This is a re-recording of the reading I did at the Yale Writers’ Workshop 2024. The opening paragraph is designed to be performed as much as read, so I selected these 350 words to read aloud. You can listen to me read it as it’s intended to be read.
Birthplace at Tiffany’s
Probably everyone has had the experience of walking around and catching sight of an amazing-looking person out of the corner of their eye. The kind that you look at and immediately think, “My God, she’s gorgeous.” So beautiful that your mind immediately begins to wonder what her life must be like to be blessed with that beauty and vitality and smile. You wonder what her boyfriend or husband and cabana boy is like, and if she drives an equally-sexy sports car and lives in an incredible house or has a limo drive her around her beach house on the Côte d’Azur and–well, at least my mind shoots through all that in about two or three seconds of pure envy and desire and wishing that maybe someday I could be even a sliver of that.
Then you realize that you were actually seeing your own reflection in a storefront window. I hope those few seconds make you think, “Wow, I’m not half bad!”
I think, “Oh. It’s me. I already know how boring her life is.”
While Elle was holding me in my unbeknownst captivity, as my legs complained ever-so-slightly less and less, she and I slowly expanded our walks. They went from only inside Central Park and grew into some that went into midtown. Elle actually enjoys window shopping, whereas if I set off to shop, I’m hunting for prey. One of her favorite places to shop without buying (seriously, how does she even do that?) is Tiffany’s.
She doesn’t mind loitering there since the big ol’ rock on her finger is unmistakably a Tiffany signature collection, so she’s got Fifth Avenue street cred, but every time I try to give her a ribbing about it being so heavy it weighs her down, she reminds me that twenty-six grand was the cheapest one in the entire pavé collection. If there had been a more entry-level one, she would have entered on that level instead.
Of course, I was just giving her a hard time because I knew I wouldn’t even be shopping for a ring inside a Cracker Jack box anymore.
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