You have no real relationship or kinship to someone if they haven’t woven you into their narrative.

This concept drives trillions of dollars every year. Word of mouth marketing . . . have you heard of it?

Stepping away from business, though, I have had occasion to think about this again and ponder it for quite some time over the past few weeks.

It’s something I started thinking about last year, and now that’s come up several times in just a few days, I’m taking it as a sign to pay attention and internalize it.

Playing around on the beach in Isla Holbox (in the Mexican Carribbean) August 2009

First example: A relationship ends, and not cleanly or cut and dried. While you’re still friends with the person, you hear the other person sharing stories about experiences he’s just had with another woman … places they explored together, meals they’ve shared. There are pictures, inside jokes. You understand (or should understand) that it’s time to move on. He has woven another woman into his story in a way that is meaningful to him. There is little room for you.

Second example: You feel an instant bond with someone you meet and you enjoy each other’s company. You find her hitting the nail on the head when she listens to your problems and offers feedback. You find yourself lending weight to her opinions and begin to value her. You find yourself talking about her insight with other people in your circle. “When I told her this, she said that.” Boom. She’s part of your story.

Third example: Someone who you’ve spent little time with seems to understand you pretty well without much effort on your part. Without much fanfare, he lets you know that he’s written a blog and he’s included a “callback” referring to a joke you made a few days earlier. This is funny to you because you had already read the post before he alerted you and you knew that callback was included for your benefit. Mutual admiration is at work, and you’re now each part of the other person’s story.

All of this has me refocusing on input versus output. I’m pouring so much of my time and attention into things that have no meaningful place in my story. I can only read so many blogs/websites/case studies. Why not abandon a few them and replace them with my friends’ work? How about that? Paying genuine attention to the people I love and admire instead of strangers. I have so many smart, talented friends that I can easily replace some of my daily intake of “expert” with the content they work so hard to produce. (These thoughts started shortly before this relevant post by my friend Morgan.)

If I’m managing input, I should be paying that much more attention to output. I’ve been spending more time here and on my other site writing. It has felt wonderful to experience this release, the spill of words on a page again.

Stories aren’t just on paper or on a screen. My story is how I interact with you, what I give to you and what I take from you.

I want my story to be:
Incredibly powerful
Memorable
Passionate
Emotional
Inspiring
Breathtaking
Embraceable
Uplifting
Nourishing

When I meet you, I want to contribute these memories to your story:
She was intelligent.
She was talented.
She was beautiful.
She was driven.
She was genuine.
She was enthusiastic.
She was devoted.

I need to bring life into balance this year. For me, balance isn’t 40 hours of work and 20 hours of play. My balance is switching back and forth between the hot tub and the cold plunge pool, experiencing the refreshing shock of change whenever I need it and feeling that much more alive for it.

I want work…deep intense challenges in my career with problems I don’t know how to solve yet. I want an intensely fulfilling relationship with someone who’s ready to stand still and pay attention and then hold on for dear life to the center of our relationship while we push each other to excel at those things we’re driven to succeed in. I want to turn off the spigot of superficial interactions and channel the flow of my attention into the people who matter most.

This is my narrative. I’m paying attention to my story, and to the characters in it.

For all my hair-related posts, click here.

This post is for all my black sisters, all my white sisters raising biracial babies and for my white girlfriends who are endlessly fascinated with my hair (as I am with theirs).

I was forlorn at having to leave my hairdresser back home when I moved. She was one of only a couple of women in the state who specialized in ethnic hair and I’d been seeing her every two months for close to four years. She outlasted a couple of my romantic relationships, that’s for sure. Still, Cassandra and I couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get my hair to grow.

I know most of my readers are either white or male, so I’ll take a quick moment to explain the whole point of writing this post. The reason why you don’t see a lot of black women walking around with long hair is because our hair is exceedingly dry and delicate. (Unprocessed) Caucasian, Asian and Latina hair is strong and flexible like fishing line while our hair breaks like a filament of spun sugar.

Simple, everyday things like washing our hair or tossing and turning in our sleep causes split ends or even makes it break off. Our strands’ insanely curlicued composition makes it that much harder for all the moisturizing oils to make it from scalp to the ends, where it is most needed (and my dry-haired curly friends of other races can totally relate). Compounding the problem is the fact that black people’s hair grows very, very slowly.

Every month when I came in to get my hair cut, Cassandra and I would talk about what shampoos and conditioners I was using and what else I could do to help my hair grow. I was doing everything right – or so we thought – getting regular cuts, eating well and drinking lots of water. But nothing really worked. On the whole my hair was healthy, but any growth was lost in split ends. So, she suggested sleeping on a satin pillowcase because cotton pillowcases absorb the healthy oils in hair and cause it to break even more.

The satin pillowcase wasn’t enough – and I hated sliding all over the place every night anyway.

So it was with trembling and fanfare that I booked my first haircut at a new salon near my apartment. It was owned and operated by a woman with tons of experience with black hair who was herself a minority. I thought, “Finally, this will be my answer. I will ask her all my black hair questions. She will be my black hair mommy.”

I don’t have the skill required to convey to you how funny that hair appointment was. Suffice it to say I was like a seven-year-old all over again, asking her black hair mommy (BHM) what everything was and what order she was supposed to do it in. I told them everything I was doing with it currently and how frustrated I was. They understood my frustration. After all, I had “good” hair. There was no reason it shouldn’t be growing.

Wait. Hold up. I was the keeper of the much envied “good” hair? No way!

The conversation basically went like this:
Me: “Well, I curl it every day and . . .”
BHM: “Uh uh, honey. Oh NO. You cannot curl your hair every day. That is why it is all breaking off.”

Me: “Okay, well I also . . . “
BHM: “Oh NO. You cannot do that.”

And the best part was that there was another girl working in the salon with long, natural hair. I swiveled in the black vinyl chair, pointed at her and said, “I want that. Come here. I want to ask you things.”

Black Hair Mommy 2 came over and giggled over my cluelessness. As BHM continued cutting layers into my hair, the two commiserated over why my hair was at an epic standstill.

BHM 2: “Are you wrapping it at night?”
Me: “No. Ummmm . . .”
BHM 1 “You have to explain to her what wrapping is. She probably thinks you just mean wrapping it in a scarf.”
Me: “Yeah, what do you mean?”

BHM 2, a beauty from Barbados, was patient with me and answered every question. She even whipped out a brush and demonstrating what she meant by wrapping, sweeping her hair up and around her noggin into a flat beehive shape against her scalp.

I had a lot to learn. I immediately stopped using a curling iron and booked another appointment this past weekend to spend a morning with my two black hair mommies. It was a hair tutorial, if you will. They spent close to two hours showing me how to take care of it from start to finish, and I am beyond grateful. They washed my hair, showed me how to blow it out using a paddle brush and showed me how to style it using the least heat.

I’m gonna go into detail because I know black women are buying books about how to take care of their hair. Down at my subway station, the newsstand is chock full of black hairstyle magazines. Women have sent me messages on here asking for advice on what to do with their babies’ hair.

And, honestly, the proof is in the pudding here. I used to look at those women with insanely shiny, soft-looking hair on the boxes of Dark N’ Lovely relaxer at the drugstore and be like, “Bitch, please. Ain’t no black woman’s hair ever look like that no matter what relaxer she use.” Yet I haven’t stopped touching my hair since this weekend because what the BHMs did to it is so incredible. It blows around in the wind! It swings! It moves! It can probably do trapeze stunts and make my bed, too. If I can love my hair this much now, I want other black women to be able to feel that way. I took the below pics tonight with NO products in my hair:

Hair Regimen Before:
-Relax with Optimum Care products 1x every eight weeks
-Haircut 1x every eight weeks
-Deep condition, Wash and condition with Ojon products 1x weekly
-Blow dry straight using blowdryer attachment and Luster’s Pink Oil 1x weekly
-Curl almost every morning before work
-Sleep with hair down on regular pillowcases
-Take vitamins, drink lots of water, etc.

Hair Regimen Now:
-Same relaxer and haircut regimens
-Deep condition with Ojon, wash with KeraCare 1st Lather shampoo followed by Crème of Nature Detangling Conditioning Shampoo for Normal Hair, followed by KeraCare’s Leave in Conditioner (still 1x a week)
-Blow dry to damp using just the dryer (w/a nozzle attachment), then blow straight (still w/the nozzle attachment) using a paddle brush and Salerm 21 B5
-Flat iron or use curler only ONCE a week (usually right after drying) to style, using Salerm Brushing Technica spray to protect against heat
-Wrap hair at night

What’s different:
The biggest, most important difference is that I’m not using heat on my hair every day. That change alone will allow my hair to grow past shoulder length by summer ’08, according to the black hair mommies. Next most important is that I’m wrapping it at night (meaning I physically wrap it – see pic – and then cover it with a satin scarf) to protect the ends while I roll around in my sleep.

I’ve also replaced a product that was way too heavy and greasy for my hair (Pink Oil) with a product that is just as economical but lighter and more conditioning (Salerm 21 B5, manufactured in Spain and available online or at beauty supply stores). Let me tell you, if you blow dry your hair straight (even if you aren’t black), do yourself a favor and get this product. My hair feels unreal. With my eyes closed, I wouldn’t be able to tell my own hair from that of naturally straight hair – that is how glossy and soft and swingy it is. Never in my life has it felt like that, and I’m convinced it’s due to how the B5 in that product interacts with heat to condition and protect the hair.

Also, using the paddle brush (brushing into the roots, then pulling smoothly from roots to ends) really straightened the hair a lot better than my straightening attachment ever did. It smooths down the cuticle of the hairshaft more too, resulting in more shine.

What’s not too different:
I was using great shampoos and conditioners before, but the brands I switched to are just a little better and a lot less expensive. While I’m still using the deep conditioner from Ojon (expensive, but worth it), the new shampoos don’t contain sodium stearate (soap) and are actually formulated for black hair. Don’t see the point in using two shampoos? I didn’t either. BHM 2 explained that since we only wash our hair once a week, it needs a little more help getting clean. Also, KeraCare products are made to restore your hair to a certain pH level. Wacky.

Why I’m psyched: Dude, I’m going to have long hair!

Why I’m not psyched: Wearing a head scarf at night is so not sexy. At all. Guess if I start dating someone, the scarf will be replaced by kinky satin pillowcases (method approved by BHM 2). Hey – I have priorities, okay?

Shopping List:

• Salerm 21 with B5
• Salerm Brushing Technica
• Ojon Restorative Hair Treatment
• KeraCare 1st Lather shampoo and Leave-In Conditioner
• Crème of Nature Detangling Conditioning Shampoo (Yes, it’s really just $4.99)
• Paddle Brush (it’ll be cheaper at a beauty supply – but get one that looks like this and about the width of the palm of your hand)
• Satin Scarf

Being of mixed descent myself, I’ve watched the hair debate from the sidelines. I never needed to defend my choice of hairstyle to anyone as a teenager or young woman because there were no other black people around. And that there was the problem with my hair: There were NO black people around.

Growing up, I was more sensitive about my hair than I imagine most little black girls would be. My Mom hacked off half of it at random when I was seven, and then I moved to a middle-class suburban white neighborhood where my grandparents knew fuck all what to do with my nappy, lopsided hair. My uncle, a successful hairdresser with his own salon in Sarasota, Fla., took a stab at relaxing it into submission and chemically burned off everything longer than my ears.

After that, no more white people were allowed to touch my hair for about 15 or 16 years.

After moving to New Hampshire at 13 to live with my aunt (herself a white woman married to a mixed man), I had the luck of having a couple of black women in my church congregation who had mercy on my hair. They showed me how to chemically relax it without making it fall out of my head. When I went to college, I started relaxing it myself.

I still wouldn’t let anyone cut it. That didn’t happen until my senior year of college.

Since then, my hair has grown in fits and starts, never making it past the finish line of my shoulders. I have wanted long hair more than anything – more than being a certain clothing size or having a bigger salary. I just want long hair. Call me crazy, but I guess I’ve always thought shiny, healthy, long hair is a woman’s crowning glory.

Must go back to all those Biblical ideals I grew up with. I had a Jewish teacher in fourth grade who wore her long, dark hair up in an elaborate bun every day. She explained to me that her tradition dictated that her husband was the only one permitted to see it cascade over her shoulders. I always thought there was something sweet in keeping something that beautiful so private.

Black female hair politics be damned, I wear my hair straight. I never learned how to deal with it curly and I like it straight. I don’t care how other women style their hair – whatever makes them feel beautiful is fine with me. I just wanted to find one black woman with long hair who could tell me how I could get mine to make me feel beautiful, too.

Enter my Black Hair Mommy.

Continue reading Black Hair Mommy here.

New for 2007 here on Dangerously Enthusiastic: Welcome to The Saucy Report, a monthly jaunt through the neighborhoods of New York as seen through my eyes. Every month, I’ll explore a different group of neighborhoods, and share pictures, links, reviews and even mini-soundtracks to bring the experience to you no matter where you live. This month, we start in the LES.

Saucy Report One: Lower East Side Standbys
“I have only come here seeking knowledge
Things they wouldn’t teach me of in college
I can see the destiny you sold
Turned into a shining band of gold”
- The Police

Ever since I told my friend Neil (aka “Saucy”) a few months ago that I was moving here, we have been making lists of museums, restaurants and boutiques for me to check out. Neil, a rock star writer and my sometimes-mentor, possesses an unstoppable flow of memories of this place from the years he spent living and working here. When he moved to L.A., I don’t think the city left him. He knows a ton about the history and culture of this place. A New York neophyte couldn’t ask for a better tour guide.

Neil is in town for a few days, so we took advantage of a rare block of free time on Saturday to see, smell and taste the city. We worked from his mental list of favorite places in the Lower East Side (one of his old neighborhoods) slowing checking off treasure after treasure.

I met up with him in Chinatown and we walked over to SoHo, where our first stop was Café Habana. (Note: Cafe Habana may technically be in NoLita. I don’t know. I’m new here. Nolita, Solita, sopressata. Everybody Wang Chung tonight. I can’t keep ‘em straight.) The first time he told me about the place, he said, “This is gonna sound so fucking weird, but you have to go to this place and get the corn. Trust me.”

We popped into the To Go location next door, pushed our way into the cramped, congenial space and ordered 2 pieces of Mexican corn on the cob. Our order was ready within minutes. We sat outside on the benches, balancing the plate of corn on our knees while Neil tried to take a phone call and eat at the same time. (See? I told you he was still a New Yorker.)

I should mention here that it was 71 degrees in New York on Saturday. 71 degrees, people. The sun lit up the plate of golden kernels; chargrilled, covered in butter and dusted with chili and parmesan cheese. Lime wedges waited patiently on the side, ready to ride the taste tsunami with their acidic grace.

When I bit into my corn, the individual kernels broke free, their sweetness popping and melting into the buttery, teasing warmth of the chili. The flecks of cheese and rivulets of lime juice wrapped around my tongue, holding hands in my mouth as the flavors rolled back and forth across my palate.

I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . that corn was fucking amazing. I wish I had seven more cobs right in front of me.

*Neil recommends: Try the Chicken with Mole Sauce.
*Fun Fact: Lenny Kravitz filmed the video for his song, “Again,” at Café Habana. Click here to watch the video.

From there, we walked to Katz’s Deli. This place is a New York standard for deli staples like pastrami, salami and corned beef.

When you walk into Katz’s, they give you a ticket that looks like the one you get when you’re driving on the turnpike. The place is famous, so the line to order sandwiches is super long. But we came specifically for the hot dogs and that line was nonexistent.

Neil doesn’t even like hot dogs, but for some reason, he loves Katz’s dogs (except for that little twisty part at the end). He orders two with sauerkraut and a knish on the side because I’ve never had a knish. (Isn’t that a funny word?) I’ve never had a vanilla New York egg cream either, so he orders a couple of those and we’re good to go.

The first bite of Katz’s dog is nowhere near the epiphany that was the first bite of Mexican grilled corn. However, that’s a near-impossible act to follow. It’s an excellent hot dog, right up there with Vienna Beef dogs of Chicago. The knish was . . . potato-ey. A big pillow of potato.

There is a really good place for knishes on the same block as Katz’s, so I’ll pop in there for a potato pillow experience when I get a chance. The New York egg cream was a delight, though. If you took the root beer out of a float and added sweet cream and a little more fizz, that might be it.

Here, you can try it for yourself and tell me what you think:

NY Egg Creams

Ingredients:
1/2 c. chocolate syrup
1/2 c. half-and-half
2 quarts seltzer water, chilled

Directions:
Combine 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup and 1 ounce half-and-half in the bottom of a soda glass. Stir with a parfait spoon to combine. Add cold seltzer to the top of the glass and serve with drinking straws.

Recipe courtesy of “30 Minute Meals 2,” Rachael Ray.

After we eat, we take our toll booth tickets up to pay for our food. There is a line of people waiting to pay. Even if you are paying together, both people still have to relinquish their ticket in order to leave. I don’t know what happens to you if you lose your ticket. Do they make you stay in the deli? If I were homeless, I would lose my ticket on purpose.

*Emily recommends: Try the knoblewurst. Dude sitting at the next table said it’s a spicy hot dog-type thing.
*Fun Fact: Katz’s Deli is the setting for the scene when Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally.”

Continue reading part 2 of the first Saucy Report here.

Between corn and knishes, we popped into McNally Robinson, a cool bookstore. We browsed a couple boutiques and music shops. Eventually, we came upon the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, another place Neil had recommended that I check out. In addition to being a bit of a museum nut, I really want to learn all I can about the city’s history. The LES is the first neighborhood I fell in love with here, so it’s a natural jumping off point for my Gotham Girl education.

Earlier in the day, Neil told me I had to get a copy of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, a social history of the LES by Luc Sante. When we were at the museum, they happened to have the book, so we got a copy. We watched a short film on the history of immigration laws in the city while we were there, and then went on our way. I will definitely go back to take the tour.

Something across the street from the museum caught Neil’s eye. It was Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a place I’ve wanted to visit since I first read about it in Gourmet magazine. I will say nothing of its mission or aesthetic except to link to its list of flavors. I believe that will tell you all you need to know.

Neil chose a small cup of gelato with one scoop of the black sesame and one of the toasted almond. I had intended to try the honey lavender and mascarpone flavors, but those are only available through mail order. Instead, I went with the thai chili chocolate. My favorite chocolatier in NH, Swan Chocolates, makes little misfit truffles out of dark chocolate dusted with paprika and I always like to see how other foodies use those flavors.

Neil and I set out again, this time with our cups of gelato, through the streets of Little Italy and then back through Chinatown.

We dipped our tiny plastic spoons into the mounds of smooth gelato. Excited, we swapped spoonful(s) and compared notes on the flavors. The black sesame was the essence of the inside of a single sesame seed, stripped down and slapped on a blank canvas by itself. It was the singularity of it that was so aggressive. We agreed that it would make an elegant finish for a sushi dinner. The toasted almond was the gelato equivalent of vanilla smoke from a nice cigar combined with the bottom of a glass of amaretto. Delicious.

The thai chili chocolate flavor snuck up on me, though. It was sweet, alright. But then it kicked me in the back of the throat. I told Neil it was like a sweet new lover who you think is so nice and good when you first get together . . . and then you find out he is just mean and evil.

“Or,” Neil says, then stops.

“What? You have to finish your sentence now.”

“Or, it’s like when you’re having this beautiful sexual experience and then it’s ruined by a finger in the butt.”

So, there you have it, folks. The thai chili chocolate flavor from Il Laboratorio del Gelato is like sex. With a finger in your butt.

I think my future in food writing is super bright.

Photobucket – Video and Image Hosting

By this time, we were back where we started. We wandered around the open air fish and produce markets on the streets of Chinatown for awhile longer before we went our separate ways. There are so many foods that are part of the Asian repertoire that I just can’t identify. Long, slimy, alive things. Round, prickly things. I can’t wait to find out what all that stuff is.

But that will have to wait until the next adventure.

Here are some highlights of my first 72 hours as a New Yorker:

Dec. 16, the first night:
I successfully drove a 10-foot moving truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. My friends and I moved all my stuff into my apartment without incident, despite the fact that it looked like an obstacle course because it had just finished being repainted earlier in the day. Before the sweat had dried on our brows, we head up to the roof with one of my roommates to toast with champagne in rocks glasses. We take in the view of the Manhattan Bridge from my amazing rooftop.

After a quick shower at our separate apartments, we meet up with L at a Manhattan bar.

Around 1 a.m. (on the 17th, actually), my friend L and I were walking towards the subway and I spy a set of frosted glass doors lit from within by a warm, orange glow. “L, what is that place?” I say. We push open the door and find ourselves in an intimate, almost womblike jazz lounge.

Tillman's Bar & Lounge during its friends and family week, 2006

However, the place is a little swanky and we’re not dressed for swank. A doorman tells us a private party is underway and we say that’s okay, we were just leaving. Another man appears and asks if he can take our coats. It becomes clear he’s the owner of the establishment. We say no, we don’t want to intrude. He asks if we would stay if he bought us a drink. As it turns out, it’s the friends and family night for the bar, which is not yet open to the public.

We stayed and enjoyed our round on the house. The place was seductive. The music; a mix of jazz, hip hop and classic R&B, was low and sultry and the drinks were sweet.

I plan on going back when I’m properly dressed and well-rested. As it turns out, Tillman’s Bar and Lounge opens tonight. And the owner got what I’m sure he wanted: free publicity.

We left after I realized I was actually falling asleep while having conversations. When I had to ask L, “Was I just talking about Brooke Burke’s boob job?” I understood that I had to go home. I see L off to the subway station, while I wait to hail a cab back to Brooklyn. I could have taken the train too, but I didn’t want to fall asleep and get mugged my first night in New York.

I realize there must be a trick to catching a cab downtown. It only cost $13 to get into Manhattan and these bastards want $50 to take me back. L told me not to tell the cabbies I’m going to Brooklyn until after I’m in the cab, but what am I supposed to do when they ask? I trudge to the train, on which I promptly fall asleep. Luckily, everyone else on the train at 3 a.m. is asleep too, but I do not miss my stop. I take a cab home from the train stop because I promised my grandparents I wouldn’t walk around after dark by myself.

NYC Lesson #1: When catching a cab from Manhattan to Brooklyn, it helps to catch one headed uptown because cabbies do not expect you to be going to downtown. After you are in the cab, by law, cabbies have to take you to any of the five boroughs. It helps to tell them that you live just over the Manhattan Bridge (which is not a lie .. you actually do live directly on the other side of the bridge).

Dec. 17, the first full day:
After waking early to drop off the moving truck, I head out to grab breakfast. I wind up at Bergen Bagels and text message my best friend because Bergen has 22 flavors of cream cheese.

NYC Lesson #2: New Yorkers don’t f*ck around when it comes to their bagels. In addition to the 22 cream cheeses I counted, there are multiple other spreads with which to decorate several varieties of bagel. There are two breeds of New York bagels: the dense, chewy breed and the light, fluffy, just crispy on the outside breed. I prefer the latter. Bergen does them so well that after my first bite of plain bagel, toasted with scallion cream cheese, I almost give thanks out loud (my mouth was too full).

I return to my apartment, zombie-like, to take a much needed nap. When I arrive, both of my roommates are putting the apartment back together since the painting is done. I inexplicably feel the need to unpack the kitchen even though I still don’t have sheets on my bed.

It became very clear to me during the getting rid of stuff, packing and unpacking process what was important to me. I ripped up the contents of box of mementos from my last relationship that had been hiding in the attic. I sold or got rid of many bags of clothing, shoes and decorative crap. But I could not make myself part with my turkey roaster. WTF? Like I’m going to be making so many turkeys in NYC.

After all was said and done, I had no less than 15 boxes of carefully wrapped and padded kitchen equipment. Service for 12, heavy cookware, knives, a hand mixer, several sets of mixing bowls. The list goes on and on. Cookery amounted to exactly half of what I own. I spent about five hours unpacking and organizing the kitchen. The great thing is that my roommates told me during a previous visit to just throw out all their kitchen stuff because it was crap like dull knives and scratched pots and pans accumulated over the years from various other roommates. However, I did keep their pink-striped dishes. And I finally felt at home.

Dec. 18
I sleep. A lot.

That night, I give my cat a new toy mouse to play with because all of her other little toys are packed. I retrieve it from her to bring into my room and when I return to the living room 15 minutes later, she’s somehow gotten it from my room and is playing with it again. I lean down and grab it from her paws and . . . it moves. It’s alive!

It’s a real fucking mouse! I throw it down and it scampers under one of the couches. My cat and my male roommate work as a team to chase the baby mouse out from behind a drafting table. My roommate traps it and sets it free outside. I feel like it’s the episode of Sex and the City when Charlotte’s trying to figure out if the guy she just started seeing is a gay straight man or a straight gay man and what seals it is when he freaks out and squeals when he sees a mouse. Except in my situation, I already know the guy is gay and I’M the one freaking out.

NYC Lesson ..3:Even when 1) you move into a very nice building, 2) your roommate has only seen a mouse in your apartment one time in the three years she’s lived there and 3)management checks and exterminates for pests once a month . . . there will still be the odd New York welcome waiting for you in the shape of a warm, fuzzy little grey rodent.

Today: I am mostly unpacked and settled in. My awesome friends have all sent Christmas cards and packages to my new address. I’m set up on our wireless network, I’ve gone grocery shopping with the little red granny cart and my cat has yet to spot any more mice.

Current favorite NYC thing: The granny cart.

As of tomorrow, I have my apartment to myself for almost 10 days. What to do? I’m gonna make Christmas cookies, see the big ol’ Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, go ice skating and I will probably see Dreamgirls on Christmas day (depending on if I decide to use that damned turkey roaster or not).

I have an entire box of books that I haven’t had time to read until now. I haven’t watched TV in a couple months, so the cat and I will get some quality vegging time. And I finally have sheets (and a new featherbed and new pillows!) on my bed. Yep, it’s gonna be a very nice Christmas in NYC.

April 4, 2006
I was born to do this. I was born to do this. There will be blood on the paper because this is the only thing I know beyond myself. It is myself.

That’s it. Do you feel the tingling? Someone sitting in another place, doing another thing, is having an impact on your life. The moment before the pendulum repeats its arc. No stopping now. Do it.

I’ve wanted to live in New York City for over ten years. In 1995, I decided that I wanted to go to school at NYU for broadcasting and eventually work for MTV News. I’m a bit of a news junkie, but I realized in high school that my peers were having less and less interest in traditional media and I wanted to figure out a way to get a message to them in the media that was most likely to hold their attention.

Unfortunately, about $10,000 of my financial aid for NYU fell through at the very last minute. I deferred my admission so that I could try to work something out and attend NYU in the spring, but it didn’t work out. I wound up at the University of New Hampshire (my state school), which didn’t even have a broadcast program. What UNH did have was a very strong print journalism program. I know that I wound up at the place that was best for me at the time.

I finished college with honors in three and a half years and applied to graduate school, still convinced that I wanted to try my hand at broadcasting. Again, I applied to NYU as well as Columbia University. I was accepted to both, but Northwestern University in Illinois had the superior broadcasting program and would afford me the opportunity to live and work in several places during the program. So, NYC eluded me again.

After all of this happened, I decided it was really the right time to cut ties and pursue what I want to do with my life. The short list of possible next destinations included New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. L.A. made the list because I’ve lived everywhere in the U.S. but the west coast. They have gorgeous sunshine there and it’s imperative that I live within driving distance of the ocean or I can’t function.

However, the streets are filled with plastic bobbleheaded bitches and I’d want to end it after one day of dealing with them. Cross L.A. off the list. Atlanta has a little piece of my heart because my whole fam is down in Florida and Georgia and it would be so nice to live near everyone. Plus, the city is just a fun place to be. Oh, and Nina lives there. However, it is not the place to live to do the things I want to do professionally. I’d be out at the strip clubs every damn night and get nothing done.

Ahhh, New York. What sealed it was back at the beginning of April, I was talking to a guy and he was telling me about he was about to move to California. This was a really successful guy; president of his company at the same age as me, owned a beautiful house, had tons of close friends in the area. He was going to give it all up to pursue a film program at a school he had always wanted to go to. How cool is that? And I’m on the phone with him, telling him about the things I wanted to do, and he says to me “You’ve got too much flava for Manch[ester].” Now, when a white boy is telling you that you have too much flava, it’s time to get the f*ck out.

Continue to Diary of Decision, Part 2 by clicking here.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Twenty years ago this Christmas, I had recently moved to live with my grandparents in Florida. I left my foster home with Pearl in Boston with just the clothes I had on. I arrived at a house on the water with gardenia bushes out back with no toys and nothing to wear. I was starting over in the Sunshine State. I turned eight the month before Christmas.

My grandma and grampa, in their 50s and 60s respectively, had already raised 13 children between them during their first marriages. Can you imagine what it must have been like for them to suddenly have this 48-pound, wild-haired, brown-eyed banshee all of a sudden looking up at them, wondering who I was supposed to play with and why we had so many rooms in our house?

They got married the year I was born and had long-settled into a quiet life together with careers as a nurse and architectural drafting teacher. In fact, they were nearing retirement. What were they going to do with me?

There weren’t many other kids to play with on our street. If you walked through the grass at the end of the cul-de-sac, you could cut over to an orange grove. I’d inhale the scent of orange blossoms and pet the noses of the horses owned by the man in charge of the grove. I kept myself occupied by making mud pies and watching for cormorants in the water.

Then it was Christmastime. Mom always had a few toys under the tree for me, but our budget was tight. It didn’t matter much because the projects were full of little friends to play with. Maybe grandma and grampa would get me a couple toys like Mom did.

On Christmas morning, I was fit to be tied. I wanted to go pee, but I couldn’t leave my room because grandma said to wait for her to come get me. She and grampa were puttering around out there in the living room. I could hear them.

She finally appeared at my door. “Good MORning,” she said, with her usual heavy emphasis on the “MOR” part of the word. She would do with me what she did every Christmas before me with my six aunts. She stood behind me, wrapped her hands over my eyes, and directed me through the hallways, the kitchen, the living room and then my feet felt the Astro Turf-like floor covering on the lanai.

I heard grampa shuffle into position and fiddle with the camera, getting ready to catch my reaction to my first Florida Christmas. What was under that tree? Did Santa eat the cookies? Grandma took her hands away from my eyes. I blinked, and the dream of every little child who had ever seen the Sear’s Big Book Christmas Catalog appeared . . .

Yeah. My grandparents went a little buck wild with the Christmas shopping. That there’s the picture of “an embarrassment of riches,” for a kid coming from the projects. (The first picture was taken after I had opened almost everything. When I first saw all that stuff, it was wrapped and under the tree next to the Barbie house.) My grampa and grandma still tell me how much fun they had shopping that first year and setting up the Barbie house and everything else.

Look at the Barbie mansion. They had even arranged all the little furniture and put one of the Barbies in there, with her remote-control Corvette parked right outside (it was joined by a pink Corvette the following year because Barbie made lots of friends and they needed to drive to hang out with her). Speaking of pink (and purple), you can see where my obsession started here. Pink slippers, purple Popple roller skates . . . even the My Little Pony had hot pink hair.

I also received classics like the Hungry, Hungry Hippo game (LOVED that), a Cabbage Patch doll, a little boom box and a whole mess of Play-Doh. I didn’t even know how to roller skate yet, but my grandparents took care of that too.

I’ll never forget that first Christmas with them. That they would go and figure out what a little girl would want decades after they should have been done with child-rearing is still so touching to me. And what I really love is that they continued traditions like leading me to the tree and making me wait to open my eyes.

The true joy of life resides in these moments of unexpected bliss. Isn’t anticipation the best part of any surprise?

I catalogue my life through photos. They are not a collection of emotionally moving images composed for the benefit of others, but a lock box for my own memory of where I was at a given moment or stage of my life. Without them, I can forget entire months of my own existence. I have a hard time remembering anything about college right now because my photo albums and journals are locked up and divided between a friend’s parents’ house in suburban Illinois and a self-storage unit in Chicago, where I left them during grad school.

I am fascinated by the shards of life one can capture between the F stop and the (increasingly digital) darkroom. If I thought I had any talent, I might have pursued a storytelling career in photojournalism instead of print and broadcast journalism. I work with a really cool group of people right now, and we take monthly field trips that have us roving among the paranormal in Portsmouth and the mundane in Manchester. A few months ago, we had a workshop with a local photographer and he patiently sat with us and answered all of our technical questions. He said one thing that stuck with me, and I’ve been trying to incorporate it into my photos ever since.

It’s the Rule of Thirds. Our photo guru for the day said the subject of the shot should occupy one-third of the space in the frame, while the remaining two-thirds should be filled with something else – whether it be white space, something complementary, something contradictory, etc.

It stuck with me because I live my life about as opposite of that Rule as one could possibly live. When something becomes important to me, I make it the center of my focus. I’m not one to make a long list of New Year’s resolutions, but one I’ve kept since I made it in 2002/2003 was “Care Deeply, or Not at All.”

Is there some white space in my life? Sure, but not much. I focus on dancing, writing, cooking and fucking . . . and that’s all I want right now. One shifts into focus while the rest blur around the edges. The shutter snaps, grabs what it wants for the memory picture book, and another area lurches forward, demanding that I hold my hands steady just for this one second.

I’m really excited because I’ll have a photo published for the first time in a couple of weeks. The day before my birthday, to be precise. (Actually, this isn’t true. I had a photo published while I lived in Chicago, but it was of another photo at an art exhibit, so to me it doesn’t count.) I have, without exaggeration, 15 or 20 stories to write for you (the ideas keep me up nights), but right now I’m just going to share with you visuals of how I think, remember and love.

If all the previous paragraphs make no sense, it’s because I got home late from another photography workshop tonight and I type too fast when I’m tired. I’ll do two more parts to this (1/3 is this one, 2/3 is “I take stupid photos,” and by the time we get to 3/3 it’ll be time for my 2006 Photo Essay).

Four Days in Photos: October 13 – October 17

FRIDAY

Splendor in the Grass: Me in my backyard.

What I was looking up at.

SATURDAY

My neighbors' dog, Kula. She brings me joy.

Kula in Action.

My neighbor took this one.

I was trying to photograph the bumper sticker above my head.

I didn’t see the ass sticker in the photo above until I looked at the pictures the next day. Drunk mistakes = great photos.

SUNDAY

Apple picking. A completion, of sorts.

Me, pumpkin, scarecrow. Mack's Apples, 2006.

We grow more than apples here.

Making apple pie

Making apple pies is like a Chinese New Year for me – I celebrate a fresh start independent of the rest of the world. This year, pie-making happened the same day my best friend had her first baby.

TUESDAY

Apple pie for breakfast today.

I’ve been trying to get a nighttime shot of this for my best friend’s husband, but I can’t get it right with the reflective material and the flash setting. I’ll keep trying, as I stifle my giggles. Just trying to hold my hands steady long enough to stop.

Hammertime.

Caption: Aunt Marianne, 2005.

I was raised by beauty queens. Living, breathing, pageanting beauty queens. I was put into modeling school in 4th grade. If you don’t believe me, I will call my aunt and have her dig up the footage and photos from the Crest Commercial I screen tested for. I sang, danced, did the 1/4 and full angel turns and learned the proper way to exit a car while wearing a skirt. I will say please and thank you, even if you are mean to me, because that is the proper thing for a lady to do.

When I moved to Florida, it was to live with my Grampa and his second wife, who I call my Grandma and who welcomed me into her side of the family like I was born into it. Grampa had seven kids (5 sons, 2 daughters), Grandma had six kids (all daughters), and besides my Mom and “real” grandmother, my entire family lived in Florida.

I had lots and lots and lots of cousins, but only on my Grandma’s side. My Grampa’s children didn’t produce a lot of grandkids, and when they did get married and have children, they moved away.

Of the cousins that came together on the holidays, I was the oldest. Looking at family photos is so funny, because I was surrounded by a bunch of blue-eyed Irish towheads. All those blondes and then there was me, a little chocolate chip muffin with shining brown eyes and hair bigger than Alfalfa from Little Rascals.

Caption: One of these things is not like the others. Seriously, look at my hair.

Caption: My Gramps and my uncles, back in the 80s.

My Irish aunts, their husbands and their children are some of the most loving and welcoming people you will ever meet.

Caption:Grandma and some of my aunts on Mother's Day 2000. That's Aunt Marianne in front.

I was so lucky to grow up so close (geographically and emotionally) to my extended family. Every family has its quirks though, and with one as large as mine the quirks are many.

Out of all my aunts and uncles, I spent the most time with my Aunt Marianne, my Uncle Joe and their three daughters. Their eldest, Katy, was the third-oldest in our group of cousins, so she and I did the most hanging out when we were growing up. We played with our barbies together and she came to me first when she found out Aunt Marianne and Uncle Joe were getting divorced. She didn’t even want to say the word, “divorce.” I was only 10 or so, but I told her I knew everything would be okay. Grandma and Grampa had both gotten divorced, I told her, but they loved all their kids just the same. We focused on quietly making outfits for our barbies that day. I always chopped their hair off. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s because Uncle Steve burned off a bunch of my hair with relaxer at his salon. That’s why I do it myself now. But I digress.

Fast forward quite a few years, and Aunt Marianne has been Mrs. Florida twice (with two different husbands), as well as Mrs. International and little cousin Katy was Miss Florida 2002.

The world of pageantry is ridiculous. I was in modeling school probably for 3 months before I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to pursue that as a career. Make no mistake about it, pageantry is a career and Aunt Marianne thought I would be very good at it. I hated it. There was no way I was going to miss hanging out with my friends. I was in 4th grade and I wanted to start dancing again. I left modeling school behind and began my pre-professional career in dance.

The thing about pageant contestants is that in general they are so pretty, but you only see the surface. The contests are superficial for a reason. Once you start digging, sometimes you find ugly things. Katy is probably one of the few exceptions to this rule. She is sweet, eager and naive.

Aunt Marianne kept her very sheltered, most likely because she knew what succeeding in pageantry meant for many girls and Katy wasn’t to follow that route. Katy got married the same weekend I got engaged in 2005, and that white dress actually meant what it was supposed to on that day. You know many other virgin beauty queens from Florida? Yeah, I didn’t think so. This is what my family is like.

But in her efforts to shield my cousins from the big, bad world of Central Florida, Aunt Marianne sometimes went too far.

One day after the divorce, Katy and I were sitting at the counter and eating cookies. She and I were talking about what kind of men we wanted to marry when we grew up. I said I didn’t know whether I’d marry a Black man or a White man, and I kind of wished I had a crystal ball so I could see what my kids would look like.

Aunt Marianne was listening to the conversation and decided to pipe in.

“The girls aren’t to date or marry Black men,” she said. “If Katy married a black man, she would not have my blessing and I would not attend the wedding.”

I was just in shock. I’m 10, for Christ’s sake. I argued with her for a minute about it, but it wasn’t really my place. I was a young lady and ladies don’t argue. I remember crying that afternoon and being so sad and angry. I thought it wasn’t very fair that Katy wouldn’t be able to marry whomever she wanted. I didn’t even think of the implications Aunt Marianne’s comment had regarding my very own parents and my race.

I’ll put it out here that the two sides of my family don’t usually hang out together. I always assume it’s because we wouldn’t all fit in a mansion, let alone my grandparents’ lanai. Another reason might have been a little back and forth on race relations.

The Italian side had dropped an “i” off of our last name due to prejudice against Italian-Americans in Buffalo, NY (where my family is originally from). Some of my uncles and my aunt later put the “i” back on the surname when they turned 18. I always thought I would, too, but I began getting published at age 18 and I wanted to keep my byline.

My mom got knocked up by two different Black guys. Her sister also married a Black man. My Aunt Patty Jo (on the Irish side, and she’s no longer called this since she moved up north), moved to Boston and later married a biracial man. I lived with them when I moved back to New England.

I’ve been told joining my extended family at the age of 7 changed how my relatives saw Black people. I was a sweet little kid, smart and kind. I had good manners. There was nothing scary about me, save my Alfalfa hair. My Aunt Patty Jo said it was because of me that she could marry a mixed man. My grampa hadn’t been such a fan of Black people before me. Maybe because they kept getting his daughters pregnant? I don’t know.

The best part of all of this came when my Aunt Marianne remarried and wanted to adopt. She wanted a biracial baby boy, but they didn’t want to place him with two White parents. Willing to do what it took to get that baby, my Aunt Marianne pulled out childhood photos of me and Katy, little brown and White beauty queens in training.

“I always loved Emily like she was my own,” is what my Grandma tells me Aunt Marianne said when she gave me the news.

I laughed, perhaps a little bitterly. Aunt Marianne is now raising two gorgeous little boys, one of them biracial, the other one White, with her third husband. I hope she lets them marry whoever they want to when they get old enough. By now, she should know the beauty of us mixed folk is far more than skin deep.

That's me in the pink shirt. Katy's to the right, and her little sisters are in front of her. Wish we hadn't grown up so much.

Edit: A few of you have gotten in touch with me about taking care of your little mixed children’s hair. A friend of mine suggested these sites to me a few months ago, and they are really good resources for products suggestions and haircare tips:

NaturallyCurly.com (My friend also recommends the book, “Curly Girl.”)

Nappturality.com (This site has message boards where you can go on and talk with other people dealing with “going natural.”)