Innholdsfortegnelse for April 1-14, 2019 i New York Magazine

How to understand someone else’s marriage? We interrogated dozens of couples (and a throuple) to see what makes them work—or not (p.24). For more of “Marriages: An Investigation,” go to nymag.com. ON THE COVER AND THIS PAGE: Photographs by New York Magazine, based on photographer Ted Spagna’s “Sleep” series. For these pictures, we invited couples to our studio outfitted with an automatic camera, then left them alone for a half-hour to do whatever they do in bed. The whole idea of “Treat people the way you want to be treated,” the reality is it’s a very selfish thing. It really should be “Treat people the way they want to be treated.” —Simone Jenkins (married to Adam Powell) Three Rules for a Good Marriage 1. No television in the home. We…

Joe Biden CLASS OF 1961 Born in Pennsylvania, he graduated from Catholic prep school Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. Cory Booker CLASS OF 1987 Nicknamed “Sugar,” Booker was a varsity football player at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, New Jersey. Pete Buttigieg CLASS OF 2000 “Mayor Pete” started his political career as class president of South Bend, Indiana’s St. Joseph High School. Julián Castro CLASS OF 1992 Castro posed with a very ’90s backdrop at San Antonio’s Thomas Jefferson High School 17 years before he became mayor. Kirsten Gillibrand CLASS OF 1984 The future senator, pictured as a sophomore in 1982, would graduate from the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York. Kamala Harris CLASS OF 1981 At Westmount High near Montreal, she remembered long-distance phone calls…

PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS asking me about Oklahoma. Sometimes they say: “I know a lot about Oklahoma, from your plays.” This always makes me ill at ease. The range of life there is not to be indicated, much less its meaning laid bare, by a few people in a few plays. Some day, perhaps, all the plays I will have written, taken together, may constitute a study from which certain things may emerge and be formulated into a kind of truth about people who happen to be living in Oklahoma instead of South Dakota. But not now. The secret is scattered too widely—and what is worse, hid away—in the breasts of too many people. Farm people, ranchers, lawyers, bankers, doctors, waitresses, bakers, tool dressers, school teachers—there, as everywhere, unite in a…

“An old boyfriend. I messed it up. I was young, partied too hard, and he eventually left me. He was a simple guy with an unglamorous job, but for whatever reason, he was extremely attractive to me. We had intense sexual chemistry, and he had solid family values. We would have had a nice life, probably living in a pretty house on Long Island with a bunch of kids. Instead, I have one kid with a mess of an ‘artsy’ human being and we live in a shithole in Red Hook.”…

“I have a high-risk pregnancy, and after hauling up the groceries plus laundry one day, I just snapped. I said, ‘If I miscarry, it’s because you didn’t take good care of me.’ He was like, ‘You’re so mean.’ I wanted him to say, ‘Get off your feet right now. You’re not lifting a finger until we know this pregnancy is healthy.’ ” —SONYA, 41, MARRIED FOUR YEARS “My husband’s family isn’t very accepting of us, and we fight every time they visit. What I need him to say is ‘Yes, they are assholes and I can’t imagine how much it sucks to hang out with them when you’re not biologically obligated to, but please, I need you there with me.’ ” —TODD, 45, MARRIED THREE YEARS “My wife is way…

MIKE AND KAREN Pence’s marriage seems to derive its strength from the systematic emasculation of one of the most powerful men in America. The extraordinary measures the vice-president takes to maintain his chastity are a source of ridicule. He dines with women outside his family only if Karen supervises. He reportedly refers to her as “Mother.” When the Access Hollywood tape came out, Trump went out of his way to apologize to her. Yet just reverse their gender roles to understand how singular, even subversive, their marriage seems to be: a husband who controls his wife’s social life—whom she calls “Father” or “Daddy”—a wife whose boss answers to her husband as much as he answers to her. But reversing gender roles here is a fool’s errand. Those roles are why…

LAST YEAR, when my husband took me to St. Lucia for my birthday, he booked a large open-air suite that had been lovingly handcrafted out of 20 different species of rain-forest wood. The first evening, we slipped into our own private infinity plunge pool to watch the sunset over the Pitons. I poured myself a glass of Champagne and thought about how far we’d come since my husband told me, ten months earlier, that he was boarding a plane to London to be with another woman. He came back to me two weeks later. He’d decided the affair was an ill-conceived midlife Rumspringa. He cried, expressed remorse, said he didn’t know what had come over him. And now, here we were in St. Lucia: This was my reward. My husband…

HUSBAND That was a totally out-of-line attack in style and substance. WIFE I got about three hours of sleep last night between your alcohol snoring and Henry peeing his bed for the fifth consecutive night and me doing all 13 loads of laundry this week. If we’re talking “out of line,” let’s discuss how you love to punish me after a really long workweek. you are in some strange reality right now. You do not have to agree with what I am saying, but you do not get to tell me I’m in some strange reality. why would you think something like that? if you don’t want me to go out on a certain night, then just say that. You’re waiting till after then, accusing me of “punishing” you? I…

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE model of marriage was my college-sweetheart parents, this 2000 photo was a revelation. Suddenly, it seemed marriage could be more than you and your best friend wearing khakis, kissing chastely, and grocery-shopping. It could also be you and an older, soul-patched man tongue-kissing in public and wearing matching leather pants in the summer, probably without underwear. In my fantasies, Angelina and Billy Bob got naked and held ornately carved daggers at each other’s throats while growling lustily. If by some terrible accident they ended up with a sensible pair of khakis, their first instinct would almost certainly be to tie each other up with them, or perhaps see if they could slide into one leg together and have sex (they’d definitely find a way). Sadly, the couple…

THE CLOCK read 3:04 when my wife leapt out of bed to check on our son, whose bedroom is at the other end of our apartment. As always, she’d awakened me. When she returned, I asked if our child had woken up. She said no. “Then why did you go out there?” “Fuck you!” she said. In the light of day, the preceding exchange makes no sense. But it fits the pattern established the day we brought our son home from the maternity ward. There are times when I’m the one cursing unprovoked or coming back with the kind of cruel or snarky insult you can only sleep off. While we usually agree on the overall goals of parenting, she’s both more selfless and more neurotic. Our son is a…

On Falling in Love ROBERT: There was definitely an element of love at first sight for me. CAROLA: I did not feel that way. ROBERT: She didn’t even like me. It was two years before we got together. I ended up going out with her best friend, Dominique, on and off. CAROLA: Dominique didn’t live in New York. So when she’d come to visit Bob, we’d often get together. ROBERT: Sometime later, Carola had come over to my house with Dominique. We talked, got stoned, and listened to “Blanche.” Remember? CAROLA: I certainly do. ROBERT: By the Three Friends. CAROLA: The worst song I ever liked. ROBERT: By that time, she was teaching at a— CAROLA: A liberated preschool. ROBERT: In my heart was always the fact that I thought…

PURCHASING AN EXPENSIVE umbrella can feel like a dicey investment: They’re easy to lose and easier to steal. Yet a good one, like the Davek Elite ($150; amazon.com), which ranked No. 1 in our guide to finding the nicest-looking and sturdiest umbrella on the market (see page 58 for the 19 runners-up), is so far superior to its cheaper counterparts that it’s worth the price. It’s handsome, sure, but the real clincher is its ability to withstand the poorest of conditions. The fiberglass-ribbed frame holds firm in gusts, and the canopy is so protective it seems to create its own temperature-controlled atmosphere. And if that isn’t enough: The company offers a lifetime guarantee and will replace the umbrella if it’s stolen (yes, really) at half the original price.…

What Is Rain? As most relatively informed fourth-graders know, there’s a fairly simple chain of events that leads to wet stuff intermittently falling out of the sky. When air rises, it cools, according to Stuart Evans, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo and expert in atmospheric science. “And when it cools,” he says, “the humidity increases until you get to saturation; this is the point at which water droplets start to form (but not fall, yet). An updraft keeps those water droplets up in the air, where they bump into each other and ultimately merge together. They continue to grow fatter through these collisions, until they’re big enough to fall out of the sky.” And there you go. That’s rain. When it rains in New York, where does…

NON-HUNTER BOOTS FOR WOMEN Ilse Jacobsen Rub boot, $170 at nordstrom.com. NON-BEAN BOOTS FOR MEN Aigle Landfor waterproof rubber boot, $135 at nordstrom.com. RUBBER BOOTS FOR DOGS Pawz waterproof dog boot, $10 at amazon.com. WOMEN’S RAINCOAT FOR TRAVELING Outdoor Research Helium II, $159 at outdoorresearch.com. MEN’S RAINCOAT FOR BIKING Patagonia Torrentshell jacket, $129 at patagonia.com. THE “AMAZON COAT” FOR DOGS RC Pet Products packable dog rain poncho, $12 at amazon.com.…

THE UNDERGROUND HUBS Brookfield + Westfield + WTC 0.678 miles Jump between the West Side and the middle of Fidi through this mall wormhole. (If you need one, buy an umbrella from the Gateway newsstand in Westfield.) THE UNLIMITED-METROCARD HACK Times Square 0.678 miles If you can spare a swipe, it’s an efficient way to avoid both rain and hordes of tourists. THE LONGEST STRETCH OF SCAFFOLDING Fidi Shed City 0.78 miles Lots of construction going on down here; you can walk multiple blocks almost drip-free. THE ENORMOUS BUILDING Chelsea Market 0.2 miles Grab shelter and a quick bite of Buon’Italia pasta from the grocery annex on your way to the A train. THE OUTDOOR OVERPASSES 7 Train 4.6 miles It takes precision to align perfectly with the elevated tracks…

IT MUST SEEM STRANGE to anyone who’s ever packed a school lunch for a third-grader to think that the biggest thing going in gourmet-sandwich circles these days is egg salad on squishy white bread with the crusts removed. That is the thing to get at Konbi, a bakery and café the size of a large canoe run by two Momofuku vets in Los Angeles. Hot on its heels in New York is the Black & White, a riff on a PB&J consisting of a mixture of black-sesame paste and peanut butter, plus citron jam and a schmear of cream cheese (pictured, middle column, top). That’s the sandwich—also served on squishy white bread—that everyone who’s been to David Chang’s brand-new Peach Mart at Hudson Yards can’t stop talking about. Both of…

1722. George Frideric Handel, composer of Water Music, is accused by Johann Mattheson of stealing melodies. Later, scholars say Handel heavily “borrowed” from many other works. 1783. Mozart debuts his Symphony No. 37 in G-major. It’s mostly copied from Haydn’s Symphony No. 25 in G-major, written the same year, though the copying isn’t discovered until 1907. 1939. South African singer Solomon Linda records “Mbube,” which later becomes the basis for the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” (Linda sold the rights to the song for ten shillings.) 1963. The Beach Boys release “Surfin’ U.S.A.” with music lifted directly from Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.” Berry got the copyright, but Brian Wilson was credited as the sole writer until 1966. 1968. The Kinks discover that the Doors’ “Hello, I Love You” sounds…

1. CLAIM: In 2016, Ed Sheeran was sued by Ed Townsend, co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” over “Thinking Out Loud,” which used the same chord progression and harmonic rhythm. RESOLUTION: A trial is pending. 2. CLAIM: Also in 2016, the writers of X-Factor winner Mat Cardle’s “Photograph” sued Sheeran for $20 million, accusing him of “note for note” copying on his song “Amazing.” (The melodies are unusually close.) RESOLUTION: Settled out of court. 3. CLAIM: In 2017, Sheeran’s “Shape of You” was called out on social media for being melodically similar to TLC’s “No Scrubs.” RESOLUTION: The “No Scrubs” songwriters were added to the credits. 4. CLAIM: In 2018, Sean Carey and Beau Golden sued Sheeran for $5 million for “The Rest of Our Life,” a song…

1 For New York’s most recent cover story, Adam Sternbergh and Boris Kachka took stock of the booming podcast industry (“The Great Pod Rush Has Only Just Begun,” March 18–31). Pop Culture Happy Hour, which was listed in Nicholas Quah’s rundown of 100 podcasts worth listening to, was one of several programs to respond: “When you’ve been around as long as we have, in a podcast market as crowded and ever-changing as this one, getting this kind of a shout-out can still bring a tear to these rheumy old eyes.” Several readers lamented the lack of diversity in both the industry and the creators highlighted in the story. By the Book co-host Kristen Meinzer noted, “There’s a lot of great stuff in this story. But there’s also the implication that…

TOM STEYER, the Democratic megadonor turned impeachment activist, has a distinct look when he thinks he’s saying something so obvious it might be embarrassing for you if you’re not keeping up. He smiles a little, his eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and he tilts his head back as if he’s expecting a punch line. It’s been two days since the attorney general’s summary of Robert Mueller’s report went public, and Steyer is using this look a lot. I’m asking if his strategy has changed now that we know Mueller didn’t find evidence of Trump-campaign collusion with Russia, and he’s not having it. “We’ve said from the beginning this isn’t about the Mueller report; this is a broad sense of criminality,” he says, on the edge of exasperation. We’re sitting across…

“My husband doesn’t know that I’m a binge eater. When he’s on work trips or gone for several hours, I eat until I’m sick to my stomach. He knows I go to therapy, but he doesn’t know it focuses on my eating disorder.” —CARRIE, 40, MARRIED EIGHT YEARS “I lied to my husband about how much our wedding cost. It cost close to six figures. He thinks it cost half that.” —PANOS, 39, MARRIED TWO YEARS “I literally have no idea what my husband does for a living. Something with computers.” —NAVA, 38, MARRIED TWO YEARS “I pretend I have a seven-day period so I can avoid sex a little longer.” —ALEXA, 30, MARRIED TWO YEARS “I misplaced my wedding band. It’s been a month, and I have no clue…

AS A KID, I didn’t know what was going on with the blue light, but when I was about 15, I came home from school in the afternoon, and the front door is locked. I’m like, What the heck? I go through this window my brothers and I kept unlocked for when we snuck out at night, and I look up and my mom is running out of the bedroom totally naked, and my dad is zipping up his pants saying, “Oh, hi there, Mike. What are you doing home this early?”…

IN SEPTEMBER 2017, President Trump, surveying hurricane damage in Florida, assured the crowd, “Melania really wanted to be with us.” She was standing right next to him. Had he forgotten she was there? Or—as rumors suggested—was he so accustomed to her body double that he didn’t realize that “real” Melania was there? (Even so, shouldn’t he have pretended she was there?) I don’t know if Melania uses a stand-in for events she prefers to sit out, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is how plausible it seems that there’s a spare Melania. Such rumors reinforce the notion that Melania is more a category of person than she is an irreplaceable individual. For all its seeming artificiality, what we observe of the Trump union is uncannily authentic in one key way:…

I WAS MARRIED four times to three husbands—50 years later, I remarried my first husband. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I like being married, but I’m a terrible wife. I can’t cook. I can’t drive. And as soon as I had my kids, my No. 1 priority was my children. No. 2 was my work. Who wants to put up with that? My first husband, Richard, was at Dartmouth and I was at Smith, and we had the same background. Probably we were in love—you know, when you’re young, you’re in love. But it was really about going to Europe. We knew our parents would give us money as gifts. So we had a traditional upper-middle-class wedding with a band playing Mendelssohn or something and all the relatives and the cakes.…

WILLIAM: I’m going to ask you to try something now, Jack. Scooch up close to Claire and put your hands on her cheeks. CLAIRE: Oh boy. JACK: Do I squeeze them like this? CLAIRE: We have a joke about squeezing cheeks. It’s hard for us to be sincere. WILLIAM: Okay, so gaze into her eyes instead … Is that comfortable, Claire? CLAIRE: -Ish. Sure, okay. That’s better. WILLIAM: Look into her eyes and say, “Claire, I love you so much.” JACK: Claire, I love you so much. WILLIAM: Did that land, Jack? JACK: Yes. WILLIAM: Okay. And say, “Claire, everything that’s mine is yours.” JACK: Everything that’s yours is actually mine. WILLIAM: Not the time to play. JACK: We’re jokers. Okay, everything that’s mine is yours. WILLIAM: Does that land?…

JAMES: By the time I was 30, which is when David and I met, I was just over dating anybody. We hooked up. A week later, I emailed him and we went to a bar. And he and I just started talking and we have not stopped talking since. DAVID: I had tried the monogamy thing and I ended up cheating. They ended up cheating. If you’re open, it’s kind of like giving the other person permission to not have to be everything on the checklist. JAMES: I don’t like a lot of full-on expectation. I just had so much pressure growing up, put on me by my single mom. She was religious, in a speaking-in-tongues kind of way. DAVID: We got married in 2014. JAMES: I didn’t want my…

JOE: I remember after my daughter was born, a friend said, “You have a king’s family,” because we had a son and a daughter. I felt on top of the world. The following winter is when Mason had his accident. LYNN: Losing a child, it’s worse than anything you can imagine. He was 2 years old. He died at a Christmas party, eating cashews. He didn’t choke on them; he aspirated. We went to a party and came home without a child. JOE: From the time I started dating my wife, I couldn’t fathom what my life would be like if she was not in the picture. So the thought of somehow allowing my marriage to be torn apart by something—I don’t think that ever crossed my mind. We were…

WHEN OUR DAUGHTER was a toddler, we’d whisper-fight—obscene gestures and allover her head as she blithely watched Curious George. Because we restricted the war zone to us, I deluded myself that she would be unaffected. Of course, that’s not true, as I discovered when I overheard her pitting her Beanie Boos against each other. She had one of them holler, in a perfect imitation of me, “I’m sick and tired of this crap!” So we decided to try and fake a more noble version of ourselves in the hopes that, when our daughter grew up, she’d seek out a better relationship than our own. Getting into the character of a mature, reasoned grown-up proved difficult. One Saturday morning, Tom informed me that he had scheduled a five-hour bike ride upstate…

SIX WEEKS after #MeToo hit, I had sex with a man who asked for permission when he wanted to touch me somewhere new. I was straddling him in a back seat, skirt up around my waist. My mascara was on his face, his thighs. It seemed obvious to me that he was welcome to touch me wherever. But I knew I was supposed to want him to ask. At one point he got ahead of himself and froze with two fingers inside me. “Sorry, is this okay?” In response, I tilted my hips to slide his fingers in deeper. I hoped it didn’t seem like I didn’t appreciate his respect. After that, we met up every few weeks for long afternoons of sex and talk—about books, our childhoods, how he’d…

AD 21  Before the umbrella, there was the parasol, which was first seen in ancient Egypt, the Middle East, India, and China. The Chinese started oiling theirs to make them water-resistant. 1709 A Parisian purse-maker named Jean Marius, whose shop was located near the barrier of Saint-Honoré, created the first pocket parasol. Looking strikingly similar to a modern umbrella, it weighed less than one kilogram and had flexible ribs so it could be folded. 1852  In Britain, Samuel Fox invented a steel-ribbed rain umbrella that used shaped rods to make the frame collapsible. 1928  Slawa Horowitz, a student studying sculpture in Vienna, created the first small modern folding umbrella, with a telescopic handle (allowing it to be more compact), metal ribs, a metal shaft, and a black silk cover. 2013…

“It was back in 1982. I went to have dinner and drinks—mostly drinks—with a client’s brother, and we went to the Knickerbocker Club and stayed there until it closed. It’s raining out, just sheets of rain, so I go to leave and there is only one umbrella left. It looked like mine, but it wasn’t mine. Mine was a Brooks Brothers, not terribly expensive umbrella, and this one looked just like it, a style called Paragon—it had a silk cover, so it was very old, at least 20 or 25 years old at the time. So I took it. I still use it. Good umbrella.”…

BITES IDEAL MEAL: New dishes are added weekly, but of those we tasted, our favorites were the mushroom broth, the steelhead trout, the duck, and the white-chocolate mousse for dessert. The housemade brioche on the bar menu is also excellent. NOTE: Booker and Dax alum Piper Kristensen offers two beverage pairings ($35 with alcohol, $20 without), both of which are worth the money. OPEN: Dinner Tuesday to Sunday. PRICES: Tasting menu, $60; bar-menu dishes, $8 to $23. ➔ See The Thousand Best at grubstreet.com for 999 more great places to eat and drink.…

Harmony Harmony happens when more than one note is played at the same time, creating chords. Think of the piano intro to the Beatles classic “Let It Be”—those four chords have gone on to be the harmonic foundation of hundreds of chart-toppers. Rhythm Most commonly thought of as the beat that drives a song—the drum and percussion pattern that glues it all together—rhythm is pretty much fair game for copying these days. Melody Notes played one at a time in succession, usually represented as the vocal part of a popular song. Using one song’s melody in another without authorization is how musicians get sued. Lyrics Just as we all speak in clichés, so do we write songs with those same common phrases. How many songs have an ooh baby in…

The undercurrent in a lot of the conversations around song copying is the question of appropriation. It is easy to hear “7 Rings” as yet another example of an artist profiting from her access to a mainstream market that still demands black music (especially when Grande dips into “blaccent”) but not necessarily by black people—despite sensational exceptions and steady progress. The fact that artists from “outside the circle” can still better exploit certain sounds developed by black artists and communities is why Grande is being singled out for an otherwise unremarkable use of a widespread rhythm. “7 Rings” is less egregious than the deliberate or subconscious pilfering done by white rock acts in the 1960s and ’70s: say, the Beach Boys rewriting Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” into “Surfin’ U.S.A.”…

“One of the wonderful things in New York is the New Works Reading Series in conjunction with New York University, which has readings and master classes taught by poets like Marwa Helal and Kwoya Fagin Maples. I spend the entire year reading favs like Gwendolyn Brooks and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and some of my favorite books are Among the Monarchs, by Christine Garren, and The Black Automaton, by Douglas Kearney. The best place to find poetry is Greenlight Bookstore (686 Fulton St., Fort Greene). Ask for Angel Nafis or Nicholas Nichols. They’re the kind of booksellers who will show you what’s hot.”…

“Too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man.”—E. M. FORSTER, A Passage to India Is Marriage Obsolete? I RECENTLY WATCHED Planet Earth II with my family, and the footage of various animals waiting not so patiently for their mates to return to the proper rendezvous point in order to make sweet marital bird love or regurgitate a little fish smoothie into crying-baby throats was enough to send a chill down my spine. This penguin dad is seriously inept at scaling wave-tossed rocks and at locating his lady in a million-strong crowd of other penguin ladies screeching at the moon together, I found myself thinking. Does her screeching have the faintest hint of burgeoning contempt to it, or am…

ANDREW: We both went to a summer camp in the Poconos. We were each other’s first kiss. The girls in her bunk had picked on her. She didn’t have a cochlear implant back then; she had poorly functioning hearing aids. She said I was the only boy who talked to her and she never forgot my face. KERI: It was the end of the summer. Andy walked up to me at canteen and sat with me while I was eating my snack. He asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to read his lips anymore. At one point, it got pretty dark, since we were in the woods; he kept talking and saw that I wasn’t responding, so he actually walked…

THE PHOTO IS FROM 2012, before Olivier Sarkozy and Mary-Kate Olsen were married, but it remains the perfect artifact of their relationship: perplexing, slightly disconcerting, and ultimately delightful. At first glance, there appear to be two children present, one of whom is dismissively smoking a cigarette while on an urgent business call. It’s as if they’d all just strolled out of a terrifically awkward and stilted brunch, which the elder Sarkozy has convinced himself went swimmingly. “My two girls!” he keeps exclaiming to no one in particular. Sarkozy is 17 years Olsen’s senior, but their cultural dissonance is what elevates the couple to a source of fascination. She’s one-half of a set of bubbly all-American child-star twins turned luxury-fashion designers; he’s a European banker and the half-brother of former French…

I MET MY HUSBAND the second weekend after I got to college. Since graduating, the only time we weren’t under the same roof was when he was at grad school. He’s always been—I don’t even understand it—dead set on “You’re it.” He always adored me more than I adored him. It’s not that I don’t think he’s great, but who I was at 18 is not who I am now. I don’t know if I’d choose the same partner now. It’s not about other men, though I’m sure that’s part of it. When we met, I was so green. Any sort of sexual awakening or discovery of my body as an adult has all been through him. It’s like, what’s out there, what kind of interesting things would someone else…

YOU NEED TO HAVE a buzz, but you cannot be drunk. If you are too drunk, then you will get irrationally jealous. You will not have the part of your brain that says, “No, he loves you, he is just doing this for fun.” Your husband must concentrate on you. Yes, something is happening for him, but that is a physical sensation and he needs to feel it, enjoy it, but he must check in with you, stay aware. You may think you understand the word aware, but your husband must be aware of you as though he is in your brain. This is about turning you on. As for the girl, she can do what she wants. You can’t control her. She has to be very attractive—but not as…

A COUPLE YEARS AGO, at a fashion-industry party in Manhattan, perhaps sensing a receptive audience, a small Japanese woman made a beeline for my wife, Helen. “You worry about your health,” the pint-size woman, apparently a famous psychic, told Helen through her translator. “Do not worry. Drink a glass of water with a drop of lemon juice every morning and you shall live a long life.” I do the grocery shopping, and I know that to keep my wife from thinking she’s going to get pancreatic cancer or multiple sclerosis, we must now always have lemons in the house. Most mornings, I’m greeted by the sight of a squashed slice in the sink, a reminder of a patently insane, useless, nonsensical—but ultimately harmless—ritual that I tolerate because I love my…

Carol and Alden Beauchemin have been separated twice during their nearly three-decade marriage. She runs a party-plan business; he’s a self-employed land consultant and developer, and they credit the survival of their marriage to a marital strategy she discovered online. Carol is such a devotee that she coaches other wives on how to surrender, but she doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea. “I was watching Fifty Shades of Grey the other day, and Christian was asking [Anastasia] to surrender to BDSM,” she says. “I was sick. That’s not what it is at all.” CAROL: I’ve built my business from the ground up to a team of over 500 women across the country. That pays all our bills and really supports our family. But my tendency was to micromanage…

“It’s just a manifestation of our love; it is very strong.” “We decided about three days ago. We’ve got our son, a dog. I thought, ‘Let’s just do it.’” “I hope we avoid money fights. But everything else I think we can handle.” “I think we’ll have a lot of great times together, but we’ll also have some hard times. As long as we’re taking care of each other, we’re gonna be okay.” “I guess it’s important mostly because it’s important to our families. It’s important to us, I guess. I don’t know if there are tax breaks involved. [Laughs.] No, no, it’s a nice symbol.” “Noah quit his job and needs insurance. And I have terrific union insurance.”…

LIGHTNING ROUND Age: 22. Music: “A$AP Rocky. He grew up in the hood, like me.” Church: “I used to go to Hillsong. Carl Lentz changed my life.” TV: “I mostly watch Big Boy interview videos on YouTube.” Where do you work? I just got a new job, actually. I was unemployed for five months; my mom was really worried, but I prayed on it. Then I found this job on Indeed to sell tequila at a liquor store in Yonkers. I went in for an interview, and I was fumbling for words. But I guess she liked my look, so she decided to give me a try. I’ve been through a lot: I grew up sharing a bed with my mother; I sold drugs for a while. When she said…

KEY: STICK GOLF COMPACT DRYNESS (1-5) WIND RESISTANCE WEIGHT/COMFORT LOOKS (1-3) WHILE THERE ARE PLENTY of perfectly serviceable umbrellas out there, we wanted to find the best version possible—one that will keep you dry, won’t flip, is easy to tote around, and (this isn’t asking too much) even looks nice. So ten members of the Strategist team—armed with top-reviewed contenders, from compact and motorized to steel-framed and maple-handled—waded into some of the gustiest corridors of the city. We checked for dryness, of course, but also for how their metal held up in the wind, how easy they were to open and close, and, last but not least, how we felt about being seen with them. The top five advanced to another round of scrutiny. Head to thestrategist.com, where the rest…

The Umbrella Around 50 percent of the city’s $5 flimsy-black-umbrella market is dominated by Conch, according to Jing Li, general manager of Elite America Corp. Here’s how they get to New York. 1 After Wenzhou Conch Umbrella Co., Ltd., assembles the umbrellas in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, the company ships the goods via freighter to the Port of New York and New Jersey. 2 They are subsequently transported to distributor Elite America Corp in Greenpoint. (Other nearly identical, often brandless styles hail from manufacturers in Xiamen and end up at warehouses in New Jersey.) The company orders 1,000 cases a month with each case holding 60 umbrellas. (Elite did not disclose its wholesale prices.) 3 Street vendors purchase them from middlemen like midtown-based B2B Supply or Elite America Corp. 4…

“Of course not. But if your umbrella was taken from an open stand just inside a restaurant, what you can do is take it up with the restaurant. The business has implied that it’s taking responsibility, so if your umbrella goes missing, the manager might offer you a free appetizer.” —ELAINE SWANN, etiquette expert and founder of the Swann School of Protocol And some other rain-related ethical queries. Can I carry a humongous umbrella? “If you’re walking alone with a golf umbrella, you’re claiming too much space. Stick to one that just reaches out to your shoulders. To avoid collisions, tilt the canopy away from people when you pass, and when it’s folded, carry it vertically so you’re not swinging the pointy end in a way that could jab somebody.”…

A five-minute egg yields the ideal soft, runny yolk. For extra crunch and “radishyness,” Attea cuts pink and breakfast radishes both thick and thin and garnishes the tartine with daikon-radish microgreens. Shaved bottarga, or cured mullet roe, adds umami flavor and a playful egg-on-egg effect. Weller sources New York State einkorn flour and berries from Greenmarket’s GrowNYC Grains and mixes a bird feeder’s bounty of seeds ( flax, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin) into the dough. Attea whips lemon zest and salt into high-fat butter for “the brightness factor.” At first glance, the new radish tartine at High Street on Hudson looks like a cheery harbinger of spring, all blushing-pink crunch and runny golden yolk. But it also represents a budding collaboration between baker and chef—in this case, Melissa Weller, who has…

MUSIC IS MATH. There are only so many notes in a scale and only so many pleasing chord progressions you can create by combining them, so the pop-music economy is powered by familiarity. Success is a tug-of-war between tested formulas and unique personal style, and finding the balance is key. Travel too far off the beaten path and you alienate your audience; stick too close to the tried-and-true and you might get sued. Attitudes about borrowing in music have changed since the end of the 20th century. The shift dovetails with hip-hop’s growth and the ways rap producers have been able to morph and even break existing stigmas about quoting and sampling other artists’ work. Rap in the ’80s was a Wild West of collage art made via uncontested cribbing.…

WHEN ARIANA GRANDE’S “7 Rings” began climbing the charts with a rhythmic cadence that reminded a lot of people of a lot of other songs, it quickly became a platform for discussions of what we deem original and what we hold as communal. “7 Rings” is built around two hooks … HOOK ONE “My Favorite Things” THE FIRST CLEVERLY transforms the well-worn waltz of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1959 song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music into an Atlanta-style hemiola, also known as the “Migos flow.” Substituting “bottles of bubbles” for “whiskers on kittens,” Grande turns the Broadway duo’s triple-time rhymes into trappy triplets. Rodgers died in 1979 and Hammerstein in 1960, but they have writing credits for “7 Rings.” In fact, the company that owns their catalogue controls…

Bebe Rexha SINGER, SONGWRITER ➽ “I love Meredith Brooks, and I love her song ‘Bitch.’ But when we did ‘I’m a Mess,’ I didn’t go into the studio that day wanting to do an interpolation of her record. After playing it for some people, though, they were like, ‘Oh, this reminds me of [sings] “I’m a bitch, I’m a …” ’ So I decided to give [songwriters Brooks and Shelly Peiken] publishing [royalties] on it because I just didn’t want it being a situation. I did it right before the song was released. I think the ‘Blurred Lines’ thing really scared the shit out of the songwriting and music community … Anytime somebody tells me something sounds similar, I freak out. I’ll get a musicologist or two on it. I…

“I painted the very first flower in September 1993. I used stencils for only a short while. I didn’t like the permanence of the spray-painted flowers. This one was cut from the cardboard of a USPS shipping box. Being a student at the time, I looked for cheap supplies everywhere I could. I feel that the images of the used stencils capture some of the grit and energy of the flower project’s early days in New York. It’s one of my homemade, hands-on solutions for getting a flower message across a big city in an efficient way.” See Michael De Feo at the Brooklyn Museum on April 11 and at 198 Allen Street on April 25.…