a tale of two delis

Last summer it was a surprise to discover how popular Greenpoint was on the blogosphere. I discovered New York Shitty, where Miss Heather makes the pretty obvious observation that Greenpoint is filled with dog shit. It's always been this way, as walking up Humboldt toward St. Stan's for mass on Sundays during my childhood was always an obstacle course, and my mother wouldn't curb her cursing when it came to that particular block. I also started following Greenpointers, where native G-Pointer Justine Carroll gives a balanced view of the town's gentrification: the new resources are great, the type of people attracted to such opportunities not so much. And just this week I fell in love with Bitchcakes and bust a gut laughing at her profile of Louie, a casanova who without fail would stop me en route to my grandmother's house and tell me I'm good enough to bite -- a veritable wolf under Cotton Hill's clothing, ladies.

I've become jealous of their "exclusives" -- and humor. A few weeks ago I warned Current of the work being done on a house on his block (a blizzard of Styrofoam), and Miss Heather covered it. We walked by the finished product last weekend, joking about its Belvedere XL status, and sure enough Miss Heather soon followed up. Therefore, no longer am I keeping my mouth shut, and I came upon this instance of Greenpoint Magic Sunday.

That twenty-four-hour bodega-cum-deli I wrote about recently is none other than Greenpoint: Finest Deli. (I won't even bother ranting about the sign's poor grammar.)


Juhas Grocery, two blocks away, can't really compete with Finest in terms of hours and food selection. (It does have beer, but if you're in the market for that I suggest God Bless Deli.)


Always up for dumpster diving, I take a closer look at the captain's bed.


Juhas is giving away Greenpoint's Finest bed bugs! And, boy, are they yummy.


***
You can find more Greenpoint bloggers on NYC Bloggers; there's about fifty each who use Nassau Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue. Not all are gems, some are defunct, but the keepers are worth an afternoon's lazing on the computer. And because I am a firm believer in the B61, this blog is not listed.

can't buy me love

Because I'm smart:

against engendering

I have a hard time admitting to doing womanly things because if the core belief of feminism is that the sexes are equal -- funny how English works, as other "isms" believes the opposite of equality -- then I feel obligated to act equal.

Being a woman in general feels limiting (funny how little things have changed), not only because of standards of upkeep -- though the species is already a hairless ape, women bleach, pluck, snip, shave, wax, and thread more areas of their body more often than men are expected to do -- but also because of biology. Sure, I could have been enjoying Billy Joel's The Stranger concert last night, but after going to the bathroom I had to search every nook and cranny of the closet and my dresser to find a box of tampons I swore I had. Winding up empty handed, I swallowed my pride, walked to a 24-hour bodega-cum-deli, and bought a brand I don't use. What does it say when you have more confidence buying condoms than you do tampons? I find it fucking embarrassing. ("Hi, I'm bleeding out an orifice and need a wad of cotton. Thanks," versus "I'm taking responsibility for my health and avoiding unplanned pregnancy, so please hand me a box of latex sheathes.")

And what really bothers me is that for a week I am reminded that I am not man's equal but a slave to my body. It also feels like a kind of punishment, because I had earlier gotten rid of the hair on my legs. I had caved in to peer pressure felt during Pilates classes -- those women's legs are hairless, so why aren't yours? -- and my body said: "If you're going to act like a woman, I'll treat you like a woman." I woke up with horrible cramps and had to forgo morning Pilates in Hoboken.

I have maintained that a hysterectomy is just what the doctor ordered, taking care of the two birds (contraception and menstruation) with one stone, but doctors won't give the order unless absolutely necessary because of the risks of surgery and long recovery time. What they will do is burn the uterine wall so it cannot support an endometrium (lining) so nothing is shed during menstruation. They'll also insert a metal coil into each fallopian tube and allow it to permanently scar into place, thus blocking sperm from egg. They'll do those procedures, and my insurance will cover them.

An exam/consultation is scheduled for August 12, and I'm hoping that New York, being the forward-thinking city it is, has doctors that will understand I am not a woman who "wants it all," namely a good career and loving family with kids, but one who wants success in business and consequence-free sexuality. Hormonal contraceptives are out of the question because I don't like the idea of changing my body's chemistry: It already takes one hell of a headache for me to take an aspirin; you think I'm going to allow artificial estrogen to screw up choice of potential mates? Of course I'm not looking for a man's scent to tell me which one should knock me up, but pheromones surely have something to do with "you guys are gonna be fine, until you break up."

In the past few years I've gone through a personal sexual revolution, from "What's the big deal?" to "Where's this orgasm everyone's raving about?" Deep-seated, unconscious concerns are holding me back, but perhaps once my body is closer to being equal to a man's, it'll start acting like one.

not Grace Slick

Lots of chalk.
Originally uploaded by tokyohanna

"[They] were both naked and not ashamed."
-- Genesis 2:25

My lover knew the way to the rabbit hole, and I followed him down the twisting tunnel.

He asked if I could see the stars twinkling in a sky of tar, and I said they were candles; the matches' sulfur had not yet dissipated.

He set me down, laid me back, and asked if I could feel the softness of the freshly picked cotton. No, I recall, but the bedsheets were soft enough.

He picked me up and took me to a waterfall, yet I saw ceramic tiles instead of a rocky peak. Cool water smoothed our hair and coated our bodies, but we controlled the temperature and intensity with a lever.

He finally threw me on an animal pelt, the tawny fur worn short to the hide, but all I remember was the couch.

Originally meant to be posted July 22, 2008.

and if you can't be with the one you love, honey

... love your uterus!

I Heart Guts plushes are much cuter than Giant Plush Microbes -- it's in the smile. Seriously considering getting my mom a faux uterus since she no longer has a real one. It can hang out with the infamous colobus monkey, who leaves me messages in a falsetto.

incendiary, somnolent, and stable

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
--Marilyn Monroe

I burned my hand boiling pasta last night and was worried I'd wake up with blistery fingers. Not the case: they're just a little tender -- and elsewhere a little raw.

***
My perfect weekend started with a kiss. I'm usually the one getting up early and leaving a good-bye peck on the sleepy-eyed Other -- but not Thursday. My company granted its employees a four-day weekend for Independence Day, and this gesture of generosity left me with little to do. On a whim, I requested a Pilates partner to try a place in Williamsburg, so a workout at noon was all that was planned. It would have been nice to prepare a few blog entries, but the one at the forefront of my mind was inappropriate, sewn together from sentences of doubt jotted down during particularly stressful times.

"So it goes," Kurt Vonnegut writes in Slaughterhouse Five when something dies, but nothing died; it just became indifferent and ambivalent. I have relatively few regrets -- my biggest being too accommodating and not piping up when at first the waters turned rocky, rationalizing my fear as maturity.

"Nothing was beautiful, and everything hurt," a bastardization of a Vonnenugget (damn you, Steve Almond!), was the first thought I had upon waking up anew from being downhearted on Diamond and leaving a literally messy situation to moving in with -- don't remind me -- and entering a situation that can turn metaphorically messy. My life is bagged and stored and must be sorted and trashed.

I've been thinking lately -- doesn't everyone? -- and if last year was my slutty year, then what description can be given to the failed man-less year? It's my year of indulgence, and I say that weightedly. Not only am I indulging myself, but I'm indulging others. And an indulgence, as any Catholic knows, is a type of forgiveness after specific acts penance. (And as any Protestant knows, Martin Luther got pissed off becuase the Church began selling them.) So have I finally been freed from shackles of the past, been given the liberty to indulge and be indulged? I'm treading carefully, fearful of the rug being slipped from under me. My every fibre wants to stop looking this gift horse in the mouth and start saying yes to everything.

(Really, reading Slaughterhouse Five will make anyone a Vonnegut scholar.)

I suppose I should have considered writing about the two musicals I had seen with Ashley earlier in the week -- Avenue Q is funny yet predictable if you already own the soundtrack, and Gypsy is a masterpiece -- but catching up wound up to be more exhausting than invigorating, as my new sleep patterns and old circadian rhythms haven't quite come to a compromise.

Pilates, however, always invigorates, and my partner and I left with compliments: "You guys are pretty strong. Ever considered trying the reformer?" Later caught Wall-E, which I didn't find too preachy about taking care of the planet, but others had different opinions: "It's criticizing people growing dependent on computers when computers made the fucking movie!" You're not the only one who hated it.

For July fourth's Bushwick barbecue, I made a salad; the cheese I found not so yummy. A "karaoke explosion" started once the correct cable was picked up and lasted until two in the morning. Probably around one I nodded off and woke up after half an hour, stirred by the Jack and coke spilled on my leg. But I bounced into action, providing an unrestrained and out-of-tune rendition of "Rosalita."

And even though Saturday and Sunday were quiet (except for Die Hard), I now know why some people live for time off. Weekends and vacations had always possessed a kind of threatening quality mainly due to the people I was forced to spend them with and somewhat because my brain can't process idling and relaxation. Perhaps this anxiety is lessening thanks to the birth of a new schedule -- nine to five on Mondays through Fridays and carte blanche on the weekends -- along with the end of a transitory cycle of moving, looking for a job, moving... Still a gypsy, yet somehow grounded by nothing.

cooking for two, continued

Ashley's Vegetable Lasagna

Adapted from Mom's recipe, which is adapted from Grandma's recipe. You won't miss the meat. Trust me.

• 2 jars marinara sauce, preferably something with basil
• 1 small onion
• 3 large cloves of garlic
• small package of white mushrooms
• 2 large carrots, shredded into ribbons with a peeler
• 1 red pepper
• 1 package frozen, chopped spinach
• 2 boxes Barilla no-boil noodles
• 1 medium container of ricotta
• 1 large mozzarella, grated or sliced
• 2/3 cup Monterey Jack, grated or sliced
• 1/2 cup Swiss cheese, grated or sliced
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 1/3 cup white wine, marsala wine, or sherry

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large pot, sautee onion, garlic, and vegetables in about two tablespoons of olive oil until soft, about ten minutes. Add the wine and the two jars of sauce, give it a good stir, and let it cook while you prepare the spinach.

Microwave the spinach block, wrapped in a paper towel and placed on a plate, on high for six minutes or until defrosted. Squeeze out the liquid from the paper-towel-wrapped spinach -- you can do this while running it under cool water to avoid burning yourself. (Getting rid of the liquid is important -- it's bitter!) Add the spinach to the sauce and cook for ten minutes.

Build the lasagna in layers as follows: a little sauce to coat the pan, noodles, sauce, ricotta, three cheeses, a sprinkle of parmesan, sauce, noodles, sauce, ricotta, etc. Fill pans as long as your ingredients last. Cover with foil and bake for 50 minutes.

What I Did
• eschewed mushrooms
• substituted fresh spinach for frozen; forgot to chop (didn't make a difference)
• used a block of pepper jack to replace both the Monterey Jack and Swiss

What I'd Change
• One package of no-boil noodles is enough, at least for my pan.
• Either I didn't let the lasagna set enough or the sherry made the lasagna slippery, as it didn't hold together well when served. I may not use it next time -- and there's definitely going to be a next time.

zoo story

Though most of my research in the world of physical anthropology happened at the Central Park Zoo -- the macaque study is one of my finest collegiate accomplishments¹ -- I did venture to the Bronx Zoo once or twice and noticed the construction of a new, permanent exhibit featuring creatures from only Madagascar. The Daily News reviews it, and there's a mistake in the first sentence:

In the Disney hit "Madagascar," animals from the Central Park Zoo escape back to their home off the eastern coast of Africa, only to then beat a retreat back to the zoo.

It's the Dreamworks hit Madagascar; Disney's animation is never schlocky.

¹ The lemur presentation also gets high marks.