Tsk, Tsk, Tsk…
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The other night, I met up with the adorable Rachel Reisman for a drink.
I refer to the adorable Rachel Reisman as “the adorable Rachel Reisman” for reasons that cut to the heart of our acquaintance. The “Reisman,” while useful in distinguishing her from the many other Rachels out there, and, in her case, nicely alliterative, remains a reflexive part of her name in my mind because she is the younger sister of my camp friend Zack Reisman, and employing the Reisman connects her to him, like European aristocracy or a phantom limb.
The “adorable” part is because I knew her in adolescence, when the 3-year age difference we shared was a kind of yawning chasm that made it cute and fun for each of us to hang out with the other. If we met now, Rachel would simply be a very cool girl who lived in the hipper part of Park Slope and worked in film production, and I’d be forced to acknowledge that there is little difference between her 29 and my 32.But because we’d known each other when I was 14 and she was 11, and because of our connection through Zack, I knew and loved her like a little sister.
A week or so earlier, I’d bumped into Rachel on Smith Street, where she’d been sitting at brunch with a bespectacled boy who looked to be about her age (which, of course, meant about my age, too).He had an earnest rumpledness about him that screamed Brooklyn, and, from Rachel’s I’ll-tell-you-all-about-this-soon grin when we said our bump-in hellos, I figured they were newly dating.
So I was now sitting outside at the French place on my corner, ready to be told all about it. Only, Rachel was grimacing, not grinning.
“You remember that guy I was having brunch with?” she said, prompted by my, “How are you?”
I nodded, sensing from her harried tone this wasn’t the time to tell her I’d thought he was cute.
“It’s looking like he’s a total jerk.”
I raised an eyebrow, said, “Uh-oh,” and prepared to settle in to hear the whole story.
But first, the waitress arrived with our drinks. Rachel ordered a vodka gimlet. I ordered a coke. I was pretty sure I was pregnant, but still hadn’t taken a pregnancy test. But, I was both confident and paranoid enough to hold off on ordering anything alcoholic. As the waitress lowered our drinks to the table, I snuck a look to see if Rachel was sneaking a look at me.
She wasn’t. I chalked this up to the nature of our relationship – my soda would have set off the “pregnansense” in any friend made in adulthood. I myself could barely get over the fact that Rachel could legally drink.
But it was also possible that Rachel was too preoccupied to pay attention to my drink order. She was quite caught up in her love-life drama and eager to tell me the tale.
It seemed she met the Brooklyn boy in question through Friendster.
“Friendster,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the Web site that linked “friends” with other “friends” in some way you had to be younger and more single than I was to understand or take part in. One thing I did know: The Internet is a place to shop for anything but a mate.
“I know,” Rachel Reisman said, in total agreement. “But he really was a friend of friends – we had like five different bizarre-o high school, college, and post-college New York connections, so I figured I could ignore the cyberspace element.”
“Okay,” I said, still dubious.
“No, I’m serious, Eve,” she said. “We even had work people in common,” she added, explaining that he was a producer for “Tsk, Tsk, Tsk,” the consumer reports segment on the local news known mostly for the graphic that proceeded and ended its airing, which consisted of cartoon hands doing the fake carrot-peeling move universally accepted as code for a naughty, naughty. It was accompanied by the 888 number for the “Tsk, Tsk, Tsk” hotline.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound like I was giving her more credit. I still thought the Friendster thing was sketchy, but saw no point in making Rachel feel worse than she did. And so she continued with her story. Apparently, they had had three “amazing” dinner dates, including one, his treat, at Blue Ribbon, and after their fourth – a casual we’ve-fallen-into-a-couple-like-pattern movie at Cobble Hill Cinema – he had finally spent the night. They’d been having a day-after brunch when I’d bumped into them. All in all, it sounded promising.
“But get this,” Rachel said, leaning across the table. “I haven’t heard a word from him since!” It was what … a week ago, I was thinking when she clarified without my asking: “Two weeks and three days.”
“Yuck,” I said, appalled on her behalf. “What a slime-o.”
“I know,” she said, sipping her gimlet. “I mean, if he just wanted a casual hook-up, why put all that dating energy in? Why not just say, ‘I want a casual hook-up’? I probably would have been into it!”
As I comported myself in a series of sympathetic shrugs, nods, and face scrunches, Rachel’s cell phone began ringing. She had left it sitting on the table. Whether this was a function of her work (for which she tended to take a lot of phone calls), her recent predicament, or just something people younger than me did, I had no idea. But she looked at the caller’s number and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.”
From her tone of voice, I deduced it was a work call and turned my attention to the street. Instantly, I was confronted with a baffling sight. It was the Adorable Rachel’s Brooklyn Boy, right there on Smith Street, walking with his arm around another girl.
I tried to decide what if anything to say to Rachel – maybe this wasn’t the actual guy; I had, after all, only seen him once – but had little chance. My look of shocked bafflement had given it away and Rachel turned to see what had caught my eye.
“Oh my God!” she said, then hurriedly told whoever was on the line she’d have to call them back. “What a scumbag!” she said, once she’d hung up. Stunned, I nodded as the guy and his new girl faded from eyesight. Talk about a Tsk, Tsk, Tsk.
“What should I do, Eve?” Rachel asked me.
One solution presented itself. “You could always call the hotline.”
The Brooklyn Chronicles appears each Friday. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.