While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a package from Canada Post filled with holiday cheer.

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The man with no hair who you see in the freeze frame of this YouTube video is my sister Heelya’s boyfriend Brian. He buzzed his head last week.  He says it’s his new Chris Daughtry look. Joe filmed this little segment, among others, on Christmas day as we milled about our house cooking dinner and opening presents before Joe’s parents and siblings arrived for what would be a grand feast in the backyard. (To my family and friends back home in New York: yes we ate dinner outside under the carport in our backyard. It was warm and even a bit humid. Yes, I said humid.)

Before I explain the significance of this video, I should first point out the significance of yesterday.

Yesterday was my first Christmas together with Joe. Sure, it was our first Christmas as husband and wife, but it was also our first Christmas together, logistically speaking. I’m always in Western New York with my family and he’s always in Tampa with his, so the fact that we could celebrate under the same roof, much less the same state, was pretty awesome. I was so grateful for that.

It was also the first time in 16 years that my father has spent Christmas with his parents –– my Oma and Opa, who spend their winters in a retirement community about an hour south of me.

Now, add PK, who also lives in St. Pete, and Heelya and Brian, who live in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and you’ve got a whole bunch of Kurps together for Christmas who might otherwise be scattered up and down the east coast. It was wonderful. Our house was loud and crowded. When Joe’s siblings arrived, followed by his parents and grandfather, it got even louder and more crowded in that colorful bustling warm-energy way. I loved it. Ain’t no Christmas without a ruckus. As I shimmied past pairings of people in the hallway and the living room, carrying trays topped with cheese and veggies, guacamole and hummus, I couldn’t help but think of my Nana and Papa’s Christmas Eve gatherings back home in New York.

(I should also mention that this was the first time ever that my mom didn’t spend Christmas with her parents. Nana: I know you’re reading this. I thought of you the entire night, and now that I have one Christmas dinner under my apron I can finally fully appreciate all those years you hosted Christmas Eve at your house.)

Anyway. Joe and I decided to set up a long table Last Supper-style under the carport in our backyard, which turned out to be a genius idea. My dad strung lights and my mom and I crafted pine and berry napkin ring holders out of garland. Joe fired up the deep fryer and from scratch made better mozzarella sticks and chicken wings than any bar and grill I’ve ever been to.

With my mom’s help, we cooked turkey and ham, mashed sweet potato yams and set out a salad bar. Rosey made corn casserole and Joe’s mom made lasagna. Oma supplied her signature chocolate butter cream cake and so many cookies the tray collapsed when we cleared the table. Three pugs attended the celebration: Cubbie of course, Uncle Homer (my parent’s pug) and Owen (Heelya’s pug), who sadly was suffering from a ruptured ear drum and spent the night with his head cocked lamely to one side.

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Peggy’s cobalt blue dishes

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Peggy’s cobalt blue dishes won’t leave me, which is odd because I don’t know Peggy and I never ate off her dishes. She died years ago in the house next door, according to an old lady who lives on the alley near 30th Avenue and 1st Street.

One night while Joe and I were walking the pug, this silver-haired woman named Virgina or Ginny toddled out her front door and introduced herself. Said she lived in the neighborhood for 50 years and didn”t recall ever meeting us. Raised her three sons in the alley house. Wondered where we came from. Which house we lived in. What kind of dog we were walking. What our names were.

Then she started telling us about Peggy.

Peggy was a piano teacher. She lived in the two-story yellow house next door to ours and taught Ginny’s three sons how to play. She was a good friend. A good piano teacher and had the finest collection of cobalt blue dishes Ginny had ever seen.

She didn’t go into much more detail, except to say that when Peggy died she acquired her dishes.

Since that conversation I can’t seem to get the piano teacher and her cobalt blue dishes out of my head. If I had lived in this house 50 years ago, Peggy and I would be neighbors. I would pop over for a chat in the morning and we’d sip Earl Grey tea out of glassy blue teacups as morning sunlight glittered through the front porch.

Peggy would have a cat. A fat cat with black and white fur that would purr loudly and drop dead mice at her feet, which Peggy would coolly toss out her back door for hungry birds and stray dogs to nibble on.

On holidays, Peggy would come over carrying a tray of fig cookies stacked atop a cobalt blue dish with gold trim and scalloped edges. She’d always be bringing us cookies and I’d always be afraid of breaking her dishes. When I’d wash them, I’d use simple Ivory dish soap, the kind that comes in a white bottle and doesn’t dry out your hands.

In the evenings, Joe and I would hear Peggy play the piano. Mostly she’d be in the middle of a lesson with some neighborhood kid. They’d be playing Chopsticks or Mozart’s Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman, which is really just Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I can picture Peggy’s curtains, paisley yellow with little blue and red flowers. Her accent. A true Florida accent. Soft and lulling. I can even picture her fingers on the keys. She may have been a small lady, but when she played the piano she pounded the keys.

Why do I blogger?

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A friend of mine likes to point out, whenever he gets the chance, that blogging is a total waste of time. That friend, in case you’re curious, is Zipper Boy and I’m going to continue to keep his identity secret because he is still dating Zipper Girl might get back together with Zipper Girl ended up marrying a MUCH BETTER zipper.

He likes to send me links to stories in the Washington Post or the NY Times that illustrate why blogging is profoundly meaningless. Fruitless. A few days ago he shared with me this link to a story titled, “Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest.”

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"She’s the other half of my zipper."

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ST. PETE – Today I had lunch with one of my oldest friends in Florida.
It was at a Thai restaurant called The King & I, and we were talking about relationships – his not mine – and I could tell by his blushing and squirming that the chick he’s dating is turning his insides to goo.
If he hadn’t squirmed and hadn’t blushed, I’d be writing about his smile. His smile was a billboard that flashed: DUDE IN LIKE, as it was one of those punch-drunk smiles that you cannot, no matter how much you think you’re in control of your facial contortions, pinch shut.
Basically, the man is smitten and getting smitten-er by the day.
Before I tell you what he told me today, which I’m pretty sure you garnered from the title of this post, I’ve gotta give you context. I’ve gotta paint a picture of this kid so you can squint him into focus in your brain.
I won’t tell you his name for fear that She, whom he is falling for, might read this. We’re not Facebook friends or Twitter friends, but who knows? We might one day be, and just you watch this relationship go in the shitter.
Ey! I pray it doesn’t. At heart, I’m a romantic. By trade, a cynic. It’s just that in the event that She screws Him over, or He screws Her over, I don’t want to air His vulnerabilities on the Internet.
This friend of mine. He’s analytical. Nerdy in the best way. Wears T-shirts with ironic expressions and dinosaurs decals. He’s a whore for gadgetry and all technological advances. And despite his CNET membership and frequent use of the word, “app,” he’s devoutly religious. I think the only friend I have who goes to church every week.
For four years he has insisted on paying for our lunches and dinners, which usually run several hours long and have functioned, for me, as food-talk-therapy sessions.
Anyway. So he’s dating someone new. A girl I’ve never met, but whose name I’ve invented a song for. (Well, not invented, per-se since the song I sing is a real song with a refrain that sounds like this chick’s name, but more like a song I adapted in the spirit of her name.)
It’s a nice name. Makes me think of gingham curtains and Ashley Judd in bare feet.
As grease dripped down my chin from the tubular spring roll I was eating, this glowy friend of mine explained in the most rudimentary terms, how this girl is just about perfect for him.
“It’s like my zipper theory,” he said. “You know how a zipper has two parts that are a little different, but kind of alike? We’re like that. She’s just different enough.”
“You’re so head over heels it’s killing you,” I said.
He blushed. Smiled like clothespins were pinching his cheeks and nodded begrudgingly in agreement. My supremely picky, painfully rational friend had found himself a lass.
As I began pounding the table in approval, he began pointing out that there was, of course, one problem.
The Perfect Fit had been really busy lately. So busy, that last month they went one whole week without speaking or seeing each other. So my friend, the self-preservator, decided to end the relationship. Nip it in the bud, as they say.
But of course, there was one other problem, he said.
He liked her. Good and plenty. He liked her tons. And when he dumped her, he felt cinematic-ly sad. Couldn’t concentrate at all at work the next day.
“She wasn’t making time for me, so I figured maybe she didn’t like me. But when I broke up with her or whatever, I could tell that night, by her face that maybe she liked me.”

So he decided to call her a few days later to see if she wanted to meet for dinner. And without officially reconciling, they began dating again.

As he told me this story, blushing and eating spring rolls, insisting he wasn’t going to invest himself in the situation because he wasn’t sure how the gal felt about him, I couldn’t help but pound the table again.

“But she’s your zipper,” I cried.
“I know,” he said.

A post for Ricci’s 26th birthday

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This is Ricci and Mbaye.

If you’ve met them, you know they’re a pretty dynamic couple.
Ricci moved to Senegal a year ago.
To say she moved there “to find herself,” would totally undersell her career ambitions and gut instincts.
She’s a remarkable photographer with an adventurous soul. And like all of us, she settles into comfort zones and second guesses her impulses, of which she has many.
When we were both journalists living in downtown Sarasota, Ricci would frolic around my shanty cottage in her bathing suit, reminiscing about the beach picnic we had just had as if it had happened 30 years ago. I suppose it’s because she knows a good thing when she’s got it. That, and she’s grateful for moments. Not stuff.
But Ricci utterly thrives when she’s plucked herself out of a comfort zone. Some flowers live OK in the shade but blossom in the sun. Such is the case with the Ricci species.
Last January, the night before her flight to Dakar, Ricci called me to debate her decision to move to West Africa.
“Buck up,” I said. “Board the GD plane. Africa was all you could talk about for months. If you turn around now, you’ll have shackled your brilliant whims and awesome plans to fear and anxiety.”
In truth, I wasn’t that eloquent and Ricci called several friends that day who were all likely to say jump, so of course she boarded the plane. Had she dialed my German grandmother I’m afraid she’d have accepted a full-time job as a staff writer for a magazine in Chicago with medical, dental and a 401K.
So Ricci moved to Dakar and worked as a correspondent/photographer for Voice of America, a radio and television broadcasting service governed by the United States and stationed in countries around the word.
And so it was, that as my life became increasingly domestic hers became fiercely independent. At night I’d browse her blog, blown away by the pictures – Bill Clinton on an AIDS mission, the president of Iran at an Islamic Summit, men in wheelchairs playing basketball, big-bellied women stirring vats of cous-cous, children sliding off the backs of beached whales, goats getting slaughtered in the street …
I was so proud of her – mostly for politely stomaching goat intestine soup – that tears wet my laptop. Every now and then she’d post a picture of herself, and even in a headscarf and dusty pants I could tell she was euphoric.
Then she met Mbaye, a soccer player with a come-what-may attitude and contagious smile. They dated for nine months in Dakar and then Ricci moved back to Chicago.

A month later she flew back to Dakar. By Thanksgiving she and Mbaye were back in the states – Mbaye for the first time in his life.

Rather than explain any of this I’ll dig up an old e-mail written by Ricci in bullet-point fashion, as I’m sure she was writing it while filing a story about Senegalese scrabble champions, while photographing a sword-juggling monkey, while carrying on a conversation (in French) with a soothsayer, while daydreaming of malted milkshakes.

Heids,
Filed the story and now ready to file my story with you.
  • have bought plane ticket back to states for sept. 17. this freaks me out, because i do not want to truly leave to dakar.
  • also have plane ticket back to dakar, where i will stay from oct. 20 — nov. 22 (i have some work to do here at that time)
  • my boy and i are going to the us embassy next wed. to apply for a visitor visa so he can come here and meet the fam. we’re SO nervous. i’m scared of the us government. if they say no, i guess we’ll just have to get married so he can come visit. (do NOT get me started on the ridiculousness of this process. i’m actually documenting it (via words).. it’s SO convoluted and feels like some ridiculous Willy Wonka-type, bureaucratic scavenger hunt. Just so he can come VISIT!!) our country blows sometimes.
Not one to stop at a visitors visa, Ricci contacted a sports agent in the U.S., who arranged for Mbaye to try out for several soccer teams on the East Coast. In between tryouts they stayed with me for a weekend in St. Pete.

I interviewed the couple earlier this month on a sun-drenched stretch of interstate on route to Sarasota. Since Mbaye speaks only French and Wolof – his native Senegalese language – and since the only French sentence I know goes something like, “Ohh la la j’ai une rendevous avec David dans 20 minutes …” I asked Ricci to translate.

Note: Unless Mbaye gets signed to an American soccer team he will have to return to Dakar in May.

—

Mbaye, are you nervous about your soccer tryout next week?
(Ricci translates)
“He says he’s a little nervous because he doesn’t know who he’s going to meet and if they’ll be as nice as they were last time.”

Ricci, are you nervous?
“I’m nervous about him flying by himself, about him getting lost at the airport or something.”

You don’t feel the fate of your relationship hangs on whether or not he makes the team?
“I just have to think we’re going to work it out no matter what happens. If he makes the team, great. If he doesn’t we’ll figure something out.”

Have your communication skills improved, dating someone who doesn’t speak English?
“If we have a fight — and it’s usually me who gets mad because he rarely gets mad — I want to make sure I say how I feel correctly in French. And after I go through it in my head I realize if I can’t explain it simply in terms he can understand, then it’s probably not worth getting mad over because it’s convoluted and more my problem than his.”

You’ve learned to not overreact.
“There’s a level of communication that has to be there because sometimes when you speak the same language, you just assume what somebody means when they say something. For us, when I say something, it’s like this is what I’m saying, but this is what I mean.”

What do you guys fight about?
(Translates into French for Mbaye)
Ricci: “I don’t think we’ve had a big blow-out fight.”
(Mbaye interrupts in French.)
Ricci: “Oh yeah. We had one in Senegal.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “It was over money.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “And we got in one once when we got in a car and I didn’t know where I was going. I was freaking out and he was l like, ‘Don’t freak out you’re going to get in an accident.’”

Is that his role? To calm you down?
“Oh yeah.”

(Ricci laughs. Translates into French.)

Mbaye (in broken English): “She is never calm.”

Ricci: “One time I was calm and peaceful and he was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ And he said, ‘When the volcano is quiet one must question why.’”

Did Mbaye have anxiety about coming to the United States?
“He worried that my friends were going to think he was different or maybe not a good guy. He wasn’t afraid that they would be mean. He just figured they’d act weird around him.”

Did we act weird?
(Translates)
“He says no. He says all my friends were so nice and took such good care of him.”

Does he have a favorite American food?
(Translates)
“He says he has a stomach he doesn’t understand. It accepts everything that goes into it.”

How has your relationship changed in the United States?
“In Africa he knew how to get around and he knew the language and I was the person who didn’t know what was going on. If we’d have to get something done, he would know exactly what to do and I wouldn’t even ask questions. In Africa we never spent the night together. There were days we wouldn’t see each other. And here, I don’t think we’ve been apart more than an hour — once when he flew to Charleston for a tryout. I was worried at first that we would get sick of each other, but we’ve gotten along better the more we’re together.”

(Translates into French for Mbaye.)

“He says the relationship is better here. When we were apart I’d call him 20 times a day.”

Because your insecurities are magnified when you’re apart. That’s pretty normal, I think.
“Yeah. We fought more in Senegal than we do here.”

Were you worried Mbaye wouldn’t adapt to American shizzle?
“I was worried he might get homesick, but I wasn’t worried about him adapting at all.”

(In lousy French) Le Ikea pullout couch etait-il comfortable la nuit?
Mbaye: “Tres comfortable.”

Ricci, how would you describe your relationship with Mbaye?
“It’s easy. It’s almost like … I don’t know … I’m happy. Girls always say, ‘I want to find The One. I want to find The One,’ and when you think about it, it’s like, oh this is it. Anticlimactic is the wrong word because it has a negative connotation, but I don’t know … it just feels good.”

Finding The One was less dramatic than you thought.
“Yes, I guess.”

The people in your life better be comfortable around cameras. Does Mbaye ever tire of being your model?
“He loves it. He always jokes he’s the poorest model in the world.”

Is it frustrating for him to not be able to communicate with your friends?
(Translates)
“He says he’s not frustrated. He’s sorry he can’t speak English but the fact that people try to talk to him is the most important thing. He says there’s a lot a smile and hand gestures can communicate.”

In what ways is this relationship different than others you’ve had?
“Well, we don’t speak English and we’re biracial. Those are the obvious ways it’s different. He makes me a better person. I feel like I have to be a better person because he raises the bar for me. Sometimes I’m like, but what do I do for you?”

How has the biracial thing played out?
“I have a lot of friends who date Senegalese men, but it’s also like ‘he’s with her because she has money and connections. Or, ‘he’s using her to get further or whatever.’ Someone said to me once when we were applying for a visa – ‘how do you know he’s not just using you for the visa?”

That’s a rotten thing to say.
“First of all I said, ‘He wouldn’t do that because he’s a good guy and an honest person.’ Second of all, there’s a level of trust in every relationship. How do you know your girlfriend is not cheating on you? You have to trust people are who they say they are in any relationship.”

But generally you haven’t felt discriminated against?
“Most of my friends are super liberal and accepting. I’m sure there are some people who have problems with it but then it’s like, it’s not your relationship. I’d rather be with him and have these kinds of problems than be with somebody who doesn’t make me happy and have people look at us like we are – quote – normal.”

True dat.
“I feel like most of our problems are the world’s problems, not our problems.”

And what does Mbaye think?
(Translates)
“He says people look at us strangely because we’re beautiful.”
—

PS. The picture above was taken during a turkey sammie picnic on St. Pete Beach. For a glorious list of sammie recipes click here.

Meet Ricci.

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My friend Ricci is a bit of an inspiration. She’s reading this so I’ll refrain from using clichés. When we first started at the same newspaper in Sarasota we were instructed by the editor to avoid clichés like the plague.

Like the plague.

The first time I set out to write a novel I started a chapter about Ricci that went something like …

“She was frazzled. Maybe she was nervous, or the opposite of nervous. Now that I know her, I know she’s what my father would call a sparkplug, but like the blue scooter she bought one month earlier from a man in North Sarasota, sometimes Ricci’s would misfire. When that happened if we were there for her, she’d be OK. On her first day of work she took out a watermelon, sliced it in half, pulled out a shaker of salt and doused it right there at her desk.”

We became fast friends. We signed up for salsa-dancing classes. We swam opposite laps in the same lane at the YMCA pool. At Halloween we carved disturbing faces into pumpkins. We took photographs of each other jumping in the air for no reason other than the pictures looked cool. We drank two-for-one vodka cranberry tumblers at the same bar downtown. When I started riding a bike, Ricci got one too. We shared clothes. We fought. The worst fight we ever had was on top of the Ringling Bridge and I swear on my father’s temper, I never fought with anyone like I did with Ricci that day. We yelled at a decibel so fierce passing coots on Bird Key shot us the stink eye. Then we moved on.

We canoed. We kayaked. I dragged her to cheesy films. She dragged me to dark arty films. We sat for hours on Shell Beach reading magazines and gossiping. We dissected each other like 8th graders skinning bullfrogs. I was 23 and she was 22.

When Ricci announced last year she was moving to Africa I never doubted it. Senegal, she said. Dakar, to be exact. She had a plan, but it was a Ricci plan. She’d photograph Senegalese women and freelance for any outfit that would pay while living with an African family in the city. She’d live there for three months, return to the states, move to Chicago and start working for American newspapers again. Two months in she called me using another American journalist’s international cell phone.

“Any word on when you’re come back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to extend my stay.”

It’s been six months. She’s back in town for just a week to shoot a wedding in Jacksonville. My grill master friend Roger threw her a BBQ Wednesday night and because Ricci’s a tough one to tie down for more than 15 minutes I managed a partial interview. 

—
Distracted by a pan of fudge brownies being passed around, she snatches one and says, “They don’t have brownies in Africa. Do you know how special this is? Wait. Are you writing this? Don’t write this. They probably have brownies in Africa.”

What American thing do you miss the most?
R: Diet Mountain Dew.
(Roger butts in and says, “That’s a direct affront to me because I forgot to buy you Diet Mountain Dew for the party.”)

R: Yes. 

What was your biggest worry on the flight back to Sarasota?
R: That I’d be that girl. The ‘This one time in Africa’ girl.’

Yeah, because you know in a room full of journalists we’ve got no tolerance for self promoters.
R: It’s a lot easier though. I don’t talk as much as I used to. In Africa I don’t speak the language fluently so I guess it’s easier for me to stay quiet now.

Has anything changed here in the six months you’ve been gone? (Roger butts in again and says, “Yeah, I got better looking.”)
R: Yes. Roger got better looking.

How do you describe Sarasota to your peeps in Senegal?
R: There’s a lot of money and a lot of white people in Sarasota who don’t dance well. I have a proven theory – the more oppressed you are the better you dance. Dancing and money are inversely related.

What’s it like buying the necessities in Senegal. Like tampons?
R: There are too many choices here. I don’t deal well with decisions, you know that. In Senegal it’s like you have one brand. One choice. I prefer that.

What’s the most annoying response you’ve gotten from people in the states?
R: The jokes about Islam.

Do you rock that yellow dress in Senegal?
R: The lady I buy vegetables from gives me a hard time if I show my knees.

Is it weird as a journalist to come home to journalists?
R: Being around journalists … you guys listen better. Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but journalists are better listeners. I think there is a greater appreciation here for stories. Nobody’s eyes are glazing over when they see me.

Do the Senegalese have dogs?
R: No. There are no cute dogs over there. Mangy, mangy dogs. Nobody really has pets. Some foreigners have dogs. My friend has a dog but he keeps him on the roof. They’re not as nice to their dogs as we are over here. They kind of have a lot more shit to deal with, you know? Dogs aren’t extensions of their lives.

That’s a direct affront to me. And the pug.
R: Sorry it’s true.

What’s the nastiest thing you ate?
R: The goat intestine. That process … it was … well, to see the goat alive, being killed, dead and then eaten. I don’t know. It was weird because the night before the goat was killed I had a dream that I died.

Did you use a fork to stab the goat innards?
R: Everyone eats with their hands. But it’s like whenever they pray their hands must be clean and since they’re Muslims they pray fives times a day. The cab drivers keep sanitizer in their cars. And with eating you usually end up eating with everyone out of one giant bowl. At first it bothered me but it doesn’t anymore. Not after I realized how clean everyones hands are.

What’s the crapper like?
I peed in a hole in the ground when I was staying with Mama’s family. There was no shower curtain. The bathroom was all tiled. It’s like a self-cleaning vehicle. The water and soap from the shower washes everything in the room. I hate shower curtains now.
You’re mostly the same Ricci. But you’ve changed somehow …
R: I’m more calm now. I’ve got more faith not just in God, but in myself.

Epilogue: Ricci takes spectacular pictures. Some photographers get lucky. Not Ricci. She’s a wrangler. She stands on chairs. She climbs trees. She lies on streets. She zooms in on faces. She zooms out on action. Expressions are the hardest thing to capture and Ricci does it consistently. When pictures aren’t contrived, imagine for a second what the person taking them looks like. When Ricci takes pictures she looks like a chipmunk hunting for nuts, then storing them in her cheeks before winter.
The photo above is by Ricci. For more like it visit Ricci Media.