Do you like to do things? Sure ya do!

by Christine Quinn

From time to time, we offer up this space for everyday New Yorkers with a point of view on the issues of the day.

It’s a big week, with gay marriage up before those old fuckfaces in the Supreme Court, with hackers trying to take down our Netflix accounts, and with old straight men confessing their love of high-heeled boots and also apparently doing dudes during their midlife crisis. What an era in which we live! By which I mean, the Cenozoic. But more importantly, weighing heavily on all our minds, is the forthcoming Jurassic Park 4, which is expected to hit theaters next summer, which will be my first summer as mayor of the fine City of New York, or so Mike Bloomberg used to tell me, back when we still talked.

I’ll never forget the first Jurassic Park. I’d never been so excited for a movie before. The year was 1993, and I’d been that crazy queen Tom Duane’s chief of staff for a couple years. Me and my then-girlfriend Laura went to the Chelsea Clearview on opening night! (We’re both huge Laura Dern fans.) I made Laura — my Laura! LOL, not Laura Dern — pack the flasks, and as much as we enjoyed the film and its Spielbergian magic from the back row, getting crunk, still I found the film’s message gratifying. You can’t fuck around with dinosaurs, everyone learned that day. And in the intervening twenty years — has it really been that long! — people haven’t fucked with dinosaurs once. Not once!

And then The Lost World happened in 1997, and it was so-so. Jurassic Park III came out just before 9/11, while I was already on the City Council. That was the one with that Téa Leoni. I hate that stuck-up bitch and her snooty accent. Don’t ask. Even though these two movies weren’t as great as the first, still, I’ve seen each of them at least three times, and when I am tucked in my nest of straw and gravel at night, flipping channels alongside my wife, and we come across any of them on TNT or whatever the fuck channels are way up there, of course we’re glued to it and we stay up late, giggling and clapping our forearms together.

I related to these movies so much because actually, genetically speaking, I am also part dinosaur. Not a very large part! But it is why I have such piercing eyes, and a long-ranging sense of smell, and why my voice carries so. Of course it also explains my wonderfully armored neckplate.

And now Jurassic Park 4 is breathing down my frill, and I must admit: I’m fucking furious. Some pussy named Colin Trevorrow is directing it. He did some film with that Aubrey Plaza (why does she have that name?) that nobody saw. But worse, it’s written by those jackaninnies that did Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If there ever was a movie about a savage animal that failed to capture the nobility and menace of its species, it is that piece of James Franco toilet-scrape. In their envisioning of Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs are likely to be little mushy pantywaists, scraping and bowing before the humans and their horrible stunguns, instead of biting off the heads of adults and ripping the bowels from stupid human children with their delicious and amazing claw-fingers.

Why must this happen. Why must this happen to me?

My makers have made contact, an increasingly rare occurrence, to reassure me that my genetic legacy will survive this torture-by-Hollywood. And yet I despair. I thrash in my basalt-clad office, shrieking obscenities, kicking straw. Why must I suffer all alone these degradations of depiction? It hardly seems fair.

Christine Quinn is the next mayor of New York City, she is pretty sure.

★★★★★ Yesterday’s mud-spatter glittered on the toes of the boots. Under the gray, away along the cross street, a golden glow was coming through. Downtown, the covering was starting to rumple and come apart, glowing white seams and clear blue ones opening to the east and overhead. Lingering rain-grit crunched underfoot on Franklin Street. One boot grazed the red synthetic back of a chair in the jury waiting room, leaving a powdery smudge like a squashed moth. In the murals around the top of the walls, well-proportioned pink-gold cumulus clouds marched above city landmarks. Straight ahead was Grant’s Tomb. High up and off to the right, beyond the painted sky over the painted Public Library, a slice of flawless blue showed through a window. The prospective jurors were herded into the opposite end of the chamber, where now the blue was out a left-hand window and in the window to the right was a confusing, roiling patch of paleness — and then an edge of blue appeared there too, and the scene resolved into a tall cloud, moving across the narrow gap between buildings. Meanwhile an official was explaining that justice would not require any further participation by ordinary citizens today; everyone’s duty was discharged in full. It was only midday, and ragged prodigies were filling the sky, obliterating the polite ecstasies of the muralist: a high transparent layer on the blue; a writhing mass of blinding white, coiling from cornice to cornice across the street. The courthouses led to Chinatown led to Little Italy (cannoli, toy buses, a man barking lunchtime outside a restaurant) led back into Chinatown. The bakery with the good black-bean cakes was not the one with the proper Hong Kong tea; that one — why not go looking for it? — could be found a few doors down. Tourists stood considering the durian stand. Deep yellow crocuses were up in the park between Chrystie and Forsyth, very far from where things had begun.

“Fewer Americans signed contracts to purchase previously owned homes in February as limited inventory and access to credit held back a more robust recovery in housing.”
 — Are $950,000 fixers and impossible lending standards and the need for quarter-million down payments with no-contingency bidding-war offers possibly slowing the current idiotic real estate frenzy? Perhaps! But here is a proven fact: Whenever people are acting super stupid-crazy about any market, it is wise to stay the hell away from said market.

Photo by Jeremiahsb.

by Matthew Shaer

A couple of years ago, I took the train out to Long Island to interview the last person pulled alive from the wreckage of the Twin Towers. Genelle Guzman-McMillan had been in her early 30s on September 11, 2001, and employed by the Port Authority, which had an office on the 64th story of the World Trade Center. She and her coworkers had managed to make it out into the stairwell and all the way down to the 13th floor before the second plane hit, after which the entire building collapsed and Guzman-McMillan was buried under several thousand tons of debris and dust. She lay there for 27 hours, a few inches away from a corpse. Finally, she was found by a search-and-rescue dog. A miracle, the media called it.

By the time I met Guzman-McMillan, a decade had passed since the ordeal, and she seemed fully healed, both emotionally and physically. She told me her story clearly and calmly, in an unwavering voice. Sometimes she smiled. Once, her eyes filled with tears, but she quickly regained her composure. After about an hour, her husband and two daughters returned to the house, and she showed me to the door. I went home and transcribed the interview and wrote the whole thing up. The short article on Guzman-McMillan appeared in August of 2011, in New York Magazine’s 9/11 encyclopedia. I think Guzman-McMillan was happy with it.

I mention all of this as a way of getting at how thoroughly the experience contorted my view of what it means to write about tragedy — and more specifically, what it means to write about tragedy through the eyes of a survivor. In some ways, Guzman-McMillan was an anomaly. She claimed that she’d never once seen a shrink, never had bad dreams about the towers collapsing; she’d found God in the rubble, and she planned to help others do the same. (In fact, she still speaks frequently to church groups.) That was enough for her. Moreover, she’d had ten years to process the tragedy — time doesn’t heal everything but in certain cases it can provide a bit of padding.

***

In early November of 2012, I saw an article in the Times about the Bounty, a tall ship that had sunk during Superstorm Sandy, leaving one sailor dead and the captain missing at sea. The lead art was a photograph — I later learned it had been snapped by a Coast Guardsman, on his iPhone — of the Bounty slipping under the wind-chopped Atlantic. It was terrifying and surreal and hauntingly beautiful and I knew right away that I would try to write about the doomed boat and her crew. I took it for granted that other magazine writers were thinking the exact same thing (and I was right).

But I figured there was more than enough in this story to go around: There was the history of the boat, which had been commissioned in 1960 for the Marlon Brando version of Mutiny on the Bounty, and was subsequently saved by Brando himself; there was the motley crew of 20-somethings and retirees and the insular tall ship community; there was the headstrong captain, Robin Walbridge, who had made the decision to sail around and then through storm, when he should probably have laid Bounty up in port.

In the end, I caught a lucky break: a well-known adventure writer (a writer much better than me), who had been mulling a story on Bounty, decided against taking the assignment from a major men’s magazine. That left me and a reporter for Outside, which was racing to prepare a Bounty piece of its own. Still, Outside faced space and timing constraints, and it was unlikely its writer would be able to both hit her deadline and attend the February federal inquiry into the sinking of the Bounty. I was going to write my piece for The Atavist, a digital publisher that allowed its writers unlimited space and some flexibility on timing — since The Atavist does not release a print edition, I could go to the hearings, in the Navy town of Portsmouth, Virginia, record what I saw, and have the whole story to my editor just a few days later.

But I was completely unprepared for how difficult the process would be. Many of the sailors had taped a segment “Good Morning America,” in early November; a handful had also appeared on a Weather Channel documentary produced by Al Roker. And yet no matter how many Facebook messages and emails I sent, no matter how many phone calls I made, I could not secure an interview. Selfishly, this infuriated me. I thought of Guzman-McMillan, who had so willingly talked to me. If she could talk about what she had experienced, why couldn’t the Bounty sailors? And why wouldn’t they want to? I was offering them a platform — a chance to tell their story.

Here’s the place where I nod to Janet Malcolm’s famous quote from the very first page of The Journalist and the Murderer: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” In hindsight, I think I can claim both stupidity and egoism (take that, Janet!). There are very good reasons to write about a tragic event, of course: to explicate catastrophe and help to keep something similar from ever happening again; to draw attention to malfeasance and highlight heroism; to sate simple human curiosity. The sinking of the Bounty had caught the world’s attention, and plenty of people — me included — wanted to know exactly what had happened on board.

And yet when I sat down to type out messages to the survivors of the Bounty, when I dialed them up at home, I was thinking less about the nobility of the enterprise — or for that matter, the feelings of the survivors — than what it would take to get the story written.

***

In the end, I managed to get a few sailors to talk to me. For the first interview, I flew out to Oakland; the second took place over the phone. In the latter case, the survivor talked a blue streak for two straight hours, more or less uninterrupted by my questions: he recalled what it was like to be sucked underwater with a sinking ship, what it was like to almost drown, what it was like to believe without a doubt that you were dying.

It obviously hurt him to talk about it, and he hung up pretty hurriedly. I probably should have called him back later to ask how he was doing — to thank him profusely for taking the trouble to relive a tragedy. But again, I concentrated solely on the quality of the copy, and how thrilled my editor was going to be. I haven’t talked to that survivor since.

On the other hand, I do fully believe that reportage about tragedy can help us better understand the world around us. In 2011, I wrote a story about Leiby Kletzky, an eight-year-old Hasidic boy murdered by a mentally troubled man named Levi Aron. I built the narrative around the efforts of a local Hasidic man, Yaakov German, to crack the case; indeed, German helped lead investigators directly to Aron. The murder itself was unspeakably brutal, but German’s efforts to find Kletzky’s killer seemed to me indicative of a better part of human nature — the part of us that cares deeply for others, that wants justice to be done. I remain proud of that article and the reception it received.

I just wish I could always approach all stories the same way.

***

I went to Portsmouth. I sat through the hearings. At one point, a young sailor named Laura Groves took the stand. I had attempted to contact Groves several times, but I never received any answer. Later, I’d phoned up a former hand on the Bounty, who had not been on the boat at the time of the sinking, but was in touch with plenty of folks who were. I told him I was working on a short e-book for The Atavist, and asked for his help reaching Groves and others. (The Atavist doesn’t publish e-books, exactly — the stories are more like multimedia-enhanced “mini-books,” or really long articles. Still, it remains easiest, in most cases, to describe them as e-books.)

So Groves knew about my project, as did most of the survivors. After about an hour on the stand, the lead Coast Guard investigator asked Groves to describe the scene on deck while the crew was preparing to board the emergency life rafts. Groves indicated that most of the sailors were calm, although one was clearly panicking and scared. The investigator asked Groves to say aloud the name of that sailor. Groves shook her head.

She would write it down, but she’d prefer not to say it out loud. There were journalists in the room, she said. “They are people writing books about this,” she added, practically spitting the words.

I’ve been a professional journalist for about seven years. I’ve worked full-time in the newsrooms of two major papers. But I have never shared the bloodhound-like instinct of the tabloid reporter. Having a door slammed in my face does not energize me. It dejects me. I read the comments sections of my articles with one hand half-covering my eyes.

Hearing Groves say those words was just as good as getting a knee jammed into my gut. The air went straight out of me.

A couple days later, I relayed what Groves had said to a magazine writer friend (the same writer, incidentally, who had chosen not to write about the Bounty). He emailed back the following:

Of course it’s easy to forget, in the pursuit of a good story, how much higher and more personal the stakes are for the people who actually endured the thing. You’ll move on, we’ll always move on to the next one, but the people who’ve lived through it have to live with the way its been represented. I remember an interview, years ago, with a woman whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, that famous picture of the firefighter carrying the dying baby. It had been turned into a memorial statue, and the woman told the interviewer that she just wanted her daughter back. Always good to keep those human impacts in mind.

Wise words, and I’ll try to remember them as long as I write.

Unfortunately, my friend is all too correct that all nonfiction writers move on. We bounce from one article or essay to the next. And it’s in that moving on — that constant search for a bigger and better and more incredible story — that we can often allow ourselves to forget what, exactly, is at stake.

Matthew Shaer is the author of The Sinking of the Bounty: The True Story of a Tragic Shipwreck and its Aftermath, which is available via the Atavist iOS app or as a Kindle, Barnes and Noble, or Kobo e-book. He tweets at @matthewshaer. Top photo courtesy of the US Coast Guard; diagram of the HMS Bounty by Damien Scogin for the Atavist.

When Awl pal Sacha Jenkins was a teenager growing up in Queens, he was into graffiti and rap music and, more than anything perhaps, the Washington D.C. hardcore legends The Bad Brains. In the early ’90s, with help from his friends Elliott Wilson and the artist and graffiti documentarian Henry Chalfant, Sacha started a music magazine called ego trip. Then he wrote for a bunch of other magazines, one of which gave him an assignment of interviewing Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jennifer. The interview didn’t go so well. They didn’t get along. “He was kind of a meanie,” Sacha says. But through subsequent interaction they became friends. Hanging out at Darryl’s house in Woodstock (not the Big Pink, another house up there) they eventually started their own band. And then got Los Angeles rapper Murs to assume lead vocal duties. And are releasing their first album in June on Fat Beats records. There’s their first video, above, directed by Jason Goldwatch. Pretty cool story, right? Sacha’s the best.

OH YES. It’s TripAdvisaargh. The name, we should think, is self-explanatory. (via)

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Concrete, explicit instructions in the time of emotional cholera.”

Dear Polly,

My problem started innocently enough, a little white cLIEmax that rolled along and gained momentum until it became a large-scale inescapable avalanche of deceit-gasms.

Paradoxically enough, I met him at a bar on a girls’ night out that a friend had organized for me as a “screw men” celebration following yet another breakup in a string of less-than-great short-term relationships. When we started dating, my expectations were down to zero and I was more interested in casual fun than a meaningful relationship. Maybe my relaxed openness is what made it work; we became best friends and fell in love, and a year or so later we are living together and planning an engagement sometime in the next year. The only reason I wish I’d had an inkling that it was going to become serious was that I didn’t think twice about faking orgasms. Sex with him has always been very enjoyable, but I simply don’t orgasm from his penetration alone. Initially, faking it just made sense: it met objective expectations he had for his own sexual performance; it made him feel good about himself; it created a dramatic apex during sex; it allowed for a shared feeling of contentment in the denouement coming down from it; and it made me feel like a woman of utmost sexual prowess.

The only downside is that I’m now being dishonest with my life partner and the wrongness of it is eating me alive. I’ve continued to pretend-orgasm when we have sex because he would surely notice a sudden stop. He is not lacking in stamina, and, in my several attempts not to fakegasm, he kept going and going ceaselessly until I put on a show. We talk about most everything, and in conversations about sex I am ashamed to say I have lied about my supposed fast and frequent orgasms. Now that I know him, I know that he probably would have been fine with this issue if I had been honest about it from the start. He is happy to pleasure me in other ways, and I think he would be caring and confident enough to overcome the socially conditioned expectation to get his woman off that way. It’s the dishonesty that I don’t know how he’d handle. We have an otherwise very sturdy foundation of trust, and I am scared of how revealing such a longstanding lie would affect our relationship. I am not distraught that I don’t orgasm like that with him (although I have with ex-boyfriends), I love him and I just want to do what is right for us. Should I accept and continue to hide this little white lie from him for the rest of my life? If I really enjoy making him feel good, is there still some fundamental importance to revealing my orgasm fraud?

Help me, Polly!

Climax Caper

Dear CC,

You said yourself that the situation is eating you alive, and for a good reason: Honesty is fundamental to maintaining a healthy partnership. It’s a truism because it’s so goddamn true. Even lying about stupid shit — flirting with some old boyfriend, smoking cigarettes on the sneak, buying something you can’t afford — can serve as the tiny fissure that eventually brings down the whole levee. And when the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

You start lying about dumb stuff, and pretty soon you feel like two different people, The Dreamy One and The Liar. At first, The Liar is just trying to keep the peace. But soon, unethical choices become feasible: As long as The Liar does it, and no one knows, what difference does it make? The Dreamy One stays dreamy while The Liar graduates from little indiscretions (complaining to friends about his/her spouse, calling him/her secret names, lying about plans) to bigger crimes. As the crimes pile up, The Liar and The Dreamy One both start to tell stories about how their wife/husband is too rigid and inflexible to ever accept the very natural things that The Liar wants from his/her life. Enter: Alienation, frustration, distance, bad sex, lack of sex, confusion, cheating, anger, divorce, and finally? Driving your kid across town to spend the weekend with your ex and his new lady, Chloe, who mostly likes smoking heroin and playing Skyfall.

OK, just kidding about that last part! Chloe actually just likes weed and that Walking Dead game. (Or that’s what your five year old says, anyway.)

I totally understand why you’ve found it so difficult to drop this act out of the blue. But who wants to doom herself to a life of faking it? Not only is that exhausting, but it eliminates the possibility of improving your sex life. How can you even focus on what’s actually happening in bed when you’re always about to pull the trigger on an Oscar-worthy performance? That kind of acting (and strategizing) seems likely to dull your physical response. You’re singing this elaborate rain song while holding this giant umbrella over your head. Whether or not it ever rains, you’re never going to feel it.

When you’re playing the field, great sex can consist of a pair of really skilled performers getting in sync and bringing the house down. But those highs often go hand in hand with a limited run of shows. When you’re in a committed, long-term relationship, great sex is less about having a fail-proof routine at the ready and more about improvising in the moment, with an open heart. Less thinking, more feeling. Less showmanship, more honesty. As the love and trust increase, the sex magically gets better. (That sounds creepy to the traveling minstrel, but it’s true.)

You should come clean about your entire history of faking it. You started doing it because it seemed fun, and you haven’t been able to stop without disappointing him or causing him engage in marathon sessions (something that probably warrants its own delicate discussion). Obviously, you’ll have to be vulnerable and admit that you feel embarrassed by the whole thing, and you’ll have to apologize for allowing it to go on for so long. He’ll probably be upset for a while. But you’ll open up the possibility of having a great relationship and great sex that gets better over time. Right now, those things are off the table, thanks to this lie. If the relationship is meant to be, it’ll survive Fakegasmgate. (I would not necessarily mention that you screamed like a banshee with other men.)

If you’re sure that the truth will embarrass or upset him too much to recover, I guess you could tell him that even though you used to love to vocalize (a lot!), you’ve started to feel obligated to make noise, and it’s detracting from your actual enjoyment. You could simply admit to playing it up a little, which has lately made you feel pretty less engaged. That’s a lie, but at least you could tell the truth moving forward. I don’t know, though. You’d still be pretending, trying to glue together the past and the present and the future of your sex life without any of the seams showing. “You’re the best, baby, but now I’m going to be very quiet about it.” “I come all the time, but now I do it quietly! Which is better!” As awkward as it is now, my guess is that your sex life will be better (for both of you) if you tell the whole truth. And look, who knows? Maybe your boyfriend has some stuff he needs to let off his chest, too.

If you apologize and you’re patient and respectful of his response, I have to think he’ll get it and this might just be the beginning of a new kind of life together. Trying to be something you’re not is a sickness, even if most of us have it until we hit our 30s. Once you shake it off, life gets much richer and more satisfying. My guess is that this one big moment of reckoning will mature you and make you happier in ways that you can’t really anticipate right now. You’ll start to think hard about the other areas of your life where you’re just acting. I mean, you just told the smoothest version of this embarrassing story I can imagine. I bet you have lots of friends, and people dig you. But, are you always on? Do you feel like being less than perfect means that you’re a total failure?

It’s common for women to expect too much of themselves. The rest of the world does, so why shouldn’t we join right in? Personally, though, I feel a lot happier when I accept that I’ll never even come close to being perfect. This fakegasm situation is about you more than your boyfriend. Until you’re okay with however you happen to feel on any given day, until you’re comfortable showing up without fireworks guaranteed in return, you’re cutting yourself off from your natural responses and feelings. You have to dare to be a regular woman, no better or worse than any other, with your own issues and weaknesses.

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her,” writes Adrienne Rich. Regular, flawed women are much more interesting and lovable than perfect women. Why does that feel like such a well-kept secret?

Polly

Dear Polly,

Is it cowardly to decline someone romantically because they have kids?

Romance is on hold. I am a woman in my mid-20s who loved dating in college, but has found that pool of sexual energy shrunken since real life came to town and drank all that chlorinated water. My last relationship ended on account of me moving (very far) away to look for work. It was a decision wrung from cabin fever more than cold rationality. Although I have always secretly shunned those who put money before family, it was then that I found that as long as my self worth is vested in a career, having a good job really did influence my ability to make myself and someone else happy.

I’ve been in this new place for about a year. Economically I am standing on one foot and things are better than before, but still insecure. Occasionally I go on dates and four months ago I met someone who would grow to become a good friend. Nick. He is positive, energetic, involved, and intelligent, we share many common interests and I adore his friends. My life is suddenly filled with activities of all sorts and I feel like I have found part of the foundation I’ve been searching for.

Because we met online, I knew from the onset that Nick has a son. I told him I was not interested romantically before we met. We’ve gradually started spending more time together, and somewhere in there, I’ve also stopped dating around. Our relationship hasn’t crossed that friendship-line, it is very much at the “so what is this” point. Yes, it got there last night.

I’ve never even kissed Nick, but when we walk down the street, people assume we are a family, and oddly enough I don’t mind, I think I enjoy it. Two week ago I invited him and his son over for dinner, and as I looked out into the backyard to see them running circles on the lawn, this superb feeling of non-angstiness came over me. I think I felt for the first time what it is like to not be thinking of myself.

Two parts of my biology are butting heads. One of which can’t help texting him first thing in the morning. I feel stimulated by him and incredibly grateful. Having been through enough relationships I acknowledge that it’s special, but I also question whether it’s prudent to take it further. My other self can’t tell if I am playing house. I am terrified of becoming bored later on. I still ogle attractive strangers, sometimes in an apathetic way, but sometimes I feel like a cat in heat. I covet that immaturity, and the logical part of me doesn’t want complexity.

Nick will ask me how I feel but I won’t know what to say. I haven’t experimented with him on account of him having a child, somehow that falls into my minds “you better be serious about this” category. More importantly I know that his last and first relationship was with his son’s mother, and I don’t want to be the second woman to break his heart. What if I kiss him and don’t like it? I am happy with my social life, I don’t yearn for the awkwardness of the wrong people sleeping together, but I sure as hell would be jealous when he moved on.

On Hold

Dear On Hold,

Ah, the magic of biology! Sometimes I wonder what the male praying mantis must be thinking, at that fateful moment when the female praying mantis is making a light dinner out of his brains. As she chows down and releases the chemical that incites the bittersweet praying-mantis love-making, is the male praying mantis thinking, “Fuck yeah! Yeah! Like that, baby, just like that!” Or is he thinking, “Guess I should’ve known by the way you parked your car sidewaaaays that it wouldn’t last”? With those last insecty thrusts (ew), is he mourning (“My world! My beautiful world!”) or is he high-fiving himself?

The truth is, the praying mantis himself probably doesn’t know until it’s too late! He’s probably all twitchy and ambivalent up until that fateful moment when that wily she-devil has half of his noggin between her merciless mandibles! Good kisses and bad kisses, feelings of non-angstiness, cat-in-heat urges, gratitude, jealousy — these things can rarely be predicted.

But whatever happens next, the kid should be kept separate from the deciding process. You can test the waters with the man without involving the child. Personally, I didn’t even meet my then-8-year-old stepson until six months into dating my husband, because we needed to know we were serious first. Obviously single parents casually date around, they just do it without bringing their kids along. You should stop hanging out with the kid while you figure out what shape your relationship with his dad might take.

And look, if you really do covet immaturity and shun complexity, if you fear boredom more than anything else, then you should wait. Maybe you will break his heart. Or, maybe you’re working through all of the possible negative outcomes at a point when more thinking won’t necessarily provide new information. These pangs of “Oh, shit! I’m young and I need to be free!” and “I don’t want a kid yet!” might be drowned out by something much louder, or they might not. Will your soul be screaming “Fuck yeah, baby!” or will it scream “My world! My beautiful world!”? You might not know until you try it. Maybe it’ll scream one thing, then another. Personally, I had a lot of different, conflicted reactions over the course of getting to know my husband, but ultimately, the complexity and maturity required of me felt like a gift rather than a sacrifice. (Let the record show that I was a decade older than you are now when I met him.) If you feel sure that you’d mess up your whole life if you went for it, obviously you should stop yourself. Are you into him simply because he’s the only guy in the picture? Would you still be into him if another nice guy were hanging around?

If you’re pretty sure that your feelings about him are specific to him, and not just related to a general improvement in your circumstances (more friends, adorable family-like scenes playing out in your backyard), if you’re anxious to find out more about him, to listen to him, to get to know him better, to kiss him (and not just kiss some guy sort of like him, but without the kid), then I would trust your instincts and kiss him. Will having a stepson suck? Will getting serious fuck over your entire career? How can you know that from here? Sometimes you can’t control the outcome, or predict the future, or ensure a clean exit. Sometimes all you can do is lower your head between those mandibles, close your eyes, and hope for the best.

Polly

Previously: Ask Polly: Should I Make The First Move On My Dream Girl?

Did a mean old levee teach you to weep and moan? Write to Polly and learn some more marketable skills!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Christina Rutz.

“New research raises the depressing possibility that depression may counteract the health benefits of performing physical activity or light to moderate alcohol consumption.”

by Awl Sponsors

On Thursday, April 4th, ArtBattles U will host the first-ever live painting battle in New York, for college students only. College! Those golden years of challenging society, authority and parents. That’s a very 2012 way of looking at things. In 2013, college students have the chance to challenge each other and, more importantly, themselves.

ArtBattles U gives the best student visual artists a stage where they can put their skills on the line and let the crowd determine their fate. These live painting “battles” bring out the best live painters, cheered on by fellow students, local tastemakers and trend setters. Tens of thousands more watch online. What’s at stake? Pride, school reputation and a monumental grand prize at every battle.

Student DJs provide the soundtrack for the night. Student photographers, hosts, dancers, hype crews, models and MCs generate the pulse at each ArtBattles U event. It’s a place to find the next big thing and for the next big thing to be found.

So next week, four of New York’s top college artists will take the stage at Webster Hall to paint live in front of more than 400 students and fans. The competitors have 90 minutes to transform a blank canvas into a finished masterpiece. At the end of the battle, the fans will determine the winner. The winning artist will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Miami where they’ll stay at the W Hotel South Beach and get passes to the best art galleries.

You can get your free tickets right here, right now.

ArtBattles U New York Battle
In partnership with The W Hotel, Monster Energy and Blick Art Materials
Webster Hall, Marlin Room
125 East 11th Street, New York, NY 10003
Thursday, April 4th, 2013
7 to 10 p.m.
FREE TICKETS AND ADMISSION

ABOUT ARTBATTLES U
ArtBattles U LLC (“ABU”) enhances the lives of college student artists by providing them with a public platform to showcase their talents. Our team of artists and creatives host ABU events at cool, unique venues that enhance the artistic experience. Our events are packed with college students, local tastemakers and trend setters. Tens of thousands more viewers watch ArtBattles U events via our web TV shows aired across our various digital media platforms. This is an empowerment platform allowing college artists to achieve their aspirations from gaining an enriching life experience to outright fame.

Learn more about ArtBattles U:
www.ArtBattlesU.com
Facebook.com/ArtBattlesU
Twitter.com/ArtBattlesU
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Pinterest.com/ArtBattlesU
Google+ @ArtBattlesU