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.