labor pains

Sometimes you just need a margarita. Or twelve.

Tonight, of course, I couldn't make use of that particular coping mechanism. Lest I counteract my 3oo dollar antibiotic cycle and risk the mysterious "very bad reaction" the pharmacist foretold. But I made a few anyway and that was a party. The ladies drank them. And god saw that it was good.

There is such a thing as Girls' Night, and it covers all manner of sins. We have cultivated this tradition across the ages. We the seed gatherers, the wheat threshers, the women. From a ruddy congregation in the dark of the signal fire to the more finely evolved modern survival schema of baked goods and elastic waistbands, we've been making molehills out of mountains for centuries.

You see, there are moments in every woman's life that call for introspection, and there others that require processing—by committee. Times get tough enough, hurts get harsh enough, the lemon pile reaches the flood line, et voilà! The herd convenes for baying and keening and the licking of wounds.

A good Girls' Night can be anything, anywhere. A terrible movie and a ten ton tub of popcorn. Microwave lasagne out of the cardboard carton. Sex and the City episodes on DVD. A six am drunken pizza party to ring in the new year. A handful of Kleenex and a bottle of wine. Fat pants and brownies. We are adaptable. We adapt.

Then there is Mexican Night, a particularly heartwarming subgenre involving equal parts estrogen, tequila and avocado. It doesn't take much—I've seen this manifest at Chili's bars and grills nationwide. But the medicine is no less potent. It's your bottle of XXX moonshine under the bathroom vanity cabinet. You pull these stops on special occasions and under duress. Or, you know, just because. (Although, at least in the lifespan of the average American woman, it's never "just because." Who among us can safely recall a day without a tragedy to tackle, else a victory to flaunt?) It's never the inbetween, ladies. The dog faces either upward or down. We peak and we valley. And in the hollows we seek solace in sisterhood and salted rims.

On one such evening, Valentine's Day, 2006, I split my middle finger open on a can of black beans making enchiladas to soak up a piña colada sobfest. Outside, former frat brothers marched up and down 3rd Avenue with bodega bouquets to escort their J Crew clad girlfriends to overpriced table d'hotes. Inside, my friend the EMT superglued me back to single girl wholeness and we went right on weeping and wailing, cursing the Hallmark holidays.

Even as a kid, I sensed the magic. I wasn't so tall then; I used chiles out of a can and I made a few righteous messes of home and hearth, but I knew. There are certain demons that can only be fought with cayenne peppers and grated cheese.

A sprig of cilantro, lime juice in a paper cut, the clink of grocery store glassware . . . the dosage doesn't have to be exact to drown out the din. Even for a moment. A few women come together over a bowl of corn chips and poof: All that ails you goes up in a cloud of calories.

Tonight was no different. The day after Labor Day, when the whole world went back to work. All our summer hopes began to spoil in the fruit basket. And, well, somebody somewhere must have summoned the Kraken. We merely answered its call. With Sauza Gold and grouper tacos.

Maybe, for an hour or two anyway, we feel a little less alone.

brace yourself like a man

I'm going to wear my underpants on the outside for a moment and say that, if wishes were time machines, I'd go back to Baltimore and call for an immediate do-over.

Of course wishes are not time machines. Nor are they horses. Nor do they grow on trees. They are only wishes, and no matter how hard you think on them, they will not bend your life to their parameters. The meat grinder moves on and makes of you what it will.

If you are like me, you believe in rhyme before reason. That there are forces of fate working in defiance of our comprehension, with little latent 'ah-hah's weeks, months—years—down the road to look forward to. Non-believers beware, you doubt these truths at your own peril. Or perhaps you prefer chaos. Maybe the void makes more sense.

All I know is I struggle with Why. And as each of my dreams and limbs in turn are mangled and misshapen, I prefer to wait it out, rather than wrestle with the senselessness of a human life span.

Oh, for another 140 years.

this modern love

Call me a voyeur, but when a couple of Yankee-clad hipsters* get engaged in my immediate vicinity, the cell phone camera comes forth to document the occasion. With irony. Lots of irony.

What is it about our generation that we must make our every moment public? One too many superheroes in our childhood cartoons? This the emotional equivalent of wearing our underpants on the outside, but we do it anyway. We have started to live like snowmen, rolling our insides around accumulating icy girth, content worthy of Facebook and bloggery.

Then again, this is a big lonely of a world. We can connect to anyone—friends, loved ones, perfect strangers—just by logging on to one device or another. But here are two people celebrating a milestone and, for better or for worse, they are all alone in a stadium of 50,000.

So alone, the newly affianced lady feels she must opt for the armpit shot to catalogue her moment. Perfect or imperfect.

I don't know whether I found this sad or savagely uplifting at the time, but based on their subdued smirks, I'm going with the former.



Just who do we think we are?



*Please note the fauxhawk on #28.

road trip, part two of two

After 23 hours, the speed limit increased to 70 mph, the highways flattened out to a sun-bleached shade of bone grey, and the sky cracked open to let pass the rain clouds.

A windy Florida night gapes around me, midnight blue and humid. And the world seems suddenly very big.

I am grateful to be here. So grateful. For the first time in months, maybe years, I am supported. I am sinking into the musty sheets of my mother's second bedroom, the safety net of all safety nets, overlooking the Intracoastal effing Waterway, and surely that spells paradise. So why am I suddenly overcome by the incontrovertible lonelies?

Answer: It is time to face the big girl music.

Because, maybe she got me here . . . Maybe a confluence of Universal factors stuck a finger in my life and stirred the pot. Maybe the shit hit the fan and I had the brass to make bold moves. But now it's my turn. There's nobody but me in this damned psychic meadow. My choices are being etched in ink. And I'll have nobody left to blame if I fall on my face.

Now comes the hard part. Getting up and writing applications. Studying algebra. Resumes and cover letters. Personal statements. Overcoming crippling self doubt. Then I pack it up and go home (quote/unquote) with little guidance and no guarantees.

One month, two months, three—the difference isn't monumental. Tango would have sucked me back to shore soon enough. My wasted New Yorker of a heart thuds in its shell. Something in me cries out for chaos and corner delis.

I go back to nothing. Jobless, apartmentless and loveless. I go back with guts and hope to make an end run at the pursuit of happiness, but there are no absolutes. Don't get me wrong, I'm going back anyway. For the above stated reasons and then a few. But I know (and y'all know) full well, that there are always alternatives, unhappy alternatives, to that which we close our eyes for all those lonely 2ams in exile.

Hard to explain to anyone, let alone the Internet, that in place of certainty, I've got nothing but good omens. And I'm going on them anyway.

road trip, part one of two

America appears both innocent and sinister from the interstate.

Eleven hours out of New York and the difference is clear. The salad bars are full of canned beets and wilty lettuce, plastic ladles in assorted crocks, ubiquitous bacon. The everyday staples of city life: New York Times, coconut water, whole grain bread, are few and far between. Billboards don't advertise lifestyle living or hipster trends, but that largely unclassifiable "shit you need" factor—cheap places to sleep and all-you-can-eat-buffets—gas/food/lodging and cheap cigarettes.

It made me realize how simultaneously vital the city is, and yet—how ridiculous. We become accustomed to everything at our fingertips. We either grow into richer, more evolved consumers, or we become finicky yuppies who, when unleashed on the quote/unquote 'real world' are ill-prepared for reality. I mean, really, we have wasabi peas and hazelnut gelato available 24/7 in our convenience stores.

I suppose this month (and yes, that's the final timetable) will be a bit of an adventure in normalcy and my ability to adapt. After five years in New York, I've been thoroughly citified: acclimated to public solitude, multitasking and tuning out the background noise. Instinctively, I brace my face away from bus exhaust, I can apply eye makeup anywhere—in subway windows, on park benches, in transit and on the fly. I know the city by zones, train stops and restaurants. I can acquire almost anything in any neighborhood.

Like it or not, the land of shouting crazies and midnight falafel has become home to me. Maybe not the whole package 'home,' the fantasy of what that word is supposed to hold in four measly letters, but 'home' in the sense that I have built my life there. A life which transcends even the basics of job and apartment, the mechanics of waking up and hoarding food in winter. A life that works just as well–if not better—out of a suitcase.

For better or for worse, this is my city. I know, I know, last month I hated it here. This place is a beast. A sensory barrage. A swift kick in the everything—and that's all before breakfast. But, even so, it took trying to leave to make me finally feel at home. Or home enough.

Five years ago, I moved to New York with nothing but a backpack and a laptop, chasing some harebrained dream of being an actress. I survived infestations, shady plumbing, studio living and bar rot, among other things. I have conquered and been conquered. I've gone to galas at the Waldorf and I've eaten diner pancakes at three am. From the Met to the Manhattan Bridge, from squalorous dumps to slinky lounges and four star bars. It's all my city. A new world every block. And it's home. Or the closest I'm going to come to it for now.

At least when I wake up in New York, the world makes sense. The structure of the grid cast out like sonar, the x factor of travel time and train delays, and of course, the anonymity.

If traveling is mystery and newness, discovering the rules from the road, home should be where the rhythm makes most sense. And unfortunately, I picked a place that didn't entirely suit me. And now that's where I belong.

Maybe someday I'll get my herb garden and laundry lines, a herd of cherubic children in ladybug galoshes playing in the mud puddles. Or maybe I'll die in a cramped apartment lined to the rafters with leather bound tomes. Life has become one big choose-your-adventure storybook and I'm flipping back and forth like a madwoman, leaving a lot up to Fate and fancy, but feeling free.

So I've got a month. One month to get my shit together, to get good and ready to go back and hit the ground hard.

I guess woke up one morning this month and decided I wanted to keep doing things the hard way. But hey, that's just how I roll.

or are we dancer

Well, he kissed me.

After all that, an afterthought. For me, it was lost in the sea of a thousand bloodthirsty bandoneóns, tugging my heart down to the depths and Davy Jones.

I should probably talk about Baltimore. Because Baltimore changed everything.

I had worried I wouldn't be able to keep up, that my legs would quit from the hip joint down and I'd be left to bleed while the whole world turned around me. But I matched pace, class after class, milonga after milonga, for thirteen hours a day. I danced. I danced until it hurt to stop, until a piece of my own toe flesh came off in my hand. (I know, hardcore.)

It was that easy. Coffee, sweatpants, dance shoes. Run a brush through your hair. Class for seven hours, práctica. Stretch. Moan. Fall face down on the bed for five minutes, then roll off groaning to the shower. Cotton dress, eye makeup, splash of scent. Leave everything behind you but your heels and your wristband, pinned discretely to the hem of your dress. Walk unladen through hotel halls to the swirling eddy of bodies orbiting each other, a mass of man and woman turning back the hands of a giant clock. Dance, and time submits. Dance until dawn turns the giant windows cobalt blue. Pry your throbbing, soggy feet from the straps of your shoes and plod barefoot down the marble floors. Sigh in the elevator, insert a key card, let the heavy hotel room door click shut behind you. Don't bother with the light. Let the dress slip to the floor. Brush teeth hastily, find a t-shirt and curl into bed. Sleep if you can. Wake to the bleating of a bland alarm and repeat.

You see, there wasn't hardly time to play "he loves me, he loves me not." We managed only a few stolen kisses between workshops and dance halls, between rock hard sleep and morning reveille. A hand in my hair as I slept, an arm around my waist in the dark. An electric glance across a class.

We hardly even danced together. I trolled the edges of the floor, avoiding mouth breathers and back-breaking old men, waiting for dances, enjoying the echo of di Sarli in the gothic Ballroom, down my legs and through the floor. And he did the same. If I saw him standing there, I changed my course. Avert the eyes, scan the crowd. Make him wonder. It was my own dance, my counter cabeceo.

Never be caught staring longingly at a leader, begging for tandas. If that means fewer dances, it gives those dances dignity. I learned that in Baltimore—one of a million half-baked epiphanies that still hover in my ether, ready to spring.

Did I find tango, or did tango find me? It's been little more than a year since a New Years' resolution brought me to a snowy SoHo studio, since I started shifting weight on the subway platform, tracing tiny patterns with my toes. And here I am in the ocean of it, buoyant and baptized by the salt.

I've had lonely moments in this world none of my friends can quite comprehend, getting dolled up at midnight and leaving parties early. Walking home alone at 2, 3 and 4 am, shoe bag in hand, feeling the quiet ascend from the pavement. I've had to fight my worst insecurities, wait to be asked to dance by strangers, overcome my own perfectionism, learn to let go. I've forced myself to smile and start conversations where I otherwise might have bolted. By a slow pace, I forged friendships, made connections. I created a world for myself where, on any given night, I'll know someone out there on the dance floor. That recognition, that "Where have you been?" Like the man at the bodega in the cop shows who notices something's fishy when the girl hasn't been seen scrounging for Häagen Dazs three nights running. I remember when I first moved to this city; my mother told me to find a neighborhood bar. Well, ma, I found it.

What I take away from Baltimore, besides a flutter in my heart (akin to ostrich wings) and a dozen or so revelations about body mechanics and torsion and artistry, is simply that. Tango Element was the summer camp I never went to, the clique I never felt a part of, the peace of knowing in one moment that I am exactly where I ought to be. What I witnessed on that floor, in those classrooms, in myself . . . I lack the words.

I belong here.

From the girl who was always on the outside, this means everything. I know now this is not just some group of creepies who like to rub up against each other's cheeks and walk in step around a room counterclockwise. We are in this together—for one reason, for a million reasons, for the communal lack of reason, with a capital R. We are a family of students, learning from masters. Arch-tired and dancing anyway. A delicate hierarchy from Ludites to legends.

Ordo ab chao.

So forgive me for not having a list of moments to report. For thirteen hours a day, my eyes were closed. I was feeling with my feet. And everything else went away.

We finally danced on Sunday, ending the night and the festival with two tandas of utter transcendence. We drove home straight from the milonga, through the middle of the night, running on moments and kisses and turbo charged coffee. At seven am, he dropped me at my door. And reality returned.

Or maybe it didn't. The week has been a blur of dancing, tying off loose ends and falling flat on my fantastic face. I hesitate to jinx this by overworking the details, so I leave you, winking, on the threshold. I'm sure there'll be something to say when I land. For now, know that I fight the forces of vertigo, staring down the void beneath me as I cut chord after chord. I hear the steel snap behind me, the weightlessness encroaching. These are my last few days in New York for at least a month. I am leaving. Skis on at the top of the mountain, feet poised on the edge. But even as I do this, even as I squat in the eye of the self-created storm, I'm living a bit of a private fairy tale, dancing in a penthouse on the park.

He walked me home, he kissed me on the eyes.

only in nyc

We are all doing our best.