A Far Rockaway of the Womb
I had the odd experience this weekend of being on my own for a few days. In my epically single epoch (not so long ago) I would’ve scrambled to fill the hours with commitments, social and manufactured, or stared out a window contemplating my loneliness. These days solitude is the ultimate commodity, only to grow more precious by the time this baby makes his debut ANY TIME NOW REALLY YOU CAN COME ANY TIME!!!!
Knowing myself and my proclivities toward ambient anxiety which can be cured only by shuffling around the house putting things away, I decided to do a little staycation on the recommendation of Namwali. She knew of my solitary window because I may have been saying for months “I am masturbating to the idea of this weekend!” Do the Maya Angelou thing and check into a hotel, she suggested. With Chase points as my witness that is exactly what I did.
I’ve felt so vulnerable being pregnant and launching this book into the world at the same time. So I didn’t want to travel far. And I’ve felt extremely claustrophobic all summer, both in my body, where medical professionals tell me my baby is Samoan, measuring >99th percentile with every scan, Madame, are you on a diet of steroids? etc. My brain is broken, mostly from sleeping in 90 minute increments before being awoken by the Mortal Kombat roundhouse kicks to my bladder in the night. I’ve also felt dependent on other people, which I loathe, to bend over and pick things up for me, to drive me places, to borrow their cars, to lift Theo into his high chair.
I’m trying to lean into slowing down, and by leaning in I mean kicking and screaming. I don’t like to be idle. I take any kind of bodily injury as a personal affront, and I know if I ever got a terminal illness the people eulogizing me would not say things like she handled her diagnosis bravely and gracefully they’d say she was such a pain in the ass we were waiting for her to go! I am a summer person-- I want to eat every tomato, spit every watermelon seed, loll in meadows and loamy seashores, all of it. And, coupled with the fact that I am terrified my career is about to fall off a cliff as I am forced back into the lockdown of early motherhood….yeah, kicking and screaming. So, in that Venn diagram of feeling weirdly self-conscious and not too adventurous yet craving the ocean, one place and one place only presented itself.
I recommend to you, dear reader: Rockaway Beach.
The great thing about the Rockaways is that you can be your total self and no one gives a flying fuck. This is not the type of place where nosy Nellies comment on the size of your belly and say hilarious things like, “Are you sure there’s just one in there?!” No.
If you want to go swimming in your jeans, as I saw a great number of men splashing about in sopping trousers, go for it!
Want to have your grandma film you twerking in your bikini in a cold Sunday evening fog, as I witnessed while eating the most sublime arepa of my life, be my guest!
Do you have a tattoo on your very skull that reads simply, elegantly “TATTOO”? Flaunt it while eating a bagel at 6pm, as I saw one gentleman doing outside Broadway Bagel & Delicatessen. Which is the stranger part of that equation, who is to say.
Eight months pregnant riding a bicycle down the boardwalk? NO ONE BATS AN EYE! That part was heaven, as good sense has prevented me from getting on my bike all spring and summer, which I very much resent. But! Monday morning, there I was, breathing in the smell of occasional sewage and sunscreen mingling over Jamaica Bay. All this freedom for the price of a ferry ticket. It’s the cool disregard of New York City (which both giveth and taketh away) transported to the seashore, dotted with brutalist architecture. You can hear sirens while you swim. Heaven.
Brooke accompanied me to check in to the Rockaway Hotel and to allow our central Massachusetts sensibilities to betray us in the face of luxury (WAAAAAOOOWWWW this is wicked nice!!! $20 for four jumbo shrimp what are you out of your fahkin mind?! May we never stop being appalled and enthralled by nice things.). We ordered a lunch of mezze platter and poke bowls and a lemonade and a passion fruit margarita, which the waitress delivered to the wrong person as it is I who is trying to slow the baby’s growth with the occasional (?) alcoholic beverage and Brooke is sober-curious or something.
After a good session of eavesdropping, we took a walk on the beach. As we emerged we found a spigot to rinse sandy feet. It runs in a constant thin stream. You can neither turn it neither on nor off. Seems like the perfect metaphor for these days: to be steady yet mostly ineffective, fulfilling its intended purpose, sure, but at a maddeningly inefficient rate that is totally beyond one’s control. Slowing down, kicking and screaming. But the great thing about that trickle is that it forced us to stay at the beach a little longer.
BOOK NEWZ!
Entrepreneur article on True Blue Stationery: my first ever business article goes viral?!
New York Post feature, with a *chef’s kiss* Post headline
Atlantic article
Baffler review
Air Mail article
ABC News interview: I live and die for the makeup chair!
I recommend!
Le Bureau: A French spy thriller series on Amazon that is allowing me to live out my fantasies of being a spy yet has also disillusioned me as it seems you have to be an utter psycho to be a really good undercover double agent.
Get On Your Knees: A return to the thea-tah! This one woman show by Jacqueline Novak is the perfect marriage of erudite and silly, the only place to live.
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder: I feel as if this book was written for me, a mom of a young kid with an inherited Mennonite shame complex. I just noticed on the publisher’s website that it is categorized as “Women’s Fiction” which is an utter bullshit title because this novel is required reading for the whole citizenry. Tho makes me think I’d like the disclaimer of “Men’s Fiction” on a great number of books...
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria: A thorough social history of the ways in which white western women replicate patriarchy and racism under the guise of good intentions. And a page turner!!!
These leg sleeves (which is almost another way of saying pants?!) for those of you afflicted by nighttime charley horses
Making fancy spa water: I’ve been messing with basil, mint, blackberry, and lime infusions. Call me Gwyneth Jr.
See you on the flipside of afterbirth!
P.S. I’m definitely in the market for recommendations of light, frothy book/show/movie/podcast for postpartum fun, so if you’ve got anything send em my way. Example: I watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in the middle of the night when Theo was born and I remember nothing of it save the Catskills dance sequences and that the guy who plays Lenny Bruce is a smokeshow. So, recommendations like that, please and thank you!