One night in Park Slope.

The doors open. You enter the room and see a bunch of hat-skinny-jeans-wearing kids around the table. It’s covered with red cups. Holy shit, you’re the oldest one here. You’re birthday is coming up. You’re about to hit the quarter. It seems ridiculous, but it’s not funny at the moment. You already have couple of margaritas and a subway ride behind you. What the hell. You brought a bottle of Haitian rum with you, and at this point you’re in desperate need of it. Show me the way to the next whiskey bar…oh don’t ask why oh don’t ask why…The brown color of a drink in the glass, one sip and another and just one more…makes it all better. The music is playing and the room is still -€“ still. Somebody hands you a cup and a ball. No thanks, I’m still working on it. You look up. He’s tall and handsome, he hands you a cup and a ball, you play. One cup, and the next one, and just one more…The room starts to spin just a little…You wander to the kitchen, the window is opened to the concrete-covered back yard. The girl sings while you inhale, hold, and let the smoke out of your lungs. Little cough. It’s been a while. If there is anything that hipsters know, is how to party.

But the next thing, you know is that you’re sitting on the stairs outside. The voice gets to you Sweetheart move your shoes, you don’t want to ruin these nice shoes. Your hair is being held.

The face of some man, telling you it will be ok. He’s short and black and smiling. He tells your friend the cab back to Manhattan, would be 120$. The angry voice, of the next door neighbor, growling she’d call the police. You don’t want to get your friends into trouble. You have to move.

You’re on the cold bathroom floor, breathing heavily and shaking. All you want is for the shaking to stop, but it wouldn’t. You know what’s going on, but your body refuses to work. The ceiling is circling round and round. Your knees are made of cotton wool, and you do know there is no possibility you’d make it to the subway. Another kind voice. I’m alright - you mumble. You lean on his shoulder. Long narrow corridor. The light coming out from the rooms. It’s getting emptier, Where did everyone go? Somebody’s bed. Garbage bin next to your head. He covers you with a blanket. He has white remains of powder under his nose. Blanket, bin, kiss on a forehead. He’d be coming back to check on you for the rest of the night. Sip of water-sleep-through up. Cup-bed-bin. Eventually you wake up. The bin is filled with something you’d rather didn’t belong to you. You hear the music and recognize it. Katie?- Gabbi’s voice - I’m fine. Goodnight. I’m sorry.

Morning. Gold earrings at the table. Yellow-purple stains of vomit (fucking chili) on the brown swade flats. The stairs outside. They seemed higher last night, when you were leaving the remains of your stomach on the pavement. Subway. Shower. You throw the shoes out. Bloody hell. You partied like an 18year old.

Parlez Vous Français?

For Gabrielle,

 who inspired me to dig out

my inner French girl.

  

The book has arrived! It’s massive, the pages are yellow and smell of old paper, and it’s falling apart but I don’t care, I just love it. Thanks to Amazon.com I have purchased Mastering the art of French Cooking by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child, the 6^th edition, form 1961. No worries, I haven’t given up on the regular bookshops. You can still find me at the Strand, browsing through 18 miles of books (it’s a process) or at Barnes and Noble on 86^th and Lexington Avenue, with cup of coffee, accompanied by my friend Gabrielle, fashion magazines, and piles of books on Interior Design. We decided to cook, but we won’t blog about it. Somebody has already done it, and not only wrote a book about it, but also turned it into a movie. Julie and Julia - surprise-surprise - the book was better than the film, though the lack of Meryl worked for its disadvantage. The idea came to us, while hollowing out tiny holes in salmon fillets so we could put garlic in it. Thinking, that several years ago, I hardly knew how to boil an egg. Anyway, the cookbook is fifty years old, which is not a lot, but old enough to have history to it. The history I am really curious about. I wonder which owner am I? Who were the previous ones? Where are they now? (Under the ground I know, hopefully not all of them). It was sent to me, by Abigail.A from Santa Cruz, California. It’s surprisingly clean. Except for the dedication at the front page (From 1964!) it has no notes or marks or even stains. It won’t be a problem at all, to make my own, of course. I’m a master at stains. One night Maria and I wanted to open a wine bottle without a wine opener (things tend to magically disappear when you need them). So we pushed the cork to the inside of the bottle. I was finding wine stains all over the kitchen for a week, including the ceiling and the inside of the cabinets, even though they were closed at the time. I wrote to Abigail.A. If I manage to discover anything about the story of the book, you’ll read about it soon enough. I know already we won’t try all the recipes. There is no way I would pull a knife down the back of some poor lobster. Therefore there is absolutely no way, I would put my body through digesting 60 pounds of butter.

For the past months, I have been becoming a Francophile. The interest was always there[1], but the fascination…I think the real fascination, has started with this book I had read on Chanel, and well, one thing lead to another. I tend to go through the phases of an absolute interest about things. And I’m totally aware and unaware of it too (I can listen to the song that I like ten thousand times in a row, till I’m so sick of it, I can’t listen to it anymore). Recently I have been stalking online Jim and Jules, developed a crush on Louis Garrel, made a third attempt to read Proust, even bought my first French dictionary. Speaking of the language. There are many reasons, why one would learn a foreign language. It could be fascination with nation’s culture, cuisine, history etc. For me the reason is simpler than that. Three of my French friends forget how to speak English when they’re wasted. After they have several drinks, I can’t understand the word they’re saying. The reason good enough to learn, if you ask me. As a revenge (when they’re sober) I molest them with questions like - Gabbi, how is bread in French? – Pain - Aww that’s so cute!! It is scientifically proven, that everything sounds better in French. 

Oh the little plaisirs. Making an omlette while listening to Serge Gainsbourg’s and Bardot’s Comic Strip (BAM ! POW ! BLOP ! WIIIIIZZ !) and dreaming to look like Catherine Deneuve in her young years ( and older ones for that matter). The sensuality ; the correlation between food and sex. They are making me a little bit less neurotic and obsessive in my New York ways. I figured, I’m already a Polish-speaking-with-a-British-accent-New-Yorker-obsessed-with-India. My sense of nationality is fucked up as it can be. It won’t harm to add a bit of Parisien to it, would it?

Wish us good luck with the recipes. Hopefully we won’t burn the kitchen down. If we do, well, the only thing to left to do, will be to use our je ne sais quoi on the landlord.

C’est la vie!

K.

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[1] I have visited Paris twice, and as much as I love New York, esthetically –  Paris is the most beutiful city in the Western Word.

Sleepy Hollow.