Loft Life Residency Week #2
Musings on deli hot bars, movies I saw this week, and some treats at the end.
Anyone who has ever gone through a life-altering change has a relationship to their local hot food place: the sort of place where you can walk in on autopilot and leave without firing off too many neurons in the process. It’s a sad person’s lifeboat; you are guaranteed something nutritionally promising and hot, which is good for when you run out of friends to get dinner with and you live with too many people to feel like cooking in such a small kitchen. This could be a few things if you don’t live in New York for the deli hot bars: a Southern meat and three, the Chinese buffet at the mall, Ryan’s Steakhouse (wait - they went bankrupt), Golden Corral. All of these are places for those who do not have the capacity to think of what to cook or have the want to, but want to feel taken care of by the warmth. Finally, I’m home!
My fascination started with the deli hot bar from one of my college jobs. I worked as a receptionist at a law firm on 42nd street and the office was in one of these mega-capitalist-conglomerate buildings, which featured its own deli and hot bar on the first floor. That place kept me FED. Of course, they had a deli and grill but the hot bar was the fever dream. In the mornings, you could self-serve lox (don’t be fooled: real hot bar-heads know that they also have iced and cold sections), bagels and varying breakfast bread options (and you could request them toasted!), and several different kinds of cream cheese and other schmears. They also had oatmeal (rolled AND steel cut) with a million kinds of nuts and fruit toppings (I remember they also had a few different variations of honey specifically), yogurt bowls, seasonal fruits, scrambled eggs that were somehow still fluffy while being under a heat lamp, and so many kinds of breakfast meats (including kielbasa and Taylor ham/pork roll). I should also mention: this place was consistently packed and I wouldn’t risk going in if I knew I didn’t have at least 15 minutes to spare.
Now, lunch: I cannot emphasize enough how many different variations there were to this. For holidays or events there would be silly themes, like I recall around Fourth of July there was a build-your-own-burger and fry theme (with at least 3 kinds of non-beef burgers and a few hot dogs in the mix, fried chicken, and more than a few kinds of french fries so the office workers still felt like they could get an inkling of joy for the holiday they couldn’t take off for while their boss was guaranteed to be in Montauk) and Thanksgiving week with an abridged version of a traditional turkey dinner, but it would always be alongside what I would call their staples. Their staples that I can recall easily are as follows: lo mein (vegetable, shrimp, and sometimes chicken), fried rice, a daily rotation of Chinese dumplings, orange chicken, shrimp and broccoli, California rolls, tuna rolls, salmon rolls, white rice, brown rice, spaghetti, penne, an ambiguous “red sauce” , chicken parmigiana, eggplant parmigiana, chicken piccata, chana masala, chicken tikka masala, biryani, samosas, roasted seasonal vegetables, chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, and usually an after-thought fish option (usually baked tilapia or cod with lemon on top). The combinations you could craft - the way you could eat from all over without leaving the building! I haven’t worked there since 2020 and I can still recall all of the above, which isn’t including their separate salad bar.
My relationship to these Midtown hot bars began after I stopped having a meal plan and realized: “Wow, a place with hot food I don’t have to warm up in a microwave!” The hot bar at my job was perfect since they gave a discount for working in the building, but once I graduated college and had other jobs I divided my time at I moved this hot bar obsession to another place that’s more around town (and easier to lie about the weight at): The Whole Foods hot bar. I wish I could tell you I’m a better leftist than consuming at Whole Foods, but the insane appeal of it being so hyper-capitalized is that I can get the same items at any Whole Foods hot bar in America. I’m sure my overall curiosity stems from growing up in a food desert and having Walmart as our closest grocery store, but how a place can serve the exact same fresh food day after day and keep it at the exact mediocrity as the day prior, while knowing that even though it’s limp and been under a heat lamp for 2+ hours, it’s still a green vegetable, which you hypothetically need and should consume, is intriguing. If you ever come across me at a Whole Foods hot bar, I would like for you to only give me a head nod, which I will return, with the understanding that I am obviously not having a Good day. All that to say, I am full of mediocre vegetables and overcooked turmeric cod and afterthought-crisped rice.
I saw Urchin this week and usually movies about addiction piss me off; I rarely see addiction realistically portrayed without some sort of overly dramatic characterization or a put on erraticism, making it clear that someone is playing at an idea of an addict (bonus points of hatred: if the movie doubly portrays poverty with actors who obviously don’t know anyone outside their tax bracket). Fortunately, it was so good I remembered that if I relapse it will kill me and it will not be immediate: first, it will suck me dry of everything I have built without it and knock it over without any regard for how long or what it took to get it. After it’s done with that, it will make me forget how I endured any obstacles without it for so long, and will burrow out an easy spot for me to slip back into how careless and cowardly and selfish I used to be. It was so good I looked up a meeting afterward.
Something in the movie that I had to write here (no spoilers) is that there are a lot of moments where Mike (Frank Dillane) is right about to reach a new level of thought, structure, or breakthrough in his life and then the opposite character excuses themselves to be on the phone or take a call. God, it’s so heartbreaking!
Over the summer Johncarlo and I joked that we should eventually pool all of our money together to buy a house so that all of us can live together again. I have no money whatsoever for any sort of down payment at the moment, but the four of us have paid more seriousness to the idea of this. I do really consider myself married to these people; I’ve even called them my spouses before. I treat my commitment to them as such because I am forever devoted to all of us: working with them, growing with them, being there for them through every facet of life as collaborators and friends. I genuinely know these are people I was born to cross paths with and push through life together.
I have been thinking of this house I want to make this week. What it would look like, which neighborhood we’d live in, which floor we’d get. I think Johncarlo and Phil would take the first floor, Lily and I would take the second floor, and the basement and/or attic is our workspace. The backyard would be open play and I’m sure we could raise some sort of garden from it. I gotta start booking more commercial work for this to materialize, but I remembered: we are already living in it.
I had a dream last night. I actually had two dreams last night. In the first dream I was on a trip and alone somewhere in a tropical forest. I was exploring and I looked down to see a giant and sharp looking spider on my left forearm. I felt it start to pierce my skin and knew it was getting deeper in by the second. I realized that if I didn’t do anything about it that it would hurt me more, and I remembered that no one else was around to help me. This was my only way to save myself. I dug deep for the courage to pull it off me and I could feel it releasing from my body as I pulled it further off. I threw it to the ground and I slowly (?) walked away from it.
In the second dream I was asleep and someone I haven’t seen in a bit woke me up. They told me we were running late for something. I rushed to get dressed and got to the door to meet them, and then I woke up.
Should I get myself Final Draft or a banjo for Christmas?
I saw Die My Love this weekend and (also, no spoilers here) there’s a moment I keep thinking about. Actually, two. First, Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) does a lot of hands and knees crawling, which I’ve been doing a lot anyway: hands and knees. At a new meeting I went to this week I shared about how I crawled on my hands and knees to five years of sobriety last week. Hands and Knees. Hands and Knees. Crawling. I feel like a fucking baby; showing everyone how much work it’s taking me just to stand up and walk. How am I going to get anywhere like this?
Second thing in Die My Love: there’s a moment where Grace launches and crashes herself through a large glass door, and when it happened I thought, “I would feel so much better if I could do that.” To throw myself through something, feel all the immense and sharp pain, and release. All the tiny pieces of glass that would puncture and rip my skin apart, after failing to protect me in any real way, would make me bleed out, get stuck up in me where no one could find, and remind me that all this is really happening to me. That I really fell through glass. That I really decided to leap into what looked like reality on the other side. That none of it protected me or ever could. When it happened in the theater, I didn’t jump but instead exhaled and finally released my shoulders.
Few things to share:
1.) Lily made a vlog from Edinburgh and the link is below. Not only are they incredibly talented (!), but I cannot emphasize enough how much Edinburgh shifted my life:
2.) New Spotify playlist is below, featuring some songs that are helping move through a lot and some that I just remembered how much I love:
3.) If you’re in New York this week, go see Mikey Maus in Fantasmich! It’s at The Brick playing Wednesday - Saturday. My talented comrade Hannah Kallenbach is a force of nature and created one of my favorite shows I’ve seen all year. I saw it earlier this year but I’m going AGAIN! GO!!!! : https://www.bricktheater.com/event/mikey-maus-in-fantasmich-2/2025-11-06/