Is it fucked up that yesterday I went to the Museum and wanted to watch Jurassic park and today I want to go watch Broke Back Mountain?

I am so bad at doing everything I promised to do. Funny story though: my editor found my LiveJournal; he laughed about my letter to boys and their controversial art.  

I got the column. So starting late January or early February my writing about the subway will be appearing in Spindle. I want it up in January because it’s the magazine’s “official” launch. I want to be a part of that. I think he still has open mics for 2 more so technically I’m one of the first three regardless.

It was really cool, when I met my editor I stayed for the poetry slam and it was awesome. I got to judge too. It’s cool cuz I’ve been looking for a good one. I’m excited about Spindle: it seems like a cool idea that would really go somewhere. It’s a cool looking site too.

Went on a first date last weekend. It went well: probably one of the best first dates in awhile. Not that there are a ton of them. Oh man.

It’s easier for me to get work done on a lot of projects when my boss isnt’ here. It lets me relax a little and be able to come back to things. I know I might not be able to finish a project with her here, but often I still can’t anyway.

Nick’s had a friend over all week. Becca and I really dig her. Lots of girl bonding and teasing Nick.

I’m sure there is more. Kathy should be here with the next round of fellowship applications.

Hope my phone gets here soon. This is crazy ridiculous and I had to meet up with so many ppl that I’ve never met before this week. I mean really inconvenient.

HOLLY CRAP!!!

Brooke,

Thank you for your query.  I love the concept and your samples are an interesting mix of prose poetry (Citronella, in particular) and flash fiction, which would have been enough for me, but a series of creative non-fiction pieces as you’ve proposed is absolutely perfect for Spindle.

I like to talk to prospective columnists personally to get a better sense of what they’re going for and how it can best fit into Spindle’s overall design, so whichever method works best for you, let’s connect via IM (******* or telephone (********or in person sometime after the New Year.  I work on West 27^th, so depending on where you are, we can meet up for lunch or coffee after work one day if in-person works for you.

Thanks, and happy new year!

**********************

Editor & Publisher

Spindle: NYC in the first person

www.spindlezine.com

Sometime between the gin and the sheets- or maybe it was just our nakedness, the air too hot for sheets that summer, trapped unmoving between the high-rise buildings- you mentioned John. We’ve debated it since, whether you said he always wanted us to marry or if you said he thought we would, but we were naked in my dorm room bed, much like where we started three years earlier.



You’ve said if it weren’t for John, we might not be as close as we are. That maybe we wouldn’t have taken the effort to call and e-mail and chat if he hadn’t pulled into that Wal-Mart parking lot, if there had been someone better to have called you that day in July. We were still teenagers. Do you remember? Hours after it happened I attended a birthday party in the park near my old high school with half a dozen other girls. We ate cupcakes that sat in ice-cream cones and played capture the flag. We took off our shoes and dipped our toes into the cold stream that divided the picnic tables from the trails. It was amazing. I didn’t know for days.



The gin hit harder that night that it usually did, but that’s not why it happened. You’ve suggested closure. I’ve taken it as part of a lesion in love: the kind that exists without sex, without obligation. But I've wondered if it was John, or because of John. That somehow that empty extra-long single bed that lay across from mine that summer was much like the one he left open on weekends. We’d sleep almost naked those nights, with one or both of us in underwear. I was too scared to sleep skin to skin. I’ve grown up some. You have too: the way you slid your hand up my leg at the bar, the way you reached for me in bed that night.



Maybe we were reaching for what we had: love and sex and fun, all when John was just out for the weekend. Where he was returning to replenish the Peeps on his desk that he always let me eat (he had them for every season). When he was coming back to recline at his computer and bullshit with you- because he was amazing at it (a fact he was proud of), before joining you for a smoke.



Until that evening I had seen John more recently than you. When people die I forget that they’re gone. I think of them as far away: difficult to visit, until in an offset unguarded moment I’m struck with the fact that they’re dead and it’s too late to ask them that one question I had always been too embarrassed to approach them with; that it’s too late to show them what I’ve become. Seeing you ended the charade that maybe John had just transferred, that he lived too far away, or that like other freshman friends, he had outgrown us. Maybe we were reliving the past: a time when we were all a little more naive, when we were all alive and some of us only pretended to be jaded. Maybe we were trying to show John who we’ve become, and that in our strange fucked up way we still love each other.

Dear Bronx,

I probably owe you an apology, and I did have a good time the other night. But when two cops each named McSomething tell you you’re in a bad area, and escort you almost all of the way to the bar you tell them you were headed to, you feel somewhat uneasy.

Also:

Dear Rap Stars,

The way you spell your names and the titles of you songs- the new and inventive ways you refashion “Shorty”-  now “Shawty”- every few years  makes my job more difficult: either that or Amazon is not showing your genera the love. Maybe Musiq instead of Music has nothing to do with it.

Oh and while I’m writing letters:

Dear New York City Guys,

I do not want to come over to your apartment for a 1^st date. Nor do I want to see the “controversial painting” in your apartment at the end of the night. Also, if you were out of high school by the time I was born, we can be friends but I’m not going to fuck you. No offence, but I’m too young for you, and I have a long standing rule about dating men closer in age to my parents than to myself.

Any New York City Nice Guys, please find me. Tell me where you are waiting, because as much as people say try the bookstore, it’s always lonely in the literary non-fiction section.

Love Me

Merry X-mas everyone. Out of work at 1:30—half an hour later than I was told. Awesome.

Being required to go on bridal WebPages for work is still fun even though I’ve been officially not “practically engaged” for 9 months.

Part of me thinks it’s good that I’m starting to get out there, as single and open, but part of me would like a relationship- a SUPER casual one though. Trademark sigh.

This is long and dedicated to 2 ppl: Vanessa- I believe my only reader, and myself so I don’t forget all this crazy shit.

I want to be reading best American 2007, but I’m going to have to skip around: it seems like a lot, a LOT of literary journalism. That’s awesome, but there is a really long essay on the war and blah! I want to read something beautiful, or something that amazes me, or creative or different. When I read 2006 (we read very little in Ira’s class) some of the stuff blew me away, and the 1^st essays were good. Grammar Lessons blew me away. The book did seem to grow into a big collection on death but there was some great stuff. Flipping through this edition I haven’t seen anything that isn’t literary journalism. Sigh. Although there is what looks to be a good essay on Nabokov’s Lolita— that just reminds me I need to get back to that collection of short fic and so far I don’t like it.

So all of that aside I did have a crazy exciting weekend, and Monday actually. Friday Becca and I got Pizza- she was called a snowflake, I know they were talking to her because I am a self-proclaimed ‘nilla wafer, then hung out with DJ in the West Village. DJ’s friend was having a party, so we went back to his place for him to change, his roommate’s friend then invited us to a party the next day: we said maybe.

When we get to DJ’s friend’s party it’s at a private party at the Runway (ppl were smoking indoors! In NY! It had to have been) Everyone there was super nice, DJ took care of us (must be making the good money at NBC) and Becca and I got to taste the $5000 Champaign he was drinking. I also gave out my number to this guy who seemed nice and smelled so good, so good.

The next night we decide to go to the other party. It was a triple birthday party. Hedgefund/banker/wallstreet guys. Gave out my number. Possible date Saturday. He texted me but I’m worried one of my texts scarred him off. If I don’t hear by Thursday I might text back and test things out.

Sunday I had a great workout was feeling good, then discovered we had no hot water. I usually send overly polite apologetic e-mails to my landlord b/c he’s super orthodox and I want to show respect etc etc, but I lost it. The e-mail went as follows:

There is no hot water in building 550 on 146th street.

 It's December, we expecting a nor-easter, I have shit to do today: our water is ice cold. Sitting around naked waiting for hot water is not working for me today.

I thought this problem is (sic) resolved.

Brooke

apartment 18

Yesterday I volunteered for an IRTS event at the Waldorf. I helped out for a little bit, ate crazy food and then hung out with the sales guys from work. I was so surprised to see them. It was awesome b.c one of them I know really well, one is my age, but we’ve never really talked, and one guy …well I think he loosens up with a beer and some clients. I ended up going out with them and drinking with them and the clients. ; ) All the guys at work talk good care of me. I also had a taste of one of their Champaign’s (cham-pa-gin, as they called it) although it was not 5000 I’m sure.

Today was also the day of raise bonuses. No bonuses. I thought I was going to get no bonus either because of what the other girl’s I work with supervisor had said, but I lucked out and got something really nice that I wasn’t expecting.

So life is good.

Note: when spell checking this I saw the ‘nilla wafer comment: Saturday night the boy I gave my number to asked me what my background was and I made him guess. He said part jewish. So I have 2 part jewish, 2 part Latina (from mixed Latina ppl), Melissa thought something else that was very different, I should ask her again…

I was really thinking about posting a week after the last entry- I swear! But a co-worker who I have recently added to livejournal has inspired me to get back on the wagon. I wish I could better follow her advice about other wagons.

I now know why grown-ups are so strapped for cash at the holidays. The rent check just cleared, I just got a black Friday bill, I just spent $60 bucks on x-mas gifts (I spent nearly twice as much on the present for my secret santa person at work than on my brother—I thought that would make him not feel weird, but I do have a “real” job and maybe I should spoil him.) and I’m still not done yet. I have been shopping in spurts, the electric bill will soon be coming, Nick will soon cash the check from when I broke his phone, we bought a futon for the living room, the weekend is coming up… It’s crazy. I think I’m going to focus more on saving when the new year starts—oh and soon I will be making payments on my phone.

I NEED to get on getting a passport photo. I hope Sarah can go with me to England to visit Nikki; I have practically no flying experience.

So been on a date: no call back (very surprised), Christmas party, Santa Con, and saw my co-worker Michal perform. 1. She is awesome. 2 Her music / performance  was awesome. 3. Her and her boyfriend are SO cute. (I met him when she cut my hair and got trapped in Brooklyn. )

This weekend I have a ton of IRTS applications to read (due Monday) but I am getting together with DJ on Friday. The rest of the weekend I don’t know. Hopefully being productive, undoing some of the recent damage I caused, and maybe (not holding breath) seeing Brendan. Although there has been some contact, I told Jay I needed some major space after repeated drunk dials after my Friday night date a few weeks ago. Tangent, on the way home from Friday night date a guy on the 1 looked at me and said “I know you.” Long story short we went to HS together and I haven’t seen him since he went through puberty. I got a hug out of it ß- reasons I should write more often.

Doing ok on the creative writing front. 2 ppl have read the draft of the most recent piece. One said work on transitions (cool)  the other person said it’s 3 stories—I was trying to experiment with a more stream of conscious stylized narrative (not real stream of conscious, that is bullshit). I’m going to maybe take out a good chunk of the end and rework it, but not tonight.

I feel like I should read something from best American (even though I’m worried that this years edition is going to be way more political etc) but I am soo tired. I also borrowed a book of short stories from Bob, but they are crazy dense—horrible to read on the subway. Nabokov. I’m no big into things translated from their native tongue, but I heard a selection from Lolita on NPR when I was running the board (This American Life maybe?) and the writing was beautiful. We’ll see how it is. I definitely still want to read Lolita whether I like these stories or not. The book was suggested to me after bob read the Social Deconstruction and Candy Box—so far I’m not seeing the connection.

Long entry. So tired. Hope the Eagle is in a better mood tomorrow.

8 days until the x-mas party

1 day until date with Steven

2 days until hanging out with Brendan

Brendan is also coming to the x-mas party

Want to write about my impromptu trip to Long Island but I think I need to write a version for me and a version for live journal.