You are currently viewing the stories for July, 2008

Naked and Never Hungry: How I Come to Know This City

by 07/27/2008
Neighborhood: Lower East Side

I don’t know what I’m doing here. It is a Thursday night and I am in a tiny Lower East Side theater at a dress rehearsal for the play I’m in where I am going to take all my clothes off. Now, generally, I don’t act and do not, by any means, take all my […]

Me and My Cane

by 07/01/2008
Neighborhood: West Village

“What happened to your knee?” Not since my pregnancy have so many people elevated a distended part of my body to public discourse. My neoprene knee stabilizer invited countless questions and unsolicited advice from friends and strangers in Greenwich Village, where I live, on the #6 train, and in the physical therapist’s office in Union […]

Little Devil

by 07/01/2008
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

After work on Tuesdays, my mother comes home to the apartment in the Ansonia Hotel where we live with my grandmother and takes me to acting class. The year is 1952. I hate acting class even worse than I hate second grade! My mother says I will learn how to speak with “charm and grace.” […]

Once More Over the Bridge: May 24, 2008

by 07/01/2008
Neighborhood: Multiple, On the Waterfront

I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge on my last day of classes. It was a beautiful day in May. I had walked over the bridge many mornings this year, dropping my daughter at her school in Brooklyn Heights and continuing to work. I teach the essay to first-year college students and it is a good […]