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The problem with going to Puppy’s house was that I left smelling like a burned-out hippie who just stumbled off the last plane from Goa. It was a peculiar combination of pot, dirt, sweat, patchouli and God-knows-what else. It was a miasma that inhabited his apartment like a roommate, and it followed me all the way home to Sunset Park.



Puppy’s apartment was the entire top floor of a dilapidated brownstone. Puppy converted the living room into his bedroom, and the bedroom into his farm. The ceiling was wreathed in grow lamps and the walls covered in reflective Mylar sheeting. The plants grew from a series of interlocking troughs built a foot off the ground.



“You know hydroponics?” Puppy said. “Well this is aeroponics. They get everything they need from short bursts of nutriginated-water. They grow huge on nothing. See?” He lifted the lid on one of the troughs, revealing the tiny root structure of a mature plant.



“I hate pot,” Puppy always said. “I fuckin’ hate it. It smells like crap, and it makes me stupid and tired.”



Being a pot farmer in the middle of Brooklyn was strange enough; being a pot farmer who didn’t like pot was downright weird. It was for the nausea, Puppy explained. For years, he’d experienced intense stomach cramps. Once he’d vomited for 12 hours straight. He was a model and extreme biker before he got sick, but over the years, the muscle and fat were stripped from his bones. By the time we met, he was a beautiful face with a wasted body.



Medically, there was no explanation. Puppy called it “Cobain Syndrome,” since Kurt Cobain complained of similar symptoms before he killed himself. Puppy’s  doctors called it idiopathic gastroparesis—medical terminology for “we don’t know what the fuck is happening.” The doctor gave him morphine for the pain; the pot he grew on his own. The sicker he got, the more of a shut-in he became, and one day he turned his personal remedy into a home business.



Every time I went to Puppy’s apartment we looked for something to help with his nausea. We meditated, used magnets and electroshock bracelets, made strange teas from herbs ordered off the Internet, exchanged massages, did yoga; anything and everything we could think of. He taught me to play a didgeridoo, hoping that the harmonics would resonate with the frequency of…something.



I played along because I loved him. He was funny, sweet and brilliant—at least, he was when he wasn’t high. I hoped each time wouldn’t end like so many before, with Puppy shaking in agony and me tying off his vein and injecting morphine into him. But often it did.



Growing pot indoors made for a shorter, and less seasonally-dependent growing regimen. This meant Puppy could get two or more crops a year, at times when there was little fresh pot to be found locally in New York. One spring, right after harvesting his plants, Puppy made a surprise announcement. He was visiting his parents.



Puppy’s parents were a mystery to me. Once he’d compared them to snake-handlers, and told me they were backwoods Louisiana religious types. I knew he’d run away from home and changed his name as a teen. They kept in touch in fits and starts, always looking for that rarest piece of real estate: common ground. This was a strange development for someone who rarely even went a subway ride away from home.



The day he was to leave, I went to Puppy’s apartment to help pack. In between stuffing random clothes into a bag, he gave me things. His didgeridoo, a book I was slowly reading during my visits, a jacket of his that I loved. Packing, he said, made him realize how much crap he needed to get rid of. He’d be back in a week, and he expected me to be ready to play the didge for him when he returned.



Part of me wasn’t surprised when a week later I got a call from his business partner, saying he found Puppy dead of a morphine overdose. No note.



For months, I refused to wear his jacket. I kept it shut up in a drawer by itself, where the smell of Puppy’s apartment could linger. I opened it periodically, and Puppy came rushing back to me in a whiff.



Eventually the smell wore off and someone bought Puppy’s apartment and renovated it. But every time I pass someone smoking up on the street, I am taken back to the only farm I ever knew in Brooklyn. 

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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  Do you have a New York story?  

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On a recent cold weekend, I crossed two firsts off my Life List: Watch a movie on one of the museum’s screens, and see what fans are raving about when they discuss the oeuvre of Bergman. I was accompanied by my friend Chazz, who, like me, is in his 30s and usually shuns mainstream Hollywood junk for “the cinema,” which means art houses with tiny screens and uncomfortable seats, and dialogue spoken in foreign accents.

We were seeing The Silence, a black and white Swedish film from the 1960s that was very scandalous in Sweden at the time for its sexual content (allusions to masturbation, incest and random carnal encounters) and flew in the face of the country’s censorship laws. We arrived early to an already long line that had formed in the cavernous basement above a subway station, which became ever more massive until the ushers opened the doors 20 minutes later. The audience was largely, if not exclusively white, but with a diverse age range from people in their twenties up to the auteur’s contemporaries.

We sat and watched people file in, and watched and watched because the show time came and went with the lights still on and the doors still open. Say what you will about regular theaters, but at least you can be certain that you’re watching trailers in the dark a good 10 minutes before the scheduled start of the movie. It was a large space, but not so much that we were going to have the luxury of empty seats on either side of us. Much to Chazz’s dismay, a guy sat down next to him right before the room went dark who smelled, according to Chazz, like he hadn’t showered that month. Always prepared, I offered him a perfume sample of Clinique’s Happy, a decidedly feminine scent, to hold under his nose.

Unfortunately for us, the afternoon went quickly downhill from there. As the movie unfolded, I soon began having trouble staying awake and noticed Chazz frequently examining his watch and giving me the nearly imperceptible but not unfamiliar what-have-we-done look. It was fast becoming clear that we had been burned once again by the film Gods and pretentious film critics who had led us astray to endure yet another painful movie-going experience at the hands of foreign directors and screenwriters.

About halfway through the film, there was an unintentional highlight. As Chazz and I were mentally trying to spur the other to walk out, a great noise went up nearby and froze everyone around us (froze beyond the average movie-watching freeze). Someone had very audibly broken wind. Amazingly, this had never happened to me before at the movies or at any other public space. It was a first I was sorry I hadn’t had on my list. The silence was quickly broken by titters and people shaking with unuttered laughter in their seats (their own version of The Silence perhaps). Some just looked on, stunned (stunned beyond bad movie stun). If nothing else, after doubling over laughing, I was fully awake and Chazz was able to wait out the end without having to frantically check his watch.

Judging by our baffled conversation afterward—I thought the two main characters were sisters and that one of them was dying, Chazz didn’t realize the characters were related until late in the film and thought the sister was just really neurotic—either Bergman’s movies are even more obtuse and ambiguous than his reputation implies, or Chazz and I are far less sophisticated that we’d like to believe. It’s probably the latter; so from now on, you’ll find me keeping my distance from the gassy knoll—as Chazz has nicknamed the MoMA incident—and hiding out in some colorless megaplex with a gigantic tub of popcorn watching explosions and overpaid American actors speaking the finest English-only dialogue.

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I saw my first uncircumcised penis at the age of 60 when I attended a recent production of Naked Boys Singing Off-Broadway. I thought, you know what, you didn’t miss a thing.



My brother and I used to take baths together when we were little. We were only 18 months apart and thought it was fun to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest and slap each other’s butt with a towel.



Our mother died when I was 10, and my parents were divorced, so our dad just moved into our house and lived with us. He would tuck each of us into our beds in our own rooms at night, but we were all pretty peripatetic sleepers, and would often cross the hall and climb into each other’s beds and snuggle together. Sometimes Tom and I would jump in the shower with our dad, too. The thing I remember most about my dad is how furry he was. But that all ended by the time I was 11 and my dad started buying me books about physical maturity.



Something else must have made an impression on me though, because years later, after I’d graduated from Michigan and moved to New York, I went to a party with a close friend.



She was Episcopalian, and the party was given by her son’s friends, so it was a safe assumption that these guys weren’t Jewish. I started talking to one very nice-looking young man, and I was definitely being flirtatious when I remembered: He’s not Jewish. What if this relationship went anywhere? I had to be careful. So I said to him, “Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”



“Not at all,” he answered. “You can ask me anything.”



“Are you circumcised?” I asked.



“Well, no” he said, “But what’s the difference?”



I told him, “I’m sorry, but if it’s not like my dad’s or my brother’s, it’s not good enough for me.” That’s when I realized that I had an irrational fear of an uncircumcised penis. Or maybe it wasn’t irrational.



It was more than just what I grew up with. I could have grown up in a kosher house and still learned to love bacon, especially in a BLT. For me, it was a matter of aesthetics.



My good friend Dean, who’s gay, has another perspective. “It’s all personal preference,” he says. “And it has nothing to do with being gay.” He doesn’t share my anxiety over such an encounter at all. “Uncircumcised penises are less common in New York. Seeing one is kind of like a Christmas present. A nice surprise.” He thinks they’re sexier. “Whatever,” he says, “if it’s nice looking, I’ll be all over it.”



I still think it’s more than personal preference. Some men like women with large breasts and some like women with small breasts. But either way, they know what they’re getting up front. Like buying food in glass jars rather than cans.

But even cans have a picture on the label. That’s not true with penises. By the time you find out, it could be too late.

So why, when you sign up with an Internet matchmaker, do they tell you every nuance of the interests of a potential date, including whether or not he likes thunderstorms, but leave out this key fact (unless you’re on JDate).



Another friend of mine advised me to just stay away from European men. “Italians and Brits—they’re almost never circumcised,” she warned. Oral sex is more complicated, too, she said. “You have to use your fingers more, to keep stuff out of the way. It’s a good thing women are so good at multi-tasking.”



One obvious way to solve the problem, if you think it’s a problem, is to just go out with Jews. But I’d like to be more flexible in my approach to finding a new Mr. Right and broaden the gene pool of contenders. He doesn’t have to be Jewish, or rich, or have a house in the country. Just be single and circumcised. Is that too much to ask?



The Army has a policy of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” That’s not for me. I’d like men to tell, so I wouldn’t have to ask.

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By the time my boyfriend, Robert, and I discovered that our New York real estate agent was also Sweden’s most famous gay porn star, we weren’t surprised. It was strange that our married, father-of-two friend Dave was the one who recognized Fredrik as “Tag,” but the whole apartment-buying process was so convoluted and absurd, even that seemed kind of fitting.



First there was the one-bedroom co-op on 16th Street, where our offer was accepted, contracts were signed and a ten-percent deposit put into escrow. A month after that, we were rejected by the board, for reasons that were never made clear to us. Having already given up my rental studio on Avenue B, I moved temporarily to live with Robert in London. But three months later, we still hadn’t received our deposit back and whenever we called, our lawyer always seemed to be “in the middle of a deposition.”



Finally, an email from a paralegal showed up in my inbox stating: “the seller is refusing to return your deposit because they think that you purposefully bombed the board interview.” Or, as Robert said, “This really doesn’t say much for our social skills.”



Our lawyer suggested that we settle—cut our losses and write off the deposit—so I started lying awake at night plotting revenge against him. After I woke Robert up at three in the morning to suggest flying to New York to stuff a banana in the tailpipe of our lawyer’s BMW, Robert took to sleeping on the living room couch. Then we retained a new lawyer, who said he’d never heard of anything like this: “It’s nothing but an old-fashioned stick-up!” At the end of the summer, when we threatened to file a lawsuit against the seller, our entire deposit was returned to us—without interest, but still. Time to start looking again.



We called Fredrik. “Ändhållplats!” he said. “I won’t even waste our time on co-ops.”



I had erroneously assumed that the twelve-year age gap between Robert and me only showed up when comparing each other’s CD collections and friends (the difference in the former being the obvious disparity between Bruce Springsteen and Death Cab for Cutie and the latter being that New Yorkers in their mid-twenties are still a decade away from an all-consuming obsession with the city’s elementary schools). But the gap showed in our apartment search, too. Robert said he had “been working like a dog for twenty years” and now wanted something nice and clean to come home to and I, a part-time yoga instructor and grad student, felt absolutely confident in saying that I did not want to entertain friends with “Red, white or cognac?” We agreed on the East Side, but he wanted Upper and I insisted on Lower.



It was like a game of chicken, both of us refusing to swerve to the opposite side of 14th Street.



“Excuse me for asking,” my friend Phoebe said. “But are you a trustafarian?”



I shook my head.



“Well,” she pointed out, “if Robert’s buying the place, shouldn’t it be up to him?”



I pointed to the cover of a sales brochure for a building on Fifth Avenue. It showed a woman carrying a latte in one hand and a teacup poodle in the other, while a uniformed man in the background chased after her with eight Chanel shopping bags. “Phoebe …” I said.



“I get it,” she replied.



In the end, I won regarding the location, though this was probably due less to my debate skills than the prevalence of downtown condos. With our apartment on the Bowery, Robert got what he wanted, the top of a building and a washing machine, and I was happy to settle into a legendary slum. After our first night there, I stood up in the morning and looked out over the East River while Robert slept. Then, wrapped up in a comforter on the floor, I made a mental list of things to buy: coffee maker, coffee grinder, coffee cups, bed. The whole search had taken more than a year, but as I snuggled back under the blanket, I happily thought, “We’re home.”

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I am constantly arguing with my friends about the best way to get from New York to Boston. Since my discovery of the Chinatown bus several years ago, I have refused to even consider another route. At $15 each direction, it is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to make the four to five hour journey. My friends, however, scoff at the idea of boarding the Fung Wa Express. They tell me that they value things like: guaranteed reservations, comfort and not sharing seats with chickens (I am friends with many unreasonable people.) 

One Fung Wa quirk is that they hand you a quarter when you get on the bus. They don’t explain it, but you are supposed to give it to the driver as a tip when you get off. It’s a way to motivate the bus driver not to kill all of the passengers before they hand over their quarter, I suppose. 

On my last trip on the Fung Wa, I found myself in a germaphobe’s nightmare. I desperately needed to pee and though there is a restroom onboard, it’s difficult to make your way to the back of a moving bus when the driver obviously has no working knowledge of how to use a clutch. 

Once inside the bathroom (still being bounced around by the driver’s seeming disregard for my bladder) I raised the seat with my sandal, careful not to touch it with my foot, and unzipped. As soon as I began to pee, the driver hit the brakes and the seat came slamming down. I fell against the back wall and urine splashed on the floor. I was going to need an alternate approach.

I raised the seat again and braced my foot on the rim of the toilet with the toe of my shoe holding the seat up. I leaned forward in a sort of modified lunge position directly above the toilet bowl. I rotated my pelvis backwards and prepared to pee straight down. I would not miss again. 

Unfortunately, my calculations did not include wild speed bumps in the middle of the highway. As the bus hit the first of many bumps, I watched helplessly as my stream flew over the rim and soaked my left foot and sandal. I overcorrected as the bus’s shocks kicked in and my urine shot to the floor and drenched my right foot. I was covering the bathroom walls and floor with pee, and I began to laugh uncontrollably at the sight of me peeing literally all over myself. 

I exited the bathroom unable to do anything to hide the fact that I had thoroughly drenched myself in urine. I had soaked the front of my shorts, and the pee was slowly dripping down my legs and creating pools of urine in my Birkenstocks. 

I bobbed down the aisle, left and right, forward and backward, reaching my hands into the done-up buns of Chinese women for balance and inadvertently slapping the bald heads of men. There were bags in the aisle and I cringed as I rubbed my urine-saturated leg hair all over them, trying pathetically to step around as the bus lurched in unpredictable directions. 

I reached my chair and plopped down. I took a deep breath and turned to my seatmate, who I expected to be looking at me with abject horror. But she was oblivious, staring at the seat in front of her with an animated food coma drool. I looked back at the people I had practically molested with my pee-bathed hands (there was no soap or water, obviously), but not one person looked put out or even slightly annoyed. No one took any notice of the dark stains on my shorts or the squishy sound my sandals were making. And not a single person appeared to notice the stench of liquid excretions that was invading my own nose. 

The Chinatown bus may be a lot of things—it doesn’t offer luxuries like a law-abiding driver or a mop to clean up the bathroom when you’re finished—but it’s not a place of judgment. As I sat there, submerged in my swampy shorts, I knew I was right where I belonged and nothing that anyone said could change my mind about the Fung Wa. 

The last time I took the bus, I’m ashamed to say, I used the bus driver’s quarter to buy a soda at McDonald’s. But this time, I gave the driver a knowing nod—one that translates from English to Mandarin as roughly, “Fuckin’ ay, man”—and I threw him an extra quarter, straight out of my own moist pocket. 

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Our date is around the corner, and I’m feeling a bit queasy. I’ve already chickened out more than once, and this time I have to tell him … But how? What is it about telling someone he has bad breath that is so difficult?

I consider a Bad Breath-O-Gram. The Center for Breath Disorders assures me, “if you know a friend, relative or colleague who has breath that, to put it discreetly, would wilt the spines off a cactus, all you have to do is e-mail or snail-mail a note to the center providing the offender’s name and address. The center will tactfully contact that person, mentioning that a well-meaning busybody thought his life would be better if he had more knowledge about halitosis.”   

Me? A well-meaning busybody? No, I just want to kiss a guy without having to hold my nose. Is that so wrong? I wonder what it would be like to receive a Bad Breath-O-Gram? Wouldn’t you constantly look over your shoulder, wondering who the sniff-agent is who snuffed you out? How could I face Jerry knowing he’d been humiliated “anonymously” by me!   

No, I cared too much for Jerry, the close-talker who politely refused breath mints and who would be sitting beside me in a few short days. I’d consulted half a dozen girlfriends (who consulted husbands and boyfriends), but there is no consensus. Some think there is just no way to tell; others say not to give it a second thought.     

Bad breath would normally be a clear red flag falling under the “no chemistry” domain, however, my romantic life being what it is and given the fact that he has other redeeming qualities, I had to make some progress.     

Some advice: If you ever date someone with bad breath, and there’s a chance you want to continue to date him, don’t broadcast the news. The more people I told, the more cartoon-like he became. It was becoming harder and harder for me to take him seriously. “I’d give my eyetooth not to have to say this,” I’d begin, or “What I’m about to tell you really stinks: your breath.”

What was I turning into? I had to cut the drama. It’s plain and simple, open and shut. What a sorry person I am, taking pot shots at the expense of one kind-hearted man. What do I value more, a good chuckle or a potential relationship? 

I rationalized; maybe he has too much (camembert) on his plate. What he needs is a woman like me to insist that he take better care of himself—and to spare his clients and employees who must have noticed by now. There’s no way I’m the first person to be overpowered by the humidor of his mouth.

I should just call him. Offer the dignity of distance; give him a chance to improve the situation before we met again. But I had pulled back, so we weren’t talking all that much, and the less we talked, the more difficult it was to work it into a casual conversation. No, at this stage of the game there was only one way to go, a face-to-face (hopefully not too close) encounter. 

When he leans in to kiss me, I’ll just blurt it out, as though it’s just occurred to me, as though I haven’t been contemplating this and telling everybody about it for weeks.

“Oh,” I’ll say, “your breath’s a little, um, used? Compromised? Kinda funky … Here, have some Sen Sen.”

I don’t know … I’d like to share some results of some useful terminology I found on the Internet. “This is not meant to be amusing,” the unknown author insists, “but rather meant to provide a public service. When someone exhibits bad breath, it is now said that they are, among other things: melting the moustache, farting topside, leaking some limburger, burning tires on their tongue, polluting the local environment, exploring the limits of personal space with every exhalation. Whewwww … a mouthful!”

I try another source. Emily Post advises, “if a person has body odor or bad breath, that person wants to be told about it.” Further, she opines that the recipient of such news will “hopefully be thankful that you’ve brought it to their attention.” 

I hope she’s right. Because in the final analysis, I’ve decided to tell him in the best way I know how. I’m publishing my breathless suggestion. I’ve checked with my brother, my dentist, my taxi driver. “I’m concerned,” I say, “about karma. Isn’t this a bit harsh?”

The cabbie pulls me up short. “What’s harsh?” he replies. “Is letting someone go through life skanky harsh?” In other words, I’m doing him—and a small tribe of New Yorkers—a favor. So Jerry, if you’re reading this, I’ve just two words for you: tongue scraper.

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As one of the only Jewish girls from my hometown who still wears her original nose, I’m taking it a little personally that Ashlee Simpson has parted with hers. To have a distinct nose that doesn’t detract from one’s face—indeed, a distinct nose that actually accentuates one’s face—is a rarity. Ashlee Simpson was that rarity, and she just threw away a lifetime of interesting.

This is not to say that nose jobs are never justified. My two best friends growing up were Natasha and Elanit. Elanit was the first to get a new nose, and her face was grateful for it. Natasha was next, and her face thanked her, too. But one day I bumped into my third cousin Helen, whom I hadn’t seen in years, and I noticed her nose for the first time. I noticed it because it looked too familiar. “Wait a second,” I thought, “That’s Natasha’s nose.” What was Helen doing with Natasha’s nose? Then at the mall, it was like déjà vu: one girl after another walked by wearing Natasha’s nose. Jews do all look alike! I thought. I eventually found out that they all just went to the same surgeon. 

Soon after Natasha got her nose done, she approached me and said, “Well, Jul, you know what you have to do. Elanit did hers, I did mine; now it’s your turn.”

“Oh, I don’t plan to change my nose,” I answered.

“You’re kidding,” she answered incredulously.

“No, I don’t think it ruins me.”

“Did my nose ruin me?” she said with some indignation. I examined her face closely and thought, “Nah, I guess it was something else.” But I answered: “Yes.”

What an odd question, though. Presumably, the only reason one would undergo nasal reconstruction is if she believed her nose had a ruinous effect.

Comments about my nose didn’t come just from friends. When I decided I wanted to be in movies, the first thing industry people told me I’d have to do was “fix the nose.” Even when I was interviewing for my first New York waitressing job, a waiter was gracious enough to tell me that he had just overheard the owner—a former “Miss Subways” title holder and small-time model/actress—mutter, “Pretty girl. But she needs to get rid of that nose.”

Fortunately, I was mature beyond my years (and, I guess, theirs) and took the “meant to be” route. I couldn’t help but feel that my nose was in some way an accentuation, and would ultimately pay off. I wasn’t sure if God existed, but I figured he knew best (though not with Natasha and Elanit). Eventually, I was rewarded.

At 22, something magical happened: I grew into my nose. Meaning, the features sorted themselves out finally and began to mesh—so that my nose no longer stood out, but instead contributed to a overall distinctive, elegant look. 

Among the most captivated were men, at least two of whom had an unusual opening pick-up line: “Don’t ever change your nose.”

“Excuse me?”

“People will tell you to change it. Don’t listen. It gives you a look. You have a look to you.”

Which of course reminded me that I had a big nose, and so I sent these guys on their way. (Even if a woman likes her prominent nose, she doesn’t want to be reminded it’s there.)

My nose got some other affirmation along the way. There was Rebecca from acting class, who told me how she’d awoken from anesthesia in the middle of her nose job—just in time to see the mallet descend on her face and hear the crush of breaking bone. Studying my face, Rebecca exclaimed, “But I don’t get it—you … you’re beautiful! How do you carry it so well?”

Which is what I wanted to talk to Ashlee about. Because she reminded me of me. Only with a better nose. Hers never ruined her profile. While other girls have to take their noses off, we were able to pull ours off. Even with her old nose, Ashlee was prettier than her sex symbol sister.

Did anyone—her family, her handlers—try to tell her she was making a mistake? 

Ashlee was special. Even when she went blond, she stayed special—thanks to that distinctive nose. She wasn’t interchangeable with all the other pop starlets. But now you can’t tell her apart. Maybe interchangeability is the whole point today; it seems to be more marketable than the few originals we have floating around. (Save, thankfully, for Jewel, who never gave up on her nose.) It may be a cliché, but Ashlee’s nose gave her character. 

Unlike myself—for whom it would have been understandable to succumb to the advice of people in show business as I tried to break in—Ashlee had no excuse; she already was somebody. She had managed to achieve fame with a prominent nose. To a made star, no kind of nose can be an impediment, and this makes Ashlee’s choice all the more frivolous.

When the superficial people engrossed in tabloids at the checkout counter are calling you superficial, that’s pretty bad. The next time I hear Ashlee’s hit song “Pieces of Me,” I know I won’t be the only one missing one piece of her in particular. 

  Do you have a New York story?  

  E-mail  nystories@nypress.com

I have never seen a man on the third floor of 568 Broadway. Women of all ages and sizes pour from the elevator of the ordinary Soho office building after three brisk dings, leaving the less-fair sex to continue their upward journey to law offices and accounting firms. This urban Isle of Lesbos exists for two reasons: Downtown Women’s Ob/Gyn—a slightly granola collective of female Gynecologists and nurse practitioners—and the swanky Bliss Spa, hilariously situated across the hall. A sign outside Bliss apologizes for the location’s “temporary lack of fabulousness.” Yuck. I’ve never been much of a girly-girl. Sneaker-clad and close to my dad, I spend my money on used books and roll my eyes at designer sunglasses and expensive handbags. 

One recent Friday, I made a pilgrimage to the insufficiently fabulous third floor for a package of birth control. This New York necessity had been withheld first by my insurance company, then by Duane Reed and finally by Satan’s horsemen themselves, UPS. Apparently, what Brown can’t do for you is deliver to a Mott Street tenement with no doorbells. I called, I complained, I yelled and screamed, I threw around the term “my medication” as though the poor customer service operator might cause my untimely death of adult diabetes or acute kidney failure.

Finally, I did what every single, twenty-something, heterosexual, agnostic Jewess would do. I panicked. I freaked out, feared the worst and decided that I must be pregnant. My boyfriend at the time was chronically calm and unruffled, but I feared the whole pregnancy scare might be more than even he could handle so, I, uncharacteristically, kept it to myself. 

Almost. My best friend “G” chatted supportively from her office at a major women’s rights organization. “No babies,” she typed firmly. “Big money,” I replied, “big money, no babies, no babies,” invoking that shining beacon in hard times, Game Show Network reruns of “Press Your Luck.”

Then I headed over to good old girl land at 568. On the elevator, I noticed another woman around my age. She sported a dark pencil skirt, smooth spindly legs, and pointy pumps I decided were Prada, despite my utter ignorance of what a Prada shoe might actually look like compared to one by Chanel or Gucci or, say, Steve Madden. She threw her slick hair behind one shoulder and typed furiously into a Blackberry. I was certain she was headed for Bliss. She was too chic to have a vagina.

When I exited the elevator, my respiratory system was assaulted by jasmine and lavender. The smell was lovely but astringent, so powerful it reached down to singe my lungs and up to clear my sinuses.

In this dim hallway existed the universe’s epicenter for the odd duality of womanhood. We all had arrived to lie on a table, to be prodded and poked, to be slathered with slippery creams, to care for the various trappings of our lady parts. Ginger scrub and a natural loofah or industrial size KY and plastic speculum? It’s up to you! Hot stone massage or pap smear? Shall we wrap you in seaweed or draw your blood for a nice HIV test? What kind of girl are you?

As I looked around, I assigned gravitas to the women turning right—those fearing they were pregnant, those praying they’d be able to conceive, and those cursing old lovers for HPV, herpes or worse. These are big moments, life-changing moments; moments in no way enhanced by unsolicited aromatherapy. I decided that the women turning left were fancy, fun-loving and frivolous. I imagined hordes of sparkling party girls who had stopped in after three-martini lunches to primp and polish their already perfect lives. 

Shaking and nauseated (it must be morning sickness!), I entered the door to the right. Here were my people: grungy purple-haired teenagers, lesbian couples planning in vitro, exhausted moms in non-Juicy sweatpants. Sterility filled the air. I gave my name and received a cute purple makeup case stuffed with lotion samples and Estrostep. The nurse smiled. The packet was solid and reassuringly pink, each blister-packed pill present and accounted for. The rock of anxiety in my stomach began to dissipate and I knew I wasn’t pregnant. I’d been tricked by my raging hormones, indignance and an overactive imagination.

Pocket full of prevention, I felt calm and confident, even sexy. I knew I wanted children in the next ten years or so, but at this fancy-free and financially challenged point in my life, not a fraction of me was ready. I inhaled the fragrance as I returned, relieved, to the dark corridor. I’d probably be back soon enough. I just wasn’t sure if it would be for prenatal care—or a facial.

Sandra Oh turned all eyes on Asian-Black relationships through her Golden Globe-wining portrayal of an intern wooed by an African-American surgeon in “Grey’s Anatomy.” I had my own interracial hook-up with a hot guy in China.

Growing up in Thailand, my middle-class, Buddhist-teaching parents freaked out when they found stacks of porn under my 14-year-old brother’s bed. Then they chuckled when they learned he’d seen the Titanic five times just to catch a glimpse of Kate Winslet’s bare breasts. My sister was also a rebellious teen who skipped school and snuck out on dates. Her frequent absence after dusk put my parents through years of insomnia. That made me the golden first-born who followed the rules. The only time I nearly gave my mother a heart attack was when I came home from an all-girl Catholic boarding school reporting that my period hadn’t come for five months. A small-town clinic nurse told my mother I was pregnant. “You can never trust kids these days,” said the nurse confidently. My mom took me to a gynecologist in another town where she was comforted that I was suffering from a typical teen trouble, unstable hormones.

In our society, Sex-Ed meant a one-hour lecture on how a woman got impregnated and how to prevent it. Talking about what was behind the bedroom door was “taboo” or “trashy,” yet at the same time prostitution and teen pregnancy were epidemic. Though a friend thought I had the exotic look and hot physique of Tia Carrere from Wayne’s World, and I got whistled at plenty, I had never dated when I started my freshman year in college, (even though most of my American friends got laid every weekend). Two studious years later, I had managed to go to many drunken parties and watch porn with a friend but remained a sex-curious virgin.    

I met KJ on an overnight train ride to Xi-An. He was one of the two African-American students in our study abroad program and a quiet hunk. He dropped by my cabin while I was falling asleep to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do.” We talked about everything. He said his mom had died of lung cancer three years prior. As he recited his memory of her last day, I held his hand and cried. I felt an instant connection. I shared the buried pain of losing my father in a plane crash two years before. It felt as if we were the only two people on the train. 

As we studied hard and explored Beijing, our friendship grew along with our fluency in Mandarin. Everywhere we went people gawked at us, assuming since he was black, I must be his Chinese whore. We would stop by each other’s dorm room to chat about life, Buddhism and his first girlfriend, who was studying abroad in Kenya that summer. When the girlfriend dumped him, I stayed by his side. 

One night out, after ten Tequila shots, we made out like fierce cats fighting. I got chills up my spine whenever he was around. We fooled around every time we were out clubbing, and the next day we’d act as if nothing had happened. 

The last night in Beijing, under the disco ball light, I was on his lap with my bra undone. He licked my nipples and I had what I thought was my first orgasm. We hopped in a cab at 5 a.m. and ended up on his bed. “You wanna do it?” I asked. He undid his belt. “I won’t do it without condom,” I added coldly. “You are kidding me,” he said. He searched through a half-packed suitcase, pulling out a condom. I heard him mumble a thank you prayer to his over-prepared Jewish roommate who’d left it. While I patiently waited for him to put it on, he cried out, “Damn, I tore it.” 

He got dressed, looked up the Chinese dictionary translation for “condom,” then disappeared for a long while. I waited, naked in his bed. Upon his return, his eyes sparkled as he earnestly shared his adventure. He’d found a small clinic with a condom vending machine but he had no money. So he turned toward the on-call nurses. Horny, drunk, sleepless and determined to get laid before going back to America, he formulated the sentence, “Wo Yao Zuo Ai De Dong Xi.”

“No, you did not say that!” I yelled. “Yes I did and here they are!” he said while showing off a handful of candy-colored condoms.

“I never did this before. My girlfriend was a strict Catholic,” he admitted. “You?” he asked. I told him I hadn’t either. “Then we are each other’s first,” he said, enthusiastically. I gave the first and the clumsiest oral sex in my life and, as I reckoned, so did he. Between too many gag reflexes, he still did not have a hard on. The alcohol we’d consumed numbed our nerves. I faked orgasm as he feverishly fingered me. 

We went back to America, both still virgins. I blamed it on the alcohol, the hypocritical culture where I grew up and his Catholic ex.

Back in New York City, a male OBGYN broke my hymen at age 26. After ending months of orgasm-free lovemaking with another man who used his Greenwich Village apartment as a harem, I was up for a revolutionary change. No longer counting on a man, I purchased Kim Cattrall Sexual Intelligence and the Rabbit, intending to give myself my very own orgasm. 

I remained friends with KJ, though we never talked about the indelible memory of Chinese nurses giggling over his impeccably pronounced request. It meant, “I would like a make-love thing,” which got him condoms, if not sex, in China.

I’m 22-years-old, have bottle-dyed blond hair, own several pairs of killer stiletto heels, turn the volume way up when a hip-hop song comes on and … have decided to wait to have sex until marriage—a rare decision in New York City. Picking me out in a crowd would not be easy; I could be any girl on the N train or in line at Starbucks feeding an addiction to caramel frappuccinos. 

It’s not easy to uphold this deal I made myself, especially in New York. It takes more discipline and commitment than a fat girl desperate to be thin. Plus, there’s no cheating as with diet pills or with a finger down the throat—you either are or aren’t chaste.

For the record, I am religious and I grew up in a Catholic household, which certainly influenced my decision. But the choice to give myself for the first time in marriage isn’t tied to some disordered fear of hell. 

I made the decision in high school, after seeing a close friend hurt and heartbroken. The 15-year-old guy she’d given it up to, and was planning to marry, was kicking it with a girl at a rival school. She went from on to try and fill the void with a new guy, and then another and another; a trend I see in a lot of New York women. 

Perhaps I would have changed my mind in college had my freshman year gone differently, but I ended up living with the most promiscuous girl I’d ever met. Beyond playing referee between the several booty calls she got nightly and the boyfriends she tried to maintain on the side, I got to hold her hair away from her face as she threw up in the communal bathrooms after a long night of partying and listen to her crying that no one liked her. And it was true—most people didn’t like her. She was mean and self-centered—traits that only got worse as she added another name to the list of “conquered” boys. By the end of the year I listened to almost daily complaining fests about guys, close friends and parents. One year of that was enough to solidify the promise I made to myself—marriage or bust!  

Then I made the big move to New York City, a world I had never even visited before packing everything I owned and boarding a plane. Journalism and the hope of landing a kick-ass job brought me to the city. But living here with this personal commitment has taken on a whole new meaning. Sex is rampant in the city that never sleeps. If the billboards and bus ads don’t prove that point, the general summer wear does.  

Living chastely in a city where that term is a foreign concept takes concrete solutions.  

Despite being very observant, I tend to see but not look. Advertisements like the new Victoria’s Secret 34th Street display that uses bodies to sell products, music videos playing in Times Square or the naked cowboy strumming his guitar are all on the list of things I notice but don’t look at twice. It’s not prudish—it’s just a healthy knowledge of human nature; when bombarded with this at every turn, previous resolve slips and ideals seem less important. 

I don’t do clubs. There’s too much of a sexual vibe in the air, and people are only thinking of one thing on the dance floor. I like bars but steer clear of the crowded rowdy types full of guys with too much testosterone. I drink my Miller Lite or Jack and Coke but know my limits—because I like to keep my wits about me. One of my friends, who was also waiting for marriage, went out one night, had a little too much to drink and woke up the next morning in some guy’s bed. Two months later it turns out she’s pregnant from that first time encounter. No thanks. I have a good time out, but I’m not imprudent.

I’m a firm believer in dressing to show my dignity as a person while in the latest fashions. No “open for business” sign will be emblazoned on my chest as it is on many women on the streets today. I don’t dress like I’m from another era, but I also don’t walk around in skin-tight, ultra-short, cleavage-baring outfits. Guys have enough things to catch their attention; I’d rather my smile be a focal point than my chest.

Lay the groundwork early on—like on the first date. A simple conversation explaining the respect I have for myself and the commitment I’ve made is usually enough to show whether the guy is even worth another 10 minutes of my time.  If he isn’t cool with waiting, I’m not interested in dating. Guys everywhere will push to find a limit so standards are a must. 

And no, this isn’t something I’m going to take back in the  years to come or auction off through Jane magazine. This isn’t a year long commitment like Paris Hilton claimed to make a few months ago or the three years Rivers Cuomo (lead singer for Weezer) has abstained. To me it’s more than a challenge; it’s a way of life. 

“I need the final prints from our East End office, NOW! Don’t take the subway either; you’ll disappear for hours. Take a cab!”

I know it’s never a good idea to try explaining to my movie producer boss why taking a cab from the heart of midtown, during gridlock, is a bad idea. So I jump in the elevator (which of course stops on every floor) and run out onto 45th Street, where a cab is miraculously waiting. Yet I hesitate. As I weigh the chances of getting a cab on Sixth Avenue that isn’t tied up in side street traffic, I spot a dark-haired businessman running toward my open ride. In a panic, I make a run for it.

“Sorry,” I say to the winded gentleman as I get in the car.

“Oh, lucky lady,” the cab driver says, turning around to smile at me. “I saw you coming. You beat that man by two seconds.”

“Thanks,” I say, catching my breath. “Twenty-third and First please.”

“Twenty-third and First. OK.”

Two buildings down and five minutes later—gridlock. As if someone has sensed my anxiety, my cell phone rings.

“The producer wants lunch,” another assistant tells me. “Stop at E.A.T. on your way back. It’ll be waiting.”

“Sure,” I say, wondering when I will get to eat.

We start moving again, zooming through the thirties, weaving in and out of cars, running yellow lights. But then we pass the twenties, too.

“Um, sir, I’m going to First and 23rd, remember?”

“I know lady, I show you.”

I sit back in my seat, the hair standing up on my skin. I have to get there. The East End assistants will be going to lunch soon. I can‘t afford to miss them.

“Lady, I go this way. I show you lady.”

“Thank you,” I say, frantically dialing the East End office. It rings. It rings. They must be out to lunch already. God, I’m totally going to lose my job.

“Lady, see everyone goes over Fifth. They don’t know, you avoid the tunnel, you save 15, sometimes 20 minutes. I show you.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, scrolling through my contact list for one of the assistant’s personal cell numbers. It rings. He answers and agrees to run back to the office and have the documents ready when I arrive.

I shout into the phone, “Ten minutes!”

“No ten minutes,” the cab driver interrupts. “Five, tell them five.”

“Um, five. I’ll be there in five minutes. I need you to get back to the office NOW!”

“Lady, you watching? Watch lady, watch what I’m doing.”

I look out the window and see immense traffic filling up Third Avenue as we somehow move on with ease.

“Lady, you ready, lady? Watch, watch lady.”

Suddenly, we have slipped under a pathway and, within seconds, we are out and onto First Avenue and 20-something Street.

“Ah ha!” the cab driver shouts, proudly raising his fists in the air. “You see lady? You see what I’ve done?”

“Yes,” I say in amazement. I was impressed. This driver had gotten me from 45th between Sixth and Broadway to First Avenue and 23rd Street in only 20 minutes. Twenty minutes! I hang up the phone and smile at the driver.

“That was great!”

“Yes, I know. That is why I wanted to show you.” He was young, maybe 29, and handsome.

“Could you wait for me?” Normally, I never ask drivers to wait, but this guy was too good to lose.

“Oh yes lady, I wait for you. How long?”

“Two minutes.”

I dash from the car, run to the elevator, the office, and return with the package.   

“Lady, that was quick, lady.”

“Bet you can get me back faster! Now show me that route again.”

As the driver leads me back the way we came, I listen attentively. He excitedly explains the route in great detail, but I will never be able to explain it to another driver.

He pulls in front of E.A.T.S. and tells me to have a great day. I tip him $10 and thank him for the best cab ride I’ve had in six years. What a great guy, I think as I walk into E.A.T.S., grinning ear to ear. I look out onto the street and, with a ping of jealousy, notice another woman getting into my cab.

Since then I’ve told others about this remarkable cabbie. I wonder how many New Yorkers have had the chance to ride with him. Maybe we should come together and form a club. We could call it, ‘Car H45J, where are you?’

DO YOU HAVE A NEW YORK STORY?

Prior to moving to New York, I’d heard of shrinks, shamans, yogis and life coaches, but never energy workers. Having relocated from Atlanta four months ago, I was grappling with a broken heart, a lack of focus and a bad attitude. I spent two months strolling through traffic with my eyes closed. “I think I’m trying to get hit by a car,” I confessed to my trusted friend Brian over lunch. “Oh, I tried to get hit by a car the entire first summer I lived here,” he said as he bit into a sandwich. Was this a competition? Just because we shared this tendency, it didn’t make the desperation any less affecting. I had back pains, anxiety overload and no real solution to my pervading problems. 

“Maybe you should try visiting the multi-dimensional energy worker,” he suggested. I didn’t even know what an energy worker did, but I was broke and Brian said the fee was mutual respect. I jumped at the chance to release, or slightly distract, my inner demons. 

The karma guy’s name wasn’t Locust, or Moonshine; it was David. And he didn’t wear sandals and carry a flute. His day gig was event coordinator for a nonprofit organization. Short, with curly hair and a permanent stutter, David was a good Jewish boy in his late-twenties who happened to practice energy work but only as a hobby on the side. He claimed he had accumulated “a proverbial tool belt” of skills that allowed him to exercise psychic abilities, tap into peoples’ past and see the toxic build-up in their bodies with his own mind’s eye. To me—a 23-year-old liberal, alternative medicine enthusiast who used to serve wheatgrass for a living—this sounded fascinating. But when I relayed my exciting discovery to my judicious lawyer father, it sounded like a joke. “I’m waiting for the punch line,” he said.

The first thing David did when we met for coffee (he had tea) was size up the degree to which my spinal fluid was imbalanced. According to him, everyone’s spine is either too acidic or too basic. “What am I? Too acidic?” I guessed, thinking of my feisty streak. “No, you’re too ba-ba-basic,” he stuttered as though it were obvious. This news disappointed me. Too basic? I felt like a generic brand of toilet paper. We had a lot of work to do.

The following Saturday I trekked from Brooklyn to 101st Street, where David performs his sessions from his apartment. I thought about my dad’s cynicism as he set up a massage table and told me to lie down with my face up. First, David gently cupped the back of my scalp to get an accurate reading of how screwed up I was. He said he did this by shooting a beam of pure white light down my spinal column and into my head. Then he told me about my problem areas: my throat, my feet and somewhere around my intestines. I asked about my back. He explained that, like all therapy, his expertise would allow me to resolve my anxiety after I targeted my past issues. 

If I had to get to the root of my problems, what better way than with the aid of fairies, elves and sprites? Evidently, during that first session, they were all present. The elves acted like dust mites, cleaning out my toxic feet. The fairies told David, in what I imagined were squeaky voices, that the build-up in my lower pelvic region was tied to the persistent pain in my left shoulder. And the sprites helped to remove the rest of my oozing negativity by playing a game of sorts, like Mary Poppins when she cleaned up. Forty-five minutes passed as he lightly touched random parts of my body, wincing elaborately as he ejected all of my bad toxins by violently shooing them away. When he finished, I stood up feeling slightly woozy and floated home. I had to admit the result: I felt fantastic.

I reported to my dad that my limbs were still intact and no inappropriate favors were requested in exchange for David’s unconventional treatment. In fact, I couldn’t wait to travel an hour to the Upper West Side to get another high dose of good energy from my new favorite and free therapist. This time, he put on music to set the mood. “The Whale Rider soundtrack, since you’re related to the Mer family,” he said as he set the volume low, referencing my apparent connection to mermaids and other sea creatures. For David, this was all great fun, and he sported a healthy grin as he prepped. I figured that his spinal cord fluid was like Baby Bear’s porridge: just right. 

He leaned over me and waved his hands over my face. They began to flutter wildly as if I were dreaming. He never used words like mantra or chakra to describe the process. Instead, he flaunted a modern vocabulary that sounded less new age-y. I raised an eyebrow when he told me that he had gotten “online” and that he was now able to “download” what the sprites, fairies and elves were revealing to him about my body. After we were done, he informed me that he’d transformed my negativity into unconditional love. It sounded like a holistic greeting card since I was lonely and new in town, I ate up every word.

I continued seeing him on a weekly basis, feeling better with each session. During a recent visit, I had my first breakthrough and cried. So did David. Sure, it was awkward, but I just rolled with it along with the rest of our shared journey. I can’t decipher if it’s his concentrated care that makes me feel better or because I rest assured throughout our sessions that he has an average day job that compares to my own. All I know is, it doesn’t really matter. My spine and my head have never felt better—and I found a new friend. 

As a 31-year-old British gay woman, I had high standards for the exhibition of Japanese comic book porn at the Museum of Sex. Turns out, my personal life is more interesting than anything you’ll find on display at their shrine to sexuality.

I took my ex-boyfriend, Greg, who I started dating after my first-female lover when I was still vacillating between the two sexes. I met him on the F train from Park Slope to Manhattan; he was on his way to a record store, I was heading out to a lesbian bar. A waspy Jason Priestley look-alike, he has the dubious honor of validating my decision—and three other ladies’—to be 100 percent gay. He didn’t let it affect his self-esteem, although he tended to put off potential girlfriends by asking them on first dates if they’ve ever slept with women. Unfortunately for Greg, he wasn’t the type of guy to be aroused by the thought of two women together. He’d already turned down my offer to spend the night with him and my Spanish ex-flame.

We stood in line at the museum between velvet ropes next to a sign that read “please do not touch, lick, stroke, or mount the exhibits.” The walls were painted brothel red and security guards in black suits made the place feel more like a club than a museum. Even the woman at the ticket booth was seductive. I asked for discounted admission for students. “Are you with the babe?” the attendant asked Greg and eyed me, “because if you are, you can have a discount too.”

The exhibition began with shunga, erotic Japanese prints depicting priapic men prodding geishas with huge veiny penises, and then happy-ended with some Manga cartoons played on a series of television screens. I hoped to be turned on (but wasn’t) by an enlivening round of oral sex performed by a group of cartoon Asian female nurses. Meanwhile, Greg turned his attention to a comic book featuring the seduction of a large furry mole by a nubile young super heroine. Given my recent theories about his sexual proclivities, I paid close attention to see how he responded to representations of man-on-man Asiatic loving. “These guys all have huge cocks,” said Greg.

In the final gallery, the objects on display from the permanent collection were anticlimactic and not the sleazy S&M-dungeon-Christopher-Street-bath-house-foot-fetish cornucopia I was expecting. So, we went on to a couple of dildos and vibrators strapped onto various electrical kitchen equipment, a video of an elderly woman showing transsexuals how to walk like “ladies,” and an old Viewmaster with 3D pictures of Nordic blondes lolling about in meadows wearing transparent, white peasant-smocks. Greg pressed a button on one of the sex toys and it whirred to life. He looked at me and smiled. “Far too big,” I said.

I was disappointed, my expectations had been set by a visit to Amsterdam’s equivalent, the Venustempel. After a huge spliff, my friend Maike and I had marveled at the extensive collection of ancient Greek pottery, which featured a striking array of novel and athletic positions. There was also a whole labyrinth of cave-like rooms covered in snapshots and Polaroid’s celebrating various carnal preferences and fetishes: straight, gay, bondage and bestiality. But it was the last room, entirely devoted to overweight people, that captured my imagination.  While Maike and I were completely blasé about everything else, our insouciance waned slightly at the sight of a woman inserting a snake into her vagina, and vanished completely at the sight of two 300-pound lumps of human flesh moving as one. But at least we attained the cheap and shabby feeling we paid good money to experience. Kind of like the Coney Island freak show, pre-Giuliani.

New York is a great place for sex. Unlike England, where my neighbors’ activities were concealed behind net curtains, I’ve caught dozens of nudes frolicking around their apartments. Americans took me to their collective bosom, introducing me to threesomes and kissing girls. Emily from Connecticut jumped me one night when we were traveling together in Portugal. I had mistaken her warmth for that U.S. lack of reserve I had heard so much about. Maybe she just wanted a hug. Apparently not.

My friend Jessica threw good orgies, and always preceded them with a filling Thai takeout (“can‘t do much on an empty stomach,” she would say, maternally). A publisher by day and a dominatrix by night, she offered me a job at the dungeon in midtown where she worked. “They would just love your British accent,” she said, giving me a guided tour of the chambers. After reciting a history of the uses and abuses of the steel birdcage and the spanking horse, we reached the “doctor’s office.” She handed me something and said, far too brightly, “this is for administering enemas.” The salary was tempting, but I didn’t take the job at Rebecca’s Hidden Chamber. 

At Jessica’s parties, I was resolutely monogamous. But, even by my reserved, Albion standards, the museum was tame.  I left feeling more like I’d been to the gynecologist than to New York’s temple of lust. I looked at Greg. “I have blue balls,” he said.

It’s a glorious Sunday afternoon and I’m wearing shorts and sneakers. The streets are thick with happy people reveling in the warm, cloudless weather. Dog walkers, joggers and young couples, gay and straight, have exploded out of their apartment prisons.

I’m heading for the Dugout, where large hairy men gather to swill beer and rub bellies. The Dugout is the east coast focal point of bear culture, and on this beautiful day, will be packed with unshaven gay men fiercely affecting their best blue-collar postures and costumes. The place may indeed be populated by bankers and lawyers, but to the uninformed it will look like a convention of plumbers.

After two decades wherein AIDS-related wasting made anyone of a slender frame immediately suspect, heavier men began to seem healthier men, giving at least a partial impetus to the “bear” movement. And since fat is the new black, bear bars are always a popular destination.

Crossing Hudson Street, I fall into step with a young black man. He’s wearing a shiny black do-rag, worn under an askew baseball cap. His clothes are hugely oversized, his pants sagging down, his boxers pulled several inches above the waistband. His gait is polished and swaggering, and he’s got his right hand cupped over his crotch. He ignores me and I pretend to ignore him.

In front of the PATH train station, I see four teenaged black girls. One of them has pink hair woven into her own, giving her the comical appearance of an exploded firework. The girls are animated and giggling, emitting piercing screams at each other’s clever jibes. Then they see the young black man at my side, and for a moment I wonder if they think that he and I are together.

We pass the girls and are about 10 feet away when one of them shouts.

“Hey, he a girl!”

I glance back to see them all looking at the young man. He stops and turns around.

“Wazzup?” he asks, hands raised in the familiar pose seen in rap videos.

I fade into the crowd outside the pizza joint and watch.

“You a girl, right?” another one of the girls asks.

I look to the young man, who nods. Only then do I detect the faintest hint of breasts, likely strapped tightly, under “his” sweatshirt.

I expect the girls to say something insulting or obscene to this young handsome drag king, but quite unexpectedly, they become coy, even coquettish. And one of them apparently finds the king quite attractive because there’s a bit of schoolyard-like teasing by the other girls, as they push her towards him.

The drag king waits, confident, serene, and pardon the pun, cocky.

His admirer finally approaches, her head down, embarrassed.

“You a girl, right?” she reconfirms, examining him closely.

“Yeah, baby, wassup?”

“How old you are?”

“Twenty-one,” he replies, boldly putting his arm around her.

“OK, cool. Me too.”

“Waz yer name, hotness?” he asks, pulling her tighter.

“Chantelle. What’s yours?”

“Ripper. Cuz I fucks the ladies so hard, I rip her.”

The girl lets out a peal of laughter, “Ooh! You so bad!” and she playfully hits him, but pulls away from his embrace.

The king pulls her back, “Where you goin? I can get your number?”

The girl looks back at her friends, who have lost interest in their conversation, and gives him her number, which he punches into his cellphone, and they separate.

The young girl pretending to be a man swaggers off towards the Christopher Street pier, and I head towards the Dugout, where actual men are pretending to be plumbers.

“The thing about this job,” I say, straddling my first customer of the night, a cute, ruffly-haired young guy with glasses from a record company, “is that it’s not rocket science.” Michael is his name. Actually, I forgot his name.

“Right…” he laughs. “We both know what we want.” He means that he knows I want to get paid, and that he would like a lapdance. But his voice is suddenly husky. 

Normally, I am a difficult, halfhearted stripper—cold and distant with my customers. My barely masked contempt is equaled only by my morbid fascination with this den of iniquity. It’s like poking a dead rat with a stick: You shouldn’t do it, you don’t particularly enjoy doing it, you hate how disgusting the dead rat is, but some part of you needs to see what its entrails look like. 

Let me explain: I started working at the strip club out of a combination of dire financial straits and old-fashioned curiosity. I wanted to see the seedy, dark side of New York from the inside. However, it’s rare that one just falls into a situation accidentally. For things to happen, one must be open to them first.

In short, I went looking for trouble. I went looking for the old, weird, vice-squad New York. And, much to my delight, surprise and despair—I found it.

Here, there’s a market for everything. At the club, the girls are representatives of their own niches. Some men like the blondes, who are only acting dumb to maximize profits; the curvy Brazilians; the Eastern Europeans; a few like the moody, slouching girls.

Then there’s Michael. Most men don’t talk during dances, at least not with me. My silently communicated boundaries discourage it. But Michael is chatty; he has witty, well-made anecdotes about Willie Nelson and peyote and calling up recording artists: “So how are we doing? How’s the record coming? Help me help you. How’s the creative process flowing?” I feel like I’m talking with an old friend. While they pay for a lapdance. I can’t mix the two, right?

“What’s your favorite movie this year? Remember, I’m a media guy, I have to know.”

Are you fucking kidding? 

“The Squid and the Whale,” I say.

“My definition of being professional,” he whispers, “is doing what you love with people you hate.”

I hate all the clients: the businessmen; the old men; my boss, Frank. My violent, Taxi Driver-style fantasies involve machine-gunning him down while he’s doing what he thinks are slick moves on the dance floor in his sleazy suit, bald head sweating. Multiple bullets send blood spurting from his chest, splattering all over his white shirt and the girls, who scream and then start laughing like hyenas.

But I can’t hate Michael. He’s too young; we have too much in common. He reminds me of somebody I used to know, was attracted to. His face, his mannerisms, his voice: they’re all disconcertingly familiar. 

Per standard practice, I try to avoid eye contact, anything resembling intimacy, but I can see him gazing up at me, looking into my eyes, blowing cool air onto my stomach, something that only a lover would do. For the first time in my dubious two-week career, something bizarre happens: I’m enjoying this transaction as much as the person paying for it. Is it still a transaction? What am I doing here?

My right hand rests on the side of the couch. Before I know what’s happening, he covers my hand with his, and I freeze. He’s broken the cardinal rule: the rule of my hating him, my professional, psychological boundaries. 

And just like that, what started as a crude service between strangers becomes a genuine moment between, simply, two human beings. 

In a city of 8 million, it’s amazing what we put ourselves through to find these moments, the ones that make us feel alive, and, for a song or two, not alone. It’s even more bizarre the places, where and when they occur—catching us off guard. For a minute, my anger, my judgments of myself and everyone else, melt away. He sweetly fumbles with his wallet and, soon, disappears onto the street.

“The city is so dirty,” Robert DeNiro’s character fumes to the politician riding in his taxi who asks him what he wants to change the most. “I just wish somebody would clean it up.” His vehemence startles and creates an uncomfortable silence.

At the Nassau G station at 2 a.m., the floor is flooded with water and soap suds. It’s nice to know that once a night, just a little part of the city gets clean.

Rose White publishes a zine called Old Weird America.

I meandered aimlessly around the small café of a bookstore on Astor Place, hoping that during one of my laps someone would have the decency to get up from their table and give it to me. 

Instead a man motioned me over to him. My gut told me to ignore him, to turn and run far away, but he looked innocent enough: he was sitting with a woman who I presumed was his wife. The idealist in me figured he and his wife were leaving and they were going to offer me their table. So, I went.

“What does SJM mean to you?” He asked.

“Excuse me?” I replied, perplexed, trying to figure out if he’d accidentally meant SJP, as in, Sarah Jessica Parker.

“Have you ever tried online dating?” he continued.

“It’s not really my thing, actually. Wait, SJM…single Jewish male?!” I blurted out.

“Yes! See, we have a son, and he’s 24. He’s tried the whole online dating thing, and it just didn’t work out for him. He has horror stories you wouldn’t believe! So we’ve watched him struggle in the dating arena, and frankly, we don’t know how he’s supposed to meet anyone! So, we’re trying this approach now.”

“Umm, does he know you’re doing this?” I asked. “Because if my parents did this, I’d probably kill them.”

“We’ve done it a few times, here and there, but when we saw you, we just knew we had to approach you. You have a very friendly smile and pleasant demeanor, you don’t see that very often in New York.”

“Thanks,” I responded, half flattered, half scared. 

And then, against my better judgement, I conversed with my future in-laws for over half an hour. By the end of our chat, they told me that they didn’t care if I met their son or not, but that I absolutely had to keep in touch with them. They invited me to their home for every Jewish holiday from now until eternity and went on to proclaim themselves my New York family.  

“If you need anything at all, you just call us. If you’re sick, we’ll take you to the hospital. If you need a ride somewhere, we’ll offer you our car. If you need a kidney replacement, you can have mine.”

They said they’d never met anyone so amenable before, and that it was a lovely surprise. They didn’t want me to leave and invited me to join them for dinner that evening. Through a plastic smile, I politely declined. By the time I’d gotten away from my overbearing new family members, I’d forgotten all about their son they wanted to set me up with—their reason for approaching me in the first place.

The next morning at work, I opened my e-mail and found a letter from my new dad. He went on about how much he and his wife enjoyed meeting me and that they sincerely hoped we could all stay in touch. He reiterated that our meeting was so special because cheerful people like me are a dime a dozen. And he ended his ode by telling me, again, that they will gladly be my NYC family. 

I was appalled. I hadn’t given this man my e-mail address. He’d obviously Internet stalked me, but, as strange as I felt about the situation, I did what everyone would deem the unthinkable: I replied.

I sent a very brief e-mail back thanking him for his kind words. He took that as his cue to figure out my work number and call me at the office that same afternoon. And then call, and e-mail, and call, and e-mail, every hour until I finally responded.

He desperately wanted to talk to me because he wanted to impart some imperative career advice, as well as invite me to his wife’s surprise birthday dinner that evening. He told me that after he and his wife gave birth to their son (son? What son?), they wanted to have another child—a daughter—but sadly, his wife was unable to bear any more children. And the clincher’s when he told me our meeting was “B’sheret”—destiny; I was the daughter they never had but desperately wanted.

In a fit of panic I slammed down the phone and immediately dialed my mom—my real mom. 

“Mom, don’t get scared, but I think I might be getting kidnapped. Seriously, you should come to New York now. You might have to fight for me.”

OK, so maybe I had let things go just a tad too far.

Then I did what any calm, rational and highly professional person would do in this situation: I ran crying into my boss’s office.  

I knew my boss had the one thing I was severely lacking—a backbone. She’d help me weasel my way out of this eerily stalkerish situation that I’d smiled my way into. She stood over my shoulder as I composed and sent an intensely concise, extremely cutting e-mail.

I was mortified, but that’s when I felt it; all of a sudden a backbone replaced my previously flimsy spine. And for the first time in 26 years, I felt like I was in control of my life.

Needless to say, the date with their son never happened, and these days, I am a little more conservative with my smile. 

Read more by Marissa Kristal at Mariskris.blogspot.com.

I board at 68th Street at the head of the train, as I always do. Even when the other cars are too jam packed to squeeze one more person onboard, the other passengers at my stop are usually too lazy to walk forward on the platform to get on at the front, meaning I can usually slip on without having to wait while several full trains pass me by.

The downside of boarding at the head of the train is that it’s the car reserved for people with bicycles, and there are often grimy bike messengers carelessly yanking around their filthy, muddy bikes, which occasionally brush against the crisply ironed droidwear of the other passengers. 

Today the first car has only one guy with a bike, sitting on the little handicapped bench by the driver’s door.

The first thing I notice about him is the odd manner in which he’s holding his bike. Most bike messengers, if seated, will turn the front wheel perpendicular to the rest of the bike, thereby shortening the bike’s length and hopefully reducing the dirt anxiety of the other riders. This guy has got his bike upended, the handlebars pointed towards the roof, and he’s clutching it to his chest. 

The second thing I notice is how much the guy with the bike looks like Ziggy Marley; like he might be of mixed race, his skin a mocha-cappuccino, with short braided dreadlocks. He’s wearing headphones, and, while his head nods, I catch a glimpse of the palest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

Seeing his eyes sets me off to creating an elaborate back-story for this stranger. I decide that he’s obviously a model, waiting for his break, doing grunt work as a bike messenger, probably for one of the Midtown delivery companies that service all the fashion mags.

The third thing I notice about the guy with the bike is that he has a spiral notebook jammed into the netting of his backpack. I can see that the front of the notebook is full of scribbled messages, all in French. OK, this guy with the bike is the biracial son of a French citizen and one of their many North African immigrants. His parents begged him not to come to New York—Americans are beneath contempt after all—but he’s willfully disobeyed them and come to the city to pursue his dream of global fame, and after achieving it, he’ll return to Paris and resume sneering at American tourists.

In the time that it takes us to move from 68th Street to 59th, I talk myself into loathing the guy with the bike: He probably has snotty Eurotrash, condescending friends and they have a stupid way of holding their smelly cigarettes. As the train slows into the 59th Street station, I hear a tiny bit of his music leaking out from his headphones—Coldplay. My victory is complete.

When the doors open at 59th, a pregnant woman is the first to disembark. As she passes the guy with the bike, he does an odd thing. He doesn’t stop nodding his head to his stupid music, but he sort of barks out a word at the woman. It sounded like: “Baby!” The next passenger off the train passes the guy with the bike, and this time he says, a bit louder, “Tall!” Indeed, the guy is quite tall. The next lady to pass him gets a shouted “Suitcase!” clearly because she’s pulling one.

I’m really pleased now. Apparently this Yank-hating model wannabe has some sort of bizarre version of Tourettes. I share smiles of amusement with the passengers near me and notice that the guy with the bike doesn’t announce arrivals, only departures, which probably means something to those familiar with this sort of thing.

I eagerly anticipate 51st Street. When the doors open, the guy with the bike is momentarily overwhelmed by the number of passengers leaving the train. His eyes widen and his head snaps back and forth as he tries not to miss naming anybody. “Old! Hat! Green! Glasses!” 

We are now approaching my stop. I’m tempted, terribly tempted, to depart from the far doors of our car, out of range of the guy with the bike, but my need to hear my own identifier overwhelms my fear of what it may be. I do a quick self-assessment. My crew cut is fairly recent, my hair is pretty thin anyway…will it be “Bald!”? Or maybe he will comment on my oversized short-sleeve orange bowling shirt? “Orange!” Oh, please…don’t let it be “Fat!” 

I’m wearing cargo shorts today, which sometimes causes my co-workers to comment on my over-developed calves, the last vestige of my bodybuilding days. I would definitely be happy with “Shorts!”

The announcement is made: “Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street.” We roll to a stop, the doors open, and people are actually holding back from leaving the train because they want to hear what the guy with the bike says about the others. Finally, fearful of the doors closing, I push past the guy with the bike and hear, “Muscles!”

Guy with the bike, I take it all back.

Read more by Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod.blogspot.com.