How I Became the Academy’s Biggest Nightmare

There is something that makes me entirely Un-America. That will leave the one visitor I had from Saudi Arabia yesterday (hi!) scratching her head, “I thought you’re supposed to be a New York Cliché?” I still fit the bill: what I am about to tell you just proves I’m an outsider who flew to the city, away from her bizarre family. Super cliché, right?

Okay, here’s the thing.

Never have I ever been to the movies with my family.

Nope, my family never did this. I have never had this experience.

Weird right? I’m an only child, my family is only three people! The three of us have never sat in a movie theater together. Never in the history of the world. Movies were not a valued form entertainment in my household growing up. “Read a book,” was my mother’s well versed phrase. But really, movies just weren’t an option. By the time we got a VCR in my house, I was nearly a teenager. Fortunately my father took it upon himself to keep me from “freak status”. I owe it to him that my elementary school social standing remained some where above that of home schooled kids. He took me to see the amazing Disney movies that were released during my childhood: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. I think he enjoyed Aladdin even more than I did. So I’ve been to the movies with my dad, but to this day I have never seen my mom in a cushioned seat in front of the big screen.

Barney the Dinosaur — He’s PURPLE? Are you KIDDING me? Ugh, he looked so much better in my imagination

We did have a TV, but it wasn’t like most televisions in American households in the early ’90s. I can’t say my mother was a remote Nazi because our TV did not have a remote. Many children have watched Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s in black and white, but I did it in 1990. I imagined Barney the Dinosaur was red and blue until my classmates started showing up with his purple face plastered on their lunch boxes.

Saturday morning cartoons were a coloring book for my imagination. We never had cable but I was allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Well, under one condition: that I mute the sound during commercials. No, I am not kidding. I remember my first major act of rebellion against my mother was sneaking a listen to the jingle for Polly Pocket!

It’s kind of amazing my parents did this. Honestly, I’m grateful for it. Perhaps these a-typical American viewing trends are the main reason I grew into the unique individual I am today. In San Francisco, it wasn’t difficult to find friends whose parents also heavily restricted TV and movie viewing. Since moving to New York, I have found many more individuals who are shocked by my media void. I am notorious amongst my theater friends because nine times out of ten, when they bring up a movie, I haven’t seen it.

Take this year’s Oscar nominated films. I haven’t seen a single one of those nominated for best feature. I’m the Academy’s worst nightmare. I really only see movies in NYC if I am invited by a boy. I’ll go, and appreciate that he pays for my $14 ticket, but I can’t help thinking We’re in New York City! There are so many more interesting things to do then watch a movie that will be on Netflix in 3 months! But now that I haven’t dated in over six months, I realize how grateful I am to the boys who take me out to movies. They keep me from turning into my mother.

There are nine movies nominated for Best Picture. Here is a list of nine movies I have not seen, the top contenders for Best “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS” Picture.

Jaws
8. Groundhog Day
It’s A Wonderful Life
Back to the Future
Gone with the Wind
Goldfinger, or any of the James Bond Canon
Raiders of the Lost Ark, or any of the Indiana Jones trilogy
The Godfather
The Muppets Take Manhattan

MuppetsTakeManhattan4_CourtesyofPhotofest_lowres-detail-main — It is nothing short of insane that I have not seen The Muppets Take Manhattan! Two things I love: Muppets and Manhattan wrapped up in one movie. Of all movies on the list, this is the one I’m most excited about.

It is absolutely insane that I haven’t seen The Muppets Take Manhattan. But with all these movies, I don’t feel like I can just watch them by myself on a snowy Saturday. It should be an occasion when I watch these, right? I at least want to share the experience with someone who will understand what a step crossing these off the list with me will be! Any volunteers? Any one else not seen any of those movies?

Mid Winter Florida Vacation: Trading Snow for Sand

“Is it spring yet?” is the first thought on every New Yorker’s mind.

“I hate February,” is the second.

Slush, snow, gray, and rain to top it all off. This is New York City at its worst.

Get me the fuck out of here. Put me on a plane to a place with palm trees and beaches. Where I can drink a frozen beverage outside and then smoke a cigar. Let my legs, so long encased in long underwear, see the light of day. Oh, a girl can dream. Wait, airline ticket prices are low this time of year? One of my best friends just moved to Florida? This might actually happen?

You bet it happened. Rose, April, and I packed our bikinis, flip-flops, sunglasses and trudged through the snow to Laguardia Airport. We hopped on a plane, April’s first plane ride ever, and a few hours later landed in Tampa Bay.

What followed next were four of the most indulgent, enjoyable, and all-American days of my life.

The beach was our #1 priority. It never got quite warm enough for bikinis. But the sun did shine on our pasty northern skin! We looked like ghost next to Walter and beautifully bronzed skin.

It felt amazing to take my shoes off and feel the sand and the water. Luxury.

I would have flown here just for a 30 minute walk on the beach. It was what I needed. Now I’ll be able to make it to spring and still maintain sanity.

Did you know Hooters began in Florida? Did you know they paint cleavage on their sexy dolphin mascot here? Did you know I’d never been to Hooters before? I’ll probably never go again, unless I’m in Florida, but their wings aren’t half bad. Did you know they’ll replace your margarita if you spill the whole thing all over yourself?

This is the view Walter wakes up to every morning. Lucky bastard. The property has a private dock. It’s the perfect place for smoking cigars.

This is the first cigar I ever smoked. Walter killed all the old men gabbing outside the cigar shop when he walked in with us ladies in tow. We got the girliest cigars they had: mojito and vanilla flavored. We sat on the dock, our legs dangling over the water, puffing our cigars and watching pelicans fly pass and searching for dolphins. Spotted one! It looked nothing like the Hooters representative above.

We considered going to Disney World, but after consulting out bank balances, opted for the Florida State Fair instead.

An Alligator Show! These guys were great. The alligator was lethargic in the cloudy, 60° weather. If I had left Florida without seeing a gator, I would’ve been disappointed. The little girl they got as a volunteer who’s sitting on the alligator there? She was hilarious.

Remember all the food from when I worked at the New York State Fair? (Here’s the post if you don’t.) Well it’s the same scene in Florida. Except this time no one was working, we were on vacation. I ate a corn dog and loved it. But that was nothing. Rose and Walter each tried a donut burger. That’s a burger with one glazed donut as the top bun, and another glazed donut as the bottom bun.

April and I ~~looked on in horror~~ cheered them on. The jaded New Yorker in me says I went to Florida and got mouth cancer (from the cigars) and elevated cholesterol! Oh, and a gambling problem!

I told you this vacation was the most all-American thing I’ve ever done! Yep. This was my first time at a casino. I played the slots for the first time and lost five dollars.

Really, we went to Florida and had a blast. I’ve never had a real American vacation! It was high time! It was so amazing to get away from the snow. It was great to see Walter and how he’d making his life post-NYC. I guess there are other places in the world one can live, I guess I can understand why he moved away. I mean, dolphins from your backyard! It was with heavy hearts (and heavy stomachs) that we returned to NYC. We ended our vacation sharing a slice of key lime pie while waiting for our flight to board. It was back to the snow and cold. At least now we know Florida is only 1,009 short miles away!

Thanks for reading, happy weekend! You can follow me on Twitter @NewYorkCliche or Facebook and if you want to make it even easier to read my New York adventures, subscribe!

February 19, 2014May 26, 2016

Backstage for the Final Runway Show of New York Fashion Week

I have a bit of a fascination with fashion. I love reading fashion blogs, love the challenge of making the most of my tiny wardrobe budget. I’ve even considered adding a weekly What I Wore type feature- New York Starvinging Artist Style?- to New York Cliché. Would you read it? (I see my dude readers shaking their heads adamantly nooooo.) I love New York Fashion Week.

I always get caught up in the madness of these bi-annual seven days. For three years I lived in it. Literally lived a block away from it. The September NYFW moved from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center was the same month I moved to W 64th Street. Any time I left the house, I passed by the tents, by the photographers snapping pictures of attendees, by the back stage entrance where all the front-row celebrities exit their town cars. I even worked many events thrown in conjunction with Fashion Week, most memorably one with horribly bitchy models. I saw so many inside elements of America’s biggest fashion parade, but the inside of the tents remained a total mystery.

I always wanted to get inside the tents, even strategized ways of sneaking in. Gigantic, impermanent, impenetrable, canvas structures: they are the main venue of all the runway shows. You can’t get in with out a press pass or your name on a list. Money doesn’t buy you a ticket to a fashion show, unless your a socialite, but the point is the tickets are not for sale. It’s incredibly exclusive. You have to be “deemed worthy” to attend one of the shows.

This year, I found a loop hole. Volunteering your time will get you in the tent. That is how I found myself backstage for the final show of Fashion Week. Amongst frazzled designers, irate PR people, and dozens of naked models who needed me to help them get dressed.

New York Fashion Week Backstage

Oh models. In another time and place, they would be considered freaks: Step right up, folks, and see the Living Skeleton! She’s taller than a man! She doesn’t know how to smile! Today we’re fascinated by their combination of beauty and alien-like features (also because the industry is so expert at delivering standards of beauty). Models and volunteers all arrived at the same time. In some instances, it was obvious which category a person fell into. But for the most part, it wasn’t apparent. Bundled in winter jackets and wearing no make up, they mostly looked like normal girls. After hair and makeup teams poured over them for hours, they’d be unrecognizable glamazons. It was a fascinating transformation to watch.

New York Fashion Week Hair and Makeup

I started out helping assemble gift bags. Which was great because the woman spearheading this was a real sweetheart. She kept thanking me profusely for my help and even gave me a gift bag with some real nice makeup swag as a token of her gratitude. This absolutely goes against the cliché of the fashion industry where you expect cold ice queens. Which was by far the majority of people I was working for. Sure, I get you are under a lot of pressure, but belittling and barking at someone who is volunteering their time to help you is inexcusable, insane.

We went on the runway to place the gift bags. It was cool to be in a place I’ve seen so many pictures of.

After we placed the gift bags for the first and second rows was when it started to get crazy. Coming up on show time, there weren’t enough models, all the designers had to share them. This was the closing fashion show, a benefit for AIDS research, this was not Michael Kors. All volunteers not wearing jewelry were called upon to help as dressers. The models would come off the runway, they needed to get out of their previous outfit as quickly as possible and into the next one- with different shoes, jewelry, and makeup and hair adjustments. This all had to happen in about 5 minutes. Dressers help them into all those elements. Suddenly I was thrown into a very important position, one I knew nothing about and had no experience beyond dressing myself.

New York Fashion Week Models

The next 30 minutes was a blur of bracelets, zippers, cramming feet into complicated shoes, finagling armholes, and boobs. So much boobs. The girls would come running at me naked save for tiny nude colored thongs, and I would pray they knew which dress was theirs (I was uninformed other wise) which I would take off the hanger and affix on their body. Most were complicated clothing pieces. I spent a whole 90 seconds my finger at a girl’s butt crack coaxing a stuck zipper to go up. 90 seconds was just enough time to realize how awkward it was.

There were male models there as well. I didn’t dress any of them. They had a much more leisurely job as none of them were shared by designers, they each only had to walk once. Three very distinctive types were present in the male models, there was no obvious pattern with the ladies. We had the brigade gorgeous black men, the commune of long haired, scruffy guys, and then the requisite “pretty boys”. This categorizing was quite an enjoyable analysis.

New York Fashion Week Male Models

Were the models bitchy? Some were. Some rolled their eyes when I had no idea how to cram ridiculous shoes on their feet. They would come off the runway shaking: I’m guessing from nerves, stress, and probably lack of protein. You think it’s an easy job- you just walk and do what you’re told. You’re only out their for two, maybe three minutes! Their entire job is less than three minutes! Yeah, but then you realize one tiny mistake is a gigantic percentage of that three minutes. They have to be flawless, and that’s not human nature. Some of them were super sweet, thanking me for my help. Most of them were really young. I over heard one say she was 15! What a strange, strange way to spend your teenage years.

So, did I enjoy my time back stage? Yes, I’m glad I did it. Would I ever want to do it again? Hell no. It was quite the experience. The cliché that people in the fashion industry have no sense of humor is absolutely based on truth. Now I can dress someone else in about two minutes, maybe this will help me never be late to work again. For me the mystery of the Fashion Week tents has been solved.

February 17, 2014May 26, 2016

Single on Valentine’s Day: What a Drag

I paused the film just as the lips of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams made contact. Tears rolled down my cheeks as steadily as the rain falling on screen. My eye makeup ran into black claw-like smears stretching for my cheeks, gold remnants of shadow sparkling in the illuminated glow of my laptop. I wiped my face on my t-shirt, baggy and shapeless, the word BLOOD in block letters across the chest. One of the large collection of free t-shirts I own, this one was acquired whilst promoting a friend‘s show about vampires. Too bad it didn’t read LIFE SUCKS. Unable to wear the words, instead I spoke them aloud, to no one but my empty apartment, my cat hiding under my roommates bed rather than cuddling with me, and the bottle of wine nestled beside me on the futon.

I got up, grabbed a box of tissues and the box of chocolates my roommate had received from one of her many admirers. She told me to help myself and left them out on the kitchen counter. I sat back down on the futon. I poured myself another glass of wine.

The next thing I knew I was awakened by my cat nearly stepping on my face. I opened my eyes and found myself confronted by my laptop, the keys of the keyboard decorated with chocolate finger prints, and open to my ex-boyfriend’s Facebook page,. The both the bottle of wine and the box of chocolates was nearly empty. Thankfully some tissues remained. I put my makeup stained face in my sticky chocolatey hands and cried.

If a single woman weeps on the night of Valentine’s Day, and no one is around to hear it, does she make a sound?

I got drinks with Miranda and her boyfriend, Steve, last night. The three of us discussed how I spent Valentine’s Day vs how I should have spent Valentine’s Day. The above is one of those sides. Lord, I hope you can guess which one! “You’re New York Cliché!” Steve said, “You have to live up to your reputation! Your readers count on you!” Crying, eating chocolate, watching chick flicks, and stalking exes- those have been clichés for decades! They’re antiquated! I did absolutely none of those things on Valentine’s Day! I just can’t live up to my cliché standards! Ok, actually I did eat an entire box of chocolate…but it was one of those mini boxes, containing only three pieces. That’s vaguely in the realm of portion control!

How does a single woman actually spend Valentine’s Day?

Instead of alone, I was with my girl friends. Instead of watching The Notebook (which in reality I’ve never actually seen), I watched the fabulous Hot Mess Drag Revue.

The chemistry between stars Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling isn’t as captivating as the drama between queens Lady Bunny and Bianca Del Rio! I didn’t stalk my hairy ex’s Facebook, rather I stared at the dance moves and manicured bodies of men in heels. Instead of an entire bootle of wine I sipped champagne and cocktails. Makeup was all over my face but it was artfully applied- you don’t want to look like a feature-less mannequin next to the best makeup artists in the biz.

That was my Valentine’s Day Galentine’s Day celebration. Galentine’s Day is absolutely what the NEW single-on-Valentine’s-Day cliché should be!

photo-11 — You may recognize two of these ladies from features on my blog! Rose and Lilly!

Galentine’s Day: the NEW single-on-Valentine’s-Day cliché.

feature image by John Michael Decker, other photo credits: Rose

February 13, 2014September 18, 2016

My Heart is Hibernating and How I Got My First Hickey

I just want to feel something again. Especially the day before Valentine’s Day.

My heart feels as numb as my hands do since I lost one of my lovely cashmere gloves two weeks ago. Why? Has it blacked out, having taken one too many shots? Is it coated in a plaster cast that I won’t even let anyone sign or remove? Has it mutated in a Darwinian survival strategy and grown an impenetrable exoskeleton? Maybe it’s just frozen, this winter has been especially cold.

I haven’t felt my heart flutter in my chest, nor jump into my throat for many, many months. It’s still beating, I checked. Stopped typing and placed my hand atop it, resisting the instinct still ingrained from elementary school to recite the pledge of allegiance. Is this normal? Is this just how it goes after a heart”s been broken? My heart is a first timer, never having been broken before. Maybe it’s similar to loosing your virginity? The first time is painful, but then it gets less so each time after? Until it’s finally fun? Yeah, no. Major analogy fail.

You may have noticed a lack of posts about my love life recently. Maybe you thought it correlated with my blog coming out, that revealing myself as Mary Lane meant rescinding the dish on romantic conquests. Nope. There’s just been very little in that department.

Turns out I’m wretched at rebounding. After having finally felt something for someone, the thought of throwing myself into a likely meaningless coupling seems oh so bleak. As bleak as the mid winter. I have had some feeble attempts, but my heart is not in it. No, it’s somewhere in my chest, wrapped in blankets, hibernating like a bear.

An old friend passed through New York awhile back, around Christmas. We had long been flirtatious, including one occasion where we kissed. On paper, it was the perfect recipe for a rebound. I invited him to stay with me, if he needed a place, and of course he jumped at the chance. Instead of having the whirl-wind 24 hour romance I hoped for, he instead reinforced the controversial cliché: all men are assholes.

I took him to see his first Broadway play and he fidgeted and whispered loudly throughout the entire show. I shrunk in embarrassment, feeling the annoyance of all those sitting around us. He was loud, brash, and flirted with other girls in front of me. A guy sitting next to us at the bar even commented that he was kind of a dick. Yeah I know, I though, but I already agreed he could stay at my place tonight.

Maybe this is good, I thought to myself, maybe canoodling with someone I’m physically attracted to but whose personality I find obnoxious is exactly what I need right now. Of course my mind was aided to this conclusion by alcohol. He had even paid for insanely priced $22 glasses of wine at the theater. I don’t like him, so no feelings are involved, this will just be fun.

The next morning I awoke to a tinkling sound. The door to my room was open, and the sound of someone peeing was strangely loud. The bathroom is down the hall from my bedroom, not close. No one else was in my bed so I knew it was him. He is 6’3, I figured, his bladder is proportionally on the larger side. Maybe that’s why it sounds so loud. Unless–no it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t! Seconds later he emerged from the hallway. I think he washed his hands, but I don’t exactly remember. “Did you just pee with the door open?” I asked him, point-blank. There was no need for niceties.
He shrugged and smirked, “Yeah.”
I looked at him in disgust, knowing the chance he’d left the toilet seat up was 100% likely.

Then I looked in the mirror. Staring back at me was a bright purple hickey on my neck. My first neck hickey, first visible hickey I’ve ever had. “You gave me a hickey??” I yelled, “Are you kidding me? You’re 27 years old and you give people hickeys!? I’m a performer! I have to work tonight! I’m playing a new character, a sexy vampire, I have no idea what my costume is like! I can’t show a fucking hickey!” Fortunately, it turned out my costume was basically designed to hide hickeys. Another fortunately: this guy doesn’t live in New York, it will be easy to never see him again.

This was the costume. It literally has a choker/hichey-hider built into it! Like it was meant to be!

What an awful guy, you’re thinking. How the hell was he ever someone you’d call a friend? There is no excuse, but I will say he was heart-broken himself. His heart still bloody and raw, he’d pick at the scabs, still talking about is ex. Very obviously still in love with her. A state much sorrier than myself.

I believe I’m at the point where my heart may unfreeze, emerge from hibernations, or outgrow its exoskeleton at any moment. I just need a warm spell, wake-up call, or protein shake. But I think men can sense there is something wrong with me. The number of men who flirt with me has drastically decreased since before my heart was broken. Can they sense I’m scared and closed off? Or is it that I’m old? I’m officially in my late twenties now, my eye cream is no longer just preventative.

Walter says it’ll all get easier after Valentine’s Day. No man wants to start something new between Christmas and V-day. Maybe he’s right. Or maybe me and my heart are so clearly damaged goods that this is going to take even longer than I ever dreamed.

Wah wah wah, how’s that for a Valentine’s Day post?

Tomorrow I am celebrating with girl friends by going to a drag show. I’ll automatically be in a better mood tomorrow. What are your V-day plans? And don’t worry, I don’t really think all men are assholes- I know my dude readers get ruffled by that cliché. That’s what I love about you.

feature image by John Michael Decker

February 10, 2014July 3, 2014

A Big Blog Reveal: Internet, Meet Mary Lane

It’s about time you met this lady. Her name is Mary Lane.

She lives in New York City. Has for almost 6 years. Wonders if that is enough time to call herself a New Yorker. Knows it is in some circles, but not the ones that matter. She lives in Hamilton Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood that most people have never heard of. If she wants to feel bad ass, she can say she lives in Harlem. If she senses you’ll worry or judge, she can say, “just north of Columbia”.

2014 - Photo Image (0153) New York Cliche photoshoot 3 February (black and white) — Taking the leap and revealing my identity on my blog!

Mary Lane’s go-to pizza place, Bella Vita, is on a side street of Times Square, a block away from where she works. Yeah, she works in Times Square, often on weekends. Which means if you catch her on the way to work on a Saturday night, steam is pouring out of her ears. Why can’t people move through Times Square? I hate tourists! She doesn’t really hate tourists. She loves entertaining them. Lucky because that’s her job.

Magnolia Bakery is too cliché (really too sweet) even for her. She prefers her cupcakes from ChikaLicious or Sprinkles. But hell yes, she loves a good cupcake. Macarons even more, but those little French cookies have never exploded as a New York trend. She’s never bought a pretzel from a street vendor, and part of her feels a little sad about that. You’ll think she’s a vegetarian when you first meet her, but nope, she’s not. To tell the truth, ML is a bit of a snob and thinks hot dogs are icky. Her drink is Bacardi and pineapple juice, though she’s recently developed a great fondness for tequila. Wanna see a gal do a tequila shot without flinching? That’s always been easy for Mary Lane. Sometimes she wonders if there’s something wrong with her taste buds.

Her favorite subway line is the D. Favorite building is the Chrysler. Favorite bridge is the Brooklyn Bridge. Honestly, no other bridge makes much of an effort. Favorite park is Central Park, no matter what the season. There’s a castle there, how do you compete with that? Favorite neighborhood is the West Village because she doesn’t know it that well. It still holds the thrill of the unknown, sometimes a New York girl needs to feel the thrill of being a little lost. Favorite river is the east river because, yuck, New Jersey. Lord, Mary Lane is a total New York Cliché.

No kidding. She’s such a big New York Cliché, for years she’s identified herself as such. Writing a personal blog about life in New York City, it always felt safer to take advantage of the easy anonymity that the internet allows. As she became a better writer, Mary Lane began revealing more of her vulnerabilities, realizing truth and honesty breathe life into words like nothing else. The prouder she became of her writing, the more she wanted to attach her name to it. At the same time, she became tentative to let the whole world know these were her struggles. Her heart breaks, her doubts, her triumphs, her moments of abject ridiculousness.

Then she thought, Hey, this is me. I have nothing to hide. I’m going to own it. Own my words, attach my name, show you just what I look like. Will there be ramifications? Maybe. But this is who I am, how I think, how I write. Hiding behind anonymity makes me look ashamed, cowardly, or at the least tentative. No, internet, I am none of those things! I’m a New York Cliché and damn proud of it!

So hi, hi everyone! My name is Mary Lane. This is my blog. Nice to finally put a name and a face to it all, don’t you agree? I would love it if you would introduce yourself in the comments section, just say hi! Have you been reading for a while, or did you just stumble here today? Does my name get the song “Penny Lane” stuck in your head? What’s your proximity to NYC? If you blog, link me up! I pinky promise to reply to each and every one (for once). Let’s tear down all the yellow caution tape of mystery, on all sides.

If you support my uh, shall we say Blog Coming Out, I hope you’ll share New York Cliché on…shall we say your social media platform of choice. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter. True thanks to the best readers ever! Here’s to taking it to the next level as my true self!

All photos taken in Rockefeller Center by John Michael Decker.

February 6, 2014June 5, 2015

Life As A Chick Flick: Can Men and Women Be Friends?

The idea popped into my head about half way through my third drink. I was almost drunk enough to spew out word vomit, any unfiltered thought that crossed my mind. But not quite. Wait. Should I say that? Will that be awkward? Nah. He’s my bro-bestie, if I can’t speak my mind to him friendship, and really life as we know it, is a sham.

So I spoke.

“You know what I just realized? If life was a chick flick, we would end up together.”

I caught Walter mid-sip into his porter. He swallowed.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied.

As if I had just said, “The subway at rush hour is crowded.” Or, “New York is cold and horrible in February.” Or, “I write a blog called New York Cliché.

When I think about it, I guess it was an obvious statement. All forms of media want us to believe that men and women can’t just be friends. Perhaps the most controversial cliché ever, but we’ve seen it a million times. The average movie, television show, book, (even blog!) serves as evidence to the statement. Friends was called FRIENDS, not Couples, not Lovers, but how did it end? When Harry Met Sally: perfect example. You’ve all heard by now that J.K. Rowling just blew up any belief that Harry Potter and Hermione were really, actually just friends. Then there’s another well-know Harry (at least around these posts), my ex-boyfriend Harry, who left me for another woman- his best female friend.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES — Classic Walter and me: goofing like we do.

You can think of a million more examples. Until recently, I vehemently fought against the stereotype. “I don’t believe that for a second! Of course men and women can just be friends! I have plenty of guy friends!” Now I start to wonder. After the man you love leaves you for his female best friend, it’s hard not to believe it (and dwell/obsess about it) for scores of seconds. Is it true? Are my best dude friend and I just biding time? Ya know, meeting for lunch and faking orgasms in delis, until one day 5 years from now we proclaim our love for each other on New Year’s Eve? Is it inevitable?

Maybe we just don’t remember examples where men and women are simply friends because it’s unremarkable. Because there’s not enough drama. We get bored, loose interest. If Dawson and Joey had never dated, millennials to this day would still feel profoundly gypped. Dawson’s Creek wouldn’t have lasted two seasons. Everyone knows the Will They or Won’t They dance get’s tiresome if there’s no pay off.

Walter and I have canoodled the Will They or Won’t They dance for years. To the point where our friendship circle is tired of gossiping about it. No one would deny in a different dimension, with timing a skosh different from our own, we would have ended up dating. I imagine a horrible break up, ending with us never speaking again. Fortunately timing is everything, a cliché you know is true, so that never happened. In this dimension we remain fast friends, the best of friends. We don’t want more, we’ve certainly had enough chances.

If life was a chick flick, there’s a montage of Walt and I cruising in a convertible, blaring tunes and singing along to the golden age of pop-punk. There’s a scene where we stay up all night talking and sharing an e-cigarette, watching the sun come up over the roof tops of Harlem. A trip upstate where I crash around blackberry bushes picking berries and Walter looks on bemused from the side of the road. Next moment a bee stings me, right on my right butt cheek.We both hold each other, tears streaming down our faces. Because we’re laughing so hard, not because a bee sting on the ass hurts like a bitch.

If life was a chick flick, Walt forsakes New York, moving in October for the sunny beaches of Florida. I go visit him in February, my two roommates in tow. We arrive at the airport in matching dresses and squeal with delight when we see our friend waiting for us at the gate. The next 3 days are spent at the beach, exploring little Florida coastal towns, sitting on the dock in front of his house smoking cigars and willing dolphins to jump out of the water.

None of the above is the work of a screen writer, it’s all true. We’ve had some great times. Right now I’m in Florida visiting my bro-bestie. Best. Vacation. Ever. Please don’t be disappointed when it fails to culminate with a declaration of love at Disney World or an epic romantic gesture at the airport. No. We are here doing our part to prove that yes, men and women can actually be friends. Seriously, they can!

Proving that is what this vacation is all about.

Just kidding. It’s really about trading disgusting, cold, slushy NYC for sunny, warm, beautiful Florida. Duh.

Life is not a chick flick.

It’s so much better.