A Night with David Sedaris & Co.

Holy shit. What a night. I’m exhausted and perhaps slightly tipsy, but no matter. Tonight rocked.

Our friend Sam is dating a girl named Melena who worked as a tutor for this children’s literacy tutoring place in Brooklyn called 826NYC. Melena knew about this event tonight promoting Children Playing Before a Statute of Hercules, a book of short stories edited by David Sedaris and featuring dozens of famous writers, the profits of which go to 826NYC.

Last night Sam, Melena, Boyfriend and I walked down to the Great Hall at Cooper Union (right on East 7th and Third Ave) and went to this kickass reading. Melena is apparently head over heels about David Sedaris because she almost peed herself with excitement when he came out.

Sarah Vowell, the voice of Violet Parr in The Incredibles and a regular contributor to NPR and author of several books, co-hosted the event with David. Not only that, but the fucking crazy talented Lorrie Moore read some of her work, along with Joyce Carol Oates, Akhil Sharma, and Charles Baxter. It was insane. For anybody who enjoys good books, it was like a night of hanging out with celebrities.

The Boyfriend laughed so hard at some of the stories that I think I still have finger grip marks on my leg. Melena tossed back her big head of lush, black curls and opened her mouth wide and sent her laugh straight to the ceiling. Sam, who was only vaguely familiar with most of the authors beforehand, said now he wants to come over to my book shop and get himself an armload of books. Altogether I think we count the event as a success.

Afterward the four of us got in a cab and went to Babalu in Midtown and sucked down mojitos and performed our favorite passages for each other from the readings we’d heard, getting louder and wilder about it as the mojitos flew by. (Nobody can say that Babalu’s mojitos are watered down. Those fuckers are strong.) The Boyfriend pulled me onto the dance floor and before I knew it, Melena was tossing her curvy body around the floor with Sam left with nothing to do but worship her writhing body.

The Boyfriend gets tipsy easily and soon he was kissing my neck and laughing hysterically, pawing at me. He was really happy because he had an audition that went well this afternoon and we’re both crossing our fingers that he’ll get called back tomorrow. He’d get to play some sort of British schoolboy in a torrid and forbidden love affair, or something like that. The Boyfriend was trying to explain it to me on the dance floor, but we were both dancing, we’d both had a bit to drink, and it was loud.

The Boyfriend is brushing his teeth right now in the bathroom. He’s sitting on the closed toilet lit, knees together and feet askew, hanging on to the countertop. Poor guy. I’m going to go get him a huge glass of water and then throw his ass in bed.

Our Own Kind of Fourth

The night before the Fourth I picked Boyfriend up from the train station. On the way I bought him yellow tulips on a whim from this little corner market chaperoned by a Muslim woman wearing a purple burka. I held them as I finished my walk to the train station, walking through the city alone, knowing that soon I’d be walking the same streets with him. He'd only been gone four nights (visiting his parents in CT), but already I felt a vast missingness when I crawled into our bed. There was simply too much space in the bed and I didn’t enjoy the luxury of being able to sleep diagonally as much as I thought.

I felt like a nineteenth century lover, standing at the train station with my flowers, looking for my guy expectantly. I was nervous for some reason, maybe as if I thought he wouldn’t come or wouldn’t find him, but two minutes after the train stopped, there he was with his patched up duffel bag, wearing a lopsided smile, running his fingers through his hair, and kissing me on the lips.

The flowers went over well. Very well. We almost couldn’t wait on the cab back into the Village.

For the Fourth, to celebrate our independence, we slept in until noon. We went for another round when we woke up, tangled up in the sheets, and then hit the shower. We walked around our hood, hand in hand, with Dog on his leash, and ate at this little sidewalk café near Spring Street and had sandwiches and beer in the afternoon sun.

Zach called Boyfriend’s cell phone and informed us that there was a completely illegal and beautiful blackjack game going on in Harlem that night. Boyfriend smiled gamely, knowing that I do love me some blackjack, and we accepted the invitation.

After we left the café we hit this tiny bookstore in SoHo and fingered the books there for a while. Dog stayed outside in the front, sitting on his haunches, watching us through the windows. He turned six this year and he’s just so chill and good-natured. It’s hard not to love my doggie.

Once we left the bookstore (Boyfriend bought the new Safron Foer book—we’ll see how it is) we took Dog to the doggie park in Washington Square Park. I watched Dog play with an upper crust standard poodle and some sort of punky lab mutt while Boyfriend started his book and I wrapped my arm around him. He put his head on my shoulder.

After a light dinner at home (nobody really felt like cookin), Boyfriend and I changed into some homeboy-style clothing (I say that with affection, kids) and hopped the subway up to 125th Street where Zach would meet us (probably with some boobalicious girl) and take us to the game.

The card game was like something you’d see in a movie. You come to this shittastic old apartment and knock on this little side door. A little slot opens in the door, some guy looks out, and Zach asks for Isabella. The door opens, we each pay twenty a head, and the game is on. There are twelve tables and an elaborate set-up for an illegal card game, including a bartender and some great casino-style lighting. Lots of different people, lots of different styles, lots of money spread out on tables in thick chunks. Texas Hold ‘Em at one table, five card stud at another, but blackjack at the two back tables.

Count me in.

Boyfriend played, too, which isn’t usually his style. Two minutes after getting there he was up fifty bucks. Zach and his girl played Texas Hold ‘Em at a nearby table and she was up, too, squeezing her cleavage together and cleaning up the boys' money. Boyfriend played it tough and hard at the blackjack table and kept winning and pissed off some of the players who kept losing their own money, so he stood up and watched me lose thirty-five bucks.

Two hours later the four of us were back on the street after a few those bootleg drinks at the card game. We got back into the subway and got off at T Square and walked to the river for the fireworks. Actually, Zach and Girl parted (probably to walk back to his Hell’s Kitchen apt for some nookie) and Boyfriend and I continued on to the river.

Fireworks exploded over the river. Something like twenty thousand aerial shells went up. The fire department does this thing with shooting up red, white, and blue water in 300 ft. arcs. The crowd pressed together, the banging and bursting mapped out across the sky, and I put my hands in the kangaroo pocket at the front of my guy’s hoodie and held his hands.

So many explosions.

Kiss Goodbye Nekkid on the Net

I don't know about you, but I'm about through with this new legislation that has wiped out most of the porn on the Net.

What are you supposed to do when your boyfriend is out of town for the weekend visiting his parents?

This means that I have to dig out the fucking DVDs from the closet. Or maybe I'll just rub one out without assistance as a protest to the sexually challenged legislators that passed the law in the first place.

Paging Nate Berkus

I'm going to just go ahead and say it. Nate Berkus is sexyfuckablehot.

In a strange turn of events, I was at Best Buy on the Upper East Side with Natalie and Sam, buying an iPod Mini with them for our friend Zach who had his stolen on the subway last week. (Several friends pitched into the iPod Mini pool. Zach without his Mini is not a happy thing. The man lives, eats, breathes, and sleeps music.)

Anyway, while we were at Best Buy, Oprah was playing on the 60-inch plasma flat screens, and this guy named Nate Berkus was on doing (of course) decorating stuff. The thing is that he is hot, hot, hot. Normally guys all perfectly cleaned up like Nate wouldn't necessarily strike my fancy, but this fucker struck something in me. (Boyfriend, I still love you. Worrieth your head not.)

Sam explained to me that Nate's boyfriend (some chiseled Italian guy) died in the tsunami in December. That would suck beyond any measure of words to go on vacation with your guy in some exotic place and return home without him, losing him in a freak accident like that.

I hope there's not some rule about coveting a man that has lost his guy in the last six months, because if there is, I'm guilty of some of a crime.

Who knew Oprah had the hot guy hookup?

Three Years in New York

(I took this picture of T Square earlier this summer.)

Three years ago today I moved to Manhattan. I’d only been to the city a handful of times—twice with my family, twice with my brothers, and a few random times with Henri when I lived in Montreal—but I knew this was where I wanted to be. I couldn’t explain why; I just knew I had to go. Maybe part of it is because I’m used to motion and newness and the freshness of moving somewhere new and the strange pangs of leaving home and learning more about myself than I ever would have and could have imagined.

I moved to that shithole apartment near Washington Square Park and lived with the three straight guys for two whole months before classes at NYU started. I met Natalie, my Girl Friday, a few days into my junior year of college. I met my boyfriend a few weeks later. By the next summer we were living together and my dog moved in with us, flown in from Madison where Mom and Dad still live.

Here I am. The bookstore where I work, the yoga studio I visit twice a week, the parks where I walk with my dog and my boyfriend, the group of friends that haunt the nearby bars and cafes with me, the lazy weekends, the trips home, the cards and letters and wedding invitations coming from friends in all the cities where I’ve lived.

This blog is dedicated to the family that I have scattered everywhere (the family I was born with and the family that I’m making, every day): to Natalie, to Nick and Henri in Montreal, to Paige in Wilmington, N.C., and to everybody back in my hometown of Madison. And, of course, to Dog and Boyfriend. You guys are my lobsters.

And to any of you that stumble upon this little trinket, come on in. Make yourself at home.