** Nobu **

I’m sitting on the toilet in Nobu, having just changed out of my silk underwear (it was cold in NYC today and I have a long walk to my parking garage …)

(At one point I was standing in the stall in just my bra, panties, and queen size p’tan’tyhose, and heels, and I thought for a moment what it might be like to burst into the dining room in that getup. I mean, we’ve all had those “Gone to school naked” nightmares, right? Why not go ahead and do it? They’d freak out, call the cops, I’d act all nonchalant … “What? What’s wrong? It’s a conceptual outfit! Conceptually, I’m wearing something!”)

in order to look a tad less puffy for my Dinner At A Fancy Restaurant … and I’m thinking, “Damn, for A Fancy Restaurant, they sure have a shitty-ass restroom. Sure, they have this white noise in the background that sounds like water, I’m sure that helps with the tinkling, but the toilet is so low my knees are punching out my eyesockets for crying out loud.”

We had the $100 tasting menu (the middle one) which was not nearly as good as the $200 tasting menu at Megu

(but I could be remembering only the delicious Kobe beef balls and the wonderfully solitary restroom that deliciously enabled profoundly sacred moments of the drunken upchucking of very expensive food without the hassle of women in the next stall listening to you (a) puking your guts out followed by (2) an auditory congratulation of self for a particularly good showing)

BUT! But. But it was all okay in the end, as the dessert (which looked sort of like a pyramid at Teotihuacan) was delicious and. AND! I had dinner with Heath Ledger.

And by with, I mean, he sat across from me. And by across, I mean, I was looking at him from my round table of five, and he was angled towards me from his boof. I mean, booth. You’ll be happy to know that the baby is teething.

Thanks for dinner, Google!

** Cory Booker / Street Fight **

My loyal readers, all seven of you, will recall my post about Street Fight on PBS. Those of you who may have missed it are in luck. Dearest Raoul, whose voice my boss deemed definitively “sexy,” (don’t worry, I told her you were married!) writes:

Dear friends, as some of you know, “Street Fight”, the documentary film covering the Cory Booker for Mayor campaign in 2002 (a campaign I helped to manage) has been nominated for an Oscar! It’s very exciting for us all, but especially the filmmaker, Marshall Curry. The film is getting a limited run in NYC and LA, so here’s the information to go see it.

Street Fight - NYC showings
Street Fight - LA showings

If you don’t live in either of these cities, but want to be a totally champion, you can buy the DVD here.

Please go and see it, and please tell your friends!

Thanks!

I bought the DVD and look forward to its arrival. I want to see how many Raoul B.’s it takes to screw in a fluorescent lightbulb. ;)

** Skype **

Are you on Skype? At the dogged insistence of my old man, I’m now on. Search for me. I mean, I’ve got an iMac and am on AIM du temps en temps and all, but I’m all about the Estonians. (Ahem.)

Yeah yeah yeah, stuff about Mexico City. Forthcoming.

Don’t worry — this one’s not about my crotch.

Not yet, but on their way: bloggy blog re: my trip to Mexico City, and other stuff

Just in time for Saturday night at the movies with my duff curled up on my couch, Choyo handed off the one eye and I popped in Full Metal Jacket. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen the film before but it’s amazing. Maybe that’s the adrenaline talking, and definitely my brain is not thinking one then two then three, but here I go.

There are things that strike a deep chord within me. Movies of this variety are fairly obvious: G.I. Jane, Black Hawk Down. But then there are experiences that touch upon the same nerve. Example. Visiting Parris Island to see Jeremy’s best friend graduate from the USMC (I was pissed off at how doughy the girl Marines looked – no wonder women soldiers get no respect! I thought). Walking around the Army base in Vicenza. And then –

I remember visiting Gales Ferry the tail end of my sophomore year in college. The big Harvard Yale grudge match was a heavyweight rower rite of passage: boys all cooped up in bunks together rowing, eating, taking shits. I borrowed a car from Dwight Hall under the auspices of official errands for U.S. Grant and pretended to visit my buddy Chris, while really just hoping to hang out with Finnian (I had a ginormous crush on Finnian at the time). This was my cover for visiting, on a Wednesday (I think it was a Wednesday; there were strict rules governing when visitors could join for dinner at the Ferry).

I remember this: playing Connect Four or some other board game with Fin, singing “I Like Big Butts” before dinner as was required by all visitors, watching Top Gun, singing one of the Yale fight songs to the freshman in their dorm per their request.

(Apparently they were sick of male voices and just wanted to hear a female voice sing the tune. Little did they know that thanks to my mother, I had a mortal fear of singing and was convinced that my voice sounded like shit, that I was tone deaf, that if I opened my mouth and sang I would surely be beaten. But I gave it the old college try, opened my mouth and nervously sang as much as I could before my nerves got the best of me and/or I was afraid I would spontaneously burst into tears. I could hear their breathing, all those heavyweight boys unto men, smelling like boys and surrounding me in their freshman bunker thingy while I tried to get out as many words as possible about the men of Eli rowing through that line or whatever without having a huge fucking breakdown. Christ, having a crush on Finnian was emotional enough, let alone having to deal with my mother in the back of my head (it would be another decade before I broached that topic).)

Anyway, I am there, and the air is reeking of testosterone, and it is drenched in tradition, and I am so fucking jealous. I remember being sad that there was nothing like this for women. I remember understanding damned well why the men should have their sacred space, I remember respecting those lines, and I remember just wishing there were enough women like me who wanted my own damned Gales Ferry. Where all I had to do was push my body past its limits, shovel some food down my throat, take a shit, wash my ass, and pass out.

I wanted it, I looked around and I felt it all around me and I wanted mine. I remember driving back to New Haven that inky night, thinking about how one of the guys whose name I no longer remember threw me under the bus and didn’t help me with the lyrics to the song I was originally going to sing, thinking about how adorable I though Fin was, but mostly wanting to know where my Gales Ferry was.

I don’t know, maybe my desire to bond with my fellow women athletes was more about yearning for a relationship with my older sister again. And maybe the reason I would crave an experience like that, or why I wonder how I would survive in a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, or how I find the idea of solitary confinement in a maximum security prison highly intoxicating …

You cannot fuck with me.
There is nothing that I cannot handle.
You think you are going to break me?
You think I’m going to flinch at that bullshit?
You can’t touch me.
My walls are impenetrable.
I am a machine.
You want a rock?
You want an island?
You have no idea who you’re dealing with.
I feel nothing.
You do not impact me.
I’ll show you what I can do.
I don’t need you.
I don’t need anyone
You will.
Not break me.

That was the old me. I’m doing so much work to lay down my arms, to break down my walls, to soften my stance, to feel.

I have to remember to feel.

I have to remember that it’s okay to feel.

I am not that little girl anymore. I’m a grown woman, dependent on no one.

But it’s there, though, nagging at me, tugging me towards it. And I cannot tease apart, not yet at least, my current desire to be strong and fast and powerful (to be detailed in a forthcoming post) from my childhood desire to be safe from the whims of an unfit parent.

And I want to be the ANP that I know I am, somewhere, deep inside. Little ANP. Soft and delicate and vulnerable and sweet. Kind of like my college roommate Julia, that sweetheart, all squishy and soft and absolutely Love.

Emotional and sensitive and loving and able to feel.

Able to feel. All of it.

Even if what I feel is nothing but the pain of knowing my sister will never run again, the pain of recognizing that my mommy didn’t love me, the pain of realizing that the beautiful man that I loved so dearly will never wrap me in his big gun arms.

This past weekend I was a panelist on Your First Job - What To Expect for the Women’s Intercollegiate Sports Endowment & Resource at Yale.

One of the tips I shared with the undergraduate women, many of whom are (like me) long-limbed, was to check out Eddie Bauer and Lands’ End for oxfords with long-enough sleeves.  Plus,

Anittah Patrick ’99, former member of the track and crew teams and one of the roundtable leaders, said the weekend also allowed the alumnae to connect with each other. “What was wonderful for me was to connect with the other alumna athletes. Although they were in much older classes, I was impressed by their accomplishments and moved by their honest insights.”

Click here to read more.