Eat the Damn Cake

Come on– best title ever, right?

One of the things I’ve recently learned about being married: it’s much harder now to be quietly depressed for a day.

Just a day, here and there. It shouldn’t be so difficult.

My emotions are mysterious. An ancient civilization would probably have interpreted them as evidence for like twenty different persnickety gods. I get randomly really happy whenever I’m driving alone, listening to my ipod. Which doesn’t happen a lot, since I live in Manhattan. I get randomly really stressed out and remind myself of one of those middle-aged men who work too hard in the New York Times Health studies. The ones who die of stress-related ailments and are then compared with all the women who don’t die because they handle stress a lot better, naturally.

Sometimes I get horribly depressed, for about a day, and walk around with a blank look, muttering, “Why have you failed at everything?” to myself. This happens pretty much every time Dan from Modern Love rejects another one of my perfect pieces about modern love. It also happens, well, randomly.

(failed at getting the jeans into the drawer. And that is way too close for a good excuse)

It’s always been this way for me, dating back to the moment I discovered that I was doing things that I could fail at. Traceable to when I learned that life is about winning. At everything. And if you don’t win at everything than you’re a big, stupid loser who will probably develop a mid-life obsession with tiny ceramic animals and start collecting them and arranging them on strips of green felt.

I’m kidding. I don’t think that.

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I looked in the mirror naked yesterday, in between taking a shower and putting some clothes on, and I thought, “You look like you have a lot of personality.”

I know. That’s an insult, right?

“What’s she like?”

“Um, she has a good personality.”

“Ohhh….I see.”

How long has THAT been around? Is it officially forever yet?

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I read Dooce for the first time, after reading the Times Magazine article about her and some other incredibly famous women bloggers. I was a little hurt that no one mentioned me. But then I figured out why they hadn’t. I figured out why I don’t get a million hits a day. It’s because I don’t have enough pictures on my blog. All of the really famous bloggers have these gorgeous, sunshiny photos of their kids and their decor and the glittering new stainless steel kitchen that all that sponsor money got them.

So I’m going to make a real effort to change, beginning with this post. I’ve switched the setting on my camera to one that washes everything in white light. I’m also planning on having some kids really soon.

This is what my life looks like right now. Please try not to get too jealous.

That’s my couch.

My dishwasher. It doesn’t work that well. It leaves sticky clumps of stuff that was probably once food on everything. I swear, it’s not just because I don’t rinse things thoroughly before loading them. Bowls by…Martha Stewart, I think. Someone got them for us as a wedding gift.

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This is a guest post from Josh Stanton, one of the most accomplished, motivated young people I know (and the only person I know who can start a story with, “So I had to give this speech at the UN the other day…”). He adapted this article for me from his piece on Huffpo. I’m really happy right now, because I love conversations about masculinity, and I am kind of obnoxiously thrilled whenever guys want to talk about how complex their identities actually are, and the pressure they feel to narrow themselves. I read a lot of gender theory in college. Sometimes it all comes rushing back. And it’s awesome.

On an ideal Sunday, I get up and quietly make my wife breakfast, so that I can present it to her with great gusto before she’s emerged from bed.

After dining and doing the dishes, I throw on my gym clothes and go for a run and a lift, as I’ve been doing since high school. If it’s a truly fortunate afternoon, I then put on the grungiest clothes I can find and meet my guy friends at a bar to holler at the screen while watching football and guzzling beer. (No buffalo wings, of course; I’m a vegetarian.)

Then I progress into the evening with my wife, getting a pedicure at the small nail salon next door and enjoying a romantic dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. After getting home, I read some of my favorite works of Jewish literature (whether rabbinic texts or more popular pieces). I often get hooked on whatever I’m reading, stay up late and end up tired for my early classes the next day.

To me that is the making of a wonderful day. Yet I have at various points been called “gay,” “metrosexual,” “manly man,” “jock,” “nerd” and (prematurely) “rabbi” for the way I spend my free time.

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I try not to read the comments on articles about cosmetic surgery. People are always yelling. They are always disgusted and horrified. They are always saying things like “then what?” If you are willing to do that to yourself, than what else are you willing to do? What’s next? A clone army? Vanity babies that are genetically manipulated to look like your favorite Sports Illustrated bikini model? Anything could happen.

Sometimes I forget I got plastic surgery. I don’t feel like someone who would do it. I don’t look like someone who did it. It’s easy not to think about it.

The New York Times is talking about how, most notably in New York City,  there are ethnically preferred cosmetic surgery procedures. Like, Italian women get knee fixes and Dominicans get butt lifts and Koreans get their jaws thinned. What was interesting, the article implied, was that the Long Island  women were getting their butts reduced while the Washington Heights women were getting theirs enhanced. In other words, cosmetic surgery is no longer just about fitting into your adopted culture (as it often was for Jews and Irish and blacks), it’s about fitting into your ethnic group.

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Once in a while, I just want to talk about food.

This is an ode to my favorite sandwich in the world. This is a love story about the grilled cheese. I have become an expert at it. A connoisseur. I have become virtuosic. Once, one of my friends ate a sandwich I’d made and immediately faked an orgasm. Or maybe she wasn’t faking. Either way, I have a right to brag.

I remember my first grilled cheeses. They were tuna melts. My dad called them “grilled cheese tuna”s, and he made them for me when I was three or four years old. I hated mayonnaise. I thought it smelled disgusting. He thought it was hilarious that I thought that (you know, he was very concerned about being in touch with his child’s emotions). He licked it off the spoon and I ran out of the room. I came back for the sandwich.

I started to get creative when I moved to the city. I was on my own, and I didn’t have to eat college dining hall food ever again. First I bought baked beans and chocolate croissants and eel rolls and tons of spinach and the occasional pastrami sandwich. I bought bagels. And then I felt a little sick and the baked beans grew mold in the back of the refrigerator, and I started to make sandwiches. I made grilled cheeses with alfalfa sprouts and fresh mozzarella and homemade honey mustard and crisp lettuce. I made grilled cheeses with bright orange cheddar and garlic chicken and sautéed onions. And then with three different kinds of cheese. And then with tzatziki sauce. On whole grain. On potato rolls. On my favorite, sourdough. Once in a while, on a bagel. Once there was filet mignon. I searched for watercress.

(source)

My friend came over at that point and faked the orgasm. She swore she would integrate tzatziki into more of her meals. Possibly all of them. And then she couldn’t find it anywhere, and she called me to tell me I was a tease.

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