When I graduated high school, there’s a reason I left town and was happy to wave a placid goodbye to my dear graduating class, save a few close friends. Most people stuck around the state, so I imagine the others who bounced also felt trapped to a degree. Believe or not, some of us ended up in New York City. Imagine that. The chance is phenomenally…predictable. We all found out who was here through the usual little bird perched on the jackhammer outside our windows and I happy to hear about another compadre from the past, but it would have be nice to leave it at that. Apparently, they’ve been watching too much Sex and the City and had other ideas in mind. Now, I am fully supportive of unions, unity, the UN, but a reunion? Listen girls, just because we’re all in the city it doesn’t mean we have to pretend and be friends. I’m all for cordiality and would even be mildly excited to run into you on the street, but we weren’t friends then and there’s no need we need to force it now. I wish you the best of luck, but my buck stops there.
Adrianna, publisher, midtown
Wedding Bell Blues
Before I begin, let me set this straight: I am a relatively normal, well educated, well brought up (or at least this is what I like to think) female in my early twenties. And yet, as I partake in the ever so common “girl talk” amongst my friends about relationships, men, dating marriage and beyond, I am labeled either as heartless (my friends and family have aptly nicknamed me ‘Ice Queen’) or “a dude,” at least in my ways of approaching these subjects. Time after time, I listen to stories from young girls expressing their desires to get married, have children, and “settle down” so to speak and time after time I can’t shake the idea that all of these things sound terrible to me, at least for the time being. End to my freedom and youth, added responsibility, the feeling of being “tied down”? No thanks. But because I feel this way, I’m considered weird, emotionless, and altogether anti-female. Why are my opinions so wrong? Why is it expected that every young American woman love the idea of marriage and babies and growing old with one person? Maybe it’s just me, but I thought we had moved past the idea of women’s roles as wives and homemakers in the 1960s, and yet young women these days are still expected to love the idea of looking at bridal magazines and wedding ring catalogs. The more and more I talk with my friends in their early twenties, the more and more I feel like an outsider for not having my wedding colors picked out already or a cut of diamond in mind for my engagement ring. I’m 21 years old for christ’s sake! I hate to say it, but maybe this is why there are so many miserable, dependent women in the world these days. And maybe, just maybe, the world would be a better, happier place if young women would get their noses out of “Brides” magazine and consume their thoughts with more fulfilling ideas and thoughts than the type of dress their bridesmaids will wear. I’m sorry, but dreaming about bigger and better things than a big, fancy $200,000 wedding and a honeymoon doesn’t make me a guy or mean that I don’t have feelings… we’re living in 21st century America here, get with the picture.
Penny, lecturer, Union Square
Profligate Human Beings
It bothers me when people order or make food and only consume a portion of it, chucking the rest, but I can deal with that. My roommate’s eating/ordering/wasting habits, however, are something else. She’s slightly lazy and even more spoiled, ordering take-out often and only buying groceries from FreshDirect. This would be fine if she actually ate the food she bought. Instead it sits in the fridge, our teeny fridge, unopened, taking up space, rotting, going to waste. Turkey, carrots, massive cantaloupes, milk from last month – you name it, it’s there or has made an appearance in the past. Though I’m sick of waiting around for the food to turn to mush and throwing it out myself (or mooching when appropriate and necessary), I’m most mystified when she orders take-in for that night, then leaves it on the table for two days…unopened! Perfectly good sushi, burgers, pasta, wraps, and everything under the sun have experienced a long-term relationship with our kitchen table when they should have been gobbled down immediately. I guess I’m just jealous because I wish I could afford to order take-out as often as she does, But seriously, order your take-out and eat it too! And your FreshDirect. I’m sick of watching food go to waste while people literally beg for a dollar outside our doorstep.
Julie, optician, upstate
Does ANYONE really NEED a car in the city??
The parking situation in New York has gotten out of control. No one on my block works… they all have rent controlled apartments and too much time on their hands. Basically, they sit in their cars the entire hour and a half that the street is supposedly being cleaned. For those of us with better things to do, that leaves a slim to none chance of finding a space. (And forget your dream of nabbing that prime spot just outside the door.) Get out and take a walk, people. Let’s fight it out like we used to.
Allison, 33, lawyer, Manhattan
Good Lookin’ Nowt !!
Saturday night I come work and my roommate jumps on me and begs me to come out with her. This guy, E, she met last summer in Spain, who coincidentally happens to live in the adjoining borough, has been incessantly calling her for weeks looking to get back together (they never dated, mind you). The only way to get rid of him, she claimed, would be to meet him and end it once and for all; he’s a hater, she told me. A big, fat racist. Of course, she needed a wingman, and I’m not one to turn away a friend in need. Even though the situation sounded thoroughly awkward, I put on my dancing shoes and off we went. When I saw him, I realized why she secretly wanted to see him again: Imagine your friendly neighborhood 6’3’’, wide-shouldered beach-blond lifeguard standing there with the widest grin, very happy to see you. She caved in immediately, and I had to spend the rest of the night with his dimwitted hulk of a sidekick, P. In about seven seconds of conversation, I found out P has never been to the Greenwich Village, despite living in Brooklyn his whole life, and that he has a red sports car. He wants to be a stockbroker, and ‘get real rich, real fast.’ Then comes the punch line; a metrosexuallooking dude walks into the bar. P freaks out: He points, and over the music he whisper-screams into my ear, ‘have you seen the fag at the bar? What’s up with this place!’ I stare wide at P and politely ask what’s wrong with him. He goes on to tell me that if he had a gay son, he would pull his shirt over his kid’s head and — get this — shoot him. WHAT? As the night proceeds, I watch my roommate willingly getting her knee molested, and hear both E and P pass criticism on pretty much every minority group out there complete with the most colorful variety of expressions (I dryly suggested they should write the bigot’s dictionary, and they responded enthusiastically). On the car ride home (I would have gladly taken the train, but my roommate insisted they should drive us) the conversation somehow slid into politics, and E told us how the foreigner exchange students in his Ivy-league university always try to convince him to vote Democrat ‘All these foreign n*****s, they’re not an active part of society, what right they have to an opinion? And who invited them any way?’ That’s when he told this hilarity ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ice. Ice who? I’s your next president.’ He then decided to ask me who I’m voting for, and I pointed out that I am a foreigner myself, not a citizen. He took a moment to think about it and said, ‘That’s ok. You were born in the Ukraine, right? Anyone from the former Soviet Union is fine by me. And you seem like a nice girl. My dad moved here from Spain. So you’re ok.’ I thanked him profusely for including me in the 5-people group he brands as ‘ok,’ but reminded him that I also grew up in Israel. It just went over his head, and instead of responding he chose to tell a story about a real racist – one who hates everyone. ‘He hates Russians!’ he exclaimed. Though I have visited (and even lived for short periods of time) in the less liberal parts of the U.S., I have never encountered such blatant racism. What more, I have never expected to encounter it in New York, the most diverse of cities, in two guys born and bred in Brooklyn. I felt like I was part of some social experiment! Upon parting I thanked them for a most educational of nights, and when my environmentalist liberal roommate promised to see E again, I asked her how could she seriously associate herself with this hypocrite. ‘With that face,” she exclaimed, ‘he can get away with anything!’.
Joy, writer, Brooklyn
Dumb F***s, Literally
Do you know that type of girl that is smart, capable, and talented, but acts completely helpless whenever she’s around a man? Maybe she’ll pretend she can’t carry her suitcase, when she really could manage it herself. Or she’ll mispronounce words on purpose, and pretend she doesn’t know how to pump gas. Let’s face it. We all know one of them. Maybe we’re even friends with her. But that makes it no less frustrating. I honestly thought the Jessica Simpson trend was done with, but I still see these girls dumbing themselves down, in order to appear “cute” to men. So listen up, guys: Most “adorably helpless” girls are faking it. And girls, if you can do it yourself, stop being c***s, stop pretending, and show off your smarts.
Taylor, singer, UWS
Temporomandibular Joint Disorder ?
I’m sitting on my morning one-train, waiting for it to depart (I live way way up in the Bronx.) It’s pretty early in the morning so there are only a few of us in the car. Engine’s off. It’s dead silent. Since unprovoked human interaction has, quite frankly, died, it’s pin drop quiet. Seriously; all I hear is ragged breath and the wind howling outside. All of a suddenthe silence shatters in the most gut wrenching, stomach turning way possible. There’s the faintest suck-ling, squishing noise. The woman in the next seat is chewing gum. Chewing gum with your mouth open is not only rude, it’s positively revolting. Chewing gum so loudly that everyone within the general vicinity can hear it pop, smoosh, and then reform inside your probably cesspool infected mouth? That is the most passive aggressive form of obnoxiousness that I can imagine. It’s borderline hillbilly behavior. Close your mouth, chew in silence. Show some respect.
Letitia, lawyer, Bronx
Love’s Labour’s Lost It’s so weird interacting with lovers of loves long past. I always find myself on this weird fence of am I going to be a dick to them because they really hurt my feelings and should give them a taste of their own medicine… or am I going to be nice so I don’t seem like a total bitch?
Annaleise, receptionist, Soutwick