1. Denial
Okay, so I'll make it to Jersey City by 9, then I'll take the Holland over to the Battery and will totally be back in Brooklyn by 10 ... traffic seems a little slow, but I'm sure it'll clear up.
2. Anger
What the fuck is this? The left lane is fucking closed? And who the fuck are all these people, anyway? Shouldn't they be at home? It's fucking 10 o'clock on a fucking Sunday and I've been fucking sitting here for twenty fucking minutes and for the sweet holy LOVE, what the FUCK is holding us up - IS THAT A FUCKING VESPA?
3. Bargaining
Maybe the Lincoln Tunnel will be better.
4. Depression
I'm never getting across this river. I'm never getting back to my home or my friends or my television. I'm never getting back to New York. I am stuck here. I am stuck here forever. But I don't care. I don't care about anything but sleep. Because I can't feel my feet. Or my soul.
5. Acceptance
Which means I'll fit right in.
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the five stages of new jersey
broken lizard
So a couple of years ago, Annie and I took a class on Michelangelo together called Michelangelo and The Something-or-Other. Or The Something-or-Other of Michelangelo. I couldn't tell you for sure - I didn't exactly take that much away from the class. Our professor was adorably Dutch and enviably well-educated, but his lectures were rambling and unfocused, punctuated with sudden bursts of rapid-fire Italian or dire pronouncements along the lines of "Michelangelo, he was a gay, you know."
I do remember a few things, though. I remember being warned about Albanians. I remember needing a great deal of Nicorette to make it through the day. I remember quite liking the Pietà .
And I remember this: LIZARD = DEATH. Which was written, just as you see here, on the chalkboard when we walked into class one day.
At that point in my life, I'd only known Annie for a matter of weeks. And yet, as soon as our professor began explaining to us exactly why the reptile subset in question was so tainted with mortal peril, I knew with absolute certainty that she was about to deliver a good, swift kick to the man's intellectual nads.
She did. And it was glorious.
But not so glorious by half as her most recent art-historical smack-down, which everyone should read because it is very smart and very funny and very apropos. Anything that combines Disneyworld, The Da Vinci Code, and unicorns is very much worth reading.
And you don't even have to sit through a three-hour lecture to do so.
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