••• This week in The Cut‘s Sex Diaries column: “an interior designer sexting at a café: 45, straight, married, Tribeca.” She’s having an affair with an actor, but the best most memorable part is a solo performance:

Noon My text to Matthew turned into a few hours of sexting, just as my coffee has turned to red wine. Still sitting at the café … I contemplate masturbating under the table, beneath my coat. No one would know. I ask Matthew if I should. He writes yes, but only with pics. So I try to get my hands under my jeans while also taking photos and it’s very awkward, but I get some hot pictures to him … even if I can’t manage to get off.

1 p.m. I finish the job at home. I lie on my bed and rub myself until I come, thinking about Matthew’s tongue on my clit the entire time.

1:30 p.m. Late for a work meeting uptown. I zip up my jeans and get out the door. I don’t wash my hands. Is that gross?

••• “Driving a car into the busiest parts of Manhattan could cost $11.52 under a major proposal prepared for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that would make New York the first city in the United States with a pay-to-drive plan. […] Trucks would pay $25.34, and taxis and for-hire vehicles could see surcharges of $2 to $5 per ride. The pricing zone would cover Manhattan south of 60th Street. In a key change from past efforts, drivers would not have to pay if they entered Manhattan by all but two of the city-owned East River bridges, which are now free to cross, as long as they bypassed the congestion zone. […] New technology can identify vehicles on any roadway and automatically charge them, so the task force was able to draw a narrower—and perhaps more politically palatable—cordon limited to the most crowded streets. In turn, that means drivers can enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan by two bridges without paying as long as they go directly to the F.D.R. Drive along the East River and then continue on it until they are out of the congestion zone. With current street configurations, that is possible only at the Edward I. Koch Queensboro Bridge at East 59th Street and the Brooklyn Bridge downtown; coming into Manhattan via the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, drivers are only able to continue into streets covered in the zone. […] The report called for increased traffic enforcement by the city, and said the distribution of official parking placards should be subject to a joint review by city and state officials. [I hope this means a complete review of all existing placards.] People who live within the congestion zone would not be exempt from the new fees.” —New York Times

••• “State and federal officials reached a deal Sunday to reopen the Statue of Liberty, a day after the federal government shutdown forced it to close.” —New York Times

••• “The psychotherapist Mark Epstein is known for lucidly mapping the ways in which Buddhism can enrich Western approaches to psychology. In his books, starting with the publication of Thoughts Without a Thinker in 1995, the philosophies and practices of those worlds are in fruitful conversation. […] Mr. Epstein, 64, lives in Tribeca with his wife, the sculptor Arlene Shechet, and he sees patients in the same building, in the unassuming basement office.” —New York Times

•• “The Gristedes supermarket chain appears to be engaged in a headlong retreat from Lower Manhattan. The firm’s owner, John Catsimatidis, is seeking to close two Downtown locations of the grocery store, at 90 Maiden Lane (in the Financial District) and at 21 South End Avenue (in Battery Park City).” —Broadsheet

••• The Wall Street Journal on developer Allan Fried’s plan “for an expansive retail space and hotel at the landmark American Stock Exchange building (86 Trinity Place) in New York’s financial district. […] The four lower levels […] could offer as much as 100,000 square feet of retail space.”

••• Daytonian in Manhattan looks into the history of 49 Walker.