East Coast Gal

People from the East Coast are quick to point out how we are different from the rest of the U.S. We live on the edge, we are rude to tourists and very cold-hearted when it comes to people who are much slower-paced than we are.  And people from the South are quick to point out how they are different. They are more relaxed, very centered around big families and lots of food. East coast folks are gossipy and social. The southern folks are kind and quiet.

Say what you want about the South and their sometimes backwards ways. I don’t agree with everyone from down there and there are certainly things I would change, but the calm sweetness of a no-frills good ol’ time certainly is not one of them.

But when it comes to women, I have my southern ways.

Unlike women up here, I am smooth, chivalrous to a fault, because it almost seems insincere. I am friendly and chatty and it can make a grown woman crazy trying to figure out if I am flirting with them or if I was just raised right by a strict Ma and Pa who taught me that a lover comes to expect certain things and you should always oblige so to not hurt their delicate sensibilities (which are mostly a front, to be honest).

Not all of east coast women are like me though. Up here, we have some who act as if they’ve never seen a push-up bra before and the jerks who are, for lack of a better term, jerky. (You know ‘em when you see ‘em.) And yeah, lesbians are typical up here and a large subset is interested in beer, sports and hot women. At times, I feel like women like me are an endangered species, a creature to be protected and cultivated for the future.

I am friendly. I always shake your hand and smile when I meet you and I make a point to repeat your name back and be formally introduced to all parties in a group. I tease in a good-nature way, I open doors but I never pull out chairs. I include people in conversations and I am a fan of casually touching you when I talk. On the shoulder. On the knee.

I have a sweet tone to my voice, a slow drawl that makes the words sound dramatic. “Well, don’t you look nice tonight,” sounds ever more so sincere from me. (I think)

I am genuinely nice and I will compliment every woman around me because it is the polite thing to do. I will never let you stand, I will always give up my seat. I Smile and wink at women and give a good hearty kiss on the cheek to my lesbian brethren in passing.

I drink scotch or whiskey on the rocks. A double, please. Always. Or beer, but probably not heavy beer. I will play the latest hit on the jukebox and will pull you to your feet and dance with you in the middle of a crowded bar.

Some people may think I am cheesy. Or that I am just playing to get a woman’s attention. And that may be true at times but I do make silly chauvinistic comments because I can get away with saying just about anything in that sweet tone of mine.

But I do fall head over heels quickly when I am smitten by a woman. I have been known to walk a straight line behind a pretty bird with sparkling eyes and shiny hair as she squeaks out her drink order or throws her own soft charming drawl right back at me to soothe me into doing her bidding.

And don’t be fooled. I may seem fragile and gentle, but I turn quicker than a flipped pancake when my hand is forced. Steel Magnolias, every last one of me.

I’ve been told that others dislike me, because I don’t seem genuine. They think that I am obviously looking for a trophy wife to help plan Christmas Parties or to smile and nod (and pack and extra flask) while I entertained clients. They found me and my sweetness to be patronizing.

But….

…turns out ladies are suckers for an accent and a kiss on the cheek after all.

Lunches are never free

I’ve learned in my almost ten years in the work world, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Delusional when I was back in college I thought that the real world was just like “Friends” or “felicity” and paperback novels about NYC. Eating at funky restaurants, one of my beautiful friends would whip out her Louis Vuitton wallet and put down her platinum AMEX card and gracefully utter the words, “It’s on the company.” And actually my first encounters with the expense card culture were not unlike my delusional thoughts. Being young, cute and perpetually single in NYC, I honestly thought that the business lunch and dinner were comprised of a bunch of old men expensing champagne, dining with me at swank restaurants while having sexy conversations about religion, politics, Art and of course sex. I mean, that is what my mentors exposed me to whenever we went out to dinner.

One of the main reasons why I took my job a couple of years ago was because of the opportunities to go to lunch on other people’s dimes. And doesn’t it sound like a great idea? Get paid to eat, drink and chat to strangers! Order food without looking on the right side of the menu, get drunk as someone else paid, all the while chatting about interesting thought provoking topics.

Then I had my first client lunch. And then I had my second. And then the third.

I’ve become a pro at these lunches and learned that I had to also believe in Santa Claus when I thought someone was going to pay for me to eat awesome food and get drunk as I didn’t have to worry about social acceptability with my leftist opinions. This is the ad world in the US, every opportunity is seen as a network, everyone gossips and working in such an incestuous industry you learn that if you fuck up people will take notice and you will have a reputation. Such as some people who have graced my presence are known in industry circles as drunks, pervs, and the whores sleeping with xyz.

Sitting through enough of these lunches and being a rogue sociologist (without any formal schooling) I’ve noticed patterns in behavior. If the group is all women, the conversation will drift towards shopping, if its men, sports reign supreme. It’s always a mundane topic, boring, and leaving me looking into my soup for some type of inspiration to join the conversation.

However, wanting people to learn from the mistakes lessons I never remember, I’ve enclosed the three point cheat sheet for all of you ambitious kids out there. Brush up on these three points, and you would make Emily Post beam with pride. Well, from the grave…and you know that has to mean something especially because we know how hard it is to find sun six feet under.

Pointless “safe” conversation topics that always come up in dinner:

1. TV/Movies: Sounds like a safe bet doesn’t it? And whenever the conversation turns towards this topic, being the TV/Film buff that I am should make it enjoyable and engaging. NOT! (Forgive the Wayne’s World reference.) Forget everything that you know about foreign and Indy movies. I bet nobody at the table saw [Insert obscure German film here]. Mention it, and it looks like you are trying too hard and are borderline pretentious. You cross into pretentious if you say that you saw it without subtitles at the Berlinale when you were taking time off from your stressful college life. Stick to the basics, preferably prime time, major network television; any reality tv show. My new found interest in tv is rooted in my desire to fit in with my colleagues. I’ve actually begun to treat tv watching as my homework, just like reading Ad Age before bed.

2. Significant Others aka boyfriend/girlfriend: I am the only single person on my team. It’s not even like any of them are recently tied to a significant other either. They are all in long term monogamous marriages. The topic comes up every lunch/dinner. “How is _____?” Or the ever infuriating, “Christine, who are you dating? Anyone special?” and then someone would say “what’s your flavor this week?”

You want to succeed in the corporate world? Get a boyfriend/girlfriend. You want the girls to be envious of you in the corporate world? Get a big fucking ring, because after we meet someone with a big rock, we talk about her and the ring for days.

3. Hobbies: And no drinking doesn’t count. Even if you are an adult beverage connoisseur like me. Talk about the subtleties of a nice scotch, and you like an old man or a drunk…with very expensive tastes. Stick to safe things that everyone enjoys and denotes good breeding: tennis, squash, sailing, reading Oprah’s book club books (but you have to hate Frey). Again, its slim pickings when I can find someone who has read Bordeiu and can discuss the difference in theses when compared to Weber.

Did you notice that I didn’t mention business? Don’t be the loser who has nothing to talk about except for work. Just because you live at your office doesn’t mean that everyone has to know. The beauty of NYC: none of us have lives outside the office, we cultivate interests so we appear more interesting.

The above reasons are why I am usually silent about my personal life…nobody believes that the shit happens to me. Hell, I wouldn’t even believe that half the shit happens to me (like what happened last weekend – I could write a movie based on what happened to me – and yes, I will recount once I am fully ready to accept that it did actually happen to me). Learn from me. Oh, and it should go without saying, never have more than 2.5 drinks at dinner because even if you can handle your liquor you’ll still look like the office.

relationships and then some

I finished the ritual I perform every four hours: 2 pumps of saline spray into each nostril, toss back 2.5 Tablespoon of Robitussin, slather my neck and chest with Vick’s Vapor Rub, a 4oz. cup of Airborne, and shove simultaneously 1000mg of Vitamin C and 450 mg of Echinacea into my throat. I look like a 6 yr old. My scent; a combination of mint and cherry flavored cough syrup, snot dribbling down my nose, and whimpers of how much I want my mommy right now.

Yes, I am still sick. My sinus infection cleared up only to be replaced with a horrible chest cold from walking home that one night in the freezing cold sans hat and scarf. In its place a hacking “unproductive” (aka no phlegm, and God how much I fucking love phlegm and wish for it right now) cough, heavy chest, and thoughts racing through my mind that I am about to have a serious asthma attack.

Whenever I get sick and paranoid like this, I need to be around people—someone to take care of me, their presence to remind me if I do go into an asthmatic fit someone will be there to call the police or drive my sorry ass to a hospital. But I’ve come to realize that my relationships with my friends have changed and no longer can I call them up at 2am to come over and sit by my side. To invite them out for a beer yes, but to take care of me, not so much.

Other priorities have come into their life: jobs, relationships that provide sex, a desire not to be nocturnal…and it’s acceptable that the friendships have evolved. And it’s acceptable if you don’t notice this evolution because you are one of those lucky people who are perpetually in relationships and have the luxury to barter expedited intimacy via sex for chicken soup and companionship when you are sick.

So perhaps it’s the combination of being sick and not having anyone to take care of me at 2am and the prospect of a new year on the horizon with promise, but I’ve crawled back to online dating, committed to find a decent lady.

And yes please remind me there is always something wrong with them, and there are no decent women on online dating and the decent ones have issues.

So with friends in NYC still happily engaged in productive relationships, I am back trolling the depths of mediocrity called match.com. The beauty of internet dating, I recently learned, is this feature called the ‘keyword’ search. Have a hand fetish? Enter that term in and see all the ads that mention hands. You see, I have a British fetish, I love the accent and women who are my polar opposite: repressed, refined and have a sarcastic sense of humor. So I’ve keyworded (it is now a word in my book) match.com for Brit, British, England, Englishwoman, etc.  I stumbled upon this one lady, who has posted an ad on match and eharmony. Same dorky smiling face, similar rambling of why she wants a girlfriend…and I was thinking to myself, isn’t that slightly desperate? What must be her fatal flaw if she is posting on match AND eharmony?

Through some faultless CIA style investigation, I found out that her profile is fake.

And I am now convinced that 85% of match.com profiles are fake.

Corporate Pigs

Yesterday I had a board meeting/ all days Sales boot camp.  I wore my black Elie Tahari suit and put on my theatre smile to meet and greet the newly hired pigs of sales. I felt like I was wearing a mask – the suit was a shield: I was stuck and glued to this corporate slave mentality. When I think of a sales representative, the only word that comes to mind is “pig”. They are a dirty breed of Corporate America. I am clearly not a fan and until I meet one who is intelligent and real, I will continue to think of them as pigs. They sell their soul every time they meet with clients. They are great liars and terrible partners.

This meeting started at 7am. First and foremost, I am not a morning person. I grunt at the slightest sound of a chirpy “good morning” from an overly enthusiastic sales rep. secondly, how could they be so alive at the crack of dawn?

The meeting lasted until 6pm which was followed by dinner in midtown. Our corporate office is in Chelsea so this meant that we all had to travel together in a rented bus which by the way was a bit late – this of course drove the pigs crazy. All 52 of us arrived safely. We were then slammed with alcohol on an empty stomach. If you ever want to be entertained, please be in the company of executives who have discovered the open bar.

I have a theory: The majority of the reps I know are ex sorority girls and ex fraternity boys. They are full of themselves; cocky know-it-all little bastards.

Most were drunk before the first course. The speeches were long and made absolutely no sense. Rubbish talks about grabbing agencies by the balls …or something of that nature. I buried my face in my hands and continued to day-dream about the day I will free myself from this lifestyle.

I barely touched my food or my whiskey. I was just over it. But because it is my job, I have to. Those college theatre classes did me good. I mingled and laughed and had a great “time”.

When it comes to work, I am all for it. I’m throwing ideas out there which are later stolen by the pigs and thus, they are the cool ones with innovative solutions to our sinking magazine sales. Blatant pigs!

Dinner ended well after 10pm. I hopped on the train and started to think about my career. I love my company; I love the brand and I admire Tina Brown. But…I am so unhappy with how the company is unfolding after the old crew left 3 years ago. Because of the alliance with the Daily Beast, I have found myself building a wall to prevent me from correlating my brand with the celebrity infested gossip site and I HATE to admit that. I hate it! I should love both brands equally because it is where I work – I live and breathe the magazine. I’ve noticed that I have given 100% of my time and dedication to the company only to be treated like I am nobody (only recently – due to a new boss and new department). And I am not. I have a respectable title with a piteous salary. A few years ago, on my first interview with my old boss, I told him that my goal is to become the next him. He was on board with me – he truly believed in me; he sent me to a different department every year to learn the proper way to do business in publishing. I climbed the ladder and I swallowed my pride quite a few times along the way.

It is no longer my goal.

I want to find peace and be appreciated at work but I can’t seem to grasp this new concept these executives are trying to implement. I mentally checked out a few months ago. With that said, I have a few interviews lined up for the next two weeks. I am taking initiative and I am so proud of myself.

Maybe 2012 will be my year after all.

PS: I am not a sales rep.

Bonzai

My 12-year-old Bonzai passed away tonight.

I rushed to my parents’ home after my sister called me choking on her own words “ Bonzilla won’t wake up. I don’t know…. “. I arrived home to find my sobbing father alone in the guest-bathroom, his coat and briefcase still in his hand clutched in anger and sadness. My mother was in her rose garden saying her goodbyes and my red-eyed sister was setting up the dinner table. And there I was, frozen in fear.

My mother’s rose garden has become a peaceful sanctuary dedicated to loved ones. She has never buried anything there, but she has dedicated each of them to those who have left us. Anyone who has ever seen my mother’s garden knows exactly what I am going to say. Picture this: a rose garden as big as my mother’s heart and striking with vivid colors cascading onto one another forming a rainbow of velvety scented petals.  In the middle lays a bird water bath and a few flea market finds scattered around the manicured rose bushes.

Bonzai has his own rose it is a white Jacobite bush my mother planted 6 years ago. It is beautiful and it has always been my favorite.

At dinner, we all sat in silence. Isn’t odd that Death is silent? We can’t utter a word and we become paralyzed. We ate but belly half-full because of sadness. I excused myself and walked out to the rose garden and told him this:

Bonzilla, you were a great friend… You know how I believe that we are all floating souls and we reincarnate until we are full of knowledge and wisdom?  Well, I hope we will meet again. This time though, I will be the dog and you can boss me around. Deal?

I smiled and I left it at that.

But I drove home is silence.

Bonzai, we will find each other again.

Happy New Year

Thank you so much for the wonderful reads; the comments warmed my heart and reading you enlightened my soul.  I hope someday, you and I will cross paths and share a different bond. Until then, I wish you all a Joyous New Year.

 

May the gift of love, happiness, peace, and warmth be yours as you make a new start.

 

Happy New Year to you all! xoxo

 

Here’s to you, 2011

The end of another year has turned my thoughts to what I have achieved in the past 12 months and what I haven’t. I have not gotten a better job but I have become closer to my parents. I kept my New Year’s Workout Resolution for three whole months (sporadic months – but who cares right?). I’ve grown up considerably, even though I still have moments of panic, like on Christmas Eve when I realized I left my meds at home and didn’t have anything to keep me alive. I called my mom freaking out and later flipped out while I was wrapping gifts because they looked so ugly and you would think that I would be GOOD at gift wrapping because everyone else in my family is and I am so talented at so many things, like falling down in high heels after a night out, spilling things and, to a lesser extent, dating.

Dating. Oh, have I dated. I was hoping 2011 would be THE year. You know, the year where I fell blissfully in love over romantic candlelit dinners, afternoon picnics and evenings at home cooking and had a date for weddings and parties and Saturday nights and got flowers on my birthday and had someone other than my sister for whom I could buy comfy sweaters that I would later steal and wear because they smell like Chanel. Still creepy. I’ll admit it.

But I am a bit cynical. I know damn well that’s not what I really want.

2012? I am looking at you, baby.

I did, however, find a surge of confidence in early December and decided to get out there and online date – which has proven to be every bit as scary as I thought it would be. But it has also been fun. And as much as I complain about it, I will probably continue on for a few more months at least and take advantage of the confidence boosting effects of my New Year’s Resolution workout plan. (Finally putting that Bikram membership to good use!) But I’ll probably be switching to face-to -face dating when my Match.com subscription runs out in March.

Here are my stats on Match.com (in case you feel terribly sorry for me)

Total views 1,011 (I’ve only joined less than two weeks ago)

Emails: 54 (it should really be 55 but I am going to pretend I never read that email from the creepy guy looking for a threesome with his wife and I).

Winks: 120. really? 120?

I have not answered any emails.

And I did learn a lot of about how you can be happy even when you’re alone and how you at times have to buy those flowers for yourself and not rely on other people – especially women – to make you feel sexy and loved and special and beautiful and charming and irresistible.

Sometimes.

That will be the case this New Year’s Eve, as I seem to have alienated my only chance to have a friend over for the glorious celebration of the changing year. The whole detailed mess is probably best left between the subject and myself. I can’t decide if, in the end, I owe her an apology or if she owes me one or if the whole thing is being blown royally out of proportion.

Suffice it to say that the correct response to your single woman du Jour when she tells a story that ends with, “And that’s the main reason why I’m not in a relationship anymore,” is NOT “Well I know one person who is very glad that you’re single,” followed by a soft kiss on the lips. No matter how cute you are. No matter how drunk you are. No matter how low-cut your dress is. No matter how sexy you look in those shoes. Just, you know, for future reference, in case you ever find yourself in that situation after a night of too many whiskeys with one of your girlfriends while she downs something girly and fruity and laments the parting of her boyfriend of six weeks (She really felt like he was the one, y’all!) and you decide that a late-night visit to your fuck-buddy is, like, totally the best way to occupy the hours between closing time and hangoversville.

I blog because…

I stared at the screen for a few minutes not knowing where to start, which is different for me. I may not know where I’m going when I start writing an entry, but I almost always know where I want to start.

I don’t blog because I’m some dating goddess. I don’t blog because I think I know more than you do. I don’t blog because I want to be your best girlfriend or because I think I can give you dating advice. I don’t blog because I want you to tear me apart. I don’t blog because I need your validation. I don’t blog because I need the attention. I don’t blog because I’m a bitch. I don’t blog because I think I’m always right. I don’t blog to bring other people down (look at my situation with the roommate – I’ve never said anything remotely bad – but she swears that I have). I don’t blog because I want you to be my girlfriend. I don’t blog because I want your opinion. I don’t blog because I think I am perfect…

I blog because I love to write. No, really. Love. To. Write. I’ve written little newsletters, short stories, screenplays, bad poetry and journals since I was very young. I was editor of my High School and College Newspaper (I wrote this one story many many years ago that wasn’t so much a story as it was an homage to my favorite color combination at the time – Blue and white. In the “story” everything the girl has is blue and white and swirled and lovely. And I don’t remember exactly what happens to her, but I am certain that her blueberry-flavored blue and white chapstick was VERY central to her ultimate salvation.) In the perfect world, I’d lounge about on a pillow and write all day and people would drive trucks up to my house and bring me money in exchange for the writing.

But the trucks haven’t gotten here yet. And they’ll probably never come and I am actually okay with that.

So I blog to give my passion for writing somewhere to go. Blogging is tricky business. If I didn’t want to be read, I wouldn’t publish this on the Internet, right? But being read isn’t the only reason I do it. Some days, I think it was easier to blog when no one read. Do I need a thicker skin? Probably. I do LOVE that people read the blog. I love that people sometimes see a little piece of them in my writing. I have blogs that I read in the morning as a break from my mundane existence. The peek into someone’s life makes me happy. And if I can be that to a few people, then that’s great. But that is just a side effect of blogging, really. Because I do this for me. It helps me work through my feelings and remember the glorious things we don’t always – it is easy to forget the flush we get about something when it ends poorly.

In addition to allowing me to look at myself, this blog allows me to cherish those perfect little moments that would otherwise be lost in the bigger picture. If you do love to write and you do open your blog up to comments, you’re bound to get unsavory remarks from time to time. You come to expect them. But, as I told a friend of mine, negative comments on your journal feel like some intruder has stormed into your home and taken a dump on your carpet.

And I guess you could say that I opened the door. But there is a difference between constructive criticism (which, FYI, I’ve never really asked for, though I do appreciate it at times) and outright meanness (again, also never asked for and appreciated to a much lessor extent). Maybe, I think, I should shut the door from time to time. In closing, I’d remind you that you don’t know me. We haven’t had lunch and cocktails and mani-pedis. You know what I let you know about me. And if I sound defensive, it is because I care about myself. If I’ve learned anything from being fiercely independent and opinionated, it is that you have to protect your own heart and soul.

And desiring to do so doesn’t make me a weak person.

Almost Midnight

It is almost midnight and I am so relieved to have a brand new week to play with.

I have had a tough week loaded with anxiety, fear and sadness. Though it started with a splendid (over the top) holiday party which I can’t complain about, I have had a miserable week. First I learned through my concerned grandmother that my mother suffered a mini stroke – my mother has not said a word to anyone and the only reason my grandmother knew was because she was right there when the doctor revealed the answer to the mysterious blindness that occurred the previous week.

Apparently, my dear mother had gone blind for 6 hours. It happened as soon as she arrived back home from dropping my father at the train station. She unlocked the door and couldn’t see anything – she managed to get herself in her bed and waited until the temporary blindness went away.

Oh, doctors! She is more stubborn than a mule. She refused to call me or anyone to help her; she never does anyway. When she regained her eyesight, she went on with her business; baked the family’s favorite cookies and got her usual 4 course meal ready for the 7pm dinner.

NOTHING was said to anyone. She still doesn’t know that I am quite aware of her little scheme.

Last weekend, our 14-year-old White Persian cat named Princess Rachel was not doing too well. I knew her days were short with us and I rightfully warned my parents not to tell me if Rachel had gone to kitty heaven (I can only imagine the endless fields of catnip and the millions of four-legged purring machines rolling around and getting high on heaven life).

That Sunday evening, I gave her one last kiss and said to her that she will be fine. She passed away the next morning.

When I arrived home this morning, I asked about Rachel and my mother said: “She’s fine. She’s better. Don’t worry”. I looked around the house until my mother couldn’t bear having me tear down the house only to never find her. I knew she was gone but I hoped that I was wrong.

I sat in the kitchen and cried.  My mother, like any Haitian mother prepared some fresh coffee and reminded me once again that she is fine, she is better and not worry.

I am sure she was referring to herself as well as Princess Rachel.

We are young

It’s hard for me to comprehend that I’m actually actively seeking a woman right now. It’s so odd. I’ve always shrugged off my single status as a consequence of me not finding the right lady or that I want to have fun. And that I needn’t look so hard because she would find me. Or we’d find each other.

Fate and all of that good stuff.

Then I turned a certain age *cough* and all hell broke loose emotionally and I realized that I didn’t want to wake up 10 years from now alone and not at least be able to say that I’d tried. (If I’m never going to find The One, I don’t want it to be because I spent my life hiding under covers away from human contact – I could be anti-social sometimes) But what’s next? Bored with dating, tired of trying to find her in smoky bars and wondering where to go. I get tired of it all, spending weekends alone. I scrunch my nose up at the girls who might be available. I’m too picky. Or sometimes, not picky enough, so I end up wasting time on women when I know there’s no hope for a future. And this causes me to wonder if I’m at the point in my life where it is worth dating someone who isn’t The One. And then I get all stressed that I’m over thinking and that I should be having fun and not worrying so much about biological clocks and life schedules.

I’m stalled. Or maybe I’m stalling. There’s a fine line between the two.