1.

Between and beneath Carroll and Bergen Streets, on the walls of the express tracks sandwiched between the F and G lines, someone wrote, using the preferred writing utensil of MTA workers — orange spray paint — “EXP,” seemingly denoting “express line.” Today those two tracks, which travel deep beneath two important Brooklyn routes, don’t see any trains. Standing at the Bergen stop, peering down at the well-lit and well-kept tracks, there is something wistful, almost magical about the pristine silence of empty tracks with so much unused potential. An express F train: imagine it.

I have spent several commutes using the stopwatch function on an iPhone to track the F line’s progressions and regressions in timeliness. Sometimes my journey has to finish with an A train, but then I stop the watch. Getting on the A is cheating. I am only interested in what the F can do. I am devoted to it, as if by studying it I, a powerless commuter, could somehow make it better. I’ve learned that the journey from Windsor Terrace to Jay Street Borough Hall takes almost exactly 15 minutes; the journey to Soho is another 10, but a long 10. But then there is the five-minute walk from front door to station entrance, and an average of five minutes waiting for the train to arrive. Any deviation — a faster walk, a freshly arrived train — is anomalous. Cynicism means survival.

2.

At a dinner party to which I’d never normally be invited — my partner and I were stand-ins for two real adults who’d cancelled at the last minute — the neighbors at our table, also real adults, politely asked us where we lived in “the city.” We lived in Brooklyn, we said, for the first time not proudly. What ensued was a discussion of the hows of getting to work, or rather my singular how. The husband, a lawyer with two young children enrolled at a top Upper East Side girls’ school, wracked his brain for what the F train “did,” eventually recalling its meticulous and slow accommodation of seemingly every neighborhood in three boroughs after we’d jogged his memory. The 6 train, at this point in time the second part of my daily commute, was more familiar to him. So it seemed this lawyer was remembering subway lines the way you might recall each of the Seven Dwarves. He hadn’t been on the subway in decades, but he didn’t dare crush us by saying so.

3.

There was a Greyhound-like quality to the ride today, on a newer F train that had a stench like developing gangrene. People appear less understanding of a wealth of human scenarios when confined in small spaces. One such scenario: a loud, sweaty child in a too-small stroller. I watched a woman near him try to look away at this spectacle: the boy had folded his mother’s ticket to citywide travel cleanly and irrevocably in half and the bent card was now lying under a distant seat, where he had thrown it. The mother hadn’t yet noticed, and nobody had helped her out yet. Shouts of “Ba!” pierced the humid, slightly conditioned air. The fresh air blew out of a vent and across the top of my head, nearly as effective as holding your face over a cooler at a Fourth of July picnic in Texas.

Two stops later and the entire picture had changed. The kid and his mother had gone, the train had emerged out of the tunnel and onto the bridge. There was a beautiful, blotchy pink sunset out one side of the train. A blaring, unintelligible announcement drowned out sighs of impatience and interfered with people’s daydreams about moving to Colorado. Many people who do leave New York must decide to do so while on the subway.

4.

A woman across from me is flossing her teeth.

5.

Get on the subway in running clothes: there are millions of avid runners in the city, and yet one feels special walking onto a train in running gear. Everyone stares. This has a lot to do with the uniform of the runner: the bright colors, the exposed, perhaps glowing, skin. The traveling for a purpose that is not work, but which still requires a particular kind of dress code, a uniform. The average commuter does not have a uniform. Anyone who is dressed in a uniform catches our attention, though it is supposed to make the person seem anonymous.

6.

MTA workers, who usually pile onto local trains like the F during late-night hours, get a mixture of respect and curiosity from us. They work in darkness, they are usually dirty or carrying something dirty, and they seem either drunk or very tired. We’ve decided that they aren’t the ones to blame for delayed trains, so they never get any kind of grief from us. We don’t know what they’re doing. We see them waving flashlights inside tunnels sometimes, walking down tracks, or resting casually on the top of the fatal third rail. But we don’t know what they do that gets done, and we don’t have any discernible evidence that they’ve done anything. Still, we like them.

In 2007, the New York Times wrote an article about the death of an MTA worker. It was something like the second death of a worker in sixth months. The explanation given for this, by some suit at the MTA, was that the employees who work on the tracks are part of a “lax organizational culture.” Sometime after this I was assigned by my boss to read a book about writing, Words Fail Me by Patricia T. O’Conner. I particularly appreciated the chapter on jargon, remembering the phrase “lax organizational culture.” Not only is this trio of words ugly — the short “lax,” the second mouthful of an adjective, the formal use of the word “culture” — but the phrase suggested this person was far removed from the tracks, and probably never even rides the subway.

7.

It is 7:04 in the evening and you don’t know where you are anymore. You’ve been evacuated from a 6 train because another 6 train a mile away isn’t working properly. Attendees of the 6 train at Union Square lean over to see if they can spot the next train first, even though the track is curved and visibility of the tunnel is very limited. Somehow, none of these people ever falls onto the track. Evidently, these commuters, with places to be and cocktails to be had, are not the type to cause “earlier incidents,” nor should they have to be inconvenienced by any. They seem particularly exasperated, as if they are new to this, as if this was the day they impulsively decided to take the subway instead of a cab, and what a mistake that was.

When trains are slow and people have forgotten or don’t like their books and their smartphones don’t have service, I imagine they can more readily convince themselves of their own capacity for evil. I have never seen this play out, but faces show deeper, darker crevices on commutes, particularly commutes home. Our disenchantment with commuting leaves a permafrown that can be adjusted slightly to accommodate related feelings, of being inconvenienced, insulted, stepped on, or watched too closely by a stranger.

Sometimes the expressions are less grave, perhaps when the train is spacious enough to honor us the requisite foot radius of personal space. Their look is detached but not forlorn, unhappy but not suicidal. These are people who are so bored, so tired of life, or life as it is depicted right now, by the subway, that Abilify “could be right for” them. But faces can look sad when all they are is relaxed. How does everyone feel once off the train? I would like to walk with these people to their front doors, to watch their faces lift from malaise to anticipation — and what of?

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I have always fantasized about being with a woman named Joanna or Karla. I imagine them to be sensible but spontaneous, thoughtful without being dramatic, and obviously good looking. I have nothing to base any of these conclusions on. They are just beautiful names and I can’t imagine any Karla or Joanna being anyway else. I am also confident that never has a Joanna or Karla ever dreamed of being with a conceptual Robert. I’m probably right.

According to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, my name is just not sexy.

In 2004, these researchers determined that the sexes assess names as being either appealing or unappealing based upon certain factors. Most interestingly, names are subconsciously appealing based on how important the first vowel is to vocalizing them.

A two-syllable name can be stressed in the front or the back end. For men, sexy names were stressed in the front. For women, sexy names were in the back. Matthew is stressed at front and is perceived as sexy. Which might explains Matthew McConaughey’s enduring cinematic career.

The consequences for the rest of us? Well, sorry, Nina. Sorry, Judy. Feel free to join me and my friends Cindy and Paul in the club of kids jealous of our fre-name-ies with names like Craig and Sofia. If only we’d have gone to high school together, unsexy namers. We could have all sat and enjoyed our anti-prom, enlightened discussions on amine, and simply settled on gross first kisses with our unsexy selves.

This study came to my mind a few weeks ago. I was at a packed club in Chinatown, New York. For reasons I’m sure an evolutionary biologist could explain, I was undergoing the essential act of greeting all the men near the section I was standing (VIP. Holla.) In such a high-energy, sexualized environment, all male egos have to be neutralized by demonstrating to each other a spirit of respect and good faith.

Anyway, everyone was super friendly and I found myself talking to a pleasant, dark haired, Italian-looking gentleman. He told me his name, which I forgot, and then I told him my name. He leaned closer toward me, and almost as if he was making a confession, told me that he, too, was named Robert. He had told me his middle name; which he explained was the name that he went by as an adult. A soberness tainted his voice. It was if he was either ashamed to have abandoned the fraternity of Roberts or felt bad I had to be stuck with it. Either way I laughed and our interaction got me thinking.

Despite the feeling that everyone has an uncle Robert somewhere in their family tree, it isn’t a name I encounter often. Whenever I do, it often comes with a twist: Rob. Bob. Bobby. Robbie. Whatever. Somewhere, I missed the memo that Roberts aren’t supposed to stay Roberts. And then it gets worse.

I was cursed with potentially the most unsexy name since Frasier Crane. Robert Oswald Wohner. Three names. Three long Os. Together, it is a cacophony that celebrates a love for Mets baseball, unintended abstinence, and a permanent residence in the Friendzone.

This former Robert at the club had abandoned the life that could have been destined for him. He now was handsome enough to look like a member of One Direction and friendly enough to share details about himself with strangers. In every way, he was a cool person. He knew he deserved better than what his birth name would have demanded.

Yet I am that Robert, a name worthy of leading the Confederacy but dateless at prom; ready to be quarterback of the Washington Redskins or play your favorite Hufflepuffian vampire but never scribbled inside marble notebooks, adorned by hearts and kisses. It’s sobering.

I’m not alone. What transforms an Elizabeth into a Beth or Liz? A Zachary to a Zac? A Joshua to a Josh? Can we escape the limitations are names set for us? Do such limitations exist at all?

Growing up, I fully felt like a Robert, partially because my brother was named Ivan. Our names suited each our personalities. He was in every way an Ivan: master baker, computer programmer, songwriter, relationship therapist, thesbian, academic. I was Robert, the loner who played LEGO Racers on our home computer. In a way, his Ivan-ness illuminated my Robert-ness. And like most shy kids, you simply grow up conceding the family spotlight. I don’t know what would have changed if our names were reversed, but I don’t worry about that anymore.

For me, maturing involved determining the unintended influences on my life and reevaluating which would continue to define my thinking, values, and personality. A name is just a piece of the puzzle. So while I don’t love being Robert, I like being myself. And my name is a part of that. I do think there is something to our names sharping how we see ourselves. But the legacy is just one part of accepting our pasts in order to dictate our futures.

That night in Chinatown was everything I hope a Saturday night to be. I didn’t pay for my alcohol. The DJ played “Wild Ones.” In that space, being Robert only mattered as much as I let it matter. Which isn’t to say I suddenly assumed my suave alter ego, Roberto. I didn’t. Watching me dance makes it gloriously obvious that, Robert or no Robert, I can do unsexy all by myself.

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In news fit to ruin your day/week/life, The Beastie Boys’ MCA (Adam Yauch) who had struggled with cancer in his parotid gland and lymph nodes since 2009, was found dead today at 47 years old.

It is currently unclear if Yauch, who cofounded the New York City hip hop group The Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike D (Michael Diamond) and Adrock (Adam Horovitz), died of complications with his cancer. He leaves behind a wife and a daughter.

The band hadn’t performed live since MCA announced his battle with cancer in 2009, (even cancelling a tour and shows at Lollapalooza and All Points West that year) but it was always the hope that they’d one day do so again.

What a huge, sh-tty bummer.

Let’s all have a nice Beastie Boys lovefest. Leave your awesome MCA memories in the comments. We need some cheering up right now. This is the worst.

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Last Wednesday, I finished a beer at The People’s Improv Theater in New York City and told my friend I had to head out to do something for work. He was confused because it was almost 10 p.m.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m going to this like, crazy public access TV show by this comedian guy and there’s a bunch of weird stunts and it’s like, an underground cult hit…You know what? I can’t explain it properly. Do you want to just come with me and see for yourself?”

I feel like this is a common entry point for new fans of The Chris Gethard Show.

Though hard to nail down in a “three-second pitch,” comedian Gethard’s TV show strives to be one thing: not boring.

And it’s definitely not.

Gethard, a New York alt comedy staple and a long-time beloved performer at the legendary Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater, hosts a cacophony of randomness every Wednesday at 11 p.m. on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. (Archived episodes can also be watched here and there’s a livestream to watch online.) The show started in 2009 as a live stage show at the UCB and moved to cable access television last year.

I’ll do my best to describe it: The Chris Gethard Show is part-talk show/part-game show. There’s a house band called The LLC, a motley crew of bizarre panelists and a live musical guest — all corralled by the ringleader Gethard, a slight mad genius, who half-blushes with disbelief/half-delights in each non-sequitor of the show.

Panelists include (among others) a hairy, shirtless man in swim goggles known as “The Human Fish” (played by UCB performer David Bluvband), Gethard’s best friend, the quick and angry Shannon O’Neill, sweetheart producer Bethany Hall, and a hidden Twitter fiend called — in David Lynch-ian style — “The Man Behind The Plant.”

In the opening of the show, Gethard described TCGS as simply “a home for creative people and weirdos.”

As an improv comedian, I’ve known of Chris Gethard since I first came to New York in 2009 and saw him perform in UCB’s Sunday night celebrity-infused improv show ASSSSCAT 3000. He solidified his place as one of my favorite comedians by being super hilarious on stage, but became one of my favorite people after I read a fantastic interview he did with The Onion AV Club to promote his appropriately wild and weird book, “A Bad Idea I’m About To Do: True Tales Of Seriously Poor Judgment And Stunningly Awkward Adventure.”

Gethard takes the outlandish ideas that most people suppress and then actually goes through with them. As described on the show’s website, Gethard is known for “using Twitter to book Diddy as a guest, staging a show to make a depressed teenager from Ohio have the best night of his life, and pulling off a cross-country tour, its route largely defined by people on Twitter while it was happening.” He’s also starred in a Comedy Central show, ‘Big Lake,’ and when it was cancelled, he interviewed one of his biggest Internet haters face to face.

Gethard has no problem being the butt of the joke or the “loser.” His campaign “Loser is the New Nerd” started as a way to take back the social implications of both words in a world where Zooey Deschanel and Lebron James identify as “nerds.” In an interview with Thought Catalog, Gethard said the chic appeal of nerd-dom makes some things easier, but doesn’t eliminate bullying.

“That doesn’t change the fact that some of these kids don’t get to choose,” he said. “There’s kids with asthma and allergies and eye patches and back braces all over the country who really have it rough for being who they are. The ‘Loser is the New Nerd’ mantra was basically saying — nerd doesn’t necessarily refer to those types of kids like it used to, and those kids, myself included, should empower themselves by boxing out the word ‘loser’ for themselves, by drawing a line in the sand and saying ‘We can all be nerds, but you have to be born into being a loser.’”

At Gethard’s show “loser” is actually kind of the new “winner.” The packed audience was a crowd of mostly college students — young people with dyed blue hair or long flowing floral skirts: hippies, weirdos and yes, nerds. Next to the panel, a monitor showed Twitter in real-time with tons of Tweeting fans, but the sole video sketch was a self-deprecating tale of Gethard’s trek to Washington Square Park in search of his biggest fan only to find no one actually watches The Chris Gethard Show. When he finally found a young guy who’d actually heard of him (though not of his show specifically), Gethard was so excited, he bought his “fan” a Spiderman ice pop.

The show is comedy, but the first episode of The Chris Gethard Show I ever watched made me cry. In it, Gethard brought on Alyssa, a 16-year-old girl, who described herself as “biggest comedy nerd in the suburbs” and showered her with presents, compliments and special guests like Seth Meyers, Kay Cannon, Tina Fey, Jack McBrayer and Bobby Moynihan. A mostly speechless Alyssa started crying at one point, and that’s when the floodgates opened for me.

That’s what makes Chris Gethard awesome. In his world, everyone is special. To Gethard, his show doesn’t even start for him until the calls come in or the Twitter monitor starts updating — until in his words “the people get involved.” Fans of the show have created T-shirt designs, original animations and Spotify playlists inspired by TCGS.

“I really don’t want this to feel like a standard TV show, where you watch the show and we give you what we want to give you and you take it. I want this to be something that the community of viewers gets to shape and mold and make their own,” Gethard said. “I want to sort of set the parameters, but then let the viewers of the show point it in whatever direction they want.”

The show I saw last week featured a game called “The Multiple Choice Cavalcade of Fiascos” where callers from places like Brooklyn and Long Island, but also North Dakota, Illinois and Sweden, answered questions about the panelists. (One caller told Chris, “I met some of my best friends through The Chris Gethard Show.”)

Punishments for wrong answers included a group of grown men in diapers quoting Charles Manson, a mermaid who thankfully didn’t have to eat a live goldfish, a guy in an Arnold Schwarzenegger mask doing a strip tease, and a 30 second dance party to the sound of a baby crying (to which panelist Shannon O’Neill hilariously asked, “Is this dubstep?”).

Watching the show live, I kept thinking about myself in high school — cast out and alone — and how I would have completely latched on to a show like this: one that shows it’s not only okay to be weird — it’s standard procedure. Gethard is particularly proud of that aspect.

“It’s important to me to honor that,” he said, “and really try to build the environment of the show as an inclusive, interactive, accessible place that kids from all over can participate in.”

The show last week ended with a group of men spitting on Gethard’s face, while he joyfully yelled, “Is this really how we’re ending this week?” Then, the studio audience burst into enthusiastic cheers, blowing soapy bubbles while The LLC sang Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.” It was perfect — and impossible to describe.

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Post-college, contentedly live in the city near your birthplace for years, with no plans to move. Only start thinking about “changes” a few months after you know that your new boyfriend is leaving town.

Around this time, start a new job that you feel will take you in new directions. Immediately realize that it’s all wrong. Meanwhile, spend a bunch of time with your boyfriend’s friends and discover that you could really get into the stuff they’re into. Talk a lot about the way these things happening simultaneously must mean SOMETHING. Say, “And what will I do if I stay here?”
 
Wait a long time to make the decision, even though you’ve made the decision long ago. Tell friends you’re “considering it, definitely. I mean, it seems to make sense to consider.” Go out to dinner with lots of people and talk around and around it over bottles of wine. Say “who knows?” over and over again. End every sentence with “Well, we’ll see.” Keep multiple tabs open with job searches in his city AND your city, and leave your computer on the kitchen table, looking like you’d just gotten up to pee mid-job search, for hours. Retrieve it after your roommates have definitely seen it with the words: “Ugh, life is SO confusing!” 
 
In long talks with your friends, reference conversations that occurred years ago in which you expressed some affection for the city in question. “No seriously! You don’t remember? It was Saturday. We’d just gotten Chinese food? And YOU said, I could totally live in New York one day, and I said, ‘hmm. I dunno. Maybe LA.’ How could you not remember that??” Remain really adamant about this, and add more details if you need to. 

Have dinner with your parents and cry the entire time. Tell them, through tears, that this might really open up new doors for you. When they mention the boyfriend, say, “I’m not an idiot, you guys. I know that we’re really early into the relationship. I would NEVER do this just for him.” Be comforted by their nods of affirmation. Be wary of your sister, who comes into the dining room and says “Seriously, would you ever have even thought of this if it weren’t for him?” Yell back, “I’m TALKING about this with MOM and DAD!” Then go back to crying.
 
Be adamant about not living with your boyfriend. Stress over and over again that you KNOW neither of you are ready for that. “This is really about me and the new adventures it will open up for me,” say. “I’ll definitely want to have the space to explore that. Think about the new people I’ll meet through my Craigslist roommates!” Inwardly, shudder at the kinds of people you will probably meet through your Craigslist roommates.

Know that, of course, it doesn’t matter what gets you there; in the end, you’ll be there and deal with the consequences. Remember that watching Titanic made you feel swept up in something larger than yourself, and it wasn’t REALLY about that steamy, sexy hand print – or, not entirely. Listen to the soundtrack again while you pack for your new adventure, and remember the feeling of excitement to see what’s COMING in life. Text your boyfriend that you miss him. Whenever you tell a new person that you’re going, end the conversation with “Yup, so. We’ll see!”

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Dear You,

    
So you told me that you thought about leaving New York. Which, I suppose, plenty of transplants think of doing. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last.

But these waves of thoughts were different than before. It was triggered when your sister had her baby, her first child and your first nephew, and you weren’t there. Instead, you spent that Friday checking mousetraps. You met your nephew via Skype. It has also been officially a year since you’ve been here and you’ve reevaluated the facts.

Living in Bed-Stuy is precisely what one could have assumed living in Bed-Stuy to be like, just with more cat-calls from tough guys in groups wondering why you’re so rude for not welcoming their advances. Never has being around so many made you feel so alone. You thought you would have found your Miranda and Charlotte by now, not watching them on DVD wondering how a show could get so much right and wrong in the same season. 
    

Every day it becomes clearer that New York is the greatest place to be when you matter but it’s the worst place to be when you don’t. Around every corner is a better apartment, or a better happy hour, or all the makings of a wonderful life you wish you had.

But I don’t think you should leave New York.

At least, not yet.

In your heart, you know you were not meant for an ordinary life. You flourish in a life surrounded by innovators and passionate people. You found that here.

There’s a life for you back home. It was pre-wrapped for you from birth. It’s comfortable, featuring your friends, your family, your car. It all sits waiting for you like a lottery ticket with the winning numbers unscratched. It’s tempting, no doubt.

There’s nothing magical about New York City. It is an amazing place just as there are amazing places everywhere, each with its own strengths and opportunities and disadvantages. You could have discovered and followed your passions in dozens of cities or towns. But for you, you knew in your heart that place was New York. And so you came.

Your nephew won’t ever remember you weren’t there for his birth. But one day you might find he’ll remember the time he visited his favorite aunt up north. The one who left home to make her name is the greatest place to make a name.

I hope you find solidarity knowing you are like so many others. You’re a special kind of person, the kind who decided to choose what their destiny would be, not have it laid out for them. Their New York might be in Los Angeles. Or Nashville. Or a sustainable farm in South America. That isn’t the point. The point is you didn’t commit to change because this city would make you the woman you wanted to be. You knew the woman you were. You know the woman you demanded yourself to become, and she belonged in New York.

Remember that CD you bought from those subway musicians at Lorimer? You paid ten dollars for only 5 songs. I told you that was a rip-off. You disagreed. You liked their music and wanted to support them in a simple way. You decided if those guys make their name outside of the subway system, you said you’d be glad to have been there when they had only the backs of people waiting for the next G train. 
     

It is very possible that the financial, emotional, and physical toll this move to New York took on you will not be worth it. It is very possible that you will go home and resume being yourself as you would have otherwise been, understanding the life you had imagined isn’t a fairy tale. But when it comes to your success, I’d put ten dollars on you.

And I’d put ten dollars on your success happening here.

– Robert

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Funny — ludicrous, perhaps — that the above quote, the above reminder, is still required, still needs a voice. Funny because this is post-race America, or so I’ve been told, where, as a nation, we’re finally above race as a separator and classifier of people.

Post-race America is a convenient lie, a myth, a falsehood which seemingly sprouted the moment Barack Obama won the 2008 Presidential election. For if it were true, why must Ta-Nehisi Coates make such a statement? What’s the basis for his reaffirmation of black people’s existence and stories?

The basis stems from the new HBO show Girls, which is, according to the official website, “a comic look at the assorted humiliations and rare triumphs of a group of girls in their early 20s.”

The show’s lack of diversity, its whitewashing of New York City was obvious to many viewers during the series premiere, myself included. Accordingly, Girls received criticism (and, in all fairness, praise) throughout the Internet, including one from Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic. In Coates’ article (the one I quoted above) he chooses to focus on HBO, labeled as a “power-broker” perpetrating the fallacy of whiteness as the sole source of American narrative.

“Whiteness” is not Coates’ word; it is one I’ve co-opted from novelist Toni Morrison’s Playing In The Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, a slim piece of literary criticism I read sometime around 2002. Literature and television are merely different methods used to deploy narrative; strip away the overt differences between these two mediums, textual vs. visual, and one is left with story, perhaps the oldest and most universal art form in human history.

What is, in this context, “whiteness?” Since I’ve lost the book (a consequence of a romantic break-up), I refer to the text made partially available by Google. That said, from Toni Morrison:

“[T]raditional, canonical American literature [which] is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence…has no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature.

“…[A] more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States.”

In other words, “whiteness” can be described as a mode of revisionism, a myth-making factory which imagines, then projects, narratives “free of, uniformed, and unshaped by” black people.

This is not a racist tactic; it does not originate from some warped hatred of a specific people. Rather, it is born of, and used as a remedy for, “white guilt.” If one, guilt notwithstanding, cannot or will not deal with race, with racial issues, with black people and one’s relationship to black people, then the easiest solution is to pretend black people do not exist and, therefore, exert no influence upon one’s life.

I must confess. As an artist, I can understand why Girls is devoid of black people: to make any kind of artistic statement, one must remain authentic to his/her perspective and experiences. Perhaps it’s a stretch to suggest Girls makes an artistic statement — then again, I’m of the belief that art is always the act of making a statement, be it personal, political, social, etc.

Art is never created in a vacuum and it is never without an overarching statement or critique of a larger entity. Girls is touted (perhaps more by others than its creator) as the voice of a generation. I believe that to be true, for Girls erases race not only as yet another reinforcement of whiteness, but to acknowledge a generation’s indifference to race beyond, on occasion, overt racism; every one knows a burning cross when they see one, but not all people can see or admit to “white privilege.”

Therein lies the artistic statement of Girls and, just maybe, it explains this nation’s continued fascination with the “post-race” myth: race is an issue unworthy of our time and energy; race is not a ‘white’ problem, and should not be projected onto us; race is ignored and, therefore, no longer exists for us; we have reached, finally, a post-race era in our society.

Racial hatred in the United States, particularly hatred toward black people, fueled lynchings, rapes, bombings, unlawful arrests, illegal and immoral experimentation (see: Tuskegee syphilis study), segregation, denial of voting rights, denial of education, denial of freedom, and the treatment of humans as products, livestock, machines to build a country (see: slavery — yes, we’re still talking about slavery).

Racial indifference, however, is far more subtle and far more egregious. Racial indifference is whiteness: a world drained of its color to represent the imagination of its white creator, be it a director, screenwriter, or TV producer; not only is color — race — absent from the narrative, it is wholly dismissed as an issue specific to some other world, some parallel version of Earth where non-white people live and roam and tell their own stories and, god forbid, demand that those stories be recognized as equally valid and relevant.

Naturally and predictably, the counterattack to such claims is deflection, particularly in the form of Girls writer Lesley Arfin’s tweet.

“What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.”

Precious, and its source material Push, the novel written by Sapphire, is about (what?) black mothers beating black daughters? Illiteracy? Rampant incest in the black community (as some writers have had the gall to suggest)? To understand Precious, you have to understand Push; to understand the novel, you have to understand the novelist or, more to the point, her artistic statement.

From an interview with NPR’s Michele Norris of All Things Considered, Sapphire said:

I wanted to show that this girl is locked out through literacy. She’s locked out by her physical appearance. She’s locked out by her class, and she’s locked out by her color. I encountered this. I had a student who told me that she had had children by her father.

Yes, the representation of an upper-class, college-educated white woman certainly belongs in Push and, by extension, Precious, the story of an obese, dark-skinned, illiterate girl living in the projects, a girl impregnated by her father.

What Ms. Arfin — and perhaps, the generation depicted in Girls — lacks is a general understanding of history, of connection, to say nothing of perspective. Girls exists despite the fact that, in New York City, there are black people who are as rich, talented, and beautiful as the show’s stars.

Precious, conversely, is a story that cannot be told without white people. Precious Jones did not end up poor and in the projects on a whim, but rather through institutionalized racism and discrimination. Directly or otherwise, white people’s influence is exerted upon Precious Jones’ life. It is so because, according to Morrison, Sapphire, like all black artists, “is at some level always conscious of representing one’s own race to, or in spite of, a race…that understands itself to be ‘universal’ or race-free.”

Such representation of black people, of blackness in whole, cannot occur without attention paid to white people, to whiteness. As a black writer, I may very well create a short story comprised of all black characters, but this is done as an escape from whiteness, a reconsideration of blackness — inherently influenced over generations by whiteness — with whiteness stripped away, as if to say, “Enough. No more. Let me tell it my way, if you don’t mind.”

Shows like Girls reinforce the notion that stories rooted in whiteness are universal. This idea comes at the expense of stories from blacks who are shoved to and, to quote Morrison, left to “hover at the margins.” Consequently, the universality of whiteness casts marginal blackness as a toy, as a decorative trinket to be picked up and dropped with little care.

No wonder Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One” was the music of choice during the dinner party scene; naturally, it is a black homeless man who says to “Hannah” (played by Girls creator/director/writer Lena Dunham). “Oh girl, when I look at you, I just want to say, ‘Hello, New York!’”: blacks used for entertainment and validation for whites while, at the same time, exerting no influence on the lives of the white women in Girls. Yet another among “assorted humiliations,” I suppose.

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Clean up after yourself.

I have never been able to understand how someone could come into someone else’s home — someone who welcomed them there at their own inconvenience — and proceed to make a huge mess. When has that ever been acceptable? Even when my dad would taking me camping in the woods as a kid, we still had to leave the campsite “the way we found it.” And this isn’t some spot in the forest; This is my home.

If you cook, don’t leave the pots and pans out. If you shower, hang up your towel. If you use a tissue, don’t then just drop it on the living room floor. (This has happened in my apartment, no joke.) Leaving soda cans in the corner of the bedroom has never been a thing human beings do. Unless — are they your food for later? Are you a goat? If you need help knowing where dishes go or what to use, please ask! As a hostess, I will totally help you with this.

Everyone has differing levels of cleanliness or pest situations, but I’m pretty sure there are a few basic ground rules for living indoors that everyone should know. Even Luke Skywalker probably cleaned up the inside of his tauntaun (so, intestines basically) better than you’ve treated my house.

Don’t rely on me for everything.

Having a house guest for more than one night can be exhausting, especially if you’re also playing tour guide. I feel enormous pressure to make sure every minute of every day of your visit is enjoyable and fun-filled. The best thing a house guest can do is come in with ideas.

I know I live here — this is my city! I can absolutely show you around and take you to the best little cafes or parks or bars, but what I can not do is read your mind. Too many visitors show up with no game plan. Did you look up if there were any art exhibits at the museums that tickle your fancy? Did you read about a bar in Brooklyn with a real-sized TARDIS from Doctor Who inside? Did you see something on TV about a restaurant with amazing double fudge sundaes? GREAT. Let’s go to all of those! That little bit of research makes my whole life a million times easier.

If we don’t get to do the things you find most fun, I will feel immensely guilty as a hostess. It’s my job to make sure you have a great trip. So you have to give me somewhere to start. Saying, “I don’t know. Show me around! Whatever you want to do!” makes me feel 100 percent responsible for your good time. I don’t want you to be passive-aggressively bored.

Research is also helpful for learning your way around. If we’re in a place with a metro system, take a look at a map before you come. That way I won’t have to babysit you to every place you go, especially if I have to work or if you want to see other friends without me. I want you to have the best time — and your freedom too.

Be open to new experiences.

This past weekend, my sister, a party girl who thinks an average Tuesday is getting proposed to by an arms dealer on a yacht, came to visit. Though it is not her usual speed, I got us tickets to see Sleep No More, an amazing interactive play (based on Macbeth) that takes place inside a hotel with all the participants wearing masks.

It’s amazing immersion theater and unlike anything she’d ever done — or would ever probably be able to do where she lives. I worried all week about whether or not she’d be open to the weird, artsy aesthetic of the show, which requires commitment from its audience. To my delight, she got totally into it — following the actors around and exploring rooms on her own. I wanted to make her visit memorable and she was completely open to trying this new, bizarre thing. It was the best — for us both.

Don’t go through my stuff.

You will find sex toys. Sorry for party rocking.

Be gracious.

You’re on a relaxing vacation, but I’ve spent all day showing you around. This is not my vacation. I love seeing you! I love having fun and getting a chance to show you where I live, but this is not convenient for me. In fact, apart from the fun of hanging out with you, it is really tiring to host someone in your home.

By being gracious, I don’t mean sending me a thank you note or bringing me a bottle of wine. (But hey…) I mean, just be kind and respect that I’m doing you a solid here. I could have seen you on your trip, without letting you invade my personal space. Instead I opened my bed and/or couch to you.

So just be cool, okay?

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1. The cost of living is low.

Beer? Cheap. Food? Reasonably priced. Apartments? Let’s just say I don’t spend 99 percent of my monthly income on rent, coughcoughNewYork. For a lifelong yank like myself, Texas prices were a revelation. Four dollars for a six pack? What is it, 1940? Is there a catch? Do I have to open the cans with one of those metal hole-poker implements like it’s a cylinder of Juicy Juice? No, you don’t. The cans work normally like a modern can should. They’re just cheap!

No state income tax, less expensive gas because it’s made around here or something, and cheap beer as far as the eye can see. Your money has a slightly easier time staying in your pocket around here, which leads me to number two.

2. There are jobs.

In my (entirely non-scientific) survey of the job market in Austin, things are looking pretty rosy. Austin’s become a bit of a tech/corporate hub in recent years, due to the constant stream of young employable talent coming out of the university (…of Texas, which is here) and arriving from elsewhere for all the reason’s I’m laying out right now. It’s a self supporting loop; The conditions beget the jobs, the jobs beget the conditions, on and on and on. I don’t see my friends struggling with un- or under- employment as much as I did elsewhere. We’re not all working in our dream field, and people do go without from time to time, but it’s not a depressing wasteland of everyone trying to get a service-industry job and failing. I have benefits!

3. People are friendly.

I do not blame you if you think this sounds hopelessly naïve. I wouldn’t believe me either, probably. But I’ve had this confirmed by multiple outside visitors: if you come from either of the coasts, you’re going to find the middle of the country almost disarmingly welcoming. People you don’t know wave to you. You can strike up a conversation with essentially anyone. Accidentally making eye contact with a stranger isn’t an awful stare-down that leaves you feeling dried out and steely; they’ll probably just smile at you. It’s the sort of thing you notice right away, in all sorts of subtle ways –- the people are just friendlier. It’s contagious, as well. I hate to use the phrase “Good Vibes,” but, uh, good vibes, dude.

4. There’s weather!

Central Texas has two seasons — summer and spring. It doesn’t have the maddening consistency of California: it’ll rain once in a while, it’ll get down to like 40 for a week or two in February, it’ll spike up to 100+ in the summer, there are clouds and such — but most of the time, the word I would use is “balmy.” It’s balmy.

5. There’s stuff to do.

This is probably the one people think of as being Austin’s big draw — SXSW, Austin City Limits, film festivals, etc. It’s the cultural center of Texas, that’s for sure. No one’s going to Houston for much of anything. (Houston sucks. Sorry Houston, real talk.)

On a day-to-day level, there’s always something to do. Personally, I got involved in the improv comedy scene down here, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I stumbled into an open-minded, funny, caring, tightly-knit group of people doing excellent work seven nights a week. There are communities like this all over town.

Oh, sidebar, a little secret about SXSW — No one gets into the good shows except the media. For the average attendee it’s just standing around in lines waiting for something to happen, and if/when that something does happen, the sound quality sucks and no one bothers to stop talking.

6. It’s livable.

This one’s kind of an amalgamation of the other five, but I think it merits its own discussion. I’ve never lived anywhere I didn’t immediately start planning my departure from. Everywhere else, I was thinking down the road, where I would be going next, what the exit strategy would be. I don’t have one of those here. I could live here forever, I think, and that’s goddamn terrifying, but it’s also really lovely and comfortable. It’s not a place where you’re going to get famous, probably, but who cares? When has fame ever made anyone any happier?

Austin’s the sort of place you can settle into, the kind of place where you stop worrying so much about that kind of thing and revise your concept of success a little bit. In 30 years or so, I’ll be an old guy on a bike, a true Austin trademark. The weather’s balmy, the people are friendly, and oh yeah, the tacos. The tacos are real good.

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The peeling storefront decal says “The Sexiest Butt Ever,” the sidewalk chalk of professional marketing. I want to be noticed. I look through Missed Connections for myself; my fifth grade teacher’s husband looked for his name in the obituaries every night after he finished the crossword for the day. I’m upset when I have not seen myself in these four years living in Minneapolis. On my days off I try to be seen. I want to find myself somewhere. It’s not rational.

I was planning on going to New York City with a good friend of mine but the police charged him multiple times for expired license plate stickers. Then his apartment burned down. His only possessions: worn clothes and car. Since I’ve borrowed a few of his things, I have joked about being an archivist for his personal museum. So I had some time off and traveled around the Twin Cities via bus, uptown, downtown. Please someone. Post about my smile, my anachronistic fashion sense. Are my glasses a brand of a famous writer? I don’t know how I feel about that.

w4m please please please

A gay friend told me women don’t think I’m straight since I don’t ogle them, his words. I am aloof. I don’t want to be that guy. “Why do you keep talking about the plight of the gays?” my mother said, “Are you gay?” She says the word like the holiest of profanity. I told her that I was approached to be a model -— a woman stopped me in a half-sit-down-half-fast hybrid restaurant and told me I hope this isn’t strange but you are really good looking do you want to model for cash? And my mom said, “Well if you could quit smoking and eat protein then you could model full time.”

Thanks.

_____

The bar was an extra set for a-holes. I was over-dressed; I was other-dressed. A guy in a backwards baseball hat (people still do that?) descended the stairs and told a compatriot I hate this place. It’s said that hell will be a place of our choosing. The cool part of the bar was downstairs. The Peanut Bar. No peanuts or popcorn upstairs. The floor was littered like an ancient history textbook bazaar -— husks, kernels, shells. Hamster carpet in plastic baskets. I looked and felt like someone’s father (well look how you look, my friend said, you look like someone out of an English heist movie), how old professors say they view their female students like family members.

Anne, let’s call her that, hugged me with her leopard print shawl. (How many leopards did children have to kill to make that? It’s fake, she said. Well how many fake leopards? One, she held up a digit. One, I repeated.) I was introduced to some guy with a mustache, holding a giant tankard like he was in a bar scene for a musical. We shook hands. Isn’t this nice, we said. Yes, nice. Anne yelled to a bunch of men, It’s my birthday. Nice, they said, and nodded.

I edged through the douche phalanx. A girl was telling her friend that some incident was so random that she almost threw up. It was the U of Minnesota’s spring break. I hope that works out for you. At the bar, another girl told her friend, You just have to show your boobs, that’s all that matters. Tonight’s lesson from a serially published late night philosophy journal.

Anne’s friend asked if I was a tits or ass guy when I returned to the table. Never mind, she said, I bet a hot mind turns you on. You want a sexy mind. I look around the room for someone.

Like 98 percent of men here are assholes, and in general, Anne said to me and touched my arm. I mean, I like all the bad ones. Yeah wow, about to get really deep here and I’m not ready for that, she said.

I wanted Anne once, but that was a long time ago. My psychologist friend told me, Why do you feel you have to be the nice guy? Why do you always have to do the right thing? I was teetering on sober. I thought of a girl I was dating at the time.

The shots girl walked around in a dress that contorted like a short question. Behind me, a woman that I went on a few awkward online dates with was sitting at the same booth ordering sake bombs with a guy who’d wear ripped things. People are hired to professionally alter those clothes with shotguns. Scattershot shooting range denim, shirts, hats.

I just don’t want the good ones because I don’t know, Anne said. I’d been buying her drinks all night because she thought she had no friends since she returned from Eastern Europe on a Fulbright. We talked about shopping for dildos on Amazon. She read the ratings. We laughed and said those things must go somewhere. She said guys have hands.

The sober-drunk where every syllable matters. On my way down the stairs to the bathroom I let two women go ahead of me. They told me guys bought them shots at this other bar and they left and isn’t that awesome? That’s awesome, I said. I know right, one of them said. She was wearing something sporty, like she was running away from something. Right, I said.

The barkeep was singing along to that Gorillaz song with the hi-hat the beginning, about feeling glad, named after some old actor I’d eventually remember. She had a pink band around her thigh, maybe for keys or that thing thrown at weddings that women pretend to love to want. Her shorts were an abridged version of her annual checkup when she bent down for a bottle. You could almost prophecy stirrups. The bartender asked me what kind of whiskey I wanted. House? I said like a dumbass, sober, socially anxious. Rail, she said. House, yeah rail I said.

There was a better word I could have picked. I wanted to go home. I could’ve picked any place to be that night. I could’ve been anywhere for anyone to look at. No, nah. I wouldn’t let me. Notice me, someone. I will be checking later. I will remember everything, I promise.

_____

w4m 21 I saw you by the bar and you said house instead of rail or well. You wore a cab driver hat or dockworkers hat, something working class and glasses that anyone who thinks they can write wears. I hope that’s not the case, that you write. You looked like a dad my dad maybe because it seems you want a woman with a history and demeanor out of a early 20th century psychology book. Ugh, reading. I’m hot and in college. Your vice. You were leaning against the bar, loud music was playing, a song I didn’t recognize. You did. I followed you home walking. I watched you go inside. I watched lights through windows, yours. I miss you already. Sleep well. Tell me what color panties I hung on your doorknob.

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