Some things you love make you seem cool. Other things you love make you seem deeply uncool. Eating a giant bag of Funyuns for dinner, binge watching Murder She Wrote until too late at night, soaking your pizza with ranch dressing: everyone has stuff they like that also makes them feel a little guilty or embarrassed. This week, we decided to share some things we love but don’t normally advertise to the world. Our guilty pleasures, revealed:
Olivia
Cold tomato sauce
The other day, I was enjoying some leftover pizza cold, and I had a revelation: what I love about cold pizza isn’t even the pizza. It’s the cold tomato sauce. I LOVE cold tomato sauce. One of my favorite snacks is eating the cold pasta sauce from leftover pasta. I don’t eat any of the pasta, but I will eat the leftover sauce by the the spoonful. One that’s a little more secret is that sometimes, I eat ketchup right out of the packet. When there’s not enough ketchup but you still have fries? You can’t afford to waste precious ketchup! Just squeeze that packet right into your mouth. As a kid, tomatoes were always my favorite. I guess I shouldn't be surprised!
My friendship with Hilary Duff
When I moved to Park Slope last year, I felt it in my guts that it was the perfect chance to become best friends with Hilary Duff! Hilary is from Houston, which makes her part of the BKTX community. Obviously we’d have a ton in common. She definitely lives in Park Slope, according to Reddit (JK, according to TIME MAGAZINE). We could make pickles together! We could antagonize our friends who work at the Park Slope Food Coop, which she hates! We could swipe through Tinder together while eating pizza! We can cook together and interior decorate! She stars in a guilty pleasure TV show, which I love. We’re basically already friends. In my head.
My pajamas
Sometimes, I wear my matching J Crew pajama set to bed. Sometimes, I channel Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and wear an oversized men’s shirt. But my favorite pajamas by far are a pair of plaid men’s boxers. They belonged to one of my ex-boyfriends. They are 10 years old and completely destroyed (really in bad shape). Not only is the elastic totally shot and no longer functioning so that they sag, but there are also 3 rips in them… The most dramatic is the gash underneath the entire right buttcheek. It’s fraying a little bit which makes it look extreme, but I love them and just can't bring myself to throw them away.
Emily
Jane Eyre
If you’re a dedicated BKTX reader (Hi! I love you!), then you might remember that I am the crazy cat lady of Jane Eyre. The truth is … I have nine (9) distinct copies of Jane Eyre. The tattered Penguin Classic I stole from my parents' bookshelf. The slightly newer Barnes & Noble version I used in high school. A Signet Classics copy that I think my high school boyfriend left at my house and didn't want back. The Jessica Hische drop cap edition. Included in a Norton anthology from college. A free ebook from Amazon. An audiobook that I downloaded to listen to in the car on the way back to college from the beach, when I just needed to brush up a little for class (obviously I didn’t need to read it again). The movie (with Charlotte Gainsbourg). The movie (with Michael Fassbender). Yes I’m blushing.
The music I listen to at work
A few months into my first full-time job, I discovered that I loved listening to NSFW music at work. It started with Kelly Rowland’s “Kisses Down Low,” which was one of my favorite songs at the time — it was actually weird that it hadn’t popped up on my Spotify until then, but when it did it was an amazing experience. It was hilarious that no one knew that I was listening to this frankly pretty dirty song. A wonderful and unexpected side effect of listening to this genre at work is that the smooth, repetitive beats are calming and not distracting, so you can drown out the din of an open plan office and focus on answering emails (a lot of them — the songs are really long!). The words aren’t important. It makes you dance a little in your chair. Your day becomes more productive. If you want to try it yourself, here’s some of my favorite work music:
Hiding love letters in furniture
I’m really not very sentimental. It probably sounds like I’m a hoarder from that Jane Eyre nonsense, but I’m not. I go through my closet every few weeks to get rid of things I don’t wear anymore, I recycle museum brochures and tickets, I don’t hold onto magazines after I read them. However, I do keep everything any boy I’ve liked has ever written to me, romantic things but also stupid notes left on my car at school or scrawled onto Post-It Notes . I keep them, and I store them in a secret compartment in a piece of furniture in Texas, in a house that I do not live in, and inside a piece of furniture that does not belong to me. No one else knows where it is. Maybe once a year I make sure it’s all still there, and flip through a few things.