guest post 9

More from Kep:

Okay, Nina and I talked tonight and here’s the scoop: she wants me to continue for a little while longer, so bear with us here. She wants me to say something reassuring, ‘cause the emails are pretty freaky concerned. So: she is healthy, wealthy and wise. Okay, one and a half out of the three are for real.

After all is said and done, I agreed that she can “out” me, but in the meantime, quit asking her who I am. She wont tell and neither will I. If you approach me and ask: is it you? I’ll say: of course not, I swear! So don’t ask. I prefer it this way and so does she.

Listen, if you’re a good friend of hers, it’s a good time to send your kids over so that she can feast on their awesome grins. She told me today that she was sitting at a table tonight watching three little tikes wolf down food and she felt the world was a good place again. If you don't have kids, then go buy her some diamonds or pearls or something (see Nina: I look out for you!). Whatever you do, don’t pay much heed to me. I’m just the blogger de jour. There’s a real person behind Ocean, and it ain’t me.

guest post 8

More from Kep:

I had lunch with Nina last month, just before she left for Europe. I should have taken a picture of it, because I find her lunch habits so irritating that it’s time to shame and humiliate her in public. Nina – you knew this was coming!

You ask her out to lunch and right away she says: fine, but it has to be at a place that has good coffee.

So I am rackin’ my brains: what’s close to campus, has good food and good coffee? I give up. You pick, I tell her. So we wind up not at all close to campus, at a place that has no food to speak of (“oh, I guess they ran out,” says ms. charmer herself), and I have to watch her slurp milky caffeine, all hour long. I mean, how long can you work a cup of coffee, for God’s sake.

I noted that she carries with her chewing gum which is good. Friends, if you drink milky coffee, do remember that the combo gives a person terrible halitosis. Try riding in the front seat with someone who insists on swinging by Starbucks drive-up and then orders some latte or cappuccino and neglects to pop a spearmint baby into the mouth. Crank open the windows!

But about the lunch. I asked Nina if she thinks it’s healthy living to crunch a bar, drink coffee and then devour a pear back in the car (did anyone besides me ever get her lecture about healthy living? I know what I am doing wrong, damn it. It’s the doing it wrong that’s the problem, not my lack of knowledge about it!) and she ticks it off on her little Polish fingers: protein, produce, grains.

All the women I have ever lived with did lunch basically around rabbit food. There were piles of greens, mixed with more greens, with an occasional orange carrot or red radish thrown in (talk about fetid breath! Do not smooch after a radish; just write the day off for intimacy; your partner will understand and be grateful, believe me). And when I was in college, all the women would band together around lunchtime and do yogurt. Yogurt. Pop the lid, dig in the spoon and you’re done in 25 seconds. I defy anyone to take longer than that over a yogurt.

So fine. Protein, produce, grains. My asiago roast beef sandwich (roast beef, smoked cheddar, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and creamy horseradish sauce, on an asiago cheese demi) happens to have the same. We swung by Panera on the way back and Nina did one of those fake hit her hand on her head routines, with an “oh yeah, I forgot they had good coffee here!” as I rushed through my prize meal in the five minutes we had left for our break.

guest post 7

More from Kep:

I was sitting around trying to get work done while watching the Tony Awards last night – don’t ask, don’t ask, I do not know why – when I get a “you got mail” on my computer. It was an email from Nina.

You are alive! I wanted to shout, but it was email and so I just kept quiet.

She wrote the following (edited by me for reasons of readability here):

Kep, thank you. (This is good, I thought, she’s not firing me. She is saying thanks.)

… can I tell you this: the language of your posts is at times is a bit …colloquial. You never talk like that when you and I connect. Be yourself. (Oh God, I hate it when people say that to me. What does it mean to be not yourself? If I am a certain way, I am myself, Nina, shut up!)

I was surprised that you had to resort to that bean-up-the-nose story. You do not have to write about me, but if you do and you are short on material, ask me. I’ll give you some pointers. (Hey, you have given me years’ worth of material! No worry there. Simmer down, I have stuff on you!)

But really, you're terrific, thank you. I have had nothing but positive emails about you. (So why didn’t you share them with me? Your box is littered with precious little notes, and me, I am sitting here in my wicker chair wanting someone to say: you are an okay human being. Do not hold back on the praise for shit’s sake. Oh, I don’t care if the rule is that I keep curse words out. So kill me for saying shit on the blog. Oh fine, I’ll try to do better tomorrow. Okay, Nina, send me the next message – I can take it!)