Sloane Crosley - I Was Told Thered Be Cake: Essays

I have changed the names of some individuals, and in some instances also modified or changed their identifying features, to preserve their anonymity. Except in the case of my family. Their names are their names just as my name is my name just as your name is your name. That is until someone comes along and changes it for a book of essays. In that instance, your name is my name. But not literally.

Also, in a couple of cases, composite characters have been created or timelines have been compressed. The goal was to maintain peoples privacy without damaging the integrity of the essays. The other goal was to capture people using the brush strokes I felt defined them best. Perhaps they would have chosen different strokes. They are, after all, what it takes to rule the world.

As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. Say someone pushes me onto the subway tracks. Or I get accidentally blown up. Or a woman with a headset and a baby carriage wheels over my big toe, backing me into some scaffolding, which shakes loose a lead pipe, which lands on my skull. What then? After the ambulance, the hospital, the funeral, the trays of cheese cubes on foil toothpicks

Back in the apartment I never should have left, the bed has gone unmade and the dishes unwashed. The day I get shot in a bodega (buying cigarettes, naturally) will in all likelihood be the day before laundry Sunday and the day after I decided to clean out my closet, got bored halfway through, and opted to watch sitcoms in my prom dress instead. I have pictured my loved ones coming to my apartment to collect my things and I have hoped that it would only be lived-in messybras drying on the shower curtain rod, muddy sneakers by the door. But that is never going to happen. My dust balls alone have a manifest destiny that drives them far beyond the ruffle of the same name.

I like to think that these hypothetical loved ones would persist in their devotion to dead me no matter what. They would literally be blinded by grief, too upset putting sweaters in boxes to notice that I hadnt dry-cleaned them in a year. That is, until one of them made his or her way to the kitchen.

Where are you going? my father would ask.

Packing up her bedrooms much too painful, my mother would tell him, choking back the tears. Im going to start on the kitchen.

This is the part I dread. This is the part where my mother would open the drawer beneath my sink only to discover my stash of plastic toy ponies. There are about seven of them in there. Correction: ones a Pegasus, blue with ice skates. The rest vary in size, texture, and realism. Some are covered in brown felt, some have rhinestone eyes. Some come with their own grooming brushes; others with the price sticker still on their haunches. If they arrived in plastic and cardboard packaging, they remain unopened as if they will appreciate like Star Wars figurines. Perhaps they are not the dirtiest of dirty secrets, but theyre about as high as one can get on the oddity scale without a ringer like toenail clippings.

Im not exactly sure how the ponies happened. Though I have an inkling: Can I get you anything? Ill say, getting up from a dinner table, Coffee, tea, a pony? People rarely laugh at this, especially if theyve heard it before. This partys supposed to be fun, a friend will say. Really? Ill respond, Will there be pony rides? Its a nervous tic and a cheap joke, cheapened further by the frequency with which I use it. For that same reason, its hard to weed out of my speechmost of the time I dont even realize Im saying it. There are little elements in a persons life, minor fibers that become unintentionally tangled with our personality. Sometimes its a patent phrase, sometimes its a perfume, sometimes its a wristwatch. For me, it is the constant referencing of ponies.

I dont even like ponies. If I made one of my throwaway equine requests and someone produced an actual pony, Juan Valdezstyle, I would run very fast in the other direction. During a few summers at camp, I rode a chronically dehydrated pony named Brandy who would jolt down without notice to lick the grass outside the corral and I would careen forward, my helmet tipping to cover my eyes. I do, however, like ponies in the abstract. Who doesnt? Its like those movies with animated insects. Sure, the baby cockroach seems cute with CGI eyelashes, but how would you feel about fifty of her real-life counterparts living in your oven? And thats precisely the manner in which the ponies clomped their way into my regular speech: abstractly. I have something for you, a guy will say on our first date. Is it a pony? No. Its usually a movie ticket or his cell phone number or a slobbery tongue kiss. But on our second date, if I ask again, Im pretty sure Im getting a pony.

And thus the pony drawer came to be. Its uncomfortable to admit, but almost every guy I have ever dated has unwittingly made a contribution to the stable. The retro pony from the 50s was from the most thoughtful guy I have ever known. The one with the glitter horseshoes was from a boy who would later turn out to be gay. The one with the rainbow haunches was from a pot dealer, and the one with the price tag stuck on the back was given to me by a narcissist who was so impressed with his gift he forgot to remove the sticker. Each one of them marks the beginning of a relationship. I dont mean to hint. Its not a hint, its a flat-out demand: I. Want. A. Pony. I think what happens is that young relationships are eager to build up a romantic repertoire of private jokes, especially in the city where theres not always a great how we met story behind every great love affair. People meet at bars, through mutual friends, on dating sites, or because they work in the same industry. Just once a guy asked me out between two express stops on the N train. We were holding the same pole and he said, I know this sounds crazy but would you like to go to a very public place and have a drink with me? I looked into his seemingly non-psycho-killing, rent-paying, Sunday Times subscribing eyes and said, Yes. Yes, I would. He never bought me a pony. But he didnt have to.