Illustration: Maanvi Kapur
A lifelong New Yorker, comedian Charlie Bardey grew up downtown and continued to cohabitate with his brother until recently. Now that he lives alone in Brooklyn, he’s trying to feel more comfortable cooking for guests. “A big journey for me has been learning not to be self-conscious about it,” he says. He spends most of his days bouncing between writing, going to shows, and recording his breakout podcast, Exploration: Live!, with co-host Natalie Rotter-Laitman, which takes observational comedy and applies a touch of the profound. (A recent conversation about reality television evolved into one about a general fear of the unknown.) His meals veer between the rigidly routine — yogurt and berries for breakfast — and the haphazardly improvisational: sending out a flurry of texts to secure dinner plans. Nothing fills Bardey with more fear than finding himself with nothing to do on a Friday night. “For me, emotionally,” he says, “that is an emergency.”
Wednesday, August 20
This Wednesday morning, as is the case every morning if I’m home, I have the same breakfast: Greek yogurt, watered down a little bit, with blueberries and a little jam. It is completely essential to my life that I wake up and have basically the same thing every day. Otherwise, the decision of what to have for breakfast completely breaks me. If I’m missing a component piece (the yogurt, the berries), I lose an hour short-circuiting.
I always get my blueberries from Mr. Kale, my favorite grocer in the city, part of the Mr. Fruit chain celebrated in this very magazine. Let me add to the chorus: It’s fabulous. Open 24 hours, and the produce is so cheap. The other night, I bought two pints of blueberries for two bucks each. It’s perfect for my lifestyle since I usually come home pretty late, maybe because I internalized the wrong lesson from the song “Cabaret” from the musical Cabaret.
I’m almost exclusively a morning-coffee person, though I’m in a little bit of a transitional period because I just learned that if you have another coffee throughout the day, you can get way more done. For the past six months, my coffee machine has been broken. When I try to use it, the machine (a Ninja my brother snagged from an old office) beeps three times, signaling, according to Google, a water-flow issue. Right now, its primary function is conveying to guests that I have my life together enough to own a big fancy coffee maker. Instead, I drink Café Bustelo instant coffee, which I like the taste of. But more important, I like telling people I like the taste of it. Sorry to be all 2014 about it, but it can still sometimes feel so good to subversively appreciate it.
At 11 a.m., I record my podcast, Exploration: Live!, with my co-host, Natalie. I love her, and I love making this podcast! Right now, we’re recording remotely because Natalie has a job in Los Angeles. When we record in person in the Headgum office, we have access to office snacks, which, because of our jobs as comedians, isn’t really so familiar to us. There’s novelty to the little packs of nuts and the protein bars. But we try not to eat while recording because our listeners have made it clear they do not like it. If we slip for even a second, people are like, “This is triggering to me. It is horrible. You cannot do this.”
We start slow today because Natalie’s recording before work at 8 a.m. (God bless her), but we find a compelling groove in discussing the feeling of wistfulness. Natalie talks about making a peanut-butter soba noodle for dinner, which I take note of.
After the podcast, I eat a peach, which I’ve set out from the fridge to warm a bit. Peaches are heavenly right now. I think I have between two and three a day. I go to the gym, after which I return home and make my smoothie, which contains yogurt, frozen blueberries, water, psyllium husk, whey-protein powder, and creatine. The real key ingredient of the smoothie is psyllium husk, which has been amazing for my digestive health. I really recommend it, not to be a pervert.
I do a little bit of work (sit at my computer, bounce my leg, and switch between tabs), and for lunch I have leftover tofu curry a lover made for me. (Aww.) I work more, then decide I need a second lunch, so I make a tuna salad. It consists of two cans of tuna; the three scallions I have in my fridge; a few mini-cucumbers, diced small, which I buy at Mr. Kale ($1 for a bag!); mayonnaise; salt; pepper; celery seed, my favorite seasoning; a little cilantro; hành phi; and lemon juice. It’s totally delicious. I love preparing food that you can taste and adjust as you go. I eat it with Wasa crackers while hunched over my computer playing Pokémon Showdown, an online Pokémon battle simulator that I play for, conservatively, three hours a day. It is a huge issue in my life, and my addiction to it is, to me, a hallmark sign of the way my attention has become dysregulated.
I bounce my leg furiously for a few more hours before meeting my friend Richard Perez for dinner. We go to Captain Dan’s Tavern, one of my favorite spots in the city. It’s kind of just a classic bar, but the food is great, the kitchen is open until 2 a.m., a High Life is $4, and my friend’s fiancé is a line cook there, so the vibe is right. I appreciate a workmanlike quality to restaurants and bars — simple and effective, meeting a wide variety of needs. I get a burger and fries, and Richard gets the Caesar salad with chicken, which is my other favorite thing here, though I think (and I’m saying this with love to Captain Dan and his family) it’s a bit overpriced.
I go home and eat chips, a few pieces of the raspberry dark chocolate I always have in the fridge, a few handfuls of honey-roasted peanuts, and another peach. I play 100 more hours of Pokémon Showdown, read four pages of The Magic Mountain, and go to bed at 100,000,000 p.m.
Thursday, August 21
Something kind of nice about having the same breakfast every day is you find new depth in it. Some mornings the blueberries are mealy. Sometimes they’re crisp and tart. Sometimes the yogurt tastes like ice cream and I relish it; sometimes it tastes like paste in my mouth and I choke it down, desperate for it to be over. It doesn’t matter — I have to eat, and anything is worth not having to start my day with a decision.
After breakfast, I have a tutoring session. I bike to Windsor Terrace and do my best to teach a rising eighth-grader algebra so he can do better on the SHSATs. Biking home, I’m so hungry, and I feel frozen as to how to proceed with my day. As a freelance, underemployed comedian-podcaster-writer, I mostly make my own schedule. I chose this path partially out of a passion for writing and performing but also largely out of an antipathy for waking up to an alarm clock. Most days I wake up between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., and I love it! Still, it often means I’m forced to build the plane of my life as it flies, so to speak.
I decide to eat out but then end up stuck, unable to choose where. I need a protein-forward meal, a coffee, and a comfortable enough environment in which I can (try to) write. My instinct is Lincoln Station, a sweet, unassuming sandwich place and coffee shop in my neighborhood.
Like Captain Dan’s Tavern, Lincoln Station is a utilitarian option: good — not overpriced — food and a decent working environment. As usual, though, attempting to work at a café is a disaster. I sit outside because the tables inside are filled and I don’t want to sit on the counter-height stools. Outside, the wind keeps knocking over my table number, and I keep picking it back up like Charlie Chaplin. There are a few bees circling, which I don’t mind, but when a server brings out my sandwich — a meatball sub on ciabatta — the bees truly swarm. They return even when I swat, which makes me feel like the bees and I don’t have an open and honest relationship. I feel unheard and taken advantage of and foolish. I move to a different table, farther away from the potted flowers, and eat my sandwich quickly.
I’ve been flirting with sadness all day, but I have my first sip of coffee and feel better and excited and start to write. I run into my friends Free and Caroline, who live nearby, and then run into my friend and neighbor Cameron, which, of course, feels fabulous. I’ve lived in my neighborhood now for seven years, so I’ve met a lot of people who live around here. This also makes me feel rooted in community, like an older person in a small town in the south of France, a feeling we can all aspire to.
Caroline gets a slice of Lincoln Station’s gluten-free olive-oil cake and offers me a bite, to which I say, “Can I have a bite?,” to which she says, “Yes, that’s why I just offered you a bite,” so I have a bite. It’s delicious.
After my 4 p.m. meeting, I go to the gym, which is crowded in the afternoon with people who work more (no offense) regular schedules. I return home, have my smoothie, and bike to Bushwick to see my friend Max Wittert’s show I Can Steal Your Mother at Life World. It’s the third time I’ve seen the show. I love it! After, someone asks me about my shoes, and I respond for eight minutes, during which time I fail entirely to come up with one salient and coherent point to make (they’re comfortable but not that comfortable? Or they’re cool? Or they’re fine?), and I realize I’m so hungry. Max and I and about eight other people walk to El Santo, where I get a Corona and a chicken burrito. Before it comes, I joke that I’m so hungry I’m going to swallow it whole in one gulp like a pill. It arrives, and it’s so delicious that I basically do swallow it in one bite like a pill, which two people remark on, and I feel proud in a boyish way.
After biking home, I play Pokémon Showdown until time ceases to exist, read 12 pages of The Magic Mountain, and go to bed at an hour so late they haven’t even come up with a word for it.
Friday, August 22
The blueberries are better today — tart and crisp. Auspicious!
I head into the city to hang out with my youngest brother, Henry, who is about to leave for his first semester of college (!). We meet at my favorite establishment in the city — Harper’s Bread House, on Grand and Forsyth — which makes, to me, the best onigiri in the city. We get two each of spicy eel, spicy crab, butter chicken, and seaweed salad and eat watching handball in the park. It’s a perfect food experience, and it’s the first place I recommend to anyone who asks me where to eat in the city. I grew up around that area, and I’ve been going since I was a kid, and I’m so glad it’s still open. I miss Prosperity Dumpling, where you could get five fried pork dumplings for a dollar. They closed after there was an exposé about how they were actually making the dumplings in the alleyway behind the store. And I’m kind of like, Yeah, girl, they’re five dumplings for a dollar. What do you want?
Back home, I realize, to my horror, I have no plans tonight. I feel forgotten and lost. After sending some texts, I secure the outline of a plan: Make dinner with (for) my neighbor Vince, after which we’ll head to my friend Julio’s party. For Vince, I end up making the soba peanut noodles I’d been thinking about. I improvise the peanut sauce. It’s the basics: peanut butter, soy sauce, honey, toasted-sesame oil, a bit of water, rice vinegar, grated ginger, and garlic. For a main, I poach bass in water and soy sauce with a ton of scallions. After the bass is done, I throw in some Broccolini and poach that. I serve it all together. It’s great!
Both of my parents — and, in particular, my father — are talented home cooks, so I’ve always understood cooking and hosting to be of paramount importance to successful adulthood. I know how to cook decently, but hosting is harder for me, and I’m just now learning how to serve food without equivocating, apologizing, and projecting a deep neediness: “It might be too salty,” “The oven was weird” — that kind of stuff. I’ve been trying to practice a small and unassuming “Oh, I’m glad!” as a response when someone compliments my cooking. We’re being evaluated constantly, but it’s kind of a bummer to show that you’re thinking about it.
We bike to Julio’s. Before heading in, we stop in a bodega, where I suggest we buy this new Corona product, Sunbrew, which promises “real orange & lime peels.” We also buy a bag of peach gummies, my favorite thing to bring to parties. Everyone loves candy, and it’s a delightful and cheap thing to bring. At the party, we try two Sunbrews, and they are horrid — way too sweet; cloying, even. Nobody else touches them, even when there’s no other alcohol left. What could they see that I couldn’t?
Saturday, August 23
I wake up with no plans, completely terrified. I have a party later in the night, but a bright and beautiful day stretches ahead of me with no one to share it with. I feel like I’m going to die. Saturday days are a kind of black box to me. Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday days, Sunday nights — they all have clear imperatives. Saturday day is anyone’s guess. When you have a boyfriend, Saturdays are for going to furniture stores. But I don’t have one, so I’m completely lost.
Like divine light from Heaven, Richard calls and asks what I’m up to. He meets me at my house, and we set off. We get matching cold brews and a single egg tart to split from Lisbonata, a new Portuguese bakery near my house. We try going to Bagel Pub, but it’s mobbed, as it always is on a weekend. We defer our bagel plans and head off to meet my other little brother, Alec, who is working the Eastern Parkway Open Street. He works for NYC DOT, and I truly couldn’t be more proud of him. We hang out for a bit before getting a bagel at [redacted], which is bad, but we have a nice time.
We head to the park and pick up peaches at the farmers’ market but detour three avenue blocks into Park Slope to find a bottle of water that resonates with Richard’s desires. We find a grocery store on Seventh and buy shrimp chips, toffee pretzels, and two huge and stupid Essentia waters, a product so idiotic that I can’t help but love it.
Richard leaves to see a dance performance in the Rockaways, and I meet my friends Mohammad, Hayley, Jovvi, and Dylan to go to a block party run by Rhodora wine bar in the south of Prospect Park. We get there, hungry and unwilling to wait in the food line, so we go to Risbo, a French rotisserie restaurant in Flatbush. I have a major dilemma, which is that I’m supposed to get dinner with my friend Max, with whom I’m co-hosting a party later in the night, but I’m hungry now. I waffle and end up ordering strangely: a scoop of bourbon-vanilla ice cream and a side order of chicken. They arrive at the same time, and I eat the ice cream first. Mohammad and Dylan order massive platters of food. I’d gambled that I’d be able to mooch off them. And I do.
I bike home, shower, and meet Max at a Mexican place, where I order a ceviche and have a million chips, all of which makes me feel bloated, probably due to this being my second full dinner. We go back to Max’s place and light candles for the party. I set out a bag of Carambars, and we batch white negronis. Max is an extraordinarily talented host and chef; his apartment is tasteful and beautiful and chic and playful, so parties at his house are always completely fabulous. After everyone leaves, Max and I play Smash, and I get on a bus home. I’m drunk from the white negronis — too drunk to get ready for bed — so I end up doing nothing on my computer for a hundred hours and go to bed after 5 a.m. I don’t even try to read The Magic Mountain.
Sunday, August 24
I wake up hung-over. I drink water alone. I look in my fridge, and I have blueberries but no yogurt. This is a disaster — my system is falling apart. Everything is falling apart. I can’t remember if I have friends or loved ones.
I make a plan to visit my friend Yoshiki before he leaves town for six weeks. I tell him I’ll pick up sandwiches along the way. I don’t love any of the bodega sandwiches around me, but I settle on Beyond Natural Market on Bedford and Fulton. I go in and the vibe is odd and forlorn. The market is the size of an airplane hangar, and most of the shelves are empty. Country music is playing that the guy working the front seems completely uninterested in. I find a deli counter in the back, and the man working there looks frightened that I’ve found him. I ask for two turkey-egg-and-cheeses and amble around the empty aisles. I get my sandwiches and an iced coffee, and Yoshiki and I eat together on his roof. The sandwiches are perfect (I get mine with mayo) and only $5.50.
I initially have plans to get dinner with my ex-boyfriend Anand and his new boyfriend, Alex. When we were dating, it was Anand’s dream to have a Grub Street Diet, but he’s a tenant lawyer in Queens Housing Court, so it doesn’t seem likely he’ll ever get one. The relationship’s ending was particularly painful and fraught, so my inclusion of our dinner is a gesture of apology and gratitude. Unfortunately, though, he and Alex get back too late from a weekend trip. Sometimes things don’t work out!
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