Choking

KEEP CALM I MUST KEEP CALM!!!!

I stood up from the breakfast table and walked into the kitchen. My sister was in the middle of sticking her head in the fridge and my step-brother was cutting a piece of pie from last night's desert. My brother looked up first. "Uh. Caitie!? Nat needs... help."

I imagined myself looking like I was in urgent need of assistance with well groomed hair, a calm attitude and a quiet but stern look of need, oh and maybe a nice new pair of well cut jeans on... what I probably looked like was a red-faced, wide eyed, hair flying, bushy-tailed animal-about-to-get-run-over-by-a-car with flapping arms and crazy gesticulations to my throat.

My sister looked up. I tried to breathe in, making a rattling noise. I was choking on a waffle.

Caitie's eyes widened. She bolted from the fridge as the training she had learned when she was a Residence Assistant while in college began to guide her movements. In three quick heaves the food cleared my throat and I began to cough violently. *cough* "Thanks." *cough*

I sat down trying to act totally calm and collected. "You okay?" My brother asked. "Yeah." I said. Caitie went back to the fridge and my brother continued to cut his pie. I stared at the day old waffle I was eating and felt no appetite for food. My throat felt raw and I felt particularly stupid. Really? I choked on a day old gluten free waffle and not a bit on all the turkey I ate last night?

I felt like I had just lived through one of those moments where, in Hollywood, the victim of choking (who is generally a fat, slovenly guy packing away a 20oz. steak) just brushes themselves off and in a voice clear as day says "Gee, thanks" and then gets kissed by the concerned and useless wife, and in the real world: A coughing fit ensues to clear any excess food and then the victim feels like a totally jackass of a human being because all she was eating was a stupid stale waffle.

I stood up, threw out the rest of the waffle and cut into a piece of pumpkin pie. I'd have to try pretty hard to choke on that custard, I reasoned.

That was the first time I'd ever really choked on any food before. And let me tell you: no one looks particularly graceful when they're getting a fist shoved into their diaphragm as they get bounced up and down from the sheer force of the heaves of the life-saver. Womp Womp. Choking sucks, I don't recommend it.

Be safe out there folks! Day old breakfast can be a danger!

Cool Hand Luke

I felt his hand pat my butt. "When you get a chance; could we get the check, sweetheart?" I froze. Get your filthy hand off of my butt!!! My mind screamed. I smiled a weak, passive smile and moved away from him. I heard his drunk wife's shrill voice behind us: "Did he just touch her ass!?" to the other 4 drunken people at the table. I wanted to die. LEAVE. Just, leave right now, please. Get the fuck out, ALL of you!! I tallied their bill and slid it in front of Mr. Cool Hand Luke who was now standing on the opposite side of my bar. "Thanks so much, you did a really great job." He said as he jotted down the total, tipping me an extra 25 bucks on top of the already included gratuity. I took the check back without a word and watched as he joined his group.

I felt like a victim for about 30 seconds; and then I felt really irritated. As much as I tell myself that we live in a world that's moving more toward equality of the genders, the races, the sexual orientations and the classes; I am still reminded that we have a long way to go.

I tried to picture doing anything to a guy that would make them feel like a piece of meat, but all I could think about was maybe patting them on the head and being really patronizing. I felt frustrated. I could raise a stink about this, I could call that guy out, have his wife feel more ashamed and embarrassed than she probably already feels (Hell, she has to go home with that slime-ball at the end of the night...) I could tell my manager what happened and have her throw those people out... I mused over the scenario of all 6 of those loud-mouthed drunks getting tossed out of the restaurant. Eh, not worth all that fuss.

Unfortunately, this is not a new problem. I am a 25 year old waitress in a dark room with a lot of drunk people on the weekends who are out to have a good time. The benefits of being young, pretty and single are certainly fun and plentiful, but the down side is really gross. I'll get texts from older men who want to "see what I'm up to tonight" and cat-calls on the street. Sometimes, all I want to do is throw a burka on in order to avoid the salacious stares and whistles from construction workers. This problem is not only mine, I see it happen to other girls, too. I see girls just trying to get from point A to point B, not wearing anything overly sexual, getting all sorts of nasty comments thrown at them.

To all you you sad, lusty, sexually frustrated, bored, men who feel, I dunno, trapped? And look at me and think I'd be a nice roll in the hay: go fuck yourselves. And then figure out how to get yourself a therapist to get you to a place where you can be happy, balanced, and not feel like you need to take a quick swipe at a girl's butt in order to give you a thrill.

Growth to the Extreme!

At 8:30am this morning, I was pushed onto the 7 train and squeezed in with hundreds of other New Yorkers like cows in a slaughterhouse. I walked in huge groups of people, all walking the same speed and direction and with the same neutral expression on their faces down long hundred-foot hallways. I watched as hundreds of people moved along the platforms, almost like schools of fish, on their way up the stairs, down the stairs and onto the trains.

I was so glad I wasn't doing this every day just to get to work, I was a temporary visitor just passing through. It's stressful to be in such tight quarters with so many people, but then having to fight your way to the surface just to go to work? Stress-Fest! Every time a train pulled in it was packed so tight with New Yorkers that I couldn't see the inside of the train from the windows. And as I stood in the middle of an especially large group of commuters, I was in the awkward position of not being able to hold on to any poles, so I simply let the sheer amount of bodies surrounding me on every side hold me up as the train lurched and rattled along the track. I even had a full cup of coffee I sipped, but because the trains were so packed I couldn't lower my arm, so I let the coffee cup rest at my chin.

Simply put: Holy Shit the subway system is over crowded. I can't imagine that what I experienced this morning is healthy or safe! Fire hazards? What a joke! There were so many people that, god forbid, if there was something truly wrong the exits would not be enough to handle the stampede of folks! And even the sidewalks of New York are too small to handle the outflow of people from below!

According to the NYC Dept. of City Planning:
"New York City's population increased from 8,175,133 in April of 2010 to 8,244,910 in July of 2011. This is an increase of 69,777 residents or about 0.85 percent over the 2010 mark. The largest change in the city's population occurred in Brooklyn, increasing by almost 28,000 persons or 1.1 percent, followed by Queens, which registered an increase of 17,126 persons or 0.8 percent. Manhattan also showed a substantial increase of 16,075, which translated into a change of 1 percent. "

Woah.

So, as of 2011 almost 70 thousand people moved to New York. Meaning that one could bet there are even more people now. Manhattan Island is not getting any larger, though. So... maybe that can explain why I feel so packed tight.

To keep my mind off of how miserable that commute was I kept imagining wide open spaces and big old-growth trees... Being a guppy in a massive school of fish is no fun, and the city just gets bigger and bigger! 70 thousand people need a place to live, too! And eat! And work! And, according to the Census bureau New York's population has a good 30% of it in 25-35 age range. So, we're young, too. That also explains why I kept catching the eyes of many tired looking, trendy 20 something's also on their way to work, or, you know, unpaid internships.

I think I'll just stick to the off-peak hours so I can stretch out on the seats of the train car and pretend I'm only one of 20 individuals going to work.

Life in the Shitter

The rim of film covering the inside of the toilet bowl made me stop and stare for a moment. The toilet looked like it hadn't been cleaned in so long the original off-white of the porcelain made the brown of the inner parts of the shitter look like some new apocalyptic disease was brewing in a stew of I-Dare-Not-Think-About-It water.

I gazed down in horror at this scene, unsure of what to do next.

Here's the thing with needing a bathroom: The stakes are always high, and will just get higher the longer one delays. Having to relieve oneself is, I think, fundamentally one of the purest forms of comedy because everyone has a shared experience.

In this particular moment, standing in this small New York City apartment bathroom, I needed to go pretty bad. However, that toilet was so disgusting I considered running back home to my apartment and peeing there.

Another tangent: I used to lick subway poles when I was younger. I played in the public playground's sandboxes (also known as the filthy kitty-litter of New York's infants). As a kid I visited Coney Island's beach as I lightly kicked syringes out of the way before settling down for a day on the surf. I am no stranger to nasty, but I have to draw a line somewhere!

The hypocrisy of my childhood was that I would NEVER sit on a public toilet seat. In fact, I got to the point of being so sceeved out by toilets and other people's bathrooms that when I went to anyone else's house I would squat over their bowl as well. My precious tush was not going anywhere near anyone else's butt-rest. It took me years, and a whole lot of research, to finally get over my phobia of other people's bathrooms.

I suddenly judged the guy whose apartment I was in. I judged him pretty hard core. I cursed his name as I stood there doing the pee-pee dance. Fuck. Fuck. Guys are GROSS. Clean your damn toilet! It's not hard! Just pick up a scrub brush and swirl it around in the bowl a couple times and voila! Sorta' clean!

I got nervous standing there any longer than a couple minutes. What if the guy thinks I'm pooping? I'm taking an awful long time just to take a leak. The thought that he might be sitting in the living room thinking that I needed to go and take a dump in the middle of our make-out session made me overcome my fear of the petrie-dish-toilet and pee.

When I got back to the living room I had to reacquaint myself with this person I thought I knew. You're toilet just said volumes about you I thought. Then, I noticed he was rubbing hand sanitizer on his hands after having just blown his nose. What. The. Fuck.

The Death of an Ex

I thought you died today!

Seriously! I thought, for a moment, that you were lying somewhere on your death bed having just expired your last breath. I jumped to that conclusion when I was asked by a friend (in a sober, quiet, and bated voice) if I had: "...heard what had happened to you today?" WHAT HAPPENED!? Oh, you had a baby and a friend wanted to make sure I was up to date so I didn't find out through some other source. OK. Phew!

It's been a while since I've thought about you. You make regular appearances in my sub conscious, and you pop up in dreams from time to time, but generally I'm concentrating on the most recent guy in my life. Unless, of course, something out of the ordinary happens that reminds me of you. But, seriously, I don't give you a lot of rental space in my brain. Your memory has slowly started to fade out, like a black Tee shirt that's been washed so much it turns a dark charcoal and loses its original, powerful, black.

Thinking about you dead made me very sad and that caught me off guard. I remember (two summers ago, when we first decided to really not talk to each other ever again) I would bike home from work late at night. I'd be biking up a really steep hill to get on the Queensboro Bridge and I'd think about you as a character in my brain that I liked to torture so as to take my mind off of how awful it was to bike that hill. I'd imagine all the things I could say and I'd scream them at you in my brain. I'd hurl insults and create terrifically embarrassing scenarios to put you in and I'd watch, in my imagination, as you were peed on by a goat and then kicked in the nuts. Or, I'd wistfully place you in a moment when you somehow ran in to me on the street after I started dating Justin Timberlake and I'd pretend I didn't see you and you'd look so downtrodden that the paparazzi following us would notice and then do a very embarrassing interview with you right there on the street, and as they do it a pigeon would shit on your face.

You know, that kinda' thing, it'd help me bike up the hill.

Thinking about you being dead today was not fun. Not at all. Even though you're in another phase of your life and we don't talk anymore and I'm very happily not married to you; I still wish you health and safety. I wish you happiness and fulfillment. I wish you the life you want to live.

Isn't it funny how death can make us all the same? Like, in war times, when one is in the trenches, it really doesn't matter who has more money or fame or a happy family life, we can all die just like the next guy. And death is a means of measuring how much a person can really mean, can't it? Death can make a memory of someone precious, when before, when that person was alive, that memory was never really recalled or treasured.

So, I guess, what I'm trying to say is: I really care about you, even after all of the horrifically awful heartbreaks we put ourselves through. I mean, I'm glad we're not together, but there is still a place in my heart that loves you and wishes you all the best.

I'm really glad you're not dead.

Soaked

I was soaked. Drenched, sopping, dripping, filthy and carrying twenty pounds of groceries.

Let's rewind. An hour beforehand my sister and I decided that we needed to do some grocery shopping, except: we needed to go to it at the Super Stop & Shop that was a ten minute walk from my apartment. Leaving the house with our umbrellas in hand, we made our way down the hill of 48th street, under the trestle of the Long Island Rail Road, past the Home Depot Parking Lot to the entrance of the supermarket. To say that the rain pissing down on us was anything less than biblical, would be a gross understatement. Torrents of rain! Buckets of rain! Rain so thick and strong that when the wind blew the visibility fell to only a few feet. The lightening was striking mighty close as well! Each flash in the sky would immediately answer back with a loud chest exploding boom and crack, setting off car alarms and shaking the ants my sister and I had become, sending us scurrying and screaming and laughing.

I wore my flip-flops, knowing full well as we first set off that the sky would most likely open up and we'd get drenched. We went shopping, imagining in our ignorance that once done the rain would let up and we'd walk home in much cooler temperatures. We stepped out of the store and saw bedlam before us. It seemed that in the course of 40 minutes the entire street by the entrance to the Home Depot parking lot flooded with feet of water. Cars sat submerged in 4-5 feet of dirty, muddy, trash-filled destruction. The traffic was halted as everyone in their cars stared with a dumbfounded expression at the Noah's-Ark-worthy flood that had stopped up 48th street.

My first thought was: Oh Shit. I've never seen a flood before. I grew up in New York City and have seen plenty of houses floating away on boulevards covered in a free flowing river on CNN, I've seen waterfalls in the subways, and really, really big puddles on Broadway. But this: This sight before me was a new experience. Cars that had been parked on the street were nose deep, the sidewalk was completely lost, and small waves splashed up against the side of the buildings as cars stuck their toes into the water before deciding that the river was too deep to forge, and then turned around.

I looked at my sister. "We have no choice, we have to go through it."
"Are you sure?!" She asked looking slightly worried and thrilled.
"We have no other choice! This is the only way to get back to the apartment. It's this way or we have to walk about 40 minutes in another direction!"
We stood there in dumbfounded silence as we watched a brave soul forge the river. She was the first human we'd seen on the street. The tiny asian woman was wearing a garbage bag and was pushing a wire mesh cart. The water, at its deepest, came up to her hips. She soldiered on, clinging to the side of the chain-link fence like a subway rat to keep from being carried away until eventually reaching the shallows under the trestle on the other shore and then disappearing into the rain.
"If she can do it, we can." I said, determined. "Let's go."

To say that swimming through that river was just about the filthiest thing I have ever done, would be correct. There were leaves, grass, branches, McDonalds wrappers, greasy oil slicks, and most likely the dead bodies of discarded mob hits floating at the unseen bottom. I felt the floor with my flip-flops praying that the cheap $2 pair of thongs wouldn't snap in the water leaving me wet and shoe-less. The water got up to my mid thigh before it finally began to recede. I held the groceries up to my chest as I balanced the umbrella on my shoulder probably looking completely ironic and silly with an umbrella protecting my head from the rain while the rest of me was submerged in a flood.

I moved slowly up the hill from the disaster. Cars and trucks on the other side of the water looked on at the two of us as if we were the swamp things coming up out of the muck. One idiot decided that he'd drive on the sidewalk and crept past us in his white 4xNothing SUV. My Sister called out that he should turn around, but her voice got lost in the pouring of the rain and I secretly hoped that car would get swallowed up in the torrent.

I was so angry! Why why why was this happening to me!? WHY did we have to go shopping at that grocery store!? I felt the frustration of breaking up, coming back from vacation, changing plans, the pressure of turning 25 and bunking up with my sibling all bubble up, as if wading through that filthy refuse had unstuck all of that and floated it up to my conscious surface. A huge clap of thunder boomed and I screamed. I set down my groceries and took a couple of deep breaths. The rain poured and poured. My sister stopped walking and watched me appraisingly, as if waiting for a signal in which way to proceed. Is Natalie going to fall apart? Is she alright? I felt the water run down my back and closed my eyes. I felt like screaming more, so I did.

The thunder echoed in response. My sister, ahead of me, put down her bags of groceries. She analyzed my voice and body language, and: seeing that my response to our current circumstance was not directed at her, she breathed deep and walked on. "It's behind us now, Natty." She said matter-of-factly. "In fact, that was kinda' fun."

I looked at my soaked clothing and shook the wet hair out of my face before picking up the groceries. I felt better for screaming really loud. I felt like less of a victim and felt less sorry for myself with each step. I took another breath. Actually, as much as that sucked, it was kinda' fun, actually.