dinner with the ex

I’m not sure when the last time it was when we saw each other, probably on a corner downtown sharing a cigarette in the snow. In reality only two months had gone by since then, but it easily could have been something more like a year.

I can't explain what made me agree to dinner… maybe to validate the decision I had made, but more realistically it was probably to quietly pass judgment. I couldn’t wait to hear how miserable he was now that I was gone, how his penis hadn’t seen any action in months, how he was close to losing his job, how his hair is now receding… anything that would result in my clear superiority.

So we arrived at a small Persian restaurant I had never been to. Immediately the waiter insured awkwardness by seating us at the obvious romantic-date table next to the fireplace. Thanks to the safety buzz I was carrying from the two glasses of wine I drank before leaving for dinner, the typical catch-up conversation was almost familiar.

The waiter continued to contribute to the date ambiance with complimentary dessert for us to share with two spoons. Sliding the check on the table, he coyly gave a rose to the lady and the check to the gentleman. I gladly let him pay, after all I figured it was the least he could do.

This same time last year, we would have been at my mother’s house in Buffalo, half-stoned/half-drunk navigating through my mother’s affair with a married man, my older sister’s verbal outbursts, and my little sister’s shift toward all things that scream teenage angst.

But now we were sitting across from each other on what should have been an evening reserved for some happy couple on their first or second date, anxiously engaging in hand-sex. Seeing him now I realized how skinny he is or maybe he always had been. I immediately hated the new watch he was wearing. It was a throw back to something you’d find in a cereal box in 1984 that doubled as a calculator, but to me it was a clear indication of an attempt to overly portray the indie-rocker image he had always been struggling to achieve.

We survived the evening seemingly unscathed until just minutes before we were set to leave, he decided to abruptly announce, “So I’ve been on a few dates myself lately.” While I was aware this topic was lurking just under the surface of our meeting, I wasn’t expecting to actually go there. While I had already started dating someone new, I wasn’t about to bring it up and I definitely didn’t want to hear about his latest makeout buddies. But I won't lie... I smiled a little on the inside when I learned she was a bartender at the townie bar with a bachelor’s degree in peace and conflict studies.

the self-highfive

The highfive is a greeting that is greatly under utilized and I think it’s due for a comeback. Rather than starting meetings or introductions with a handshake, wouldn’t it be more fun to highfive? No death grips to deal with, no limp hand syndrome, or excessively moist palms.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because of a conversation I had last night about a little thing I do called “the self-highfive.” Now I’m not talking about literally highfiving yourself because that would just be clapping, and there’s nothing particularly cool about that.

The self-highfive is more of a mental highfive, rather than an actual action. I like to flash back to myself when I was 16 years old and think about just that little sliver of my life. I try to imagine an exact moment, on a specific day and what I was probably wearing, what I was probably doing, how I was probably feeling. By then I was working almost everyday in the very prestigious job of Sales Floor Associate at Target. My little sister was just a baby then. My step-father was drifting in and out of sobriety. My mother was battling depression and would be in bed for weeks. My older sister was long gone. I was in an elite, private all girls high school where my hand-me-down clothes and multi-colored ’86 Pontiac Sunbird didn’t quite fit in.

When I look at that sliver of my life, I think it would have been more appropriate for that person to end up as a drug addict in some abandoned building somewhere. Day after day I only ever had one thought… just wait until I turn 18. I would think it over and over and over. It became a mantra for me.

So the self-highfive is really more of a divestiture of self. It’s the present me going back to the 16 year old me and saying, “I got us out of there girl! Highfive!”

It’s my reality check on those days when I’m frustrated by things that are so small in comparison to what the 16 year old me was dealing with. It’s also my own private internal celebration for what I have and what I’ve done. The self-highfive should be more widely embraced. Everyone needs to just take a moment, step back, and congratulate themselves.

the trick date

I should have known when I kept catching the guy from my training group checking me out that something was up. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt… maybe I’m imagining it… maybe I’m just being conceited… Or maybe I just have a booger on my face.

Tonight I learned how a guy can trick a girl into going on a date. It was creepy, yet effective.

Step 1: LIE ABOUT A GROUP EVENT. Tell the girl that the entire training group is meeting up for dinner and invite her along.

Step 2: LIE ABOUT THE REST OF THE GROUP GOING AHEAD. When the girl shows up, tell her that the rest of the group is meeting you at the restaurant. This will ensure that there’s no immediate flee from the scene.

Step 3: WEAR LOTS OF COLOGNE. Don’t be shy when it comes to the cologne, guys. You’ve reach the perfect level just when her eyes begin to water and burn.

Step 4: STAGE A FAKE PHONE CALL. Now this is the most important step in tricking someone into a date. When you arrive at the restaurant pretend you can’t find the rest of the group. And just to guarantee authenticity, stage a fake phone call to someone in the group you were “supposed” to be meeting out. Now the guy I was with didn’t even bother pressing any buttons on his cell phone but I recommend dialing something, even if it is your own voice mail. Begin to pace slightly, but not too far away from the girl (you want to ensure she hears). Talk loudly saying phrases like “You’re where?... I can’t hear you… I think your cell phone is breaking up.”

Step 5: ATTEMPT TO LOOK GENUINELY CONFUSED. Tell her you have no idea where everyone else went and that it’ll just be the two of you. Try not to smile too much… you’ve got her trapped now.

A few notes about this trick date and any date in general:
DO NOT spend the evening making fun of the place the girl is from.
DO NOT laugh on the inhale… so unattractive.

just drive

Since I sold my car a few months after arriving in Chicago, something I’ve longed to do is drive. I’m not talking the stop-and-go, congestion driving of the city. I’m talking some late night highway driving. The kind of driving that you do in the middle lane of the highway just in case you swerve due to your slight buzz. The kind of driving where the road is so straight that it looks like at any possible moment you just might drive off the edge of the earth.

I’ve been in Dallas for two days now with a rental car at my disposal to attend training for work. It’s strange to admit this but I can’t help but find myself thinking about getting out of class just to drive. I don’t know my way around Dallas, in fact this is my first time here. But even though I have no clue where I’m going or how to get back, there’s nothing better than flying down the highway with the stereo so loud it’s shaking. During these drives I’ve also rediscovered how much I miss the radio. There’s nothing more thrilling than scream-singing at the top of your lungs to songs you love or songs you guiltily know the words to. After all you can’t exactly do that on your morning walk down the street with your iPod without looking borderline insane.

So far during my trip some car driving goodies I’ve had the pleasure of slaughtering are:

• The Sign by Ace of Base


• Jeremy by Pearl Jam


• Name by Goo Goo Dolls


• Push It by Salt and Peppa

Never mind that I'm driving a 2008 Chevy Aveo.

when your past catches up to you

I haven’t spoken or seen my father in several years now and the few times I’ve happened to mention that to people their reaction is always one of two things… quiet judgment or complete incomprehension.

I stopped chasing after him a long time ago, even before our current silent standoff. I was trying to take a nap earlier and I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. I rarely think about him anymore. As I was tossing and turning trying to shake him from my thoughts, I decided to stop fighting it... I went where my mind wanted to go and started reliving something I haven’t allowed myself to think about since I was 14.

What most people don’t know is that the summer between 8th grade and my freshman year of high school, I decided I couldn’t live in my mother’s house anymore, although that’s an entirely different story. I looked to my father to save me, which perhaps is somewhat unfair since he’s never really been a major figure in my life. It would be like asking the man you buy your morning coffee from to reach out and pull you out of a world filled with alcoholism, fighting, depression and chaos. I suppose it wasn’t fair but I asked nonetheless.

I’ve always had this secret love affair with writing. I had grown used to living in a world where no one ever asked me what I thought or cared about, but I deep down I was praying that for once someone would look to me and say, “so what do you think?” Writing for me was more than a hobby or bad teenage poetry. I felt that by writing I could somehow feel even just a minor sense of importance. I wanted to believe that my thoughts somehow mattered, even if no one ever read them.

A few weeks after I moved across the country from New York to Texas, a major part of me died and I can still feel the effects of it now. People have told me that I have a wall… that I’m difficult to get to know and although it isn’t intentional, I really believe this is why…

I had just started my freshman year of high school and returned to my father’s house after a day at school. I was greeted by both my step-mother and my father with a stack of photocopied pages from a journal I had kept stashed away in the far corner of a closet in the room I was staying in.

That same afternoon I was immediately taken to see Gene, a therapist they both shared. They bombarded him with the photocopied pages from my journal and attacked every sentence I wrote. This type of reaction is something you would expect from the sudden exposure of international conspiracies or a confession from Mother Theresa that all along she was really a brothel owner pimping out young children around the world.

During this deeply humiliating moment, I was the only one in the room who was silent and Gene finally asked them to leave. He only asked me one question while they were gone. He turned to me and said, “Doesn’t this upset you?”

The truth was my father had stripped me of the one thing that ever mattered to me and I felt completely violated and raw… The truth was I wanted to scream but no longer had a voice.

About a week later I returned to New York and my father quickly turned the room I had occupied into an office.

I didn’t write again after that for 4 years.

In 3 weeks my father comes to Chicago for a conference, which is probably the only reason I’m even thinking about this.

selective interpretation

This morning on the bus a man told me I was a heart breaker.

I chose to ignore the almost tangible aroma of Johnny Walker.

It's sort of like when guys on the street harass you about your great ass... You think "what a perv, but thank you for noticing."

a new yorker in the midwest

People always ask me what business I have as a New Yorker living in Chicago… why not New York City or at least somewhere on the east coast? And the truth is, I really can’t remember anymore what it is that brought me here, but this is where I am.

There are so many nights when I wonder if I made the right choice… why am I here? When choosing between joining my company’s New York City or Chicago office, the obvious choice would have been NYC. That way I would have been closer to family, already set up with a group of friends, and wouldn’t have to endure being asked everyday what my accent is all about.

When it came down to making a choice I had this romanticized vision in my mind that I would drive off into the sunset, heading straight through the corn fields of the Midwest and find myself in a city where I didn’t know anyone and no one knew me. That I could somehow reinvent myself and forget about where I came from… clearly I’ve been watching too many Lifetime movies where the female heroine overcomes breast cancer, her rapist, adopts a family of abandoned orphans, and still looks fabulous all in one 2.5 hour made-for-TV movie.

So what business do I have as a New Yorker living in Chicago and when will it start to feel like home?

the regulars

It’s been almost 6 months since I began working and during that time I’ve developed a steady group of “regulars” on my morning commute. While we never actually speak, I’ve mentally concocted nicknames and secret lives for several of them.

1. Skunk Boy – This guy gets his nickname from the 2 distinctive white stripes on the back of his head that I can’t help but stare at. While I’ve been told that it’s not polite to stare since before I can remember, I just can’t help but become fixated on it. From the front you would never realize there were any stripes at all and at times I wonder how long in life he walked around never knowing, until the first day of kindergarten when Bruce, the school bully who was about 2 years older than everyone else, finally let skunk boy in on the secret that everyone else around him knew. I imagine this was probably fairly traumatic for skunk boy, a major life-altering event and that’s probably why he’s turned out to be such a D-bag now. Skunk boy is in his early 20’s, a recent college grad with a massive gap in between his front teeth, which is particularly unfortunate given his skunk-state. He developed much of his personality and social skills from the state-college frat that he was a member of for 5 years (the 5th year as a super-senior). He’s the kind of guy that laughs excessively loud at his own jokes, glancing nervously around the room seeking approval. He likes to talk on his cell phone in crowded places, louder than necessary in the hopes that people will overhear and think he’s important. His phone calls seem pretty uninteresting. He is a regular creep at bars that lingers in the corner, waiting until 15 minutes before last call to approach the drunkest girl in the room. He wears bright-colored button down shirts, with just one too many buttons undone, exposing his sparse chest hair and the beaded necklace he bought at his last Dave Matthews Band concert.

2. The Hacker – She’s in her mid-50’s and looks harmless enough but getting stuck crammed up against her is pure torture. The times I’ve had to stand with my body closer to her than I would get to anyone else in any other situation, I’ve been convinced that at any given moment the medium-sized rodent that’s been lodged in her throat for the past 15 years will erupt from her chest cavity in a mucusy ball, ultimately splatting against the CTA window and slowly sliding down, leaving an ooze trail behind it. I imagine that she lives a quiet and uneventful life and passes time with her 5 cats and 12 birds in a small, dusty apartment filled with all kinds of useless junk. There is a narrow path through the clutter that leads from the door to her tattered armchair to a stockpile of canned cat food in her kitchen. The Hacker isn’t above picking up a few cans on the street to exchange for the 5 cent deposit or checking the payphone for any loose change that may have gotten away. She’s probably a state employee (most likely at the DMV) with the same job since she was 18 and by now is making a 6 digit income, although you would never realize that from her appearance. Ultimately on one incredibly hot summer day, she’ll slump over in her beaten and torn arm chair that looks like something straight out of the 1960’s, and she’ll be found by her landlord once the smell has become too unbearable to the other tenants in the building. Her cats will inherit all her money and live out their days in some pampered cat retirement community.

3. Old Man Dr. McDreamy – He takes the 146 Express bus from the corner of my street. He’s in his late 60’s and I have yet to determine what exactly he does every morning. I suspect he no longer works but yet he is there, every morning, waiting for the 146 like clockwork. Every time I have seen him he wears the exact same thing and I have come to envision his closet filled with identical outfits, neatly awaiting him each morning. Old Man Dr. McDreamy gets his nickname from the character on Grey’s Anatomy because of his aged, faded resemblance to the TV-stud. He wears tight black jeans, a tucked-in button-down shirt, a slightly crumpled corduroy blazer and cowboy boots, which seem slightly out of place in the urban sprawl of Chicago. Although he is aged, he has thick dark hair with flecks of gray that he wears slightly long and wavy. He has gold-rimmed glasses that I suspect he acquired as he aged and his vision began to slowly fade. A stroke has left him with a perpetually opened mouth that appears uncomfortable and even somewhat painful. In his younger days, Old Man Dr. McDreamy was the kind of good-looking guy that had a flock of girls lusting after him but never really noticed; he was too preoccupied with things like art and eastern religious philosophy. Although he could have gone to an Ivy League school like Yale or Harvard, he opted for a less obvious choice like Babson. While in college he met and fell in love while working toward a PhD. His young wife died shortly after they were married, leaving him a young widower and causing him to dive into his work in order to avoid human interaction all together. From then on Old Man Dr. McDreamy remained alone, never remarrying or having children. His faded good-looks are the only remnants of the time in his life when he was truly happy. Now he just stands on my corner, his mouth open, waiting for the 146.

the corporate idiot

Since I've started working a common feeling I've been forced to confront is feeling like a complete and total idiot. I thought that I would be able to get past this after my first month or so but it seems to have gotten worse. In school I had grown comfortable in my role as the over-achiever where I could get A's with minimal effort and any question I had could be answered by Google.

Flash forward to the corporate world filled with project-specific jargon, acronyms and names impossible to pronounce. I can't count the number of times I've been called out on errors or mistakes in front of a room full of people only to be left feeling about an inch tall.

I never considered myself a stupid person and I actively try to learn but it all just seems so overwhelming and impossible to conquer.

I would be a liar to say that I've never retreated to a bathroom stall for a good, solid 5 minute cry before braving the world of cubicles again... will this ever pass?

Jerry Springer

So I was at work, as usual, and i received a call on my cell phone. The number was private so I decided not to answer and let it go to voicemail. About an hour later when I had some down time, I listened to the message and who would have thought that the Jerry Springer show would be on the other end. I immediately went through my mental list of any midgets or cousins I may have had sexual encounters with and since there are none, I was clueless as to why Jerry was on the phone.

Let's back track about 8 months... one night in a drunken stoopper, I thought it would be hysterical to contact the Jerry Springer show for tickets. I had completely forgotten about this until I got the call telling me I had tickets. I immediately called Jerry back and it's true... September 10th at approximately 5:30pm CST, I will be an audience member of one of America's trashiest contributions to modern society.

When talking to the Jerry representative on the phone I learned the official JS dress code:

• Men
• collared shirts
• no hats
• no logos
• no sweat pants
• Women
• "something cute"

Can't wait!! JERRY JERRY JERRY!

the daily poo-off

So since I began working, a major disturbance in an activity that's generally fairly mundane and not typically worth mentioning on a blog is (for lack of a better term) pooing. Because I spend so much time at work, it's only inevitable that what goes in must come out. That's not the interesting part.

What is interesting are the rules that no one talks about but we all seem to know. And if someone happens to violate these rules, there will be some pretty annoyed and even constipated individuals, silently crouched in a nearby stall.

The office pooing rules:

1. The last 2 stalls are strictly designated for pooing only.
2. If someone is in a stall and it's silent, leave an absolute minimum of a 1 stall buffer between yourself and the pooer. Although it's recommended that you leave as large a buffer as possible.
3. Have some common courtesy for the pooer: do not linger in the bathroom while a poo is in progress.
4. Non-pooers should try and create as much background noise as possible: loud peeing, running the water in the sink, ample paper towel dispenser noise.
5. And finally just something to think about: Hit the hand dryer on your way out... It's greatly appreciated and I like to think it sends just a little good karma my way.

So what happens when there are multiple pooers in the bathroom at the same time? I'm glad you asked. It's what's known as the "poo stand-off." Two people defiantly turtle-heading, straining not to make a sound, hoping that the other will surrender to defeat and leave. But as long as the non-pooers follow the rules, it'll work its way out. (What an awful pun.)

conversation overheard on the train

So almost every morning I wake up to my alarm and my first thought of the day is generally, "Oh man i REALLY don't want to go to work today." So i lay in bed until the last possible minute and then ultimately I'm forced to begin my day. It wasn't until this morning that I felt somewhat foolish and even spoiled for my attitude when I happened to overhear a conversation on the train.

It was just my luck that I was sandwiched in between two people who were having a conversation. My initial reaction to this was severe annoyance as they seemed to talk through me, as if I didn't even exist. It was a conversation between two strangers that was continuing from the train platform where they initially met a few minutes earlier. It was between a man and a woman in their late 40's. At first I simply thought that the man was hitting on this woman, and perhaps he was. Since I was stuck right in the middle of their conversation, I had nothing better to do than sit there and listen.

The man offered the woman a business card of a temp agency where he assured her she could find a temp job that paid up to $12 an hour. At first I was really surprised at how responsive she was to this offer. I mean in Chicago you can barley buy a drink for $12 let alone make an actual, survivable living.

So the man exits the train after a few stops and then the woman makes a cellphone call. She relays to the person the other end about what just happened and exclaimed, "God is great. God is great." She was sincerely grateful for the chance encounter that just happened.
That statement immediately brought me back to a week earlier when I had attended a Baptist service with a friend I was visiting. During the service this same phrase was exclaimed over and over. Although I'm not a terribly religious person, I can certainly recognize and appreciate the underlying truth and purpose of that statement.

I couldn't help but feel horribly self-centered and in-compassionate. It's not that I'm a bad person. It's that I very rarely take stock in what I have and what I have accomplished and truly feel grateful... that is until that humbling experience this morning. So often I focus on the smaller inconveniences in life... my commute, my student loan payments, not having a trust fund to fuel my every desire. Instead I should remember how genuinely lucky I am to have been afforded an education that has given me a not just a job but a career and a shot at a future that a lot of other people would be jealous of. The hard part is just trying to remember that at 6:30am.

my new chapter

I couldn't leave my last post on such a pessimistic note. Something a friend of mine told me is that when it's meant to happen, it just happens. And that couldn't have been more true for me. Just when I had my ideal cardboard box layout in mind and officially lost all hope of ever finding a "real job," I got the phone call that set me on a new course completely.

The time it took from the first callback and the offer was approximately one week. During that time I went through 2 phone interviews and was flown out to Chicago for an in-office visit/interview. It was crazy how it all happened, but I couldn't have been more relieved when it did (and neither could my bank account).

Two days ago I made the 12 hour drive from upstate NY to Chicago. With my car loaded with nothing more than every piece of clothing and every pair of shoes I've ever owned, I made the drive fueled with coffee and my trusty iPod.

I got my second wind somewhere around Sandusky/Toledo and hit my third when I experienced Lakeshore Dr. for the first time. White knuckling it and praying I would live long enough to make it for my first day of work, I made it my destination... well sort of.

Before even making it to my surrogate uncle's apartment, I parked my car on the street and ventured into a dog-friendly bar for a round or three. I was greasy, I was smelly, I was exhausted but more than anything I was so excited just to be there.

Monday at 8:30 am will be my official birth into adulthood.

what no one ever told me about life after graduation

I graduated with my Master's degree at the top of my class from a big name university about 4 months ago. All anyone ever told me was that my future would be bright, exciting, and how lucky I am to have this great education.

But what no one ever told me, and this seems to be a common theme among many of my friends, is that the months following graduation would be the most difficult. You're knocked down from your high-horse and begin to realize that you may not be the young, savaay go-getter that you thought you were. No one cares about your degree when you have very little "real-world" experience to back it up.

Forget about any sororities/fraternities you may have been in or the number of games of beer pong you've won. The type of car daddy bought you no longer gives you an unlimited pass to wear big sunglasses, while talking on your cellphone and somehow managing to balance a cigarette.

What no one ever told me is that the second you get that long anticipated degree, you're on your own, and that the months following graduation and before landing your first real job would be the most trying and personally revealing.

During that period of limbo you will find yourself questioning every decision you ever made in college... Should I have gotten my degree in this? WHAT do I actually want to do with my life? Do I have what it takes to make it in a job? Am I even employable?

There will be moments where you envision what it will be like living in a cardboard box while all your friends go off and live the corporate lifestyle. You begin to think, "maybe I can bring myself to become a stripper... after all it pays well." And worst of all, there will be moments of severe, earthshaking despair when you've had one too many job rejections, and you finally begin to realize that maybe your mom was wrong, maybe you aren't really all that special after all.

This is what no one ever told me about life after graduation.