My neighbor has prostate cancer. I ran into him in the elevator the day he was discharged from the hospital after a four-night stay.

He doesn't speak English & my German stinks. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to say, "I hope you are feeling better. I hope the treatment you received was sufficient & the hospital staff caring. That sounds like an absolute nightmare but fingers crossed they can keep you in good health. We sincerely care about you."

Except I know the German for maybe three of those words, so I just said, "This is not good. Not good. Very very very not good."

He actually got mad at me. The words "Of course it's not good, you absolute moron!" might have been said. I wanted to explain that my German isn't good enough to discuss sensitive topics but that sentence alone would take me twelve elevator rides to translate & would probably end up as, "Best I no talk. Bye bye." I thought, wow, even when I mean well I'm screwed.

I fumed for a couple of days before I settled on a solution: a multipurpose preemptive German apology. "Hallo. Ich bin ein 68-jähriger New Yorker und mein Deutsch ist nicht gut. Für nette Worte telefonieren meinen Mann. Wenn du eine Pizza brauchst, bin ich dein Mann." ("Hello. I am a 68-year-old New Yorker and my German is not good. If you need kind words, call my husband. If you need a pizza, I'm your man.")

It is winter and in every German tree are clumps of mistletoe. I guess it's there all year round, but you can only see it after the leaves drop in winter. It grows in giant balls that are thickest at the tops of the trees.

In New York you pay five bucks for a couple of twigs, so of course I couldn't resist greenery that was more valuable than my education. One day while we were driving to a local farm stand I spotted a low-hanging ball, and I told hubby to pull over so we could get it. He jumped a small creek, crawled through a hole in a rickety fence, and waded through a muddy pasture to the tree. That night I attached a string of miniature Christmas lights and hung it on the balcony.

The next day our friend Evelyn came over to make gingerbread houses, and she said in Germany it's illegal to cut down mistletoe. I said it's a parasite that hurts its tree host, but she said it's protected like all wild plants.

"Do you know why there's more mistletoe at the tops of the trees?" she asked. "Birds eat the berries, which means there are seeds in their poop. Since they're always flying, that's where their poop usually lands."

She doesn't say why you're supposed to kiss under it. And despite her decidedly cold explanation, I still find it romantic. The next time we're walking through a forest and I see some hanging high above I still can't resist. "Hey, a bird pooped up there," I say to my husband. "Give me your face."

One night on our cruise my friend Mike got really excited about the evening's entertainment: a mentalist. He had to sit in the front row, and for some reason he'd put on a suit, which stood out among all the muumuus and flip flops. I asked him why and he said, "I had a really, really good friend, Rick, who died twenty years ago. He promised me if there was any way he could contact me, he would. And I've been waiting ever since."

I just about cried. Mike is a really sweet Southern man so this didn't surprise me, though his naivete did. "You want a medium," I said, "not a mentalist. A medium talks to the dead. A mentalist asks you to think of a number between one and a hundred, and two minutes later a chicken walks in with the number painted on its ass."

Mike was stunned. "Oh," he said. "So this guy can't talk to the dead?"

I shook my head. Mike's face fell as the realization slowly crushed him. He seriously thought he'd hear from his long-lost friend again.

There wasn't much I could, but I had to do something. "You should definitely talk to the guy, though," I said. "The skills don't seem that far apart. If he asks you to think of a number between one and a hundred, tell him, 'I will, but first do you see an older man near me whose name starts with an R or an L?"

Conversation with my fictional American husband.

FAH: "Hey, it looks like a beautiful day. Let's go have some fun!"

ME: "Great idea. What do you want to do?"

FAH: "We could stop by the flea market at City Hall and then have Aperol Spritzes by the park."

ME: "Oh, that sounds perfect. Will I need a jacket?"

FAH: "You'll be fine. If it gets too chilly, I'll keep you warm."

ME: "Aren't you wonderful? Okay, let's go!"

Conversation with my real German husband.

RGH: "Get up. At your age you need to move around or you will die."

ME: "Great idea. What do you want to do?"

RGH: "First you will use the toilet, then I will use the toilet. Then we will go out. When we come back, I will use the toilet, and then you will use the toilet."

ME: "Oh, that sounds perfect. Will I need a jacket?"

RGH: "Yes. It is not cold but you need something to absorb all of your sweat."

ME: "Aren't you wonderful? Okay, let's go!"

(Naturally I'm crazy about him.)

Opens today in France. I'm not going to see it but I'm curious how much sugar they needed for the top.

STRANGER: "Is that a Moose Knuckle?"

ME: "No, I wear thick underwear. [PAUSE] Oh, you mean the JACKET."

Surprise

I have to do something. Every morning I wake up and it's like my eyebrows have grown just a little bit bigger, until they threaten to consume my face. It looks like two squirrels are scurrying across my forehead, and very soon there's just going be to one. Years ago, though, after an overzealous afternoon with a razor blade, I learned that shaping and tweezing your facial hair is like trying to remove your own gall bladder. This time around, I decide, I'll let a professional handle it.

I don't exactly keep up with the trends, but I know about threading. I've seen it on the news, where an Asian woman wielding something like dental floss wraps a loop around a stray hair and yanks it out, faster than the blink of an eye. While I run my daily errands I pass eight or nine threading salons, and I slow down in front of every one. I feel my giant eyebrows weighing me down until I can hardly hold up my head. I think, why don't I just go in and get it done?

You hear all these rumors about New York metrosexuals, but I'm the only guy in the salon I finally choose. There's so much estrogen in the building, in fact, I feel like I've accidentally stumbled into a frozen yogurt shop. Mercifully, the procedure is quick and painless. Five minutes and fifteen dollars later, the woman passes me a hand mirror. My eyebrows are far apart and half their original size. The delicate arch makes me look ever so slightly surprised.

I look at the woman. She looks at me. "Well, I think they look good," she says.

I race to the bathroom of a nearby Bed Bath & Beyond and survey the damage. They could definitely be worse. They're certainly not that 30s Jean Harlow brow, the thin Sharpie squiggle dancing just below the hairline. They could almost pass for natural. Still, the arch is sharp enough to change my default expression. I'm no longer bored. I'm not exhausted. If I keep my face entirely still, I'm somewhere between inquisitive and questioning. Add in even the slightest additional surprise, though, and I look like a man fleeing Godzilla.

I run my remaining errands as I struggle to keeping my face utterly placid. Inquisitive eyebrows aren't such a horrible thing, I discover. They have the attitude that I don't, second-guessing every word I hear.

I stop at a fruit stand for a mango and some strawberries. "That'll be twelve dollars," the man says. I look at him. He looks at me. "Okay, okay," he snaps. "Maybe it's just eight."

I drop in Macy's to see what's new. There's a red knit cap I almost like. I'm not sure if it works with my beige skin and ridiculous height. "You look great!" a clerk says. "You look fabulous!" I look at her. She looks at me. "You look like a lit match," she admits.

By the time I head home it's late, and the subway is deserted. Still, a middle-aged man sits down right next to me. His suit is cheap, his hair's thinning, his mustache nearly hides his mouth. "You should be a model," he says, just out of the blue. "I mean, you are absolutely gorgeous. You've got cheekbones for days, and it looks like you've got a smokin' hot body too. You could be, like, in one of those Calvin Klein ads, just wearing underwear. David Beckham's got absolutely nothing on you."

I look at him. He looks at me.

"Well, I wouldn't turn off the lights when I fucked you," he says, so imagine my surprise when he did.