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“Astoria just felt like home,” Waite said.
“Everywhere else I had lived in NYC, I
felt like I was living with a bunch of other
transplants, but it’s just really nice to have
that sense of community in Astoria. Half
of my neighbors were older people who
had lived there their whole lives and were
raising families there. I felt more at home
in Astoria than anywhere else in the city.”
While working as an actress and model,
she got a job near her apartment as a
waitress at a burger place by Kaufman Astoria
Studios (in this article, as in Waite’s
memoir, names have been changed, and
the names of businesses are not mentioned).
There, she met a great group of
friends — and her future husband, Marco,
her coworker from Argentina.
Waite spent “every second thinking about
Marco” after they started seeing each other,
and she remembers thinking, “Yes! Yes, this
is what real, sing-it-from-the-rooftops, heartmelting
love feels like.”
She met Marco’s precocious 7-yearold
son, Seb; Marco won the approval
of Waite’s family; and the couple got engaged,
then married, eventually earning
Marco his green card.
Soon, Waite and her parents invested
significant amounts of money in a small
gastropub Waite and Marco were opening
up in Astoria, in a business partnership
with another couple. Later, in their
Astoria apartment, the couple found out
that Waite was pregnant.
Her “before” life ended three weeks after
her daughter’s birth when she found
an email indicating that Marco had a
girlfriend. In the “after” section, the lies
snowball.
As Waite’s marriage unraveled, she
tried to hang on to her life in Astoria
but eventually moved to her hometown
in Maine. (As for the lies, infidelity and
betrayals Waite discovered, we’ll leave
you to read the memoir and find out for
yourself.) She recently bought a house in
Maine and is working in insurance. Her
daughter is now 2 ½ years old.
Waite came back to Astoria for the
book’s launch party, which was held at
Astoria Bookshop, with a crowd full of
Waite’s friends and colleagues, and lots
of local bookworms.
“Astoria Bookshop was a really obvious
choice from the beginning because
half of the memoir takes place in Astoria,”
Waite said. “There are a lot of Astoria
landmarks in the book, though the
names are changed. That’s where I lived
for the majority of time in New York and
Jen Waite at the Astoria Bookshop
it’s still where I think of as ‘home’ when I
go back to New York.”
Being in Astoria “felt bitter” back when
everything was falling apart, she said,
“but now that it’s been two years and I
feel more resolved about everything, it
still feels like home.”
Plus, since the book’s editor, Kate Napolitano,
and Waite’s literary agent, Myrsini
Stephanides, both live in the neighborhood,
Astoria Bookshelf was the perfect
choice for the launch.
Waite is no longer pursuing acting and
modeling — “that wasn’t the right path for
me,” she explained — so writing the memoir
was a creative outlet for her. More than
that, though, it was therapeutic: “Writing
helped me to process it and understand
what was happening,” she said.
While the writing process helped her
heal, she said that sharing the memoir