Yusef Komunyakaa, David Sedaris, Sandra Cisneros, Michael Cunningham, Christopher Buckley, Annie Proulx, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Chuck Paluhniuk, Barbara Ehrenreich... I've been fortunate to meet a number of writers since I started college.

The bookstores nearest my hometown aren't anywhere near the book tour circuit, so I was voting age before I ever got to talk to real published writers with real books and real readers. It was a windfall I hadn't anticipated when I moved to Austin. I kept a vigilant eye on the on- and off-campus publications announcing cultural events around town, preferring joint readings and signings with authors I had either read or planned to read.

I attended lecture by Michael Moore and Gloria Steinem, a performance by whirling dervishes, and a taping of Def Poetry Jam. Despite making plans with my then-boyfriend to wait in line early, I missed Bill Clinton's big engagement, but I did get to see Marcel Marceau pantomime walking a feisty dog and Tracy Chapman sing "Fast Car" thrice before it was up to par (in her opinion - everyone else thought each take was amazing) for a live Austin City Limits taping.

I wouldn't change where I went to college for the world, because The University of Texas gave me just that - the world. In perfect portions that were nourishing, but still left me hungry. It was great practice for living in New York, where I'd have myriad opportunities to make contact with inspirations, be them writers, buildings, or entire communities.

Usually, I get nervous before I encounter people. If I've had negative conversations or experiences with them in the past, or I'm not comfortable in their company, I tend to avoid the meetings. It won't make me any stronger, I know, but it feels good. Small talk is so hard. The lack of authenticity and preponderance of judgment is blatant as verdigris in an unkept sculpture garden.

Minutes before I meet someone I admire for the first time, I go through the same thing. There's this dread that comes with fearing I'll be perceived as an idiot or poseur, especially in front of someone who has mastered satire or extended metaphors. I waited over an hour to talk to Judy Blume, my absolute favorite childhood author, at Bank Street Bookstore yesterday. The women in line were some of the nicest strangers I'd met in a long time. We talked about the Disney-izing of literature for kids, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., and books we love. I met Judy Blume's husband, who joked that Judy probably wouldn't sign the copy of The Post-Birthday World I was carrying.

When I got to the front of the line, I looked Judy right in the eyes. I could feel my eyelids flutter with a forecast of tears. "I have waited so long to meet you!" I said. "I've met so many of my favorite writers, but never you." Judy smiled and signed my books. She looks exactly like she does on her book jackets, exactly as she's looked for about twenty years. Judy thanked me and asked me where I'm from and where I am in my life. I gave her the brief summary, adding, "Middle schoolers in Harlem love to sneak passages of Forever just as much as any other kids." She laughed and wished me luck. When I started to walk away and then turned back feeling like I'd forgotten something, I thanked her again for coming. She said, "I'm so glad you feel that way. Goodbye, Amanda!" It was so warm and genuine. I managed to walk away all drunk-like before asking her to adopt me, but just barely.

I was goofy with excitement.

I remember my dad telling me I looked like Judy Blume when I was a kid. I think he meant I looked like I could be a writer, too, more than that we shared any real physical resemblance. That comment meant a lot to me, and it still does.

"Double your pleasure, double your fun."

This warrants a road trip.

The sun sizzles upon the pinstripe-clad white meat of my thighs. I'm in Westchester County, home of NYC's closest suburbs, and I can't believe I'm in a cab with no air conditioning, much less a shared cab with no air conditioning. This is the land of in-house washer/dryer combos and attic storage - luxuries magnified by their proximity to Manhattan, where someone regularly pees in my building's basement laundry facilities and I have to call on the professionals. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

Two thirty-year-old teenage boys sprawl in the backseat. I sit beside the cabbie and stare into his smiling license picture. The grin transforms the stern face he now wears. There's a sticker above the picture: "If someone other than the person on this license is driving this vehicle, call the police." I think we are never exactly who we were a minute ago, flashbulbs or not. I also think I'm going to sweat to death if the cabbie's erratic swerves and sudden braking don't kill me first.

It's Indian Summer here in White Plains, if they still call it that. I mean, it's that hot spell before winter, but maybe "Native American Summer" is what they're calling it nowadays. The green monotony of foliage gushes reds and yellows every few trees. From the train, it looked like stingy, barely perceptible smears of color across a canvas. But from the clear view of the cab, I see there are quite a few leaves with beaten chlorophyll.

The cab skids into another lane to avoid a bumper it's been riding since the last stoplight that was green gone yellow gone red gone green, like a summary of deciduous life. The man-boys get dropped off at a flagstone-speckled 3 BR, 2.5 BATH. Pinpoints of blinding light glint off the unused seatbelts.

The cabbie and I ride into the flames. Every few minutes we're changing lanes, and every second we're just changing.

Six months after deciding to organize and purge the apartment of things I don't use, I sold a few items on ebay yesterday. The whole process amazes me. People from anywhere can browse and bid on other people's stuff from anywhere. Once you win an auction, the stuff is mailed to you, and you never meet the original owner of whatever you bought. At the most, you get a return address, so I guess you know more about your item than you would if you got it from a thrift or resale shop. Nonetheless, there's a lot of trust involved. How can anyone be sure my best friend didn't die in those Paper Denim & Cloth jeans and decide to haunt them from deep within the stylish dark wash? Or that I didn't kill my upstairs neighbor by stomping him to death in the wedge shoes, which easily wipe clean?

When I was in high school, I bought a copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks. It’s a rare book in itself, but I found an autographed copy on ebay at the same time. I collect autographed books, so I gushed and appreciated and pined…and bid five dollars on an unautographed copy. I was fifteen, so money was tight and ultimately, not mine. Imagine my surprise and annoying repetition of “Serendipity! Oh my God!” when I received the autographed copy of Blacks after placing a winning bid of five bucks. I took it to be part of a master plan, and knew I’d feign ignorance if FoolishBookseller, or whatever his name was, tried to undo his mistake. Fortunately, I never heard back from the seller.

But that pizza guy who mistakenly delivered the wrong pizza to me – one even tastier and bigger than the one I’d ordered - and then called ten minutes later wanting to pick it back up, so he wouldn’t get yelled at? I still feel a tiny bit bad about that. Between mouthfuls, I tried to let him down easy. “Umm, yeah. You see, I’ve eaten almost the whole thing.” Oops?

The three items I sold on ebay affirmed my sense in it being a small world (although one big enough that I would prefer not to paint it – thanks, Stephen Wright). The designer jeans my best friend didn’t actually die in are going to a bargain hunter in Brooklyn. One dvd set is heading to Pennsylvania once funds are transferred. The other is going to the University of Texas residence hall where I worked as an RA for two and a half years. The floor where I lived my first year, actually.

That’s cooler than finding out the gorgeous secondhand wedges look great dressed up or down and can kill a man. Well, almost.

Nora Ephron on living, loving, and leaving NYC:

"Whenever you give up your apartment in New York and move to another city, New York turns into the worst version of itself. Someone I know once wisely said that the expression "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" is completely wrong where New York is concerned; the opposite it true. New York is a very livable city. But when you move away and become a visitor, the city seems to turn against you. It's much more expensive (because you have to eat all your meals out and pay for a place to sleep) and much more unfriendly. Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance of this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, you experience change as betrayal... You've turned your back for only a moment, and suddenly everything's different. You were an insider, a native, a subway traveler, a purveyor of inside tips into the good stuff, and now you're just another frequent flyer, stuck in a taxi on the Grand Central Parkway as you wing in and out of La Guardia. Meanwhile, you read that Manhattan rents are going up, they're climbing higher, they've reached the stratosphere. It seems that the moment you left town, they put a wall around the place, and you will never manage to vault over it and get back into the city again."

It's Friday and I'm tutoring Jing, one of the most adorable little attention deficit poster children you could ever meet. We're talking about grammar when she suddenly remembers something she wants to ask me.

Jing: You know Shel Silverstein?

Me: Of course.

Jing: When did he die?

Me: Umm. I can't remember when exactly. I know I was still a kid, though. I think I was in middle or high school when I read that he died suddenly. I can't remember of what...

Jing: Oh, I know! [Grave pause] He died of an infected beard.

I like older people, and I don't mean geriatrics that may bequeath me large sums of money or moth-eaten stoles. I like older people who have more experience than my peers and me and generously offer the biased roadmap they've scribbled in perilous attempts to navigate potholed adulthood. When you're older, I think you're more comfortable believing you're right. Or certainly less shy about coming right out, pun intended, and saying it. Younger people don't want to step on too many toes or be arrogant, so there's a lot of relativity in everything. Is that shirt red? Well, some people might say it's red. Of course, color-blind people - who are just as good as non-color-blind people can't determine if something is red at all. Or you know, burgundy, which the shirt might also be.

The older people in my life are in their late twenties to late thirties. I didn’t seek most of them out, but I found myself amused and welcomed by them. And then someone made a pop culture reference I coulda known, I shoulda known with all the nostalgic VH1 programming and such, and I was outed as the young one. It was fine by me. I like hearing about other people’s experiences and what life lessons they learned from them. I then usually like to make the same mistakes they did, because it will be different for me. I say this only a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek.

There’s a new person I want to invite into the fold, but she’d be the first of a completely different demographic. I don’t have any fifty-plus Jewish women in my social circle. Certainly none that are writers who knew Meg Ryan before Restylane. But why not Nora Ephron? I recently read I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman. At times, it was hard to sympathize with my new friend. “So you’re complaining about your rent being jacked up and you make more than $250,000 a year? Boo freakin’ hoo!” Or “You’re whining that your hair is unruly, but you can afford to take it to professionals twice a week who will fragrantly mollify it? Shut up!”

Despite the fact that Ephron can’t accept she’s a priss in rumpled clothing, I like her. She owns up to the fact that President Kennedy never made a pass at her - and solely her - when she worked at The White House. There’s no shame when she says she’s a woman men easily get over. And she hates how her aging neck looks! There’s a certain acceptance there, and it’s refreshing. She uses turtlenecks to cope, which is exactly how I deal with my insecurities – cover them up, forget about them, and forge on ahead. And also? I like turtlenecks.

There’s an essay toward the end of the book called “What I Wish I’d Known.” Not surprisingly, it’s comprised of a lot of advice I can’t totally appreciate, like “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” But there’s one gem that I’ve never heard from anyone else, but that I believe with the intensity of a whirling dervish or the snaking line outside of a chic frozen yogurt place:

“Whenever someone says the words, ‘Our friendship is more important than this,’ watch out, because it almost never is.”

Brava, Ms. Ephron! This piece of advice is all too topical, having recently been betrayed by some people, one of whom I thought was on her way to being a friend. Someone I tried to trust, but had to distance myself from, and then cut off altogether when I realized she wasn’t really a nice person. Someone who stabbed me in the back rather than the front, where Oscar Wilde said true friends do.

I don’t intend to confront her. I believe – and my elders support this – that in the end, everyone will get theirs, and that I shouldn’t stoop that low in any activity outside of yoga.

Besides, the girl has mad cellulite and lacks the wherewithal to cover it up.

I tell my mom I bought a fitness center class card and have officially begun the quest for the pilates body.

"How much was that?" she asks. "You could have watched the video I gave you."

"The one with the stoner?" I scoff. "A sloth wouldn't feel the burn watching that video."

She wants details, so I explain that the video instructor's slurred words and dilated pupils suggest she's high on more than life. Between poses, she actually goes to a pantry offset and digs into a bag of Fritos.

I think my mom is surprised that I spent money on an endeavor in which I will likely humiliate myself. (Theatre camp during puberty doesn't count, because it was my parents' money). Shocking as it may seem, I have always been the last picked for gym class. The only reason my butt isn't as wide as a Hummer is that I'm blessed with high metabolism and the tendency to subsist on only yogurt and watermelon for days at a time.

The first pilates class isn't what I expect. I feel okay about myself when I pull on the black tights before class. I don't look as out of shape as I am. On the walk to class, my mind begins to conjure up potential discomforts, like a studio full of tan, naturally airbrushed supermodels and one pale, freckled, normal me. As I wait on a bench outside the studio, I watch my classmates file in. Some are lithe and toned, some are not. I'm more on the toned end of the spectrum, so that's great. Then we walk into class, and I observe the others. They pick the mats and resistance bands and claim spots on the floor. I lie down behind someone who looks like she'll know what to do, but still looks more out of shape than me. This is a perfect combination, as far as I'm concerned.

I crunch and roll around an imaginary beach ball vertebra by vertebra, rocking side to side after strain. Julia, the instructor, asks us to visualize a corset being tightened. The humiliating moment arrives - "I'm going to lose grip on this resistance band!" I think. "It's going to snap away from my outstretched leg and attack a small child somewhere!" But it doesn't.

A girl nearly pokes one of my eyes out with her pointed toe, but I slide my mat and taut abs over. I move my muscles, but not my hips. Those hips, I'm told, have a stake through them and cannot be lifted. I'm also instructed to scoop my stomach, prompting me to think about the wet metal tool serving sundaes at Ben & Jerry's. Pilates is all about imagining I'm doing something other than what I'm actually doing - lying on the floor and trying not to be relaxed.

After the class, I feel fine and kind of disappointed. Honestly, part of me wanted to have to take a cab home. I can still walk and laugh without wincing. How much could I have worked out, if everything feels normal? I do feel more energized, though. I stay up an extra hour reading, but regret it the next morning. This is a typical battle.

It hits hours later. I've been sitting and working for a few hours and get up to go to the printer to retrieve something. My legs have become wobbling boulders. My abs feel like they're highlighted down to every last ribbon of muscle. All the parts that left the mat in counted intervals and rotations are feeling heavy and tight. I love the feeling that someone has kicked my ass, and I just took it lying down.

Three types of people pepper the streets of NYC tonight: the people in shorts and tank-tops who refuse to accept it's fall - so fall, in fact, that the temperature has dipped to the fifties; the people who embrace fall and swish around in scarves, woolen knits, and knee high boots; and then there's the category into which I fall - the people wearing long sleeves and flip flops.

I saw The Brave One with Cade last night. Much of the film, including the part when the protagonist and her fiance are brutally attacked, was shot and set in my neighborhood. Cade and I walked from the authentic Mexican hole-in-the-wall to an Upper West Side theater, talking about the lost summer. "Lost," because it disappeared without the fanfare of heat waves, blackouts, and other such catastrophes. (This is the first summer in a long time that that's happened). "Lost" also because Cade and I spent so much time apart.

Despite my argument that the precocious autumn can be explained as simply as El Nino and La Nina switching positions in the back of the family station wagon, this fall feels like my first, only earlier. I was starting a new job then and feeling overwhelmed, and hey, this seems to be what I do this time of year. My life choices could work as a farmer's almanac: "Gather apples whilst Amanda learns new job protocol."

The thing about fall is that it feels like a state of in-between, a suspension, a precipice. It's not hot, but it's not cold. There's a flirt of what's to come, and flashes of what was. The city's lumbering breaths are cool and sneak into the space between your shirt buttons.

It feels like resting your head against a cool car window and watching the gray weave of road underneath, something I used to do that my dad always corrected. With speed, the asphalt becomes soft as wool. The buildings fuzz over.

It's fall, but the leaves aren't falling. Not yet. No need to turn on the air conditioner or close the windows. No need to stop the street fairs or put the kettle on. It's time for me to keep one thing sharp, but let everything else go into the soft focus between stages.

Adventures in Signage, Pt. 7

My neighbor's car. His name is - well, I'll give you three guesses.


Insulting is the new catchy? Ahem! Smart has always been sexy, mmkay? Just ask the construction workers who yelled, "Hi, sexy mami!" to me as I snapped this shot in the name of journalism.


Cigarettes? Congestion? Too perfect. Smoking is evil, kids.


I don't think you'd ever see a car horn manufacturer using the word "honkies" in its business, but perhaps I'm naive. This sign made me stop in my tracks. Cade turned around and looked at me quizzically. "Look - whiteys!" I explained. He looked around at our fellow pedestrians - we were near chichi ABC Carpet & Home - and said, "Yeah, so?" Then I showed him the sign.


Gag. (No gross pun intended). I hate the lame phallic slogans and such you see at some overpriced hot dog places.


And then I began to wonder how I took a wrong turn and landed in Wisconsin.

I lived in New York City over two years before I ever saw someone masturbating in public. This has got to be some kind of record.

Yesterday, Cade and I were eating ice cream in midtown. We'd walked to the outdoor front plaza of an office building, so we wouldn't have to sit in the fast food place where we procured the creamy treats - a place with a shady cyber cafe area and patrons who throw burgers at the cashiers. As we were walking from the sidewalk to some steps to the butt-friendly edge of a central flower bed, Cade said, "Don't look, but that guy on the bench is touching himself."

So then I looked. Nothing is worse that saying, "Don't look, but..." That always signals me to, "Look and..." It wasn't a big deal. The guy was touching himself through his clothes, which were fashionably ballooning off his thin frame. You could hide a bicycle in those pants. He was either a stroke victim or just really into his moment...on the bench...with his hand.

Cade and I walked far away behind him and sat down. "That's illegal," I said. "He's not exposing himself, but it's indecent. Should I call 311 or something?"

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I knew I wasn't going to sit down next to him to condemn what he was doing, or pull a Seventh Heaven and rattle off a five minute heartwarmer of a speech before shaking his hand (eww!) and wishing him well. He was definitely not sane, either. I like to keep the crazy at least a good six feet from me.

So Cade and I ate our ice cream. Then we started watching the people walk down the sidewalk and notice the man. Some were oblivious, but most saw and did at least a double take. Some were confused, thinking, "Is he doing what I think he's doing?" One woman pushing a wheelchair kept turning around and watching, her elderly loved one nearly careening into oncoming traffic. Some people laughed or at least, stared curiously. No one was too offended, despite how grody it is to watch a stranger attempt to light a campfire with hand on denim friction. Watching the watchers reminded me of Borat.

Blocks away on the Upper West Side this evening, Cade said to me again, "Don't look, but..." Another guy playing with himself. This time his hand was shoved down his pants. This time he was walking and practicing onanism. You've gotta admire that kind of coordination. It's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy x 10.

"How weird is that?" I marveled. "I've never seen anything like that, until yesterday. Now I see it again today."

"In a city this large," Cade mused, "coincidence is magnified."

We both thought about the gravity of the statement at the crosswalk.

"You know," I said, "that sounds like movie preview narration. In a city (pause) this large (pause) coincidence (pause) is magnified."

Though my deepened voice didn't sound that much like that guy who narrates the previews, Cade smiled knowingly. We almost had the beginning of a story.

I continued, "Now, one man must..."

Cade interrupted. "Ahem. Two men must."

"Yeah, you're right. Where was I?"

The book I'm in hits bookstores tomorrow. It's been on sale at Amazon.com since Friday, and I've had my copy for a few weeks now. Unfortunately, my story has a typo in it from an editor's careless verb tense change. Grrr! It's really a small mistake, but it's all I can see - an oozing zit on my writing credentials. I haven't read the entire book, but I've noticed other typos. I plan to email some higher-ups and offer my editing services (for a handsome sum) on future projects.

I originally thought I'd drop the book title, but now I feel like of weird about that. Should you be curious, you can email me for more information. Rest assured it will be in the new releases section of most bookstores.