Metropolitan Diary
Initiation
Dear Diary:
It was the early 2000s. I had been resisting my friends’ invitations to join them in a night of dancing at one of those only-in-New-York, late-night parties held in the kind of dark, crowded clubs that were tucked into quiet streets along the Hudson River at the time.
Intense, sweat-soaked, group experiences like that didn’t appeal to me.
At some point, I gave in and spent six hours one night dancing as hard as I possibly could. It was magic. I had found my tribe.
As the early spring morning broke over Manhattan, seven of us left the club together, footsore, sweaty, exhilarated and exhausted, and then settled in for breakfast at a nearby diner.
I felt like I had been initiated, let into the heavy rites of a secret fraternity. I was now one of those guys.
A world-wise waitress came to the table and scoped out the group.
“Oh, puppy!” she said. “Puppy! What happened to you? Did you get off the porch and play with the big dogs?”
I nodded.
“Don’t say a word,” she said. “I know just what you need.”
She took the other six orders and went to the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later, bringing me a mound of scrambled eggs, several strips of bacon, a toasted bagel and a big glass of cranberry juice.
It was best breakfast of my life.
— Gary Clinton
Tiramisu
Dear Diary:
He slid the oval dish toward us, a perfectly clean column of cream waiting at the edge of the plate, an arrow made of ladyfingers and mascarpone pointed directly at our hearts.
Befuddled, we looked at him, then at the bartender’s face which evolved from confusion to adoration.
“Here,” said the stranger I had been shoulder-to-shoulder with as we ate an Italian supper on a Saturday night in Carroll Gardens. He gestured toward his plate of tiramisu (well, our plate of tiramisu). “You try it.”
Just a few minutes before, I had gestured toward the plate with my eyes while craving it under my breath to my friend.
The two of us had shared a regretful, longing glance: We should have gotten dessert. Now, we were being offered the last bite of someone else’s.
I was almost afraid to ask the bartender for a spoon. Was this kind of sharing allowed?
Before I could think too hard, shiny silver spoons were resting on the counter, then caressed in our hands, then sinking into the custard with an Olympic diver’s grace, and then, satisfyingly, into our open mouths.
It turned out the owner’s father came into the place every morning and made the tiramisu by hand.
— Jordana Hope Bornstein
Tumbling
Dear Diary:
My husband and I were in New York to see “Good Night and Good Luck,” and I had gotten done up for the occasion: dress, hair, makeup, jewelry, a stunning but impractical white coat and an infrequently worn pair of kitten heels.
As we walked to the theater, the promise of spring was in the air, and I was feeling upbeat. I was gliding along. The next thing I knew, I was tumbling in slow motion onto the dirty pavement at Broadway and 44th Street.
My coat and my ego were a bit tarnished as my husband rushed to help me up. To my surprise, two young men also stopped to help.
As I turned to thank them, one of them smiled.
“Hon,” he said, “it was totally worth it! Those shoes are fabulous.”
— Suzanne Schneck
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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