The Nice People We Meet on the Subway

I don't usually sit when I take the subway. I find sitting makes me feel more claustrophobic and usually some man's crotch ends up just a few inches from my face. Also, I like to balance without holding onto anything, like I'm surfing.

When I choose to sit, inevitably I do so just as an elderly man or pregnant woman or tiny child is boarding the train. Of course I bounce right back up to offer my seat. Most people are very grateful for an unexpected resting place.

But sometimes being nice backfires.

The other day Tiffany and I sat. Remember that long train ride to Brooklyn? Well, we were on our way back. I was tired and not in the mood to surf, so we sat down in the middle of a bench in a nearly empty car. A few stops later, the car was very crowded. I kept an eye out for incoming crotches, but what came our way instead was an elderly looking woman carrying several bags.

I say elderly looking because of what happened next.

"Would you like to sit?" Tiffany asked, half-rising from the bench.

The woman looked at Tiffany like she was an idiot.

"Do I look like I need to sit?" she snapped. "Do I look old? What makes you think I need to sit?"

I'm not proud to admit that at this point in the exchange I pretended not to know the woman I'm engaged to. Meanwhile, Tiffany began to stammer.

"No, I mean, you don't look like anything... I mean, it's just...we're getting off at the next stop!"

"Actually, we have two more stops," I said helpfully, reclaiming my partner.

Tiffany glared at me.

"But you're right," I hurriedly went on, "we really should start making our way to the doors."

Extra Door

When Tiffany and I lived in San Francisco, we bought almost all our furniture on Craigslist. It seemed like someone was always selling exactly what we needed, so we never saw any point in going to an actual store to buy the same thing for a lot more money. In New York, not so much. People here are too rich to bother selling things. They just throw them away.

Until last weekend, we hadn't bought anything on Craigslist. We had, however, picked up three excellent pieces from our neighbors. Our sidewalk trash finds so far include: a bookshelf that's too big for all our bookshelf spots (we're selling it!), a grocery cart that we have yet to use, a miniature baker's rack to give us extra kitchen counter space in our living room (the rack is not so miniature that it fits in our kitchen), and a bright orange door. We have no use for the door. That is to say, all our door frames have doors, so this door is nothing if not superfluous, but it's so pretty! And antiquey! As soon as we saw the old-timey keyhole, we had to have it. For now it's a decorative door on our patio.


But Tiffany kept scouring Craigslist, and we finally hit the jackpot with exactly the multi-purpose ottoman we'd been looking for. This guy was selling a piece that has a cushion top lid that reverses into a coffee table top. Even better, two smaller ottomans fit inside the piece, providing us with extra seating whenever we have company.

I was suspicious as soon as we approached the seller's apartment--a towering water-front high rise in the financial district.

"Why would someone who lives here need extra cash?" I said. "Should I put a rock in my pocket in case he's a murderer?"

Tiffany rolled her eyes.

(FYI: There are no rocks in the financial district anyway.)

It turns out the guy was just like us. Or he had been just like us until he moved into the towering high rise with the doorman and the swanky red lights in the elevators. Now, he was on the cusp of being someone infinitely more rich than us. But old habits die hard. He was selling his ottoman because he didn't need it anymore (he needed something bigger to go with his enormous new apartment).

Tiffany and I took a minute to breathe in the smell of his success before we hefted the ottoman up and walked awkwardly out of the apartment.

"As nice as it is," I whispered while we waited for the elevator, "it's a studio. At least we have a bedroom door."

And a decorative orange door too.

A Long Day's Journey

Although I have no sense of direction above ground, between Tiffany and me, I am the most competent on the New York City subway system. Except, apparently, when I'm not.

Last weekend, we took an adventure to Brooklyn to see what we could see. But, because of construction on the subway lines, we almost didn't get there to see anything. The express trains weren't running, but they were running on the local track, but only one of them and it wasn't making all stops... We let two trains go by as we contemplated the map in the station, the map on Tiffany's phone, and the paper service-change advisories on the platform.

Finally another train pulled into the station. By now we should have been in Brooklyn, eating brunch somewhere.

"Are you sure this is our train?" Tiffany asked me as we stood between the open doors trying to decide whether to bail.

"Yes," I said, shaking my head no.

We jumped inside.

It wasn't our train. We ended up dead-ending at the bottom of Manhattan, then paying to reenter the station to catch the train going back the way we'd come.

When we got to the transfer station, we saw an express train pulling in at the same time.

"Finally!" Tiffany cried. "Our luck is changing!"

It would have been... if that train had been going in the right direction. That long-awaited express train took us a quarter of the way home before we had the opportunity to switch again.

We could have given up--"I meant to bring snacks!" I cried at one point as we watched ourselves pass the stop we needed and our stomachs growled--but we kept trying until we reached what now felt like a very faraway borough. We didn't make it to the restaurant we had in mind, where the food was so local it very likely came with a side of dirt. But the restaurant we found had no line.

"These pancakes are amazing!" I moaned, scooping up my syrup-soaked crumbs with my fork.

"I think they're Bisquick," Tiffany commented.

Fine Art

I'm very concerned about my carbon footprint.

If I'm not around to do it, I remind Tiffany to crawl under our desk and behind our TV to turn off our surge strips when we're not using all the things that are plugged into them. When our sink had a drip in one of our previous apartments, I kept a pitcher underneath it at all times and drank only that water. Sometimes I turn out the lights on Tiffany when she's still in a room.

But. I enabled an enormous waste of paper the other night when our friends Bobby and Teresa came over with their children, Julia, Peter, and Baby Sandro.

We didn't have time to pick up taste-treats or toys like we usually do. They had been waiting for us so long they were about to be kicked out of the Natural History Museum.

So when Tiffany and I got home, we ran around sweeping our clutter underneath things, looking for anything kid-friendly. I eyed a set of Left, Right, Center dice but decided they were too close to swallowable-size.

"Where are the crayons we bought?" I shrieked. "And paper! Lots of paper!"

Tiffany surfaced from somewhere deep in the closet with a plastic baggy of crayons. The box apparently had been destroyed when Peter and Julia last visited.

They're such good kids they don't need to be entertained, really. But when Peter started throwing our stability ball around the apartment, King-Kong style, we pulled out the crayons and a stack of brand-new printer paper.

"Can I have another piece?" Peter asked after a few swipes of blue.

I handed him one.

"And me too, please," Julia called, sing-song style, as she taped an abstract-style rainbow to our bathroom door.

"Maybe they should use the back of the paper," Tiffany whispered to me as I went for more sheets.

I gave her a half-hearted nod.

But when I suggested as much to Julia, she pointed out that when we hang the pictures on our walls, only one side can be seen.

And since she was exactly right, I kept passing out paper, without a second-thought, until all of our doors were covered in crayon-drawings.

Next time I'll be prepared, though. I'll tell Julia I have a better idea:

Reversible art.

Guggen-heights

I'm not afraid of heights except when I'm somewhere that's up really high in the air. When I was little, I wasn't afraid of heights even then. I was afraid of elevators. I didn't trust them to stop themselves, and so I took the stairs--often dragging the rest of my family or at least one member with me--no matter how tall our destination.

My brother has always been afraid of heights and once stopped me from looking out at the top of a Look-Out we had summited together when we were small children.

"Get back, Rebecca!" he cried, throwing his arm to block me from approaching the safety railing. We went back down again without seeing anything.

I was reminded of this the other night at the Guggenheim. I'd never been there, and the spiraling, ascending design really was beautiful until I looked over the edge at the glittering gala-attendees below. After that it was terrifying. I saw myself plummeting the several stories to my death amid silver tray-laden servers passing chicken satay on sticks.

"Get back!" I cried, throwing my arm to block Tiffany and Rob from approaching the curved railing. I understood my brother's arm from so many years ago. If you love people, a fear of heights is like a blanket you can't help but throw over them to prevent them from seeing anything. It's why I'll never sky-dive. And why Tiffany never will either.

I wanted to laugh at myself, but I didn't see anything funny about our altitude. So I just took Tiffany's hand in my sweaty palm and we three walked on together.

The Notebook (lesbian-wedding edition)

The first time Tiffany and I had a moment to think about our wedding after we got engaged came high up in the air on a plane, somewhere between New York and Miami. Everything about the ring on her finger was still new. That day, we took pictures of her left hand holding a coffee cup at breakfast, a beer bottle at the bar, and a pencil while she studied. We tried to obscure the rubber band she had to wrap around the ring to make it fit (the ring I "borrowed" from Tiffany to use as a model was not one she wore on her ring finger. Apparently it was a thumb-ring for a giant).

Anyway, even though for years getting engaged felt like the Big Thing, now the Big Thing is the Wedding, and we have to plan one. We brought a notebook on our Christmas holiday to jot down our ideas, in case we had any.

"So should we talk about the wedding?" Tiffany asked shortly after take-off.

"Sure, I was thinking..."

"WAIT!"

I looked at her, startled.

"Maybe we should write this down in the notebook. Should we get the notebook? I think we should get the notebook. Can you get the notebook?"

I got the notebook.

Now that we're a little further down the line in our wedding planning (translation: we've planned NOTHING but have talked an awful lot about many things), I've come to appreciate the Notebook. As far as I can tell, it's mainly helpful in that it allows us to cross out what we've written down after we realize how incredibly affordable our ideas are for multimillionaires.

O-M-Double-G-D, It's a Cat

Did I tell you about our cat?

Tiffany and I live in an apartment where pets are not allowed. It is our greatest sadness, which is why I was so happy one day to open the curtain of our patio door to find a beautiful black and white cat staring in at me from outside.

"O-M-Double-G-D, it's a cat," I whispered to myself, using my great powers of deduction (O-M-Double-G-D is oh-my-good-god-damn for anyone who's interested).

I backed away slowly so as not to startle it and then sprinted the 20 feet between me and the bathroom where Tiffany was showering.

"Tiffany!" I yelled. "There's a cat on our balcony!"

Then I loved Tiffany a little more because her first response was not:

"What the hell are you talking about?"

It was:

"Oh my god! We have a cat! Get it some milk!"

I ran into the kitchen and filled a small bowl with milk. When I ran back to the patio, the cat peered at me, and then, when I opened the door, darted away, over the wall that divides our patio from our neighbor's and into an open sliding door.

My great powers of deduction only go so far. Because we've never seen our neighbor and he/she/they has/have nothing on his/her/their patio (not even twinkly lights!) I did not consider that he/she/they might own a cat. Invisible neighbors don't have pets.

"Oh," I said to myself. "It's someone else's cat."

And then I drank my saucer of milk and went back to report the sad news.