the guez

When I first moved to Brooklyn five years ago, I lived in Williamsburg. Around the corner from my apartment was a funeral home that displayed in its window a large, garish clock. I called it The Death Clock. The Death Clock was huge, easily visible from all corners of the street. It filled the whole window. The Death Clock had numbers on its face written in a crawly roman numeral in a font reminiscent of a Burton film. And finally, The Death Clock was neon, glowing whitely all hours of the day and night. It was in all, a very strange way to advertise a funeral home. The Death Clock glowed at us impassively as we strode past towards the subway late for work, as we brooded over our lives on our way back. When we walked home drunkenly in the middle of the night, it washed the street with a blue and white light that followed us all the way home. I never once used it to tell time. I just shrugged past its message of inevitable endings until I was safely past. Last week, walking h...

We were on the roof, two rounds into the song game. I had the guitar, noodling through the sudden silence. "How are things?" he asked, looking at me. I turned my face to the overlapping brownstones sleeping below us. "Fine." "I don't know why I have such trouble telling people…" He played with the pick in his hand. "I'm moving to Portland" "oh." My fingers fell silent. "when?" "September." Down below, people were walking home. A garden cat darted past into the shadows. Somebody called out to her friend, her laughter floating up into the air where we sat. "well… congratulations." "thanks" "you'll have to tell jen to be cool with me sleeping on your couch when I come to visit," realizing as I said it, that it was never going to happen. "ok. I will," he said, watching me. "I mean, it's fine. It's a good decision for you. And I barely see you anymore anyway...

There are times when my life resembles a bad scene in Bridget Jones' Diary . Monday morning, while out on my run in the park, I encountered the perpetrator of my broken heart and his new girlfriend. They didn't see me, as I was jogging behind them, and so I began a panicked dance of skidding right, then left, then right again, in a desperate attempt to find the appropriate direction to flee. The people walking past must have thought I was dancing with a ghost or doing some enthusiastic warm-up exercise involving flailing limbs and an expression of terror. Finally, finally, I chose a direction and sprinted past, hoping that I remained invisible, or at the very least, looked super fast and sporty. (It never did occur to me to just turn around and run the other way). On my ipod, Erin McKeown lilted into my ears, "I'm the kind of lover who won't run for cover. What kind of lover am I?" It's nice to have a sense of humor about these things. So that if h...

To his credit, he didn't even hesitate in response to my idea. "I know a few places that are great for that," he said. "Rocky can get us there, easily." It sounded perfect to me, so a little after 1 am, he arrived at my door with a spare helmet and soon we were speeding down empty roads to the bridge. The only place still open at that hour was the strip club, illuminating the filth and back alleys of Long Island City, red lights on steal beams, the awning lit like a hotel. We parked on a side street nearby and went the rest of the way on foot: up the stairs, halfway across the bridge, to the spot where the moon challenged the largest billboard, stuck between both islands. The bridge supports crisscrossed forever above us, the towers on either side of the water distant and dark. I climbed over the railing and threaded my fingers through the fence. "You ready?" "I don't have anything to scream about," he said, suddenly shy. "Just screa...

So next week, my dear little kat is leaving us for the sultry summers of Washington DC and the warm companionship of her Suzy. The whole thing has left me at a loss. Who is going to wind around my ankles when I cook dinner or take naps on my bed while I sit hunched at the computer? Who is going to follow me around the house and snatch at my toes when I prop my feet on the coffeetable? And walk me as far as the front door when I leave? What, oh what am I going to do without my kat? So last week, I went out and brought home cat. He doesn't have a name yet and spends most of the day cowering under the bed. He's just like me I think. Kat scoffs at his shyness and rolls over into the sunbeam by the pillow. "What is he so afraid of?" she asks and purrs.

What would you do if my love ran out of gas on the interstate and abandoned the way between my ocean and yours? What if it decided to get a cup of coffee instead and linger amid the plains and diners of the middle. Maybe it would find your love on the side of the road. And our loves would laugh and tell stories and talk about those days. Maybe they'd run away together and leave us to wonder what happened. (nov '04)

Powerwalking up 8th avenue one morning, late for work and trying to close the gap between where I was and where I needed to be fifteen minutes ago, I was struck with another sobering thought. If a portal to another dimension magically opened up on the sidewalk beside me, and by some stroke of luck I happened to see it, I wouldn't use it. I would not use it. sigh.

today in an effort to reduce the baggage in my life, I threw out all of my socks with holes in them. now my feet are cold.

There was a time when my filmmaker boyfriend took a job as an art model in order to make ends meet. The artist who employed him posed him nude against walls under bright lights and painted him, not as he was, but as he would be in fifteen years. He removed most of the muscle, added some fat, let the cheeks sag, the hairline recede. He added experience and some bitterness to the face, a hardening around the eyes. It's disconcerting to see what your lover might look like in the future, when time erodes his little perfections. This person. This man. Could I love this man with his sad eyes and sagging flesh? Besides, how well does this artist know my B anyway? Who's to say he'll ever wear that expression? Around the time B started modeling with more frequency, his restlessness started to shake him. He spent a lot of time thinking, started writing more. Had a birthday, realized some things, locked himself alone in his room for days at a time writing, screenplays, comedy acts, sk...

I recently got a gig cutting web videos for Hearst Magazines. It's not a terrible gig. Though arriving in that airy lobby every morning as those editors and models for Cosmo and Seventeen strut through the turnstiles in their heels and pose on the dual escalators past the waterfall, has done something to my self-esteem. Which is sort of why I never read those magazines in the first place. But now it can't be helped, and I've been forced to confront my own schlubbiness. The nice thing about working in film is the jeans/t-shirt uniform which I bring to new levels by also not doing my face or hair until I get to work, after which I run to the bathroom and half-heartedly throw some clips in one and powder on the other. Besides, I live in Williamsburg/Greenpoint which makes Disheveled into an art. But Hearst is Manhattan - the kind of Manhattan where Sarah Jessica Parker bought her shoes and gossiped and ate brunch on HBO. Hearst creates that Manhattan. And a short while I afte...

is an asphalt factory in Queens. Which is where brian, our flat tire, our broken jack, and I spent the afternoon. When the triple A guy finally arrived to lend us his jack, we were half delirious from the fumes and the inside of our noses burned in an unnatural way. How do you like them apples?

Sure, there are days when the fear really gets to you. There are days when you wonder why you made this choice, when you have no idea how to accomplish anything or even what the next step is. The path is all full of brambles and your paycheck is late. And of course the fear is nothing compared to the times when you wake up in an empty apartment and the only plan you have is to work in your bedroom alone all day and then go to sleep in the same room in order to do it again tomorrow. All for a movie that's full of flaws and empty of promise and not necessarily worth it. Then there are the days when you go to Joe's house to borrow some lights and he lends you his camera too so that one huge problem is solved, and you find it's easier to breathe. And then you put your glasses on to discover the brown lump on the couch is kenan feeling sorry for himself on a gig that fell through, and would you like some tea? So you drink the tea and tell them how you couldn't help but feel ...

Powerwalking down 8th avenue after work the other day, I was struck with a sobering thought.  If a portal to another dimension magically opened up on the sidewalk beside me, I wouldn't notice.  I'd be too busy stressing about rental houses and insurance agencies, and I'd march right past. Somehow, without my noticing, I'd become a grown-up.   The thought was so disturbing that I spent the rest of my walk trying to figure out how to reverse the effects. Maybe it's time to get out of the city?

I drove my car back from Massachusetts last night singing on the top of my lungs. I sang every song I know. Every showtune from every album I had as a child, from every play in high school including the parts I never got. Before that I sang about the woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. I sang about the rare bog in the valley-oh, meeting a bear up in the woods, about picking up a bumble bee. Then I went on to all the lyrics I could remember of all the pop songs and all the folks songs I could think of. Unfortunately, I couldn't get very far on those without help and so I just switched to a new song when I couldn't remember a verse. Which is why I ran out of songs to sing when I was still in Connecticut.  When I finally arrived in Brooklyn, my throat was hoarse. And when I reached under the seat to grab my stuff, my hands closed around something unfamiliar. It was the crack pipe belonging to the asshole who stole my radio. I rasped out a quick cur...

Yesterday the jackhammer woke me up at dawn and told me spring had come.  I ran downstairs and asked the orange man what they were doing and he said they would just dig up this block and leave the rest of the street alone.  But I didn't believe him.  When I turned away, the little hammer winked at me. Cheeky bastard.

If I remember correctly, the term from screenwriting class was ethical mode of action . To get it, you take a character and push him, and then push him a little more until he is quite uncomfortable, and then you sit back and watch what he does. His behavior in this extreme moment of his life defines his future existence for you. And hopefully it will prove you've concocted a person with the strength of will to stand up to the empire, or whatever it is you want him to do. Discovering elements of one's own ethical mode of action is a lot less fun. My discovery began this way: Enter a windswept,autumn night. A few sprinklings of drops, the hint of a rainstorm. Make it late for a work night- 9 or so o'clock. Add a good amount of crappy-job fatigue, accelerated by the knee-snapping speedwalk of a greenpointer with a half a mile still to go. Make sure it's just late enough that moving the car is going to take some time, and then throw in, just for fun, the discovery of a pile...

One summer spent in New York with my car (my LA sweetheart) has yielded this conclusion: Having a car unjustly towed by the NYPD, and having its window smashed and stereo stolen by a garden variety Brooklyn thug feels exactly the same. It costs about the same too. Conversely, the resulting misery is inversely proportional to the sweeping lights of joy experienced when the last concrete building outside the city fades away and all the adventures of the countryside spill out onto the road. So it was worth it I think as I send my car back to its winter hideaway in my parents' driveway in Massachusetts. Despite the price.

Ode sleepy dawns in greenpoint the sun slips past the dreamsighs of my pillow and waits listening the orange man assembles he bows to the foreman raises his instrument and begins O dear jackhammer what would summer be without your per- p-p-pERp-p-p-perPET-ual PUSH

My apartment windows don't have any screens. My roommates like it this way. And so do I. It's prettier. We get unfiltered Brooklyn sunlight in every room. When tall, skinny neighbors come to visit, they can holler up at me and I can stick my head out my bedroom window and holler back. I have total freedom to lean out from the living room and glare my disgust at the latin music beating from the parked car on the corner. And one day, I really will have the courage to lean way out and yell, "Yo! Cheese Sandwich!" to the slow bodega clerk across the street so that my food will be ready for me when I get downstairs. We live only barely separated from the outside world. No screens, no air conditioners. When the neighborhood cats go into heat, we know it. When I was little, my parents used to joke that I had sweet blood. I imagined my veins running rich with fruit juice, and felt special for all my bites. So my first summer in this apartment, snapping awake every night and s...

At nine o'clock in the morning, before she left for work, my roommate sat down at the kitchen table and wrote down on a piece of paper, "I, Julianne B- ask Katerina to take my teddy bear, my cds, my photo albums, and some clothes including my good shoes." I read the list outloud over her shoulder. "So that's what you're going to take with you today?" "No, it's what Katerina shold grab for me if the apartment catches fire." I glanced out of the window to where twelve storeys of apocalyptic smoke blackened the sky two blocks away. Down below, a line of men in uniforms stood ready in front of our building, waiting for the slightest wind shift to tempt the fire with the prospects of fresh fodder. Because who would be satisfied with an empty warehouse, when there's plenty of prime real-estate right next door? "Umm, if our house catches fire," I said, "I don't think Katerina's going to want to spend time going through y...