tomato, tomato
Tomatoes from my very first CSA. In Charlottesville, split with Emily.
In 2021, I moved to Brooklyn with pieces of a poetry manuscript and no immediate plans for gainful employment. At the time, I had been dating A for almost two years. I felt like if there was ever a time to pick up and move my entire life it would be at 25, and if it would be for a man it would be for this man.
A got a big time job in New York, as is expected of those who get advanced degrees in business. I had finished my (second) creative writing degree in 2020, and was restless from a year of staying mostly inside, dealing with a slew of health problems, and adjusting to my first real, non-academic, non-restaurant, non-farmer's market job. It was a hectic and unstable year. Between the surgeries and COVID, I felt more aware of my body than ever before and I was ready for a change in scenery. So in June, A and I packed up our small semi-basement apartment in Charlottesville and moved to the 43rd floor of a building in downtown Brooklyn.
But that first summer in New York was unbearably long. Every time I move somewhere new, Iām shocked by how the changes I feel most immediately occur at the molecular level: the mineral content of the water on my hair, the air quality on my chronic eczema, the pressure change in the elevators on my ears.
Despite the slow ebbing of the pandemic that summer, I didnāt go many places. It felt too hot, too unfamiliar, and most importantly: I felt ugly. I was ugly in my body--so fat and sweaty. On the subway, I constantly worried I was spilling out of my seat, invading the personal space of the person next to me. I was ugly in my clothing, which was hip, maybe even fashionable for Charlottesville, but way uncool for Brooklyn. And the most ugly and embarrassing thing about me was that it was clear I didnāt know where I was.
I have always taken pride in my above average ability to literally know where I am on a map. Thrown into this vertical city, I had little sense of which brownstones, which bike rack, which cash for gold sign I had passed before. I was constantly flipping and turning my phone to orient my internal compass when emerging from the underground, careful not to block the stairway by retreating behind a hydrant or tucking myself behind a particularly deep pilaster.
Every excursion tested my patience with myself. If I wanted to try some cool restaurant it was an introduction to a new subway line, a new neighborhood, a new cross section of streets. If I wanted to get some groceries to fill out our new apartmentās pantry, I had to scour the internet for a place close enough that I wouldn't over extend myself lugging things back, wander in, and hope they had what I was looking for. My hair curling wildly, sweaty and out of breath, I would ask the clerk if they had any zataar, hot pot seasoning, or gochujang.
In Virginia, I always fought off the dog days of summer with tomato sandwiches. K-pop blasted in my ears as I waded through the already dense air to get to the Water Street Parking Lot where I spent most of my Saturday mornings. I had to walk a lot of the time because ģ“ėŖØ had a set up that took longer than most of the other vendors. If I was scheduled to open, I had to leave my place well before the first bus of the day. On the days I was the later one in, I took the nearly entirely empty first bus. A stove with two burners, two tents, a table for displaying kimchi, a small eating area, a ticket rail, and a table for expo. If we got it done quickly enough and the bulgogi was cooking in the pan by 6:40am, I could go and do my rounds around the market. My route was the same every week, even the weeks I didnāt work: Susan and Marian, then Earl, Fran, and Maria at Bowerbird, then Double H if I remembered to bring cash, then Franciscoās stand and chatting, then back to work.
I kept all my groceries and treats under the expo table, as safe from the heat as I could get it. Then, for the next five hours, it was like nothing else existed outside of what I could see. The people waiting in line, the full ticket rail, the kimchi jars sweating in their iced display containers. Five hours of calling out names, explaining what kimchi is, asking people if they wanted to add avocado, or egg to their breakfast bowl, sneaking bites of my own breakfast in between it all. After we broke down for the day, I lugged my goodies back to my apartment, stopping by the bakery and the butchers on the way to fill out my groceries for the week.
By far, the most joyful of the meals I pieced together from those hauls were tomato sandwiches. A whole tomato thickly cut, sprinkled with salt and a few scrunches of black pepper on Albemarle Baking Company's pain de campagne (or milk bread, if I had the energy to make tangzhong) with a generous helping of Duke's Mayo. It's simple and it's perfect. The juice drips down your chin when you first bite into it, it soaks the bread and drips into your hands and onto your plate as you eat. It's all the toils of a season of growing, from the last frost to that moment you bite into it. All that heat, those rainy days, that patience--it turns into a sweetness anchored by a little acidity that cools you down and reminds you..."I have wasted my life."
I schlepped over to the nearest farmer's market pretty much the week I arrived in nyc--late June, the beginning of 'mater season. Charlottesville business branded tote bags in tow, I bought kale, eggs, strawberries, crusty bread, and of course, two pounds of tomatoes.
Those first two pounds ended up going towards a pasta sauce because to get Duke's in Brooklyn you have to order it off of their website and get it delivered. A small road block. It took a couple weeks, but that just left me square in the middle of the season, with plenty of tomatoes left to be bought and eaten.
I ripped open the box and began making my sandwich shortly after. Cut the tomato into thick slabs, maldon salt, fresh black pepper while it's still on the cutting board, then slather some lightly toasted bread with duke's and assemble. She was gorgeous, she was that girl, she was beautiful.
my very first tomato sandwich in brooklyn.
But even as she was all those things, she was disappointing. Though the tomatoes were just as big and juicy and perhaps even more photogenic, they simply were not the same. I suspected because of the soil, because they were greenhouse tomatoes maybe, or because of the climate.
I should have known better than to have such high expectations. I had always said "there's nothing like a tomato sandwich in the summer in Virginia"--and with such cloying pride, as it made me feel like I was from somewhere, it made me feel I had known a place deeply, down to its roots. But for the first time in that high-rise, with the first bite of my sandwich still stinging my face and hands--I felt the truth of the statement.
For someone in a relatively fragile mental state, this was a devastating realization.
With nowhere to go, with A chained to his desk for his big boy job, with no tomato sandwich in the midst of tomato season, I worked on my book. I wrote a few new poems: a sestina about drinking, a long poem about my first real relationship, a short poem about A and me. But the bulk of my work, as is typically the bulk of all good writing, was editing. I revisited poems that I had shoved into a folder titled ājunk,ā which was a folder within a folder within a folder within a folder. I stashed them in there after hearing some famous writer say that if she felt stuck on a poem she shoved it into a drawer where it wouldnāt see the light of day until she was ready to work on it again. I guess I was hoping the poems would ferment--that i had the right recipe and just needed time. But of course, the poems were ugly too.
I scanned poems obsessively, I put them in Sapphic stanzas or dactylic hexameter, only to abandon the form a week or two later. I worked on that book like it was my 9-5 job and entrenched myself in my own ugliness while suffocating in the hot radiating off all that metal and concrete.
My favorite John Keats poem (and actually one of my favorite poems ever), ends with the lines: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,āthat is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
When we read this poem for a class, my friend Caleb said "I think all my friends are beautiful, but I know that objectively that is probably not true." Such strikingly soft and moving statements are part of why I find Caleb and his poems to be so beautiful.
Once that same year, Earl at Bowerbird asked if I'd prefer a cinnamon roll from the corner, edge, or middle. When I said I didn't care, he gave me a look and said "of all people, I expected you to care." I considered this briefly then said "I just think they all deserve a good home."
From then on, I intentionally bought cracked macarons (there weren't many if any, they were all true masters of their craft at Bowerbird) because I knew they'd get a little cracked during my walk back home anyway. When I went up to Francisco's tent, I'd always take the ugliest things. The most cat-faced tomatoes, the scarred zucchini, the sadder looking cilantro starts. Partly because of trust--in my whole time buying from him, I never had a bad product. Partly because I knew if I didn't take them there was a high chance they'd be left at the end of the morning. Packed back into crates and moved to the next market he had, up north in DC or east in Richmond. And then? ("what happens to the ducks in central park when the pond freezes over?")
That summer in Brooklyn, I was cruel. To myself, to my poems, to my friends, to A. Deep in my ugly era, I felt betrayed by the promises of beauty. Betrayed by the tomatoes, betrayed by the picture-esque view of the city from my apartment window, betrayed by A and my friends, who all had jobs and little to no time to hang out with me. Even as the weather cooled, I rotted. I complained. I was angry. I was scared. I cried.
It took time. It took making new friends, re-connecting with old friends, getting an okay job with a mission I thought was worthwhile, taking a poetry class, going to bookstores, ice cream shops, movies. Slowly, I found the beauty (and truth) in all the ugliness. I ate bagels. I had my first new york slice. I became a regular at a Chinese take-out.
Xifu food is a pretty classic NYC Chinese carry out. A single counter and a few tables in the front. There is always a grandma in the back, sitting on a stool and making dumplings. In one of A and my earliest visits, I ordered tomato egg noodles for the first time. I had always been curious, but never had an opportunity to try them myself because, well, tomatoes for me were a precious commodity. One I always used for sandwiches or freezable sauce for the dreary winter months.
The noodles were carb-y, thick, and springy like udon. They absorbed the umami and sweet notes of the tomatoes, which were cooked down to a pillowy softness. The tomato skins added a nice textural element to the chew. The eggs were abundant, which was ideal because they are essential to every bite--the scramble forms delightful pockets for the juices, sugar, and chili oil.
I shouldn't have been looking for a Virginia tomato sandwich in Brooklyn--I don't go to Charlottesville looking for bagels (sorry Bodo's). I was entitled, thinking I was owed some magical experience. I cringe looking back at myself then. Because in truth, one thing that is so great about New York and New Yorkers (and what I learned as I slurpped those noodles then) is the ability to create something beautiful in spite of, or oftentimes out of, something ugly.
That first bite of tomato egg noodles held me, comforted me, and reminded me that tomatoes, in any form, are a kindness, a beautiful and true kindness.
