Roxane Gay—
It looks like Open City is closing its pages—a real shame. Issue 30 will be their last and it’s only $10.
4
Internet Depersonalization Goes Both Ways
It has taken me a long time to write this, even though I’ve known the whole time what I wanted to say. But there is a story, and there is the reason I want to tell the story, and it is hard to figure out how to make the second one, the reason, count more, both for me and for whoever reads this.
Also, the story involves someone whom people know. Someone I’ve met once, but who I have something like 75 
facebook friends in common with. By comparison, my best friend of 25 years and I share only 53 mutual friends. So, there’s this question of whether to say who the someone is. This goes back to the earlier point–it isn’t important who, in terms of why I want to tell this story. I’m not telling this story to call someone out. So, don’t say who it is, right? But then what if people think it is someone who it isn’t, and have resulting feelings about the wrong person? Maybe I should turn comments off? But I don’t want to turn comments off. Not yet. I would like there to be a discussion about what I’m trying to say, but not about who I am talking about. So, please, don’t try to guess; if you do I’ll flag the comment for Blake to delete.
So. Mean Week 2009 was less than a week into when I started writing for HTMLGiant. I hadn’t read it super regularly, and I
wasn’t sure what Mean Week was supposed to be, and I did it really wrong and felt really bad feelings. The worst feeling I had came from a horrible, virulently misogynist, hateful, anonymous comment in the form of a beyond-degrading epithet directed toward me. Anonymous meaning the person identified himself by his first name but there was no link attached or anything indicating who the person really was. (See why I am reluctant even NOT to say who it is? By this unspecific description, you might think you know who it is. Like, Jereme Dean uses his first name with no link, and if you didn’t know that I’ve never met Jereme even once, you could think it is him. But it is not. To my knowledge Jereme is not hateful even if he disagrees with people a lot.)
Whatever Mean Week is, this comment was beyond. It isn’t called Hate Week.
Again, this was early in my tenure here. I didn’t know the game. I don’t have a thick skin. I’ve always been called sensitive, as if it is a bad thing, and certainly there is this idea that I shouldn’t let things like this get to me, not on the internet, not on HTMLG, certainly not on Mean Week. I disagree. Sure, it may have negative effects on me, but I think it is dangerous to disregard hatefulness. This is why I am telling the story.
Of course, though it affected me and made me cry, I had to somehow get past it, and the way I did this (I thought) was to reason
that the person didn’t know me, and didn’t really think of me as a person. Like, in response to another nasty comment directed toward me by someone else, Blake commented (for which I thank him), “would you say this to her face?” This made me feel better about both commenters. They just see my name and don’t really think about that name being attached to a real person with real feelings. They couldn’t.
I still think that’s true. But here’s the twist: Six months later, I met the person who made the hate comment, and, apologetically, he identified himself as the commenter, and said it wasn’t really about me, or something, and he was sorry.
Raskolnikov’s inbox
[Best if read bottom up for chronological order.]
Recipes for Writers: Migas
If Chickpea Curry is my number one dinner all-star for cooking without shopping, then my lunch/breakfast/brunch all-stars are fried rice and migas, which I think of in my head as tortilla eggs. I’ll do fried rice once I make/photograph it; today is all about migas, which I made yesterday. Basically, I make fried rice if I have leftover rice and stir-fry or vaguely Chinese leftovers, and I make migas if I have vaguely Mexican leftovers or bits of Mexican-y ingredients and corn tortillas. Flour tortillas might be good too but I’ve never tried it.
The only essentials for migas are tortillas and eggs. And hot sauce or salsa or something similar. Yesterday, I ate it with some Melinda’s Chipotle Ketchup that I bought at Marshall’s (it’s a really great Marshall’s. I also got sesame oil and walnut oil).
At left, not-migas; unhappiness. Below right, migas; less unhappiness. Below left, Melinda’s Chipotle Ketchup; happiness.
Other bits that go well in migas:
Mushrooms
Red onions, scallions or other onions
Leftover chicken or beef or pork or shrimp or tofu
Jalapenos or other chili
Poblanos or bell peppers
Spinach
Leftover cooked potato or sweet potato or squash
Tomatoes / tomato sauce / tomato paste
Avocado
Cheese
Yesterday, all I had were eggs, tortillas, shredded Colby-Jack, and leftover tomato sauce from when I served handmade cheese tortellini. So the tomato sauce already onion and garlic in it.
Here’s the method: Cut all your non-egg, non-sauce ingredients in little bits. Tear the tortillas into bits (around 1-inch square but precision is NOT necessary and indeed frowned upon because it’s good to have some crispier bits and some softer bits and besides tortillas are round). Beat eggs, with milk if you like, salt and pepper. Heat some fat (vegetable oil, butter, say about 1 tablespoon per egg, at ~2 eggs per person) in a pan/skillet. Add all the non-egg non-sauce non-cheese bits including the tortillas (but if you are using avocado, for the love of god add that at the end). Season with salt and pepper and fry in the oil till they get to desired softness/brownness/doneness. Add eggs, sauce, cheese (which you could have also added to the eggs in the beating stage). Kinda scramble those eggs with everything until cooked. Eat with hot sauce/salsa/Melinda’s Chipotle Ketchup.
Recipes for Writers: Chickpea Curry
This is a new feature I might do — easy things to cook that are great. I figure I’m picking up where Mark Bittman is (sadly) leaving off.
The first recipe is an all-star one that I can make some version of at almost any time without shopping, provided I have some canned chickpeas (or white beans, or dried lentils, or I’m sure canned black beans would work). I usually have it with rice, which I always have in the house.
The first step is to chop (smallish) and saute whatever hard vegetables you have on hand. For me, this usually means some combination of carrots, onions, and maybe celery, though I’ve made it without some of those too. You can use anything that’s pretty hard. If you use potatoes or sweet potatoes, you might want to chop them extra-fine or even grate them. So, heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a pot, add your chopped vegetables, and saute stirring occasionally for 5-10 minutes, until softened and maybe browned, or longer if you want to caramelize them. But they will keep cooking a little throughout the process. At the end of sauteing, throw in minced garlic if you like. Minced fresh ginger is good, too. If you have tomato paste, add a tablespoon or so now.
Next, add a can or two of drained and rinsed chickpeas (or other beans), as well as any soft vegetables you have around (except soft greens, which I’ll get to). This could mean eggplant, mushrooms, fresh or canned (with juice) tomatoes, summer squash. Canned tomatoes are probably the one I most frequently add. Then add some liquid, a cup or two depending on how much stuff is in the pot, enough to make it a little stew-like so it won’t burn. Tomato sauce, chicken broth, water, whatever you have. Then add curry powder, salt and pepper to taste. If you don’t have curry powder, add some combo of cumin, coriander, chili powder, cayenne, ground mustard, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder.
Bring it all to a boil and then turn down immediately to a slow simmer. Stir occasionally. Cook until everything is at a nice, eatable consistency, say twenty minutes. At this point, stir in fresh or frozen spinach or something similar, if you have it (I don’t always), and cook until cooked (wilty-looking). If you have any parsley, cilantro, scallions, basil, or chives, chop some and add them. Then it is ready to eat with rice or any other cooked grain that you have cooked. In a pinch I have eaten it with toast. I would eat it with tortillas, if it came to that. It is really good with chili paste or hot sauce.
Again, this is really adaptable. Maybe all you have is carrots and chickpeas. That will still be really delicious if you add enough spice. The great thing about this dish is that you don’t have to have anything fresh–canned beans and tomatoes and some frozen spinach along with your dried spices work great. Leftovers are even better than the first go-round.
Prisecolinensinenciousol
From an interview between Joyce and Djuna Barnes at Les Deux Magots in Paris, printed in Vanity Fair (1922)
