Accismus » Mulberry Street

Becoming A Woman

Elizabeth — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:56:10 +0000

I am currently reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants, and she has one segment where she’s talking about going to a seminar, and the woman leading it asks everyone in the audience at what moment they first knew they were a woman, as opposed to a girl.

Naturally, I stopped reading to think about that in terms of myself¹ and I’m pretty sure it was when I paid my first gas bill at the beginning of my third year of college. I had had this big freak-out about utility bills when I was in my senior year of high school. One of my parents mentioned paying a water bill or something and I hadn’t really known you had to pay for water – ever – and I suddenly realized I wasn’t remotely prepared for the rigors of adulthood. At the time, I’d been quietly worrying that I’d be too homesick to ever live away from my parents even though I really, really wanted to live all kinds of places in the world. Now, with the introduction of the water bill concept, I realized there must be any number of administrative concerns I had failed to even consider.

I asked my mother to please list for me every sort of bill I was likely to come across, and I would write them all down and do some research.

“Usually gas and electric,” she said. “And heat, but sometimes that’s included. And that’s about it, really. Cable, if you want it.”

“What about air conditioning?” I asked.

“That comes in under electric.”

“And what about this water bill you were talking about? I really want you to try not to leave anything out.”

“Water bills are usually more when you own a house,” she said. “When you rent, your landlord usually pays for that. Same thing trash pickup, and some other things, too.”

“Okay. Now, do I need to have life insurance?”

After making my list and indulging in a day’s worth of anxiety over how much all these things would cost, and what the procedure was for signing up for them, and how you would even know you were supposed to if it hadn’t randomly occurred to you to ask your mother to make you a detailed list, I forgot about my utility-bill-related panic, went off to college, spent two years in the dorms, and then got an off-campus apartment with a friend.

About a month after we moved in, I found myself walking to the mailbox with a check for the gas company in my hand and I remembered my childish concerns back in high school, and all of a sudden, I felt immensely mature and capable and self-reliant and smart.

“So I’m a grown-up now,” I thought to myself. “It just all works itself out somehow. You don’t really have to try.”

This was, of course, an erroneous conclusion, but it took me another five years or so to realize that.

(image via)

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¹As will become clear from the way in which I answered it, I completely misinterpreted the question. I thought it meant, when did you first realize you were an adult, but it turns out that it meant, when did you first realize men want to bang you.² But then, I’ve been misinterpreting what ‘woman’ means since the concept was first introduced to me in sixth grade.

²I guess my answer to that is that I’m still always really surprised when they do.

A Night Walk

Elizabeth — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:02:06 +0000

Usually, my Brooklyn neighborhood is pretty sunny and wholesome, but last night, I walked home from a friend’s apartment, where I had just watched Brick, and I don’ t know if it was the movie’s influence, but all down the dark, deserted stretch of Manhattan Avenue, it seemed I was in the gritty, Hopper-esque NY of yore. Piles of garbage and busted furniture lined the curbs. The stores were all shuttered behind their graffiti-covered security gates. The usual drunks were passed out in the usual doorways. Outside the Associated Grocery, an emaciated shirtless man combed through a bag of bottles. A tattooed strung-out couple helped each other try to jimmy into the money slot of the exterior Chase ATM, and glared at me as I passed. In the darkened rear of a nearby bagel store, a security alarm blared. An older lady sniffled on the steps under the Polski church’s towering Gothic spire. In front of me, a woman glided down the sidewalk iin an ankle-length dress; as she passed the OTB, a gust of stale wind blew a stream of paper plates and takeout bags into a halo around her head, and a man’s profile emerged from a shadowed doorway as he turned to watch her, a pipe hanging from his lower lip. The moon was nearly full above the upper floors, where, behind open curtains, tatty furnishings were strobed by blue TV light. Down the empty street, a bus rattled, its few sullen passengers staring into their laps, lit bright against the night. The very air smelled of despair and oregano. As I rounded the corner onto Norman, a clown stood in the center of the empty street, holding a slowly rotating pinwheel and weeping, his tears making tracks through his white makeup. In the gutter outside my apartment, an infant kicked and whined; moments later, a sewer rat dragged it away by the ankle. In the hallway outside my door, a group of refugees huddled around an oil-can fire. They begged me for something to eat, and I gave them half a box of Tic-Tacs. Inside my apartment, my beloved was asleep beneath a pile of newspapers. His tuberculous cough rent the night sky and my heart as the Cimices watered themselves at his shriveled veins, and a buzzard kept patient vigil from the mantelpiece. Rent was due – I stood beneath a bare bulb and forged a check for $2500, as a pipe burst and drywall rained down around me like manna. Ah, New York. New York, New York.

Backwards Compliment

Elizabeth — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:01:42 +0000

Woman in the elevator: “I wish I could dress like that. For work. That’s a definite perk.”

I thought I looked nice!

Meredith + Reese = 4 Never

Elizabeth — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:23:14 +0000

In the subway station today, a gang of kids came through, and one boy started screaming.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I only have one question to ask you today! Meredith! Meredith? Wait there, please.’

Meredith: ‘Stop it, seriously.’

Boy (running after her): ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this will only take a minute of your time! Meredith?’

Meredith: ‘Will you please–’

Boy: ‘Will you go to prom with me?’

(Everyone starts laughing.)

Meredith: ‘No! Quit it!’

Boy: ‘Meredith. Please, be my date to the prom.’

Meredith: ‘No.’

Boy from opposite subway platform: ‘Yo, what’d she say, Reese?’

Reese: ‘She said no. Ladies and gentlemen, what do you think she should say?’

Assorted embarrassed people: ‘Yes!’

Meredith: ‘I can’t.’

Reese: ‘Why not?’

Meredith: ‘I already have a date.’

Boy from other platform: ‘Oh, come on, don’t do Reese like that! He’s a good guy!’

Reese: ‘Who?’

Meredith: ‘Parker.”

Reese: ‘Parker?!’

Boy from other platform: ‘Sing her a song, Reese!’

Reese. ‘I can’t. Because I can’t sing. But I can tell you how I feel today.’

Meredith (bright red): ‘Oh, my God.’

Boy from other platform: ‘That’s okay, Reese! You tried.’

MS 12/15/09: The Dog Must Go

Elizabeth — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:47:14 +0000

You know what I think a million dollar idea would be? If you were to invent some sort of thing you could feed to, say, a dog somewhere, that would make the dog entirely loose its voice forever, but otherwise wouldn’t harm the dog. Every dog in New York would be given this treat eventually, including the one next door to me now, at my new apartment – the big black one with the white muzzle, who barks every morning from 7:00-8:00am in such a way as to completely penetrate even the most shoved-in of earplugs.

Since nothing like that exists, though, I will probably have to feed this dog poison at some point. Or, someone – not me – will, I mean.

MS 12/10/09: Photoshopping

Elizabeth — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:54:56 +0000

Extremely obese black dude with a small mop of dreadlocks: ‘Naw, man, but he’s not real! He’s just a cardboard cutout!’

Dweeby-looking white guy: ‘Yeeeeah, I know. He’s uh…what’s it called? Photoshopped.’

Black guy: ‘Exactly! Ain’t nobody really look like that.’

MS 12/9/09: Ikea

Elizabeth — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:40:49 +0000

My friends and I went to the Red Hook Ikea yesterday. Going on a weekday is definitely the way to do it – the place was pretty much empty. Except…there were all these preteen kids running around everywhere eating $1 yogurt and carping at each other. Later, while eating our meatballs and lingonberry sauce, my friends and I saw all of the kids piling into a schoolbus in the parking lot.

Why would a junior high school take a mid-day field trip to Ikea? Just because the food’s cheap and there’s plenty of floor space?

MS 12/8/09: Quest Diagnostics

Elizabeth — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:50:51 +0000

At the waiting room of Quest Diagnostics testing center, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, an incredibly frazzled-looking blond Polish woman in green scrubs came out to check the sign-in list (no employee had entered the waiting room for 15 full minutes). A very young woman went up to her.

‘I just scratched my name out,’ said the young woman. ‘I will come back another day.’

‘Ok,’ said the worker, studying the clipboard.

‘See?’ said the young woman. ‘Right there. I scratched it out. Because I have to pick up my kid – at 10:30, the schools let out.’

‘Ok,’ said the worker.

‘So,’ said the young woman. ‘I suppose I will come back tomorrow. Because how many are waiting?’

The worker made a vague motion over her shoulder at the waiting room, where sat a very old man with a cane, a Mom-ish looking woman reading a Polish magazine, me, and a mentally-challenged man (who had clearly shit himself) playing with a pop-bead toy and accompanied by an older lady with garish rouge circles painted on her cheeks.

‘So…four?’ asked the young woman.

‘Yeah, four, yeah,’ said the worker. The very old man approached.

‘When will you call me?’ he asked.

‘Well, I will have to come back tomorrow, then,’ said the young woman. ‘What are your hours?’

‘Who are you?’ said the worker.

‘Douglas,’ said the old man, pointing. ‘When will you call?’

‘Now,’ said the worker. ‘Room one.’

‘Room what? Where?’

‘Your hours tomorrow?’

‘Uh…eight to five. Room one, room one. Right there, sir. Elizabeth?’

I went up with my form.

‘Okay,’ said the young woman, regretfully. ‘I guess I will just come back tomorrow then.’

‘I can’t do this test,’ said the worker, looking at my form. ‘For a job, yes? I can’t do. Will speak to my friend to do. Please take a seat.’

I sat down again. The young woman left in a huff, and the worker guided the old man to Room One.

Presently, another harried Polish woman came out, this one in white scrubs. She looked at the clipboard and called to the back:

‘Which one had the form?’

‘What?’ called the first worker from another room.

‘The form? Which is the one with the form?’

Everyone in the waiting room stood up halfway.

‘Me!’ I said, coming up with my form.

She took it, and scrutinized me.

‘Are you ready to urinate now?’ she asked, loudly.

‘I sure am!’ I announced.

MS 12/7/09: Quarters

Elizabeth — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:01:12 +0000

As I was picking up my laundry, an older Polish man came in and put a five dollar bill on the counter next to me. The Asian woman ringing up my laundry looked at it.

‘Five dollar quarters?’ she said.

‘Uh, four and four quarters,’ said the man.

‘No–’

‘For the meter! The meter!’

‘No! We are not a bank!’

A long, uncomfortable staredown ensued.

‘Forget it,’ said the woman.

Another long, uncomfortable staredown, during which I paid for my laundry.

‘You go down there!’ said the woman, pointing vaguely East. ‘To the Western Union!’

‘Oh, okay!’ said the old dude, with heavy sarcasm. ‘Thank you! Have a nice evening!’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Excuse me,’ he said grandly, bowing himself out the door. ‘Good evening!’

MS 12/4/09: Number?

Elizabeth — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:50:05 +0000

As I went down the stairs into the train tunnel, an old French guy coming up muttered something critical at me, which unfortunately, I didn’t catch. After passing me, he hollered at a model-gorgeous girl in a sleek black outfit, who was smoking at the top of the steps:

‘Get rid of that cigarette! That is ugly! Ugly!‘

Later, outside a bar in Astoria:

Woman: ‘Well, then, uh, I don’t know, let me get your number?’

Guy: ‘My phone number?!’