Thanksgiving at Tiffany's
in SoHo
ON HOLLY GOLIGHTLY
Last year, I went to the Paris Review Spring Revel.
I didn't know what the Paris Review was until I was twenty years old. I just knew that I liked to read and I really really felt a sense of purpose when I was writing.
At one point, I was talking to someone else about Breakfast at Tiffany's, which I'd just finished reading. I'd really latched onto the word "playgirl," which was in one of the blurb's on my copy.
I was speaking with someone at my table about the story. How it was sadder than the film. How Holly Golightly was so young in the book.
"You know she's a sex worker in the book," someone at my table said.
"Oh!" I said. I hadn't read it that way at all. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just caught me off guard.
I had really identified with her. In a New York apartment with ambiguous midwestern roots, charming people, running around with no attachments. I often call myself a "neighborhood girl," which I think Holly is.
I can't go home without falling into a couple of conversations.
I can't be walked home from a date without later being questioned about the man who walked me home. God forbid he steps inside, or comes up.
Holly Golightly represents (to me) this figure who's been adopted by her neighborhood. A girl with no real sense of home, trying to make one out of everyone she meets.
ON HOME
My sense of home can be very weak. Take Thanksgiving, for example. My parents are not in Kansas, and Kansas doesn't feel exactly like home anymore. Neither does New York.
One memory that did feel right though, that does sit with me, is when I was at the Tiffany's store (in SoHo) trying on the most beautiful ring.
I find my home in people and more and more, I feel like I'm ready to find my sense of home romantically in one person. I felt at home wearing the most gorgeous square cut diamond in Tiffany's and hope that someone who feels like home will eventually put something like that on my finger (though I'd much rather prefer something vintage with familial significance and meaning).
So, instead of going home for the holiday, I had it at Tiffany's.
HOW
I can't remember when I had the idea first. But I know that the first person I told was my publicist, Sean Forde. And like he usually is with all of my craziest ideas, he was immediately into it. No questions asked. No Why? or What if? Just giggles and yes and How.
And so that's how we ended up running errands the evening before.
First, we swung by Chair Up on the Lower East Side. We told them that we were having Thanksgiving at Tiffany's. They were extremely kind and let us borrow a blue table for 24 hours.
As Sean and I coat checked the table at coat check at a local social club, he pointed out that it was Tiffany blue, and I giggled wondering if the kind gentlemen of Chair Up did that on purpose.
Next, Sean got a haircut at Cartel in SoHo. There was a little tiny yorkie inside that I played with for a little bit.
I knew I was hungry because I started to get irritable, so I went to Cafe Gitane and had an Americano and wrote some letters until Sean arrived, and then we split the spicy oranges and olives.
Then, we went to go get our Thanksgiving bird.
RAF'S CHICKEN
I love Raf's. I've written about it before. And the chicken at Raf's is one of the best in New York. I had stopped by a day or so earlier asking if they'd let me have a chicken to eat in front of Tiffany's and they told me to come in on Wednesday at 5 pm. So that's how Sean and I ended up at Raf's asking for a to go chicken the evening before Thanksgiving (Raf's does not do to-go).
As we waited, they told us we could sit and offered us a drink. One of the bartenders found it funny that we asked for the item on the menu that takes the longest to make. But that's how you know something is really really good. When people take their time with it.
Eventually they brought of the chicken, and Sean and I said thank you and left.
COLBORN PIE
Sean and I went our separate ways and I made my mother's pecan pie recipe, facilitating book club as they baked in the oven.
GREENS
I made the greens the next morning, as my Mother usually does. This time I used frozen kale. I will not be doing that again.
BREAD
As I made the greens, Sean Forde popped into the Balthazar Bakery to get a baguette.
THANKSGIVING AT TIFFANY'S
Sean Forde and I called a car and put our table and chairs in and loaded our food into the bag along with Sean's new schmedium telfar bag. We got out in front of Tiffany's, getting stuck for a moment in the throng of people trying to go west to New Jersey. But we weren't trying to go to New Jersey. We just wanted to go to Tiffany's.
As we got set up, it struck me how particular plateware is. How it's clink feels so wrong in certain settings. How the line between a plateware appropriate and not appropriate occasion is a very thick line. People watched, stared as they walked by.
I've grown comfortable with spectacle as I've leaned more into performance art individually. One woman was so delighted that she took a picture from afar and then came closer to take one and to say hello.
"We're having Thanksgiving at Tiffany's!" we told her.
She laughed.
REFLECTIONS
I had Thanksgiving at Tiffany's because I couldn't have it at home. And like Holly Golightly, I often find my home in people. In luxury. In music. In a way of looking at the world.
I forget that I'm a 24 year old woman, a lot. I forget myself a lot, forget to factor in people's perception of me, whether they think that I'm a playgirl, or an influencer, or a Kansan, or a joke.
But I know that I love to have fun and I love the people I love.
And I feel so lucky that when I found out neither my friend nor myself were going to be with family on Thanksgiving, that I could throw out a declaration like
"We're going to have Thanksgiving at Tiffany's!"
And that this declaration would be accepted and met with cooperation and compassion, resulting in a half chicken, a Tiffany Blue table, a homemade pie, and the realization of a momentary dream.
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