Resident Alien

One More Dinner Party Tip

2006-04-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

As you know, one of the secrets of happiness is enjoying Flow activities as often as you can. Writing has always been the way I get my Flow on (along with cooking and, of course, shopping for expensive boots). Writing allows me to forget my worries or what time it is, and be completely focused on the moment, so happy I don’t even think to wonder whether I’m happy or not.

Recently I learned that groups as well as individuals may attain Flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Czech psychologist who coined the term, said that a creative spatial arrangement is one way to encourage Group Flow. For example, let’s say you’re having a brainstorming session with your work colleagues, you should have chairs and white boards in the conference room—but remove the table (or, of course, you can keep the table and skip the chairs).

Because of my continued scientific interest in the dinner party, I cannot help wondering how you could apply Group Flow principles when entertaining. Usually my method of inducing Group Flow is to keep refilling people’s wineglasses. Now I’m wondering whether all I need to do is hide their chairs.

But let me return to the subject at hand. A year ago I wasn’t doing enough writing, and so I started a blog. But now I’m writing a lot. Currently I’m getting my Flow fix from a piece for one of my favorite magazines, a new novel, and a couple of other projects. With so much to do, I have to make a choice about where my time and energy goes—and I’ve decided to take a break from Resident Alien. Until I return, I hope that you will Flow.

For God's Sake

2006-04-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

When they knocked down the freeway over Octavia Street, the prostitutes and crack addicts that used to hang out there were driven away. Now the Street is a Boulevard and Hayes Valley has at least four new eateries, including Sebo, where I went last night. Outside, the frosted windows proclaimed its exclusivity. Inside, the décor was understated and the sake menu overwritten. Each sake inspired a paragraph of purple prose. The description of “Heavenly Grace” made it sound better than Tantric sex with a mermaid: “Your palate will enjoy a rush of silky flavors that roll on a viscous fluid that has fruit forward goodness and ends in a watery goodbye.”

Then there was “Reformation”: “If it were a house, the first floor would have wood and straw elements; the second floor, young green vegetables, and the third, a dash of minerals and a refreshing bitter flavor.” Huh? What kind of house has young green vegetables on the second floor? I felt annoyed by this blatant abuse of extended simile, the comparison abandoned almost as soon as it was made. It was simile for simile’s sake, an empty conceit, a single rhetorical flourish that seemed to embody everything that is going wrong with Hayes Valley, and everything that happens once you turn a Street into a Boulevard. Soon, I thought miserably, our neighborhood would be the kind of place where every restaurant has a line and every cocktail has three storeys. I ordered the sake nonetheless, and climbed to the top floor, where I felt much more cheerful, reflecting: "If this house was a glass of sake, everyone who lives here would be drunk."

Transcendence, via the Tealeaf

2006-04-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

Ancient Moonlight.
Black Velvet.
Monkey Picked Iron Goddess of Mercy.
No, these are not the names of medical marijuana strains, but of teas served at Samovar tea lounge in Noe Valley. However, if the menu is to be believed, the teas are almost as potent. Monkey King is “A deep, lingering sybaritic journey,” Black Velvet will “radically improve your day,” and Iron Goddess promises to “penetrate your issues and dissolve them.”

Like most English people, I find the phrase, "a nice cup of tea and a sit down" to be one of the most beautiful in the language. There is nothing like tea to banish the five o’clock blues. Anna, the eighteenth-century Duchess of Bedford, one of the first Brits to serve afternoon tea, claimed that it banished a “sinking feeling” and I think that she was right.

My friend Bodhi, though far from British, is a fellow tea aficionado. She humored me by naming our Burning Man camp “the Desert Tea Lounge” and serving tea in assorted garage-sale teapots. (She sported a skimpy dress that would have shocked the Duchess of Bedford, made of secondhand lace tablecloths.) Last Friday, Bodhi again demonstrated her commitment to tea by venturing out in a downpour to join me at Samovar.

Tea lounges are springing up everywhere these days, aspiring to do for tea what Starbucks did for coffee. Tea’s popularity now doubt owes something to its touted health benefits, but there is another reason that tea is the perfect beverage for our age. Coffee suited the work-obsessed nineties, but tea, which calms you down as well as stimulating you, is more meditative, more suited for our slower-paced times. This is a more spiritual age, one in which we are supposedly more interested in fulfillment than in getting rich quick. I believe that tea, because of its association with Asian cultures, has a vaguely mystical appeal. It is no accident that at Samovar there are statues of the Buddha and of many-armed Hindu deities.

You’d think that I would be overjoyed by the tea-lounge trend, but in fact the English like to drink bad tea (one reason is that in the nineteenth-century, unscrupulous tea merchants adulterated it with dried leaves and chaff and we got used to drinking swill). Our preference for bad tea is a matter of temperament as well as tradition. A nice cup of tea is perfectly lovely, but a “sybaritic journey for all the senses”? Well, it makes a Brit distinctly uncomfortable.

As Bodhi and I scanned the menu, I realized another problem with topnotch tea: it costs six bucks a pot. But then, I reflected, I spent $6,000 on therapy. If Iron Goddess could “penetrate and dissolve my issues,” then at one-thousandth of the cost, it was pretty cheap.

The Haunted Bathroom

2006-04-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

I am feeling perky today. As we say in England, there’s enough blue in the sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers (or maybe it’s just my family that says that). After so many days of rain, a scrap of blue sky is a glorious thing. And so, I discovered yesterday, is a child. No, I’m not expecting one of my own. I started volunteer-tutoring at 826 Valencia.

The workshop that I’m helping out with is a journalism class. Over the course of four weeks, the kids, aged eight to eighteen, each write an article. Then we produce an issue of a newspaper, the Valencia Bay-farer. In the first class, a week ago, we had a brainstorming session. My friend Chris, who was leading the class, asked the kids to come up with as many article ideas as they could in fifteen minutes.
“Unicorns!”
“Britney Spears!”
“Ghosts!”
“My school bathroom!”
“Now that sounds promising,” said Chris. An investigative report on school bathrooms. What about your school bathroom interests you?” The kid thought for a minute, then announced:
“My school bathroom is haunted!” It's hard to teach kids what journalism is.

Marty Seligman, one of my spiritual heroes, says helping others is one of the keys to authentic happiness. This is one reason I volunteered at 826. Unfortunately, I haven’t been feeling the virtuous glow, the satisfied selfish selflessness, that I hoped for. The kids hardly need me, since in the journalism class at least, there’s a glut of tutors, with more than one per student. Plus, I was disappointed to see that the kids all appear to be well-fed and middle-class. Why can’t they get in some underprivileged offspring of crack addicts? Then I’d really feel good.

But while the kids can’t gratify my altruistic impulse, teaching them is profoundly entertaining. It’s really more about them helping me than me helping them. Yesterday evening, in the second class of the course, the kids did research for their articles. One little girl was writing about the Venus Fly-Trap. We listened on speaker phone while she conducted an interview with an expert, the owner of a local plant store.
“Do you have any Venus Fly-Traps?” asked the girl.
“No.”
The girl was flummoxed. The rest of the questions she had prepared were now irrelevant.
“Wing it!” someone whispered. We watched as the little girl thought. Then she said,
“Is it weird to be a plant?”
"I don't know," said the woman. "I've never thought about it."
"Well, what do you imagine?" persisted the eight-year-old reporter. "And is it weird to stay in one place all day long?"
It may not be weird to be a plant, but is very weird to be a kid.

Goodbye, Little Vienna

2006-03-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

While not as pricey as phone sex, therapy is expensive. I can’t bring myself to actually add it up, but I’d estimate that in the last two years, I’ve spent a little less than $6,000 on it. And I’ve squandered hours schlepping to and from my therapist’s office (which is on a block so crowded with therapists that a friend of mine calls it “Little Vienna”).

Therapy was sometimes exhausting, and sometimes boring, but I learned how to do what I call “inviting your feelings in for a cup of tea.” For an English person, that is no small thing. Many of my fellow Brits slam the door on feelings and think that therapy is self-indulgent. I was like that once. Now I think that people who say that therapy is self-indulgent are the ones who need it most.

My therapist was a cipher of a woman, who revealed absolutely nothing about herself. I have no idea whether she has children or how old she is. She has gray hair in a pageboy and clothes that I never noticed. She always remained sphinx-like and unfazed, whether I was crying, rambling, or ranting.

As therapy slowly helped me to change, I began to feel that I owed this woman a great deal. Once or twice I thought about our last session, and how I would bring her a bouquet and a movingly inscribed card or maybe a copy of my book. But when the time came, I couldn’t decide. What’s the etiquette for saying goodbye to your therapist? Should you bake cookies or give her a card or maybe a potted plant? Why doesn't Hallmark make a card for this? Our relationship seemed at once so intimate that nothing could be enough, and so impersonal that anything at all would be too much.

My compulsion to please others was one of the problems that drove me to therapy in the first place. By the time I was ready to end therapy, I was able not to give her anything. I felt that it was enough simply to tell her how grateful I am. And after all, I was paying for her services—enough to buy an umbrella for everyone I know, fly to Baja for a couple of weeks, or have phone sex for two solid days and nights.

The Hal Podger Society

2006-03-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

From now on, I plan to model my life on that of Hal Podger. Who was this Podger fellow? You haven’t heard of him because he was an ordinary man, who worked for General Electric for over thirty years. But Podger also achieved something more difficult than winning a Nobel Prize: he was happy. In fact, we should all hope to lead lives that deserve an obituary headline similar to his: “Hal Podger—a perennially happy man, married 65 years.” Podger married his high-school sweetheart and had six children. He loved cha-cha and home repair. In fact, if he was at a friend’s house for dinner and a door squeaked, “he’d run for his toolbox, humming and singing.” Whenever you asked him how he was, he always replied: “Faaaaaaan-TASTIC!!!”

OK, Hal was probably a bit annoying. No doubt, he was one of those people who won’t say a bad word about others behind their backs (people like that really irritate me). Plus sometimes you just want a friend to get drunk with while listening to Death Cab for Cutie—not someone who does the cha-cha while he unblocks your drain. And then there’s the biggest question of all: Was Hal truly happy? Or was Podger just a Pollyanna, like our friend Mr. Best-Ever, someone whose cheeriness masked loneliness and self-doubt?

I prefer to believe that Hal was indeed happy, and that in the picture accompanying his obit, his smile is genuine. In this rainiest of Marches, we need some inspiration. So in homage to Hal, I am starting the Hal Podger Society, a society of those who aspire to be Podgers—perennially happy people. The Podgers do not evangelize, they simply promote Podgerism by example. Next time you ask me how I am, the answer will be: “Faaaaaaaan-TASTIC!!!”

How to Stay Young

2006-03-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

In California, people often look almost eerily young, and I’ve always wondered what their secret is. Plastic surgery? Raw food? Energy work? Or do they all have ageing portraits of themselves in the attic? Whatever the reason, people here tend to age in California years. To calculate someone’s age in California years, according to the formula I have devised, you divide their real age by 1.3. Thus a forty-year-old who has lived all his life in California will look as if he’s in his early thirties. I came to California four years ago, when I was twenty-six. If you factor in those four California years, I’m actually about twenty-nine (which explains why I still like to go out dancing all night).

My friend Mindy, a glamorous creature with an enviable wardrobe and perfect skin, turned fifty this weekend, which makes her about thirty-eight in California years. On Saturday, I went to her birthday party, which was like a cross between Burning Man and The L-Word. Beautiful women rubbed shoulders with fire eaters, a magician, a candy girl, and a fortune teller. A towering transvestite in pancake make-up handed out miniature latkes with smoked salmon, while a woman in a belly-dancer outfit proffered a sulky boa constrictor.

At the end, guests were given boxes of cookies containing fortunes composed by Mindy. The first one I opened read: “The polish on your toes should never be darker than the polish on your fingernails.” I sat down on a couch and eagerly began disemboweling the rest, as if one might contain the secret to eternal youth.

Then a man leaned over and said, “I have to ask, is that dress vintage?”
“No,” I said. I was wearing an extremely colorful mini-dress that I had chosen because I did not feel very colorful myself.
“Well, it’s fantastic,” said the man warmly. “Honey, you have the tightest look of any woman in the room. I’ve been watching you and you upstaged every woman here, except for the fire-eating woman, and that’s because she was on the stage. Everything is perfect, your accessories, your hair...”

As he continued in this vein, a wave of euphoria washed over me. I felt as if my entire body had been dipped in warm honey. It was a revelation. Who needs mood elevators when you can be flattered by an attractive, well-dressed gay man?
This one was a master at the art of giving compliments, knowing, as so few straight men do, that it’s more important to be specific than to be effusive, that “Your hair is always so shiny” is better than “You look fantastic.” He finished, “And you’ve got just the right amount of make-up, not too much and not too little.”

Mindy was sitting on the couch nearby. “I love your friends,” I raved.
“They’re great, aren’t they?” Mindy said, smiling. As I looked at her luminous skin, I wondered if any of the cookie fortunes read: "Never be without a gay entourage."

Oysters and Dinosaur Eggs

2006-03-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

“I hate the way people talk in Santa Barbara,” said the woman, a slender forty-something in a black pantsuit who had just moved to California from Greenwich, Connecticut. She went on, "They say ‘totally’ too much. And they say ‘stokin’.’ What is that? They’re always talking about ‘stokin’’ and being stoked.”

Personally I like surfer speak. I think it should be used more, not less, and not just in reference to surfing. (For example, “Remembrance of Things Past is a gnarly book”). But just as I was about to tell the woman this, she turned away to find someone richer and more important to talk to.

It was Friday night and my friend Jonathon Keats had invited me to a cocktail party in a mansion in Presidio Heights. Original art covered the walls: a painting of a lobster, a portrait of a girl in a nightgown, listening through a glass pressed against the wall. A doddery butler was serving absinthe at a cocktail station set up next to a grand piano, and a vicar kept drifting from room to room, as if he’d wandered out of a nineteenth-century novel and couldn’t find his way back. Middle-aged art collectors admired the paintings while slurping plates of oysters.

Jonathon and I went into the dining-room in search of snacks. Gaunt women with artfully tinted hair were gazing lasciviously at a silver tureen of brisket. I noticed a box on the sideboard with a cannonball-shaped rock inside it. It looked out of place among the sculptures and figurines.
“What’s that?” I asked Jonathon. He is a conceptual artist whom I admire for many reasons, one of which is that he is always elegantly attired in a three-piece suit. Plus, he makes a mean martini, collects strange things like opium pipes and is that rare thing, a perfect gentleman.
“That,” said Jonathon, “is a dinosaur egg.” Then a friend of his explained that there is a subculture of rich people who collect dinosaur eggs and bones.
I stared at the egg, wondering what was inside it. Then I thought about being rich. Does wealth make people eccentric or do we all have a core of eccentricity that wealth simply allows us to express? If I was stinking rich, would I order custom-tinted M&Ms to match my decorating scheme and hire a personal stylist for my poodle? Or maybe I would start a utopia with my friends on a Caribbean island. Feeling annoyed that I could barely afford to throw a cocktail party, I touched the cold egg and said snippily:
“This is a priceless relic of our planet’s history, not an objet d’art. Shouldn’t it be sitting in a museum for everyone to enjoy?”
“Actually, dinosaur eggs are surprisingly cheap these days,” said Jonathon’s friend.

Twenty minutes later Jordan came to pick me up. We had another party to get to, but I told him to come in so he could say hello to Jonathon and have a few oysters (Jordan loves oysters even more than I love vodka, and there were dozens left). Jordan strode across the room towards me. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, and hadn’t shaved that day. Then the hostess tripped after him, her body rigid with agitation.
“EXCUSE ME” she said, grabbing his shoulder. Everyone stopped talking for a second to look at Jordan. Apparently there are still places in San Francisco where jeans are considered inappropriate. They thought he was an intruder.

Before anyone could press the panic button, I introduced Jordan, apologizing for assuming it would be OK for him to stop by. The hostess apologized too, saying “Well, you can’t be too careful. I’ve heard there are a lot of drug deals going on in the neighborhood.” This only made things worse. I was angry. Of course, it’s understandable that she was a little suspicious: she didn’t recognize Jordan, and he wasn’t dressed for a party and perhaps I should have found her and asked her permission for him to invite him. But even so, she should outwardly have given him the benefit of the doubt. Instead of shouting “Excuse me!” in ringing tones, she should have simply introduced herself. (Even “Can I help you?” would have been better.)

But owning so many beautiful things had made her paranoid. She and her husband could admire the gorgeous paintings of girls and lobsters every day, but they could no longer allow unexpected guests to show up at their parties. What if he’d been black? Someone would probably have brained him with the surprisingly cheap dinosaur egg.

Jordan ate an oyster or two, but had lost his appetite. As the vicar slipped into the garden with one of the younger female guests, we thanked the hosts for having us. I glanced back before we slipped out the door and caught the hostess rolling her eyes.
“That was one gnarly party,” I said.
“Totally,” Jordan replied.

Catastrophe, and Cake

2006-03-14T15:32:00.000-08:00

Maybe it’s the endless rain, maybe it’s a surprise visit from Aunt Millicent, but catastrophe seems imminent. Global warming is upon us, causing apocalyptic weather, and my friends at the Grotto are convinced that a pandemic is approaching. They have organized CostCo trips to stock up on vodka and Gummi bears. They have planned their retreat to cabins in the wilderness (to me “wilderness” is anywhere outside San Francisco). And they urge me to do the same, sending me Cassandra-like emails with subject lines like “you have been warned.” To top it all off, on Friday, it snowed here. What’s next? Locusts raining from the sky?

When disaster approaches, you can adopt one of two strategies. You can rush about procuring canned food and water to stockpile in your basement. Or, like the violinists who kept on playing as the Titanic sank, you can act as if nothing has happening. Whether from laziness or lack of storage space, I have decided to take the latter approach. It has more grace, more elegance, more sprezzatura. Thus instead of buying Power Bars by the case and a battery-operated radio, I have been busy worrying about important things like how to fill a cupcake.

Chow asked me to write a how-to on the subject, and so yesterday I visited Citizen Cake, whose pastry chef, Luis Villavelasquez had agreed to give me a private cupcake-filling lesson. (If you think it sounds a bit kinky, then let me tell you that filling cupcakes is hard work, especially if like Luis, you have to squeeze your luscious buttercream into hundreds of holes a day.)

First I made notes as Luis injected chocolate-mint ganache into a cupcake. Then he tried to show me how to pipe a perfect rosette of lime-green mint frosting on top. But try as I might, I couldn’t master the technique. I wished for his Zen-like focus on the task at hand, but my hands trembled and I ended up frosting part of my notebook instead.

As I wielded the pastry bag, I tried not to think about the mute swans languishing on the shores of the Black Sea, about Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe, or about Aunt Millicent waiting for me at home. But it didn’t work. When I looked at the finished cupcakes, my mouth did not water. Instead I wondered how long Jordan and I could survive if we had nothing to eat but frosting.

The cupcakes I iced weren’t good enough to sell, and I thought Luis would let me take them home. Instead he stripped and re-frosted them. Then he added them to his cupcake army, lined up as neatly as the terracotta warriors buried in Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb. I thanked Luis for his help and hurried home in the rain, reflecting that although an all-frosting diet would kill me in a week or so, Jordan could probably live on it forever.

Mocktails and Mars Bars

2006-03-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

The British love to drink and I have always striven to remain true to my national identity and ingest at least the British Heart Association's recommended 1-2 drinks per day. Unfortunately, my freakishly low alcohol tolerance is a disgrace to my native land (three drinks and I get the spins). The nadir occurred one January evening in the Lower Haight, when a mere two (OK, four) G & Ts sent me reeling out of a bar and into a shop doorway. There Jordan up-ended a recycling crate so I could sit down on it and throw up. A homeless person who had stopped to watch said to Jordan sympathetically, “My wife’s an alcoholic too.” But even this experience did not make me give up drinking (although I did give up the vintage leather trench I wore at the time, realizing it was maybe a little too vintage).

Last Sunday, suffering from a particularly bad hangover, I swore to Jordan I was never going to drink again (or eat a deep-fried Mars Bar, but that’s another story). Then that afternoon it rained so hard that it did not seem like a good day to give up drinking.

Obviously, I needed a pep talk. I phoned my friend Bob. He never touches alcohol during the month of January, a regime he has stuck to for the past twenty-five years. Bob raved: “In January, I feel stronger and stronger every day and have so much more energy for sports and jump out of bed with a spring in my step.” But he admitted that his stint of sobriety depresses other people: “They freak out and project their own insecurities onto you.”

This is the fundamental problem with abstinence. It may energize you, but it will aggravate your friends. This is partly because it makes them feel guilty for indulging. But there’s another reason too. Since alcohol makes you feel better in the short-term and worse in the long-term, when you choose to drink with someone, you’re saying that the present matters more than the future, and that this particular evening, right here, right now, matters more than getting up in the morning. Thus, when you order a Shirley Temple, it’s a clear statement of your priorities.

Fortunately, although I have yet to finesse the details, I have hit on a solution. I will become a closet teetotaler, slugging back soda water and acting as if it were a vodka tonic. That way, maybe I can have my cocktail and not drink it too.

Sexual Chemistry

2006-03-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, San Francisco Magazine decided that a sex column was déclassé and dropped “Metropolust.” Fine. I never felt quite comfortable being a sexpert anyway (people always assumed I must be an adventuress). Then the editor asked me to resurrect “Metropolust” as a dating column. Although I met Jordan at the tender age of twenty and have scarcely been on a date, I agreed.

My first dating column was about the Quiet Party (you can read my description of the silent soiree that I attended here). I toyed with various theories about the event’s popularity. But I wanted to see what a sexual anthropologist might say. I phoned Helen Fisher, a professor at Rutgers University and author, most recently of Why We Love (2004). She said that bedroom eyes and body language play a part in the Quiet Party’s success. But according to her, the real secret is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that produces “focused attention, elation, and energy.” Dopamine soars when we have new experiences and also when we’re falling in love. Fisher said: “Studies have found that if you drive up dopamine by doing something very exciting, people are more susceptible to falling in love.” The Quiet Party is nothing if not a new, exciting experience. What could be more novel than writing instead of typing, and silence, instead of noise? If Fisher is right, the attraction of the Quiet Party is not silence itself, but the novelty of silence.

The dopamine factor explains a lot. I couldn’t understand why there are so many new variations on the singles mixer, for some seemed tedious and others borderline humiliating. But now it makes sense. Daters crave novelty, for dopamine is their catnip.

So what does this mean for savvy singles? Must you now tax your imaginations to plan ever more inventive and novel dates? Should you take your crush on a vampire walking tour instead of dinner at Delfina? Should you go kayaking on the Bay instead of relaxing with a nice cocktail? Happily, there is no need. Novelty may drive up dopamine so that two people find each other more attractive, but alcohol, of course, has exactly the same effect.

How to Downsize Your Social Life

2006-02-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

At the start of this year, I received a voicemail from a friend: “Helena, I just want you to know I love you deeply, I love you madly and I’ve made a commitment to spending time with you this year.” (This is how people talk in California. In England, only members of your family tell you they love you, and then only on your deathbed.) I called my friend back. He didn’t answer. I left a voicemail thanking him for his message and saying we should get together. He called back—three weeks later. He wanted to have lunch, but couldn’t pick a date. We swapped voicemails and emails, trying to come up with a plan. Finally, I emailed him, but he didn’t reply. A while later, he left a message: “Helena, I’ve realized I’m too busy to have lunch with you right now, but I love you truly, madly, deeply.” This reminded me of what they told me in creative writing workshops: “Show, don’t tell.”

My friend has decided he doesn’t have time for me right now. That is sad, but I’m OK with it. I’m not OK with empty declarations and half-hearted efforts to get together. This wastes both our time and makes me mad instead of sad.

The problem is that there is no protocol for dumping friends--perhaps because we've never desperately needed one until now. Due to increased mobility and job switching, we meet more people than ever before. And thanks to email and cell phones, it’s now simpler than ever to stay in touch with these people. It’s all too easy to acquire a surfeit of friends. But what do you do when you don’t have time for all of them? We live in the age of Evite—but no one knows how to “Dis-invite.”

There are in fact two ways to get rid of a friend. One way is to tell them directly that you've had enough of them. But then you'll have to explain why. "I feel that we're at different places in our lives right now" probably will not suffice. You'll be forced to insult them. And what’s the point of insulting someone you’re never going to see again? Your criticism isn’t going to change them (if you thought they were capable of change, you wouldn’t be ending the friendship). Honesty in this case is not the best policy.

But if you simply stop taking their calls, you don’t have to explain anything. That leaves your ex-friend free to make up his or her own reason for your silence. (Maybe you lost your phone. Maybe you went back to England for good. Maybe you’re a bitch. But whatever the reason, it’s not that you don’t value their friendship.)Thus although silence may seem a brutal strategy, in the end it is the most polite one. There may be fifty ways to leave your lover. But there is only one way to break up with a friend.

Jagged Little Pillow

2006-02-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

At ten to six yesterday, a crowd waited in Justin Herman Plaza. As the last few minutes ticked away, a nervous anticipation built, as if we were waiting for the New Year. Some people had pillows hidden in bags and backpacks, but others were whirling their pillows in circles as if warming up for what was to come. A mass pillow fight had been announced on Craig's List and on Laughing Squid. The news had spread rapidly and hundreds had gathered. I watched as one group posed for a picture holding aloft identical lime-green couch cushions. A woman slipped by holding a pillow embroidered with a skull. (In San Francisco, of course, a city dedicated to the pursuit of whimsy, it’s not enough to show up to a mass pillow fight, you have to have a creative pillow.)

When six o’clock struck, everyone rushed together and whacked each other with savage joy. I plunged into the melee and blows rained on my head. I quickly understood why some people were wearing crash helmets. When my friend Regan and I decided to go to the pillow fight, we’d imagined that it would be sexy and fun. But a pillow fight with sleepover guests in a soft bed is very different from a pillow fight with a thousand anonymous strangers in a dark concrete plaza. This was more of a pillow war. I’d thought that the pillow fight might attract those looking for a Valentine. Now it seemed that single people had come here to vent their anger at not having one. A poet once called San Francisco “the cool, gray city of love” but last night it seemed like the cool, gray city of sexual frustration.

Soon, drifts of feathers obscured the battle scene and people paused to observe the miracle—snow in San Francisco. Afterwards, there was no pillow talk. One by one, people staggered off, looking stunned and sated. On the way home, I passed one or two people who like me had feathers in their hair and eyelashes, and we looked at each other and exchanged a small, sly smile.

Primal Dumplings

2006-01-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

Would you like to taste my crocodile-wattle-seed dumplings?” This was not an inventive sexual proposition but an invitation to taste a line of fusion gyoza. I was asked to sample the gentleman’s dumplings yesterday at the Fancy Food Show, having finagled a press pass along with my friend Laura. Line after line of booths filled the Moscone Center, and eager sales reps vied to get you to taste their samples. I declined the gyoza, but I gorged on chocolate-covered champagne grapes and lemon-chiffon goat-cheese ice cream.

When I could eat no more, I concentrated on filling the large bag I had brought with me. I did everything I could to get free samples. I dropped the name of the food magazine I sometimes write for, and accepted armfuls of promotional material that I then discreetly ditched. Sometimes I resorted to shameless flirting. It wasn’t enough for me to get a miniature gift box. I wanted the salespeople to dig out the bigger gifts they kept hidden under the cloth-draped tables, the entire cakes and the bottles of olive oil, the industrial-size bags of chocolate buttons. I grew greedier and greedier, and soon I found myself accepting things I did not want, such as a box of Gourmet Seasoning Sheets. I didn’t want to eat any more, I just wanted to take. Grabbing stuff gave me a primal thrill and it is obvious why. Sitting at my computer all day is unnatural. We evolved to spend our days hunting and gathering. As I roamed the convention hall gathering gourmet goods, I was satisfying ancient instincts.

Then my eye caught a pile of beribboned bags of fennel-seed crackers stacked up on a table. I ignored the tray of samples and reached for one of the bags, asking “Can I have this?” as I did so. The handsome Italian running the booth hesitated. Instantly I realized I had violated some unwritten code. You had to be offered a bag. You couldn’t ask for a bag. Asking for a bag was like knocking on someone’s door and asking to join the dinner party you had seen through their front window. The look the salesman gave me was more shaming than a slap on the wrist. When he handed me the bag, I gave it to Laura. I knew that his disdain would make the crackers taste like ash.

On the way home, I felt disgusted with myself. I was a glutton who snatched things she didn’t deserve. And on top of that, I had wasted half an afternoon of writing. I decided that the best way to redeem myself would be to share my bounty with someone hungrier than I was. I rooted through my bag of overwrought tidbits but I couldn’t decide if offering lemon-scented miniature madeleines to a homeless person would be worse than offering nothing at all. When I got home, like a kid after Halloween, I emptied my haul onto the kitchen table and felt slightly nauseous.

Quiet Flirting

2006-01-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

A handful of people sat in a cordoned-off section of the Canvas Café, at tables bearing fresh white index cards and ballpoint pens. They were guests at a Quiet Party, where speaking aloud is forbidden. Instead, you must write everything down. I thought this was a brilliant idea. Here communication would be stripped down to the essentials. People wouldn’t bother with idle chitchat—they’d soon give themselves carpal tunnel. Instead, we would quickly discover how much of what we say about parties is really worth writing down. Maybe we wouldn’t use words at all. Instead we would truly get to know each other as human beings, gazing deep into each other’s eyes, the windows of the soul. Or maybe we’d just play endless games of Hangman.

My friend Chris and I sat down at a table with a pale man in black, and a pretty, curly-haired young woman. Everyone stared furiously at the blank paper in front of them, as if they’d just begun an exam. Then the curly-haired woman wrote: “Have you come to one of these before?” The man sitting to my right passed me a card saying “Hi! My name is Ed.” And a fellow with thinning hair tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a card saying in crabby handwriting: “You have incredible eyes. What do you do for fun?” My heart sank. Instead of distilling what they had to say to its purest essence, people were just saying exactly what they normally would at parties—only it looked twice as boring written down.

The dark-haired man opposite me wasn’t writing anything. Then he slid a message across the table: “Soon someone will crack and speak,” it said. I seized this opportunity to deviate from boring small talk. “Then they will be severely punished,” I wrote. “Sounds like fun,” was his response. I scribbled: “Their tongue will be torn out and fed to pigeons, and then they will be locked in a dungeon, and not the S&M kind.” He flinched. Unable to use my tone of voice to signal that I was kidding, my playfulness had fallen flat. After that, obviously believing me to have a violent, sadistic nature, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I sat staring glumly into my lap, suddenly afflicted with writer's block.

My therapist once asked me why I wasn’t comfortable with silence. Perhaps she was bored with listening to me talk, but I think what she meant was that in silence I might find the real me. Instead of trying to entertain people with jokes and stories, in silence I might learn to just be myself, or better yet, just be. But persiflage was so much part of my personality that without words I felt as if I was fading away.

Next to me, Chris was flirting with the curly-haired woman, who was giggling like a schoolgirl passing notes. Although the Quiet Party wasn’t a good place to have a conversation, it was a great place to pick someone up. After all, when you’re flirting with someone, your body language matters as much or more than what you say. And usually when talking to someone, you take meeting their eyes for granted. But at the Quiet Party, where people spent most of their time looking down as they wrote, meeting someone’s eyes was a much more powerful experience.

I didn’t want to make bedroom eyes at some stranger. But if I couldn’t flirt, at least I could help other people do so. I started writing “You’re so hot!!!” on note cards and throwing them surreptitiously over my shoulder. When Jason threw a rock among the skeleton warriors, each suspected his neighbor and soon they were fighting each other. I thought my notes would be like his rock, only instead of fighting, people would be exchanging phone numbers. Sure enough, when I left soon after, people were scribbling furiously, index cards snowing to the floor.

Bus Stops and the Blitz

2006-01-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

Due to its versatility, the British word "bollocks" has been called “the Swiss Army Knife of andrological profanities.” Maybe I’m out of touch with the nuances of my native tongue, but I find “bollocks” rather limited. The term "bullshit" is both more pungent and more polysemous. Like “bollocks,” “bullshit” can mean “nonsense, lies,” as in “He’s talking bullshit.” But it can also refer to something that is unacceptable, as in “I’ve had enough of your bullshit” or “The war in Iraq is bullshit.”

The difference between the two terms reflects a difference in national character. The Brits don’t have a word for that which is unacceptable, because their nature is to accept. This trait can be noble (the Blitz) or foolish (the inefficient plumbing). But, for better or worse, Americans tend to expect things to go their way, and to be outraged if they do not.

Take the way people ask for things. On my visit to England over the holidays, a woman approached me as I was taking a shopping basket in the supermarket and said: “Excuse me, would you mind doing me a favor, please? Would you pass me one of those shopping baskets too?” She spoke as if she hardly dared expect her request to be granted, as if she was asking me for a kidney or my firstborn. An American would have used less than half as many words: “Would you grab me a basket, please?”

But perhaps because the terrible weather has forced them to be this way, the Brits are adepts at acceptance. A few years ago I was waiting for a bus in London. As it approached, the people waiting dug out change for their tickets and formed a line. Then we watched as, at the last moment, the rogue bus turned down a different street, trundling out of sight. Americans might have started fuming and saying “This is bullshit!” Without looking at each other or saying anything, the English, with resignation in their eyes, stiffened their upper lips and started walking.

Twelve Drunk Santas

2005-12-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

This is a dangerous time of year, these last weeks before Christmas, for it is the time of year when Santas run amok. Alone, they’re fairly harmless, but when they get drunk and form packs, there’s no telling what they’ll do. If you think I’m exaggerating, let me tell you that two years ago last Saturday a gang of them kidnapped me. Now this may sound rather jolly, part frat-house foolery, part fairy tale, like doing tequila shots with the seven dwarfs, or getting a lap dance from the Easter Bunny. Let me assure you it was not.

I was at Jordan’s office Christmas party at Bruno’s in the Mission. My friend Andrew had decided to come along as well, but he arrived without having had dinner, so we decided to get him a burrito. Jordan, who is always ravenous, wanted one too. When we got back to Bruno’s, a long white limo was parked outside. Santas piled out, including a lady Santa, who was particularly drunk. “Come for a ride with us!” they all chortled. I was torn. I wanted to deliver the burrito but the prospect of a Christmas joyride was too difficult to resist. “Maybe just round the block,” I said.

We piled in with the soused Santas, and in no time I found a glass of champagne in my hand and the outside world seemed much less significant, the way it does from a limo. We glided along, sipping our champagne while the Santas belted out amusing renditions of Christmas carols (“Joy to the world,/The Lord has gum”). A block slid by, then two.
“Turn around,” I said.
“We can’t turn around!” a Santa told me. I begged Andrew for help but he was having too much of a good time (a teetotal Buddhist, he wasn’t used to the champagne). He had decided to stay in the limo, come what may.
“Drop me off here then,” I said, resigning myself to a long walk back.
“Can’t stop!” they shouted. I asked where we were going but no one replied. I would have flung myself out at a stoplight but a particularly bulky Santa blocked my exit.

Tears filled my eyes. At that time I often went out drinking and stayed out until dawn. I couldn’t get a job, couldn’t sell my book, but I did know where all the parties were and exactly how much I could drink without being sick. My life was careening out of control, I felt in that moment. My life was a limo full of drunk Santas. And then it got worse.
“We’re going to the Marina!” they yelled. I gasped with horror. The only thing worse than being kidnapped by a bunch of drunk Santas was being kidnapped by a bunch of drunk Santas and driven to the Marina. The Marina, as locals know, is the LA of San Francisco, inhabited by women with ironed-straight hair and perfect pedicures, and by men in khaki pants who drive SUVs. The Marina is a terrible place. I would rather be taken to the North Pole.

I took a deep breath. “LET ME OUT!” I yelled. The limo screeched to a halt and every one of the Santas turned to look at me. They all had the same hurt, disappointed look, a look that said I wouldn’t be getting anything in my stocking that year.
“Let her out then,” one said huffily and I climbed over the mountainous Santa in my way and squeezed out the door, into the rainy winter night, a couple of miles from the Mission. I had a long way to go but I still had Jordan’s burrito, only slightly squashed, and I was free.

Dinner Parties and Darwin

2005-12-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows, sublimated libido is the engine of social life. It is for this reason that the traditional salon worked so well: the male guests channeled their frustrated desire for the hostess into sparkling conversation with each other. Thus when throwing a party, you should always invite people who are sexually unsatisfied—in other words, single people. Single people create what I call “Single Person Energy,” the magic ingredient in any successful soiree.

The phenomenon of “SPE” has a simple Darwinian explanation. People who are trying to get laid become funnier and more interesting. Thus singles sparkle in a way that most couples do not. (Sadly, many people lose their luster once they find a mate.)

But here is the magic of SPE: it doesn’t matter if the pursuit of sex is real or hypothetical. Even if they aren’t attracted to each other, your single guests will make each other more animated. The couples present are not trying to seduce your single guests (although in San Francisco, anything is possible). Nonetheless the presence of the singles will make the couples more convivial. Single people seem to induce a sexual competitiveness, a kind of biological reflex, making everyone burn a little brighter, drink a little more, stay a little later.

As bay leaves are to gumbo, so are single people to parties: you throw them in and let them simmer away, adding their savor. Just as you take out the bay leaves and put them on the side of your plate, so at the end of the party, you put the singletons in taxis. Of course, occasionally two of your singletons may hook up. While happy for them, this is sad for you. Then they may become another boring couple, and worse, yet, they may move to the suburbs.

Beatitude of the Boulevard

2005-11-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Taking hallucinogenic drugs is a popular weekend activity in San Francisco. While many cities would discourage this, here the local authorities have provided trip toys. I am referring, of course, to the kaleidoscopes on Octavia Boulevard. I’m ashamed to say I only realized that’s what they were on Saturday night, when a friend ran up to one and put her eye to it. There are twelve in all, slender silver poles with cylinders on top. I’d taken them for speed cameras. But when I looked through one, it transformed the world. The Haight-Noriega bus opened into a silver lotus with a hundred petals. My friend Chris stuck his tongue out; it became a sunset. Octavia Boulevard metamorphosed into an ever-changing stained glass window. And I wasn't even stoned.

When this former “Street” became a busy “Boulevard,” I fretted because this meant I had to wait longer to cross the road. Now when I see the kaleidoscopes, I remember not to be in so much of a hurry. I inwardly thank Gavin Newsom for rewarding trippers and flaneurs, those who look twice at the obvious instead of racing past it. For even though driving gets you where you’re going faster, walking lets you see what speeding go-getters do not get: the heavenly pattern beneath the urban ugliness, the mandala behind the mundane.

But perhaps I'm being naive. It’s hardly safe to tempt people under the influence of drugs to wander around near heavy traffic. Perhaps the authorities see these people not as visionaries but as unproductive idlers, and the kaleidoscopes are a cunning plan to eliminate them.

Dread of Dining Solo

2005-11-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

There are two sorts of people: those who are afraid of dining alone and those who relish it. I’m not talking about fixing dinner at home. I’m talking about taking yourself out for dinner at a wonderful restaurant. Most people think that this is sad. As Epicurus said, “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.” Or, as an Arab proverb puts it, “He who eats alone chokes alone.” (Why do I have so many dining-alone quotations at my fingertips? I have been researching the topic for an article.)

Although I love nothing more than eating alone (toast in bed, pizza in front of the TV), the thought of dining alone makes my skin crawl. But is it possible that I am missing out on one of life’s great pleasures? I asked around my friends and a few lone wolves claimed to love going to restaurants by themselves. “It’s a chance to people-watch,” said one. “It gives me a chance to truly savor the food,” said another. In An Alphabet for Gourmets, no less an authority than MFK Fisher proclaims: “I think human beings are happiest at table when they are very young, very much in love, or very alone [italics mine].” I decided it was time to overcome my fear.

Happily, there is a website for people like me, solodining.com, “dedicated to supplying you with all the information and tools you need to take charge of this all-important slice of life.” Apparently there is a name for my condition too: “D.D.S,” or “Dread of Dining Solo.” The inventor of this term, Marya Charles Alexander, calls herself a “solo dining maven”, and she has more than earned the right to do so. This prolific woman is the author of a newsletter, “Solo Dining Savvy” (sadly now defunct), two restaurant industry handbooks (150-Plus Tips on How to Attract & Keep Solo Diners and Solo Diners: The Untapped Mega-Market), as well as a handy guide, "75+ Top Solo Dining Tips", which I immediately ordered.

But as I perused the site, my DDS, rather than diminishing, grew. I’d thought that four or maybe five tips would have been enough to get me through lunch. But if the successful solo diner needed seventy-five of them, maybe solo dining was more challenging than I’d thought. In fact, the very word “solo,” so suggestive of a piano recital, filled me with performance anxiety.

I phoned Ms. Alexander to ask for her advice. “I suffer from DDS,” I explained. “It’s quite severe.”
The voice on the other end of the line was sympathetic.
“Can you share with me some of those feelings of nervousness?” she asked.
“I’m worried that people are staring at me and thinking I’m being stood up or I have no friends,” I confessed.
“Next time you’re out with family or friends,” Ms. Alexander said breezily, “take a look around and see if there are people dining alone and whether they’re enjoying themselves.”
I thought of the last two times I’d been out to dinner. One time, no one was eating by themselves. The other time, I’d had dinner with my husband in a small French bistro. A middle-aged man had sat at the table next to ours. He did not look as if he was enjoying himself.

What were her other top tips? “Take baby steps,” Ms. Alexander advised. She told me how she had become a solo-dining savant. Many years ago, newly divorced, she found herself with a shortage of suitable dining companions. Yet she loved to eat in restaurants. She decided that, rather than suffer through a tedious date, she would take herself out. “I started with lunch and took a magazine or a notebook,” she recalled. “Gradually I worked up to dinner. The whole process could take a few weeks.”
A few weeks? Solo dining was even trickier than I’d thought.

And it got worse. I’d imagined that I would simply show up at whichever restaurant caught my eye. Wrong!
“You should do some reconnaissance first,” Ms. Alexander advised.
Wasn’t she making too much of a meal out of solo dining? But I was determined to take charge of this all-important slice of life. I listened closely as she continued.
“You should telephone to make a reservation. This will set you apart as a discerning solo diner. At that time, you can ask important questions such as ‘Do you attract many solo diners?’ ‘Where do solo diners sit?’ And ‘Are there certain hours that solo diners tend to appear?’”

I was a little worried that this might make me seem like an escort looking for business, but Ms. Alexander was after all, the expert. As we said goodbye, she warmly wished me luck.

As I brooded on it, it struck me that solo dining is a noble thing. We spend much of our time alone, but mostly in private. What could be braver than taking this aloneness out in public, even flaunting it? To dine alone, it seems to me, is to embrace the fundamental solitude of the human condition. To dine alone is to face the fact that we die alone. No wonder I was so afraid of it.

Now I am finally ready to overcome my DDS. I see myself seated at a corner table and sipping a glass of white wine with serene poise. I see myself nibbling on a nice piece of halibut while contemplating the rich human pageant offered by the other restaurant-goers.

First, of course, I must reconnoiter. I have learned from the website that the most solo diner-friendly restaurants in San Francisco are Boulevard, Farallon, Zuni, and the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, where “the staff is ever at the ready with an array of reading materials”. I intend to phone all of them and find out through intensive questioning if they truly welcome solo diners.

Once I have selected my restaurant, I feel confident that my solo-dining experience will be a positive one. For now I have the right information and tools at my fingertips (and perhaps an additional seventy-odd tips if the pamphlet arrives soon). And of course, who knows, I may even solo-dine with someone else. According to Ms. Alexander, if I wish, I can tell the restaurant: “I would welcome sharing my table with another solo diner.” But doesn’t this undermine the whole concept of solo dining? Doesn’t it expose the “discerning solo diner” as a desperate singleton? No, Ms. Alexander assures me, it does not.

The Scary Corner

2005-10-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

There is a corner of San Francisco where it is Halloween all year long. In the Outer Mission, my friends Bodhi and Jeff have created a ghoulish nook in their apartment. In the corner they have hung a lurid painting of a horned demon, as well as a ouija board and a collection of throwing stars. They’ve also nailed up a tiny mirror with a pewter woman gazing into it. If you peer at her reflection, you see that her face is a skull. In addition, there are various portraits and figurines of clowns, some sad, some grinning, all striking fear into the onlooker in the way that only clowns can.

When I first visited their apartment, Bodhi told me that this part of it was called the “Scary Corner.” The Scary Corner was a shrine to what frightens us most (and thus, ultimately, to death itself). The Scary Corner was a memento mori, like the skull in a still-life of fruit, or Corpse Pose in yoga.

At first I did not like the Scary Corner, and tried not look at it as I passed it on the way to the bathroom. But over time, the Scary Corner became less scary. It turns out that if you incorporate death into the décor, you transform it into something comparatively harmless—kitsch. In fact, the Scary Corner actually made the rest of the apartment seem cozier.

As a child, I tried to make my rocking horse less frightening by hanging a pair of knickers on its head. Instead, it looked more terrifying still. I learned that you should not try to conceal your fears, since that makes them even worse. But as an adult I’d forgotten this lesson. Now, instead of ignoring my fears, or worse, trying to hide them under a pair of knickers, I think I may create a shrine to them. I can only hope that one Scary Corner in my apartment will mean fewer scary corners in my soul.

An Affronted Adonis

2005-10-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

My friends Emily and Elizabeth had VIP tickets to a fashion show last Friday, and invited me to join them. It was in the Regency building on upper Van Ness. In the lobby, tense, beautiful women, rich men in suits, and male models were milling about. The air smelled of custom-made fragrances.

The woman checking names off the guest list wanted to know who I was.
“This is Helena from San Francisco Magazine,” Emily said briskly. Before I could say debate her use of the word “from”, the woman said:
“Well then, you must have front row seats.” Next thing I knew, Emily had swept us away to the front row, where every seat had a bag of presents on it. There was shampoo, moisturizer, a tiny soap tied up in gauze and ribbon, and an enigmatic utensil I decided was a designer bottle opener.

At the after-party, pink drinks flowed freely. The name of the vodka company sponsoring the event was etched into giant bottles carved from ice. Waiters glided through the crowd with trays of brooch-sized hamburgers that nobody ate. The guests were more interested in the cock rings that waitresses clad only in white teddies were offering round on silver platters.

The only place to sit was on white leather ottomans strewn with pink flowers. Technically I think they were for VVIPs, not just VIPs, but after a certain number of pink drinks, I felt myself to be a VVIP. A male model with impossibly long eyelashes recognized Emily and came to join us.
“What did you think of the show?” Emily said.
He pouted a little.
“I think the outfits were too revealing. Having your nipples on view might be appropriate for a sensuality event but not for high fashion,” he sniffed. I stared at him, thinking him a total prude. Then I thought about it. The show had been a little racy towards the end. You could see the models’ nipples through their diaphanous shirts. The last model sported only legwarmers, a turtleneck, and a thong.

I wondered if living in sex-positive San Francisco had made me blasé about this sort of thing. I’ve seen so much bared flesh at Burning Man, the Folsom Street Fair, and other places. I’ve seen people dressed as clowns having group sex and beating each other with a rubber chicken filled with whipped cream (I’ll explain another time). You can understand, then, why at this point I scarcely notice half-bared nipples. And the offer of a cock ring? No more shocking than a cucumber sandwich.

Towards Better Dinner Parties

2005-10-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

Now that I do not have a big project taking up all my time, I intend to entertain more. As I have said before, I am fascinated by positive psychology (the scientific study of happiness). And as part of my attempt to apply its lessons to my dinner parties, I am considering the introduction of a new ritual.

Before I explain, we must go back to my first Thanksgiving, back at Oxford in 1996. It was organized by some homesick American students that I knew. In those days I was severely malnourished, due to the Oxford student’s typical diet of custard and spotted dick. As soon as we sat down to dinner, I reached hungrily for the sweet potatoes. But before I could dig in, the hostess announced:
“OK everybody, let’s hold hands. I want to take a moment, go round the table, and all say what we’re thankful for.”

The English are a self-deprecating nation. The idea of publicly dwelling on all the good things in my life made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I wriggled in my chair as one by one, the other guests held forth about the dinner, the other guests, their families and recent academic triumphs. (One woman was grateful for Bobby, her golden retriever whom she had left back in New Jersey.)

Here in California, my dinner guests often pause before the meal begins to give thanks. Well, thanksgiving is the wrong word, since there is no higher being involved to whom the thanks are being given. It’s more a moment of appreciation—sometimes just of the meal and the company, sometimes of other things in their lives as well.

I found this a little cloying until I learned that science has shown that expressing gratitude makes you happier. In one experiment at the UC Riverside, psychologist Sonja Lyuobmirsky asked subjects to keep a gratitude journal—a weekly record of things they were thankful for. Over a six-week period, her subjects’ overall satisfaction with life improved significantly (whereas the control group felt no better than before). And at UC Davis, psychologist Robert Emmons has found that gratitude journals improve physical health and raise energy levels.

It seems safe to assume that expressing gratitude will improve one’s dinner parties. Yes, it all sounds very new age, but that’s how people felt about meditation twenty years ago. Now it’s been shown that meditation has profound physiological and mental benefits. Could gratitude be the new meditation?

The problem is that, being relatively new, the moment of gratitude is not shaped by set conventions. Might I suggest the following?

Keep it short: Avoid the tendency to ramble.

Shun repetition: This is boring. If you’ve nothing new to say, say nothing.

Share: The first person to speak often takes all the low-hanging gratitude fruit (the meal, the present company), leaving others with little to say. Don’t be a gratitude hog.

When it came to my turn at that Oxford Thanksgiving, I mumbled something about being happy to be there. Repressed little soul in velvet trousers that I was back then, I did not imagine that I would one day move to a land where people regularly use “share” to mean “say.” And I certainly did not imagine that it would be a place where people like to give thanks all year round.

The Dread of Doilies

2005-10-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

My therapist is constantly urging me to feel my feelings, but I find that it is much easier to avoid them by channeling them into obsessive-compulsive behaviors. So, when at the start of this week, a mysterious dread crept into my heart, I decided to clean the apartment from top to bottom. I scrubbed the floors. I washed the sofa covers and the shower curtain. I got rid of everything I would never use, including a Candy Whip of uncertain provenance. (It wasn’t edible any more, if it ever had been.) I threw away a pair of boots I’d worn at Burning Man, too dusty ever to wear again.

At first, I felt invigorated by the gradual triumph of order over chaos. But the more I cleaned and organized, the more dirt and disorder I saw. I found one humdrum task after another, mending the torn binding of my favorite cookbook, dusting my computer keyboard. I was about to organize our nonfiction alphabetically by subject, when I discovered a little tome that I bought at a garage sale for fifty cents: Organized Closets & Storage, by Stephanie Culp.

Ms. Culp’s advice on vacuum cleaners: “Get rid of exotic attachments you know you will never use. Vacuuming is a chore, not an art.” Her thoughts on doilies: “Do remember that doilies were made to be used, and if you’re not really using yours, but can’t bear to part with them, they should be moved out of the active storage area and put away with other mementos and heirlooms.”

Ms. Culp seemed to inhabit a very different world with me, one in which people have state-of-the-art vacuum cleaners and get overly attached to doilies. In my world, it is vibrators that have exotic attachments and Burning Man costumes that I find hard to part with. As I stared at the photograph of Ms. Culp on the back cover, with pancake make-up, a weak smile, and a white blouse buttoned to her chin, I wondered from what dark place her lust for order sprang. I realized that I would never be truly organized, and I didn’t want to be. I would rather face the mysterious dread I felt than end up counting doilies.

Enlightened Abs

2005-09-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

When we moved to California four years ago, one of the first things we did was join Crunch gym. We just couldn’t help ourselves. We loved the state-of-the-art exercise machines and the spray-tanned sylphs doing Cardio Strip. The funky purple and yellow chairs were shaped like fists doing a triumphant salute. The slogan, painted on the wall, was “No judgments!” but in a place where half the clientele looked like extras from The Matrix, there was no need to judge. I particularly liked the staircase studded with sparkling lights that led to the changing-rooms. It was flanked by semi-transparent shower stalls, showcasing the sculpted outlines of people soaping themselves. Crunch cost twice as much as 24 Hour Fitness, and I didn’t have a job. But we couldn’t resist it.

After yoga class, I always chose one of the showers facing the staircase. I shampooed my hair, feeling an exhibitionistic thrill. But after a few weeks, I noticed that few people gave the shower stalls a second glance. At first I thought maybe they didn’t want to look like voyeurs. Then I realized they were too busy checking out their reflections in the mirror facing the staircase. It hit me why the showers were there: not so members could look at other people, but so they could enjoy the thought of being looked at.

Yoga classes at Crunch cater to this narcissism. The teachers there don’t waffle on about “drawing energy from the earth” and “feeling the fluffy cloud within.” Instead, they put you through grueling sets of crunches, knowing that what members want is not yoga minds, but yoga bodies.

I enjoyed this for a couple of years. Then I realized that yoga was more than just a workout. Yoga was something you do within. Slaving over my abs used to make me feel virtuous. Now it no longer satisfied me, and consequently, neither did Crunch. (Plus, after several changes of management, the place had gone downhill and frankly, the people there were just not as good-looking as they used to be.)

I asked the teacher, one of those yogis whose posture is so perfect they seem to float an inch above the floor, why we had to do so much work on our abs. He gazed at me serenely.
“It’s not so we can get better abs—we’re strengthening the core.” As he glided away, I realized I did not know exactly what the “core” was. But obviously it was different from abs—more internal, more profound. I’m always eager for short-cuts to spiritual growth. Now when we do crunches, I feel virtuous again, as if I’m working not just on my six-pack, but on my soul.