the bench next to Jake. Jake had come back from soccer practice and hadn’t had a chance to shower- and Jin had dismissed his wish to do so because he was already fifteen minutes late. They were working on scales from “The Leschetizky Method,” and Jake was anxious beneath the irritating layer of dried dirt and old sweat, too preoccupied with the urgent treasures of high school to be tied to a piano.
“I can’t wait ‘till I’m at college so I can just get up and get a beer, you know?” He turned to look at Jin when he said this. Tiny spores of dirt flecked across his forehead.
Whether it was the urgency of his odor, the idea of sharing a cold beer, or the fact that this impossible boy was good at everything he tried and gifted enough not to care, Jin felt himself growing beneath his slacks and had to excuse himself to use the first-floor bathroom. After that lesson, Jin started to see two, three men an evening in his rented rooms in the city. One time in August, right before school started, he took three strangers back to back, all of them difficult and violent and hard and so filled with rage, the last man made him bleed. Nevertheless, when he crawled into bed afterwards, Jin was consumed with regret that he hadn’t gone further.

An exclusive, all-boys school in Greenwich hadn’t been an obvious choice- but Jin felt immediately calmed when the bus left the Merritt parkway for the gentle slopes of Round Hill road. The houses were massive, but they were also elegant. There was an air of entitlement that swept through the oak trees and along the well kept paths that Jin hadn’t encountered since his childhood in Montgomery County, where his father worked in the Solutions Division of Carahsoft Technology. People didn’t feel guilty about their wealth in Greenwich the way they did in Cambridge. At Longy, Jin had been invited out at weekends or for the occasional Thanksgiving, and he was always struck by the way his friends parents went out of their way to maintain an uncomfortable relationship with most of their possessions. If Jin complimented the dinner service, he would be instructed to disregard the chips in the porcelain plates. If he made a general remark about the framework of the house, the lofty ceilings or the intricate staircase, for example, the hostess would divert his attention instead to the pile of books beneath the staircase, the dismal state of the lawn, or the limpidity of the water pressure in the upstairs bathroom. One time, on his way to a first floor powder room, he caught sight of a woman in the kitchen cooking something on the stove. She gasped when she saw him and Jin found the door to the kitchen closed on his way back from the bathroom.
In Greenwich, people found comfort in the tactile things a luxurious life afforded them. Long, winding driveways with professionally lit landscaping and outdoor chess boards with moveable pieces the size of a large dog. He’d yet to meet anyone who felt the need to apologize for the things they had, and this made Jin feel far more comfortable than the opposite scenario. After all, what did it say about him if people were constantly making excuses in his presence for the way they lived? The parents of his students didn’t know a single thing about him. The fact that he was Asian offered Jin a protective outer layer that few people felt comfortable puncturing. Jin looked different, which meant that he might be different, and no one wanted to put themselves in a position that proved the profundity of their ignorance.

From "Homemade"

When they were still in grade school, their mother told them that a good relationship was like a mathematical equation. If you did certain things, and he did certain things, you could be sure to end up with a successful marriage. After that conversation, which was the closest thing they got to the birds and bees, Sarah pulled Teresa aside and told her that their mother was talking about blowjobs and that one day, a boy would pop a pimple in her mouth.

From "Homemade"

Teresa took pleasure in knowing what was in store for her socially; she didn’t like surprises, never had, and never would. Several years ago when she was still working at Hallmark, Sarah took her out to an Italian restaurant for her thirtieth birthday. There had been three of her colleagues at the bar when she arrived. It made Teresa so uncomfortable to have them there that she had loose bowel movements afterwards for two days straight. Who knew what they usually did with their free time? The worst thing you could do to Teresa was take her by surprise. Sarah knew this about her, and sometimes, she wondered if she hadn’t organized the party out of spite.

From "Homemade"

In the past, Teresa mailed a vacuum-sealed loaf of her famous zucchini bread with a handwritten card for each of her friend’s birthdays. Well! That would make two less loaves to bake in the future.

From "Homemade"

Teresa had always had a soft spot for creative activities- rainy day “hobbies” like stenciling and paint-by-numbers. When she was little, her father worked a lot and her mother spent most of the day sleeping. Her mother’s migraines had been even worse than hers, and for weeks on end, she wouldn’t be able to eat at the table with her family because the clanking silverware made her see spots.
At first, Teresa used arts and crafts as a way to pass the time, but she came to love the way a project could turn an aimless afternoon into an exciting space within which something concrete could be achieved. These days, she was interested in rughooking. She’d found a yarn store in Stamford that gave 5% of each sale to the National Recreation and Parks Association. They sold hard-to-find brands with inspirational names like “Bitterroot Rainbow”, “Maiden’s Moss” and “Chinook”. It was delightful to be transported to far-off, humid places from the reassuring comfort of her fold-up bed. These niche brands cost more, but it was worth the mental trip. In reality, she’d never been further south than Annapolis.

From "Metronome"

The juice had a slightly tinny taste to it, one of these designer juices that involved crossing one fruit with another until you couldn’t identify one overruling taste, but rather a mob pit of competing flavors. Cranapple bananna mango madness.

From "Metronome"

One time, before a performance at Longy, a classmate gave Jin a beta-blocker to help him with his nerves. “You won’t sweat,” he said, dropping two pills into his already sweating palm. The boy’s name was Dave and he’d since gone off to work for a hedge fund in Madison, Wisconsin. And he wasn’t a boy anymore, he was a man- a man with a wife and an adjustable rate mortgage and according to his pictures on Facebook, a rheumy-eyed maltese and a four year-old boy.
The performance in question was the Spring Concert of Jin’s junior year. He was to perform Beethoven’s Septet in E-Flat, rearranged as Op. 38, and he was ready, technically speaking. He’d gotten to a place where he could play it on the T, his left thigh and right thigh standing in for two halves of the piano.
Lots of the students took beta-blockers. Acebutolol, atenolol, nebilolol. LOL’s, they called them. Laugh out louds. Jin had never taken anything for his performance anxiety. He avoided coffee the day of a concert and ate calming foods that would stay in his system- a heaping bowl of buttered rice with scrambled eggs on top.


The piece didn’t go as it should have, although Jin didn’t realize it until later at the reception when people kept their backs to him at the punch bowl. His fingers had felt heavy, and his nerve endings, numb, as if he was suffering from a particularly bad hangover. Because of this, he had been three to five milliseconds late in his articulation of the notes. And the humor, the tactile witticism that was the hallmark of the piece, Jin had thrown a comforter on top of the joy of this rare and shining thing that everyone had been looking forward to. He had kidnapped something marvelous, and no one wanted it back. Not from him, in any case. It was after this performance that Jin realized that he simply wasn’t good enough. When other students gave a poor performance, the Jaquelyn Wu’s and Tony Higgins of his junior class, people approached them with pinched looks and furled eyebrows. What….happened? There was a real sense of disquietude in the aftermath of such a letdown- the shared sentiment that the bystanders couldn’t let a rising star fall. Jin didn’t experience anything like this at the reception after his performance. People were embarrassed for him. He’d ruined the last piece of the program and left them with a bitter taste in the back of their throats that would probably end up causing them an ugly feeling of inevitability when their steak arrived medium instead of medium rare later that evening. I’ll eat it anyway. What does it matter?

From "Metronome"

There was nothing stranger than seeing the captain of the football team with eyeliner and lipstick on under the high voltage lights of the Marshall Burke Theatre. Marshall Burke’s son had been captain of the soccer team- Jin never knew him but he’d heard arresting stories from the other teachers at lunch. He used to make his maid clean up thin puddles of vomit after late-night pool parties and he once pulled a tampon out of a conquest with his teeth. Well. Now he had a hi-tech theatre named after his father and a comfy spot at Williams College. If he behaved well, he’d become soccer captain there, too. If he didn’t, his father would have to build a rec-room or a cinema. Williams already had a very nice stage.

From "The Sunset"

Thirty-five years. It was something to celebrate, and yet, the edge of the evening was twinged with a bitter realization. This was it, they were old now. She looked forward to baths and Bill to his golfing. Rumpled sheets and bad decisions, that didn’t happen now.

From "Metronome"

His first time had been in Cambridge and had been a long time coming. Jin had endured four years of Brian Carrs and Z.J Maloneys at Pooleville high school, too terrified by the gnarled grapevine of teenage affinities to reach out to the dark-clothed girls in whom he might have confided. It wasn’t until Jin was at Longy, far enough away from his mother’s suspicious clucks and the burgeoning soil bed of his sister’s superiority that he felt comfortable enough to stop lying. Not that he “came out”, by any means, he just put an end to the elaborate fibs that got him through so many Sadie Hawkins dances in high school.

The boy’s name was Sascha, and he was a trumpet player. He played in a jazz band called the Devlin 5, although there were only four of them. For a trumpet player, he’d been a terrible kisser. Slobbery and tepid, he had an irritating habit of sucking in his cheeks while he was being pleasured, which made him look like a particularly alert bird.

From "Metronome"

Jin had played out the scenario where he answered her question truthfully, and it was a scenario that ended dismally for everyone involved. It was bad enough sleeping with men that didn’t interest him. If he had to think of his mother’s anxiety every time he reached for a tube of Frixion, he would never be able to make sense of his needs.

From "Metronome"

Mark liked fish tacos and cheese polenta, he’d “had it” with Shiraz, and his ideal morning involved a run, a cappuccino and some sort of baked good. In his photo, he had a weak chin and dimples, and the kind of sparkle in his eyes that made you forgive whatever unfortunate things were accruing below- a paunch, graying chest hair, or a pudgy chin.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sonia looked around their bedroom at the things she had accumulated and the books she hadn’t read. If she had a choice, she would have lived near the ocean- preferably on an elevated floor with inspirational and often-changing views, but there wasn’t a great deal of sea-frontage that came without traffic, and she hated the sound of idling cars.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sometimes, Teresa worried about becoming a big softie. One of those jumpy types who talked too quickly to remember what she’d said. One of Sarah’s friends was exactly like this. One time, when she’d been over to the house in Purchase, she took a liking to a candle Teresa had created. It smelled like a watermelon and had tiny “seeds” made out of licorice. This woman, Annie, said she had a friend who had a home store in Port Chester where she sold linens and candles and miniature books of quotations. Annie told Teresa she would bring her by one day with her watermelon candles, but the next time she came over, she didn’t mention it, and Teresa had been taught never to beg.

From "Homemade"

Teresa loved her sister but she found her careless. Last year for Christmas, she’d sent Teresa a carton full of ducklings. She must have thought she was only ordering one, because the card that came with it said “I hope you like him!”. There were 100 ducklings in that flat box, 25 per grid. Teresa had to spend an hour and a half on the telephone before she could find someone to take them.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sonia couldn’t imagine Ridley with a family of his own. He had a discomforting aura about him that caused people to sit up straighter, like the first roll of thunder on a hot summer night. Even people that had never met him before felt instinctively disturbed by him, like a small, garish animal you might find in your backyard. A battered squirrel with a bit of bone showing through. A dismembered liver. The smile of a cat.

From "Homemade"

Teresa wondered, while reaching, if the customer was looking at her back. She had this thing about her new haircut. It fell sort of flat. When the hairdresser handed her a mirror to check out her rear view, Teresa had been too disappointed to say anything. She drove home afterwards, feeling deflated. So that’s what I look like. That’s what they see.

Teresa had a tendency to daydream. It was something of a problem, and the last time she’d seen the Doctor, he encouraged her to use public transportation to get back and forth from work. She’d tried to take the bus once, but it took all the energy she had to share her space with strangers after a day of doing just that. The sudden stops and jarring noises did little to lessen the constant whir inside her head. On off days when the only voice she’d heard was Susan’s on the overhead, urging Bookenders to try a blueberry latté (Full of antioxidants!), Teresa would leave the store with the heavy sound of white noise flushing through her eardrums. Her voice echoed when she tried to answer a question, and sometimes she had the strangest feeling that she just might float away.

From "Homemade"

Some of her relatives criticized Teresa for being stuck in her ways, but this wasn’t so. She was happy to try nearly anything before making a judgment. Like the ludicrously overpriced pizza night at the new restaurant near the green. Just as loud and as crowded as she imagined it would be, but Sarah told her their cheese pizza was “better than sex”, as it had to be admitted, that Sarah would know. Teresa made sure to reserve a table beforehand but she ended up sitting at the bar after too many long looks and pinched faces from the groups of three and four waiting for the hostess.

From "Homemade"

Teresa liked the people that asked for books on origami. She imagined they had very neat homes, with closets full of transparent boxes and spare rooms with clean sheets.

From "Homemade"

Teresa had been working at Bookends for three months and had finally entered that comfortably-sized tunnel of patterns and rhythms that defines a nine-to-five position. She had a combination lock for her cubby, a thermal travel mug that she washed out every night, and a plastic container for the pink runcible spoon that her colleagues insisted on calling a ‘spork’. She had a tote bag reserved exclusively for “work stuff” and the occasional string of green lights with her commute. Although exhilaration wasn’t something she could expect from this job- contentment might be.

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

Sonia had honey blond highlights painted on by a woman named Melissa. Melissa had pink nails and a pink baby boy, and she lived in a house with a sun porch. One day, Melissa brought a big pitcher of homemade sun tea into the salon, and Sonia became fixated by this gesture; an effort she found at once charming and irksome. Melissa handed her a red plastic cup, the ubiquitous type you see in the hands of men at outdoor parties, and Sonia thanked her, and assured her it was good. That word- that jug of sun tea, it got her thinking about the expression, “out-of-doors”, and did this term exist when the world was full of tent flaps?

From "White Bowls in White Cupboards"

She’d been working in the drug store in the lobby of a hotel where he had a sales conference.When you married a person, you inherited a dowry of their good and bad habits, of mistakes and acquaintances and well-worn behaviors that required courage, and patience, and a bit of compromise. Theo, for example, had a thing for the color purple, but he didn’t look good in it because he had blond hair. He had oddly formed kneecaps, and a noisome habit of cracking his knuckles during television commercials. But he was kind, and predictable- he liked malted milkshakes and he still looked forward to the weekends as if something different might happen. When it didn’t, this made him feel content instead of anxious, and he seemed pretty comfortable with the snapshot forecast of his future life. 2006, 2007- the cozy years unfolding in the canopy of a fixed mortgage. 6.3. With points.

It's been a lovely while.

Cut hair on the cold floor. Outer leaves of lettuce. Scraps of paper from a cut-out, paper heart. From time to time, I will be posting parts of my short stories that got the good snip-snip.
Welcome to the home of the words I don't use in the stories that I write.

Let the Right One In: The Most intelligent Holocaust Film Ever?

Perhaps I'm looking into this film too deeply, digging through the frozen snow for the blood, if you will, but I think this is the most brilliant Holocaust film I've ever seen.

Squirming a bit? A wee bit surprised? Trust me, I feel you...but I mean what I said. To me, this film is using vampirism as a brilliant vehicle for the diabolic violence of the Second World War.

Let's start with the lead actors. On one hand, we have Oskar, blonder than blond, with translucent skin, a lonely lost boy in a country full of untouched and unbroken (pure white) snow. On the other side of the screen, we have Eli. Eli, people. Work with me here.... it's not like she's named Lina, Signe or Ikea, for that matter. Eli has dark, slightly curly hair, pronounced eyebrows and a troubling beauty far beyond her years. She can't stand the light and is portrayed as a blood-letter, a veritable vampire who sucks the life and energy from the white men and women around her.

If you're still with me, I'll continue. Enter the story of a forbidden love. Eli continually warns Oscar that "things can't continue like this". She can only travel by night and she spends her days hidden under five layers of blankets in a bathroom in a semi-deserted apartment. Certainly, we can see the comparison with the vampire lifestyle- the intolerance of light, safe passage in the evening, the endless need for blood...but what of the interesting addition to the vampire genre, the idea that vampires can only be accepted into someone's house if they are invited?

Here, I see a person seeking safe passage- an ostracized denizen looking for a haven. Eli's guardian warns her about seeing Oskar, and Oskar's absentee mother, when home, seems ill-at-ease with his newfound fasination in the morose next-door neighbor. Things are looking dangerous for the chosen son.

Theirs is one untimely and unlucky love. Eli is a pariah with a yellow star upon her adolescent chest, and Oskar steps one footprint closer to his grave ever time he meets up with her in the aluminum playground outside of their apartments. (Which are made out of brick, by the way- and you don't see brick buildings every day in Sweden unless we're dealing with chimneys). When it becomes too dangerous for the two to be seen together in public, they opt to communicate through a "wall"- tapping out simplistic messages using morse code.

This is impossible love, big time, but the ice is there to crack. Did I spend too many years with my nose against the uppity bridge of semiotics, or did the Aryan race just meet the "dark side" under the umbrella of the vampire genre?

Andy Wahloo: Le Relookage

Um....this is embarrassing, but Andy? Your new look? Yeah. Not so much. I'll give you your scrumptious cocktails and well-endowed serveuses, but what the heck got in to you? Why did you replace the much-beloved bric-and-brac of your former self with a plastic dance floor? Yes, you read me correctly— a brown plastic dance floor. Is someone having a wedding anytime soon?

The relooking of Andy Wahloo makes no sense to me, at all. From a commercial standpoint, with the addition of the dance floor, they've taken away tables (i.e clients). From a social standpoint, the new layout might be referred to (by minds very uncouth) as a "cock block." The tables are arranged in a horrific horseshoe that means that you are required to stare at an empty dance floor from every vantage point in the bar. Empty dance floors are depressing! Did the owners never go to a high school dance for God's sake? Plus, they are dangerous, and require a lot of courage. And things that require courage require a lot of alcohol-—ah ha! I get it! They installed a plastic dance floor to get people to drink!

Touché, Andy Wahloo. But I still liked you better before.

Photo credit: Gordon Youl on Flickr

Brasserie La Fidelité

This restaurant used to be known as Les Zingots, and embarrassingly enough, that's what I set out looking for when I arrived in front of the cloaked doors of La Fidelité. And yes, I do mean cloaked- the doors and all the windows were covered with heavy red velvet, not so much to keep out the draft as the peering eyes of the uninitiated. At first, I thought I'd fallen upon an outpost of Dans le Noir, the curious eatery that opened in Paris in 2004 where you eat in pitch darkness and are served by blind waiters. Moving forward.

We checked out the menu- a somewhat safe but tasty looking entrée-plat ou plat-desert for 26 euros- why not? And in we went to the oasis of beauty and priviledge that is La Fidelité.

Part Viennese coffee shop, part massive train station, La Fidelité boasts massive ceilings, tasteful booths and absolutely perfect lighting. If you want to feel coddled and snuggled by all that is lovely, I would head here, even for a drink because the people watching is just as good as the food.

Here's the thing though, this world remains accessible to those without the It-bag and the It-bangs and the boy accessory. Although tout paris was present, the mood remained quite gay, with lots of smiles, clumsy waiters and frankly, a vibe that was refreshingly down to earth for a place with such caché.

Here's another thing: the food was actually good. Maybe even better than good. And the wine, although pricey, was decadent and memorable. And the french fries--- my goodness-- the neighboring table insisted we order them and I'm glad we did.

La Fidelité has only been open for 4 weeks, and because French people are (I'm sorry!) inherently lazy, food bloggers don't really exist so you can be happy that you read about it here. I think you'll be reading about it partout by the end of the winter. Bon app!