You are currently viewing the stories for February, 2008

How I Met My Match With Bedbugs

by 02/23/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope

There is nothing more terrifying than finding a well-fed bedbug in your bed at 1 a.m. It’s even more of a rude awakening if the source of this bedbug can be traced back to a one-week stand you met through an online dating site. It all began last spring when I turned my attention to […]

The I of the Tiger

by 02/23/2008
Neighborhood: Midtown

    Tyger, tyger, burning bright,     In the forests of the night:     What immortal hand or eye,                 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?                              –William Blake For years he sailed around the city, his effigy an urban fixture beaming from the side of a bus, the prototypical comic book superhero, blond, blue-eyed and […]

Bob A.

by 02/23/2008
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

In 1963, the year my father killed himself, I was obsessed with Bob A. I was crazy about him. My father hated Bob A. and flew into a fury whenever he heard his name. In Bob A., my father recognized himself, especially when he was young. Though Bob A. was not, as far as I […]

Petrillio, or Love on the 90th Floor

by 02/23/2008
Neighborhood: Chelsea

Even the janitor’s wife has a perfectly good love life and here am I, facing tomorrow, alone with my sorrow, down in the depths of the 90th floor.  &nbsp–Cole Porter It may not have been the 90th floor, perhaps the 30th or 40th. The exact number is foggy in my memory, but the rest of […]

Survivorship

by 02/23/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg

I went out with my friend Dylan last night. We met in 2003 on the internet. Tried dating, but were better friends than anything. He was the first person I met when I moved back to New York and looking to date. I had left because my husband was killed in the World Trade Center. […]

Where the Wild Dogs Are

by 02/17/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Red Hook

Feraz and I are on the prowl in Red Hook. We drive slowly over wet cobblestone streets by the old wharves, past crumbling warehouses and parks bright with new grass over to Beard Street, where the silver frame of a new IKEA is going up. Two construction workers wave us over. “Have you caught ‘em […]

Off-Leash: Heaven in Brooklyn

by 02/17/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope

We had already lived in New York for a year when we discovered the park. A year since my husband and I moved from New Jersey to Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, a year since the most awfully timed disaster of the loss of a family member to brain cancer. That the family member was a […]

The Last Days of Roller Disco

by 02/17/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

Through the cinder-block walls of the roller rink, the beat leaks out onto Empire Boulevard. Inside, it’s two steps from the door to the rail of the rink where the skaters sail towards you, past you, and away, rounding the curve and bouncing to the beat; as they cruise down the far straightaway there is […]

Brookti & Me: 3 Years On

by 02/10/2008
Neighborhood: Tribeca

[For earlier Brookti & Me, check here and here . –eds.] ** I’ve been reading a lot recently about our new “post-racial” world, where we have “transcended race,” where a black man is running for president and white people are actually voting for him. I’m wondering, if we have transcended race so successfully, why are […]

I Am Not a Crook!

by 02/10/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

It was Richard M. Nixon who said it best when he uttered those immortal words: “I am not a crook!” For the record, he also said, “I have never been a quitter,” just before he resigned the presidency back in 1973. So go figure. I have always thought of crooks as cartoon burglars wearing Lone […]

Too Close, No Comfort

by 02/10/2008
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

Living in Manhattan and dwelling in an apartment depletes a person of standard, taken- for-granted privacies and idiosyncrasies that I believe every person and family exhibits. Here, on this grittiest of islands, we are intimate and strangers. Think of all of the people you comfortably smile at and gossip with, not knowing (or caring) about […]

Tune in Tomorrow

by 02/03/2008
Neighborhood: Manhattan

Every weekday and many weekend afternoons at around 12:30, I prepare a light lunch, sit down at the dining room table, and read The New York Times sports section. Which used to sort of surprise me, because I’m not that much of a sports fan. I go to a few baseball games a year. I’ve […]