The Immaculate Confection

So if I were to write an autobiography of my life, the last few weeks would be a series of recipes. While the first few years would have titles like "Treatise on Misplaced Idealism," "Melodrama for Dummies" and "How to Lie for Fun and Profit" (just kidding, of course!) the last week would be something a little more edgy. More like Isabel Allende's provocative book "Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses." (And for those who still don't believe in the importance of marketing, consider what sales would have been for the book, "Aphrodite: The Programming Language You Never Knew You Never Knew.")

But clever subtitles aside. My tongue is still tingling from the delights of the week. It started when we (the roomies and I) decided to bake a German chocolate cake. Anyone (or at least Nigella Lawson) could tell you that boxed cakes do not make for tasty desserts. But for some mysterious reason (consistency of the batter? temperature of the oven? interference by forces beyond our mortal ken?) this cake emerged moist and light. We decorated the cake, flinging tablespoons of frosting here and there, leaving sticky trails all over the kitchen. By the time we were done, we had a cake that looked like a oversized white beret, top layer flopping over the bottom, inches of frosting covering every surface. And here is the strange part: this haphazard thing was delicious. We ate several slices, licked bits of frosting off ourselves, and in general made a mess of the process of eating. It was wonderful. And I don't even like cake.

Then, because all good things have to happen at once, I went on a great date. Let's be clear: I went with Alix, who's a girl, so the only thing keeping this one date from being exceptional is the fact that it wasn't, in strict fact, a date. But let's be imaginative, for a moment, and say it was. This is how it went. We left my apartment at 9:30 and I was swept off my feet...by the hard, gusting wind blowing outside. "We have to stop somewhere warm," said Alix. "And get Halloween costumes." So we stopped by the costume and wig store, where I tried on short black hair, an Afro, and flowing blonde waves. None of them really fit me, although Alix got some great photos. I have to admit - I'm no longer curious about how I would look as a blonde, redhead, or (as the salesgirl put it) sister.

We left, to find the wind had only gotten stronger. It was nearly midnight. 11th Street was all but abandoned. We saw a set of stairs leading to a door, tucked intimately below street level. Pushing past the curtains in front of the door, we came into a small, cozy Italian restaurant. Mostly tables for two, a single candle burning in the middle of each, low warm reddish-yellow light. Green herbs hanging in bunches from the ceiling and the exposed brick walls. At the far end I could just make out an enormous fiery portrait of a nude woman. (Imagine I'm an art student of Italian descent, trying to set the mood. This is how I would decorate. Maybe play that song "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" softly in the background...you know, the one from La Boheme, where Mimi tells Rodolfo she "lives alone." And I don't even like opera.) The restaurant was nearly abandoned. We ordered from a series of waiters, all with impeccable Italian accents. The food was amazing, but the next part was even better (and to think it almost didn't happen). On a lark, we ordered dessert. We asked to share the chocolate mousse. The waiter brought out an elegant, long-stemmed wine glass and two tiny silver spoons. By now, there was no one else in the restaurant. The candles had burned down and our hands and feet were finally warm. I slid my spoon into the glass and licked mousse off the end. "Oh, my God," I said, closing my eyes because the room had started to spin, holding onto the table because my knees were actually weak. "What is this?"

Think five minutes in an alley with Henry Miller, a road trip with Erica Jong or one time at band camp with that girl from "American Pie." Besides alcohol, I don't think there's anything you can consume that'll turn you on more than this. "We need boys right now," said Alix. I was thinking the same thing, along with If they could put this in a pill and sell it... But the only other people in the restaurant were the waiters, and the mousse wasn't quite that good. To be honest, I have never felt that way about a dessert before. Normally I don't even like mousse.

We finished the evening looking for Halloween costumes in various adult video stores (we only wanted cat ears, these stores had them cheaper), talking about how we both felt too awkward to ever rent pornography.

The next night, we went down to this famous bakery and got raspberry cheesecake. Again, the blend of marzipan and sugar was so sexy it was awkward eating it in public. I don't know what these New York bakers add to their mixes, but as Alix put it, eating too much of it might get you pregnant...

Devil on one shoulder, heaven's hottie on the other...

People who read this blog probably remember "Bond Day." Oh, that one day when we dusted off our fishnets, shined our leather boots, cleaned our sheets, and polished our handcuffs. And then made it all into an outfit we could wear to school. For some people, of course, Bond Day wasn't a holiday, it was a way of life. For some, it still is. But for the rest of us, we're left smacking our foreheads and thinking, "trench coat? knee-high boots? fishnet? ass-shorts? Why the hell would you put those together?" (If you dressed up for Bond Day all four years and don't regret at least one outfit, I have a street corner to sell you in Brooklyn. You'll just have to battle the coke dealers for possession.)

I didn't do it freshman year, because I wasn't in the drama program. But I count it as my first Bond Day, because when all the cool girls waltzed in (or stumbled, more like) in boots that picked up where their skirts left off (and believe me, their skirts left a lot off) I thought, how cool. I thought, sexy? Really? Because when you're 14, do you even know what sexy is? You're willing to take someone else's word for it.

So needless to say, I looked forward to participating in it sophomore year. It wasn't just a chance to show off, it was a chance to represent the team. It was, in a sense, a duty, much like pulling off good grades and volunteering for charity. I went conservative, considering the times. Slinky red shirt, maybe a little too lowcut, black skirt (but nothing too scandalous) fishnet and boots. To be honest, I thought it was classy.

Sure, there were signs over the years that Bond Day might not be in the best of taste. There was the time Barry (you all remember him) sat on my lap and unzipped my boot. In the middle of class. Still, I persevered. There was that time, in drama class, when I stood up to make an announcement about the upcoming play. At the end, I got only one question. "Is that your costume?" asked one of the guys in the back. The teacher quickly gestured at me to sit back down. "No," I squeaked. "No?" she repeated, looking worried. Laughter rumbled through the room.

There's more. (I'm going to get all this off my chest, because I know for once I have a sympathetic audience, you did it too, don't deny it!) How about that one day, walking down to the art classrooms (through that shady parking lot and down that slippery hill) and I heard one girl say to a friend, "What is she wearing?" And the other replied, "I don't know. I've seen a lot of girls dressed like skanks today." Or perhaps the fact that a friend's mother referred to it as "Casual Sex Day." The sad afternoon when I waved to Sam (E., Ben's brother) in the hall, and he averted his eyes from my creepy cork heels and shorts ensemble. Oh, there were signs. The crowning glory was senior year, when a few of my friends came to school in nothing but jewelry and sheets, the latter tucked up under their arms and wound around a couple times.

"Why sheets?" I wanted to know.
"Don't you get it?" My friend trilled. "We just got out of bed. After having sex with James Bond."
Oh. And then our history teacher refused to let them into class, and by afternoon the sheets had been unraveled, the boots had been packed away, Bush had been elected, and we were all on a trajectory towards higher necklines and more serious manners.

I have to admit, I wasn't one of the girls in the sheets. I almost was. I seriously thought about it, and then, that morning, something changed. I looked at the sheet, I looked at my jeans, and I remembered a story I once heard from an abstinence counselor (whose efforts, by the way, were wasted at our high school). She said, "every aspect of your femininity is a gift. You're born with a basket full of gifts. And every time you share one, it's like you're giving away a gift. And do you really want to arrive at the altar and have no gifts left to give your husband?"

Just kidding, of course. But I didn't feel right about it anymore. Instead, I wore a dress over jeans.
"You know," a friend told me in sixth period, "I think you're the classiest Bond girl today. I mean, not showing any skin." And I wasn't thrown out of history class!

By the time Halloween (which to most college girls is the same thing Bond Day was to us in high school) rolled around, I realized I had to go modest. I borrowed a friend's costume. It was Fiona the ogre, from Shrek. I even put on the horns. And since it was a child's costume, the neck came up nearly to my chin, and the hem fell at my knee. Going out that night, I saw plenty of women dressed as Playboy bunnies, fluffy tails and corsets galore. Even my friends, Can-Can girls and Matrix characters, looked more extreme than I did.

Shopping for Halloween nowadays, I see costumes that boast knee-high boots and fishnets. Nurses and witches alike wear skirts that barely cover their bums (remember nurses? They wear scrubs and flats. Witches have warts and stringy hair, and they stir smelly cauldrons). Halloween isn't about being sexy, but the costumes beind peddled to us aren't real. They're strange erotic fantasies, cops in a world where cops flash their boobs rather than enforce the law. And that's great, of course, except that your middle-aged neighbor and her kindergarten-age twins don't want to see your boobs. In fact, a very limited number of people actually do. And of that number, still fewer are people you want to show your boobs to. Right? So what's with "Horny Hermione" and "Peekaboo Pocahontas"? And for the big question: are we really getting closer to our sexuality, to our so-called sexual selves, when we submerge ourselves entirely in someone else's idea of sexy? (Don't get me wrong, some women enjoy being so submissive, so passive, but most of us need a little more room to breathe.) Right?

Darfur and the City...

It was a day that could have been filmed for a documentary, or at least a subpar reality TV show where attractive people get into unfortunate situations involving whipped cream and desert islands. Just kidding.

Thinking tonight was going to be pretty slow, we strolled into the Hilton yesterday night and asked the Concierge if he knew where the nearest video store was.
"Just around the corner, 28th and 6th," he said. Then he paused, looked us over, and blinked. "Wait, what kind of video store?"
We didn't end up finding one. But it wasn't a problem after all, because today was one of the most interesting days I've had in New York.

My roommate knocked on my door at 5 am. "Are we still eating?" she asked. One of my roommates is an observant Muslim, and she's been fasting regularly all through Ramadan. We'd promised her that we'd keep her company today. I staggered into the kitchen and the three of us worked our way through cereal and bagels. "This is my only meal until tonight," I said. I've never been one of those people who can't eat because it's too early or too late or I'm too full. My stomach is a bit of a revolving door (that metaphor is too strange to examine up close.)

At 5:45 we washed up and I put on long pants. She unfolded her prayer mat. When I was in India, I often saw Muslims praying in the streets, on the trains, in the alleys between vegetable stalls and department stores. In the morning I heard the muezzin's call to prayer coming from the nearby mosque. I heard it five times a day. But I'd obviously never answered it before. It was dark in the living room and we didn't turn on the lights. She angled the mat so we each had a place along its side. "I can lead or we can do it quietly," she offered. But we asked her to lead. I watched out of the corner of my eye so I knew when to bend, bow and touch the ground. She chanted the Arabic softly, but the syllables sounded to me like the Hebrew I'd heard at Seder, or the Sanskrit that Hindu priests use for every ceremony. It's possible that it would also remind me of classical Latin, if I'd ever heard it. The thing that moved me, when I was standing in the dark, in my pajamas, was the fact that it did sound so much the same. That prayer is so similar between people, or at least it's always the same thing to me.

At work, I tried not to look at the parade of muffins and cookies moving down my co-workers' desks. Around 4 pm I started getting very hungry, because I was fasting. By 4:30 my muscles (such as they are!) were starting to twitch. By 6 I was ready to dash out, man I was that ready to break my fast. Of course, that's the moment my editor decided to review one of our articles. I flipped pages, tapping my palm against my knees like I had a nervous tick. "Listen," I said at last, "I have to go eat. I've been fasting for Ramadan." He looked alarmed. "Were you doing it all month?" "No." "I didn't realize you were-" "I'm not." "Eh?" "My friend is." "What?" But I was out the door before our Mad-Libs of a conversation was over.

I squeezed into the iftaar dinner late. I tried not to inhale my food, nodding politely as everyone else actually made decent conversation. One of the speakers made me laugh. "You think Ramadan will be forever," he said. "You think, I'm going to spend a whole month giving up all the stuff my parents look down on? A month without eating during daytime? A month looking the other way every time I see a pretty girl on the street? No way." He paused here for dramatic effect. A month is a long time. 1/12 of the year. 1/888 of the average human life, since we're getting technical. That's a hell of a long time to be looking the other way and passing on the drinks. But then he laughed. "But now it's Day 19 and I'm thinking, it can't be halfway over already! I'm still a sinner!" It's true, too. The more I observe religion of any kind, the more I feel like the captain on a sinking boat, insisting on going down with his ship. On the other hand, I also feel safe. Go figure.

The next speaker sent shivers down my spine, and not because of his heavy, unplaceable accent. "I've lost fifty relatives to the genocide in Darfur," he said. "Two are - were - my brothers, one, my sister." Most speakers about world events flatter their audiences, but perhaps this man didn't have energy for flattery. "We are all Muslims in Darfur. 100%. But our brothers - the Muslims - have done nothing for the people who are dying every day. The Arab nations have done nothing. In Islam, it says, "He who kills one man, it shall be as if he has killed all of humanity. And he who saves one human life, it is as if he has saved all of humanity." I have to say this much: it is worth it to fight the genocide in Darfur, on whatever level and to whatever degree. There are definitely people who argue that a handful of college-age liberals aren't going to end this crime against humanity. But then again, what exactly do the critics expect? Miracles? Rains of frogs? A plague to wipe out the Sudanese president's firstborn son?

And after that presentation we were off again, this time to a chic Chelsea press event held in a newly-opened club. (My other roommate works at a publication that gets invited to events like these. She's the one I went to the Four Seasons with.) Waiters in black kept handing me cups of passionfruit creme brulee and gourmet chocolate sauce. Bartenders served up cosmos and champagne
(I, keeping with the Ramadan theme, looked the other way). Women in very high heels toasted themselves with glasses decorated in fresh daffodils. Mood lighting, low music, delicious food...it was an evening of Sex and the City-like elegance. At the end, on our way out, we got goodie bags full of little gold candies and card cases.

In one day I fasted for Ramadan, contributed to Darfur, and scored free chocolate. I can promise you one thing: no one else in the entire city had the same day I did (except for my two roommates). I'm beginning to see what people like about New York.

And for an update...

...on the "Men of Adventure Sports/David Beckham shirtless" saga. So today our editor-in-chief walks by and goes, "What is this?" And as I leap bravely into the fray, ready to tear the offending pamphlet from his hands (because David Beckham turned into a series of adventure athletes, in varying stages of undress, with a cover that read 'the men of adventure sports' in bold lettering) he started flipping through it.
"I'm so sorry! I am so embarrassed," I kept saying to him, trying to edge in front of the raunchy pages. "It's just a joke between her and me."
"It's okay," he said, standing up and staring at us both awkwardly. "I can handle it." To which no one knew what to say, so he just sort of ambled on out, leaving the two of us to stare, in red-faced humiliation, at the windows.
"We better take that off the corkbaord," she said at last. And so I did. But I'm afraid it may already be too late. I may already be that intern.

Give the People What They (Don't) Want

By which I mean, today's topic is: (drumroll please) sexual harassment. I know what everyone's thinking: Anika, please, this is embarrassing! What happened to nights at Marquee and receptions at the Four Seasons? What happened to cocaine and Bungalow 8, fashion models and sleeping around?

What can I say? I'm losing my edge, and now I'm starting to sound like a corporate recruitment flyer. Soon enough I'll buy a Volvo and listen to NPR all day long and drink only nonfat lattes. Or something.

The point is, sexual harrassment. When I left for TM in New York, I was worried because they included a little flyer on this pleasant subject, and then I heard (through the mysterious Medill grapevine) that a girl had, in fact, been harassed on TM and it had resulted in all kinds of unpleasant litigation. So of course, the first thing I did when I reached New York was weed my wardrobe. Skintight camis? Out. Micro-minis? Gone. I mean, who wants to be the office "skintern"?

It turns out I had nothing to worry about, the people in my office are almost unnervingly professional all the time. But that's not always been the case. I still remember one summer job I had a few years back. I worked in an all-female department, but the office was full of men. One day, one of the men dropped by our cube to talk. We discussed the weather, politics, recent movies...and then he mentioned that he had just bought new pants.
"Wait, the ones you're wearing?" asked one of my supervisors, pulling her glasses down her nose to get a better look. He shifted (perhaps uncomfortably) and said,
"Yeah. I like them."
My supervisor ran her pink nails through her blonde hair and said,
"To be honest, ____, I think they're a little risque for [this office]."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, they're quite tight. I can definitely see the shape of your butt." And she laughed while I, the man, and the other woman in the office all picked our jaws up off the floor.
"Uhh..." he said, and fled back to his cubicle. We didn't see him again for weeks.

Or, for example, I used to go to a bank where the tellers (mostly women!) wore lingerie to work. And I don't mean lace-trimmed blouses, I mean transparents shifts and high heels. Turns out this bank was actually famous for this. But the point is, walking up to deposit a check, I felt like I was being harassed by their painted-on goo-goo eyes. (It later turns out I wasn't the only one.)

Move over Clarence Thomas, you're playing with the big girls now. In fact, I'm starting to worry that I might be guilty of this heinous crime. Let me explain. Days in the office tend to be long, and occasionally dull, and there's never really enough work to go around. I mean, at least, never enough work to go all the way around to me. So yesterday, I was sitting at my desk, and my officemate and I started talking about David Beckham (I'd just seen Bend it Like Beckham). And I said, "Too bad soccer isn't an extreme sport, that would be a fun photo shoot" and she answered "Well, maybe something can be arranged..."

The point is, there's now a picture of David Beckham on our wall. Yes, we did waste company resources printing it. But before anyone gets too freaked out, I'd like to say (in our defense!) that he is wearing pants. But not much else. In fact, nothing else. So my question is: is it possible that our male colleagues, forced to stare at this image every time they come into our office to ask us for even the smallest thing, might feel harassed and offended?

Digging up what lurks beneath...

It goes like this...

One dark and stormy night about five years ago, a Mormon boy leaves home on a quest to "find himself." A few months after the trip begins, he finds himself in love...with a man. Unable to tell his family, he cuts off the affair and returns home. But as Kelis would say, sometimes "there's no turning back." So the closeted Mormon boy takes out an index card, colors it with all the shades of the rainbow, and writes, "I wish I weren't a gay Mormon, but I am" on the front. He mails it to a guy he's heard speak on the radio. Frank. Frank posts the anonymous card on his website.

Or sometimes like this:
500 well-dressed guests are taking turns toasting the bride and groom. The maid of honor stands up, giving everyone a chance to admire her pea-green bridesmaid dress, and begins, "I knew Lindsey had found love when..." but the entire time all she can think about is the fact that she slept with the groom...in the bathroom of a hotel...at the rehearsal dinner...a week ago. And unable to expurgate her overwhelming sense of guilt, she slips into the ladies during the reception, takes an index card out of her beaded purse, and writes, "I am so sorry for betraying my best friend" across the front. She addresses it to Frank, and drops it in the mail.

Frank collects these anonymous confessions and makes public art out of them. These posters demonstrate the power of secrets, he says in his lectures and speeches, to limit and transform. When I imagine the scenarios behind these postcards, I come up with scenes that read like outtakes from Desperate Housewives. But I'm being facetious, because the first time I heard about Frank's project, I was deeply moved.

I was in Barnes and Noble when I found the recently published PostSecret book, full of these strange, bizarre and intimate sentences. I settled down with a coffee and opened the book on my lap. I felt I was being sucked further and further into the twilight zone. About half of these urgent secrets involve sex, another quarter involve theft, and the final quarter (the most interesting) involve no combination of the other two. Nonetheless, these secrets are ordinary. There's obviously no postcard that reads, "I regret invading the Rhineland" or "I killed my mistress and her lover" or even "I inflated my company's stock prices and made millions raiding my workers' pension funds." It's along the lines of, "I sabotage my mother's relationships because I don't want her to fall in love again" or "I haven't told my family that I converted to Catholicism" or "I'm finally passionately in love with someone but I can't tell him because he's engaged."

When you share a secret, Frank suggests in the intro, you become more, rather than less, powerful. I thought, hell, there's no time like the present (I was in Barnes and Noble on a Sunday afternoon, there really was no time like the present) and so, lacking index cards, I took out a sheet of notebook paper and tried to phrase my various important secrets in single-sentence form. The power here is summary: most secrets don't need background or explanation. When boiled down, we're all keeping the same things to ourselves (how ironic!) But here's the funny part: after I had filled three or four notebook pages with one-line secrets, I tucked the paper into my bag and went home. I didn't feel better, but I figured maybe that was because I hadn't mailed any of them yet. Two days later, going through my bag, I remembered those sheets and reached for them. They were gone! I lost my most important confessions, the secrets of my soul, etc etc! Let them slip out of my purse like junk mail. (And then I remembered that one of my secrets was, I'm a horrible flake and lose things all the time, but I want everyone to think I have it together. Ha.) I started wondering who had found them, where they had ended up, whether they were all together.

But my fears proved baseless. I didn't get any letters from long-lost friends, no reprimands from family members, no knowing looks from strangers on the street. The truth is, my roommate, the janitor, someone probably picked up my papers, read a few lines, thought, what the hell? and dumped them in the trash. The so-called secrets of my soul have likely been recycled into napkins at Cosi's.

I think the real secret is this: although some secrets have the power to transform our lives, most don't. The fact is, you can send yourself out into the world and get nothing back, because (and I'm not trying to be sad or pathetic, just honest) most people have their own business to attend to.

In a way, it's almost reassuring.