Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

THE LIFE YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED
My apartment in New York was on the southern edge of Williamsburg, back when rents were
almost reasonable. I had a view of the bridge into Manhattan, strung up with lights like a Christmas
tree. I had painted my living room in red candy cane stripes. When Stephanie came over to visit
shortly after I moved in, she said, “You’re never leaving this place.” And I was so proud to have
impressed her for a change.
Paris had been devastating, but also a onetime deal. A private disaster is easy to rewrite for
public consumption. “How was Paris?” / “Amazing!” And people nodded, because how else would
Paris be? Besides, I had better views in front of me. Here I was. I was here. A writer in New York:
the phrase that compensated for nearly anything.
Dreamers plan their lives long before they live them, and by the fall of 2005, mine was finally
catching up to the script. The details were a little off. I wasn’t 23 when I moved to the big city; I was
31. I wasn’t exactly writing Catcher in the Rye. I was writing hack profiles and advance blurbs for
Lego Star Wars: The Video Game . And I wasn’t nestled in the tree-lined Valhalla of literary
Brooklyn. I was scraping by in a borough where razor wire was giving way to ironic T-shirts.
But I loved my big, rambling apartment. The owner of the building was a small Dominican woman
in her late 50s, with a tight bun and a stern demeanor. She spoke little English, and I refused to speak
Spanish with her, because I didn’t want to cede what little comfort zone I had, so we were reduced to
curt nods in the hallway. Her entire family lived in the building. Her heavyset single daughter, who
stopped by to discuss noise complaints. (I had a few.) Her sketchy son, who smoked on the front steps
while talking on a cell phone. Her six-year-old twin granddaughters, with heads of kinky curls.
“Is your cat home?” one of them would ask from the hallway, lisping through her gap teeth. This
question would crack me up. As though sometimes my cat were at work.
My first year was mostly good. Promising. And having finally settled the bullet points of my life, I
was ready to finesse the details. Less furniture pulled from curbs. Better skin care products. A little
personal improvement.
I had this great idea: I should learn to cook. My mother had tried to teach me a few times in my
early 20s, but I blew her off. Women don’t need to know this stuff anymore , I told her, like she was
instructing me in stenography.
But 12 months in the city had made me question this tack. Too much of my paycheck was being
handed over to deliverymen. I also hoped cooking might forge a healthier connection to food and
drink, which I badly needed. How had I determined that not learning a skill was a position of power?
My cooking experiments began with promise. Me, in that empty kitchen, slicing and dicing like a
mature, grown-up adult person. I would open a bottle of wine to enjoy while I did prep work. But
wine made me chatty, so I would call friends back in Texas. And I’d get so engrossed in the
conversation, I didn’t want to cook anymore. I’d lose my appetite after the second glass, and I’d
bundle the food and stuff it back into the refrigerator, trading asparagus spears for half a dozen
Parliaments by the window.