I Like To Try To Do A

I Was Taught That Candles Are Like House Cats - Domesticated Versions Of Something Wild And Dangerous. There's No Way To Know How Much Of That Killer Instinct Lurks In The Darkness. I Used To Think The House-burning Paranoia Was The Result Of Some Upper-middle-class Fear Regarding The Potential Destruction Of A Half-million-dollar Westchester House The Size Of A Matchbox. But Then I Realized The Fear Stemmed From Something Far Less Complex: We're Not Used To Fire. Candles Are A Staple Of The Judaic Existence And, Like Many Suburban Residents Before Us, We're Pretty Bad Jews.

Are There Moments When I See Unrequited Crushes Or Ex-boyfriends Slow Dancing With Their Dates And Kind Of Want To Stab Myself In The Spleen With A Salad Fork? Yeah, Sure.

I Thought I Was Going To Write Fiction But I Fell Backwards Into Non-fiction. It Started When I Got Locked Out Of Two Apartments In One Day And I Told The Story To Some Friends, One Of Whom Worked In The 'village Voice' And Asked Me To Turn It Into An Essay.

I Wouldn't Want To Live In Berlin. It's Bombed Out And There's A Lot Of Techno.

You Know What They Say: 'why Sit At A Table That Doesn't Have Key Lime Pie On It If You Don't Have To?'