are you gonna spend your life wondering, standing in the back, looking around?

Christmas in NYC. I love Christmas. I like sparkly things, so this is no surprise. Christmas is very sparkly. I got off work today and I decided to brave the 31 degree weather to do a little Christmas shopping for my family. A few weeks ago I had wandered around Union Square where they have a lovely fair set up of booths of all kinds of great gift ideas; all unique, often handmade items. My favorite is a little booth of glass products, all hand blown from Western Massachusetts. Isn't it funny that I can't spell the name of the state I lived in for three years? But let's not lie, I had to look it up on the map before I went to school because I wasn't honestly sure exactly where it was.

Anyway, I went back today to purchase a couple gifts for my family and was pleasantly surprised that the young man running the booth was super attractive. Dark hair, light eyes, wearing a Red Sox hat and a great smile. He's on the phone as he walks back into the booth to help me and the other two inquiring customers, but as he's getting bombarded with questions he says to the person on the other end of the phone call "can I call you later?....okay, I love you, too, bye." My heart dropped. Girlfriend. Sigh. He says to me and the other patrons "sorry...you know how parents are, can't get them off the phone." My heart picked its sorry ass back up. Everything about his appearance is ringing my "this guy's totally my type" bell. We get to chatting, I ask him which of the glass Christmas ornaments he'd like if he was my mother so that I can keep talking to him. Through the conversation I find out that he lives in the city, so I ask him what he does when he's not helping a friend sell glass.

An actor. Of course. He said some other things but I was having a hard time listening because I was finding him so charming.

I want to stand and talk to him more, he's totally adorable and easy to talk to, but I fumble to make my purchases, thank him and tell him it was lovely talking to him, and walk away. He tells me that he hopes he sees me on Broadway soon.

It's really freakin' cold outside. I can't feel my feet.

I continue to meander through the booths, intending to discover some more gifts, but I can't stop thinking about this guy. I find myself wishing I had more make up on and that my hair looked better. My imagination starts to get the better of me. It seems like a great story to tell the kids- "Yeah, we met in Union Square right before Christmas... he was selling hand blown glass from Western Massachusetts." -Goddammmmitttt misspelled again. Right click and fix. - Okay, maybe it doesn't flow that well, but the hopeless romantic in my was a little swept away at the thought of having a more interesting story on how I met someone than "at a bar" or "eHarmony". Not that there's anything wrong with dating websites. I mean, I don't use them. Yet.

I've always considered myself a go getter. A girl who speaks her mind and doesn't necessarily fit the stereotypes. I dug around in my purse, tore of a corner of a Live Bait pay stub and wrote, with my lucky pen I stole from McCann's (aforementioned Irish pub), my first name (hell, he might be a psycho) and cell number on it...complete with smiley face. Then I stuck it in my pocket. Now I had the muster the balls to go give it to him. I peek around the corner and stand a few booths down where he can't see me. I watch, waiting for the booth to clear because I really don't want anyone to overhear me, I'm embarrassed enough as it is. How do dudes do this all the time? Finally, after lingering just out of sight like a crazy stalker for about five nerve wracking minutes I get the urge to just go for it. I walk up to him.

"Hi...I know this is really weird and I never, ever do this but, uhhhh, this is my phone number and you should call me if you wanna grab a drink sometime. I just, I mean... I, you're nice. Okay. I'm sorry, what was your name?"

Overlapping with everything I was saying Oh, yeah. No. Not at all. Oh. Yeah. Ummm, Yeah! Brad."

"Melissa. Nice to meet you. I'm going to walk away now."

And I did. I walked away. And I couldn't believe the surge of adrenaline and life and pride that went through me. I basked in my own awesomeness the whole train ride home. I don't care if he never calls. He probably won't. He probably has girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Or thought I was crazy. What matters it this:

I have enormous balls.

I'm more of a man than half the men I know. And, I won't sit around, wondering about the nice guy I hit it off with, and wishing that, if he wanted to, he'd have a way of contacting me. I vow to do more of this in my life.

No more what ifs.

Your move, Brad. Choose wisely.

As I was washing my hands in the bathroom at the little Irish pub in my neighborhood in Queens I’ve been known to frequent I happened to look up at my five beer deep reflection and notice that the view down my beige hippie style tunic was pretty impressive. I took a moment to take in the excellent contours of my twenty four year old breasts and was equally impressed and mortified that this was the image I’d been presenting all day long to customers as I waited tables in the Flatiron District all morning. I looked, for a moment, into the eyes of my own reflection, and then proceeded to give myself a “you go girl” look in the mirror. It was in that moment that I realized that these little moments in my life, however inane they may seem, are something most excellent and worth sharing. I’m a ridiculous mess of artistic ambition and emotional confusion, and between laughing and crying about the unmanageable tangle I’ve made out of my life, I’d might as well share a chapter or two of the triumphs and tribulations of your run of the mill, slightly self important, desperately emotional female twenty something struggling to get by in New York City. I walked back to the table where my friends were seated and made the drunken, half coherent proclamation: “I’m going to be a writer. I’m going to make a million dollars.” One of my friends expressed that the aforementioned sentiment should be the last title of my memoir. I don’t know at this moment where it fits, but here goes fuckin’ nothing. Everything.


It’s amazing what will spark a memory within you. There are the obvious things, like catching a whiff of your ex’s perfume on the subway, or hearing the song you danced with your first love to at the Freshman Farewell, but then there are the things that catch you totally and completely off guard. Automatic paper towel dispensers. It never ceases to make a pang in my heart. The most formative year of my life was spent at a community college in Plano, TX. It was there, that for the first time, a teacher actually expressed a passionate belief in my talent and encouraged me to pursue it. It was there that I made some of the friendships that will; undoubtedly, sustain me through what I like to call my “bat shit crazy years”. It was there that I fell in love with performing and expressing the human condition. It was also there that every single bathroom was equipped with an automatic paper towel dispenser.
These devices are the germiphobe’s best friend. You don’t have to touch – anything- They also have an uncanny knack for making the average citizen look like a total ass. You walk up to it, and there are no levers, no helpful paper towel tail sticking out begging you to pull and help yourself. When functioning properly, you just wave a hand in front of it and it happily spits out what it deems an appropriate amount of paper towel and then stops, waiting for you to tear off it’s papayran offering, dry your hands, and continue on your merry way. Never once have I seen a woman be satisfied with the initial amount of paper towel offered. Granted, I spend little to no time in men’s restrooms. I’m told that the reason men are so much faster in the restroom than woman is that 7 out of 10 men don’t wash their hands after taking a piss, but I digress. My point is the paper towel gods offer you their predestined amount, and most women will wave their hands again, asking for more. How’s that for a metaphor for humanity? “Oh? I can have this much? That simply won’t do, give me more! I love the thought of trees crying!” Or, when they are not working properly, you will wave at it like a long lost sibling, or even resort to banging it with the palm of your hand to no avail, further assuring all spectators that you have completely lost it, and that your jeans are as good of a drying device as any paper towel. I seem to be having trouble sticking to the point I was initially trying to make. Every time I’m in a restroom where the offered mode of hand drying is an automatic paper towel dispenser, I am immediately reminded of the academic institution that is responsible for the path I’m chosen, and it delights me that I can garner an emotional response from something that most people will see as something mundane. My brain is either fuckin’ awesome, or ridiculously miswired. For the sake of my ego, and my potential writing career, let’s go with the former.


Remember that time I tried to text you while walking home, but the rain on my iPhone’s screen was making things impossible so I gave up and pocketed it? Should have followed those instincts.


The gift, for which no one asked, was a ball.

The gift for which no asked was a ball. It was a red ball.

The gift no one asked for was ball.

A ball was the gift no one asked for.

…… This was me trying to figure out what the correct grammatical phrasing for the sentence “the gift no one asked for”…or “the gift, for which no one asked”. I typed it several ways, with different punctuations trying to “trick” Word into helping me. Screw you, Word…. You didn’t give me one squiggly green line. Now I’ll never know which is correct.

Another testament to the laziness of the human condition. But hey, at least I spell check. And am aware. Of sentence fragments. I like to play them off. As part of my writing style.

I was going to delete this, but I decided that it would go against everything I stand for. For which I stand……


Damn.