The Power of Two

This edition of My Life as a Themed E-mail is brought to you by the writers of Sex and the City and the power of the number two.

When you're young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun. Then, you grow up and learn to be cautious. You could break a bone or a heart. You look before you leap and sometimes you don't leap at all because there's not always someone there to catch you. And in life, there's no safety net.

So at the beginning of January, I decided I could no longer remain a complete waste of space and made good on mom's bribe to move to NYC. (She offered to pay my rent for up to two months while I looked for work, which is why I didn't move back to LA.) I started looking for apartments and came up for TWO days to look at TWO apartments. The first one was a really nice three bedroom but I didn't like the location that much and the girls who lived there were nice enough, but I wasn't sold on it. I went to look at apartment number TWO on the lower east side and loved it, a kitschy little TWO bedroom on Norfolk at Houston with a girl R that I hit it off with. My room is teeny tiny but I don't care, it's cozy and cheap and I like the exposed brick wall in the kitchen/ living room/ dining room. Sold! Thanks to Suki, I gave her money for the credit check and got the ball rolling right away with the application. Suki told me I am a lucky bitch. It's true. I am. I constantly leap without checking for a safety net, but Suki is my safety net so I don't really have to worry about being responsible and stuff like that.

I will never be the woman with the perfect hair, who can wear white and not spill on it.

Which is just fine with me. In fact, I am more than happy to announce that I will be wearing whatever obnoxiously vibrant color I please to work, since I will start my new job working at a fashion media company this week! Last week I came up to interview with TWO companies, and I knew right away that this was the right job for me. It's my dream job, no joke. I am doing international sales and distribution of fashion television programming and stock footage, and my job will require that I travel to Cannes TWO times a year. I will not have to dress "business casual" and I will have a 15 minute commute to work, door to door. They refused me a signing bonus but they did agree to get me a new laptop. Let's hope I don't drop it in champagne like my first Blackberry.

There are 1.3 million single men in New York, 1.8 million single women, and of these more than 3 million people, about 12 think they're having enough sex.

I am not one of those 12, sadly. But that's ok. I will settle for a free meal or drinks on a fairly regular basis. The more frequent, the better! I have now been in NYC for TWO days and I have TWO dates lined up for this week. When I moved in on Saturday, my friend invited me out and I hit it off with his coworker J, who told me I'm beautiful and bought me a pink rose from the flower guy towards the end of the night. Awww, how sweet. I am having dinner with him on Monday night at Dennis Foy in Tribeca. I actually don't have much practice with this whole "dating" gig. Usually, I just drink too much and end up hooking up with a guy I just met, and that deal may or may not include breakfast. Or it is a friend-turned-more-than-friend. This will be one of TWO times in my life that a boy has offered to take me to dinner before trying to get in my pants and not vice versa.

Date number TWO is a blast from the past: H found out I moved to NYC and wants to grab drinks before I start work on Wednesday, so I am meeting up with him on Tuesday night. This should be interesting since he hasn't made any effort to talk to me since he booty called me in DC over Thanksgiving. None. Zilch.

If this is how easy it is to get a date in NY, I will not be as hungry as I feared. And I might become one of those 12 people.

Maybe mistakes are what make our fate... without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. After all, things change, so do cities, people come into your life and they go. But it's comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart... and if you're very lucky, a plane ride away.

I may be reckless and making mistakes left and right, but it keeps things interesting. I would say I veered off course when I went into commodities instead of sticking with media straight out of school, but it was a good experience. I didn't plan on going to grad school, but it was a great chance to travel and meet some amazing people. I guess I haven't really veered off course, though, since I don't really think I had a course to begin with.

Can't wait to see you guys when you visit NYC. It's only a plane ride (or car drive or bus ride) away. Follow through...

Christmas cheer tip

The Jews party it up on Christmas Eve before waking up Christmas Day for some bagels for brunch, a movie afterwards, and Chinese food for dinner. It's kind of a good time. Follow through...

Twas the night before Christmas

And all I wanna do is get dolled up and hit the town. It feels eerily empty without family around, and that makes me seek some sort of antidote to loneliness slash substitute for love in crowded bars with confused (but perhaps perfectly content to be so) others seeking the same. Follow through...

Why you should pay someone else to touch your koo

Because your pubic hair isn't going to go away on its own. In order to maintain a groomed nether region, women resort to various methods of hair removal, none of which are more painful than the Brazilian bikini wax, which was, little known fact, handcrafted by the devil. Alas, this cruel but effective form of hair removal is a necessary evil. When I lived in LA, there was this great little beauty salon called Beba that only charged $35 per bikini wax. Think about it from the waxers point of view: there is no guarantee that every veej is going to be pleasant to look at, and certainly not something everyone is going to want to put their hands all over, but it's their job, and they are brave souls. Sure, the process only lasts 15 minutes, the pain is excruciating, and the fact is that some stranger is touching your koo, but that is a small price to pay for walking out of that room feeling like the sexiest bitch in town.

After moving back to the East Coast, jobless and destitute, I tried the whole au natural thing for a while but felt gross about it. Tried shaving, but didn't like the sharp stubble that kept growing in. I needed a wax, but the salons in the area charge $50 a pop and I can't afford that every three weeks! So instead I found a microwaveable Brazilian bikini wax kit online (GiGi at Amazon.com) and decided to take my chances.

I won't go into the awkward details of where I had to place my legs or the poses in which I had to hold my balance in order to reach some of the places that had hair in need of removal. Let's just say my yoga instructor would be proud. And that my mother would not.

It's not that it's impossible to perform a bikini wax on yourself. It would just be easier with two for a couple of reasons. (1) Two people requires less contortion. You have to put your legs in strange acrobatic positions even when you go to a salon, but it usually isn't any more complicated than lifting one or both legs and propping them up on the waxer's shoulder or the wall. That's for amateurs. When going it alone, you must be very flexible and have very good balance. (2) After the first rip of the wax, as the now-empty follicles from which you have mercilessly torn your pubic hair SCREAM in agony, you remember how much it hurts to gets waxed and each successive pull becomes more and more difficult to accomplish mentally. It's hard to keep going because it's your own body, and there is something wrong about being the hand that causes pain unto yourself. Unless you're into that kind of thing, I guess, which I'm not. So even if the pain is the same with one person or two, it's just better when you don't have to inflict it on yourself.

The home wax kit costs $12 plus shipping, and you get three waxes out of it. So you're talking 20 bucks versus 150 at a salon. I've floated the idea to my two best friends, and they said they'd be willing to help me out with my wax, but as much as I love them, I am not entirely comfortable with having them look full-on at my veej. An accidental glimpse while changing is ok. But an extended experience? That could be a little too close for comfort.

Sometimes you just gotta suck it up. Follow through...

Silent audience

I love this piece, from which I stole the title for this post, by Pete Revonkorpi. It might have a little something to do with the fact that I played the violin for twelve years, from the tender age of six until I turned eighteen and was finally allowed to quite taking private lessons. I loved to perform, but I hated practicing. I loved the attention, but I lacked the discipline necessary to perform well enough to deserve any. The only reason my parents refused to let me quit sooner was because my teachers convinced them that I possessed some degree of natural talent; because I could play fairly well by ear, imitating my teachers came more easily to me than some other students, infusing them with false hope for the next mini-virtuoso. Apparently, they thought I could be great, but I found that talking on the phone with my non-musical adolescent friends was a more desirable use of an hour than one spent alone in front of my sheet music.

Man, am I ever sorry I didn't listen to my parents. Sometimes I'll hear a song I once played and freeze in my tracks, spellbound, to listen. And when a certain mood strikes, I want to play a gypsy tune full of life and longing and drama. Recently, I tried, and all those years of not practicing have taken their toll. My fingers no longer feel like my own because my brain remembers how they are supposed to move and what it's supposed to sound like, but those treacherous, traitorous fingers of mine will no longer comply. Follow through...