About Me
My mother almost gave birth to me on the Roosevelt Island tram, which would have been cool in a Spiderman-outtake way. My mom opted out of the fifty-feet-aboveground theatrics and hightailed it to the hospital. According to my birth certificate, I was born in New York City, I came out a girl, and a Dr. Cherry and Nurse Rabbit were on the scene.
I'm a little foggy on what happened next, though photographic evidence suggests I went through more looks than a model at Milan fashion week. Sometimes I resembled a French sailor, in my stripy onesies. Other times I was a mini Michelin man, all bundled up in a snowsuit. Then, when I started to walk, there were the butterball days. I'd discovered that sneaking spoonfuls of mayonnaise out of the refrigerator when my parents weren't paying attention was more fun than anything else (now I've moved on to sneaking almond butter and cherry jelly). The one consistent thread in the Lauren Mechling slideshow is that I was always ravishing, with high cheekbones and an irresistible vacant stare. Not. Actually, it's that I was mistaken for a boy. By pretty much everyone. And "pretty much everyone" does not exclude friends and family. When I was about ten, I recall shopping for a bathrobe at the Brooklyn Women's Exchange. A well-meaning saleslady called me "Sir" and redirected me to the boy section. My mom wasted no time in escorting me to Dr. Finkelstein's office to get my ears pierced.
Then, a decade or so later, puberty set in, and my days as a mini-man were behind me. I was now an American Girl, with the fake-o training bra (still unclear on what I was training them to do all that time) and Bop and Tiger Beat magazine subscriptions to prove it. I went in for three more ear piercings, all executed at a cheap jewelry shop on Joralemon Street that specialized in Madonna jelly bracelets.
I liked to read and write, but you probably could've guessed that given my chosen profession. Circa fifth grade, during my red-hot Harriet the Spy phase, I decided it'd be a good idea to skulk around my grandparents' Florida apartment building and listen in through people's kitchen windows and take notes on what they were saying. I only made it down my grandparents' tenth floor hall before security was called to haul me away. For those of you who have read Dream Girl, this incident will ring a bell. Sadly, that's pretty much where the Lauren-Claire similarities end. I'm not fluent in French, I cant ace any test without studying for it, and I don't lead a life of globe-trotting butt-kicking girl detective adventure. Quelle bummer.
What else? I was a good girl for most of my life, I went through a brief bad girl period (my parents refer to it as "the mouthing off years," which is a kind way of putting it) then I was a good girl again. I went to Harvard (good girl!), I got fired from my first real job for accepting a speaking engagement in a foreign country on behalf of my boss without asking him first (bad girl!), then I got a job writing B-list celebrity profiles for a Canadian newspaper (not sure about that one--though I did get to hang with Lionel Richie and one of the less famous Rolling Stones). After a couple of years up in the Great and Glorious White North, I ended up back in New York. I was a staff reporter at the New York Sun and the Wall Street Journal. I've written for New York Magazine, Jane, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Arts Online, Marie-Claire, The New York Times, and Green Leaves, the Barbara Pym Society of North America's newsletter. I co-wrote three delicious Tenth Grade Social Climber books with the delicious Laura Moser, and now I'm whipping up a new Claire Voyante novel as well as working as a commissioning editor at the Wall Street Journal.
As for the bad girl extra ear piercings, they have closed up. Except for one, which has had the same little silver hoop in it since once upon a time. I always tell myself I'll take it out when I'm ready to say goodbye to all that and fully embrace my life as a grown-up. Hasn't happened yet.