I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT BY JANE BORDEN

So tell me Jane, how were you sold into sexual slavery?”

Well, Svetlana, I tried to buy a fake Prada purse from a Canal Street stall with a Pokemon sheet for a door.” ­­­– Chapter 1, “Waiting for The Raid Team”

The first chapter of Borden’s new essay collection, I Totally Meant to Do That, is about her job spying on Chinatown knockoff vendors. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the book; Jane acts one way and wants people to treat her another. Within a few pages, she’s made the conflict crystal clear: she’s living in New York, but wants to go back home to North Carolina, but doesn’t want to go back home, or does she? Each adventure she has (a philosophical throwdown on Staten Island, moving apartments with the affable and insane Sanchez brothers, dancing to Grease in an anonymous midtown bar) is a battle between past and present.

Borden is split between her life with the upper crust of Raleigh and her existence as a low-finance, semi-boheme writer in the world’s capital.

So if you’re not interested in a crisis of location, or simply hate New-York-dwelling southerners, take a walk. There are plenty of other books out there.

Though she does standup comedy (recently appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival) the book isn’t a series of jokes. It has a natural sense of humor, with a few out-loud laughs per chapter, and a few smiles, mixed in a little laziness (Malaysians children make toys for American children! There is poo on the ground in alleys sometimes!) Borden does have a gift, though, for musicality and idiom. She explains her kindness thusly: ([ southerners] act drunk when we’re sober. I was reared to act like a golden retriever. Which is why in my first week in New York, I literally fetched.”).

The style requires some getting used to; Borden’s standup instinct instinct to add in a jokes eventually melts into honest prose.

By then, though, the collection’s true texture comes out. Exciting encounters of adult misanthropy and debauchery are continually pitted against Borden’s youthful experiences. New York, where she’s lived for eleven years, goes from a vibrant, casino-like city to a burden and a cesspool. Though she sheds her victimization complex in the interesting chapter “The Cartoon Assassin”, her conclusion is far from positive. She asserts that the city doesn’t hate her; it’s simply ambivalent and hard to live in.

Back in Raleigh, Borden’s family gives her Christmas gifts, then immediately stores them in the basement. In a nice bit of emotional blackmail, she can use them when she moves back home. Despite living in Gotham, she attends nearly every wedding she’s invited to (and in Raleigh, it’s tradition to invite the entire town). She tries to combine the two (attending southern expat events, trying to find authentic barbeque, clumping with other New Yorkers at the weddings), but it’s an unwinnable fight.

In the end, Borden makes her choice. Since the book was written over the course of six years, she takes the time to deconstruct previous chapters, putting her own words on trial to try and solve her split case. The vulnerability is striking and recalls Born Standing Up. Unfortunately, the dualistic nature of the book makes either solution a scorched Earth strategy.  Borden spends so long tearing down each of her homes, anything she chooses is, at best, a surrender.

Find out more about Jane Borden here.

You can buy I totally Meant to do That at Porter Square Books.