\t\t\t\t4:28 AM Thursday, October 13, 2011
\nReservation for Cesca. Easy. I had some idea that the place was booked
\nsolid for years. Maybe the fad has died down. The fad of the old phone
\nbooths. Will I even remember where they were? The interior must be
\nunrecognizable by now. I remember checking in there pre-2000, asking if I
\ncould use the payphones I once used like an addict. The guy at the
\ndoor said the payphones were there but that “they don’t want nobody usin’
\n’em.” Those were the Parc Lincoln phone booths, those portals of yore,
\nthose vacuums of destiny. They are certainly gone, but will I remember
\nwhere they used to be? At what table, at what bottle of wine? That grubby
\nlobby now gone, even the address is changed from 166 to 164, West 75th
\nStreet. This is as close as I might ever get to Room 317 ever again, but
\n40 or 50 feet away, 3 flights down. I had a notion that the place was
\ncrazy expensive, but it seems not to be. Though I’ve been contemplating
\nPer Se these past days, and even that seem less expensive to me
\nas the passing of currency eructates through my fingers and through my
\ncredit cards.<\/p>\n
If you don’t know what I am talking about, it’s simple:
\nCesca is a restaurant on the ground floor of the Parc Lincoln Hotel. the
\nParc Lincoln is the first place I lived in NYC in 1990 and 1991. The
\nParc Lincoln was a bona fide shit hole when I lived there. Cesca
\nis a fancy-esque place which subsumed the grubby lobby of that hotel. I
\nexpect to feel the past rustle through as the uppity hurly-burly of
\nculinary luxury rushes around me.<\/p>\n
I already know what I am getting: Cacciucco alla Toscana,
\nShrimp, Scallops, Clams, Mussels, Calamari, Octopus & Lobster Stock. $35
\nI can’t read half the shit on the menu but a seafood plate sounds safe and
\neasy. More seafood for me, I think, whilst at expensive places. That food
\njust goes down (and stays down) easierily.<\/p>\n
I wrote a poem about my ex, a poem in which I mention how I throw up a
\nlot, even now, depending on how
\nmy digestive serenity is disrupted.<\/p>\n
She woke up one day and announced she
\nwould make eggs and bacon. I had not the assertiveness of heart to tell
\nher that I can
\nnever eat food so soon after waking up. She marched to the kitchen,
\nthough, doing the work that women do, or the work that she thought women
\ndo. She cooked, and complained, complained about the frying pan and the
\nspatula and the eggs. She worked the work of women, and she put the eggs
\non a paper plate for me to eat — because that is what men do. We eat. I
\nate as much as I could (which was not much) and when she was not looking I
\nsnuck the rest of the eggs into the garbage can. As soon as she left I
\nthrew up into the toilet, because that is what boys do.<\/p>\n
holy crap it’s 5am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
4:28 AM Thursday, October 13, 2011 Reservation for Cesca. Easy. I had some idea that the place was booked solid for years. Maybe the fad has died down. The fad of the old phone booths. Will I even remember where they were? The interior must be unrecognizable by now. I remember checking in there pre-2000, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-cesca","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}