It appears that the disingenuous faux-aesthetes will succeed in knocking down Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York:

Gene Kaufman, the owner and principal of Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman Architects in New York City, has offered to pay the county $5 million for the building and restore it as an artists’ live-work space, with public exhibitions. Mr. Kaufman has also offered to design a brand new government center next door for $65 million — millions less than the $74 million county officials allotted some time ago for the plan to tear down part of the building and add the glass box.

But Steven M. Neuhaus, Orange County executive, seems determined to pursue the teardown plan. MidHudsonNews.com quoted him the other day as saying that “construction and deconstruction work” will begin “by spring of this year.” He recently vetoed a proposal that would have allowed the county to sell the center to Mr. Kaufman.

The Flexible Economy

As far as euphemisms go for the venture-capital-backed means by which full-time employment and all of its benefits and protections are being hollowed out by piecemeal employment for certain classes of workers, there is already a small revolt against the “sharing economy”; it has become too obvious that the primary form of sharing it involves is a worker utilizing her own meager assets to generate revenue for a large, extremely well-capitalized tech company. Other proposed alternatives, such as the “gig economy” or “freelance nation” are just a shade too revealing for total comfort. May we suggest the “flexible economy”?

It’s friendly, functional, snappy, and — may we dare say — flexible: While app-directed laborers might say that they feel trapped by the circumstances of their lives, they in fact have total flexibility to decide whether they work sixty-five or eighty hours a week to make ends meet, and to choose between performing a wide variety of manual labor for apps — there are so many apps one can work for these days. Meanwhile, for companies, in this new economy, they have the flexibility to shed workers any time they want, for any reason at all (user ratings, founder meltdowns, pivots, whatever). Besides, the word is already in the air:

• “Many people are really liberated by the income they are able to earn and the flexibility over their schedules,” says Shelby Clark, the chief executive of Peers, a membership organization of roughly 250,000 independent contractors for on-demand firms.

• Workers use the Handy platform “because it provides much needed flexibility,” he says, adding that its cleaners and handymen earn more than $18 an hour on average.

• The majority are “very satisfied with the platform, they have complete control over when they work, and they’re very satisfied with the income opportunity,” says David Plouffe, a former White House official who heads Uber’s policy and strategy team. “We obviously are comfortable with our business model.” [Plouffe doesn’t say flexible, but we know what he means]

• An Amazon spokeswoman says Mechanical Turk workers enjoy their flexibility, adding that the platform “gives them a wide variety of HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) to choose from.”

If you are not already flexible, now may be a good time to consider yoga lessons.

Photo of a flexible cat by Tambako

A small, warm song from Alex G, who gets consistently good results working within a stylistic framework that came to prominence on roughly the year he was born. (Via Noah.)

★★★★ The snow was going by the windows in every direction except downward — raggedy scraps at first, then smaller flakes. The apartment door had to be pulled shut against the air pressure. For a while, New Jersey emerged from the whiteout and a spot that was almost the sun flared in the mirrored glass of the tower across Amsterdam. By the early emergency pickup time for preschool, though, the snow was blowing again. A fuel oil truck was preparing to make a delivery to the mirrored tower. Some of the sidewalks were still bare; some looked bare but were slick with slush. At West End, the snow went from swirling to shooting hard down the avenue. The supermarket behind the preschool was overrun, the line for the registers reaching all the way to where the line for the bakery counter would ordinarily be. By two in the afternoon, the snow was white smoke streaming by. The steps down from the forecourt were well mounded with snow when the older boy’s school let out. On the storm blew, now thinner, now thicker. Now thinner. What was it amounting to? Out in the night, the fabric-belted line dividers of the Apple Store stood on the sidewalk, warding passersby away from the place overhung by a row of icicles that buckled away from the smooth glass top edge of the building. The cross streets were full of fluffy chunks of snow, each lump distinct in its shadows in the retained illumination. A shutdown warning on the subway speakers carried up the un-shoveled steps out of the empty station. The streets were pale and vacant but they were still the streets. Things held their usual shapes, with no real prodigies or perils yet in evidence. Surely it had snowed this hard before. Where the way had been recently swept clean, the prints of the soles of boots, with dragging heel marks behind, stood cleanly in the thin renewed accumulation. A wide circle had been cleared around the fountain in Lincoln Center Plaza, and the water was going, lit from below, sending up a mist to mingle with the flakes in the glow. A scant handful of people had closed in around the brightness — a couple, slim in their cold-weather gear, snapped pictures and put their heads together for a kiss. Then a security guard in a flapped hat cleared the plaza, and the barren isolation of the fountain was complete. But was it necessary?

I went to the farmer’s market this past weekend. It was depressing. The meats and eggs and prepared foods were all very nice, but the produce — the produce is dead: apples picked months ago, stored in giant industrial fridges; wrinkled, overripe pears; and a few sad, scattered bins of potatoes. It’s still possible to eat seasonally, if you opt for stuff that’s in season in warmer parts of the world, but we’re mostly stuck eating subpar produce from the grocery store. This time of year, we have to look elsewhere for produce.

Instead of eating awful hot-house tomatoes, yellowed cucumbers, and flavorless blueberries, winter can be a time to experiment with preserves: shelf-stable foods sitting in jars or cans, which, admittedly, have a lousy reputation thanks to a couple of decades of American cuisine that relied too heavily, and not smartly, on them, giving us the wonders of bland potatoes, grey-green beans, and mushy peas. But canning can be a way to bottle in flavor at its peak to keep for the entire year, and when canned foods are used properly, they can be much more flavorful than the bland, pale — or suspiciously vibrant — vegetables available in the middle of winter.

Most canned green vegetables simply aren’t worth bothering with; some of them, like peas and spinach, freeze well, so you should buy frozen. Others you’ll have to wait until they’re in season to enjoy them. Below is a list of reliably good canned products; most brands will be anywhere from fine to excellent, as long as you stay away from dented cans. Tomatoes vary the most, but for everything else, I tend to just buy whatever’s cheapest. Goya makes nice stuff. Even the Jolly Green Giant makes some good stuff, as long as you buy the vegetables that work well in cans, rather than the ones you wish worked well, like peas. And in terms of cooking, I tend to rely on long cooking methods, especially soups and stews, for canned goods. You don’t necessarily lose flavor in the can, but you definitely lose visual appeal, so you’ll have to set aside salads and other fresh presentations.

The king of canned plant products is the canned tomato. Tomatoes are the ideal use case for canning: a product with a very minimal harvest time is picked at its peak and preserved, so I use canned tomatoes ten months a year, happily. The only time I opt for fresh tomatoes is during the tiny window in summer when the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania fruits are at their peak. There are lots of variation in canned tomatoes. They usually come in either whole, chopped/diced, crushed, and pureed/sauce. Go for the whole ones and cut to your liking. My favorite trick for turning whole canned tomatoes into a puree is to jam my immersion blender right down into the can and go nuts. No extra cleanup!

There are also lots of different flavor options; some will have herbs like basil or oregano added, some will have mushrooms or garlic or onion or who knows what. Don’t bother with any of that. You just want plain, whole, peeled plum tomatoes. One exception would be the “fire roasted” varieties, which are usually pretty tasty. As far as branding, some people like to buy the tomatoes that say “San Marzano” on them. The San Marzano tomato is a plum tomato, a little thinner and longer than most, and prized for its meaty texture and high levels of both sweetness and acidity. The Italian government keeps as close a watch on tomatoes being labeled “San Marzano” as they can; a true authentic San Marzano tomato will have a big logo on it that says “DOP,” the EU’s shorthand for a product that is guaranteed to come from a certain place. These tend to be more expensive and are prized by foodies. In reality, a can that says “San Marzano” isn’t guaranteed to be any better than a can containing tomatoes grown in, say, Canada, which a Serious Eats blind taste test found to be the tastiest. I usually by the Cento brand. They’re cheap and good.

Canned corn — not creamed corn, but just straight up corn kernels in water — is almost uniformly fantastic. It’s sweet and crisp and sometimes even better than fresh summer corn. Drain it thoroughly and it’s good in any situation that calls for whole corn. Frozen is perfectly fine too, but I find that frozen corn tends to break down over heat, while canned retains its shape. For corn purees, frozen might be better, but for a corn salad? Go for canned.

Purists will tell you that canned beans will never boast the flavor and texture of dried beans, and, like, they’re sort of right but also dried beans are a real pain to cook, requiring either overnight soaking or at the very least a couple hours of stewing, and canned beans are readily available, still very cheap (though not as cheap as dried), and taste great. Canned beans are especially good for purees like hummus that are going to be heavily flavored. (The only legumes I do not recommend buying canned are lentils, because lentils, being much smaller than most beans, cook so quickly from a dried state that you don’t save all that much time by opting for canned. And I find that canned lentils can be a little mushy.) I usually get Goya brand, because that’s what they have near me. They’re good.

Canned pumpkin, which is actually usually Hubbard squash, is one of the few canned products that’s exactly what it seems like: a puree of vegetable, and nothing else. It’s ideal for pies and soups.

I’m sure you can buy coconut milk in jars or boxes or some other kind of container but I always get it in cans. Coconut milk is basically a puree of the meat of the coconut, unlike coconut water, and is tremendously rich and thick and luxurious and also not very healthy because due to its extremely high fat content. But it’s great for desserts, breakfasts, and curries.

Canned chiles are something else entirely; the goal with canned chiles isn’t to preserve their fresh quality but to add a totally new flavor thanks to, usually, a pickling liquid. Even in the peak of summer when the farmer’s market is full of fresh chiles, you may find recipes that call for chipotles in adobo, or pickled jalapeños, because they are packed with flavor and if you tried to make your own it would take you a long time and the best outcome would be that they taste like the canned versions anyway. I prefer the whole jalapeños to the slices, because pickled jalapeños tend to be tighter and more crisp when kept in their whole form, and because I use them for lots of different preparations. They’re great for building sauces or flavor bases, for stuffing, for frying, so many things. Get the whole peppers.

I sometimes get various Chinese vegetables canned, like water chestnuts (which I love! Did you know that many people don’t like these? How could you not like them? They have a supernaturally crisp texture and they soak up the flavor of the sauce, what’s not to like?), bamboo shoots, and baby corn. None of these are, like, super flavorful, but they’re nice to toss into stir-fries.

Canned olives are usually cheaper and not as good as jarred olives. I use them when I don’t feel like shelling out for a nine-dollar jar of olives. In stews, they work just fine.

Totally Inauthentic Esquites With Pickled Jalapeños

Shopping list: Canned corn, butter, leeks, cilantro (or frozen cilantro pesto), fresh limes, whole pickled jalapeños, cotija or feta cheese

Esquites are a Mexican corn salad, sort of like elotes, but in a bowl. They normally call for mayonnaise. I hate mayonnaise, so here’s a version without it. In a heavy-bottomed pot (an enameled cast iron is perfect for this), melt about a tablespoon of butter. Clean your leeks: chop off the tough green parts, slice in half lengthwise, wash thoroughly, then chop the white part thinly width-wise. Throw leeks into pot. Let them cook for awhile, getting soft and translucent. Drain a can of corn thoroughly and turn the heat up to high before tossing it in. Stir constantly; you want to get some browning on the corn but you don’t want the leeks to burn. When very fragrant and a little browned, turn the heat off. (If you’re using a frozen cube of cilantro pesto, throw it in now. If using fresh cilantro, hold off a sec.) Take one pickled jalapeño, cut off the stem, and dice. Toss, along with a bunch of crumbled feta or cotija cheese, into the corn. Salt to taste. Squeeze lime over the top, and add some chopped fresh cilantro if that’s what you’re using. Optional, but not really: a few dashes of Tapatío.

Hummus

Ingredients: Can of chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic, olive oil

Drain can of chickpeas. Place in food processor. Drizzle tahini over the top; not too much, otherwise your hummus will taste like peanut butter. Roughly chop a clove or two of garlic and add it. Squeeze at least half a lemon’s worth of lemon in there, too. Put the lid on the food processor and blitz, pouring in olive oil into the hole in the food processor lid. The secret: water. Add a little bit of water and your hummus will turn super smooth instantly. Chill before eating.

Really Simple Caribbean-ish Coconut Curry

Shopping list: Can of coconut milk, vegetable or chicken stock, Jamaican curry powder, vegetable oil, eggplant, cauliflower, potato, scotch bonnet chile, onion, ginger, garlic, can of bamboo shoots, can of water chestnuts, can of baby corn, fresh or dried thyme, fresh cilantro

The basic structure of a Jamaican coconut curry is not that different from a Thai coconut curry, so you can kind of blend them together; bamboo shoots aren’t traditionally Jamaican, and scotch bonnet peppers aren’t traditionally Thai, but they work together really nicely. So! In a heavy pot over medium-low heat, pour in a bit of vegetable oil. When it’s hot, add in a chopped onion, a few cloves of minced garlic, a thumb-sized knob’s worth of chopped or microplaned ginger, and the chopped scotch bonnet. WARNING: Scotch bonnet chiles are ridiculously spicy. Be very, very careful with them. Wash your hands, your cutting board, and your knife immediately after cutting, using lots of soap. Do not touch any part of your body with your hands until you wash thoroughly. I have gotten scotch bonnet in my eye before and spent about thirty minutes thinking my eye was going to fall out of its socket and roll down the block towards the river in search of relief.

When the onion is translucent, dump a tablespoon or so of curry powder. Jamaican curry powder has a different blend of spices than Thai or Malaysian or Indian or Japanese curries, leaning toward some sweeter spices like clove and allspice and turmeric. Stir this all around to coat and toast. Chop up your eggplant, potato, and cauliflower into pieces no bigger than an inch cubed, and throw them in too. Stir these all around to get them coated in curry and onion and ginger and stuff; you may need to add more oil because the eggplant is going to suck up a lot of it. Then crack open your can of coconut milk and pour it all in, stirring to get everything that’s stuck on the bottom of the pot up, and pour in about as much stock as coconut. Add in your fresh thyme here. Bring to a light boil then turn down the heat and simmer until the potato and eggplant is tender, about twenty-five minutes. When tender, taste the broth and adjust seasoning; it’ll need salt, maybe sugar, maybe more spices. Right at the end, drain your cans of various Chinese vegetables and add them to the soup; they’re already cooked so you don’t need to do much besides heat them up. Serve over rice with chopped cilantro on top.

Cuban Picadillo

Shopping list: Ground turkey, chorizo, can of tomatoes (preferably fire-roasted), can of green olives, sweet pepper (like an anaheim or poblano), golden raisins, slivered almonds, red wine vinegar, brown sugar, yellow onion, garlic, oregano, bay leaves, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, vegetable oil, rice (optional: eggs, avocado)

So this might be the first meat-heavy dish I’ve had in Crop Chef, but, you know, just because you like vegetables doesn’t mean you only eat vegetables. To start: get a dutch oven on the stove over medium-low heat. Pour in some vegetable oil and add chopped onion, garlic, and sweet pepper; cook that down until everything’s soft.

In a separate pan, maybe a nonstick, doesn’t matter, crumble your chorizo into the pan over medium heat. Render out some of the fat and then throw in the ground turkey. Brown everything but don’t cook it all the way through. Turn off the heat when it’s browned, drain off the excess fat, and reserve for a bit.

Back to the vegetables. Add in some of your cumin, cinnamon, and allspice, and stir around to toast the spices. Then dump in your can of tomatoes, which you have either diced or pureed (I recommend puree, again. This is sort of a saucy dish so you don’t want big chunks of tomato.) Sprinkle in the dried oregano, throw in two or three bay leaves, stir it all up, raise the heat until you start to see bubbles and then turn it down to let it simmer. Let it do its thing for about half an hour or forty-five minutes.

In the meantime: Put your raisins in a bowl. Heat up some water (cool tip: use a kettle), doesn’t really matter how much, and when it’s just off the boil, pour it over the raisins. Cover the bowl with a plate or something and let the raisins rehydrate for about fifteen minutes. Also, open your can of green olives. Eat a few.

Go back to the pot of tomato-sauce-looking stuff. Taste it and adjust; it may need a little brown sugar, maybe some red wine vinegar, maybe some more herbs or spices. Play with it. When it’s tasting really good, add everything else: your turkey and chorizo, your rehydrated raisins, your olives. Let everything cook until the meat is cooked through and the stew tastes great. Serve over rice with, if you want, some sliced avocado or even a fried egg.

Most canned fruits and vegetables are offensive facsimiles of the fresh product they purport to be, the vegetables flaccid and flavorless, the fruits syrupy and artificial. But there are plenty that I use heavily in winter and pretty liberally even in summer. Far from the soggy grey of canned green beans, some canned products, like corn, tomatoes, coconut milk, and olives, are bright and fresh and taste the way they’re supposed to: like summer was trapped inside that little tin and brought to save you from the hell of winter.

Crop Chef is a column about the correct ways to prepare and consume plant matter.

Photo by David Nestor

by Josephine Livingstone

So, the snowstorm wasn’t as violent as you wanted it to be. You wanted it to howl in your windows, to bury the homeless and freeze-scorch the earth. You wanted to cower in the face of its might. Aren’t you disappointed that you’re not trapped in your home, that you can’t carve one of those beer-shelves in the snow piled up outside the door? What a pity. Poor old you.

Stop yearning for it! Snow kills people. It’s like a dangerous animal. It will let you cavort nearby, but get too close and it’ll murder you dead. In fact, I hate snow. It hasn’t always been like this: I remember putting a tiny snowman in the freezer and opening the door every hour, just to check that my beautiful creation could truly be real, like everybody else. That was fine. It is magical enough in the paintings of Pissarro and the odd infant memory, sure. But snow causes disaster, and lusting after it is morbid.

The Fall

A few years back, I was at my friend Sarah’s birthday party. Sarah’s birthday is in January, so she always has the first party of the year (not counting the second half of New Year’s). Early in the evening, it had only been a little cold. Down we all went, down the staircase to the bar in London that is done up like an old-fashioned living room. It started to snow during the party. But nobody really noticed, because we were underground. We drank out of then-chic teacups. Time slipped past. I spoke to many old friends, then it was time to go home. We had to run for the last train, at Goodge Street.

The train ride passed, as most drunken ones do, blurrily. I remember having to do a gazelle-leap for the doors because I had got distracted into my book. Now I’m on the escalator. Now I’m at the exit. Holy shit! The air was colorless, because it was silent. The sky was a thick, glassy black. The ground was utterly white. I felt sorry for myself for a moment, then put on my headphones and started to walk.

Some time later, I woke up sort of gnashing my eyelids. As soon as I had managed to open them a tiny bit, I started to blink and grimace, because there was snow in my eyelashes. Moving my head slightly, I realised that it hurt. Blink, blink, grimace. Oh! I am covered in a thin layer of snow. Turning my hurting head, I see a big black tree, looming out of the big soft white. Long ravines in the snow show that I have slipped, although their edges have been softened by fresh fall. I don’t know how long I lay there knocked out, or what woke me up. Do not wear high heels to parties in January.

The Blood

This happened even longer ago — eleven years? twelve? — so the contours are vague. It was in Prague, and I had been in Kafka’s house. Sounds glamorous, but this is a story about being a teen moron. At Kafka’s house, I had bought a version of The Metamorphosis in German for basically no reason. The clock-tower in the square has skeletons on it and I had a headache. Wearing a huge idiot trenchcoat, I walked around the museum that is at the top of a big flight of steps at the end of a long boulevard that slices through the city. A big metal horse sculpture reared up with a man on it. I smoked many, tiny Vogue cigarettes. The night before I had been walking on the heels of my boots in the hotel lobby and a man had told me in French that I would break my neck doing that. I looked at the fat snow outside the museum, watching my ash falling, and then red decorations started to fall out of my face. Having a violent nosebleed on snow while looking out at an ornate city, outside a building full of velvet the color of blood, sounds really good and picturesque but actually is embarrassing because its only happening because you’re an idiot, and you realise that horribly quickly.

The Fear

Two years ago, I went skiing. I know, that doesn’t sound so bad. But you must understand that I had never been before, because I am scared of the things that posh people do, and I only accepted the invitation because I wanted to hang out with my cousins and because I would have felt like a coward if I’d said no out of fear. Ironically enough, my terrible fear of heights caused me to vomit from sheer terror regularly throughout the trip. Every day, I woke with the knowledge that I would have to get on a contraption that would hoist me to gut-liquefying heights, then drop me into a scenario barely conjurable in my worst nightmares: the top of a mountain. I have never been so afraid, never in my life, and every day so long as I live I will be a little bit happier for the knowledge that I’ll never have to do it again.

Why didn’t I predict that drinking in heels in the snow would make me fall over? Why didn’t I figure that being a chain-smoking child in a freezing country would make me ill? Why didn’t I realize that I would be so frightened on the mountain that I would consider deliberately breaking a limb to get off it? I don’t know. There’s something about snow that muffles the brain. It makes us slow, stupid, our worst selves. The only thing good about snow is that one song about the fox and the boy on the bike and so on. Everything else I can do without. Let’s hope this pale eyesore melts, and fast.

“Go to iTunes on Your Phone and Search for ‘Philip Glass’ in Ringtones! Orange Mountain Music is proud to announce the first volume of official Philip Glass ringtones available through Apple devices starting January 27, 2015 (Android soon to follow). These ringtones, drawn from original OMM masters, feature 22 tones including classic Philip Glass scores like Koyaanisqatsi, Einstein on the Beach, The Thin Blue Line, North Star, The Secret Agent, Fog of War, Candyman, solo piano works including Mad Rush, and Akhnaten. Tones include: Koyaanisqatsi from Koyaanisqatsi, various selections from The Grid from Koyaanisqatsi, Knee Play No.5 from Einstein on the Beach, Metamorphosis No.2, the Funeral of Amenhotep III from Akhnaten, two movements from the Concerto for Saxophone Quartet, Houston Skyline and Comets & Vegas from The Thin Blue Line, the perfect ringtone: Music Box from Candyman, and much more.”

by Charlotte O’Dair

On a recent Wednesday, my friend Annie1 went on her first date with a man she met through SeekingArrangement.com, the self-proclaimed “leading Sugar Daddy dating site.” Annie, a “Sugar Baby,” has been looking for what the site calls a “mutually beneficial relationship.” In exchange for companionship, the perks for Sugar Babies can include “financial stability,” “experienced men,” and being “pampered.” A day after her date with a Sugar Daddy, she told me about her experience.

James2 was one of the first people I talked to on SeekingArrangement. There are a lot of guys who just trawl the site for the second there’s a new profile to instantly favorite and message; that makes you feel adored, because you’ve literally just made an account, and then you feel like, “Oh my god! I’m so popular already!” But James just looked at my profile and didn’t do anything. I checked his profile and thought it was funny, so I was offended that he hadn’t said anything to me. So, I messaged him; I very much pursued him because I was pissed that he wasn’t paying attention to me. His original messages were pretty removed and not the most authentic seeming, so I just kept chatting him and trying to tease it out. Then it became this thing where he was clearly being much more authentic than I was, or, at least, appearing to be.

We talked for a solid month, at least, maybe a tiny bit longer. The original plan was to meet for drinks on Monday, go shopping, eat a nice dinner, and then probably get drinks at the bar of the hotel where he was staying. He messaged me to try to meet at an exceedingly fancy restaurant on Tuesday night, which I wish I could have done, except he ended up having a meeting with a celebrity. So, we just got drinks at around eleven on Wednesday, at the hotel bar, which was very chill and swanky. I walked into the lobby, where we had agreed to meet. I didn’t see him, and I was definitely the youngest person there. All of a sudden he appeared and was just like, “So, you’re here!” He was dressed really nicely, in a button-down shirt underneath a blazer, slacks and horn-rimmed glasses. He was very, very metrosexual, which surprised me because I’d imagined him as this pretty manly, kind of goofy dude. He was gentlemanly and pulled out my chair when we sat down at the bar.

I tried very hard to make sure we sat close, but also to make sure that ours knees wouldn’t touch — I didn’t want to do anything even remotely intimate, because at that point I had no idea how I felt about the entire situation. James kept complimenting me and telling me how glad he is that we could meet up because I’m always out doing something or meeting someone and how charming he thinks it is that I’m so social. The weirdest thing about it was how it was just like, pretty normal in terms of what we talked about. We talked about movies, art museums, the housing market, and his job. It came up that his real name wasn’t James, it’s Alan3. (I found out his last name as well, because he said it when he set up the tab at the bar, and it turns out that he’s totally Googleable: He’s really what he says he is on his profile and teaches at an Ivy League university.)

We had like a couple drinks — well, he was still working on one drink and I’d had three — when James casually mentioned that he and his wife have this arrangement where he can see other people while he’s traveling for work, but not when he’s at home. At this point James was like, “Oh my god, I don’t want to forget, let me give you cab fare!” Before we met up, over text, I had made all of these intimations about him giving me “cab fare” — trying to hint at money for my time, not actual cab fare, which I thought he understood. But he was clearly more of a noob than he was willing to admit. He took out his wallet, and I could see that he’s got like two hundreds, a fifty, and a bunch of smaller bills. He handed me the fifty, and at that moment, I thought, “Okay, he doesn’t have more than two hundred dollars in cash on him, there’s no way I’m fucking him tonight.” Honestly, for shoes, I would’ve probably considered having sex with him very, very seriously. But we didn’t get to go shopping together, and I’m not going to go upstairs to his hotel room with him and have him give me two hundred more dollars to do something I’m not super comfortable with. I know that if we had met under any other circumstances I wouldn’t still be fawning over him.

I thought that James would want to ignore the fact that we’d met through this weird mediated site, but he wanted me to tell him about the other people I had met through SeekingArrangement. I guess that’s what people who meet on the internet do — they talk about the internet. If it were OkCupid or JDate, we’d probably be doing the same thing. But it was kind of weird that he made it a point to say that although he was curious about what other men’s SeekingArrangement profiles were like, he never looked at them, because he “certainly didn’t want anyone to think he was gay.” He said that he had gotten a lot of offers from prostitutes over SeekingArrangement, but that’s not what he’s interested in — he wanted someone he can talk to. He went on and on about how he knew how elitist he sounded, but, he said, “How long of a conversation can I hold with a nail technician that’s coming in to meet me from Staten Island?” He also talked about how he had tried dating eighteen-year-olds off of SeekingArrangement, and how “they just weren’t on the same level of maturity.” But, he added, “It’s so crazy what happens to a female in the span of three years.” He asked me about my age threshold — like, how old I would go. I just said late forties, because I thought he was in his early or mid-forties. He looked kind of upset, then immediately asked, “How old is your father?”

As the night wound down, James started moving his chair closer to mine, touching my leg. I wasn’t doing anything back, but I let him take my hand when he reached for it. Later, he asked me, “Is it ok that I’m holding your hand?” and I was like, “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have given it to you.” I could tell he was directing the conversation to try and figure out if I was going upstairs with him or not, because it was the only time he even mentioned compensation in exchange for my companionship. He asked what I got when I met guys from Seeking Arrangement and spent time with them; I lied, and told him that I normally got shoes or clothes or jewelry. He kept touching my hand and my leg, and making comments about how I was sexy and pretty and whatever.

Eventually, James asked me to get the attention of the waiter, and said, “Don’t even look at me, pretend I’m not even here.” The bar was packed and I could barely see this waiter, but what I can see, out of my periphery, is James like, literally licking his lips while rubbing my thigh. It was kind of a turn on, I guess, but it also didn’t seem like he liked me that much or thought I was that special. It was more like he was just in awe of the fact that I was a real person who was right there, sitting in front of him. So I tell him that I’ve got to go, and get up and put my coat on. We kiss goodbye, on the mouth, but it’s the most transactional mouth-to-mouth kiss I’ve ever had. It was nice, and like, sensual, but it was very quick, four seconds max — not a peck, but a short kiss.

James walked me out to the cab, and I was just like, “Fuck!” because I wanted to take the train and keep the fifty bucks. We kissed one more time, but it was the same kind of little goodbye kiss. James asked me when I was leaving the city to go back to school, and I asked him when he’d be back in the city again. He kept saying, “So, I hope you want to see me again,” and I was like, “Yeah, no, I think I do want to meet up again.” He said, “I hope you’re not just saying that but also like, of course, you might just be saying that, because you’re not going to be saying anything else to me right now,” and laughed. I got in the cab, had it take me two blocks to the train, then took the train to this party my friend was throwing.

I ended up dancing with this gorgeous guy at this club, and giving him my number. We were making out on the dance floor for like ever. The time that I spent with James was pretty much the first real date I’ve ever been on, but I feel like it was almost belittled, because I went straight from my date with him, which was a weird experience in a lot of ways, to these very twenty-one-year old things. The date was fun and exciting, but is it more fun and exciting than these very organic things that happened?

James texted me later that night when I was at this party, asking me how it was. My phone died, so I didn’t answer him. I still haven’t answered him. I just can’t figure out if I should keep playing into this thing. It was far less glamorous than I imagined. I wound up with fifty dollars minus eight bucks for cab fare — around forty two dollars, which I spent yesterday and today on like food and beer. If he had given me eight hundred dollars when he gave me cab fare, then I absolutely would have gone up to his hotel room after. I really think I would have. I could definitely have sex with him. Even though it would be easy for me to just leave the bar with the money like I did this time, I would want to do something for him, to avoid feeling guilty about getting this large sum of money from this potentially sad man.

I feel like if I say goodbye to James now and never answer his text messages ever again then it’s pretty harmless. But, if I do meet him again, then it’s not harmless, because if I meet him again, I want to know exactly what’s happening. If like, there’s another weird moment where he cancels on shopping and wants to meet for drinks, will I do that? Will I say to him, “I need more to sleep with you because I’m not actually attracted to you and I need you pay me to make up for that”? It gets really messy.

I had it in my mind in such a TV show way, but James was just a very normal man. He didn’t have any particular game; he wasn’t particularly attractive; he wasn’t particularly nice to me; and he also wasn’t particularly good at this whole arrangement thing. I feel kind of bad about the fact that I didn’t like him, because he was a very nice guy and clearly did not get what was going on. I think if we go out again, he would take me to a nice restaurant and treat me well in that way because he paid for like, four whiskey sours at that hotel, which I’m sure were at least fourteen bucks a piece. But he’s definitely not just going to give me gifts; it’s silly to expect that he would. It’s just weird, because it is so romantic and the idea is that it’s not transactional — but this date was a strange in-between. If he had been much more forthcoming by like, telling me I was so amazing and that he wanted to spoil me, I think I would have been more apt to play into the fantasy as well.

I’m removed enough from romance and definitely a manipulative enough personality that it would be interesting and maybe not super damaging. I feel — and this could be a completely inflated sense — but I feel like I’m enough in control of what I want to do with my body and with my like “sexuality” that I won’t cross any personal lines. I’m sure I could be proved wrong very easily, but it was just really fun to be on this website where men who I could imagine marrying wanted me now, especially when I was still in school, where I’m so sex starved and feeling so ugly and small and shitty constantly. I know the attention I’ve gotten on SeekingArrangement is so artificial and has nothing to do with me as a person — it’s just me as this like, avatar. But it still felt really amazing — like, “Wow, it doesn’t matter if these guys are really creepy, it’s crazy that hundreds if not thousands of people have clicked on my profile.” It’s just validating.

In my own weird little threshold of checks and balances, I feel like having a shitty time with someone who’s our age hurts more, because it feels more like the problem is me.
With someone older from SeekingArrangement, it’s very easy to deflect onto the age difference as the problem or like, “Ugh, he’s a dirty old man.” When a boy at school is not super great to me, and I fuck him and it’s a weird time, it feels really awful and sad. I feel like this is pretty harmless. It feels very low stakes, what with the fake name, the fact that I don’t live in New York ful- time — and even if I ever do move to New York, my parents don’t live here — so it feels like this space where I can be young, and me, and figure out who I am, because it’s so anonymous.

In my dream world, I’ll end this time in New York and the corresponding dating experience having netted enough cash to not have to work on campus next term, to cover my booze, weed, and assorted other recreational drugs, and like, have a new pair of shoes and maybe a fur stole or small fur accessory that’s somewhat attainable. A new fur coat would be the real dream — but I don’t expect any of that to happen. Actually going through with this made me realize that, if I collect fifty bucks in cab fare each week — or, forty two dollars after I ride the cab for two blocks in Midtown — that’s still pretty okay. You know, that’s still grocery money.

Now I’m trying Tinder and seeing how that is. I’m going to try and make some Tinder dates this week. But even on Tinder though, I catch myself being like “This guy looks like we could go somewhere exciting together,” or like, “I don’t think I’m going to go on any fun dates with this dude.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Photo by Leslie Kalohi

1. Not her real name

2. Not his real name

3. Not his real real name

“It’s extraordinarily difficult to accept that you might be deeply statistically normal, and best advised just to do whatever most normal people in your situation have done in the past.”

Look, I know you’re upset. I know right before you went to bed last night you looked one last time out the window at the falling snow and thought to yourself, “It’s just going to keep snowing and it’s never going to stop.” I know you slept better than you have in months, maybe years, contented in the knowledge that the city would be buffeted by the winds and blanketed by the storm and then buried deep and forever. Buffeted, blanketed, and buried. And yet here you are, wide awake, uninterred, probably not even needing to put on gloves today, slowly realizing that not only did the weather fail to put an end to everything, you’re going to have to spend the rest of the day hearing people argue about who got it wrong any why. Even about this there will be thinkpieces and explainers. The storm that was supposed to bring you peace at last will be one more fucking stop on the endless local line of idiocy in which everyone shouts out into the void to try to convince themselves and others that what they have to say has meaning, they they really matter. Everything you thought you’d never have to worry about again is still there and now you’ve got the added inconvenience of having to cope with it all while the cacophony of self-appointed experts asserts that they would have done things differently and also you’re going to have to go through the day with damp socks, which is fully the worst. Listen to me: I know your agony. I share your pain. I too ache from the same deep disappointment that weighs so heavily on your head right now. I cannot tell you that everything will be all right, because we both know that that could never be true; as terrible as everything is today you can be pretty sure that tomorrow is going to be worse. What I will promise you is this: The end will come. All the anguish and torment through which you suffer each day will eventually be brought to a close. It’s just not going to be from a snowstorm. It’s going to be fire. That’s one of the few things the Bible actually gets right. Keep your chin up and muddle through. We’ll get there. It’s gonna be so hot.