talking to strangers

m i c h a e l a r d a n

t a l k i n g t o

and other essays

s t r a n g e r s


and other essays

michael ardan

This is an unedited proof not intended for sale or to be quoted in review.

NEW YORK

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Ardan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or

reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer

who may quote brief passages in review.

Published by:

Grand Street Books

An imprint of Tribeca Publishing 154 Grand Street

New York, NY 10013

Author’s note:

The events described in these essays are true. Some

names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN MITCHELL

BOOK DESIGN BY HYPE&BOND

ISBN-13 : 978 -1456404 819

ISBN-10 : 1456404841

FIRST EDITION

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


For my parents;

and for Tad G.

“Your life would not make a good book.

Don’t even try.”

—Fran Lebowitz

happy endings

Sometime midway through my junior year of college I

went through a very short-lived “running phase,” dur-

ing which I would get up every morning at six o’clock

and go for a vigorous jog through the park. This lasted

for approximately two weeks, and by then “every

morning” had become “twice a week,” “six” had be-

come “eleven,” and “jog” had become “lie down in

the grass.” The point is I’m not so great at following

through with things.

This is probably why my parents paid no attention

when, three years later, I told them I had decided to

quit my job and move to New York City. There were

no big pep talks about embarking on my own in the

big city, nor were there any questions on their part

about whether I knew what I was getting myself into (I

didn’t) or if I had enough money saved up (not really),


or even if I knew where I was going to live once I got

there (nope). At first I was a little bummed that they

didn’t seem to be concerned at all with the fact that I

was making a huge, life-altering decision, let alone that

I was going to be moving halfway across the country,

until I realized that it wasn’t that they didn’t care; they

just didn’t believe it would ever actually happen.

I guess this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. At

this point I had been living back at home for a few

months after a summer internship I’d taken in Wash-

ington, D.C., didn’t lead to the exciting career in the

Capital that I’d expected, and in that time I had started

and subsequently not finished no less than ten home

improvement projects around my parents’ house. A

chest of drawers I had decided to strip and varnish had

been sitting for weeks with all but one drawer com-

pleted (to this day it sits unfinished in my parents’

bathroom, a constant reminder of my inadequacy to

anyone in need of a guest towel). A box of new tiles

for the kitchen was placed, unopened, on the dining

room table and then forgotten. Perhaps most glaringly,

an upstairs bedroom I’d decided to paint mint green

remained a work in progress after I took a break for

lunch and forgot to go back to complete the job.

“I think I’m going to rent out my friend Mark’s

apartment in Queens while he’s out of town next


month. At least until I can find a place of my own,” I

said to my parents over dinner one evening, as if to

prove to them that I was serious about this whole

moving thing.

“Uh huh,” my mom said. “Oh, how’s the paint job

upstairs coming?”

My dad’s reaction was more subtle, but equally im-

passive. “Have you seen my fingernail clippers?” he

replied.

To their credit, my parents have never exactly dis-

couraged my wild ideas. They always just kind of let

me do my own thing, even when they thought I was

being stupid (like when I called them from my fresh-

man dorm room to tell them I’d decided to double-

major in English Literature and Acting, or when I de-

cided to fly out to Los Angeles on a whim to audition

for The Bold and the Beautiful. If you’re wondering how

that turned out, let’s just say I am not on The Bold and

the Beautiful.). All in all, they’ve always been pretty cool

as far as moms and dads go.

The other thing about my parents is that they’re

really kind of polar opposites—she is bold and unfal-

tering while he is calm and cool and subdued—yet

they always seem to see eye-to-eye. As a child I didn’t

fully understand the dynamic of their marriage until


popular culture taught me about the intricate minutiae

of successful relationships. For instance, I remember

being ten years old and contemplating the totally illog-

ical pairing of Jessie Spano and A.C. Slater on Saved By

the Bell, one of my favorite childhood television shows.

On the surface, that relationship made no sense it all.

What could have made Jessie, the überfeminist

straight-arrow (unless, of course, you count her brief

and destructive addiction to caffeine pills) fall for Slat-

er, the misogynistic jock? Was it because he was the

so-called “bad boy?” Perhaps, but even at ten I could

tell that he was pretty vanilla as far as bad boys go.

Was it a purely physical attraction? Maybe—mind you,

this was the nineties, so no one seemed to notice or

care that he wore his hair in a Jheri curled mullet—but

a purely physical attraction can only get you so far,

right? Well, whatever the reason, these two opposites

managed to keep the love alive for four seasons, so

they clearly had something real there.

Now, for the record, my father is not a misogynist

and neither of my parents has a Jheri curl, but you get

the idea. They complimented each other, even when it

seemed like their personalities were made to clash.

And never were their differences and similarities more

evident to me than when it finally began to sink in that

for once I really wasn’t going to flake out on my plans.


I’m not sure when it fully registered, but at some

point after I’d bought my plane ticket to LaGuardia,

was fully packed, and had made arrangements to crash

on a friend’s couch in the city, my mother stopped

making not-so-subtle comments about my inability to

follow through with things and instead began making

not-so-subtle comments about how I was definitely

going to get murdered if I moved to New York.

“Someone got killed in that city on Law & Order

again last night,” she said on one occasion. “This time

it was with a hammer. Can you imagine? Getting beat-

en to death with a hammer?” I assumed this was her

way of saying, “I love you.”

My dad, on the other hand, took a different ap-

proach. One night, a few days before my flight, I

found him sitting out on the front porch drinking a

beer and taking in the silence of the little Kansas town

where he and my mother had lived for the past five

years.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Just sitting,” he said. “Want a beer?”

“Sure,” I said.

That was essentially the end of the conversation,

and for the next hour or so we sat together in relative

silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though; no words

were needed. We were simply a father and son drink-


ing a beer under a clear, starry Midwestern sky, neither

of us knowing when or if we would get to do this

again. In the moment, I remember having an over-

whelming feeling that things were changing. There was

a definite sense that something was inexplicably ending

and beginning all at once.

Later that night, I found myself lying in bed wide

awake at around one in the morning, my mind flooded

with thoughts of big changes and fresh starts and end-

ings and beginnings. Unable to fall asleep, I slipped

out of bed, grabbed some supplies from the storage

closet under the stairs, and put a fresh coat of mint

green paint on the walls of the upstairs bedroom.


the great

train robbery

For all new residents of New York City, there is a rite

of passage, and with that comes a moment when we

can at last say “I’m a real New Yorker.” For some, it’s

finally being able to navigate through the underground

labyrinth of the subway system. For others, it’s the

first time telling a tourist to please walk faster or get

the fuck out of the way. For me, it was when I got

mugged.

Actually, “got mugged” is kind of a misleading

term, and not entirely accurate. I wasn’t held up and

gunpoint, and there was no knife fight or anything

wacky like that. In fact, the events leading up to the

crime happened like this: it was a hot Friday afternoon

in May, and I had just finished a grueling week at my

first real New York job (more on that later). As I made

my way down to the Lincoln Center subway station, I


A memoir. Kind of.

Michael Ardan is a writer, performer, and play-wright. He has frequently appeared onstage at the D-Lounge in Manhattan’s Union Square and at various dive bars around New York City. Follow him on twitter @michaelardan. www.michaelardan.com

COVER DESIGN BY HYPE&BOND COVER PHOGRPAPH BY STEPHEN MITCHELL AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER VASILJEV

MEMOIR/HUMOR

Whether he’s being berated on the phone while working as a telemarketer, getting robbed by a friendly mugger on the subway, or bombing onstage performing a one-man show, Michael Ardan knows the risks of talking to strangers. But he also knows that life is all about taking risks. In his first col-lection of personal essays and pop culture anecdotes, Michael takes on a familiar subject—moving from small town America to the big city—and turns it into a sweet, funny, and surprisingly original story of the adventures of a young man searching for new experiences and meaningful personal rela-tionships in an increasingly disjointed world.

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2013

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