A little while ago, I swiveled around in my chair and faced a beautiful black woman wearing a black suit and a white sash. The sash read, “Miss New York City.” At least, I think that’s what it said.

What the hell is she doing here?

I work in a newsroom. We don’t know Miss New York City. She said she needed to use the bathroom, so our company president had let her in to do so. She went into the bathroom like a normal person, and came out with a satin sash on and was carrying a sparkly tiara.

Everyone in the newsroom turned away from his or her monitor toward this pretty, confused woman. She was looking for the door out. We all whispered, “Are you Miss New York City?” We were sorta joking and laughing at what a silly thing it seemed for her to be in our newsroom. And yet, there she was.

She said hello and then felt the need to go around to everyone in the room, shake hands and say hello. We responded in kind, but laughing about it all the while. She left. She said she was on her way to the second floor.

Why is Miss New York City going to a gynecologist’s office wearing a sash and a tiara?

As soon as she left, a flurry of Google searches were performed.

“She’s not Miss New York City. Miss New York City is white, according to this web site.”
“Why would she lie about it?”
“And where did she get that sash if she wasn’t?”
“Is she the Miss New York City going for Miss America or Miss USA, because, you know, they’re different.”
“Maybe she was Miss New York State.”
“Why was she all dressed up to go to the gynecologist’s office?”
“Her name is on a porn site.”

So now, I am in a giggly room of editors and reporters, with no idea as to what just happened here.

I got off the W at Times Square and made my way to the 1/9. I passed by that plaza off the escalators, where a band of bucket drummers beat beneath the street. Bucket drummers are my favorite subway performers. (Though I also have fondness for the Chinese and the Peruvians with authentic instruments that names of which will remain foreign to me.) Commuters seemed to move with the music as they marched up stairs, slipping by one another not disturbing the steps of another.

They say New Yorkers learn to tune out the noises of the subway, noted as some sort of coping mechanism. The bing-bong of the subway doors, followed by the hiss of let-go brakes. The chatter of a half-dozen languages. The roar of an incoming train, and the screech of rail on rail, metal on metal.

The bucket drummers made me smile, but I was running late and couldn’t hang around to listen for more. So I timed my steps with their sticks and careened uptown to a concert.

My friend Goober (her college nickname) is a schoolteacher at a public middle school here in the City. She doesn’t have many books for her students, who are all out of control most of the time, from what I can gather. I was attending the school’s winter concert. (When asked why there were no boys performing in the concert, Goober told us that they had been misbehaving and lost the privilege.)

Near the end of the concert, the emcee announced that jazz great Wynton Marsalis was in the building. Mr. Marsalis came to the front, dressed in jeans and an untucked shirt, and tooted two Christmas carols on his trumpet. My jaw was on the floor. The rowdy middle school students were noisy and jumping around in their seats; they didn’t know who he was. The adults in the audience were quiet, until we gratefully cheered his performance.

I know it was all about the kids and stuff, but that was the highlight of the night for me.

I took the subway home, soaked in the underground jazz of New York City life. Bing-bong, hisssss, chatter chatter chatter, “Stand clear of the closing doors,” bing-bong, hisssss.

I have a date tonight. (I’m single by the way. Mid-twenties single girl in NYC. A rare breed, I know.) I think this is our fourth date. I can’t remember. I’m not really that interested. But I like the company.

Trey asked me to go over to his place, so he could make me dinner. Although that would normally be incredibly romantic and I know ‘all women’ are supposed to swoon for that kind of gesture, I suggested we go out for drinks instead.

I’m jumpy about going to men’s apartments, and I will tell you why.

In the last two months, I’ve been on a bunch of dates. This is my season, my friend Sue would say. She’s noticed that every year, from late October through year’s end, I go on a dating spree. A few dates a week, occasionally finding one who will hold my interest for a few weeks, all until it ends awkwardly and I become so frustrated that I lose all interest in dating for the next nine months, remembering why I love being single so much.

As you can guess from the above-described pattern, I am reaching my “Dating sucks/I love being single” phase of the cycle.

And am I.

This ‘season,’ I have gone out with Trey, a nice stoner who is younger than I am and is a little more interested in pop culture than I think is healthy. Then again, we all have our pleasures. After a date, he had me back to his place and put the moves on me, which I wasn’t really up for. I felt like I was being wrestled deep into the pillow cushions of the couch; not treated tenderly or even as a person, more than just tits and ass. Stoned and drunk, I left rather abruptly. I just wasn’t comfortable.

I also went out on a date with Trilochan, an older London transplant with a sexy accent and sexy Persian eyes. He must have come across moochy women because he offered me “whatever [I] want” for Christmas and a trip to the UK in January for his sister’s wedding. He had money, I got that; I wasn’t interested in it. Made the mistake again of having a drink too many (I’m a petite woman, and one drink can be the difference between walking a straight line and having my head in a toilet). He lived in my outer borough neighborhood and had me back to his place. After kissing a little, he left the room and came back with his pants unzipped and a condom dangling off his teeny weenie. Not what I had in mind. Next, please.

Then there was Schlomo. He wanted me to come to his place and smoke pot. I said, “No, I have a rule against that.” I was attempting to reinforce a safety rule, no more going to men’s apartment’s on a first date/meeting; I could be raped or murdered, or anyway, they’ll want sex they won’t get. An ugly scene, either way.

Schlomo said he “guessed” he understood, but he clearly didn’t. Bit by bit—shaming my prudish rule, meeting for pizza, which to him would be the same as meeting in the lobby of his high-rise—I had my mind changed. And I take full responsibility. He really shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was when I didn’t want to make out with him. (I’d just met him, and I didn’t even want to be there, in the first place.)

He had the audacity the following day to imply that I could be a lesbian. I wanted to tell him that I’m sorry that I’m just not attracted to short, fat, bald, bespectacled jerks. I could deal with the short, fat, bald and bespectacled if they were accompanied with a delightful personality, but such was not the case with Schlomo.

Like with Schlomo, I do take full responsibility for all these follies. I made mistakes. I drank too much, smoked too much, should not have gone to these men’s apartments. Maybe I trusted too much.

Don’t mistake: I’m not a prude or anything. We all like a good roll in the proverbial hay once in a while, but that’s not why I go on dates. I’m looking for more than sex. Isn’t there something to be said for intimacy stemming out of a blooming friendship?

Is that too much to ask?

So, Trey and I are going for drinks tonight. But not too many drinks. And I’ll find my way home afterward. Alone, but safe. And right now, safe is more valuable to me than the possibility of a meaningless orgasm.

I drafted a post earlier in the day.

I'm thinking now that I'm glad I didn't post it right away.

It was a rant that revealed a secret asked to keep. I want to tell someone, my gossiped fingertips are itching... but, let's be honest...

Though this is anonymous, it won't be forever.

It's a classic blogger woe: 'I started an anonymous blog, but then I told someone, and then I told someone else, then someone at work found it...'

It won't be anonymous forever.

Why not start, then, with the clear conscience, writing only things that I would say into someone's eyes?

Saves everyone a lot of preventable heartbreak, I think. Can love be practical?... Why yes, I am a Capricorn, how'd you guess?

see also: How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog, craigslist new york rants & raves

(do i sound sanctamonious or smart?)

I made my mother cry on Christmas Day last week.

Over Thanksgiving, when visiting my family out of town, my dad and I got talking about politics. Though he’s a Republican and I am a liberal, we can still have a civilized chat. Then he turned the table.

“And what are your thoughts on religion these days?” he asked.

Gulp. Can I actually say it? No, go easy.

“Well, I don’t consider myself Catholic anymore,” I choked out.

“I figured as much,” he said. He guessed right that I hadn’t been to church in a long time, and noticed that the last time I went with them on a visit home, I’d stayed planted in the pew as everyone filed up for Communion. “But I’m more interested in what you do believe.”

Eek. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

“Are you sure this is something you want to talk about?”

“I’m prepared for any answer you might have,” he said.

I took a deep breath and measured how far I should step with my words and I decided to go for broke. If he really wanted to know, I might as well go all out.

“I’m an atheist.”

“Interesting.”

I blathered out a mental list I’d compiled over years, the things I wanted them to know. It came out as a breathless run-on sentence.

“I never wanted to disappoint you guys because I know how much church means to you and I don’t want you to think that I think your faith is stupid or something because I don’t at all and it’s not like this is just a phase or something I take lightly because this has come from years and years of deep thought and I don’t have any hard feelings toward the Church, I don’t at all, it’s just not what I believe and I can’t go one pretending that I believe something that I don’t because I should be honest with myself and …”

Dad was sitting still on a stool in the kitchen and taking in everything I said, as I started to well up.

He gave me a hug and said something about how he had heard everything that I said and respects me and loves me. It was far more compassionate that I ever dreamed that conversation would be, a conversation I had actually hoped would never actually happen.

Mom, on the other hand, didn’t take the news so well.

Dad and I had been speaking while Mom was fluttering between the kitchen and the garage, shuttling a full roasted turkey and trimmings into the car to take over to the Kellys house, where we were sharing Thanksgiving dinner.

She didn’t want to be part of the conversation and we didn’t force her to be. It took me years to get where I am; I certainly didn’t expect them to get it in just one 15 minute conversation.

I woke Saturday morning, moved downstairs wrapped in an old fleece blanket I’d had since I was small. It was comforting.

I tried to be.

Mom’s face was wet and red, and she was taking big heaving breaths.

“You weren’t … supposed … to see … this,” she choked on her words.

“What is wrong?”

My thoughts went immediately to Grandma, who is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. She’s going to be 92 in 2004. If she makes it that far, anyway.

I had trouble understanding what my mom was trying to say, but I quickly gathered that it wasn’t about Grandma. It was about me.

I asked her if she was upset because she thought I wasn’t going to be saved by Jesus because I didn’t believe. Thankfully, she said no, that wasn’t it; if that had been what was causing her grief, there wouldn’t have been much that could be done.

The most I could get out of her was that she felt she had failed somehow, which made me ache inside. This is just what I never wanted. I was going to keep my beliefs inside for this very reason: I have so much respect for my parents that I never wanted them to feel this way. This way, this crying and talk of failure.

I hugged her and tried to tell her about yoga breathing, to calm her down. I couldn’t really say whether I’m funny in general (I’d like to think I can be), but I do know how to make my mother smile. I did my best and got her to burp out a few chuckles, her mouth and eyes turned up at the corners.

I was at a loss.

And on Christmas Day, last week, I went to church with my family. Because they asked me to. I sat quietly, silently, next to my brother’s girlfriend, a girl who was raised without religion and looked uncomfortable even being there. We both remained seated through the kneeling and the filing away for the body and blood. We laughed together at the girl in white pants whose thong was clearly visible. And the woman in tall leather boots and bright pink tights.

I forget which part of the mass brought it on, but I looked over and saw my mom wiping tears from her eyes and then suck the salty drops off her finger. I poked my dad, who sat on the other side of me.

“I’m sure it’s just because she’s happy that we’re all together for the holiday.”

I gave him a look, mouth a little twisted and pouty, brows crinkled.

“Well, let’s hope that’s what it is,” he said.

She broke my heart last summer.

I'm a straight girl who's never been in love with a man. I've never been in love with a woman, either. But I have had my heart broken. Twice. By women.

Does that mean I was in love with them?

Birdie cursed me for asking her to be someone she wasn't--a woman who wouldn't let a man control her, a woman who knew she was beautiful even if she didn't starve herself (what was wrong with that?). She called me intolerable and asked me not to come to her birthday party.

She didn't speak to me for two months.

What she didn't realize was that the very thing she cursed me for--for wanting to see her change--was what she was asking me to do. She wanted me to stop being so honest. She said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I don't live that way. I can't.

I broke the silence.

When a family tragedy hit (or was it a stroke of her dramatics?), I called her in tears. "I still have a lot of problems, but I realize that I love you," I said. "So very much."

We're still friends. I don't think she realizes that her words cut as deeply as they did. She's wrapped up in her own heartbreak--heartbreak that has nothing to do with me.

Not too long ago, she said of an upcoming social event, "It'll be like old times."

I didn't know how to tell her that it will never again be like old times.