Posts (page 2)

...BUT:

There are a lot of benches outside of my office building, and if I'm leaving work on the lateish side, I often see teenage skateboarders and rollerbladers out breaking the rules. You know, grinding and the like.

Tonight, on my walk to the subway, I dodged a couple of tall, lanky rollerbladers wearing black on black leather Yankees baseball hats. I remembered late one night during my sophomore year of college, Beth and I laced on our rollerblades (I can't believe I ever even owned a pair?!) and skated up and down Bay State Road for hours...or what seems like hours in my memory.

It was really warm, so it must've been sometime around finals or the end of the spring semester. We were probably antsy and feeling cooped up. How could we not have felt cooped up? We had been sharing a twelve square foot room along with Kate for eight months at that point. I think it had just rained, and the pavement on Bay State Road was perfect for rollerblading: hot top, we would've called it in elementary school. We were the only ones on Bay State Road that night. It was so dark, with barely any light cast from the windows of the fancy brownstone dorms where everyone else was inside studying.

After a gajiliion laps up and down Bay State Road, we sat on the curb just before the corner of Commonwealth Ave., our massive dorm looming off to our right. We talked about boys for a long time, and then I think it started to rain again, so we went back inside to finish studying.

Amanda and Caitlin are recommending that I read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which Amazon.com describes as a "slice of engrossing lesbian Victoriana*."

Amanda: I really think you'll like it, even though it has a gay storyline. I mean, I loved it, and I never like gay books.

Me: Why?

Amanda: Because they're never as good.

Me: Never as good as real life?

Amanda: No! Never as good as other books.

Me: Can I post this conversation on my blog?

Amanda: Sure, but what if you out me?

Me: I'm pretty sure that the seven people who read my blog know you're gay. Me being one, you being two, and Caitlin being three...

Caitlin: Oh my god, Amanda. You're gay?!

*Incidentally, what the hell is "Victoriana"?

Me: He's really nice. He called me "Amanda" by accident the other night and then apologized profusely for like, an hour. He kept saying, "I'm so sorry!" And I was like, "Dude..."

Amanda: You were like, "Yeah, I WISH."

Me: Yes. That's exactly what I said.

_____

30 Minutes Later...

Amanda, watching CSI: New York: God! I wish they would get on with it already. Enough with the character development. I'm not Allison Keiley.

A week back our hometown during the Christmas holidays makes us all antsy enough to risk running into people we don't want to see to meet up for a few beers. Cheap beers. Or at least cheaper than we find in the cities where we now all live -- New York, Los Angeles, above, beyond.

Over beer and popcorn and nachos we talk about our 401k's, paying off car loans, promotions, grad school, and other adult-type things that are only interesting when they matter to your friends.

At one point, I apologize to Dana for bailing on skiing with him earlier that morning.

"Sorry I texted you at like, 5:30 in the morning, dude, but I didn't want you to drive all the way to my parents' house!" I say.

"Uh, nice try, Allison. You texted me at 6 a.m. when I was on my way to get gas to pick you up."

"No I didn't! I remember it was like, 5:21 a.m. or something!"

"No, it was totally like 6:08 a.m."

We both scramble for our phones to check the sent and received times, a frantic race to see who is right, because it matters.

"It's nice to see some things never change," says Jim.

Incidentally, we were both right.

Last week--

Me: Are you going to Allison's birthday thing on Tuesday night?

Amanda: What birthday thing?

Me: Did you read the email she sent? You were on the list of people she sent it to.

Amanda: That email was from that Allison?

Me: Yeah...about her birthday...

Amanda: Oh! I thought it was from you, so I didn't read it.

There's a 7-Eleven on 23rd Street that smells exactly like all the gas station convenience stores we used to stop at on the way home from skiing during weekends in high school.

At 17, I could barely make it to school for 7:30 a.m. Weekday mornings were a constant driver of the stomping and huffing that made my parents wonder why they ever decided they'd have babies who would eventually grow into teenagers.

But on winter weekends, I'd leap out of bed before the sun was up and drive to Dana's house -- a crucial 3 exits farther north on 93. He'd take his parents' Suburban and drive us to Okemo, Loon, Killington, Sunday River...wherever. If Jim were with us, he'd get shotgun. I'd doze in the backseat to Metallica or Dennis Leary's No Cure for Cancer. I don't think I've ever stayed awake more than twenty minutes into any roadtrip with Dana.

We'd probably make one of the first chairs up the mountain; later in the afternoon, we'd be on the last for sure, literally chasing daylight.

In my memories, our toes cracked simultaneously as we all wrenched our feet from nine hours in ski boots. We'd settle back into our positions in the Suburban, exhaustion being the only perceivable difference from the morning trip: same soundtrack, same darkness, same carsleep. During our days on the mountain, there was so much laughter and noise and gossip and boasting and dirty joke-telling, but the drives lulled us into near-silence.

Soon after we started home, Dana would pull into a gas station. He'd fill up the Suburban, and then we'd all get snacks for the road. I loved getting Diet Coke and cheese curls. Sometimes Rolos. The store would smell like old, burnt coffee -- too many leftover pots that had been brewed for the early ski crowds, perhaps.

The burnt coffee in the 7-Eleven on 23rd Street smells exactly the same, though early morning ski crowds are hundreds of miles away. On Saturday, I bought a bottle of seltzer water there and left craving cheese curls, wishing I had some Metallica on my iPod.

I'm kind of liking my microeconomics class, even though I'm pretty sure the majority of material is flying way, way above my head, but my textbook is ridiculous.

Here's an example of a passage that I would understand a whole lot more with a little simplification:
"The monopoly currently charges a price of Pm, produces Qm units of output, and earns profits described by the shaded region A. At the monopoly price and output, consumer surplus is given by triangle C."

Here's an example of a passage that is actually simplified:
"In effect, you are uncertain whether your boss is "honest" (will keep a promise) or "dishonest" (will break a promise).

Phew, thanks for those parenthetical definitions of honest vs. dishonest. That's definitely what I needed the most help with.

It started about a year ago, after I cut my hair to my chin. I walked into my favorite bodega on the corner of 11th Street and one of the owners -- the wife of a husband and wife team -- complimented me on my haircut.

Then, the woman at the laundromat where I drop off my clothes started remembering that I request allergy-free detergent.

On Friday, Caitlin and I were heading out when we ran into our super, Junior, and his grandson, Jay.

"Junior!" Caitlin shouted. "It's Allison's birthday!"

"Ahhh, happy birthday, Mama," said Junior. Jay asked me how old I was so he could give me "birthday punches."

On Saturday morning, as I was walking down 5th Avenue to head to class, Junior spotted me from about a block away and started singing Happy Birthday for all the neighborhood to hear.

This morning, I went into the bodega on 11th Street and the husband was behind the counter. He's never been as friendly to me as the wife; up until this morning, I never knew he even recognized me. But today, he exclaimed over the huge, colorful earrings I'm wearing. He asked me if I had made them, where I got them, and told me he thought they were so unique.

Now I can never leave, can I?

Tonight, I told my roommates I'd be making dinner, but I got home late from work and didn't really start things until about 8. I threw together one of my favorite easy recipes -- pasta with sauteed tomatoes and olives, crushed red pepper, and feta cheese (and leftover sausage for a bonus tonight).

By the time we ate, we were starving. The three of us wolfed down two heaping bowls each in about 7 minutes. We're talking the most unladylike forkfuls of pasta ever shoved down throats this side of 5th Avenue.

Finished, we uttered contented sighs, and perhaps a few satisfied burps.

"That was sooo good," Caitlin said.

"Yeah," said Amanda, "I wonder what it tasted like."