New York: The City of Lost Love

Fix, my first friend in this fine city, is moving to Texas, and while I will certainly visit, I shall miss her terribly. Something about her husband getting a job, and non-celebrity married people living together in the same state being a norm, or something. Anyway, now she's on a mission to visit her old haunts before she must pack up and go. So Fix, Nicola and I shlepped out to Queens to have one of the best dinners ever at Mezzo Mezzo. For appetizers, orange scallops and flaming cheese. Wine. Enormous, delicious entrees and baklava for a grand finale. Yum.

While we shoveled food into our mouths, Fix talked of New York as if she'd already left -- the way you talk about someone you knew once that you fleetingly thought might have been The One, but for whatever reason, left. We discussed how much this city can kick your ass on a day-to-day basis, but how it's impossible to leave. In Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell compared her relationship to the United Sates to one of a battered wife. She said, "He may knock me around from time to time but boy, he sure can dance." That's how I feel about this city that I call home, and will never leave for Texas -- no matter how cute the cowboys are.