november / december 2005:

Say hello to amy's amex bill
Her first book was based on a decade’s worth of answering machine messages. Her second? Twelve years of credit card statements. We figured we’d give the quirky author a break and take her out for breakfast.

by E. B. Solomont


When Amy Borkowsky arrives at a swank Manhattan eatery nearly 30 minutes late, the first order of business is ordering black coffee. Milk cools it down, she tells me, her pale complexion flushing, straight black hair momentarily pushed back from the graceful swoops that grazed her shoulders when she walked in.

Once she has had her fix, we will discuss her career, her books, her schedule — which nearly always includes a java jolt and more often than not, “thinking and drinking” at various coffee shops, she says. One wonders how caffeinated she was when she unearthed 12 years’ worth of credit card bills and dreamt up her latest book, Statements: True Tales of Life, Love, and Credit Card Bills — the chronicle of trips, loves, and other life stories based on the record of her paper statements.

Before I have my answer, Borkowsky’s breakfast — a frittata — arrives, and she immediately sections off nearly one-quarter of the delicate egg-white pancake to give to me. “Do you want some of this? You are sitting there frittata-less,” she says. Borkowsky suddenly is struck by the fact that she is acting like her mother. “I am more like my mother than I think I am: Eat! Eat! Eat!”

That her mother’s legacy comes up in conversation so early is little surprise. Borkowsky’s break-out comedy CD and novel, Amy’s Answering Machine was based on ten years’ worth of saved answering machine messages from her mother. Though her mother passed away last year, Borkowsky recalls her mother’s endorsement of Statements. She wouldn’t let Amy put it aside to spend time with her toward the end of her life, Borkowsky recalls. “She said, ‘It’s going to be a good one. I can feel it.’”

Borkowsky grew up in Great Neck, N.Y., to a family of modest means that was culturally connected to Judaism, she says.

I ask Borkowsky if she was a funny kid.

“No,” she deadpans. “God, I answered that one really quickly.”

A self-described shy, nice girl who did well in school — but was definitely “not popular” — Borkowsky offers up her first attempt at trying to make others laugh. It was fourth grade, the subject was astronomy and the teacher, a substitute. Students were asked to name a star. “I raised my hand, and I said, ‘Lucille Ball is a star!’” says Borkowsky, imitating her child-like intonation in a high-pitched squeal.

Borkowsky spent her high school years in Atlanta, then attended college in Chicago before returning to New York to attend the School for Visual Arts, where she built an advertising portfolio. As an ad agency executive, she took stand-up comedy classes at night, honing her routine around her mother, herself, and New York.

Pressed to reveal her comic role models, Borkowsky says she admires Ellen DeGeneres because “she’s nice and she’s really funny.” It’s hard to be positive and funny in comedy since there’s always got to be some obstacle to poke fun at, Borkowsky says. She herself worried about achieving that balance with Amy’s Answering Machine, she admits. “On the one hand, I am making fun of my mother, but what am I making fun of her for? For being the most extreme, most loving mother who is so good at her job that she is almost too good.”

The response was positive, but in Statements, Borkowsky focuses on herself.

Coffee loving, creative, eclectic and funny, Borkowsky reveals herself in a series of vignettes about her friends, loves, and credit card charges. In one story, she bills herself “Amy the Amazing Hula Hooper,” and tries out for a segment on America’s Funniest People by brushing her teeth and hula hooping simultaneously: “The tension welled up inside of me as I was about to perform my pièce de résistance: the actual brushing. By this point I had kept my hoop going without dropping it for over two minutes. I stuck the brush in my mouth, instantly knowing in every fiber of my being that I was offbeat. I was unique. I was outrageous,” she writes. “I was also gagging. My mouth was overflowing with Crest, and I realized I needed to spit.”

I laugh out loud reading the story — and its retelling over breakfast — when Borkowsky says she’s saved the woman’s tuxedo jacket in which she sewed a pocket for the toothpaste tube, just in case she ever reprised the performance. She also admits it’s her favorite story in the book, and I agree: The story is hilarious, Borkowsky is real — and the combination successfully weds the innate sense of privacy Borkowsky says caused her to preserve her answering machine messages and credit card statements, with her performer’s mentality.

“There is something brave about putting your personal stuff out there,” she says. “There is a part of me that’s shy, and part of me that’s private, but the more I put things out, the more I realize that not unlike other people — whether it was my overprotective mother, or trying to find a guy and all the ups and downs of dating ... the reward is that people ... can relate to what it is I am going through. You’re connected with people, and there’s something nice about that.”

An example of this comes up in conversation not long after she says this. The discussion has turned to her frittata — now devoured — which we agree was very good, a cross between scrambled eggs and a poached egg.

The distinction reminds Borkowsky of the time she bought an omelet but served it on a plate of her own to a new boyfriend, who ostensibly thought she made it herself. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I don’t know how to make an omelet, I can’t cook anything!” she says, in a way that reminds me of so many friends.

Then I ask her why the story didn’t make it into Statements. She pauses, stumped. She vows to include it in a second printing, and a few days later when I receive a follow-up e-mail thanking me for the frittata, I believe her.



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