I'll Take Manhattan -- Every Time (from The Washington Post)

I'll Take Manhattan--Every Time

By Maura Kelly
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, May 16, 2005; C10


I was getting ready to take a two-year sabbatical from New York for an all-expenses-paid master's program -- the only thing that would ever get me to leave Manhattan -- when I rediscovered Joan Didion's book "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." I flipped to the final essay, "Goodbye to All That," written nearly four decades ago, after she'd dumped Manhattan for Los Angeles. "Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before," she complained. "There were certain parts of the city I had to avoid." Worst of all, she whined, there were no "new faces" in the New York.

Joan Didion, you fool! I thought.

If I were in New York right now, I would listen to all the conversations. I would visit every neighborhood. I wouldn't avoid a single Upper East Side blue-haired society lady, a single toothless street bum, a single street-corner saxophonist. What I wouldn't give for the faces! For a downtown coffee shop scene. Here's what might happen if I went to Doma, my favorite cafe, off Seventh. The Berlin girl with dyed orange hair behind the counter would hand me a Chinese cookie fortune with my change: "To affect the quality of the day is no small achievement." I'd look up from it, eyes wide, delighted; she'd wink and say, "Next?" Smiling, I'd move to a window seat and eavesdrop on a huge, pale, dark-haired man talking to a petite well-coiffed blonde. (An Internet date?) "My family moved here from Russia during the Cold War," he'd say. "Kids called me 'Commie,' thought I had nukes in my lunch box. I was 5. Funny, right? So I became a comedian." A shirtless man would walk by outside with a huge pair of feathered white wings on his back. (An extra from the set of the "Dogma" sequel?)

But no. I'm in a small southwestern Virginia city. Know what I avoid here, Joan Didion? The Valley View Mall, whose very existence has destroyed the vista it boasts of. The Wal-Mart, with the gun department next to the jewelry counter. The omnipresent sports bars, where people in business casual talk about nothing but college football. This town ain't for me because there's no place that gives me the simple hope that I could meet someone here who will change my life. In the Apple, I always knew that, at any moment, I might bump into some bewitching stranger.

Of course, New York could have burned me, like Didion. It could have destroyed me -- almost did. (Anything worthy of being deeply loved should have that power.) I indulged myself with booze and drugs for a long time before finally saying goodbye to all that, after some close calls. Like the time the guy I was flirting with at Jet Lounge bit my cheek so hard that I left with a nasty purple welt. Or those days I woke up next to a stranger. Or the morning someone I couldn't remember had apparently been in my room the night before -- as evidenced by the pile of change and a black lighter he'd left behind on my desk.

But New York also helped me survive -- bringing me comfort in the form of its citizens, appearing like benevolent gods during my darkest moments. As they did when I was walking home from a party late one night -- drunk, alone and broken-hearted. Drifting through a shadowy, lonely part of Hell's Kitchen, I heard two thuggish voices behind me.

I began to think saving on a cab had been a very stupid decision.

"He's gonna go nuts when he sees," one guy said.

"He's not gonna believe what we did," another agreed. "I mean, damn! Look at this thing!"

A gun, I thought as their footsteps got closer.

My heart was thundering in my ears by the time they flanked me. Too petrified to move, I stopped and stared down at my scuffed black boots.

"A lady like you shouldn't be walking by herself,"one said.

"Where you headed?" the other said.

That's when I looked up.

They were holding an arc of variegated balloons over me.

"It's beautiful!" I shouted.

"For our little brother, in a wheelchair," the first one said.

Then, keeping the rainbow force field around me, they escorted me to my door.

There have been so many other strangers in New York who have blessed me, saved me, become friends. Those people, immortalized in my memory, make the city the poem it is. Like the cabbie who gave me a free ride one icy New Year's morning when I had lost my wallet, my friends and my way. The middle-aged businessman who yanked me out of an oncoming car's path, saving my life before disappearing back into the Times Square mob. Or gravel-voiced Willy: He helped me quit smoking by keeping my pack in his register at the Abingdon Square deli and doling out cigarettes to me, one a day. (He died in 2003 of emphysema.) Or Maureen, the old woman in a wheelchair with a face like it was made of cheesecloth -- yet what a new face! -- who called out to roomful of strangers in an ATM center, asking for a volunteer to withdraw money from her account. I obliged; we had breakfast; she told me she moved to New York after she became crippled because it was the easiest place in the world to get around. Or the hipster with a soul patch and Marc Jacobs suit who slid into my booth one night at the M&R Bar and informed me "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" was playing, so I couldn't leave. Dinner followed; then a romance; now a comradeship that's lasted for five years. And there's the bright-eyed writer I discovered at a Williamsburg art opening in the eleventh hour of my New York tenure; we've been corresponding about the meaning of life since.

Yep, I'd tell Joan Didion, "Too bad you didn't see the people who could help keep you strong -- even if only by watching them smile at you on the subway and letting the corners of your mouth curl up in return. Then you'd never have stopped loving the city."

In a couple of autumns, if you notice what seems like a rough beast slouching towards Manhattan to be born again, look again. It's probably just me, returning.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The Romantic Résumé: In a Big, Small Town, Everybody Knows (from The New York Observer)

The Romantic Résumé:
In a Big, Small Town,
Everybody Knows

By: Maura Kelly
Date: 6/12/2006
Page: 5


One summer, I was going through my cell contacts, trying to background-check this adorable doe-eyed L.A. wannabe screenwriter—call him Charlie Hollywood—I’d met in Chelsea. We had a weeklong fling while he was in town that ended with him inviting me for another tryst on his home turf. It sounded tempting: Neither one of us was looking for a long-distance relationship, but a week of commitment-free love in the city that’s never deep? Sure. Why not?

But before I agreed to do it, I needed one key bit of information. Or rather, non-information. I wanted to confirm that no one I knew knew Charlie—so I could make sure the whole thing stayed on the down-low. Not that there was anything wrong with Chuck. And not that I personally thought there was anything morally offensive about a little assignation with a single guy. But I worried what other people might think, and I’d been in New York long enough by then to know how fast word got around.

Every person in the city—myself included—has an unofficial rap sheet that is maintained and updated by the old-fashioned word-of-mouth method. (Sites like Friendster and MySpace have only made the system more efficient.) Therefore, my secret encounter with Charlie could very well become public knowledge if he was in any way linked to my network—which he probably was, since everybody seems to know everybody in the circles I run in: This person’s worked with that one; what’s-her-name grew up with who’s-his-face; so-and-so went to school with such-and-such.

Take the party where I met Charlie: There must’ve been at least three or four hundred people on two floors at this thing, which was thrown by a group of 10 and held at a warehouse-esque film-production studio. Yet, despite the size, I actually thought I wouldn’t know anyone there, because none of the hosts were in publishing and all of them were seven or eight years older than I was. Plus, the guy who’d invited me was someone I knew only tangentially.

But during the course of the night, men I’d been in some way or other entangled with swam around me. There was the biologist friend-of-a-friend whom I’d blown off. (He suddenly seemed so much cuter with that hot Lebanese girlfriend in tow). There was the venture-capitalist buddy-of-an-ex whom I’d gone out with a few times, before it ended ugly. There was the magazine writer I’d met on a blind date; we tried it for a couple months, till things mutually fizzled out. Not to mention the newspaper guy I’d picked up one night at the Ear Inn on a dare, only to realize the next morning that he worked with my boss’ husband. And then I saw the freelance hack ….

Well, you get the point. But as if to drive it home, suddenly the crowd parted and a brown Afro appeared: It was Malcolm Gladwell—the New Yorker writer who wrote about the six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon—appearing like Moses to remind me of the law of urban incestuousness.

That party wasn’t unusual. And the more I realized how small my dating network was, the more I worried about my romantic résumé: the hypothetical document I was convinced would make or break me for some potential boyfriend. “Well, well,” I could imagine some scrutinizing suitor saying. “You’ve made it this far—I know you have an impressive, um, skill set. But I’m worried about your hands-on experience. You did a lot of jumping from one thing to the next. A lot of—how can I say this politely—messing around?” I’d feel the sweat forming under my pits. “Let me explain!” I’d beg, but he’d put up a hand and continue. “I also see that, on a number of occasions, you’ve drunkenly gone home with people you then failed to have any—how can I put this—follow-up with. What do you have to say for yourself?” Silence.

My batting average when it came to healthy, well-adjusted adult romances was just about zero, and trying to pretend otherwise was sure to backfire.

Of course, mine was not the only invisible laundry list of conquests, breakups and indiscretions floating around out there. In fact, maybe the thing that convinced me it was time to give up my single-girl-in-the-city high jinks (or at least try to hide them better) was an incident involving that freelance hack I mentioned briefly before. He and I would flirt when we ran into each other at media parties. But when I asked around about him, word was toxic to the point of ozone depletion. “He cheated on my college roommate with her cousin,” one person reported. An e-mail from another said: “My girlfriend’s sister dated him—till she found out he was sleeping around on her.” Someone else weighed in this way: “Bad, bad news. Dude’s a jerk, with a capital jack-ass.” All right! I’d heard enough: I’d take my business elsewhere.

But the truly shocking evidence came a few months later, after I’d forgotten about him, one late night when I was waiting impatiently for some stuff to come out of the office printer. The first documents to appear were e-mails from the Hack-Ass himself. “What happened between her and me was totally meaningless,” he’d written. “Let me make it up to you”—but that was all I had time to read, before a red-eyed co-worker appeared and plucked the pages out of my hands. He’d gotten to her too!

The whole incident disturbed me. If I could stumble across such damning proof of H.A.’s scarlet behavior, who knew what kind of embarrassing evidence might be floating around out there about me?

Although, of course, in Charlie’s case, I was the one hunting. Once I’d found that his name didn’t ring any bells with my sources, we booked my ticket.

Cut to L.A. My transplanted New York pal—we’ll call her Lucy—took me from the airport to Charlie’s, where we examined the buzzers for a second before spotting the right one. “C. Hollywood/D. Rosenberg,” it read.

“‘D. Rosenberg’?” Lucy said.

“His housemate. I think his name is David.”

“Wait. Charlie went to Harvard? And graduated like seven or eight years before us?”

I nodded.

“So did David Rosenberg,” she said.

“Wait, what? Who?”

“Josh’s older brother.” Josh was some guy who’d just gotten engaged to one of Lucy’s best friends.

“I bet that’s who lives here,” Lucy went on. “Josh’s brother David.”

“No way,” I said. “This is L.A., remember? Not New York. Besides, there’ve gotta be like three billion Rosenbergs in the world. Right?”

Then Charlie appeared. As he and I watched Lucy maneuver her Cabri out of the driveway, he grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Your housemate,” I said. “Rosenberg. First name David? Went to college with you? Brother named Josh?”

“How the hell did you know all that?” he said.

I thought about chasing down Lucy’s car. But then I decided: What the hell, I could wait another week before I started cleaning up my player portfolio. I turned and gave Charlie a smooch.

copyright © 2005 the new york observer, L.P. | all rights reserved

Someone to Call Me Bubbaleh (from The Washington Post)

Someone to Call Me Bubbeleh

By Maura Kelly
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 5, 2006; C08



During a book party in a hip bookstore a few years back, four girlfriends and I stood in a gaggle, stretching our necks in different directions, so we wouldn't be caught staring at the men we were gossiping about.

Then an unknown Cary Grant look-alike appeared. My bellybutton went shivery: He was sexy -- but also standing with a woman. "Who's he?" I whispered. My buddies turned in unison to check him out (so much for staying casual), but no one could ID him.

A few minutes later, Cary had disappeared; I decided I would, too. I was getting my jacket from the coat rack when I bumped into him -- still with the babe. She pounced on me. "Haven't we met before?" she asked. I tossed out the names of my most well-connected friends. No dice -- she didn't know any of them -- but then Cary asked why I'd come to the party. As he and I started talking, the blonde silently evaporated, her mission as consummate wing-woman complete. It wasn't long till Cary and I took off, too -- to get a late dinner together.

We started dating. His name was Richard, but he was reluctant to reveal much else: He shied away from talking about his past, or his family; and though he said he did freelance advertising work, it didn't seem to take up much time, or account for his jet-set lifestyle. My friends nicknamed him Dickie Grant, International Spy.

One night, I was telling my shrink, Dr. H., that I was heading over to Richard's after our session, since he lived only a few blocks away from her office, on the Upper West Side. Then it hit me: Dr. H. was the missing link! She and Richard knew each other! After all, they both lived on the UWS! And . . . they were both Jewish! (Never mind that at least a million other New Yorkers are also Jewish Upper-West-Siders. I thought I was on to something.) Maybe they were even related.

When I asked Dr. H. about it, she wouldn't answer -- she's so old-school, she never fields a direct question. Instead, she pressed me to uncover the deeper significance of my suspicion. But I thought it went as deep as this: She was avoiding the topic because I was right.

"Come on!" I pushed her. "Just tell me."

Instead, she repeated herself: "Why would you think I know him?"

"Listen, I know how you are," I said. I figured she wanted me to somehow relate the whole thing back to my mom's death when I was a kid -- because everything related back to that, as far as she was concerned. "But would you please get your mind out of the Freudian gutter? Admit you know him!"

She refused to budge. So eventually I asked Richard (who was independently wealthy, it turned out). He'd never heard of Dr. H. And somehow, with that cleared up, Richard's mysteriousness started to seem more annoying than intriguing. We split. He went back to his life of international spydom; I to mine of international singledom -- with my inscrutable guru, Dr. H.

I was doing my usual drive-by dating -- seeing a new guy every few months -- when I noticed a strange pattern emerging: I suspected each dude was related to Dr. H. I even became briefly convinced that she was a certain make-out partner's mother. Deluding myself was easy because Dr. H. never admitted or denied any blood relationship. Yet I felt a bit like that artist Rodrigue, who put a blue pooch in every painting he made after his dog died. Was I subconsciously more upset than I realized over my breakup with Richard?

Simultaneously, a fantasy I'd started having during the Richard era became more persistent. Though my dream wasn't about Richard at all -- but about Dr. H.!

Yes.

I'd imagine myself . . . in her kitchen, getting pecked on the cheek before hopping on the counter to watch as she bustled about, making us dinner. She'd hand me a glass of wine, scrutinize me, frown, say she liked my new haircut but was I getting enough sleep? After toasting ourselves, we'd tuck into the kitchen nook and catch up a little -- like we would if we had the kind of real relationship I wanted, instead of this doctor-patient thing, where I'm draped over the ottoman picking fuzz out of my navel while she sits behind me, playing the role of disembodied voice.

I didn't mind telling Dr. H. the most private details of my life outside her office, but revealing my deepest desires about her was another thing. When I finally confessed them, a year after Richard and I broke up, I was in tears. Dr. H., on the other hand, was so thrilled I half-expected her to hand me a stogie.

"What do you think this means?" she asked.

"I want you to invite me over to eat?" I blubbered.

"But why do you think you have that wish?"

"You seem like a good cook?" I sniffed.

"Come on."

I thought for a minute. "Well, to be honest -- maybe this is just because everyone I date happens to be Jewish -- but I've started having this weird craving for a Jewish family. . . . A Jewish mother, to be specific." I hadn't quite realized the truth till I said it aloud. "Someone who'll call me bubbeleh! Or tootsala. I'll take tootsala. I know the stereotype is that Jewish moms can be over-involved or whatever, but all the ones I know seem so . . . supportive."

"Keep going."

"And maybe I wanted you to be related to my boyfriends so you could be, like, my almost-relative-in-law. My surrogate mother or something."

As soon as I said mother, I realized what was happening.

"Holy Sigmund," I said, rolling over to look at her. "Was that, like, transference?"

"Do you think it was?" Dr. H. said.

"Totally!" I was thrilled I'd done it. "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"

I chortled at my own joke. But then I thought: Where does this leave me? How does wanting my shrink to be my mother solve any of the problems in my life? What does it mean?

"Wait a second," I said, trying to do the math. "Does this mean -- am I a lesbian?"

"Do you think you are?" Dr. H. asked.

"Not really." Then I had a better idea. "Will you just give me a hug?" I felt insane the minute I said it. That didn't mean I didn't want it.

"I'm sorry, Maura," Dr. H. said. "That's against my policy."

At least she'd given me a straight answer, for once.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company