There is trouble at home.

"The Situation", which is what I've taken to calling the collection of events that have led to my parent's current predicament, has become a crisis. My family's ability to deal with this crisis depends on its ability to communicate, and determine the contours of a new reality. For a family such as mine, it is a perfectly tragic condition. It's the fucking American pastoral.

So I deal by contemplating la dolce vita. This is a list of my current top-5 to-try Manhattan restaurants, in no particular order:

1. Eleven Madison Park
2. Locanda Verde
3. Degustation
4. Ko
5. Daniel

I must have a very recognizable face. People who have never seen me know me from somewhere. Like a fine wine, I pair it with a familiar manner...(ewww, sorry for that)

A Fruit Guy gave me a very good, really, a phenomenal deal the other day because I am a 'very good customer.' I had been there only once before, so either I was the only repeat customer he's ever had, or he thought I was somebody else. Maybe several somebodies, who knows? Now that I think of it, I get a lot of people looking at me strangely as I walk down the street. I've always just figured that it was because I must be kinda silly looking, which is why I'm always checking my fly. But maybe it's because they think that maybe they know me, maybe I remind them of somebody...maybe a movie star? Yep, probably a movie star.

But wait, I just thought of a third option. It could be, and indeed very likely is the case, that this otherwise honest Fruit Guy tells every customer, hell, passersby even, that they are 'very good customers.' My fly is down, isn't it? Sigh.

In my OK Cupid profile I claim that my smile is the first thing people notice about me. It seemed both attractive and reasonable. The pretty Colombian girl who serves my coffee in the morning likes it.

It's nice being greeted by a smile and my name, 'Good Morning, Christopher,' in a heavy equatorial accent. It's nice being told that somebody likes your smile. One of my clients says she does too. Also a Colombian, but with a heavy Queens accent. She's old school, very smart but also very sexy, sexy in a coming up in the seventies and eighties, when women were expected to be sex objects in the office so the successful ones owned it kind of way, owned it and never just gave it away. She's a 'difficult' woman, one of my favorite people.

The thunderstorms from last night left this morning with a faint smell of summer in the city. It's a smell I will always associate with my first day in New York. I remember it raining for the first weeks I lived here.

There is a different quality to the smell of warm rain in the city. The concrete landscape prevents the rainwater from seeping into the ground. Without topsoil to absorb the rain, it pools on the sidewalk, and the ledges of buildings, beads on glass faces; the city marinates in its rain, and all the smokes, the soots, the smogs that flavor the air of the city concentrate, brew in the rainwater. In the city you smell the rain, and the rain smells like the city itself.

Scent drives to the essence of the the thing. The smell of a girls body, the trace it leaves on your pillow, your sheets, after she had laid with you. It is the smell of the girl, it is the smell of all girls. It is the smell of girl.

Fresh cut grass is what Home smells like. Tobacco is what Dad smells like. My father is the slightly stale but masculine smell of Tareyton cigarettes and Mitchum deodorant.

I remember after high school football games, everybody putting on cologne before seeing the girls. CK1 is the smell of adolescence.

Far be it from me to doubt the B.I.G., but my money is currently solving a whole lot of problems. It could be that me and Biggie have different ideas on mo and money, but when you've got nothing a little sure as shit helps.

In the last couple of months I've gotten my teeth fixed, gone to the doctor (twice), got my eyes checked. I've painted my kitchen, and made my student loan payments. I've enjoyed several nice dinners, after-work cocktails, working lunches. I've been eating, plenty, and drinking just the right amount.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night to use the bathroom. Usually when this happens I have a helluva time getting back to sleep. There are no distractions at 3:00am, there's very little of anything at all. It's when I'm most anxious, and my mind races over all that might be the cause of my anxiety, but of course there is no cause for my anxiety, so my mind just races over and over again over every shortcoming, over every mistake, over every deception, and I just lie awake. But last night I just went right back to sleep. I even thought to myself, 'nothing to keep me awake, tonight.'

Hey, I've still got my issues, shit just doesn't go away because you've got a couple dimes in your pocket. But I'm dealing with them, and I'm able to deal with them because I'm working hard, and earning a few dollars. It's a taste of responsibility, of the kind of independence that comes after failing to take care of yourself, but never failing to keep open the possibility that someday, you might just figure it out.

So, mo money? In this case, I'll take it. It ain't Biggie money anyways.

Much of my time at work is spent updating this fucking lame database that Big Brother Sales Manager uses to make sure that the money they give me is in return for some kind of productive activity. Well, the joke is on them, because while I'm sitting at my desk tap-tapping away at the keyboard, I'm not out schmoozing with clients, which is what they really pay me for. Nor am I spending all that much time updating this database with anything but imaginary tasks. What I'm really doing is surfing Blogger, incessantly clicking Next Blog, Next Blog, Next Blog. That's how I discovered this: White Collared Redneck. And boy, is this shit funny!

PS - It's 1:47 right now, and my work day is proceeding according to plan.

I was never the kind of person who knew what they wanted to do for a career.

When I was in third grade I thought I might like to be a brain surgeon. In high school, a barkeep. Once I discovered philosophy, well, I thought academia might be the thing for me.

But I never had any love for surgery or the brain. Bartending was misguided, youthful exuberance. And although philosophy does indeed occupy a special place in my heart, I don't mourn not having ascended the ivory tower.

Besides, we're talking about a job. Work, for fucks sake. And work is work, right? Now, I know what I like to do: I like to bullshit with people. It's what I'm good at. Sure, I can uphold my end of a serious conversation. Sure, I can get deep. But what I really enjoy is aimless, meandering chit-chat. Gossip. Idle talk about the weather or the ballgame. And so last Friday, when, after lingering over lunch I found myself strolling on the sunny side of the street with a pretty girl at my side, chit-chatting, I realized: I fucking love my job. Because I can do that, and that's pretty much my idea of perfect.

And as long as I can get paid doing that, it makes no difference to me what exactly my job is.

Henri Rousseau, La Guerre