I spent this past summer in Chicago. I subleted a studio apartment near the lake and figured I’d pass the time alternately reading, writing and exploring the city. I was raised in its suburbs, but because I spent most of my teen years in a roadside Denny’s memorizing “Rent” lyrics while simultaneously indulging my eating disorder over peppermint tea and bowls of kosher pickles, I never really got to know Chicago as a city. I decided it was time to change that. Nowadays I know no one there besides my parents, brother and grandmother, but I figured they’d keep me busy with endless – ENDLESS! – conversations on subjects as diverse as guilt, scotch, hair loss, and the merits of well-seasoned tuna fish. All this conversation, plus my aforementioned itinerary. I figured I’d be busy.

I arrived at O’Hare late one Saturday night. Sunday I met my family for brunch and we talked about hair loss, and then tuna fish, and then later – once my parents had driven back to the suburbs and my brother had gone off to what he called a “Bloody Mary Party” – I escorted myself to a bar, ordered a beer, and tried to feign interest in the Cubs game that was on T.V.. The day after that I went to the Shedd Aquarium, then bought a pencil skirt at H&M. The day after that, I went on an architectural boat tour on Lake Michigan, then sat on a park bench leafing through a stack of women’s magazines. The day after that, I went to Lincoln Park Zoo, then Netflixed Donnie Darko. The day after that it rained and so I didn’t leave my studio sublet except to go to Walgreens to buy a scented candle and a pumice stone. It was on this trip to Walgreens that I found myself talking to the pumice stone – “You’ve got a tough job,” I’d said, “but someone’s got to do it!” – and realized I had to take action. I had to facilitate some human/human contact.

I figured the best way to go about this was to find myself a job, and three days later I was hired as a hostess at an upscale restaurant in the Loop. After years spent waiting tables, I found hostessing rather pleasant. Sure, the pay cut was humiliating – it was humiliating to be trained by a seventeen-year-old in a toe ring en route to Ann Arbor for her freshman year of college – but considering the easy work load, and seeing as how I was in it for the friends rather than the money, the humiliation was worth it. It was worth it to get to wear my own clothing to work for once – an assortment of nautical-themed Isaac Mizrahi dresses from Target – instead of my previous waiter uniform – a “Sean-John for Boys” button-down shirt paired with orthopedic Rockport’s and white tennis socks.

The start of my first shift seemed promising enough. I would even go so far as to say that I enjoyed myself. I managed to successfully maintain this positive attitude for two hours and fifteen minutes, at which point circumstance forced me to deal with a very angry woman. She looked to be about my age and she was angry because her table was too close to the bathroom for her liking. When I told her she was welcome to wait fifteen to twenty minutes for another one to open up, she lost herself to a fit of blinding rage. Choice excerpts include: “unacceptable!” “It’s my birthday!” “Are you kidding?!” and then she asked if I was stupid. Which I am if we’re talking indie bands or electronics, but in regards to restaurant work, I’m actually quite knowledgeable.

So I told her, “I am stupid, but only if we’re talking indie bands or electronics. In regards to restaurant work, however, I’m actually quite knowledgeable. I know enough to know your business isn’t wanted. Not once you’ve called me stupid.”

“I DIDN’T CALL YOU STUPID!”

“That’s right. You just ASKED if I was stupid. Which, as we’ve already established, I am. But only in some ways. Not in others. Now let me show you to the door.”

I considered this the height of professional behavior, but my new general manager seemed to disagree. He quickly escorted me down the stairs of the main dining room amidst his own fit of blinding rage, tossing words like “loose” around. Then “canon.”

I admit: I’m annoyed I lost that job. But at least I snagged a look at the reservation book before being ushered out the door myself. And at least I copied down the contact number of the enraged young woman who cost me said job in the first place. Now I can text her every day. I can text her things like: “Waste of human flesh.” Or: “Turd.” Or: “Your hair has started thinning from the back.” Stuff like that. I mix it up. I call her sometimes, too. I’ll do a no-frills routine of breathing heavily into the mouthpiece, then hanging up. Or sometimes I’ll just say, “I’m watching you.” Or: “Your sense of entitlement both shocks and saddens me.” I like to think I’m teaching her a lesson about actions and their respective consequences. But really, it’s just nice to have someone to talk to. Someone other than my pumice stone, that is.

Just recently my mother learned to text-message. She’s addicted now, and several weeks ago, I received the following message:

“JUST TALKED TO UNCLE DAVID. JACOB ENGAGED TO GENTILE! OY VEY!”

My mother’s brother Uncle David is a conservative Jew, and Jacob is his only child. I’ve known Jacob since birth, so now – almost thirty years later – I know a lot about him: I know he’s got a taste for buxom blonds with Southern accents; I know he likes a lady with a tiny gum-drop of a nose. I also know his parents would rather lose a limb than watch him date a gentile.

It’s a familiar situation: Jewish parents spend a lifetime configuring Marriage To Another Jew as the end all be all accomplishment, all the while counter-productively setting the stage for their child’s Shiksa-rebellion. They station us Jewish gals up on the pedestal of proper dating and, in so doing, nuzzle the rest of the female world into the seductive corner. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve had a Jewish boyfriend parade me around at some Bris or Bat Mitzvah and then later, behind closed doors, ask if I wouldn’t mind a little Catholic school girl role-playing action, I’d have, well, a dollar. It’s happened with disconcerting frequency, and I’m getting exhausted.

I want to be the manifestation of rebellion for once! But for whom is a Jew Gal a novelty? Is such a thing possible if you live in New York City?

Well, it is if it’s Fleet Week. Which it was in New York, just two weeks ago.

In humiliating and unrestrained anticipation of the ‘Sex and the City’ movie, and in pathetic homage to the T.V. episode wherein the four characters celebrate fleet week by attending a sailors’ party off of Chelsea Piers, I decided to celebrate two weeks ago by trolling for sailors myself. I met one in a West Village bar named, goy-lifically, Jackson. Jackson was 6”3, from West Virginia – “the might both have ‘west’ in ‘em,” he’d drawled in reference to both the village and his native state, “but they ‘sho different!” – and in an effort to keep our belabored conversation afloat – HA! – I tossed off this numb-skulled hypothetical: “Alright Jackson, so let’s say this,” I began. “Let’s say you’re on your ship and it’s sinking – God forbid! – and you end up stranded on a desert island and you can only take three items with you. What would they be?”

Jackson didn’t seem bothered by my insensitive mention of a sinking ship; it was the equivalent, I later decided, of someone saying to me, “Alright Sara, so let’s say this: you’ve just been diagnosed with Melanoma. Who do you tell first: your mom or your dad?” Jackson considered my question for a moment, then answered, “Well, there’re only two things I’d need, really: a twelve-pack of cold beer, and a good woman.”

“Interesting,” I replied. “And what constitutes ‘good’?”

“Well if I had my pick,” he said, “I guess I’d like a lady with tattoos.”

I have no tattoos, of course: I want at least the option of a Jewish burial. (Also, tattoo parlors instill in me an unmatched sense of fear – I can’t handle the idea of people strapped in chairs or the voluntary puncturing of human skin. The by-product is fine – even sexy, as Jackson suggested – but when I see the reality of where the magic happens, I get queasy.) Jackson praised tattoos and all they tend to connote, and I felt disappointed. West Virginian Sailor struck me as being one of the more exotically attractive types I’d ever get the chance to meet (Eskimos or Tibetan monks notwithstanding), and I’d banked on the feeling being mutual, but apparently not.

Or so I thought. See, I told Jackson I was sans tattoo, offered up the aforementioned reasons as to why, and he said, “Jewish, huh? That’s cool. I never met no Jewish gal before.” Then he inched in closer and put his hand atop my knee. I’m not sure this meant I was his forbidden fruit per se; and frankly, I didn’t care to probe lest I unearth some genuine strain of anti-Semitism on behalf of his parents. Instead, I reveled in the moment, this chance to act as someone else’s novelty.

An hour later, Jackson invited me back to his ship, but I declined. I mean, I’d won my Rare Bird status and shouldn’t that suffice? Did I want to chase after sex in addition? Did that seem greedy? I thought it did. I felt reinvigorated, after all, and so decided: quit while you’re ahead.

This way, when I get cousin Jacob’s notice telling me to Save the Date, I’ll have the strength to listen.

I’ve never worn a shower-cap before. On the days I shower without washing my hair, I just tie it up in a bun. This routine works well for me: it allows the bits around my hair-line to get damp and then curl flatteringly into a mass of English Rose-y tendrils. Of course, three years ago my then-boyfriend referred to said curls as my ‘pais’ - for the gentiles, those are the foot-long side-curls sported by Hasidic men

My boyfriend claimed that they made me look not just Hasidic, but also “full through the face.” Well, “potato, po-tah-toe” was what I had to say to that. He saw Hasid, I felt English Rose. We’d hit an impasse, and broke up three months later.

It was just last week I nipped my pais in the bud, and I did it of my own volition. I got my hair professionally colored for the first time and, having experienced the sticker shock of doing so – I’ve only ever worked with store-bought dye before; that stuff tops out at $9.99 – I promised the colorist I wouldn’t get my hair wet. She explained that this would help preserve the color.

As advised, I didn’t shower that night. Or the next. Or the next. On the fourth day I wondered why my apartment smelled like fish, and realized I HAD to shower, regardless of whether or not I had a shower cap on hand. I could’ve gone out and bought one, I suppose, but after dropping $110 on my color, I felt like pinching pennies. What I decided to do instead was wrap a plastic bag around my head; I keep a bunch beneath my kitchen sink stuffed into a sawed off panty-hoe leg; they take up very little room when stored this way. Anyway, I put the bag on my head, tied it with a rubber-band in back, and looked in the mirror: it was large and so ballooned above me, the corners spiking like a three-pronged crown.

I looked exactly like the Queen of Hearts.

She was the pudgy, aggressive antagonist from ‘Alice In Wonderland,’ remember? The similarity was made all the more striking by the fact that the plastic bag was black, and the bath towel hanging just behind my reflection in the mirror was red, and those, I remember, were The Queen’s signature colors.

There was an afternoon three years ago when, after a debilitating bout of food poisoning, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I was pale and haggard and sweat-soaked, and my ‘American Apparel’ hoodie/sport-short twin-set was streaked with shit and snot and vomit. It was the worst I’ve ever looked. That being said, my Queen of Hearts appearance came in a close second. So I went and bought a shower-cap.

Price? $3.99.

But to never have to see the Queen of Hearts reflected back at me again?

That, I felt, was priceless.

My sophomore year in college I lived in a dorm room with three other women - Celest, Jessica and Remy - and first semester we decided it would be really, really funny if we gave each other nicknames in accordance with our most noteworthy physical aspects: my roommate Celest had a tremendous set of knockers, so we called her ‘Boobs.’ Jessica had perfectly shaped, mile-long legs, so we called her ‘legs.’ I had what’s called a ‘shelf-ass,’ the sort to effectively balance a Zima or a couple shots of Jager, so I got called ‘Ass.’ And lastly there was Remy who, allegedly, sported a fist-sized clitoris. Ergo we called her ‘Clit.’ We’d covered the bases of relevant female anatomy and we were proud.

Since then, I’ve always deferred to my back-end when forced to sing my physical praises. I’ll say, “Check out the merchandise in the REAR!”

I’ve said this to both “boyz” in “da club,” and also to my grandmother when we go shopping for clothes together. I say it when I try on something to emphasize my most impressive aspect: a pair of jeans, for example.

“Those make you look pregnant,” says my grandma.
“From the front, perhaps,” I’ll answer back, “but check out the merchandise in the REAR!” Then I turn around to offer up the back view. “You could rest your cane on that puppy,” I say, “THIS baby’s got back.” My intention is always to make her laugh, but more often then not she’ll simply roll her eyes and mumble something about my weight fluctuations and/or ‘the negros’ as she heads to the check-out counter.

In the last few years, however, I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that its glory days are over (my ass, that is; not my Grandma’s vaguely racist stylings.) Call it women’s intuition. I sense my profile isn’t what it used to be. Jeans don’t look as good. So I fish for compliments by asking my friends what they think. “Has it fallen?” I ask. “Is it a shadow of it’s former self?” They assure me it’s not, toss in an adage like, “You’ve still got it, girl!” but they’re my friends; they can’t be trusted. They’ll provide a shoulder to cry on, sure, but not a forthright assessment on something as important as this.

For honesty, a girl needs a homeless schizophrenic. Lucky for me, one barreled onto a crowded subway directly behind me several days ago. He smelled of neglected feet and wore a diaper as a hat, and when I moved out of his way to put a few inches between us, he got angry.

“WHAT?” he screamed, “YOU THINK I’M SOME PERVERT?!” It seemed my inching away offended him. “I’M NO PERVERT! I DON’T EVEN WANT YOUR ASS! YOU AIN’T GOT NO ASS! YOU GOT PUFFY ASS! PUFFY FLAT ASS! LOOKS PUFFY! BUT IT’S FLAT! FLAT ASS!”

There are two cardinal rules which, as a woman, one must live by in New York City. First, never eat an ice cream cone in public. Second, don’t engage hysterical strangers in conversation. But here, I had no choice. I had to know the truth.

“Flat?” I asked. “Really? But also puffy? I’m confused.”

“LOOK LIKE A BASKETBALL, BUT AIN’T NO AIR INSIDE!” he said. “SO FLAT! BUT PUFFY TOO!”

I was devastated. Of course, when I relayed the story later to my friends, they’d yammer on, “What does he know? He had a diaper on his head!” but I’ve always been of the opinion that insanity connotes clarity. I knew he knew what he was talking about.

So what was there to do? Nothing really. I guess it’s all just part of getting older. I guess you roll with the punches and find a new body part to focus on. I’ve always had smooth elbows and bunion-free feet. I guess at least there’s that.

Yesterday I was dozing on a crowded subway car. Once I snapped to attention, I noticed that a pregnant woman had been standing over me and that I’d failed to give her my seat.

Forced to admit I’d be going to hell, I thought it might be fun to compile a list of who I planned to see once I got there. Feel free to toss in suggestions.

1. Ashley Simpson
2. A girl who pulled down my shorts in sixth grade gym class, and then made fun of the fact that my underwear covered my belly-button.
3. A girl I went to camp with in 1990 who, every afternoon that we went to the local pool, would point at my lycra-clad crotch and shout, “THAT CHICK’S GOTTA DICK!” Really, I don’t. I have a large pubic bone, but that’s not the same thing.
4. Rumor Willis.
5. Helen Hunt.
6. Self-described ‘guys’ girls.’
7. My freshman year roommate whose only point of conversational interest was what guys were in love with her that week. Also (and ironically), she had the most grotesque personal hygiene habits of any woman I’d ever known, ineffectively disposing of her used sanitary pads with a single leaf of one-ply toilet paper and placing it atop our toilet-side garbage can. There, like a flower in spring, the old pad would peel open. And draw fruit flies.
8. Anyone who communicates with his/her significant other through Myspace comments and/or Facebook wall-writing.
9. My grandpa’s latest child-bride.
10. Subway vomiters.
11. People with business cards who don’t need business cards.
12. Lindsey Lohan’s mother.
13. Daisy from season two of ‘Rock of Love.’
14. A gent I dated in 2006 with a soul-sucking day job and writer-ly aspirations. Specifically, poetry aspirations. See, it got back to me that he told our mutual friend, “Whatever, dude. If what I wanted was a book deal, I could get a book deal. I mean, I’m the better writer.” Now I would never be so arrogant as to label that a difficult task, but let me offer a brief sample off his work:
At night the blackness starts to fall,
My heart, it beats, I hear a call.
It is the sound of time gone by.
My heart has wings, it starts to fly.
15. People who say ‘ciao’ instead of ‘goodbye.’ Unless, of course, you’re Italian. In which case, all power to you. (There’s one exception to this rule and she knows who she is.)
16. ‘Girls’ who go ‘wild’ for the eponymous videos.
17. Gents who don’t foot the bill on the first date.
18. Ladies who don’t offer to foot the bill on the first date.
19. Me again for making those last two groups so blatantly sexist and hetero-centric
20. My adolescent orthodontist.

Earlier this week I made a date with myself to go stalk someone, but for the life of me I couldn’t decide what to wear. Sneakers? Heels? Sundress? Jeans?

Five years ago I dated a gent – it ended after six months; at six months we finally had sex sober at which point I finally had the wherewithal to realize, he called his penis ‘him’ – and after it ended, we lost touch completely. This bothered me since regardless of who does the leaving, I like to keep tabs. I like an active facebook/ myspace page. I like a personal website with frequently updated photos. But over the years, this gent has been having none of that. A former west coast hippie who used to wax poetic on organic farming and female underarm hair, he’s proven totally un-Googleable.

Until now. Sort of. He didn’t pop up on my twice-yearly internet search, but he did appear in the ‘Eat Out’ pages of my ‘Time Out’ Magazine. He’s collaborating with a Vermont butcher to make some delicious pork concoction that’s now being bottled and sold at the Union Square green-market. Their stand is there on Wednesday’s, and I figured I ought to do a walk-by.

But what to wear?

I’d decided to play it as though I JUST SO HAPPENED to be trolling through the green market searching for bottled pork from Vermont farmers. “Oh my god!” I’d perform. “What a coincidence!” Of course, seeing as how we hadn’t seen each other in years, I’d have to look as good as possible, but to really sell my performance I couldn’t look TOO good (insert inevitable joke about unrealistic concerns) lest that wreck the foil of my casual approach. I called my friend Maggie to solicit her opinion. She was no help.

“You’re regressing,” she told me. Maggie always says that regarding bad habits e.g. seeking out attention/approval from former flames that I ought not to give a rat’s vag about, one must do what’s harder in the short term to make progress in the long term. Last week, for example, I worked hard to decline an invitation from a stunning local bartender because it was clear he’d turned his attentions on me only because he’d been rejected by another woman at the bar, one chicer than myself slathered in tattoos and sporting an asymmetrical fedora. Maggie called this ‘progress.’ Conversely, the Wednesday stalk she disapproved of.

“This is the ‘him’ guy,” she reminded. “The guy who called his penis ‘him.’ Why are we debating flats or heels?”

She may have had a point, but I didn’t like her tone. So I ignored her. I went flats, and then to up the ante just a little, white tank-top over black training bra. (Take that, asymmetrical fedora.) And then I went to the Green Market to falsely shop for bottled pig.

In the end, he wasn’t there. I found the butcher, found the stand, but my gent was nowhere to be found. Perhaps I’d arrived too late in the day. Perhaps he just makes the stuff but doesn’t man the stand. Who knows? The point is, I was disappointed, but nevertheless done up in eye-liner and black training bra and so I tried to make the best of it. I bought a bottle of the pork spread and a warm loaf of bread, and sat in the park and made myself a sandwich. It was very satisfying. But also unhealthy. Just like if I’d managed to find the ex-gent in the first place.

My younger brother Sam and I share a nick-name, one to reference our similar-sized breasts: B-cup Barron.

So unimpressive is my chest, it’s successfully favored a glorified training bra for the last fifteen years. And in 1990 when Sam was unnaturally bloated from an asthma medication he’d been taking, he famously declared, “Sara’s got boobies like my boobies!”

“Not really,” said my mother. “Yours are bigger.”

As a solution to the problem, Sam wondered aloud if, like any number of my more gender-neutral hoodies, he might one day inherit said training bra as a hand-me-down. “Do I get a brassiere?” he asked.

“I sure hope not,” said my mom.

In the end, her hope came true and Sam got off the bloat-inducing meds and in so doing, nipped his brassiere-need in the bud. He’s twenty-four now, sans breasts (save for these two consecutive Halloweens in which he dressed up, first as Tyra Banks, then second as Janet Reno) but his friends so enjoy the fact that he had them at one time, that in honor of their former glory, he’s been nick-named ‘B-Cup Barron.’

“B-CUP BARRON IN THE HOUSE!” is the consistent greeting from Jake, his college roommate whose abbreviated bio includes stints as both fraternity member and, more recently, Wall Street banker. (These details are included only to explain to those inevitable, incredulous few who think, “No one, in 2008, still says ‘in the house.’” But they do. Take a break from a busy schedule to pass through some random Wall St. bar on some random week-day night, and see if you’re not badgered by spectacular choral rounds of ‘in the house’ for each new, arriving button-down.) Anyway: following Sam’s most recent New York visit, MY friends caught wind of the nick-name and decided it fit me like, well, a B-Cup. My friend Maggie loves alliterations and jumped on board faster than a hog in heat. “B-CUP BARRON!” she trilled. “It’s PERFECT!”

I frankly enjoy the new nick-name. I appreciate the aspect of sibling bonding it inspires and, more to the point, the fact that ‘B-Cup’ is a generous assessment; if not for the former vision of my brother, than for me.

Just earlier this week, my friend Maggie explained to me the fundamental cause of Halitosis. “It’s the smell of the person’s digestion,” she said.

I found this fact all at once disgusting and inspiring, like one of those televised gastric bypass surgeries one stumbles across on The Learning Channel.

I was first introduced to the disorder back in 1990 when I entered middle school and the young lady in the desk beside me stank on an unmatched level. She made me dizzy with her smell, and the thing I found the most bizarre about it, was its complex, elusive indescribability. Most things stink in categories – poo, garbage, aftershave – but this aroma defied classification. She – I’ll call her B.M. because her initials were, infact, B.M, a wonderful but sad coincidence – B.M. made me sad because eventually I realized there was nothing she could do about it. With this sadness, however, came perspective: “Okay,” I thought, “so I have to wear head-gear in public, but at least that’s not B.M. breath.” Or, “Okay, puberty means a blonde moustache for me instead of large, supple breasts, but at least that’s not B.M. breath.”

It became my tweenage refrain for when the going got tough, and cemented in my head this idea that Halitosis was forever. Like herpes. Or small hands.

But no! It’s not! Not for B.M. or anyone else! Maggie explained that because the odor is digestion-related, what The Afflicted eats will change the smell. Parsley and carrots work wonders. I find this thrilling, because since 1990 I’ve been terrified that I might one day fall in love with a man plagued by either of the following:

1. halitosis
2. the name Randall, Chad or Mortimer

For me, personally, these qualities lessen the sexual aspects of a sexual experience. They seemed insurmountable, all of them. I’d worry, “What if I met this wonderful, amazing man, but he just so happened to smell like B.M. circa 1991?” Or “What if I met this wonderful, amazing man, but a life-time commitment meant I’d be crying out ‘Oh Morty!’ behind closed doors for the next fifty years?”

Well, it sure is a load off my back knowing the first among these problems need not be a problem with the simple inclusion of raw vegetables and eight full glasses of water a day. And a vampire-like avoidance of garlic. As for the latter, who knows? In keeping with my favorite adage, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” perhaps I ought to practice. Perhaps the next time I find myself behind closed doors with, let’s say, a Josh, I’ll practice calling out ‘Morty!’ instead – a sort of Try-It-On-For-Size to see if the scenario is as disconcerting as I’ve built it up to be. And if ‘Josh’ raises an eye-brow, I’ll just play it like he must’ve misheard me.

“I said ‘MOUNT me,’” I’ll explain. “Oh, mount me! MOUNT me!”

Although frankly, I think the phrase ‘mount me’ is more disconcerting than even an incorrect name. Someone says to me, “Yeah, Sally, yeah,” I’ll just count it as Strike 1. And maybe 2, depending on my mood. Someone says, “Hey Sara: mount me!” and I’m out the door faster than a gal can say, “Halitosis is the smell of the person’s digestion.”

I moved to Bushwick recently, a quasi-industrial Brooklyn neighborhood where there’s little to do for fun besides count the rats on the subway platform and/or drink $2 PBRs at the one and only neighborhood restaurant. I find the latter option more pleasant, and so spend my evenings saddled up at their bar.

As it IS Bushwick (which IS the new East Williamsburg which WAS the new Williamsburg which is now itself a haven for well-to-do college graduates) there’s a preponderance of hip-strocity: you can’t move an inch without tangling your hand in someone’s mutton chops or handle-bar moustache, without cracking the soup-can size lenses on some pair of extraneously-worn glasses. Much like crabs or chicken pox, these kids are everywhere and they’re distracting. I mean, I do TRY and concentrate on whatever book I’ve bought with me, but mostly I just people-watch.

“Look at THAT!” I’ll think, having spotted another tattoo carved within the shadows of another trucker hat, “It says, ‘Art Is Fearless!’ How exciting!”

Last week I was thrilled to have a dashing hombre added to the mix of bar regulars, this gent who looked like the love-child of John Lennon and Justin Timberlake if such a thing was possible. (I hesitate to write that only because I’ve actually met John Lennon’s child and, frankly, he’s as ugly as a Hasid. I’M SORRY! SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE HASIDS! But generally speaking, these people ARE known more for their religious zealotry than for their strong jaw-lines and cheekbones.) Anyway, this new bar-regular was a Looker with no apparent evidence of hipster-dress AND he’s always there alone. Well, we finally got to talking when he asked if I’d read a certain piece in ‘The New Yorker.’ It was a fair enough question seeing as how I’d been holding ‘The New Yorker.’ The problem was that I’d stuffed it with a ‘Glamour’ Magazine – there’d been this article on Victoria Beckham’s skin care regime I’d found riveting – because if you’re actually seen reading something like ‘Glamour’ in Bushwick, you’ll get thrown to the subway rats faster than you can say, “Sara Barron is too concerned with what other people think about her.” So I faked my way through ‘New Yorker’ familiarity – “that article WAS interesting, wasn’t it?” – to keep the conversation boat afloat, and had just settled into the vision of our erotic pre-coital spoon, when all of a sudden The Looker reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of gloves. They were the kind with the finger-tips cut off.

That’s when I knew things would never work between us. Tip-less gloves are as effective tip-less condoms, and I knew I couldn’t sustain so much as a night-long romance with someone who didn’t think the same: impractical outer-wear has always been my deal-breaker.

This was no sweat off The Lookers back, it seemed, as he’d put on his finger-tip-less gloves to leave. Five minutes into our bored flirtation and perhaps he’d snagged a look at my Glamour magazine and/or Posh Spice fixation; or perhaps he’d taken issue with my massive Eddie Bauer parka, the one I’d draped over the back of my bar-stool. Who knows. Regardless, I’m just glad we met in winter so our clothing choices could allow us to cut to the chase of our incompatibility.

A YEAR IN REVIEW:
I’m back. Arguably not better than ever, but back. A recap:

ACNE:
Wow. I had some really bad acne this year. It’s better now. (Did you know you can get acne on your knees? I did not know this. Now I know this.)

HOMBRES:
Wow. A lot happened with the hombres this year. I dumped twice, then GOT dumped twice. I dumped Hombre Number 1 after he uttered the phrase – “I can’t WAIT to head to Burning Man!” Then Hombre Number 2 said something to the effect of, “Hey wait! Have I showed you my dolphin tattoo?” and he had to go to. Then I GOT dumped by hombres 3 and 4. Why exactly I don’t know – I stopped listening at minute one of their respective explanations – but I did notice that both made strangely coincidental reference to the word ‘judgmental.’

In the immortal words of Mr. Justin Timberlake: “What goes around comes all the way back around.”

SHOES
Wow. I bought a pair of Orthopedic shoes this year. They make my ankles look thicker than a bread loaf, but it’s worth it: they’re so comfortable. Over the summer I developed a habit of sporting them with a darling pair of American Apparel short shorts at which point my friends staged an intervention. Choice quotes from the dramatic course of action include:
“Is this some sort of hipster look you’re trying to cultivate?”
“You look emotionally unstable.”
“She IS emotionally unstable.”
“That doesn’t mean she has to emphasize it in orthodics and a pair of biker shorts.”
(Me, then, in my own defense): “They’re NOT biker shorts!”
“Potato po-tah-to, Sara. They LOOK like biker shorts.”

SHELTER
I moved from Queens to Brooklyn. I live alone now. Wow. It turns out it’s better than living with a stranger you found on Craig’s List. I’ve maintained impeccable relations with my neighbors thus far, save for the Sunday afternoon I staged a dance-off between myself and myself to the Flo Rida smash hit “Low.” Well, that’s when Penelope, the elderly Ecuadorian woman in the apartment beneath me came knocking on my door to see what all the fuss was about.
“You is okay?” she asked. “I hear ‘BOOM BOOM BOOM!’ I think, “Oh! She is okay?”
“I’m okay,” I told her, “just getting a little exercise. I’ll try to keep it down.”

FITNESS
My interaction with Penelope made me realize it might be time to join a gym. Living alone has upped my rent significantly so I traded in my $88 a month New York Sports Club membership for a $12 a month membership to a place called Richie’s. Wow. Richie’s is a bare-bones establishment, save for the sign in the women’s locker room that reads: “Ladies! If you find yourself being stalked, please to not hesitate to inform the front desk.” I should be so lucky, I thought. As someone who doesn’t look discernibly female in pre/post-workout mode, I’d frankly relish the undue attention.

EXFOLIATION
Wow. Did you know that instead of dropping five bucks a pop on those fancy, drug store loofahs, you can you use the green, more abrasive side of a garden-variety kitchen sponge?! My elbows have never been smoother!

CONCLUSION:
So riddled was 2007 with these sorts of eventful highs and lows, I had time for little more than sleeping. And watching T.V.. So here’s to hoping the remainder of ’08 stays calm enough to blog. Since what I spent most of ’07 thinking was, “Wow. The world sure needs another blog.”