Just what you’ve been waiting for: a story that just about out-pervs “Hot Tween Nurses.” Speaking of waiting, this one made the rounds of some other blogs a short while ago, but we figured, hey, let’s try not to subject our readers to a full eyeball scrub more than once a month.
But now it’s May, so here goes. Some of us are fortunate to have lovely memories of growing-up milestones with Dad. Mine taught me to ride a bike, to drive, to whistle with a blade of grass. You may recall a father-daughter picnic, a father-daughter heart-to-heart.
And how about a Father-Daughter Purity Ball? This past spring brought us the fourth annual such event sponsored by Colorado Springs’ Generations of Light Ministries; according to Focus on the Family, other cities and organizations are following suit.
Call these balls “Virginity Pledge: The Musical.” Or “Pretty Baby,” without the actual auction. Dolled up in tiaras and pearls — or perhaps abstinence jewelry — the girls (some of whom look young enough to wish they were home watching “Dora the Explorer”) are escorted by their dads to this creepy cotillion that, as far as I can tell from the photos, includes some sort of interpretive dance, as well as “a memorable ceremony for daughters to pledge commitments to purity and their fathers to pledge commitments to protect their girls.”
Here’s daddy’s script: “I, [daughter’s name]’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.” OK, “high priest?” Also, I’m guessing the part about “I will pay for my daughter’s therapy in perpetuity” is in the fine print.
I mean, for one thing, I’d want my dad thinking hard, really hard, about my virginity even less than I’d want to think about my parents having sex.
Here’s what one 11-year-old (or adult publicist) for the Ministries had to say: “The moment I put my hand in my father’s, I felt like a princess. In those six precious hours, I believe I grew in relationship with my father more than I ever have. I knew it was my night, and I treasured every minute of it.” I probably don’t have to spell this out for you, but replace the word “father” with “boyfriend” (or, to be charitable, “new husband”) and … eeuw.
Want some more? “How can you measure the value of your eleven-year-old looking up into your eyes (as you clumsily learn the fox-trot together) with innocent, uncontainable joy, saying, ‘Daddy, I’m so excited!'” wrote a dad who has taken both of his daughters to the ball. “It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self-worth and identity. Think of it from their perspective: My daddy thinks I’m beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor. My daddy has taken time to be silly, and even made a fool of himself, learning how to dance. My daddy really loves me!” I don’t know, I’m pretty sure my dad got that same feeling from taking me out to the yard to play badminton.
Look, I’m not a parent yet, but I’ve been thinking about how to have a cool and convincing “Why I recommend that you wait to have sex” conversation with my daughter — and, I might add pointedly, my son — for years. And surely there’s some truth to the suggestion that the health of a girl’s relationship with her father (or father figure, if any) can have some effect on the health of her relationship with potential boyfriends. But … a dance? A public pledge? An, ahem, Georgia O’Keeffe-shaped canopy of white balloons? And where do the boys come in? Will these girls grow up thinking of them as predators from whom they need daddy’s protection, or as peers with whom they can set boundaries together? Better these parents should teach their princesses to throw balls instead of dress for them.
When I moved to Chicago, I assumed I would become a slightly different person.
Not in the wholehearted country-song sense, where crossing the county line might allow me to outrun myself. The reinvention I had in mind was more municipal than spiritual: perhaps a change in infrastructure might produce a corresponding improvement in character.
I was moving without my car, so I would naturally become someone who walked, biked and took the train more. Our apartment was about ten minutes from Lake Michigan; perhaps proximity alone would turn me into one of those women who began the day with a brisk swim. At the very least, I would develop strong opinions about beach sandwiches.
And I would be living within walking distance of a sickening number of farmers markets.
The life I pictured appeared in View-Master slides, each image crisp and complete, with all the inconvenient connective tissue outsourced.
Click. I’m on the train.
Click. I’m wheeling my bike off it with balletic ease, definitely not annoying my fellow commuters as I lug it down the stairs.
Click. I’m wearing a helmet that looks chic rather than orthopedic.
Click. The helmet — and any evidence that it has touched my hair — has disappeared. I am now carrying a gorgeous straw tote and wearing linen that has somehow survived public transit without acquiring a wrinkle.
Click. Farmers market stalls.
Click. Farmers market haul.
Click. A thrown-together dinner party on the rooftop of my building for all my neighbors. Yes, it overlooks a nest of alleyways, and no, management does not like people going up there, and no, I don’t know all my neighbors by name or even sight yet. But I have somehow assembled enough glittering people and enough secondhand objects — a woven rug, cushions, low tables, an impossible number of candles — that it feels like a tiny seventh-floor pop-up restaurant.
In my imagination, even the building superintendent has been cast. He arrives to break up the party with the energy of the businessman who plans to level the summer camp until he witnesses the final talent-show number. Then he takes a bite of the olive oil cake I have made for dessert. He softens. “Maybe we should do this more often,” he says.
Click. Community.
What I had not pictured was shopping.
In the View-Master version, the market haul arrived already edited. There were no prices to compare, no heavy bags to carry home, no stalls selling six unrelated things I suddenly believed might change my life. I would wander in with my perfectly sized tote, allow whatever charmed me to determine dinner and wait for the ingredients to organize themselves.
Later, when someone praised the meal, I would demur in the manner of women for whom this sort of thing came naturally.
“Oh, this?” I would say. “Just something I threw together.”
Little did I know.
I was a farmers market failure.
This remained true for an embarrassingly long time — including several years when I was already being paid to write about food. I knew how to want everything at a farmers market. I simply did not know how to shop at one.
The clearest evidence came one late-summer afternoon, when several weeks of bad weather produced a scheduling anomaly: two neighborhood farmers markets on the same day. The vendors posted flyers and made an occasion of it.
I decided I would, too.
The first occupied a roped-off parking lot beside an elementary school. I left home with $45 in cash—which felt ample, even indulgent—and one of the crinkly blue totes I had picked up on our last trip to the suburban IKEA.
The day was sticky enough that the plastic adhered to my bare shoulder. Every few minutes, I peeled it from my skin and transferred it to the other side, where it promptly attached itself again. The chic tote from the View-Master apparently had another engagement.
Everyone at the market seemed either to have a distinct plan or to be genuinely content wandering. A mother steered a stroller while consulting a list. A white-haired man in a Tommy Bahama shirt amiably haggled two dollars off his peaches. Another man had a shallot tattooed on his forearm, suggesting either a career behind the line or an allium devotion I could not hope to match.
I wanted to resemble the relaxed browsers who paused over a melon because its scent had summoned them. In fact, I am much more comfortable with a list. I hadn’t learned yet that I was a Type A person masquerading as Type B. The disguise began to fray almost immediately.
I completed one slow circuit, attempting to look discerning. Nearby, a woman with timeless preschool-teacher energy played the accordion for a ring of toddlers as shoppers crowded around nearly white ears of sweet corn. Then I noticed things were disappearing behind me. Baskets I had paused over were emptier when I returned. Someone bought the last loaf of a bread I had not yet decided whether I wanted.
This sent me into a faster orbit.
The accordion sounded louder.
To steady myself, I bought a $12 arancini from a stall that accepted only cards. Because I had designated the cash as my farmers market budget, the card purchase belonged to a parallel economy; by this logic, my $45 remained intact. Arancini in hand, I passed a booth lined with turquoise jewelry, Coca-Cola merchandise and approximately 40 embroidered denim vests. It looked as though the vendor had raided a secret convention of 1990s elementary-school teachers and persuaded them to turn in their uniforms.
I chose two: one ridged and heavy, its skin receding from burgundy into a deep, almost plum color; the other a cheerful red beefsteak. They were fat and beautiful and cost about $8. A woman carrying two heirloom tomatoes could still plausibly claim to be shopping for dinner. I was back on course.
The plan splintered almost immediately. I ping-ponged from soft cheeses to eggs and squash, then past a gelato cart and a table crowded with jams, pepper jellies and a milk carton filled with VHS tapes.
Finally, I arrived at the pastry stall.
It was run by a man in his early 40s with a single gold hoop and a tight gray bun. I had never before described a man bun as severe, but no other word will do. He was arguing with another vendor in the unmistakable register of people with history. “You’re always like this,” one of them said. “I’m not sure why we’re even doing this again.”
I studied the pastries while pretending not to listen: tea-infused buns knotted with candied citrus, laminated pastry layered with spiced cream cheese, craggy oat muffins dotted with boysenberry preserves. I waited for a lull. I misjudged it.
There was no visible menu, so I began, “Excuse me, how much—” just as the baker turned toward the other vendor. “Do you remember last August?” he demanded.
There was an awkward two-second collision. Then he looked at me.
“Prices are marked,” he hissed.
They were not.
I could have walked away. Unfortunately, I have always struggled with disappointing authority figures: professors, bosses, priests, parents — and, apparently, severe-bunned bakers. I pointed to two oat muffins.
“For breakfast,” I told myself.
They were $7.50 each. I wanted them, though not $15 worth of them, but by then “Well, actually…” was beyond me. I paid and tucked them beside the tomatoes.
The bag remained almost offensively empty. For $23 in cash, it contained four objects, all of which now had to be protected from one another. Still, I had just over $20 left. The arancini did not count. The muffins were breakfast. Dinner remained possible.
I could turn this around.
I just needed to go to the second market.
It turned out to be both prettier and worse.
The vendors occupied a tree- and bench-lined pedestrian stretch that I once overheard two teenagers in airbrushed wolf T-shirts nominate as the neighborhood’s most romantic place to smoke a joint. They may have been right about the romance. Unfortunately, everyone else had arrived before me.
By then, the baskets had been picked over. The best things had departed in the totes of people who knew what they were doing. I walked one more circuit, attempting to let the remaining produce speak to me.
I bought a jar of blackberry jam because it sounded good.
Then, on the way home, I stopped at the corner store and spent the rest of my cash on a frozen pizza.
Back at the apartment, I unpacked. Everything from the markets was beautiful, delicious or both. It simply did not add up to the thing I had gone there to find.
The only dinner in that day’s haul had come from the freezer aisle.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. It was not as though the open air of a farmers market was going to cure my base shopping instincts. Put me in a grocery store without a plan and I move through the aisles like a dog with the zoomies: produce, meat, back to produce, an abrupt dairy detour, then three aisles in reverse because I have remembered lemons.
For a long time, I assumed the solution was to become more instinctive. Food culture is inordinately fond of nonchalance: meals that are “almost too easy,” cakes that come together “in a snap.” It reminds me of how, recently, my younger sister — deep in the trials and tribulations of planning her wedding look — called me sounding breathless and almost conspiratorial. “Did you know pop stars wear hair extensions?”
Effortlessness, we agreed, generally has at least a little scaffolding underneath.
Perhaps the market shoppers I envied had simply made a few decisions before everything started charming them.
My reeducation began, as many good things do, with pasta.
I had rigatoni, olive oil and butter at home, which meant one good vegetable would be enough. Zucchini could be grated and cooked down until jammy, then loosened with pasta water; tomatoes could be sliced, salted and left to steep in olive oil. Cheese would be a bonus.
I wrote a two-item list: Good vegetables. Good cheese.
Then I took a beat and added: Pastries for morning.
I gave myself a five-purchase limit, leaving two slots open for surprise.
At the market, I moved differently. With dinner already half-imagined, I could pass the tomatoes and melons without treating each one as an alternate future I might regret abandoning. Instead, I gravitated toward a pile of thin-necked yellow summer squash. The day was in the low 70s, and a breeze was coming through our kitchen window; I decided I would not mind standing at the stove long enough to coax the squash toward sweet collapse. Because one caramelized vegetable is good and two are better, I added a white onion.
Then I followed my list to the cheese stall, where I found a soft chèvre, and to the baker (a different one, blessedly) for croissants and a hunk of cornbread, which I naturally counted as a single purchase. My wildcards were honey, for the vegetables and leftover cornbread, and basil, mostly for color and romance.
At home, I cooked the onion and grated squash in butter with a spoonful of honey, miso and red-pepper flakes until they became jammy. I crumbled some of the cornbread into olive oil and toasted it in a skillet. Then I added the rigatoni and enough pasta water to turn the vegetables velvety, finishing each bowl with the crisp crumbs, little pillows of chèvre and torn basil.
In a way, it really was something I had thrown together.
But the ingredients had not organized themselves.
I had given them somewhere to land.
How I shop the farmers market now
(Ashlie Stevens ) IKEA tote, and contents
The point was never to become less susceptible to the market’s charms. It was to stop asking every beautiful thing to become dinner. Here are five simple tips I keep in mind to let the market surprise me without leaving dinner to chance.
Even a well-stocked farmers market rarely behaves like a supermarket organized around a recipe’s demands. It offers what is there, in the quantity there is. A useful form already provides enough structure — a base, a binder, a vessel — that whatever looks best can find a place within it.
One tomato may not look like a grocery haul, but with bread, mayonnaise and an egg, it is dinner. A handful of mushrooms that seems meager in a paper bag can become the center of a frittata. A single bunch of greens can be folded into beans, piled onto toast or wilted through cheesy rice.
The form supplies the logic. The market supplies the surprise.
Start with the kitchen you already have
A farmers market is not a complete food system. It is exceptionally good at providing the vivid part of dinner — the ripe tomato, the thin-skinned squash, the bunch of herbs still cool from the morning — but it may not provide the starch, protein, fat, acid or seasoning required to turn those things into a meal.
That is what the kitchen at home is for.
Before I leave, I “reverse-shop” my fridge and pantry, taking stock of the support system already in place: pasta or rice, bread or tortillas, eggs, tinned fish, tender white beans; butter, olive oil, yogurt, vinegar and whatever cheese is threatening to fossilize in the refrigerator.
I jot those ingredients at the bottom of my market list. Seeing eggs, rice, yogurt in writing makes it easier to recognize what a bunch of greens or a basket of cucumbers could become—and easier to pivot when the ingredient I imagined isn’t there.
The market ingredient does not need to do everything. It only needs to be good.
Set a limit, but leave room for surprise
A rigid list can make a farmers market feel like a slightly understocked supermarket. I have better luck shopping for roles rather than exact ingredients: Good vegetables, good cheese, pastries for morning.
Perhaps the squash looks better than the zucchini. Perhaps the cheese is a bloomy little wheel rather than chèvre. The role remains useful even when the ingredient changes.
Then I decide roughly how many purchases I want to make. Three items may be plenty for tartines; a big, maximalist salad could happily accommodate eight or ten. The number is not sacred. It simply gives me a stopping point before I begin believing every peach, pickle and pastry belongs to the plan. When necessary, I set a spending limit, too. Other weeks, a predetermined number of decisions is enough.
I also leave room for wildcards. They might improve dinner—herbs, honey, good bread, something pickled—or have nothing to do with it: flowers, jam, a spice blend, a VHS tape, an embroidered denim vest.
Impulse is part of the pleasure. It simply does better with a little containment.
This also preserves the culinary reason for the limit without overpronouncing it: farmers market ingredients are usually best when they remain recognizable. You don’t need to cram every beautiful thing into the same dinner merely because it came home in the same tote.
Let one excellent thing be enough
On that note, a successful trip does not require a photogenic avalanche of produce.
One excellent vegetable can be cooked down with butter and tangled through pasta. One tomato can be grated onto toast. A small bundle of herbs can sharpen a bowl of rice and beans. A few peaches can become dinner with cheese, bread and something salty.
The smaller the minimum, the less likely you are to buy six unrelated ingredients in the hope that abundance will eventually explain itself.
Let the market be incomplete
Sometimes the stalls are picked over. Sometimes the beautiful thing costs more than you want to spend. Sometimes the market is rich in soap, flowers and decorative squash but not in dinner. Pivot to another generous form. Stop at the supermarket for eggs or bread. Buy one jar of good jam for the pantry and go home.
And when the entire enterprise has ceased to sound fun, there is always frozen pizza.
Dinner should not be held hostage by the farmers market.
This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. It is the first half of this two-part farmers market special. Next week, I’ll be back with five flexible recipes to keep in your pocket for market day—including the jammy squash pasta with chèvre and cornbread crumbs that started this whole reeducation. There will be options for tomatoes, greens, fruit and the miscellaneous beautiful thing you bought before deciding what it was for. Subscribe here to have it sent straight to your inbox.
“I love bacon and chicharrónes, but I could never eat pork uterus,” I confess, wincing at our 60” Insignia television screen.
“Foot soup doesn’t sound great, either,” my mother replies, squeamishly shaking her head. “But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”
And I have. As a finicky eater who happens to be queer, Black and disabled, I wouldn’t touch durian, duck tongues or most of the basket items on the Food Network TV show, “Chopped.” Yet my family has been watching it faithfully for nearly two decades.
The reality competition features four chefs who transform baskets of mystery items into an appetizer, entrée or a dessert. Round by round, one contestant is eliminated, or “chopped,” until a single winner emerges and is awarded $10,000. The foods are extreme and run the gamut, from silkworm pupa to a whole goat head.
In our Valley Stream, Long Island home, my youthful 80-year-old, African American mother and I — her Gen X son and facial clone — comment on each episode like armchair judges.
“Greg’s dish really looks appetizing,” Mom says, holding a bag of sea-salt Popcorner chips, “but he forgot a basket item!”
“Uh-oh,” I reply, extracting a Ritz cracker from its sleeve. “You know what that means?”
“He’s getting chopped,” we sing in unison, laughing.
My 92-year-old West Indian father, a US Army veteran with Alzheimer’s-related dementia who once did half of the cooking, now observes quietly. Though, we do pepper him with questions to keep him engaged.
His responses, while brief, are as meaningful as the on-screen action — more so, even, because every moment he can respond to us is a precious one. The few words he pieces together help anchor us the way they did before dementia transformed our lives.
My mother, younger brother — who watches when he’s not busy bartending — and I share caregiving duties for my father, who requires round-the-clock care. Mom handles the daytime with help from an aide, while Jeff and I split the nighttime, when Dad restlessly roams the house. “Chopped” helps fill the downtime between chores, meals and other primetime events.
I began following the series in 2009, because of a crush on Ted Allen from his days on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” (He seems genuine, knowledgeable, and funny: an irresistible combination for me.) And though his passion is food — and mine is scrutinizing it skeptically — I forgive him, because the show has become a minor obsession.
When I introduced it to my parents in 2010, they thought I had lost my mind.
“You, the picky eater, watching anything to do with food?” my mother asked.
“Yeah. It’s the creativity. I really enjoy seeing what they make out of the funky basket items they get. It reminds me of my art-school days. And Ted is so much fun!”
“And who is this Ted person?” my then-well father inquired.
“Ted’s the host — and the cutest dork!”
The program has been our family ritual over the years, especially now, as we weather the havoc dementia continues to wreak on our lives. Its reality format allows for perfect projection and escapism: no coordinating specialists and home care agencies, certainly no paternal tantrums. For the hour the show airs, we leave our stresses behind and focus on enjoying each other’s company.
We also love catching the cooking tournaments, from “Alton’s Maniacal Baskets,” where quirky foods are chosen by superstar cook and presenter Alton Brown, to “Name Your Price,” where the chefs are given three products and must outbid each other for a fourth. My personal favorite is the “Military Salute” challenge, with the enlisted competitors hailing from the US Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army. In the finale, the officers team up against the judges, illustrating the power of working together, like our family.
Seventeen years of watching “Chopped” has left its mark on our nuclear unit: Mom and Jeff are still finding new ways to elevate hot dogs — Dad’s current culinary obsession — most recently mincing and serving them in a spaghetti bolognese. And I’m still persnickety but exposure to so many extreme foods has broadened my palate. I’ll always prefer Mom’s barbecued chicken, fried chicken and French fries, but I have branched out, trying an array of new, relatively tamer foods, ranging from albacore tuna to zucchini.
The program’s most enduring lesson for us has been one of persistence. Much like a high-stakes competition, caregiving forces us to confront the insurmountable daily. And we triumph over the chaos by staying present, flexible and focused on the tasks at hand, whatever they may be.
I’ve never referred to my mom’s dad as grandpa. Not grampa. And certainly not grandfather. To me, and everyone else in my family, he’s always been papa.
A lifelong Illinois farmer and lover of maintaining a stretch of land, big or small, papa must have gotten a kick out of me buying my own home in 2019, situated on a 3,615-square-foot lot in New Orleans and raised up just ever so on brick columns, holding on for dear life in the years of punishing weather it’s withstood since I became its steward.
Spending most of my formative summers attached to the heels of his boots as he puttered around in the various barns and sheds of his farm, flanked by walls of corn on two sides and soy beans and a crick (not creek) on the others, the smell of my papa is cellular to me. Good, warm, dark and healthy soil. Dutch Masters cigars. Motor oil, dispersed among the tractors, pickup truck and the red motorcycle he’d take me out on some afternoons. The smell of the breeze through the apple trees on a summer day. And Chiclets, a constant rattling in his front shirt pocket. This combination meant comfort and security to me, more so than the roof over my head, so it’s nice that, when he’s here, my own property as an adult can take on some of that sensory coziness, which makes a home feel more like a home than anything else.
I’ve always had a thing for smells. That weird Strawberry Shortcake doll that would burp its signature scent in your face when you squeezed its stomach. Scratch ‘N Sniff stickers that ran the gamut from traditional yum to secretly preferred yuck: Root beer, bubblegum, grass, wet dog. Throughout the years, my affections for my friends would be tied to their smells (Marlboro Reds, dirty jeans, sandalwood or CK One . . . um . . . fog machine). And my other closest family members, similar to my papa, all come with specific scents that map their presence in my home from room to room, front yard to back, so vividly. So significantly. I often find myself calling out the name of who the smell belongs to after they’ve passed by.
I’ll catch a whiff of my papa’s tractor-y cigar smell out back, by the tankless water heater.
“Hi, papa!”
I’ll walk from my bedroom to the kitchen, straight through a cloud of hairspray, Febreze and Barclay cigarettes.
“Hi, mom!”
A strong waft of cut cantaloupe.
“Hi, gramma!”
And, when I need it the most, a freshly washed flannel shirt comingled with the oddly pleasant aroma of uncooked meat.
“Daddy.”
Makes it easy to forget that none of these people have ever stepped a foot in my house. And never will. Because they’ve all been dead for years.
As someone who has always been fascinated with the paranormal, as far back as I can remember, I have always kind of assumed that, at some point or another, I would come in close contact with a ghost. I’ve certainly made myself an easy target for them.
My first dabbling with the paranormal took place in the living room of the previously mentioned farm in Illinois when, one sunny summer afternoon, my cousin Amy and I made contact with who knows what from the beyond via a Ouija Board she discovered in her attic — inarguably the most terrifying of places to chance upon such a thing.
(Ellen Denuto/Getty Images) Two young girls playing with a Ouija board
After asking it the standard sort of questions that we both suspected the other was moving the planchette to answer: “Does so and so like me back?” “Will I ever have a golden retriever like Brandon from ‘Punky Brewster?'” “Do I actually need to learn math?” I stepped up to crank the freakiness dial, establishing a burgeoning personality trait, and voiced the question: “What do you look like?”
“Mirror,” the board spelled out. And judging by my cousin’s face, she did not spell this out herself.
After staring into each other’s eyes for several very long seconds, I summoned the courage to get up from where I was seated, criss cross applesauce on the rug, to walk to the nearest mirror, which was in the hallway bathroom. Flicking on the light switch, because no way was I gonna do this in the dark, I padded apprehensively to the narrow mirror over the sink, knowing with everything in me that I was about to see the scariest thing I had ever, or would ever, encounter in my life. But it was just me in the reflection, and my mushroom hair.
I wanted more, though. I was already hooked on the concept of finding proof that there was something beyond death for all of us. That there was more to life than what could be seen, or even imagined.
As I grew older, starting in my teens, when I had my own money to spend on spooky pastimes and adventures, I read as many books as I could get my hands on that told tales of ghost sightings and haunted locations, making a mental note of places that I hoped to one day visit myself in my continued pursuit of paranormal confirmation, and I’ve made it to quite a few since, with plans to cross more off the list. And though nary a ghost has been sighted — yet — that doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten all the proof I’ve been looking for.
In 2012, I took my girlfriend at the time to stay at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts, celebrating our first (and only) Valentine’s Day together with plans to spend a romantic evening in what’s marketed as the most haunted room in the house, the John Morse room, the very room where Abby Borden was found dead, right next to the bed where we’d be sleeping.
(Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) A portrait of Lizzie Borden hangs inside the Lizzie Borden House.
I say “where we’d be sleeping” here, rather than “slept,” because no sleep was had that night, and not because romance activities kept us from our slumber.
After checking in, putting our stuff in the room and joining in on the pre-purchased tour of the house, the giggles and “this is so crazy” fun of the experience transitioned into earnest fright, especially once the sun went down. I remember walking up the creaky stairs of the house to our room and feeling like I was walking somewhere with high elevation. As the night wore on, I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach and, at the worse of it, was overtaken by the out-of-nowhere feeling of rage. Sitting on the bed and looking around the room while my girlfriend dozed off for a bit, I jumped out of my skin when I heard her voice after a long stretch of silence, telling me that she’d had a brief dream that someone was dragging her under the bed.
We fled late at night to stay at the house of a friend who lived nearby, returning the next morning for the included breakfast of Johnny Cakes shaped like axes. Talking to the only other couple who managed not to chicken out like we did, I’ll never forget the looks on their faces when they learned we’d left in the midnight hour. They’d heard footsteps that they’d assumed were ours walking up and down the stairs all night long.
To redeem myself from that experience, I stayed at a few more haunted locations and actually did manage to find sleep within.
In 2016, I took my wife at the time to, regretably, spend our 2nd wedding anniversary in a cottage on the grounds of The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana, said to be one of the most haunted locations in all of America. The cottage we stayed in, specifically, was said by our tour guide to be one of the most “active” spots on the grounds, thought to be a hangout for the ghosts of children who died on the property, using it as a playhouse just as they did when they were alive.
The guide told us that previous guests had reported toys packed in their luggage for their own children would be discovered misplaced and something seemed to have found a toy of sorts in our luggage as, on our first waking morning, the freshly charged battery on a certain something or other that we’d brought with us for the anniversary trip had gone dead in the night, and it wasn’t our doing, as much as I’d like to brag that it had been.
(wanderluster/Getty Images) Caretaker’s Cottage at Myrtles Plantation, built in 1796, is one of America’s most haunted places, Great River Road, St. Francisville, Louisiana.
Where many a ghost hunter has robbed themselves of a successful fact-finding mission by considering lack of a visual ghost sighting to be a bust, when seeking proof of the paranormal, I’ve been guilty of the same.
For all the eerie experiences I’ve had, I still find myself questioning if ghosts can possibly be real, even though I live alone yet, entering the house after being gone for a few hours, I’ll find it smelling exactly like the house I grew up in with my parents. Or, sitting down on my couch to watch TV at night, I’ll look over at the framed aerial photo of my gramma and papa’s farm hung on the wall, and, all of a sudden, the room will smell like their TV room, circa 1982.
I have to ask myself, how much proof is proof enough?
I’ve felt my heart stop, swearing I caught a glimpse of my long-dead cat saunter by, out of the corner of my eye. I’ve played with a handheld ghost detector at a Christmas party and been surprised by the shocked expressions on the faces of my friends, hearing it go off continuously when touched to the necklace around my neck, which belonged to my mom. And I’ve been playfully baffled to hear, time and time again, that no one else who’s taken the Graceland tour in Memphis, Tennessee thought, like I had, both times I’ve gone, that the kitchen area still smelled strongly like fried food.
The proof is there. And if this ends up being nothing more than a figment of my imagination, where’s the harm in choosing not to question it, if it gives me something I’ve been so painfully missing.
Getting older means learning that peace of mind is absolutely, 100% for sale. Or, at least for rent. When I rescued my dog, Ivy, I made a purchase, an investment. But in New York, everything seems to be temporary.
Hypervigilance is the name of the game when you have a reactive dog. It wouldn’t pose as much of a problem if she weren’t such a social being. She loves meeting new people and runs faster than any dog I’ve ever seen. To me, Ivy is a perfect dog. She cuddles next to me when I’m sick and sits on my chest when I cry. But when she sees another dog, everything changes: she snarls, barks loud enough to startle a city block, and lunges with so much force it takes all my strength to hold her back. In just one moment, she is reduced to an aggressive, rescue pit bull and nothing more.
Getting older means learning that peace of mind is absolutely, 100% for sale. Or, at least for rent.
I knew that moving to New York would be a challenge, but I didn’t think about how, with dog parks off the table, there is no off-leash space for her. And I thought, “I wonder if there’s something like Airbnb for yards.” So I googled that phrase, and Sniffspot came up. Their homepage reads, “Rent safe and private dog parks hosted by locals.” One of the locations was a 15-minute walk from my apartment, and for $15 an hour, Ivy could play and run without any risk. It wasn’t a huge space, but it was something.
The whole experience got me thinking about rental culture and privatization. Everything we need (privacy, calm, companionship, etc.) costs extra. The rise of the gig economy is well-documented. We rent bikes, dresses and chargers. We rent side gigs. We rent other people’s time to clean our homes, walk our dogs and run our errands.
Services like rentable yards and InstaCart highlight something deeper: the way city living often turns basic needs into things we have to schedule and pay for. Open space becomes a subscription. Saving time and carving out a little peace of mind for ourselves becomes a luxury.
Everything we need (privacy, calm, companionship, etc.) costs extra.
Take dog yoga and kitten therapy. Our love for animals runs so deep, and our need for their companionship is so strong, we’ll pay for it by the hour. These programs are especially exciting for people who can’t afford to have a pet full-time. Pat Apap, a graduate assistant at NYU, helped plan kitten therapy for grad student appreciation week. “This served as our mental health or wellness style event.” The process was fairly simple. “They were able to provide six kittens for two hours of ‘therapy’ sessions for students, and on top of that, they provided materials going over how to foster and adopt the kittens, so there was the opportunity for our community to support theirs.” Just a couple of phone calls and there they were, kittens for everyone’s enjoyment. Michelle Rifkin Mamaradlo owns The Party Pups in Staten Island. “ I do everything from baby parties to adults, to elderly homes, to employee parties.” Mamaradlo breeds cocker spaniels that live with her when they’re not “working.” Currently, she has eleven “champion trick-trained” dogs that can even ride skateboards if the party gets too dull. She says her business succeeds because of one universal truth: “ people love animals.”
It’s easy to laugh at pet culture until you realize this market didn’t emerge out of nowhere. The loneliness epidemic, combined with late-stage capitalism, means that anything can be rented. Who said that money can’t buy happiness? The desire for connection is so strong that, in the fallout of remote pandemic work, people are willing to pay just to work next to another person.
Olivia Bannerman, 27, used WeWork twice, but it didn’t stand out to her. She couldn’t find a coffee shop that fit her needs. Poor Wi-Fi, time limits, and a lack of seating are common issues she still encounters. I asked her if she had ever worked at a public library as an alternative, and she said that she “honestly hadn’t even considered that.” The one bonus of a paid work environment? Security. “ I felt like I could get up and go pee and just leave all my stuff . . . I wasn’t worried about theft or any weirdness.” Even businesses are renting offices now. Regus offers companies space “by the hour, day, or as long as you need,” according to its website. Lana Zolzak, an associate of Regus, told Salon that its flexibility is what sets it apart. “Some people don’t want to have to get a long-term place,” she says, and signing a lease doesn’t allow any wiggle room for exigent circumstances. Plus, when companies use Regus for their office, they deal with “bills, cleaning, and everything.” While Regus’ co-workspaces are more common among young people and start-ups, Zolzak says, established businesses are opting for office rental post-COVID. As remote work ends, people need a place to go, she adds.
It’s easy to laugh at pet culture until you realize this market didn’t emerge out of nowhere. The loneliness epidemic, combined with late-stage capitalism, means that anything can be rented.
I’ve seen a lot of talk online about the loss of “third spaces.” These are areas separate from home and work, including parks, libraries, coffee shops, bars, etc. Bannerman lives on the Upper West Side and has noticed a lack of third spaces. Every option has a catch: cafés close early, bars are solely focused on alcohol, and restaurants are expensive. She commented that the hostility of anti-homeless architecture and police presence has even made parks less enjoyable. She said, “I think it’s important to get out; you have new experiences, you learn new things about yourself. You develop friends, memories and connections. You get closer to your community, which can make your life fuller and richer.”
(Illustration by Salon / Annie Bennett / Dikas Studio) Ivy in relax mode
I think that renting has also soared because it’s been normalized by the unaffordability of ownership. ZipCar is more affordable than a car payment and a 12-month lease is a great option for those of us who can’t afford to buy a home. Having a pet is expensive, but an hour of dog yoga is cheaper. Renting used to be a phase. Now it’s a way of life.
David Adams, the founder of Sniffspot, spoke with me about the company’s immense growth over the last seven years. He said that their rise in popularity has been slow but steady. “It’s been a gradual process of learning that this is something people want.” As of June 2025, Sniffspot has over 30,000 hosts and almost one million guests.
The sites range from the U.S. to Australia, Canada, and even South Africa. Adams saw a gap in the market for his app because “people love making their dogs happy . . . and Sniffspot can be part of that.” He explains that dog parks are important but unpredictable. In addition to dogs like Ivy, who can be aggressive towards others, there are unknown diseases, people, and elements in a public park. When Adams lived in Seattle with his pets, he realized that all these factors disappeared with private land that he noticed was “otherwise not being used.” These days, in cities, especially, he argues, “dogs are bred to run free and that’s just not possible.”
Airbnb has simply changed the way we look at assets. Adams said that even though that company was his primary inspiration, he has also taken measures to ensure that Sniffspot doesn’t follow a similar path towards unfair practices that draw public criticism. For instance, the business model doesn’t lend itself to people buying property just to rent out. And since the sales are hourly, not nightly, hosts don’t make enough to rely on it. It’s a quieter, more sustainable kind of sharing economy, one where empty spaces serve a specific emotional need, not just economic opportunity.
Loving a dog like Ivy is a profound act of emotional labor. It requires you to be patient, calm, gentle and alert. It’s not that I haven’t tried to fix the behavior. After thousands of dollars in training, she’s able to happily interact with people in controlled spaces. But New York City is not controlled. I may have rescued her from a cramped pen in a city pound, but I brought her into a world that wasn’t designed for her. And I’m not sure it was designed for me either. Sniffspot is a great resource to have in my back pocket, but it’s not a catch-all solution. People say Ivy and I act alike and even look alike. I don’t know if that’s true, but we do have one thing in common: we’re both relying on rental culture just to get by.
There are two scenes in Jane Schoenbrun‘s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” that I hope will be among the first things to flash through my mind at the hour of my death, somewhere right after “oh sh*t,” and just before all of my dead pets and family members appear before me to take me back home.
In the first of these scenes, Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) runs through the woods at night, dressed only in a T-shirt and underwear, boobs bouncing and shoulder-length hair flowing side-to-side, in dreamy “final girl” form. Kris is a queer filmmaker taking on the task of reclaiming the slasher horror film-within-the-film, “Camp Miasma,” rebooting it for the queer community to no longer be appalled by. And she herself has, as of only recently, learned how to no longer be appalled by where her mind needs to travel in order to truly enjoy sex: villain-victim fantasies.
Lord, I’ve seen what you’ve done for others; please send me a beautiful woman who looks similar to these two characters, and please guide her to match my freak in the way that Kris and Billy match each other’s.
In the second scene that I hope to mentally revisit before it’s a wrap on principal photography for me on this mortal plane — seen at the very end of Schoenbrun’s latest film — Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) walks hand in hand with Kris through a dreamscape of pleasure and gore as the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard in my life plays: “Satan,” by Andy Shauf. Billy is the star of the original “Camp Miasma” that Kris is rebooting, and she’s just given Kris permission to be as weird as she needs to be in order to come.
The theatrical burden of faking an orgasm because you don’t feel allowed to get into the headspace you need to be in in order to have a real one is gone. That looming first common, boring day after a few weeks of new bliss is gone. The habit of saying “I love you” with the same ease and banality as “can I have a napkin” is gone. Just two women being down for whatever it takes, for however long it lasts, encouraging each other to let go.
Lord, I’ve seen what you’ve done for others; please send me a beautiful woman who looks similar to these two characters, and please guide her to be compatible with me in the way that Kris and Billy are compatible with each other so that I, too, may have someone to hold hands with while slowly walking to the gas station in my underpants to buy snacks, covered head to toe in blood.
(MUBI) Hannah Einbinder in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
Schoenbrun, who directed, wrote and produced 2021’s fantastic “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and then cemented their name as a visionary with the release of “I Saw the TV Glow” in 2024 — which they also wrote and directed — described the somewhat hard-to-describe “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” to The New York Times as such: “In its simplest form, this is kind of a movie about two women matching each other’s freak.”
There’s a flame in my heart that wasn’t there before watching this movie, and that’s as great as a review can get.
Schoenbrun’s third major full-length release has received mixed reviews from professional critics and reactions from casual cinema-goers along the lines of “what the hell is this?” And you know what? I wish them all well. Whether this movie is a meta take on the problematic slasher genre, a delivery system for Hannah Einbinder to showcase that she has the best butt ever, or yet another chance for Gillian Anderson to give queer women what they want: Gillian Anderson; all I know is that when the credits rolled on this film, I walked to the parking lot with a twitterpated grin on my face, drove home listening to “Satan” on repeat, and then, once inside, immediately reactivated my Hinge profile and updated it to read: Looking for someone to share dipping sauces with — a reference to a scene in which Billy treats Kris to a feast of KFC, which I’m sure no one in my surrounding area will get. But if someone does . . . wedding bells!
Having recently gone from being a married woman to someone afraid of love and marriage, now that I’ve felt how quickly that can turn to vapor, I didn’t think I’d ever feel what this film made me feel again. There’s a flame in my heart that wasn’t there before watching this movie, and that’s as great as a review can get.
(MUBI) Gillian Anderson in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
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In the song “Satan,” which I will never shut up about and am acting like I personally discovered now, even though it was released as a single by Andy Shauf in 2022 and is featured on the soundtrack for “Camp Miasma” (available for pre-order now via Waxwork Records), he sings:
Don’t watch yourself, watch the movie
This only happens for a little while
Because Satan is waiting
Satan is waiting with Halloween candy
And while reading those lyrics, this may not seem like a romantic song; but in the context of the scene in which it plays, it very much is. Hearing this song after watching this movie, I felt like I was in love, even though I currently have no one to love — and didn’t think I wanted to. But the feeling was better than love, because it was just mine. Something pure. Something I could tap into just myself, or choose to share, but wasn’t attached to the memory of any of the real-life ouchy stuff.
This only happens for a little while.
Admittedly a recovering serial monogamist, maybe that “for a little while” part is a new lesson for me. Maybe that part would be OK?
(MUBI) Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
As a divorced lesbian who lives alone with her dog in a southern state she doesn’t feel attached to, a mix of slim-pickins and general heartache has led me to feeling like maybe I’ll just never meet the right woman for me — and working from home doesn’t make the whole situation any easier, in terms of putting myself out there, if I’d even ever wanted to.
Watching “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” changed my tune, immediately, because it made me feel something I hadn’t felt for a long, long time: passion. And more so, the exciting possibility of passion for passion’s sake, without rushing to mold it into anything more, unless it proves itself to actually be something more, which only time can tell.
The true gift of a film like this — films in general, really — is that even though what you’re watching isn’t real, how it makes you feel is.
I will likely not encounter my very own Kris Williams or Billy Presley on a dating app. There is no Camp Miasma to autofill as my location on Hinge. But passion is waiting . . . with Halloween candy. And like Billy says to Kris in the film, “If it gets too real, you can always turn it off.” But I like the feeling of leaving it on, for now, just to see what the next scene may bring.
I made a Korean dosirak (lunchbox) for my father made up of many traditional sidedishes. Here's a list of them all, plus recipes for each if you want to recreate what I made.
Don’t get me wrong — I like unspoiled wilderness. I like my sky clear and blue and my city free of the thunder of cars and jackhammers. I’m no technocrat. But goddamit, who wouldn’t want a fully automatic, laser-guided, armor-piercing, self-replenishing personal sidearm?
Nice turn of phrase, huh? I finally memorized it one night, from one of the hoppers, as he stood in my bedroom, pointing his hand-cannon at another hopper, enumerating its many charms: “This is a laser-guided blah blah blah. Throw down your arms and lace your fingers behind your head, blah blah blah.” I’d heard the same dialog nearly every day that month, whenever the dimension-hoppers catapaulted into my home, shot it up, smashed my window, dived into the street, and chased one another through my poor little shtetl, wreaking havoc, maiming bystanders, and then gateing out to another poor dimension to carry on there.
Assholes.
It was all I could do to keep my house well-fed on sand to replace the windows. Much more hopper invasion and I was going to have to extrude its legs and babayaga to the beach. Why the hell was it always my house, anyway?
Don’t get me wrong — I like unspoiled wilderness. I like my sky clear and blue and my city free of the thunder of cars and jackhammers. I’m no technocrat. But goddamit, who wouldn’t want a fully automatic, laser-guided, armor-piercing, self-replenishing personal sidearm?
Nice turn of phrase, huh? I finally memorized it one night, from one of the hoppers, as he stood in my bedroom, pointing his hand-cannon at another hopper, enumerating its many charms: “This is a laser-guided blah blah blah. Throw down your arms and lace your fingers behind your head, blah blah blah.” I’d heard the same dialog nearly every day that month, whenever the dimension-hoppers catapaulted into my home, shot it up, smashed my window, dived into the street, and chased one another through my poor little shtetl, wreaking havoc, maiming bystanders, and then gateing out to another poor dimension to carry on there.
Assholes.
It was all I could do to keep my house well-fed on sand to replace the windows. Much more hopper invasion and I was going to have to extrude its legs and babayaga to the beach. Why the hell was it always my house, anyway?
A lot of people in my late father's hometown of Namhae, South Korea remembered him well. I got them together and made spicy pork and a few side dishes for lunch.
I headed to Namhae, my father's hometown and where I had spent a lot of time when I was young. I was visited by my old friend Ms. Im for a seaside fresh fish lunch.
This week on my podcast, I’m reading “The Weight of a Feather (The Weight of a Heart),” my short story in Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions, commissioned by J. Michael Straczynski.
Margaret came into my office, breaking my unproductive clicktrance. She looked sheepish. “I got given one of those robots that follows you around,” she said. She took a step, revealing the waist-high reinforced cardboard box. “Want to help unbox?
I stood up and unkinked my spine and hips and shoulders with a sound like wringing out a sheet of bubble-wrap. “Oof.”
“Come on, old fella,” she said. She handed me a box-cutter.
My Auntie in Yeosu taught me so many things about cooking and has been my role model for many years. She's always been there for me and my family so when I visited Yeosu I wanted to make her a special meal using local seafood.
After being away for years I revisited my hometown of Yeosu in South Korea. So much of what I love and remember is still there, including some of my family's favorite restaurants. And of course the traditional markets are all still there too!
This video is part two in my Real Korean Cooking Stories, a series of videos I filmed after finishing my first cookbook in 2015 when I traveled to Korea. This episode shows my visit to my friend Ji-hyun’s home, where we made a Hanwoo beef lunch together and enjoyed a wonderful time with her mom. […]
I traveled to Seoul and made kimchi for a potluck party with my readers! Here's how I did it, from buying ingredients and kitchenware in local markets to making fresh kimchi in my hotel room. Fun fun!
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