City Wendy

A Thousand Years in one Piece

I have this friend who's always just about to pick up his life and move somewhere new. One month it's Seattle, the next it's Asheville, North Carolina, or Vermont or New Zealand. Nevermind that he's lived in Chicago for ten years and seems on track to easily be there another ten more, in his mind he's still always just about to move somewhere new. In a way, I have to kind of admire his ability to keep dreaming with such determination despite the conventions of his stable life. I guess it keeps things interesting, and certainly in the middle of a Chicago winter, it might be one of the few things that keeps him waking up morning after morning to face the bitter cold and dreary skies.

When I was visiting him a few weeks ago he was telling me about his new fantasy of picking up and moving to San Francisco, which isn't so much a "new" fantasy as just an old one newly recycled.
"Where do you see yourself moving ?" He asked me, which sort of caught me off-guard.
"Well, I just moved, silly!" I answered.
"Yeah, but next," he said, " Where do you think you'll move next?"
"I think I'm probably staying in New York," I replied, rather matter-of-factly.
"Really?!" he said, surprised by my response.
"Well, yeah," I said. "I mean, I don't see Drew leaving anytime soon...or ever, really. He grew up there. His family's there. If I'm going to be with him, I think New York is where we're going to stay."
"Huh," my friend said.
"Huh?" I echoed.
"You don't think you'll ever move again?"
"I doubt it. Not as long as I'm with Drew." I said.

And then it really hit me: this could be it. I might never live anywhere else. And the realization is all at once liberating and scary and exciting and sad and...well, everything. Drew and I have been talking about when we might like to start making babies and all that and though I know my grandmother is convinced I'm going to live in sin forever, I think marriage is probably on the horizon somewhere, though neither of us is particularly in a hurry to get legal and all that biznass...especially since we're both freelancers and don't have the holy grail of company-provided health insurance to sweeten the proposition (and really, besides that and wedding gifts, what's the point of getting hitched?).

At any rate, my stuff arrived safely from storage on Wednesday morning and Drew's apartment is finally starting to feel more like "our apartment." It's still filled to the brim with...well, stuff. We have two of a lot of things: two coffee tables, two desks, two desk chairs, two TVs, two DVD players, and on and on. Obviously, we'll be making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of (to keep: Drew's ridiculously big HDTV. To get rid of: his framed picture--in the bathroom--of Louis Armstrong on the crapper) and sooner rather than later, I hope our apartment will be beautiful mesh of all our things (minus louis on the john) and our individual aesthetics--a representation of this life we're creating together. Here in New York. Where we will probably stay forever.

See, I just don't see Drew ever leaving New York. This is where he was born, where he grew up, where he's lived his entire life. Leaving it would be like leaving a limb behind, it's so much a part of him. I knew all that moving here--it's what made the move to New York an especially big deal for me, and maybe what  contributed to my freak-out/anxiety attack the other day. Because I know as long as I'm with Drew, I probably won't be moving anywhere else. It's like, my cats and I are a packaged deal--anyone who dates me, sort of has to date all three of us. And Drew and New York are a packaged deal.

Luckily, Drew loves my cats. And I love New York. But I'd be lying if part of me doesn't wonder if maybe I won't always love New York, or if I'll itch for a change eventually--if one day I'll wake up and just like my friend, start fantasizing about picking up and moving somewhere new. That's the part that's really scary to me, not the part about raising a family in New York City. God, that seems easy in comparison. It's the idea that one day I won't want to be here anymore--after all, I grew up moving around...what if being a nomad is as much a part of me as NYC is a part of Drew, that I simply can't stay put in one city for the rest of my life. My fear of commitment isn't so much about being with one person forever, its about being in one place forever. And I'm just not sure how to negotiate that fear. Maybe it's something that goes away in time. Or maybe it's just something that keeps me on my toes, always taking steps to move my life moving forward, to stave off complacency.

At any rate, it's not something I have to figure out today. But it's there--on my radar, in the back of my mind. It's the lens through which I view New York, actually. "Can I live with this forever?" I ask myself all the time. Obviously, when it comes to framed photos of musicians taking a crap, the answer's easy. If only everything were so clear.

Making Room

My stuff that's been sitting in storage for the last 5+ months will finally be delivered to Manhattan next week. I've waited so long to send for my things for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that there hasn't been enough room in the apartment for everything. Drew's lived here for something like 14 years and he's collected a lot of things during that time. And he's a guy, so it's not like he goes through all his closets and drawers and whatnot every three months like I do and gets rid of the things he no longer uses. No, when I moved in back at the end of September, there were nooks and crannies in this apartment--oh, who am I kidding--there were entire closets that hadn't really been organized in over a decade. So, little by little, I have been coaxing Drew to go through things, consolidate, get rid of stuff, make some rhyme and reason to the order of everything. And slowly, very, very slowly the apartment has started emptying out a bit to make room for my stuff.

It's a delicate thing asking someone to make room for you in his life. It means suggesting he may no longer need the pile of old towels at the bottom of the linen closet or the box of his aunt's chipped china that he took off her hands years before because he was too nice to say he didn't want it when she offered. It means saying, after he's exhaustedly gone through one closet, that, no, that's still not enough, that he has to go through all the closets and drawers and cabinets because there's precious little storage space and he needs to make sure that everything in it is really something he wants or needs to hang on to. Sometimes, it even means pressuring him, nagging, and acting like the kind of woman you don't really like being, but have to because there's still not enough room and you've got things you want to hang on to, too.

A few weeks ago when I asked, rather exasperatedly, if there was any other storage space in the apartment beside the two (two!) closets, a handful of kitchen cabinets and some room under the bed--if there was any other space at all that I wasn't noticing or hadn't considered, Drew pointed to a trunk that sits beneath the built-in bookshelf and said, "well, there's that."
"Isn't that just a block of wood?" I asked.
"No, it's a trunk--there's space in it." he said.
"There is? Is it empty? " I asked excitedly. "If it's empty, we could fill it with all kinds of stuff! Extra sheets! Blankets! Winter coats! Your enormous CD collection!!"
"Well, actually," Drew said, "my notebooks are in there."
"What kind of notebooks?" I asked.
"You know, just notebooks. Where I write things on my mind and stuff like that."
"You mean diaries?" I asked.
"They're not diaries!" he exclaimed, "They're notebooks!"
"That you write your thoughts and feelings in, right?" I said.
"It's not just thoughts and feelings," he said, "It's quotes I like and story ideas and things like that."
"But also thoughts and feelings?" I asked.
"I dunno," he said, "I guess."
"Then, they're diaries."
"Well, I just call them notebooks," he sighed.
"Fine, whatever," I said. "How many notebooks do you think you have in there?"
"Well, probably a hundred or so," he said.
"Jesus Christ, you have 100 diaries?! Do you need to hold on to all of them? I mean, are they all super important to you, or do you think you could maybe let go of some? I got rid of almost all my diaries before I moved and it felt really good!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah," he said, "I could probably get rid of some of my notebooks. That'd probably be okay."

So Drew spent the rest of the day going through his "notebooks" reading old entries and deciding which ones to hang on to and which ones he was ready to pitch and at the end of the day, he came out to the living room triumphantly carrying two full garbage bags and said, "I'm getting rid of all these! I'll take them out so they get collected with the garbage tomorrow morning."
"Great!" I replied.

The next afternoon Drew burst through the front door for lunch red-faced and hysterical.
"Jesus," I said, "What's wrong?"
"Our garbage wasn't collected!" he yelled, waving his arms around in the air like a madman. "And someone got into our bags! And now my diaries all over 52nd street!!!!"

Well, at least there's room now to store our winter coats.

Now and Then

Next Thursday I'm flying back to Chicago for a 3-day visit and I'm so excited that I've been waking up the last few mornings thinking, "Okay, just 10 more days," "Just 9 more days.." and today: "Only 8 more to go!"

It's only been 2 months since I left and I still feel very much in transition here--all my stuff's still in storage and I still haven't starting working a fulltime job yet, for Christ's sake--but in so many ways the two months that I've been gone feel like two years. Well, okay, maybe not two years, maybe more like 8 months. Okay, 6 months. It feels like I've been gone 6 months and when you're only 31, that's like half your life or something. So, I'm excited to get back for a few days and maybe jog my old jogging path and have a Delirium Tremens at the Hopleaf and eat Sunday brunch at Over Easy and try on jeans at The Dressing Room and listen to the juke box at TenCat and, of course, sing Daniel and Dream a Little Dream at Cafe Bong.

Speaking of karaoke, Drew and I have been going to a Japanese karaoke joint in our neighborhood pretty regularly for the last few weeks. It's no Cafe Bong, that's for sure (you even have to pay for your songs!), but there's something familiar and comforting about it, like a little nook I've carved for myself in this big city where I can sit in a small room with a room full of strangers-turned-instant best friends and sing my heart out. A few weeks ago, Drew and I took some friends there and it was the first time they'd seen me sing karaoke and there was something about being in my own element, with a microphone in one hand and a beer in the other, a Gladys Knight song playing from the machine and a video of some Asian city scenes on the TVs, that made me really let my guard down.

I moved here and I was lucky to have Drew, of course, and to inherit his circle of really great friends, but they don't know me like my Chicago friends do. They don't know me through countless nights at Cafe Bong and endless days at the beach and bike rides down the lake front and drunken dinner parties and summer evenings on the back porch and years of singlehood and bad relationships and all those times I thought I might never find the right person. And maybe no one ever really knows you like the people who knew you when you were single. I think there's a real freedom in getting to know yourself when you aren't sharing so much of your time with one other person, and there's a freedom to form deep friendships in a way that might not be as convenient in the early months and years of a relationship.

There's been a real shift in my focus since moving to New York, from the single-girl lifestyle where I focused most of my energy on myself and my friends to being part of a live-together couple whose focus is now more "us" and not "me." And you know, one's not better than the other. I don't think my life is any more filled with love now, necessarily, than when I lived alone in Chicago--I just think it maybe flows through a more condensed channel now and so it feels more concentrated. I don't know. I just know I'm really enjoying this time in my life, of falling in love with a new city and falling more in love in my relationship and being really excited about the future and all the possibilities. But I really enjoyed the stage of my life I just moved out of. I mean, I loved it. And it's so nice that I can live in this one now and go visit the other, and so, I'm excited for my visit to Chicago next week and I hope there are many more visits after that one and that I keep moving forward while holding on to the treasures I've collected along the way and wow, if that's not all an indicator that I've been watching too many sappy holiday movies, I don't know what is.

In Which I am Sappy

A lot of people have asked me if I have any advice for long-distance couples--how to make it work and how to avoid going crazy, and while there are some specific suggestions I'll make in another post this month, none of them will work if you aren't in a long-distance relationship with the right person.

I certainly didn't set off to start a long-distance relationship. In fact, if you'd ask me to name all the things in life I wanted, an LDR would have made the list somewhere between "hut in Cambodia" and "piece of toast with Mother Teresa's likeness burned on the side." A boyfriend in New York while I lived in Chicago? Two years ago I would have said, "What's the point?" But that was before I met Drew. And, admittedly, even after I met him, the decision to start a relationship with hundreds of miles between us didn't happen overnight. There were tears in the beginning and anxiety and confusion and sleepless nights. I wanted a boyfriend, sure, but I wanted thing to be simple, uncomplicated, easy to figure out. But that's rarely the way life works. And for all the anxiety I experienced, I got the sweetest boyfriend and the best relationship in return and I wouldn't change a thing.

Today marks exactly a year and a half since Drew and I had our first date (a blind one!) and I can't imagine how my life would be now if we hadn't taken the risk to date each other across the country. Not only do I have a new and exciting home in New York City now, I'm with the guy I was always looking for--the guy who brings home flowers for no reason, and makes me laugh all the time, and saves plane and movie and concert tickets and cuts them up and pastes them together to create little cards for me.  I'm with the guy who makes playlists on his iPod filled with my favorite songs, and who listens to me yak and yak and doesn't act at all bored and better yet, he actually remembers what I've said--months later! And best of all, I'm with the guy who isn't just kind to me, he's kind to everyone. He's that guy whose co-workers love working with and everyone's happy to be friends with and whose family doesn't know what they'd do without. I'm with the guy who volunteers at homeless shelters, gives to charity and tips too much at restaurants, not because he's so rich or wants to show off, but because it's the compassionate thing to do. And sometimes, like yesterday morning when my cat, Simone, who never likes anyone but me, jumped on the bed, curled up on Drew's chest and started purring, I wonder how I got so lucky.

So thanks, Universe, for coming through for me and making up for all those bad starts I got on the path to relationship happiness before Drew. It turns out he was pretty worth the wait.

Flashes

This past weekend was bookended with two lovely trips to Hollywood Beach with my girlfriend, Niki. We arrived there Friday afternoon shortly after 5 o'clock, straight from our respective offices and we stayed all the way until the sun went down. Somewhere in the middle of our visit, a third girlfriend stopped by on her way out of town, bringing us beer (the good kind) that we wrapped in bandanas to keep the cops at bay, and ginger chewy candies which we ate with abandon. At 8 PM, wading in the lake and staring out at the darkening horizon, I tried to cup just a bit of summer in the palm of my hand like I might have done some similar summer evening in my youth with a firefly, watching the spaces between my fingers glow orange with each flash.

Again on late Sunday afternoon, we made our way back to Hollywood Beach, magazines and Twizzlers in hand, and watched day turn to dusk before we headed for a Mexican dinner and half a pitcher of Margaritas to cap off the weekend.

Hollywood never disappoints and yesterday, in particular, was a day of beach-bound circus freaks keeping us well-entertained. There are characters we recognize now, like "Mr. and Mrs. Universe," a couple so incredibly beautiful and exotic-looking, we're not sure why or what they're doing in Chicago.

"Maybe they run a modeling school or something," I pondered, watching the deeply tanned husband and his perfectly-toned pregant wife wadel hand-in-hand into the water.

"Maybe they aren't even real," Niki replied.

Sometimes I think the same thing about our beach--the way the lake stretches into the horizon like an ocean and the the hot white sand massages the soles of my feet and the Mexican ice cream men always have lime popsicles for me the second I'm craving them most. Maybe it's not real--maybe I've imagined this one great outlet in a city and a life that otherwises causes great anxiety with its traffic and favorite bars closing without warning and work dilemmas that keep me awake.

So, my weekend was bookended by the beach, but somewhere in the middle I was sad and lonely and missing NYMan a lot, because, really? The weekend is mostly for couples. I can try to fill it with friends and activities and tell myself I like my own company when I'm alone, but those stretches of Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings that I can't convince myself otherwise, I miss him, and I tell myself, "Soon I won't have the beach. I won't have the summer or the sand or my friends with their ginger candies and bandanas for our beers." So I hold all that in the palm of my hand right now and watch the spaces between my fingers glow orange with each flash, and I know when it finally flashes off for good, I'm going to have something else to hold: I'm going to have Drew. And I'm going to have a new city that I'm pretty sure might just have some flashes of its own.

After the Introductions

The big "meet the folks" trip was a success! NYMan got in on the morning of the 4th with no trouble at all--even managing to catch two early flights, getting him to St. Louis over an hour ahead of schedule. The first stop after his arrival was a traditional diner in good ol' St. Chuck where I introduced my city-boy beau to his first plate of biscuits and gravy, which was a huge hit. Another first for him was dining in a room full of WASPs.

"Everyone looks the same here, ' he said, eyeing all the suburban middle-class white people.

"Welcome to St. Charles," I replied.

Later, NYMan was fully initiated into the family dynamic at the traditional 4th of July BBQ where my uncle asked to borrow $100 from him, my hypochondriac sister regaled everyone with stories of her many, many health issues, my mother announced she had bronchitis, and my grandmother insisted NYMan call her "grandma." And I'll stop there with the family dynamics since every single time I took out my camera, everyone warned me that if I posted any family photos on "that blog of mine," there'd be hell to pay, and since a big blow-up at Christmas time when a family member got her panties in a bunch over the airing of all the family drama--you know, like saying I wouldn't have access to coffee or internet at my grandparents' place, I have learned my lesson. They don't want me to write about them--MESSAGE CLEAR!!

That's okay--I have plenty of other stuff to write about...like how NYM got to see the arch for the first time, and how we went to a typical Missouri bar where the vending machines were full of cigarettes and chocolate, and we took a ferry across the Missouri river onto a little island where we could buy apple butter on the side of the road, and we ate lunch at a state park where two little hummingbirds fluttered about right outside our window, and NYM and I paddled around a pond for an hour in stifling hot heat just to have a break from our backseat car tour of the city and to cuss openly and to make out under a bridge for 5 minutes, and we traded our usual Gin and Toics for Airborne-soaked water at every meal to ward off my mom's bronchitis, my dad's "bad cold," and whatever else we might've been exposed to in that fierce Northeastern Missouri wilderness.

And much to my relief, the question of marriage only came  up one time in front of NYM and that was over a sushi dinner with an old college friend of mine who, I'm guessing, must have been on drugs because THERE IS NO OTHER EXCUSE FOR SUCH TALK!! Even my grandmother refrained from pressing NYM about marriage plans, which I am sure took every ounce of self-control she could muster in her tired old age. And just as soon as NYM was out of earshot, you better believe she was up in my grill about it. I told her we were waiting to have a baby first before making any big commitment to each other and that seemed to quiet her pretty quickly.

Despite a relatively smooth week of local sight-seeing, family bonding, and generous amounts of midwestern fare, the best moment of the trip came at the airport when we said good-bye to NYM. Both he and my mother, unsure how to appropriately say good-bye and equally dreading any full frontal body contact, fretted about a bit until my mother, taking the proverbial bulls by the horn, held out her hand and said, "You know, I'm not the huggy type like Wendy's grandmother--I don't like all that hugging...I'm just going to shake your hand if that's okay, " and NYM, so overcome with relief and gratitude and filled with such a strong adoration for my mother, resisted the urge to reach out and hug her and in that magical moment of soul kinship, held out his hand instead, gave her a big smile, and said, "It was reallty nice to meet you." And that, I really believe, was the very best way the week could have ended.

Meeting the Folks

I'm leaving for a 5-day trip to Missouri bright and early tomorrow morning. My parents flew to St. Louis over the weekend and will be in the states for about a month, so I'm using this opportunity to introduce them to NYMan. After I get settled in, he'll join me on Wednesday just in time for a 4th of July BBQ with the whole extended family (no pressure!). It's tradition for my family to eat bbq porksteak sandwiches on the 4th of July, and since I announced that NYM would be joining us, there's been a big to-do over what he'll eat in leiu of the pork since he's Jewish and all.

Countless phone calls, emails, and text messages have been exchaged among my grandmother, my mom, my sister and me to clarify what, exactly, Jewish people can and can't eat. "Basically, everything but pork is fine," somehow got lost in translation through all the channels until it finally reached my Grandmother as, "If everything on the buffet table has not been blessed by a rabbi, NYMan will be so utterly disgusted and offended, he will break up with wendy on the spot and we will never get her married off, I mean she's almost thirty-one for Christ's sake, let's not fuck this up!!"

"Is it a problem that I'm Jewish?" NYMan asked after I finished a food-related phone call with my mother a few weeks ago.
"No, not at all." I answered, "In my family it's ALL about the food and it's of the utmost importance that everyone stuffs himself to extreme proportions or the hosts melt under the weight and burden of unbearable guilt."
"Oh," he replied, "that sounds familiar."

NYMan and I will be staying at a motel that we booked on priceline. We should have just gone the safe route and booked reservations at a Sheraton or some such thing, but we're both on a budget right now--me saving to move to NY and NYM paying off his baseball habit and ridiculous 46-inch HDTV--that we decided to be frugal and get a deal. Unfortunately, our "deal" turned out to be a $45-a-night flop-house that reviewers have led us to believe might have mold in the bathtub and pubic hairs on the pillow cases. We're bringing our own sheets just to be safe. Extended family, hearing about our "deal," have kindly offered up spare bedrooms, which I suppose might just end up being our safe refuge.

My mother has our whole itinerary planned for us, which includes joining her  at her hair appointment on Thursday in the neighborhood where she grew up, so I can show NYMan my mother's childhood home and where I spent every summer growing up and which is, I guess, the closest thing I have to a hometown. Let me repeat that: we will be joining my mother at her hair appointment on Thursday. This is, I imagine, exactly how NYMan hoped to spend his summer vacation. And, frankly, it's the quickest way I can think of to initiate him into the reality of my upbringing.

The hair and the food--it's all about the hair and the food, and if NYMan didn't know that about me before, he sure as hell will by the end of the week. Wish us luck!!!

How to Annoy Me

Right after I've spent 10 minutes bitching about the price of gas and how much I hate Chicago traffic, and about an hour before your flight back to NY is scheduled to depart,  and just as we're practically pulling up to O'hare, lean over and say to me, rather non-chalantly, "You do know that I'm flying out of Midway, right?"

Acclimation

I'm taking NYMan to a farm in a couple weeks. A midwest farm. A friend of a friend has a house in the country and the plan is to camp out there over Memorial Day weekend for a night or two and NYMan is coming with. Now, I may not exactly be a farm girl myself, but I adapt well to most new surroundings. After growing up in 4 different countries--once moving from the heart of Seoul, where my family shared a hallway with a real-life Korean soap star to a house in rural Germany where we had a cornfield for a backyard and a neighbor with a thatched roof--I've learned to adjust. But NYMan--he was born and raised in Manhattan and even now at 37, only lives 20 blocks from the apartment he grew up in. A trip to Chelsea is practically traveling out of town for him--I mean, the fact is: he doesn't even have a driver's license,which here in the Midwest could only mean one of two things: too many DUIs or your heart is made of tin.

My point is: dating a girl in Chicago has really opened his eyes to all kinds of new things. Once, I even took to him to a restaurant with pillows on the floor.
"This is some kind of hippie cafe?" he asked, suddenly preparing for an attack of tofu sandwiches and monster-sized Birkenstocks.
"It depends on how you define 'hippie cafe,'" I answered, ushering him to a table by the window.
Apparently, anything involving the removal of shoes qualifies as "hippie," so you can imagine his disdain when I made him drink green tea and talk about his chakras, too.

I'm pretty sure accompaning me to the beach last summer--where he wore white gym socks and black slippers, no less--was a particularly painful personal experience for him, made only the slightest bit more tolerable by the abundance of flirty dirty talk and spray-on sunscreen, oh wow, I can't wait to see how he handles himself in a barn!

If there's a God, y'all, surely he'll grant us a corn maze.

I Hope There's Wine

Tomorrow night I'm meeting NYMan's father for the first time. He's a very traditional 87-year-old Jewish man and I'm the ultimate shiksa who's seriously dating his only remaining single son.

This should be fun.