rumors

“I heard a rumor that you and Ted might be moving in together.”

I was on the train out of the city with Ted’s cousin when I realized that the only thing more exhausting than a family might be two families.

We went to Princeton for his family’s Seder, and after the meal I could hear Ted’s dad from the other end of the table. Palms flat on the table, he was explaining to Ted’s old cousins:

“Well, Ted’s lease is up in June, but Beatrix’s isn’t up until the end of the year. . . .”

So, you know, I guess it was a thing. A thing about which my parents should probably be informed.

My mom had a hard time explaining how she felt. Which I understood:

“You sound exactly like we do when we talk about it.”

She told me:

“I think it will be fine. I think it makes sense for you.”

I never expected glowing excitement over the living-in-sin thing. So, I’ll take it.


~beatrix

don't look back

We said we’d have a berry farm in the mountains.

We would have had kids who ran around with too-long hair and never any shoes. They’d be olive like him and good swimmers. We’d have nights on porches with all the stars we ever wanted and sunshine mornings with wildflowers and sweet potato pancakes.

He answered the phone, “Hee-ey there, pretty girl.” I learned that Eagle Scouts aren’t always prepared.

It was one month, and beautiful the way something can be when it is purely hypothetical-- like communism and vegan baked goods.

We both cried, sitting on the trunk of his Blazer with the rusty top. Nine days, I’d begged. Let’s just have these last nine days.

We graduated. We never said I love you. When my brother met a whole bunch of my exes at a single graduation party, he said he didn’t like Fred. He asked if I thought Hugo would help me move.

Fred’s an accountant now. He has tidy hair and shirts with buttons and proper shoes and no piercings.

“How long have you been waiting for me to do that?” There was that sweaty weekend and that night in that hotel. Even when Eagle Scouts grow up to be accountants, they aren’t always prepared.

He doesn’t answer his phone the same way anymore, which probably makes sense. I’d forgotten about the mole on his right cheek.

Fred’s a pile of what-if. What if we’d figured it out sooner. What if I hadn’t moved when I’d graduated. What if he’d gotten this job instead of that one.

What if he’d ever fought for it.

~beatrix

p.s. i hope you click the link and remember how this used to be a dating blog.
~b

maybe because it's easier to imagine bad things than good ones

I gripped his wrist. I had a vision: wind ripping a wing off, the plane falling out of the sky in the tight spiral of a pinecone seed. We were hours late, and the ride was too bumpy for anyone to even bring us drinks.

I should have been terrified.

We were going to visit my family. Ted was going to meet my dad and my brother for the first time.

It might already be springtime there.

At Christmas my brother and I get out of bed while it is still dark and go climb in our parents’ bed to wake them up. We have three-hour breakfasts that sometimes include performances and end with clean-up dance parties. Clockwise, we sit: dad, sister, mom, brother. Unless we are in the car: dad, mom, brother, sister. We’ve spent decades just the four of us, and in this system of inside jokes and assigned seats, I’ve never been able to imagine how someone new will fit.

I should be terrified. I should be at least anxious.

“Remind me not to let you drink coffee at the airport,” he’d told me when I just could not stop talking.

But I was excited and I am excited and I’m pretty sure everything will be fine as long as this plane can land wheels first.

~beatrix

the bad kind of what-ifs

Ted has a lifetime of acquaintances in this city, and I think he’s better at looking up when he walks than I am. And being with him makes the East Village feel like an actual neighborhood. We run into people.

Ted asked if he was going our way, and the answer told everything without a detail. ’Cause if he’s going uptown, he’s not going to the girl whose name, with his, has become such an easy pair.

His skin was transparent, his face bonier than I remembered. Jumpy, unfocused, he has the wide, empty eyes of a stray dog who distrusts human contact as much as he craves it.

He’s going uptown, and I forgot the M is even a train. Walking away, I wished I’d given him a more honest hug, and I wished I’d given him the trail mix out of my bag. I don’t know if he’s going home, but he’s going somewhere to sleep, and Queens is a long way from here.

My boy and I laughed at the intersection of 2nd and A where he always falls in that shallow hole.

But I’ve looked out hollow ghost-eyes, eyes that never want to close, but don’t want to see anything either. I’ve stopped eating, tried to start over from the inside out. I’ve developed a quiver in my hands, my jaw, my gut I was sure was visible from the outside. I’ve been not just not my self, but not anyone.

When he pulls his shirt off over his head, he blocks the overhead light from my face. If this were a metaphor, he would be the moon in this solar eclipse and he’d control my tides. That’s a little sweet, but mostly gross. And anyway, no matter how much the earth stretches for the moon, she’ll never touch him.

And I just can’t get close enough.

I lie my head in the crook of his arm, run my fingers up and down his chest. But what I really want to do is pound it:

Never do that to me. Never do that to me. Never, ever do that to me.


~beatrix

wealth management

Sometimes I panic, not because it doesn’t feel right, just because it doesn’t feel real.

**********

He was driving down the West Side, and we were stopped at a light.

“People don’t understand sometimes. Being single is just. . . .”

“Exhausting,” we said it together.

Sometimes having a blog puts one in an interesting position to reflect. A quick scan reveals that I have written about relationships, however distant, brief, or insignificant, with no fewer than 41 boys. Stories from a kindergarten proposal to everyday adventures with the boy I woke up with this morning.

No wonder I was tired.

For a while I thought I was lucky, and maybe I am. But maybe I just deserve this.

I’ve worked hard.

There’s a Bright Eyes song that says

With these things there’s no telling, you just have to wait and see.
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.

I think it’s a love song.

I always thought I’d just keep pressing my luck, but it turns out that even if you hit the jackpot, you still have to manage your investments.

~beatrix

going somewhere

Do you know that I met him more than eleven months ago, in words if not in person? Eleven is almost twelve. And twelve is important, probably.

He wrote that haiku about the subway that I thought I understood. And I never even asked him what it was about.

It was cold the first time I saw him, even though I wasn’t wearing a coat. There was promise of spring, but it was winter. Like it is winter now. We’ve almost been around the seasons together. Almost.

Ten months almost. Ten is a lot, too.

He knows what foods to bring over when I’m sick, even though he doesn’t know if I like pulp in my orange juice. He knows I’d almost always rather walk a few blocks than have to transfer trains. And he knows how to make me laugh and what’s my normal morning bagel and how I like to fall asleep.

I’m the one who hears the funny things he calls out in his sleep. “Lonely float.” “Adidas.”

I know that the graphite-dot-tattoo on his palm is from being stabbed by a boy named Christopher in kindergarten. I know that there’s an oddly-appropriate freckle constellation of a grocery cart on the back of one of his calves. I can predict the order he’ll eat the things on his plate, and I know when it’s time to stop the movie by the weight of his arm.

I realized when I was falling asleep that I don’t know his shoe size. Or his favorite color. And I never know which side of the bed he’s going to want.

He’ll stop himself from asking me if we can try all the city’s beergardens this summer because it’s too much future, then he’ll ask me if we can send our kids to French immersion school, then he’ll ask me if we can go for bubble tea even though I hate both tea and anything that feels like a tadpole in my mouth. I’m almost always down for the walk to Chinatown, though.

I know there were girls before me, and I hate them. But not too much. I was no saint either. (It’s a funny thing to say, because I’m pretty sure there were some slutty saints.)

I hate that he had a life before me, but I’m glad we didn’t know each other sooner, ’cause we both know we would’ve screwed it up.

And all those other girls I’ll never want to count, I’m glad they broke him in. Broke him in without breaking him.


~beatrix



the blog has not only been around, but has been around with stuff on it for a whole year. thanks guys.
~b

sleep over. please

I want to go to the movies with a guy friend, and I want you to do whatever it is you do with your boys until 4:30 am*. But, in the end, I want you to wind up in my bed.

love
beatrix


*Excluding falling asleep on the subway. Or falling asleep sitting up in people’s chairs. Yes, I have seen those photos on facebook.

missed opportunites

I was away in Boston for the weekend to see Evie, so I don’t have anything prepared for today, but you are in luck. I am giving you something from my personal archives. It was written on September 14, 2008 about a trip I had taken to Boston sometime after graduating from college and sometime before I moved to New York. Enjoy.
~beatrix of christmas present


I’m pretty sure I met my soulmate once. And by met I actually mean sat with in very close proximity without saying a word.

I was taking a morning flight from Boston to Atlanta, and they asked for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for ticket vouchers. I’m always hoping that will happen, but it never does unless I have something very pressing and important to do at the other end or have someone practically on the way to pick me up from the airport. Not this time. So. . score.

Then you know that game you play with yourself while you’re waiting for a flight? The one where you sit there and think, “I guess that I will I end up sitting next to that incredibly attractive and well-dressed fellow there reading that interesting magazine”? But then you lose the game and wind up sitting next to a chubby guy who immediately falls asleep with his mouth open and taking up one third of your allotted space or an old lady with a scratchy sweater who doesn’t speak English and gets her tv screen stuck on or some guy who enlightens you on how to fly a plane yourself, complete with a full-on reenactment? Well, this one time I won.

I picked this guy with a square jaw and a cap, and when I got on the plane he was. . . right there, taking something out of his bag then putting it in the overhead bin. And I realized that I had made a great choice because his beefy shoulder was just the absolute perfect height on which to lie my head. But I didn’t do that. Then he sat next to the window, and for the first and only time in my entire life, I was happy to be in the middle seat-- next to him. Ding ding ding. Winner again.


So that’s not all. The things that he had taken from his bag? The Wall Street Journal and East of Eden. He flipped through the Journal, then stuck it in the seat pocket. Nothing too exciting, but at least he probably had a job, right? The Steinbeck book, though? That’s my favorite book. . . No kidding. And he sat there and read it for almost two hours. With his arm well over the armrest, pressing against mine. And I didn’t move my arm-- he felt amazing and I was in love. I just sat there and pretended to read, wishing I’d brought something a little smarter and trying to talk myself into saying “You know, that’s my favorite book.” so we could start a conversation and live happily ever after.

I spent the entire trip counting down how long I had left to finally talk to him, but I couldn’t make the words come out. It was over all too soon, and I had to pull my arm away from him so I could put my stupid book back in my bag. I don’t even remember seeing him at baggage claim.

So I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m alone now. I was supposed to meet my soulmate on a plane between Boston and Atlanta, and I didn’t take the chance that fate handed me. It’s a sad story. And if I’d talked to him, I’d probably be with him right now, eating a lovely dinner off our wedding china instead of eating take-away pizza out of the box.

~beatrix of christmas past



and, as i thought this post needed even more italics, i got one of those twitters. we can be friends and stuff: beatrix_here
~beatrix of christmas future

it's like insurance

A good boyfriend will do your dishes while you rearrange everything you own into a container the size of an overhead compartment one more time. He’ll ask if you need help when you are standing on your suitcase trying to get it closed. That’s when you should apologize for the toffee you cooked in that pot.

And a good boyfriend will ignore his boycott of rolling suitcases to carry yours down the stairs. You can bring the trash because that’s not as heavy.

Then the good boyfriend will get concerned that you are going to try to bring this suitcase to work with you on the subway, because, don’t forget, there are stairs. You’ll say that, well, that’s what you’re gonna do unless he wants to drive you to work. And he will, even though it’s a little out of the way.

And since he’s such a good boyfriend, you’ll tell him, “Ugh. . . You are the best boyfriend ever.”

And since he doesn’t know he is such a good boyfriend, he’ll say, “Ha. You better remember this for sometime when things aren’t so good.”

You probably should.

~beatrix

Etc.

I’ve never done this, but these things seemed just barely worth mentioning.

A List:

-If you have pets or children, it is your responsibility to corral them. If you are on one side of the sidewalk and your dog is on the other, it is your problem that his leash is blocking the entire path. If you have four children, you are responsible for making sure they are not blocking the aisles at the grocery store.

-I love Jonathan Adler. (Dear Jonathan Adler, Let’s be friends, please. Love and air kisses, Beatrix) His manifesto makes me love him even more. (Dear Jonathan Adler’s boyfriend, Would the two of you like to join us for dinner? Let me know. I’ll roast some seasonal vegetables and bake a cake. Awkward, minimal-body-contact hugs, Beatrix)

-The armrest on the non-end seats of an airplane is neutral territory. It should be used minimally and never, under any circumstances, crossed.

-Sharing photos of your pregnancy test is STILL GROSS.

-Ted suggested we coordinate Halloween costumes, so we need some ideas. Clever ideas that aren’t too cute (no Anthony and Cleopatra or Jack and Jackie) are encouraged.


air kisses to all,

trix

permission slips

I needed the words to replace all the I-miss-yous and I-like-yous and you’re-my-favorites. I needed the words to say what I really meant.

And I found them. And he echoed. And it was nice.

But. . . .

I didn’t want to say it too much. I shouldn’t say it every time I think it. So maybe not now.

He knows, anyway.

He dropped me off on the corner. It’s convenient that he has to drive by my work on the way to his.

Grabbing my things. Making sure the seatbelt wasn’t hanging out. About to close the door.

“What?” I shouted it back in.

“I said, I love you, ” shouted out the door.

And that was how he gave me permission to believe something I had known for weeks.

~beatrix

nostalgia at three months

“Wait,” he tells me, even though I can hear a train downstairs.

I had the same idea.

He grabs me around the waist and kisses me big. We miss our train.

We’ve been here before.


~beatrix

where am i?

“It’s a good thing he’s not jealous.”

Pete was playing a song on his ukulele and interrogating me about Ted while I did Wii yoga .

“Of course he’s not jealous. Why would he be jealous?” from a tree pose. “Well. . . I mean. . . he doesn’t know where I am.”

The F train is the worst train, and I suddenly I don’t know where I am. I’m not even sure what borough this is. Is there really a 23rd Avenue?

I got home really late, talked to Cooper for a minute. He asked about my night.

“Why aren’t you with your boy? Does he care that you were with Pete?”

Really? Am I missing something? Doing something wrong?

~beatrix

deception

“Where should I put these shoes? In the trunk?”
“You can just put them in the back seat.”
“Yeah, but I should put them out of the way. How many people are coming with us?”
“This is it. Just us.”

I was confused. He’d said his brother and his girlfriend were coming. I know them. They are nice and familiar and I was prepared to count them as allies. Ted says he forgot to tell me they couldn’t come anymore.

Deep breaths. I tell myself I’ll be fine, but after 45 minutes in New Jersey (a place so strange you aren’t even allowed to pump your own gas), it really hits me.

“How did you convince me this was a good idea??”


~beatrix

p.s. i will be away for another wedding this weekend, but this time with harper. i absolutely cannot wait. i hope you have a nice weekend, too.
~b

are you starting to feel at home?

I count the months off on my fingers in the train on my way home. I’ve been here for one year and nine months.

And I’ve dated a lot of boys. I don’t have enough fingers to count them.

Tonight I went with Julianna to a party where we didn’t really know anyone.

“Have we been here before?” she asked me.
“I think so.”
“With Kris with a K. . .”

It is the same place-- there’s a canoe hanging above the bar.

Kris with a K was the first boy I hooked up with after moving to New York. Jules invited me to dinner with the two of them, we ended up at this bar with the canoe, and Jules said, “I’m going home. You’ll be fine, right?”

It seems like a million and one years ago. It was the day after the first iPhones came out. Kris with a K’s was the first one I’d ever seen. He let me zoom in and out on things.

He was truly beautiful. Skin deep. One of those people who lucks out with a serendipitous mix of ethnic traits. Fully aware of it, too.

I woke up in his bed. He needed to go train for a triathlon or something. Of course. I needed to go home. I was hungover, bedraggled, and couldn’t find my subway. I’d been in the city maybe two weeks. When I finally got on it, I was afraid I was going to hurl.

It was not a shining moment of a night. And now, one year and nine months later, I’m back at the same bar.

It’s happening a lot lately. Boys have smeared their memories all over this city. There’s the place where David started puking because it took him 29 years to realize he’s allergic to pine nuts, the tiny restaurant where I had grilled cheese with Cooper one day before I went to the airport, and the place Prince Charming would take me for pancakes. The bar where I met Sandeep? That’s the second first date I’ve had there. And I’ve had two first dates at a little wine bar and restaurant on the UES-- with Ravi and some guy whose name I’m 90% sure was either Mike or Bill. I keep walking by Gyan’s apartment, not on purpose at all.

I can’t remember all the names or faces, but this city is full of them. New York is not so big at all.

~beatrix

what happens in teaneck. . .

I was dancing and squirming around in the bus shelter. It was freezing. And I had to pee. And I couldn’t feel my butt cheeks because I had tried sitting on the bench.

We’d waited in Blockbuster for a while, eating five different kinds of snacks that we bought for $8, making us consider going to Jersey to grocery shop. But now Blockbuster was closed, and we were stuck outside eating chocolate-covered pretzels, Milk Duds, Peanut M&Ms, Pringle-like chips, and Starburst.

We’d missed the second bus because it turned out that you needed to consult both a chart and a graphic to know how the 12:45 bus back to the city works. When I’d jumped around pointing “A bus! A bus!”? it didn’t turn the corner because it wasn’t our bus so much as because this wasn’t its stop.

We’d missed the first bus not so much because we’d taken a wrong turn so much as because we’d failed to take a right one. And it took us a while to figure out that the street we were on was curvy and dark and residential and not leading to the bus stop intersection.

We were in New Jersey in the first place for a party, which turned out to be full of old hippies. I’d done shots with men old enough to be my father, thrown things off the second floor balcony, and danced with a guy named Bob.

We both kept saying, “I don’t really feel drunk, but I know I must be.” And we must have been, because sober people do not get stuck in Teaneck, New Jersey at 1 o’clock in the morning.

I should have been worried and annoyed and anxious, but I wasn’t. I don’t think it’s because I was drunk either.

Alix is funny, and she thinks I’m funny. We have compatible tastes in junk food. She’s slutty enough to confide in, but not too slutty to trust.

Guys, I think I’ve made a girl friend.


~beatrix

home?

I really had no idea where I was. Somewhere between Boston and New York, but that’s not saying much. I knew the general geography, but here on the highway, on a bus, I couldn’t tell where I was. There were generic things on the sides of the highway: Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s. I saw a store named Romantic Depot which sat directly in front of one named Screws & More. (No kidding.)

I was between places. Nowhere.

I don’t really fit in in Boston. I like to visit Evie, but I’d never want to live there. Georgia will always be home, but I never quite fit there either. And sitting on the bus, I wondered if I fit in in New York. I wondered if it felt like home or if it ever would.



As the suburban landscape shifted, and we were surrounded by boxy buildings with light-square windows, I tried to gauge my emotions, just as I do every time I fly in or out of the city and crane as long as possible to see the Manhattan skyline. To see if it feels a part of me.

Do I feel ownership of the old Yankee stadium or even the new one? How does it feel to be in Harlem, where the streets become numbered and orderly? I’ve bought a sandwich at that grocery store, is that comforting? How does Columbus Circle make me feel?

I reached no conclusion. Home is a slippery concept.

But I can’t help thinking that if I can just make sure I’m in the right place everything else will just work out.


~beatrix