In college the bookstore was home. I subscribed to the Timesand everyday I would walk in there to pick it up. The women (all women) who worked there were goddesses who never forgot your name.
So yesterday I walked into the bookstore and the same women were working the special orders council. The same women who got me the limited 7" of "Fuck the Pain Away" and who tracked down "Please Don't Kill the Freshmen" and who told me that someday they would stock my book in the front window. Those women were there.
My glasses are at the doctor's this week. I'm just wearing my contacts. I don't think many people recognize me, but it's been five years. I walk up to the desk while talking to an old professor, "Denise? Hi, it's--"
"Brendan!"
"Hey, sweetie, I can't believe you remember me. How have you been?"
"I'd never forget you, Brendan," she has a smile like a candy counter. "Besides, you know my daughter? Remember?"
On the night before my first day at school I stayed in a Super 8 Motel with my parents on the outskirts of this sleepy town. The night-clerk was my age and she said, "Are you okay?"
"I'm nervous about school tomorrow. I'm excited too. But I'm nervous."
And she said, "If you ever get lonely: go down to the bookstore and talk to my mama. She's the sweetest woman for miles. Tell her I sent you."
The very first day of school I wormed my way through the crowds and went to the bookstore because somehow I was the only freshman who didn't know to bring pens and notebooks. When I got to the desk I read the woman's nametag, "Denise? Hi. I'd like to introduce myself, I'm--"
"Brendan, right? She said you were coming." Smile like a candy counter.
*
This morning I got up and went to the coffee shop where I worked in college. Actually, first it was some bullshit mid-nineties lesbo coffeeshop with the bad chai and ugly furniture. I quit and started waiting tables in town and being the research assistant to poets.
Senior year I spent my entire tax-return on my deposit for our apartment in Chicago. Then on the worst day of my life T cheated on me, my grandmother had a stroke, Felix died in Iraq and the bank foreclosed on my restaurant.
The restaurant was a local mainstay and all the local mainstays bought me drinks and told me that things would work out.
The coffee shop reopened that year. An art-teacher's son and his wife decided to leave Manhattan because there is no where else they'd rather raise their children than Gambier, OH. They heard about me losing my job and told me to start filling in at the coffeeshop.
Today I am sitting in that little shop in a booth, working on the YA novel. There are Amish people selling blankets right outside the window. The owner's wife came around to clean the tables and stopped to smile at me. "Brendan! Hi!" She's the owner and she's wearing an apron and cleaning tables. "I was just talking about you at home this morning."
"Me? Why?"
"Joel and I were just saying how lucky we were to have you work with us."
Ohio is a vast land full of people who never miss a chance to tell you how much they love you. And I love them too.
TO: you you you, on your trip to a fairyland called Kenyon
SUBJ: a poem to sing you to sleep
THE CINNAMON PEELER by Michael Ondaatje
If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek you could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbor to your hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you -- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once I touched you in water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter. And you searched your arms for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it to be the lime burner's daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in an act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon peeler's wife. Smell me.
I'm having the kind of month where I have to depend on iPhoto to tell me what the hell I did on what day.
On Wednesday I met up with Alicia on her shift at Manitoba's and Andrea and Tessa and Angus came alone. We got wasted and I ended up staying in the East Village, which was perfect because Adrianne and Jurvis were in town and we had brunch plans. We met up at Frank's, which is across the street from Lit.
A good test of whether or not the girl you're dating is a junkie is: how does she feel about Frank's? Does she like the food? Or does she just like going there because she's spent every Saturday of her adult life locked in the basement of Lit, snorting her life away with the owners and emerging only at 11 when Frank's opens.
I was really excited to see Adrianne. Not only has she been one of my best friends for years, but this was only our second time meeting. The last time was kind of insane. This time was going to be even better because her unbelievably sweet boyfriend was there and she was still oozing gravel from her bike accident.
They were staying in Times Square and had to go to a graduation the day before, so they were exhausted. It was actually quite nice. Usually when people come meet up with me in the city I feel like they're expecting to black out at a certain point with me. Like it's part of the tour?
We had such a nice grown-up lunch on the porch at Frank's. It was nice enough to eat outside, but it was nice enough to just sit in the cutest little Italian restaurant with all the windows open. I was really excited for Adrianne to meet Andrea because they're probably sisters from a past life. They both spend their days editing websites and then at night they have sexy photos taken of them in garter belts.
Andrea hadn't heard the story of our first meeting or of Adrianne's bike accident so she was treated to a pictorial slide show and a live-account by Adrianne about the her heroic rescue in the hands of Mr. Jurvis. It was such a lovely afternoon and the gnocchi was fantastic.
They had to catch a bolt bus, Andrea had a meeting and I had to go to work at three.
So after she left the Modern and went to Leonard Cohen I went home and got some work done. She texted me repeatedly during the show, which was wonderful.
Before I left my house that day I was very excited. But I wanted to be hopeful and not just optimistic. An optimist will make a bad relationship work (been there) and a hopeful person is waiting for the right thing to come along. I also decided that I was done dating women just to be polite and that if I really liked this girl I would tell her. You can tell right away if you're going to get along with them. You don't have to be a novelist.
So when I was at my house that afternoon I took out my stationary and my nice pen and wrote her a card. It was on Parrish Hill farm stationary, which is what I save for special occasions. There was only one thing I would like to say to this girl and if I didn't feel like saying it I would just keep the card.
"Having drinks tonight was just wonderful. Thank you for the conversation and the stories. I wish we'd be introduced sooner, but there's no rush. Meet me in Paris and we'll do this full-time." Also, I'm clearly the kind of person who will save this card until I meet the girl I should send it to.
And I met her that night. The Modern, I've mentioned before, is breathtaking and so you don't really have to distract a girl to slip a note in her purse. There's a Thomas Dumand on the wall and the liquor-shelves and wine-library are enough to keep you busy.
She texted me after she read the note. "Where are you?"
"Brooklyn."
"Come pick me up."
We kind of cross-signals and so I ended up calling her while she was in a cab back to her house. Then I got nervous. I didn't want to go straight to her place. We'd had a wonderful date that afternoon and I didn't want to rush into things (for once).
Luckily she's a little too much of a Lady. She had me meet her at The Bourgeois Pig on 7th and 1st, which is way cuter than it sounds. It was a big chilly out and so when I walked in she bartenders were all circled around her at the bar, rapt in attention.
The bar closed, but we were having fun. She said, "I'll go anywhere close."
"Let me take you to my friend's bar. You're just his type, it'll make his day."
We went to classy and venerable St. J's to see Newman. And as soon as we walked in I saw Luc in the DJ booth. I smiled at him. We used to completely fucking hate each other, but most of that has faded. However, she walks in behind me and says, "Hi Luc."
He smiles at her, "You're not blonde anymore, huh?"
I almost died. I can think of nothing that's a bigger evening-killer than finding out that Luc knows your date. People are constantly asking why I spent so much time with Luc's ex without dating her after they broke up and the answer is, "Because she dated Luc." 'Nuff said.
"Did you hook up with Luc?"
"No. I don't really sleep around."
"You can tell me if you did."
"I didn't. I dated a friend of his."
I introduced her to Newman and he had a big smile on his face, "Who is this gorgeous creature?"
"I told her, 'Let's go down to my buddy's bar. You're just his type.'"
"She certainly is." Newman has that sort of style that died in Pearl Harbor, only to be imitated. You gotta love it. He bartends on the weekends to survive and then she spends five nights a week playing horn in various bands in exchange for maybe a meal and some money. Great guy.
We were sitting there long enough that I said, "Why don't I take you to the opposite of this place?"
We got back on the Vespa and rode across town. She was cold and so I said we'd switch coats. She wore my grandfather's leather bomber jacket from WWII and I wore her dress-length wool coat and got on the bike looking like Coco Chanel. It was a fun date exercise.
Want another first date game? Go through each other's bags and promise to be completely honest about whatever's inside.
We went to Greenhouse, which is my eternal escape. The woman at the door saw us coming, smiled and pushed the line aside so she could undo the velvet rope for us.
There are a thousand reasons behind why she did this (too many guys and I brought a girl is the most likely) but if you ignore that for now it sounds much better. The reason there were so many guys is it was clearly a gay-straight party. The manager saw me come in and walked us over to the bar upstairs and did a shot with me and got us a round of drinks.
We went downstairs to talk. Downstairs was even gay, but the lights were so much fun to look at. I was done talking for the evening and I didn't want to have to take her home yet and I was avoiding how to get out of that part (I earnestly was having such a nice time I didn't want to have to ruin it with whatever came next).
Right as we sat down this girl walked over, her eyes widened and she came over and straddled my left leg. I keep forgetting that for a small group of people in Manhattan I'm apparently some hot-shot music guy they should impress.
She rides my knee and I can feel her hot crotch through her pants. She catches the beat of the song and sings us a song that she's been working on. I actually liked the lyrics, it was sort of a hot-bitch soliloquy about how you want her so bad, baby. It rhymed "watch me strippin'" with "panties drippin'"
When the song was over she got up and walked away.
"Really." We were getting very close on the couch and I had already told her I wanted to wait to kiss her.
And then I thought: what the one thing I've never done on a first date but I'll always wish I had? So I gave her a lap dance.
A lapdance on a girl is totally different than on a guy. It was mostly about dancing around her with my knees on the couch and massaging her scalp. Your scalp is a muscle and it never relaxes. Your ears are the same way and so is your jaw. I was having so much fun doing this, too, kissing her neck intermittently while I ran my fingers around her scalp line.
After a few songs we were both out of breath.
When we got outside I said, "It's cold. I should put you in a cab. Then we'll have to be well behaved." I opened the cab door to put her in and she said, "What about the books."
I had forgotten that I had brought her two books. One was Raphael's Comic and the other was one from Chicago called "Artbabe." I apologized to the cab driver and we walked over to the Vespa.
There was nothing I could do at this point. I had only planned on being mature about this until she got in a cab and that failed. I told her the truth, "The night I met you I heard 'Fell in Love with a Girl' play in my head. So I'm going to take it as a sign and just wait until we get some things in order. Then you can say, 'Come and kiss me by the riverside.'"
She dropped her books and purse and said, "Fuck it. I can hear water."
We went home separately and the last thing I texted her was, "Please do not ever contact me again. Tonight was too perfect for words. Pretend we were to be wed tomorrow, 'And then he died at Pearl Harbor.' Wear a black lace tiara for a week then move on."
She wrote back, "I always dress like that. Why so fatalistic? You never answered that."
That question hadn't occurred to me. Yes, I literally believed that all life is doomed and that this was so perfect we should just leave it that way.
She texted me in the morning, "Am I still supposed to be widowed today?"
"You'll get a telegram from the ward department when they know for sure."
"I already feel a little pang of heartbreak, which is why its going to rain today. So take me to the river and rest your mouth against my throat one last time."
"Okay! Let's meet for lunch at...what's that sound? Baby, something's happening. I have to--ohmygod there's planes everywhere!! I have to go. Don't ever forget that I fell in love once and it was completely."
I was really going to leave it at that because I owe it to myself to do one thing right in life and then she texted me back with this, "Alas. May Leonard Cohen's voice echo in the blazing sky: 'My mirrored twin, my next of kin-I'd know you in my sleep. And who but you would take me in, a thousand kisses deep. I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat. You see, I'm just another snowman, standing in the rain and sleet."
I'm sorry, you can't walk away from a girl who uses Leonard Cohen against you "She runs to the docks, kisses his corpse, 'No no no no! I was waiting for the wedding to tell you: you're going to be a father.' Her breath fills his lungs. He gasps. His eyes open."
"Love is stronger than death!"
"And the next day they were wed, he walked her down the aisle in full officer's dress, his arm in a sling. His face untouched, except for kisses."
"He was the kind of man who spoke words so beautifully women gave themselves to him... But it was his sincerity that really drew her in."
"Every night before bed she sees hims off to sleep and remembers that day. She sighs, he revives, he looked into her eyes and says, 'I'm right here so don't go wasting that mascara. I love you.'"
That was how it began and I may never know how it ended.
But it was a couple days before I figured out this part: she's Canadian and has no idea what Pearl Harbor is.
I got up early to get my work done for the day and my room smelled fantastic. There was a girl in there whose arms were covered in a hand picked blend of botanical oils. Instead of being satanic about my writing I went downstairs and laid out tea and cookies on a baking sheet and brought them upstairs. Maybe if I just keep refilling the cookies she'll never leave.
Because it's pretty easy to get a lot of work done when you're in bed having tea with a girl who smells like hand-picked botanicals.
About a year ago I met up with some girls who were in Kerri's class and they said "Reunion? I'm not going to the reunion?"
"Why so we can talk to Jenn Smalls and hear about how wonderful her husband is?"
What? C'mon. A reunion is not about showing off. It's about sharing old jokes, hooking up with the people you meant to hook up with senior year and drinking enough to make you want to donate.
What's also probably something I shouldn't talk about is this: I'm going to the reunion to see you guys and no one has more to brag about than I do. I can say this. Because it's fucking true. You had a Fulbright? Huh, that's cute. Medical school? Sounds like a hoot. You got over me and are getting married to the guy you were cheating on me with? Oh, that's, hmm... actually that is something to brag about.
Furthermore no one is gauche enough to brag about it the way I do, constantly. But I'm not going to. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about pop music, publishing, DJ'ing, style-directing, or, say, being a rouge international journalist for a fancy magazine.
And I'd love to talk about that even more if you'd just buy me a damn beer. Because I am POOOOOOOOOOR! Yes, I've travelled the world in bands and on assignment and I have a very affordable apartment but I only paid last month's rent two weeks ago. I have to spend the rest of the week eating popcorn so I can afford the $1.50 pints of PBR in the shitty college bar. Word is there's a nice new restaurant in the Village Inn and they serve Brooklyn Lager. Have fun in there, suckers! I can eat in a fancy restaurant anytime I want in New York City.
But in general, I am a huge favor of any moment in life that had a song that goes to it. My friend Justin wrote the little ditty above. They used to open for us, back in the day and I hated them at first and then I heard him belt out this song:
I can't pay my rent but I'm fucking gorgeous
I've got big lungs that will kill your chorus.
If you want to try: you better come in side.
I was blown away at that first show, Justin was nervous and shaking. Our old show had lots and lots of lights in a small room. He paced up the stage and said, "Jesus I'm going to loose fifteen pounds just at this show."
Can't pay my rent but I'm fucking gorgeous.
Tell me something I don't know.
Tell me something, I don't know.
I don't drink booze, 'cause my hearts explosive.
I gave up food, because the shit's expensive.
I know you want to be me, but, baby it ain't easy.
That happened to meI lost weight before our first tour because I was so poor and the only time I got fed was at that Jazz club I did Fridays uptown. Then I gained it back last summer. Then somehow in the last two months I lost twenty pounds.
I actually would have plenty of money to rent a mustang (yes, that was maybe my plan) and buy you a beer at the reunion. But I got sent home from work on Sunday by the owner. I was in a good mood and I've met a wonderful girl and it was sunny out. I was setting up my station (sleeveless and tattooed) and probably singing to myself through my brunch-drunk bravado. He threw me out and I'm surprised I worked at all yesterday.
Which is to say: no one from our graduating can be much lower in their life than I am. I actually would be able to afford the trip. It's not that I'm out of work. It's that I'm an asshole at work. I know you want to be me. But baby it ain't easy.
So, seriously, I know there are some people who aren't coming because they're out of work or they don't feel like they have shit to talk about: just come! Bring pictures of your nieces. Everyone likes pictures of babies!!
The owner of my new job sent me home yesterday for being too awesome. I really hope that he has the sack to fire me today so I can work weekends in the Hamptons for the summer.
If I had blue eyes I'd work in finance. On May 23rd, 2004 I would have been in the elevator of Goldman Sachs in a three-piece suit and no haircut. I would have been class-president. I would've had a full scholarship somewhere else and I'd wear the sweatshirt on weekends to golf games.
Instead my eyes are the color of dog-shit. Building superintendents everywhere are always scraping my eyes off their sidewalk. And you know what's the worst part? They're my second-best feature.
In third-grade I started falling behind in math and some kind of public school-forensics discovered that I might not be able to see the blackboard. I was outfitted in the ugliest, faux-gold, double-bridged glasses you've ever seen. They made my young face look even more awkward. The optomitrist was located in an old mansion at the foot of the hill near my elementary school. Across the street was my mother's official Christian Science Practitioner's office. Each was in a mansion. The optomitrist's mansion was the birth place of my 90-year-old next-door-neighbor. My mother's office was in the birth place of his wife. They lived together for 70 years. Yes. I believe in a thing called love.
I hated wearing glasses in junior high and never made it a habit. One year my mother had big news. One of her patients had cancer!! That means that every day my mother stayed with her on the phone for the big money of $15/day and prevented her from dying. God is love, she said. And the good news is that that old bitch bought me some contact lenses.
Contacts in the 90s were an unnecessary affair. Each one was $300 and was worth more than your appendix. If you dropped on of these small, clear, slippery, see-through devices: you're fucked. Mom's cancer-patients aren't going to buy you a new one.
With contacts in I slowly discovered some things. First of all: I have freckles. Never knew. Also: books have pieces of paper inside with words on them. Furthermore: it's not that you're a total loser, it's just that girls have little facial ticks and if you have good vision you can pick up on these and save yourself the heart-ache. It was a good year.
I was a complete loser in high school. Luckily the prettiest girl in my class had low self esteem. She got into a very prestigious Ivy-league school in Massachusetts. I was crushed. My game-plan after high school was to purchase a VW Cabriolet. When I got the money together. When she got into school I said, "College? That's what you want? You drive a '76 Fairmont, which is like a parent's-basement-couch on wheels. College? Really?"
And then I got a letter in the mail (I understand that I'm the luckiest guy alive and I promise you that there is so much unhappiness in my life that I can't bear to write about it) which basically said, "Hi. I'm from the single-greatest college for young writers. I read a story of yours and called your public-highschool to have your guidance counselor give me your home address. Paul Newman sells salad dressing so kids like you can come to this country-club university. Also: I know you're from New England. In Ohio we just skip February and go straight for spring. So how about this: we fly you out here and if you want to read books and drink coffee for the next four years: we'll pick up the tab."
On our last date together my high school sweetheart and I went to the mall and had dinner at Rainforest Cafe. We had to wait for a table (I know, right? Totally wasn't famous then) and went to Lenscrafters. I tried on about a dozen pairs of glasses (over my contacts) and I remember her (in that adorable I'm-going-to-break-up-with-this-guy-after-my-birthday) way she said, "You're just trying on the same pair over and over."
A week later I got dumped and I got a scholarship. I literally hadn't planned on going to college. I was so intimidated that I needed to be in costume. I didn't want to be the prom-queen's ex. I wanted to study literature and never be trash again. Andrea has a song that goes, "I'm a Shakespeare tragedy or maybe a comedy. I didn't grow up in the ghetto projects, but I went to the resort-town high school of Hard Knocks, and watched 'Good Times at 6 PM every night." So I went back to that Lenscrafters and said, "Make me look like I wasn't in the retard classes Freshman Year."
I showed up to my first day of college a nervous-wreck. My dorm-room furniture was terrible and freshman-week was an invite-only keg party of people who were Lacrosse opponents in a past-life called "boarding school." I delivered pizza for all of them and, no, I still don't have change for a $50 and I still don't care who your parents are. I took your money and rode cross-country with a friend of mine all summer. My first-day-of-school-outfit was the pants I bought at a thrift-store in Berkley. She shirt was from City Lights Books in San Francisco. The shoes were from China. Yes, I had a full-life before I even took Psych 101.
In college I made a game of teaching myself to sound whiter. I learned when to aspirate an aitch ("H") and I learned (I know, Hartford, just be jealous) that just because there were two "T's" in a row it doesn't mean you have to gloitally float over them. Suddenly I was in a new land of nerd-glasses and I went to Brit-tain and wore mit-tens to class when I got cold. I dropped all apostrophes and I never once got "smi'en" over a girl just because she had on a cute scarf from Bri'ain.
The glasses broke Junior year and I had to gerry-rig a plastic-handled fork to have its metal-tongs hold my glasses up. Everyone asked if I majored in Studio-Art.
When I graduated my parents gave me $500 to help me move to Chicago ("They have IKEA out west!") and that ended up being $400 after they needed the money for a cab. Whatever. All I wanted in life was to have my big brother watch me walk across that stage with my diploma and give me a big hug at the end. I'm sorry if you don't have a big brother in life. It turns out that misery and joy are both given a x10 just because you can laugh about either with your big brother. It's the greatest.
When I finished college I put the bullshit diploma in a tube and handed it to my brother and said, "You deserve this. I would've ran away Freshman year if you hadn't made me stay. You're the best brother a guy could ask for and I love you till your lanky, Irish, mortgaged death you son-of-a-bitch."
He said, "I'm going to throw up in this tube if I don't get back to the dorms in ten minutes."
See what I mean? Even tender moments are better when you have a big brother. Catch the fever.
Anyway, last week I thought I was going blind. This week my opto- gave me some contacts to try out. They're sublime. I don't get blinded by cab-lights and in dark bars I can tell when a girl is smiling at me. For no apparent reason they are also wind-shields and I can ride the Vespa at 75MPH with no eye-screen. They're amazing.
I'm starting to think that maybe the next phase of my life will happen without glasses. First of all: I'm known downtown for glasses. If you use my name to get in the door someplace the doorguy always says, "Brendan? Nerdy Brendan? With the glasses?"
My bullshit record career all happened in a pair of T-Pain's sunglasses. No one in pop-music has ever seen my eyes.
In college one day I wore my contacts and Eric said to me, "Brendan, I didn't know you had such eyes."
The girls at lunch agreed, "You could be, like, a heart-breaking rockabilly singer."
"You should start a band with those eyes."
I guess my cheap, Lenscrafters glasses undersold me. They shrank my sclera and distorted my eyelids. It's not really something I comfortable talking about but, yes, I have what anthropologists call "Mongoloid Folds" and makeup artists are constantly trying to exten my eye-line out to my ears. I don't know if it's from being Native or being Irish but, fuck it, I have eyes that make you want to look into them when you talk to me. It distracts you from looking at my scrawny, pathetic body. I'll take it.
The doc said that if I return the box of contacts he'll give me a new set with my new prescription.
I only bought the contacts because I've been with them for years--before they even had their own shop--and I wanted to support my friend. Tomorrow I am going to turn in my old contacts and get some new ones.
And if my glasses aren't ready--fuck it--I'm having a great, great week pretending to be a posture-perfect tall, handsom, tan-guy with Lakota-eye-folds. I guess it just means that the older I get, the wiser I'll look.
For about a week I've been wearing my contacts. I only started wearing glasses after my high school sweetheart broke up with me. A month later I got a scholarship to the best school a guy could want and I bought the glasses so no one would think I was some kind of charity- case.
My eye-doctor said he would switch out any unopened contacts I had for the new prescription and update my Prada glasses.
I'm tempted to just ditch the glasses and start this new chapter of my life without wearing a mask.
Last summer at work I held fast to my rule, "No shots until after midnight." too many nights I left the Vespa there. Now my rule is "No shits after midnight.". That way I can work off the buzz I came with.
If I could do it all over again I'd live in a doorman building in the east village. They're like nunneries with funny black guys who will sign for packages.
I hate my job just as much as anyone else. But there are some nights where I get all the right requests and I lick my finger to hold the record in place and I can't wait to play you another song. Forgive me. But sometimes I love my life.
I gave it a week. I gave it some time. I gave it until my story came out in the magazine about our trip. Then I gave it a full metrocard. I cried in restaurants. I chased you all over midtown. Today was two metro cards. It's over. Do not contact me ever again. You were not worth any of it. But it took me two metrocards to figure it out. Goodbye.
Here's what I learned by drinking my face off at a posh manhattan country club on a week day: sometimes it's wonderful to get hammered in the sunshine in a place that has showers where it's completely okay to fall asleep. Fuck it. They'll run you a tab.
A Brita filter pitcher is a wonderful thing if you're aneorexic. That way instead of drinking clean fresh NYC water you can have a cool glass of something that tastes vaguely like whatever's stinking up your fridge.
When you're certain age your credit card is the only thing in life that gives you the benefit of the doubt. Your credit card is CONVINCED that you'd look great in those pants or that you'd like to pick up the check. It's like your anti-boss.
Periodically I get invited to a bullshit party for no apparent reason other than somebody needed PR for something and someone else needed a date. I love a good awkward party.
Andrea told me it would be at the Hudson and that our goal for the night was to dress up like off-duty superheroes. I love to play dressup. So I showed up to the Hudson, which is a luxury hotel on 58th, in Italian boots, tight black pants, collared black shirt, my elblow-length fingerless leather gloves were tucked in my belt. I took my sunglasses off and told them which party I was going to.
"What?"
"The all-rockstars awesome party?"
Forty-five confusing seconds later I learn that the party is actually at Hudson Terrace on 46th and not The Hudson. Andrea is new to the city so she makes new-girl mistakes like not tell you whether an address is 221 E.7th or 221 W.7th. It's adorable.
There were two parties on two different terraces, which was fun because it made it a little mysterious as to who was going where. Then it turned out there was a fashion party on 3 and the party on 2 was our party and it was just for journalists. If you've ever been to a fancy party and heard that there is a reporter in the room you basically just have to look for the worst dressed person in the room, who is squinting the most.
Reporters are a fan of sport coats, especially if that sport coat is just a jacket they leave on their chair at work at all times and especially if that jacket looks like it came from their dad's suit. They love to mix shoulder bags with shoulder pads and I'd rather not discuss their pants.
The party died and we were the last ones out, so we decided to go to the nearest shittiest bar we could. We're already all the way out on the West Side Highway and 46th, so the place we ended up was called Landmark Tavern, which--at the time it was built--was a Hudson River Bank bar for sailors. Now it's done up well with white table cloths. We had picked up a strangler on the way, but that stranger happens to be a fellow writer and a much younger fashion writer. She was sweet and all and I think she thought if she hung around Andrea long enough she would land a better job. Instead she was blowing up my date with Hot Bitch.
On the way in the door I realized I had misjudged it and so I skipped infront of the younger girl and said, "Sorry, let me get the door."
"I appreciate that you care about these things."
"Quite the gentleman," said the post-collegiate who probably-thinks-I-do-it-ironically.
"I also appreciate that you always walk on the outside and you never walk a lady over subway grating when she's in high heels." If I do that on purpose: it's only because I have nice parents who trained me like a sheepdog.
I do know that you're supposed to walk on the outside because in Shakespeare's time you might end up with a chamber pot on your face. It turns out you should always get the door for a lady because sometimes dumb Mics who own old bars forget to hang a "Wet Paint" sign up when they stain the door brown. I excused myself to the bathroom while the bartender poured the first half of my Guinness.
Something very strange happened to me quite suddenly this week: I quit smoking. I didn't even mean to. One day you're in the bathroom of Motor City with eight people and the next you meet a nice girl who likes to play dress up and eat dinner.
I decide we need and adventure. We hail a cab and I tell the driver, "79th St. Basin." He takes us up the West Side Highway to a small rotary that goes nowhere but keeps traffic flowing. "Right here sir?" Yep. He pulls away and a bus turns into the rotary.
"Girls? Jump." We leap down a stonewall that leads to a stone staircase all the way on the west side, near the Hudson river. The stairs are unlit, but the moonlight was somehow enough. We come through a vaulted stone ceiling and down there is a riverside cafe near a yachts-only marina. Below us is a garage full of luxury automobiles that never get used.
"How did you find this place?"
"My cousin worked on that boat."
The third wheel was getting kind of squeaky and I was hoping she'd just take the hint. But I also didn't see the point in getting rid of a nice girl who's probably never been above 14th in her life. We watched the silent boats float in their slips and walked to Dublin House on 79th and 11th, which is another salty old Irish bar. This one has a six foot neon harp for a sign.
We walk the third wheel back to the subway and take a cab to my Vespa on 46th. I gave her my windproof and drove her to Macao Trading in chinatown and we had a late dinner in the basement and talked about what my character in her comic book would be.
I think we got there around midnight and we only really shared an appetizer and a side. We never ordered more than one drink, we just shared each one. It was a lovely evening and somehow we left at 3:30. I was home in bed at 4 and called to make sure she got home okay and we talked on the phone like teenagers.
At 7AM I awoke feeling like I had overslept something. But I hadn't. I was having a dream that was a hurricane of calm, wonderful feelings. And a moment later I got a text from her saying the same words, only I hadn't told her that first.
I went to the eye-doc today and discovered that my prescription is out of date and my ears are probably clogged from allergies. Oh, and, it occurred to me on the way home that maybe housing a wild animal who shits in a box, steps on it and then walks around my hardwood floors isn't exactly the same thing as buying flowers regularly.
Brendan, you are like this-close to maybe getting your shit together.
Part of my full-body shutdown as of late means morning are particularly difficult. I guess they've just become mornings like regular people have. But yesterday I was walking through park slope to get my stereo fix and there, sitting on the ground right in front of my was a single front-row ticket to see Justin Timberlake.
I stooped down to see if someone had lost a souvenir. But no. Right there on the ticket it says "JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE LIVE AT MSG" and "MAY 18, 2009."
That is today's date.
I really am the luckiest guy alive.
But I cannot go because I haven't worked in a month. So I post on facebook real quick. "Free ticket to Justin Timberlake TONIGHT. I only have one and it's yours if you respond."
People were surprisingly annoying about this. "One really?" "Why just one?" "Are you going?" "What time?"
Who the fuck cares? It's Justin Front-Row, which (sorry) is an experience I've already had in Chicago.
I think part of the reason these were so difficult for me to deal with was because I can't read so well and I'm trying to do this and carry my (heavy) stereo to the repair shop. Eventually a friend at the NYTimes says he'll send a messenger to get them from me right now. I'm at work fifth ave and I leave it in an envelope.
"Thanks, man! You're the best! Can't wait!"
I feel really good. Granted he will have to sit next to the friends of whoever lost their ticket but--look--I'm the luckiest guy in the world and that gets really lonely. If I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks I have to measure out how many great things in my life I'm going to tell you about. Sometimes I have to pretend to be really bummed about a breakup just to offset how happy and well-dressed I look that night.
But, look, I'm spreading the cheer. Have fun at the show, buddy! JT is AMAZING!!
I'm taking my emergency credit card to the eye doctor today.
I first noticed I was deteriorating on my actual birthday Thursday. I was with Alicia just after she got off her shift at St. J's and she lost her purse. St. J's is actually a very fun place to go play in the dark. Somenights it's lit only by the candles of the tables and the projector screen that inexplicably shows old movies or music videos.
Alicia lost her purse and I said, "Okay, I'll find it." I looked down and saw blackness. In a shit hole like St. J's that's a lucky thing. But I needed to see Alicia's black leather purse on one of the black leather barstools in a dark bar. I found it from memory (I had seen a light from the broom closet.)
But I realized: I am losing my night vision.
It's affecting my reading, too. I keep noticing little spelling errors in all of my work (most of it on Facebook) and I know it's because I'm trying not to focus on how I can't see.
Lately I've noticed some swelling in the ear drums because my favorite activities are listening to music on the subway to bars, drinking in loud bars, DJ'ing in louder bars and seeing bands that don't care about your hearing. I used to have wonderful earplugs but I lost them at just the right age when I could have saved myself.
On Sunday I went out with Andrea to Greenhouse and I had to admit that I was following the sentiment of our conversation and not it's exact meaning. I was shaking my head just because she smiled. I couldn't hear a damn word she was saying.
I'm losing my hearing.
Ever since I've been single I've kind of hated the sight of my bedroom. It's cold and rumpled. I try not to but I always end up making the bed like a single guy, flopping the covers back as I exit out one side, alone.
There's also the fact that boys smell. And boys who work in nightlife come home covered in sweat and mixed drinks. I even try to wash some things regularly but the sour smell of defeat just follows me home every night. I wake up wishing I had a dog to blame.
What beast slept here last night? Gross! I leave the windows open all day and it's still there on my desk. I wash the sheets and it's still there.
The only thing not leaving me is my sense of smell, which I consider and erogenous zone. My sense of smell won't leave me like my hearing or sight. My sense of smell just reminds me everyday that there's only one thing that can get the stench of loser out of your apartment. And that is to have a pretty girl around. A girl who washes her hair once-a-week (but what an event!) and who has a hundred creams that smell like Shakespeare's garden.
You keep a girl around like that and you'll never have to worry about smelling fresh.
That's probably why I've been sleeping in my suits all week.
You girls and your hair just kill me sometimes. I can't take my tie off because you danced next to it for so long.
(This story is full of 20% more facebook than is dignified).
On my actual birthday my facebook status was "ATTENTION BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WITH BOOKSHELVES: Marry me tonight and I'll never forget our anniversary! It's my birthday!"
Katie and I had dinner at Lulu (I know, right? I wish the photographer who came to dinner could have stayed with me until I threw up that salad later) and went with Nicky Didge to Annex. If you're a guy and you want to work in nightlife: buy a camera. Everyone will love you and be honored by your presence and you'll never pay cover anywhere.
Tessa arrives with her friend who is known as The Pinup P0et. I can't link to her site because I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to figure out that it was me. Fucking google. This girl is so fucking gorgeous. It's killing me inside that we aren't already married and that I wasted an entire meal with Katie when I could be with this girl.
Her first words to me are, "Brendan? Funny. I wrote a story about a Brendan. He's a tortured graduate student who spends all his time reading."
"A short story? Are you getting an MFA or something?"
"It's actually for my comic book series."
Luckily, this girl is a figment of my imagination. I made her up, I'm not out on my birthday with a 6'1" creature. We're not talking about which Sherman Alexie readings we've been too. James Joyce only comes up once in the conversation.
I left and went to St. J's and said, "I have to leave because I'm in love with you."
I don't get her number because I'm too tired to stay up all night reading A Moveable Feast onto her voicemail. I went home and listened to "Fell in Love with a Girl" about twenty times.
The next day I don't get out of bed until 3. What will happen at 3 is some nightlife photographer will have posted photos. The photos will end up on Katie's Facebook. Tessa will tag Hot Bitch. I will know her full name and have access to her pictures.
Whatever, if God wanted me to be macho I'd probably be in a sports bar yelling at illiterate men on televisions screens. Then I'd never wear a tux on a weeknight. What kind of life is that? That's like New Years without Champagne. (;
Those brutes are terrifying. And they think it's okay to wear ugly shorts and flip-flops to dinner in the summer. Dandy is meant as a compliment. Suits are where it's at!
Sometimes I think that I don't exist and I'm really just a character in one of your stories. Is that bad?
I don't get her number from Tessa but I wait for her to add me on Facebook. That's when I forget that I ex-proofed my profile. She can't add me. No one can see me because I have celebrity-grade barbed-wire around my page. If your sister is tagged in a photo with me and I'm in it: you might not ever know what your sister's wedding was like. But I forgot this. So I'm waiting for her to add me so we can email. I give great email.
Today I text Tessa and told her to have Hot Bitch meet me on 53rd St. at 6. She was a little uncomfortable and so I said
What? Who the fuck would turn down Leonard Cohen with a hot bitch? I would take either. If a hot girl asked me to see Barenaked Ladies I'd be there, in line buying the T-Shirt.
I haven't worked in a week and I took the night off because a gorgeous woman asked me if I would be her well-dressed date to Leonard Cohen. Fuck yeah I wanna go. My bank balance is $6.15 and I haven't paid rent for May. But I've got a gold record I can pawn now.
But then I get a mysterious phonecall from a strange number. It says, "Sorry about the ticket trouble. I really wanted you to go. My friend sold it on ebay. Why don't we meet at The Modern anyway?"
I gulp.
The Modern is the official James Beard Foundation Best Restaurant in the World. It's in the ground floor of The Museum of Modern art and the wall is a full-building Thomas Dumonde Photograph. It's the sexiest place alive. The dining room overlooks the sculpture garden.
"Why don't we make it 5:30 so we can converse a bit longer + drown in martinis?" she says.
I'm not breathing very well. The reason I never got her number is because I have no game. I am incapable of playing it cool. Ever. Nothing about me has ever been cool. When I flip over my pillow at night the other side is somehow warm and sweaty. Even my leather jacket--the coolest thing that comes in contact with me--is sweaty and asthmatic.
But I've read some Ian Fleming and I'm Still Drunk so I text, "How do you take your martini?"
"Straight up with a twist."
"Hendricks or Ketel One?"
"Ketel. Ketel Citron, even, if they have it. Club soda on the side."
I have bad Sunday Subway Karma today. On the Manhattan bridge I text her, "FYI: I'm not late. I stood you up on our first date to get back at you for the Leonard Cohen debacle. Kitty can scratch."
I ride the D Train, which is obnoxiously slow for an Express, and check my email.
And then, just before I get in the tunnel to Chinatown and lose service I write, "Just kidding. Sunday subway Karma. Be late too so I can do the martini-as-you-like-it-waiting-for-you thing. ETA 5:42."
I'm scared that I'm going to be late because The Modern is crawling with rich douchebags who love extramarital activities. I calm myself down by working out my one-liner: If there is anyone talking to her at all I'm going to walk in there in my three-piece suit, tear off my platinum headphones and look him straight in the eye and say, "Beat it."
And then when he says, "What? Pardon me?"
"If you want something beautiful to look at: take a seat by the Thomas Dumonde." I'll pull off my glasses to prevent myself from getting assault-with-a-deadly-weapon. "Now beat it."
I promise that if it's a friend of hers I'll pretend like I was just kidding. Banter!
I walk in the door of The Modern and the Maitre D' is all smiles, "Brendan! I heard your new song! How you been, man?"
The waitresses are stopping by the bar just to say hi.
The Lady arrives and just as she sits down next to me the bartender brings me my drink and pours her Ketel One Citron Straight up with a twist.
The chef comes out of the kitchen with a tarte flambee and says, in a heavy French accent, "It's always good to see you, Brendan. Please. With my compliments." He puts the plate down and motions for the bartender to bring up napkins. "You must have good food to keep your strength up if you are out with such a beautiful woman."
"I only met her this week," I say directly in front of her, in French. "But hey, when you meet a gorgeous girl you have to make sure that she's eaten gorgeous food, yes?"
All of the staff is coming over to say hello. The foodrunner makes a special show of bringing us another complimentary dish. He pours the radish confit over her shoulder and I go, "Back off, guy, you're scheming on my date."
He laughs and we all smile. This terrible thing happens when you're a young boy in New York City. You want to meet a nice girl and you want her to know that you want to meet her parents and hear about the dog she had growing up. You want to sneak out for croissants while she's still sleeping. But on the night you meet her you know that if you just ask her out: it sounds like you only want to have unprotected sex in the bathroom. The way most guys subvert this is by asking her on a non-date. Great idea, right? Leave it open. This way everyone can be confused for the entire night.
I'm 27 and if I could be 22 again I would tell my younger self to just ask girls out on a legitimate date. How fun is that? You both get to dress up and have dinner. Who doesn't like dinner? I love dinner. I eat it, like, five times week.
Also, I can't tell you how many times I've paid for a dinner and had a surprised "friend" just let me abscond with the check. I'd probably own real-estate if I could have just let girls shoot me down beforehand in my early twenties. "Would you like to have a date with the least-smooth guy in the Lower East Side?" If she laughs you take her uptown. If she smirks you bail and decide to just be friends. And you don't waste your night off.
I didn't plan this but I've just established that we are on a date by fake-yelling at the foodrunner. We are in a romantic-themed situation and by it not being not-a-date, she doesn't have to worry about whether or not I think it's a date. And then, if shit doesn't work out, we can decided "Let's just be friends." And when we're friends we can not-date any day of the week!
Paul is at the end of the bar. Paul is a 65-five-year-old Children's book author and the design manager at The Warner Group. He walks up to us and says, "Brendan, I haven't seen you in years."
"How's life, Paul?"
"Miserable without you." He smiles. The Lady smiles.
The Maitre D' comes over to show us pictures of his kids. "Get whatever you want, Brendan. It's on Danny."
I order the scallops for The Lady. "Order more. Please."
"I couldn't possibly. She has a concert to go to at Radio City. But I'll be back."
The Lady shakes her head at me. I only met her on Thursday. She squints a little bit, "God, who are you? They really love you here."
"Hey. They're nice people." I take a sip of my drink and think, Just shut up, Brendan. Whatever you do: keep your mouth shut.
"My god, I've never had service like this in my life. And I used to be blonde."
Shut up, Brendan. You're at MOMA and no one needs you to talk. Plenty to look at. Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP.
Our water glasses never empty and we are treated to all kinds of delights by the world's greatest chef. I'm burlesque in real life. And so I have to let her in on the secret. I'm smiling.
"Would you prefer to believe that I am this all-state playboy champ or should I just tell you that I used to work here and I got fired?"
She smiles. You made a girl laugh! And she says, "I can't believe I'm going to say this. But I wish I didn't have to go see Leonard Cohen in half an hour."
She swirls her martini and the lemon peel crests the surface like a naughty Otter, showing off at the Zoo.
Heather cooked dinner and baked a fresh stawberry blackberry pie. She had never heard Seamus Heaney's poem Blackberry Picking, so I read it to her while the pie cooled. It's okay to be a pretentious fuck on your birthday.
I explained to heather that what the poem's really about is how there are times in life where you just have to enjoy what's right in front of you. You can pickle all the blackberries you want, but they'll never taste the way they did that day when you picked them off the bush, warm from the sun.
We decided that tonight we would have Blackberry Night. She helped me pick out my outfit. It was a MT party so I can't wear cowboy boots. I was a tad late so I didn't really have time to sew up my gucci pants (I'm back to my old back-up-dancer weight for some reason, so I have lots of gorgeous clothes from the old days). I went with the black-striped shirt with the Elvis cufflinks (not bc they were his but bc they depict the King), black Italian boots, black vest and black tuxedo jacket. "You look like Johnny Cash'n'carry."
Heather worn the ripped, bleach stained pants from Trash & Vaudville, a bathing suit,a black tank and lace-up black heels. We were walking down the street in Brooklyn and a flock of black kids got out of our way and she said, "Yeah kids, drop out of art school and you can be like us someday."
Her attitude is infectious. We were in a cab headed for the party and she said, "We shouldn't be in a cab. We should be in a limo. You and I should be on the back seat and we should be surrounded by half naked women. They should be snorting blow off your Gold Record and we should be lost in conversation, not partaking." The thing about a photographer is she can tell a story that doesn't have any sense of time. Beautiful tableau.
"I actually have the number of a limo guy who's always looking to play taxi while his customers are at the game or the premier or whatever."
"You should have called him."
She walks into the bar and goes, "We need shots. We needed to be in a limo because we should have been drinking Jack Daniels out of Champagne flutes."
She goes to the bar and Andrew's back there, smiling. He doesn't even know it's my birthday but he buys me a drink. What a fucking guy, right? Heather doesn't ask what I want. She just orders a shot of Wild Turkey, a girlie shot and Jack-and-coke times two. I've never once in my life had a Jack and Coke before.
"I think our obnoxious party couple name should be Jack and Coke."
"Does that make me Jack?"
"No. You're Coke because you're sweeter and I'm hardcore and a bitch to take."
Fuck yeah that was my date to my birthday party.
Theo comes and Elyse comes and Jackie forgot there was a party apparently. Leila showed up at 2 AM when I'm on stage (for some reason) playing tambourine. She gives me the sweetest, artisanal, hand-written birthday card ever! What a doll! I got a little teary when I read it again the next morning sober.
There I was in a club full of gogo dancers, drag queens, rockabilly legends and the greatest friends a guy could ask for. Angus was there shooting photos of every single second. My DJ rival was spinning, which is hilarious because I get to be like, "Oh, you're working? On my birthday? Sucks, man."
He played Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" and I jumped on stage under the lights and snagged a tambourine from the floor. Heather jumped up with me and we danced under the flashbulbs. Tourists were taking camera phone pictures of this and saying, "You'll never believe what I saw in New York" in seven languages.
Heather said "This night has to end with both of us throwing up in the same toilet."
"Totally," I said. "I'm going to pry the lid off the tank and york on the pullchain."
It was the most amount of fun anyone has ever had on a Saturday.
The Agent showed up with her friends. I thought I put them on the list, but they had to pay cover. I felt really bad, but to keep up the persona I was like, "Whatever. You shouldn't be out. You should be inside reading my incandescent brilliance in the dark." God I love that woman.
This was just about to not be able to be anymore fun and then my roommate showed up!! He's moving in with Laia so I never see him. But it's my birthday and we get wasted and talk about how we're totally bros for life and how he's the greatest friend I'll ever have for moving in with me three years ago when that bitch walked out the door.
I don't know what The Agent said to Heather but Heather got furious at me later and slapped me on the face. She woke up her roommate to let her in because she had left her keys and purse at my house.
"WTF did you say to her?"
"Whatever," the agent said. "It was one slap in the face and you probably just like the attention."
The nice part about having a photographer over is that she walks into the vestibule and declares, "I want to do a shoot here!" All of the sudden your apartment is a location. It's a nice compliments.
Heather never leaves Manhattan because she is a resident tourist. There is a certain kind of girl who falls in love with New York in movies where you keep wondering how many more times they're going to pass the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building in the same afternoon. Heather is that girl. She likes Sophie Kinsella and picked her apartment based on how much it looked like Sex and the City.
We got to Habana Outpost, which is this slightly-too-awesome solar powered restaurant on my street. I know, right? It's closed in the winter and there's no lights on rainy days. If you order a smoothie a guy gets on a bike that's hooked up to a blender. It's $2 cheaper if you pedal yourself.
The line is incredibly long because who doesn't want to sit on a picnic table and eat corn on the cob right now? It's May! The line is very long and Heather isn't accustom to waiting. So I say, "Why don't you wait in the food-line and I will walk over to the beer-line and get us two beers and we can just stand in line together and have a drink standing up like we do every night anyway?"
She smiles on her big Easter Island face, "Stop making me fall in love with you."
This would have been the ideal plan had the morons at the bar not sucked so fucking much. Habana is one of those soup-nazi places where you just put up with it. There's 45 people in the food line and 10 in the drinks-line. They only serve local beer, slurpee-esque margaritas and frozen mojitos and corn-on-the-cob-on-a-stick. How hard can that be, right?
Instead of this being totally romantic and awesome it's just like waiting in a long line in a busy restaurant where assholes keep bumping into you with trays. Alone.
It immediately becomes what exes call Typical Brendan. Then this happens: the beer line is so inefficient that she waits in the regular line and gets to the counter before I do. It's also a typical Brooklyn thing that the restaurant is cash-only and you only discover this when you're been there an hour.
We're supposed to be in line, eating corn-on-the-cob-on-a-stick and drinking the beers from compostable plastic cups made from corn.
The back yard of Havana outpost looks like high school cafeterias do in teen comedies about wild, wealthy Californians. It's crowded and wild. Spicolli is on the skateboard. At Habana you pay outside and they give you a receipt and you bring it out to a truck parked in the yard. They cook you dinner.
"What's the plan on your birthday?"
"I'm hosting at Rated-X."
"What's that?"
"You're so adorable. Didn't you ask me last week who Weezer is?"
"Shut up. I'm Australian."
"Rated X is a party I've DJ'd at a bunch. It's the singer of Theo and the Skyscrapers and some of my friends. It's..." I was having trouble describing it. "Put it this way: there's half-priced drinks if you leave your pants in coat check. That's why they call it the panty party."
"So what's the plan?"
"I'll get there at 11:30."
"No what's the plan?"
"No plan."
"Dinner?"
"I hate making people go out to an expensive restaurant and split the check ten ways."
"Can I come over to your house and cook you dinner?"
And I said, "Stop making me fall in love with you."
We went out to a few more cute-Brooklyn backyard-of-a-brownstone places and went to the Bodega to get beer. I told her my thing about Bodega-Ethnography. She loved it. We went to the Spics. I bought a six pack of Red Stripe. "$12"
I hand him my credit card. "Only cash or foodstamps." He points to the card swiper. Oh, Brooklyn! Oh, humanity!
I count the money we have left. It's only ten. "How much again?"
"Twelve."
I pull a Red Stripe out of the pack and plop it on the counter. "How much now?"
"Ten."
Sold. The cashier smiles. Here's this dorky white boy out with an Amazon and I let him look cool for once in his life. Take it, blanco.
We drink the beer in my backyard and start a fire in the grill with old furniture. I'm from New England. If I'm going to drink in the yard I want to throw shit in the fire.
She leaves around 10:30 and I stay in. I'm not going out. Not tonight. Had a big day. But I guess it is my birthday. Yesterday I fell in love with a girl whose first words to me were "Brendan? I wrote a short story about a Brendan once. He was a loveable grad student who spent all his time in the library." I hyperventilate when I think too much about her.
Then today I bought her record and died even more. Every song is about the complexities behind being a brilliant hot bitch.
You want a one-liner? "I'm a Shakespeare tragedy or maybe a comedy. I didn't grow up in the ghetto projects but I went to the resort town high school of hard knocks and watched 'Good Times' at 6PM every night."
Tessa texts me, "What are you doing tonight."
"Not sure."
"I'm meeting up with someone you might know. She's working in the west village."
I text her back and she fucks up the text, "Brendan wants to come too now:)"
"That message wasn't mean for me, was it?"
"Oops! No! Fuck!"
I get on the 2 Train by my house and plug in my headphones and play "Fell in Love with a Girl" fifteen times on my way there. At the Clark St Station I have service and I text Rebecca, "You still out?"
When I get out at Christopher St. I have a text from Rebecca, "Over at Kingswood in the West Village."
Kingswood is apparently a bar that only lets in douchebags. Rebecca had to vouch for me at the door. It's also a restaurant bar and I hate restaurant bars. They're full of grumpy bartenders who worked a double and want you to finish up and beat it.
A woman comes directly up to me and says, "I love your tie. I just have to say that." She's a bit older than me so this is okay to say. "Who are you here with?"
I point to Rebecca, who is standing in a small herd of Indian men who are shorter than her, "I'm meeting my friend, she's apparently over there with Tech-Support."
Tessa texts me, "Are you still coming?"
"No. Too nervous."
The guy who is with Old Bitch is a complete fucking jackass who is alpha-maling me. He turns to her and goes, "Your Chinese friend is cute. But there's no blueblood in China. Those people have no class."
Right, because you have so much of it you could export.
Tessa shows up with her friends and we go around the corner to go to this secret, downstairs bar. "Did you really chicken out?"
"Yes. I wasn't invited to go bother her at work at last-call. Not my style."
"I'll warn you: she has many suitors."
"Of course she does." At the door to the bar I ask for Chuck. He appears and I tell him Gerard sent us.
"Too many people?"
"We are, really?"
"I can only let in matched couples."
"Ugh, you mean we have too much cock?" He winks at me.
We get in a cab and Rebecca screams, "Fuck this. I'm going to a bar where they appreciate COCK AS MUCH AS I DO!! I love cock! NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH COCK!!"
We go to Webster Hall and black Brendan is at the door. He lets us in but makes the gay boys pay. I disappear into the fairytale nightlife anonymity that I need right now. The DJs are amazing.
I get a text from the owner of Beauty Bar saying I can come by if I want. I bring Tessa. Who's standing there being thrown out with the losers at 4am? The Aussie.
We sit in the back with the owners until 6 AM, reminiscing about our many storied nights at that wonderful place called Beauty Bar.
Right now I'm in my kitchen while a gorgeous Australian is grilling in my back yard. She makes the best guacamole I've ever tasted.
Tomorrow I'm going to see Leonard Cohen with the writer.
My day is going this well and I haven't even gotten dressed for my party yet.
The first thing you notice about Heather are her eyes. They are greenish grey. The color changes depending on how Australian she is being. She has a fiendishly thick dark Cilliary muscle which makes her green/grey irises look like they have been outlined for you in brown colored pencil.
She has a face like the unheard-of female-Easter-Island dolls. If she talks to you--you will stare. Why is this statuesque Australian talking to me?
She has a brilliant touch with all things photography. Because of these eyes. Her portfolio includes Polaroids. She has iPhone pictures on her website. That's what an artist does. It's probably kinda wack to say that but it's a true thing. It's like that scene in Blues Brothers where they're trying to bilk Ray Charles out of a Hammond Organ by saying that it's not worth the money. Ray Charles hits the broken busted keys and they sing for him.
Frequently when you're blogging some bullshit story someone will write you, "That's not how it was!" But that's not how it was to you. To me it was hilarious and wonderful. To me it was ugly in so many beautiful ways.
So if you don't like it: start your own fucking website.
to be really funny and full of honest-to-god LOL'ing.)
So I was at work minding my own business and looking around the room. Rebecca got finished with some guy who was being a jewche bag. "Ugh," she said as if dealing with him had given her a yeast infection. "Showtime!"
Showtime! is bartender code for let's-do-a-shot. Yes, I drink at work. I take down that delicous glass of Wild Turkey and my nostrils begin to smell like my old Kentucky home. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. There I am, minding my own business, when I hit the wrong button on my phone and accidentally end up searching my ex's facebook page to see if she still has that picture up where she's standing next to the a-hole in the infant-scrotum-pink shirt and the bowtie.
I email a friend, "Find him and kill him."
Regular people go a little bit crazy when they find out there's someone else. It's natural (some would argue healthy). But I am already insane. So I go fucking nuts. I grab one of the waitresses who knows her, "Who the fuck is this guy?" I'm honestly asking because I think it's a joke. We just broke up. I didn't even give her phone charger back.
"B. C'mon." We're at work and we're busy and this bitch needs to just get this over with.
"C'mon what?" She's also Asian, so I can't tell if she's avoiding my eyes.
"Did you meet him?"
Twenty minutes later she finally relents. Yes. I've met him. A couple of times.
"You what?"
"They came to Chiakie's going-away-party." Two weeks ago there was a party downtown and you were going to go. It was a party full of the skanks from work. Waitresses love going out on their night off. And the twenty of them usually end up facedown in the doorguy's chotch.
"You let him come to a party full of my work friends. What was supposed to happen when I got off work and came down there?"
Something changed in me. I'm not a violent person and I was working on making this better. I was emailing agents and shopping for cottages in Rhode Island. But what the fuck is this about?
There's no nice way to say what happened: I'm territorial. This motherfucker is out with my ex: and they went to my beloved Lower East Side.
Because this is all over and I don't care about it anymore I'll just say this for next time: if you meet me tonight and we fall in love but shit goes sour: stay the fuck out of the Lower East Side. Even I think it's pathetic that I say that. But, look, the LES is inconvenient, dirty and dangerous. You can't sit on the toilets in the bathroom, drug dealers come directly up to you in the bathroom line and offer you a taste. There's also a negative side.
Also, if we fall in love tonight: I'll never forget our anniversary. It's my birthday!
This is a very new feeling for me because I'm normally a little too self-aware to let myself do something like this. I find myself walking up to the waitresses who were at the party, screaming at them, telling them the only reason they're not prostitutes is because they don't get paid. They just wait on the tables, get his number and spread. At one point I'm shouting, "Next time you double date with my ex why don't you guys go to the East Village. You ever explore Chinatown? The Upper East is so much different then the Upper West. Do'em both in the same night and cross through the park on 72nd. Gorgeous."
We can share Williamsburg because I work there on fridays. You can have all those stupid Korean bars you go to with the gay guys from work.
Let's just get this one thing straight. I'm not saying you have to move. I can't believe I have to say this at all: but you do not bring your new boyfriend to Beauty Bar. Then you can have 14th St to Houston. The East Village is your oyster. I know, so hip. Like we're on Friends. At Houston you turn the fuck around unless you're in Soho. You can take him to Soho and even go to the cute places we had brunch. If you need to go downtown you must take the subway because there's one neighborhood in the entire city where I've DJ'd in every bar or my friends are the bartenders. And I don't want to hear about this boyfriend of yours.
This breakup is extra bullshit because it's a fucking rerun. I was more in love with you than I was with anyone in my life. You know what song I heard when I found out about him?
I couldn't resist him His eyes were like yours His hair was exactly the shade of brown He's just not as tall, but I couldn't tell It was dark and I was lying down
You are everything - he means nothing to me I can't even remember his name Why're you so upset? Baby, you weren't there and I was thinking of you when I came
What do you expect? You left me here alone; I drank so much and needed to touch Don't overreact - I pretended he was you You wouldn't want me to be lonely
How can I put it so you understand? I didn't let him hold my hand But he looked like you; I guess he looked like you No he wasn't you But you can still trust me, this ain't infidelity It's not cheating; you were on my mind
Yes he looked like you But I heard love is blind..
I heard love is blind. Barf. Just fucking die already.
Again, this is difficult for regular people. I'm already insane and well-connected. I call a friend of mine in the 88th Precinct. He's a detective and he comes to my bar and we talk about cigars. I want to live in the 88th precinct the way parents want to get their kids into private school I live twenty-feet from the dividing line, which means I have to go to Bed-Stuy anytime I am handcuffed.
Speaking of handcuffs: get ready, Brendan. Because you're about to be in a whole lot of trouble. "Detective Jacobs."
"Yo, it's Brendan."
"What's up, my man?" Black dudes like to make you feel like you're a black dude when you're with them. "You get those press credentials?"
"Yes. Thank you for pulling that. Look, I need a favor."
"Name it."
"This guy is harassing my fiance. They work together so I don't want to make a big deal about it. She can't lose her job, you know?"
"Absolutely. You want me to check him out?"
"I just, I guess I just want to know that he's harmless. It's more for me than anything. I know I'm probably just being a psycho, right?"
"Give me his name. I'll take care of it."
Twenty minutes later he calls me back. I've got his home address. How long he's been there. I know his credit score and which bullshit college he went to in the Oklahoma. Boys who spent their youth in card catalogues in a Faustian quest for all of the world's knowledge should not have access to New York City Detectives.
There's another problem with this story. Suddenly you realize: you know who he is. A couple of months ago you were told that your girlfriend was in a small herd of gay men. She was catching a drink then there would be gay boys coming to see you DJ. They wanna dance with somebody. Somebody WHO LOVES ME!!
At three AM there is a freak out. She never shows up. It only occurs to you now that there is always a freak out at three AM. If there is vodka/soda you're a terrible person. If there's white-wine you're an asshole. I'm 26 and the girl I'm in love with hates my writing and never comes to see me DJ. Hm. Maybe one of you should have pulled me aside about this before. Thanks, guys.
The three AM freakout comes because Leigh is out in a herd of gay boys, dancing with one of them in that cute way that only tall straight girls can dance with their gay boys. And he turns out to not be gay, out loud. He thinks they're out on a date. And he wants to dance with somebody. So this motherfucking deadman is out with my ex and I'm locked in a DJ booth in Brooklyn and don't know a thing.
She freaks out and leaves. This is the moment that Detective Jacobs will say it all fell apart. You should have been out with her and told him to beat it. But you didn't because you DJ on Fridays nights, you selfish bastard.
What kind of jagoff goes out and does this? I'm probably the worst person in Brooklyn and I would never do that.
The worst part is that because you have no insecurities and you're tall and handsome and have everything you could want in life: you don't get possessive. In fact, you let your girlfriend go out with whomever she wants and you don't ask what time she's getting home. You trust her.
On New Year's Ben and I were out to dinner with the women we love and we went to her restaurant on her night off. A tall, thin handsome guy came up to say hi. He works there. Ben jokes (Ben's funny) "That's the guy you have to watch out for."
That wasn't him but this homo does work with her. This means that for eight-hours a day I know where to go to fucking kill him.
But argh! I missed my chance. There was one day where he crossed the line and went to my work party in the LES and the bouncer was a friend. He was in the LES and I could have done pulled him out the back door.
I learned a very important lesson in Karate Kid. Sometimes letting someone live so they have to experience their own life is worse than death. I decide exactly what I'm going to do. I'll come up to his house (I know where he lives) and when he walks home after work I'm going to take off my glasses, ask him what time it is and then headbutt him in the face.
Hard. There is basically a knuckle between your cheekbones and nasal cavity. It breaks like a stanza.
You're going to hit him in just one cheekbone, break his nose. He'll start crying and bleeding. His pretty little face will be asymmetrical. For life.
Then he'll never be a teen model.
I've planned this out so well and already sublet my apartment for the prison time. I'm even going to just hang out for a few days and see if he wears the infant-scrotum-pink shirt because I'm going to break his face and ruin that shirt all at once.
I've planned this so well that I even read that I have to take my glasses off or a jury could turn assault into assault with a deadly weapon (my glasses) which is too close for attempted murder for me.
When he's on the ground, wondering why it hurts his spinal chord to breath, covered in a half-gallon of blood I'm going to (ready for this?) say, "Wow, You look so good in red."
Plus it will give him a shiner. For two weeks people will meet him and go, "That ugly guy with the lopsided face is probably an asshole." He'll have to stay home from work because he's not allowed to work with customers. They keep getting creeped out and clutching their wallets like men on their testicles when Courtney Love walks by
Every time he sneezes for the rest of his life (he will be prone to sinus infections) he will be reminded of the day when he should not have messed with the insanity of a man who has given up his adult life for Mercutio.
What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as
addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrell'd with a
man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog
that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a
tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter, with another
for tying his new shoes with an old riband? And yet thou wilt
tutor me from quarrelling! -R&J Act II
The next day was Easter and I showed up to Connecticut looking like Jesus did that Saturday. My cousins all asked my mom what was wrong with Brendan. Instead of playing bubbles with my niece I was upstairs crying in the bathroom.
I left right away to come back to the city. She was coming back from Easter. She has class on Monday. If I get there and see her before she sees him then everything will be okay. I'll just pick up where I left off like she's Anna Karrenina.
I'm running in the New Haven train station. I shoot downtown. I'm going to fix this.
I'm going to make this work!
We have dinner and I cry in the restaurant. She sends me an email in the morning, "I love you I miss you. Phone's out of battery. Will call when I can."
The next day I meet up with her. And she's wearing the same clothes. Because she slept with him last night. I need to just step aside. I'll take the next elevator. But I don't.
I go to Urban Outfitters and buy her a new outfit while she's in therapy. And baby wipes.
I spent $80 and even got her earrings. While she's in therapy her therapists says one of those complete-bullshit-I-don't-need-a-therapist-to-tell-me-this-things. "You need to give this time."
I was giving it time. And you wasted it on him. Instead of getting to the root of our problems you're fucking some guy who reads The Post.
I wait in Shakespeare and Co. for three hours while she was in class. It was raining and I was sitting in the only chair they have (this is a comedy, remember?) which is in the erotica section. I learn that there's something called an OMG (oversized male genitalia) and learn a hundred things I never knew about cunnilingus.
I left this out of the first draft but for a week we agreed to take it one day at a time. We met for coffee, she was unemployed and I'm rich so I was doing nice things for her like paying for her laundry and taking her out to eat. She wanted a new look and we were having a great day, so I took her to a salon to get bangs.
She just got an iPod touch. When you unplug it from the charger you see a picture of his pretty little face.
One night I lost it at work. I wasn't taking it one day at a time. I had a guy-freak-out, "I can't do this with him in your phone. I can't take it one day at a time knowing that if you wake up one morning you'll just call him."
"You have every girl you've ever fucked in your phone. Don't get righteous."
"I am not a cheater. Never have won't start now. I don't need to delete people from my life to prevent me from fucking them."
"Ugh. Fine I'll delete him if that's what you want."
"He's still on your iPod screen."
"I took it off!"
We went back to happiness and I told her which iPhone apps to download. "Start planning some fun dates with Gigotron (tells you what bands are coming)."
"Okay! :)"
You're ready to give this another shot. You're going to do it right this time. When you got together you were so poor you were losing weight. You got together and your first Valentine's day was a LG show. Then you were on tour, while she stayed home like an army wife. Do it better this time, Brendan. You don't just let a girl like that walk out of your life.
You wake up at her house and get ready for croissants. You're on the couch being in love and reading the paper in a snuggle. Her phone rings and the screen says, "Oklahoma Mutherfucker She Never Deleted."
You've been lied to by the love of your life who cheated on you emotionally with another guy while you were still dating. She broke up with you after you spent $3000 taking her to a forbidden island in the Carribbean.
Walk out the door, Brendan. It's going to sting for a while. Your heart needs Monistat 7. In a week you will feel a little better. In a month you can probably even have sex with minimal discomfort.
Nothing changes anything. She hates your writing. You two can be in love and have freaky sex day and night but you can't write about it. There is a switch in her brain that detests you every time you write another word.
It's not that it's bad writing. She skips over the part about how something was phrased well and goes straight to hating the information it provides.
So I'm writing this right now to say I'm done. It's not going to happen overnight. But I'm on the other side of it. I'm planting corn in my back yard.
It won't sprout until July. In July I will eat it on a blanket in Prospect Park with my closest friends. And we will all agree how sweet it tasted.
We all have that one song in our iPods that comes on first. For most people it's 50 Cent's "In Da Club." If you pick up the iPod and hit a button it will just play. Which is awesome.
For no apparent reason on the iPhone its not by name but by song.
This means that sometimes I'm out. I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw. I'm in the prime of my life. But I'm lonely. I'm sad.
I wish the meeting had gone better. I want to give up.
And I throw on my headphones (my first response is to wonder if there's a bar open, but nobody's perfect) and hit the play buttons. I'm hoping that my iPhone will pick up where I left off and I can hear "Stop that Train."
This is the single greatest work of literature ever written about riding the subway in the eighties. When I was a kid my Dad lived on 33rd and his roommate had his jaw pinned because the junkies mugged him so badly. I almost never visited him. Because it was a terrifying world then. But it was awesome. There's no reason to read The Road. Post apocalyptic American was a thing in Manhattan in the eighties:
It's 4AM I've got the Hassenpfeffer Ale.'s I've got nothing to lose so I'm pissin' on the third rail Groggy eyed and fried I'm headed for the station D-Train ride Coney Island vacation
Dedicated to the boofers in the back of the 1 train They'll be kicking out windows high on cocaine Jump the turnstyle I lost my last token Riding between the cars pissing smoking
Head for the last car fluorescent light blackout Policeman told my homeboy put that crack out
You know you light up when the lights go down Read the New York Post Fulton St. downtown
Same faces every day but you don't know their names.
Party people going places on the D-Train.
And then Rick Rubin let's the sample slip and you discover that it's a riff from a Bob Marley song and Marley sings, "Stop that train: I wanna get off." In the eighties Christopher street was gayer than the volleyball scene in Top Gun. You got there on the 1. Right now when I go to join the party-people I have to take the D-Train. The lights don't cut out anymore but that used to be the time for you to grab your wallet. Or kiss your date. Yes I lined it out like a sonnet. It's a lovenote to the MTA.
The Beastie Boys are essentially Sex and the City for nerdy boys. We listen to it and think, "Fuck yeah! That's just like me and my friends: we're fucking awesome and finish each other's sentences."
But that's not what happens. Your iPhone clicks on and you're depressed. The first song, alphabetically isn't one you wrote. She wrote it herself. About you.
You've got a lotta lotta lot of nerve, coming here.
You don't talk anymore. You're having a hard time with things. But you've got a lotta lotta nerve. You walk into the meeting like Mercutio would. And you don't let anyone know that you went commando because you ran out of laundry.
One of the most difficult things is writing a story about two people laughing. First of all you can't start with the joke. You need a premise. You need to have a place to go from. And the funnier the situation: the harder it is to understand.
My brother called me last night while I was in a movie and said, "Hit me back tomorrow. I've got some big news." Right. I know. It's my birthday and so my brother got my sister-in-law pregnant or got fired. Either one: thanks, asshole.
My birthday at midnight last night was a vision. Having your night-of birthday party is kind of gay. You wake up thinking, "Ohmygod, I'm at a milestone." And you go to work and politely say thank you to too many people, then you get drunk. What fun is that? I woke up, went to the East 10th St. Bathhouse, treated myself like Caesar, met up with Pete and his hilarious girlfriend for dinner at Julia's restaurant.
I think the only time where I wasn't laughing and loving life was when I was in the bathroom, fielding tx's from ex's (I'm still drunk so that rhymes in my head which mean I'm tittering with laughter).
The thing about Julia's bar is the MGMT. There is a sweaty guy who stands at the door. He's clearly the only owner and he's clearly nervous about starting a luxury-restaurant in this recession. Which means the whole time you're eating and having your birthday he's at the end of the bar, watching which wines get poured. I know this guy. I hate this guy--shut up!
Pete and Afton had a thing, but Ben came to pick me up at eight and we went to the movies. That ended up at Beauty Bar which is like the McDonald's for skinny 27-year-old-boys: of course you want to have your birthday there!!
Woke up today and for the first time I didn't feel like the love of my life had walked out. Actually, that only means that I just had one nightmare about her and her new boyfriend. It was brief, but enough to get me out of bed.
I skype-for-iPhone'd my brother. "Happy Birthday."
"What's the news?"
"I had an MRI the other day and they found something in my brain."
"Shut the fuck up--there's something in there after all?" Just start laughing, about anything. It's going to get darker and more Irish.
"I know--it wasn't empty."
"Ohmygod, is this like Parkinson's. Like, did you just save me $600 by finding out we're just hopeless and damaged?"
"Hope so. Maybe you can use that?"
"Of course I can use that. 'I'm dying, they're not sure what it is--blow me.' "
"They found a cyst in my brain. It's going to be while before they know the full story."
"Give me the correct spellings. I went to Kenyon, remember? I can read."
You should probably ask him some better questions but for some reason insulting your white-trash brother's intelligence is really working. "I read the wikipedea. I even read the medipedea." I don't know what that is but there's nothing as good as wikipedia--including, like, specialists, so I said, "Don't read medical shit online. Ugh, that's like the way that Adrianne thought she'd give her boyfriend ringworm if she didn't wear bandaids in bed."
"On Monday we got Chinese food and I started throwing it up and alot of blood came up. Which isn't surprise: it's mostly cat."
"Seriously. They had to put up a Great Wall for a reason."
"Right. So I basically ate Abbey's Tail for dinner and ended up in the emergency room." Our cat growing up, Abbey, was run over my a car but only by her tail. She ran away too fast and her tail was "de-gloved." She disappeared. I found the tail on the way to school. I stayed home sick. We had a funeral. Two days later she showed up with a chicken wing hanging off her. Her name was later modified to "Scabby."
"Ugh, showoff. Look at me: I'm the one with health insurance. Alright, then what?"
"They don't find anything in my stomach but they do a spinal-tap."
"Ooof, you understand then why it's such a hilarious name for the band. Because it's probably the worst thing in the world."
"Yeah. I know that now. You've only read about it."
"Fitting."
"It's like getting dicked with a long needle only, like, the guy doing it accidentally sneezed halfway through. It still hurts. They're testing my fluid. They'll know tomorrow."
The call got dropped (I have shitty service in my house) and so when he called back I had to run to the front window to hear, "Look, uhm, in the Bible when a man dies his brother is supposed to marry his wife and raise his children." We're both laughing. "And I--" I can't even finish the thought. "So I--wait hang on this is serious--so I guess I have to look for a carseat for my Vespa? Two, right? You still have both kids?"
Many of us have that one teacher who changed our lives. I do. And he's retired. And into facebook now. I sent him a message that basically said, "Fuck you for telling me I could write when I was fifteen."
He wrote back:
And, why would that be, my Gaelic guy??? Bitter. No way! Given the beautiful women in your life, who gives a shit about the subjunctive?
If I were Brendan, I'd count my sexual blessings.
Yes. My History-Boys [slash]Dead-Poets teacher thinks I should just shut the fuck up and enjoy my youth. Fine! I am! It's my birthday, English-teacher-who-told-me-I-could-write!
So I will. Goodnight, Brilliant, Catholic Trinity Hartford Graduate William Provost. You tricked me into thinking I were a good writer (subjunctive!!) and I will torture you until your death with the unending agony of not-being-taught in high schools across America.
Last night I went to a friend's play reading. A million years ago I was the-next-big-thing and out of work. She moved to East Williamsburg and told her I'd help her move in. Her father came in from Jersey and paid me in a single fifty-dollar-bill. I pretended I didn't need it. He said, "Just take it. I'da had to pay movers otherwise."
I took it. And I spent it that night. I had carpel-tunnel and wore my finger-less leather-gloves to hide my doucehe-bag bracelets. He just thought it was "a part of your life that I won't ever understand." I thought that I should tell him that I'm really a quiet person who prefers coffeeshops and Joyce to Heroine. Then I decided to leave him with the impression that every Jeryse-dad prefers.
D's play was amazing. I honestly went just to be supportive. I knew Leigh wouldn't be there. Heather was my date. I told her, "Forget about your student loans. Let's go be young artists who support each other."
I totally undersold D. Her play was fantastic. On the flipside of the program I wrote down the things I thought as they came up. Nothing was out of place. The play was actually really great. It was a kitchen drama about what does a couple do when their live-in roommate die? The celebrate him. And they love life. For once.
All I'd had to eat was left-over Pad Thai from Mango, coffee and anger. I had to go to Carroll Gardens and deal with the guidae. Seriously. These people invented fascism. Act like it. Stop listening to your radio and eating that canoli and shut the fuck up. Out of my way! Do you see that I'm wearing my grandfather's leather jacket? He wore this when he fought you. That means you're in my way. Move it, signora. Ciao.
I was supposed to meet up with Katie. Katie is the ex of my friend's band's drummer's soul. If he ever got his act together they'd also be together. But they won't.
Instead I was with the Aussie from The Chelsea and she was not ready when I picked her up. Look, girl, I know you're from the Colonies and I'm a Kennedy. But skip the bullshit. Not being ready for a guy is okay when la muchacha has to let him in to watch American Idol alone. But this is 2009 and we're late.
At the play you avoided an email from The Agent. She's right. The dialogue isn't going to work. But you're young. Have fun. Drink pepsi. When you get out of the bathroom everyone wants to know if you're holding. No. You don't hold. You're just wearing the polkadot tie to your fellow-playwright's reading. And, like, you have some shit to take care of.
Heather says she's wine-drunk. Already. You had two glasses at intermission. D's play is dark. It's wonderful. You thought it was going to be two-hours about how hard it is to be a tall-hot-single-girl-who-dresses-like-a-drag-queen. Nope. It's brilliant. You can't stop making notes with your Chelsea Hotel pen. The actors are distracted by you clicking it on and off.
Heather is meeting a friend at Marquee. You don't go to Marquee. You have a million bars in your beloved LES who would never make you wait in line. But tonight you're an anthropologist. Accent on "apologist."
But, fuck it, we'll go. You go to the bar with the playwrights and live-blog your review.
Half an hour later you're in a sea of Jersey-trash. Everyone is on the list. Do you know who I am? Who she is? We're tall-hot-blonde-girls. Let us in!
You don't wait in line. That is beneath you.
Heather won't walk in until her friend gets there. You are like, Just walk in and wait for her. She says no. You don't want to be at Marquee anyway. You call it Marqueen. There is a line out the door all the way to the Apple Store. You'd honestly rather be at the Apple Store. At least there you can focus on maybe getting a Macbook Air.
Heather says she loves the smell of the street food. You haven't eaten in days. You'd love to have that hotdog that they serve on the corner of North and Milwaukee in Chicago. Chicago seemed tired last night, so you just follow your nose. There isn't an open location of Orange Julius, so you buy a hotdog from who????? George Drakoulias.
You shop vegan. But you live in Chicago, theoretically, you get a hotdog. George knows how to make it right with sauerkraut. Somewhere in Chicago Homeless Mike isn't hustling for babyfood right now. He's full. You satiated him.
I hate Marquee. Watch 30 Rock if you want to know about Marquee. It's that club that my career is based on not-being. Heather says, "We're here to see Some Bullshit DJ."
"Back of the line."
I don't live in Jersey. I don't go to the back of the line.
Heather finagles. You think of the Irish route of Finn-agle. Her friend debuts and you still have to wait. Not in line. That's embarrassing. I've got bravado like a late-model Chevy. Wait in line? Oh, please. Do you know who I am?
"Do you know whom I am?"
"Do you know about the predicate nominative? Back of the line, bitch. Figure out who I am."
We're waiting outside of Marquee. I don't have to put up with this. Honestly. I'm fucking famous. I'll go to wherever Alicia is bartending tonight. Fuck it.
Eventually Heather's friend gets us past that bullshit velvet rope. I haven't been drinking enough. Otherwise I'd've pissed on it. As it is: I'm parched.
The girls are grumbling, "I don't wait in line. I won't. I'm model-hot. I'm a huge famous fashion photographer. Kate Moss is in my phone." Oh, really? Call Katie and have her vouch for us if you want to get in here so fucking badly. I'm Groucho Marx when it comes to clubs*.
The bald, not-cool-anymore dipshits lets us in the velvet rope. It is not-yet-covered-in-my-brilliant-urea. Then we're inside. The rope. The door-asshole hands me three maroon tickets as the girls disappear inside. I meet them at the door. There's trouble. Forsouth! Two model-hot tall-skanks can't get into Marquee on a Tuesday. I walk up. I have the salve.
I hand the N'th doorguy our admission tickets. Ugh, so much bullshit just to get drink across the street from an open, admitting Irish bar! He says "$15. Each."
I'm going to spend $45 just to walk into a room in Chelsea.
Oh, no wait: I'm not. I won't. Heather won't.
We're back outside and Heather's friend is texting the dipshit DJ she knows inside. "I got u reduced. Sorry. It's Marquee."
I understand that these two non-famous cunts owe you $30. But what about me? Do you know who I am? I'm the Cyrano of Pop Music. No? It's cool: I wouldn't let me in either. No worries, bro. You got a light? Howabouta smoke? Sweet. Yeah, fuck this place. We all work for money, brah.
You tell Heather: "I'll pay $15. To go home--now. I'll hail a cab and they'll take me to an Open-Bar-Party at my house with free whiskey. I hear Tuesdays at My House are real hot right now. Later."
Heather gets bumped by the Central-Casting-Drunk-Euro-Jagoff on his way out the Exit-Door. She says, "Why don't we just hop in the exit door?"
You say, "You're the tall-hot-fashion-photog-bitch. Lead the way. Don't let them break my glasses."
She goes for it.
You follow. With the other bitch that you just met. Whatevs.
On the way in you're ready to get pinched: you're wearing your polka-dot-tie and your Birthday Suit. You're also 6'2"--did I mention that enough today?--and bouncers love picking on someone who's not their own size/race.
You split off from Heather. You keep walking. The club looks like it would in a Jay McInerney story. It's decadent and anonymous. That's all you wanted tonight.
"Sweetie, how much is Champagne here?"
"By the glass or by the bottle?" the adorable ex-pornstar says.
"By the glass--I'm not that popular!"
You laugh and she laughs. You're the non-douchebag at Marquee on a Tuesday. You're probably from The Business. So glad you got a night off. Likewise, love. "$15."
You're at Marquee. Get it. In fact, fuck it! You just snuck in the exit door of Marquee on a Tuesday in your best suit. Make sure she opens a new bottle.
Heather sends you a text, "Upstairs"
Heather does not punctuate.
But you're in Marquee drinking Champagne with people who aren't as tall as you. Today you emailed your bravado to agents in Los Angeles. You want to be in the warm California Sun, on business. You've got a 'tude. You're the Ugliest Guy on the Lower East Side. You write back, "Downstairs. Being Famous."
You go to the bathroom line and the bathroom attendant tells you to wait. Heather walks up, wearing her fake-nerd glasses. Last week you told her you were going to start wearing hearing-aids out. 'Cause, like, that's the cool thing now, right?
The bathroom attendant is dressed better than you are (if you can believe). He says hang on a minute, man. You racially encoded that sentence so black dudes will think he's hispanic. But he's not.
You've got so much going on. You have a blog to nurture. You're all over the place on facebook. You've got emails from agents in California. You sit down to pee, anyway. The bathroom attendant knocks on the door after long-enough, "Give me a couple of flushes, my man!" He's black as night. He can hear that you're not doing drugs. He's sorry that your girlfriend broke up with you. But seriously, bro.
You flush once to settle the score. The second one is because you think you're a smartass.
Marquee is a beautiful sight. I love it anyway. I am the Jane Goodall of nightlife. I love seeing you guys under the malcontent, non-spinning disco-ball. Just dance, dipshits. I'm not judging you. I'm a Catholic.
Heather is upstairs with the dipshit promoter whose phone "didn't get" the text when her friend needed to get us on. He passes her a glass of ice, cranberry, and "vodka" without asking how she likes it.
Heather doesn't drink vodkacranberries. You don't drink vodka with cranberry juice. You're not an alcoholic having your period. You have one exception: if you are an honest-to-God-Kennedy on board a boat in Cape Cod. Then you can have a vodkacranberry the way that it's okay to eat salted crickets in Cancun.
We all agree that he's a dipshit. But he's a location. You want to go back downstairs and dance with morons you'll never talk to. You want to take the polkadot-tie for a walk. Fuck it. You don't go to Marquee ever.
The thing about Heather is she likes to dance. You're basically Heather's gay friend and you make her pay for it by being the 6'1' Aussie who comes to your friends' play readings.
I shouldn't say this: but I learned how to dance in gym class. I know. I went to a great public high school in Connecticut. Real Estate Taxes=Public School Budget. I grew up in the Real Estate Bubble. My Gym Teacher taught us how to breakdance and his fatass also said this, "I will never be the best dancer on the floor. But the greatest dancer is always the one person who wants to have fun."
Coincidentally I was a backup dancer for some girl when she got famous. Here's what you do when you don't know how to dance: you count to 8. One, two, three, four--you're halfway there--five, six, seven, eight.
On eight you do something--preferably in your shoulders (no one can actually see your feet). To be a back up dancer all you have to do is count to eight.
I have a rule which is: I don't leave a party until they're playing a song I love. So you stay. You drink $30 in Champagne and you're famous.
You're wearing your other playboy tux and the polkadot tie. You dance. They play "Tipsy" downstairs and the girls talk about how they danced to that in high school. You're upstairs talking about how they played that when you were graduating college. The law-school-lesbo-grad who worked at the Ohio version of a bodega loved that song. You played it at frat parties.
And then you dance.
You count to 8.
Other morons just bump and grind it. But you're a proper, retired dancer. You count to eight and mark out your territory. You think you're going to front? On the Connecticut White Boy? This ain't the exit, bitch. I'm pulling moves straight out of Breakin' . Why?
Because.
Heather knows not to follow you when you cross the room. She'll only ruin your moonwalk back. You hit it. You are dancing to Billie Jean. Did the DJ play that for you?
You will not leave until they play Biggie. You only leave on a good song. You're only 26 (for now) and you live a life full of awesome.
The DJ throws on a record you wrote.
It reminds you that you're nothing. At first you're in an interracial circle of on-lookers. Everyone's waiting for you to count to eight. But it reminds you. Of something.
It reminds you what a fuck-up you are.
The song sounds like an ex.
All the party-people dancing just feels like all of her friends, agreeing what an asshole you are.
You leave.
The cab outside picks you up and says, "Cash or credit?"
You hope that $19 will get you home and you tell Jesus that if it's $14 you will give the rest to the cabdriver.
You go home.
*I'd never want to be a part of one that'd have me as a member. If you didn't get that: read more books.
In 2004 I went to a reading with Bill Lychek and Jonathan Franzen at Brooklyn Superhero Supply. We were a room full of young writers who were just hoping that attending might get us picked up. The entire panel tittered when Bill Lychek let loose his one-liner, "They don't call it submission for nothing."
It's five years later and I just have one thing to say: FUCK THAT.
Ohmygod, fuck all you tortured-ass writers in your creaky Manhattan apartments and your creative writing classes. Suck a dick. Seriously. Then write about it.
I've spent five years sending too-polite emails to young, busybody women who live half a mile from me. Then they get back to me, like, whenever they feel like it and say sorry but thanks.
Hilarious quickie: one of them was supposed to be this up and coming agent and was really highly recommended to me. I wasn't going to put all my balls in the same basket so I submitted it to this other publishing Maven. I got two rejection letters. Both of them from the same guy (he's actually the underling of the maven). One said, "It's a funny story but the dialogue is a bit much." The other said, "You have something great here in the dialogue, but it's just not right for me." He didn't read my manuscript. Twice.
I probably shouldn't puff myself up about this because I know that one of the agent I've been talking to reads my website. So I'll just say this: get back to work and finish my damn manuscript, bitch!
It's not that I have a big head about this. But it is the unending curse of dashingly handsome, 6'2" guys that people think we're conceited. We are, but the root word is conceit. It's like a joke that we're playing. On you. It's an act. It's like I'm a kid playing dress up but, like, with my life.
So why was I touring the world in a major label band and sending quiet emails to people who had never heard of me? Why was I writing as if I'm somewhere in Vermont getting my MFA? All polite and shit?
I totally drank the Koolaid on that one. I spent five years in the basements of bookstore/cafe's listening to Sam Lypsyt's fatass give me advice. Why? So my publisher could ignore me and debut me in paperback? Fuck that, fatass. Here's my author photo: I know. My hair just dries like this.
If nothing ever works out for me then you need to know that my attitude is: whatevs. Then I can go back to being Brendan Sullivan, which is all I ever wanted to be when I grow up.
Have a drink with me, by the time we're done you're going to excuse yourself and email your friend from the bathroom, "Let's cancel lunch. He's too good for St. Martins. Do you know anyone at Penguin?"
That's what I need you to think: this guy is 130lbs of awesome. (I haven't weighed that since Junior High). But you don't need to know that. You need to go down to Penguin with a big smile on your face and then pick out which condo you're going to live in when we sell the movie rights.
I'm not polite. I'm brash and infectious. I'm my biggest fan. On facebook my favorite writer would be "Brendan Sullivan." Because I'm the fucking best. Catch the fever.
The second I stopped playing their games they wanted to play mine. I've got nothing in writing, of course, but hey can we wrap this up? I've got another meeting right after this.
It's called a Persona. It's called you don't talk to your employees the way you talk to your mom. It's called a business relationship.
That's what I learned from my friend, Larry David: your manager is technically an employee of yours. Have I ever met Larry David? No. Can you tell that by talking to me? No.
Somewhere in California there are TWO agents reading Mercutio and wondering if Adrienne Brody is into Shakespeare (he is).
Had drinks with my Dante professor from college who is the world's leading authority on Verona in the year 1319. He said, "Former students are always asking me to read their work. But this is different. Please send me this novel when you finish."
I have the rest of the week off and it's my birthday from Tues-Saturday.
I cannot tell this story the way it should be told.Someone else who is a better writer should stop me right now on this Amtrak train and smack me around.They should stop me from writing this and tell me to write it better.
This story begins one million years ago.It was 2007.I was alone in the world.I would like to pretend that I were a better person.I am not.I never have been.I wish these stories were as discontinuous as American Literature, but I promised myself I would tell the truth today.I was sad.
I was lonely.
I was upset and I was full of this particular American Maleness that promises that single-world is the greatest time you will ever have in your life.
I was living in a deodorant-ad that promised me that--with the right chest muscle--the world would be mine.I worked in a bar in the LES that found itself too late.Real Estate historians will later discuss the foibles of this location.This could’ve been the world’s coolest place to get your haircut.It could’ve been the place where TV stars in Broadway Plays go to eat haute appetizers and be seen.It wasn’t.
There was a time in the LES when the bands we love now were the bands I hoped we would listen to.I think about all the bands that I hired.All the Australians who couldn’t afford their Youth Hostels.All the kids from Kansas City who had a friend/merchman to watch the van because they were scared of the LES.They were adorable.How many people have parked on Ludlow St. in terror, worrying that they would have to return to North Carolina without a stereo?
On the Sunday of the three-day-weekend around memorial day I walked into work.On that particular Sunday Jay was working.Jay and I had shared a girlfriend before.
Again, I really wish I hadn’t promised that I’dpreserve these details.I got the very covetous job because Jay’s ex was soon becoming my ex.The only reason that Jay and I got along was because of some bullshit, samurai dude-ship that made him respect the other boys who came into her life.Benjamin Kunkel has a terrible novel about maturing in New York City that compares girlfriend’s to cigarettes. In that the author chain-smoked them all, lighting one after another.What a terrible life that would be.And I didn’t go to college for this.
Being a bartender in the LES is an automatic celebrity status that you can never appreciate.Sometimes I’ll be out with a few of them and we’ll feel like the cast of Wayne’s World.And we’ll pretend it’s party time.Excellent.
I was sad.I was destroyed intellectually and emotionally.In May of 2007 I was dealing with turning the awful age of 25 by reading the Barnes & Nobel edition of Romeo & Juliet and saying goodbye to a girlfriend.That girl and I had only really dated from November 2006 to my birthday.Whether or not she had really checked out before then is a matter for her and her girlfriends.
None of that mattered on that three-day-weekend.Jay saw me walk in and Michael, my barback, watched him pour two shots of Jameson and hand one to me at 9PM on a Sunday night.I downed the shot on my way into work and Michael said, “Let the games begin!”
Michael would later be listed in my phone as “St. Micheal” when he became my sponsor.
There exists a terrible bravado among the recently single.The boys like to believe that because they’ve fooled a woman into loving them for so long that they are girl material.The women:I don’t know.Most of them are even worse.The kindest of them saddle into another partner, the most prolific try a few boys out; most of them do a mix of each.
I honestly wish that in this story—the only one I would least like to tell honestly—that this one was different.But every relationship to me always feels like a rerun.Ye psychology undergrads will call this projection. But it seems almost fitting that your lowest points always seem to resemble your lowest moments.
This story isn’t about what a shit I am.For once I would like a paragraph to not be about what an awful human being I am.In fact, I would like to just accept, for a moment, that I am the worst human being that has ever run the face of this cooling crust.
I do not deserve anyone’s gaze.I am awful.I am unappealing and preoccupied at best.At worst I am conniving and calculating.The most conservative estimates would promise that I am someone to avoid.But tonight I want to skip that.
A girl walked into this bar.A girl with gorgeous blonde bangs and a striking black mane.She sat just over my ice-bin and she smiled like a ripening peach.
She knew everyone around her and didn’t care about anyone else.
I was in the middle of my insanity that followed my obsessive study of Romeo & Juliet.More than just faith and coincidence told me that this was the most important girl I would meet in my life.
Bullshit studies show that more people meet their mate at work than meet them in a bar.Others show that you are most likely to meet your soul mate through your friend’s friend’s (this is the premise behind the original Friendster).But who is going to explain to me how my stars were lucky enough to align with her that night.
Sundays at this bar were known as “Posse Night.” I got the job by explaining to the owners how anyone could bring in a party on Friday, but you needed someone else to run the party for all the bands and DJs that never got to go out in their beloved LES on work nights.We wanted a place to meet up on Sundays, after we’d worked that grueling Saturday.What about all of us who worked alone on Fridays and sweated through the weekend with people we didn’t like.Just think of all the people you know who go, “Hey, it’s Saturday!Let’s go ‘downtown!’Like Lou Reed!”
So I said to the barback of one place, “Hey, I hear you have a band?”
I asked my friend’s girlfriend, “Boy-o says you can sing a tune?”
And I got the regular Saturday DJ’s to fill in.And actually, for a very short period of time, this was the single best game going in the LES.Anyone can DJ a bar on Rivington or Ludlow on a Saturday.But who can turn out a crowd on a Sunday night?Frequently I paid a worthless DJ $400 to stand there and fade between his iPods.We didn’t care.
There are dozens of bands that I love and follow and very few of them didn’t play a show downtown for me on a Sunday back then.One of them wrote a song about it. But it only came out on the Australian version of her--now gold--record.
Midnight at the glamour show on a Sunday night.
Everybody drank a lot of whiskey and wine.
We dance like no tomorrow; we’re on burlesque time.
But everybody’s gotta work tomorrow at nine.
I just played that song on my headphones and I think it's worth more lyrics:
Touch me, touch me baby, but don't mess up my hair
Love me, love me crazy, but don't get too attached 'cause it's a brief affair.
It's so good to be fabulous and glamourous
We love ourselves and no one else.
Those lyrics are immortal and hilarious. Were we really a bunch of conceited assholes who think we are fucking awesome? No. Everyone was an hour late because they were all in theirapartments, feeling bad about their hair, wishing they didn't suck so much.
You hear about how cool it as in every scene last year.But this was our time.
I gave bands the best deal in town.I said: Yo, It’s Sunday.You can have the space and I’ll pay the soundguy.Everyone gets in for free and if you want to charge cover to see the bands you get every cent of it minus the $40 I pay the doorguy to stand there, drinking and collecting money.This meant that if you were unheard of but you brought 20 people you got all of their cover charges.If you were already awesome, but still needed the exposure: you played for free and got paid in high-fives.
I remember walking in the bar that night during happy hour and Jay, the bartender, saw me, poured two shots of Jameson and passed me one before I even too my jacket off.“Let the games begin!” my 15-years-sober barback joked.
And on this fateful weekend I asked Drew’s band to play.Everyone but I had the night off.I don’t think I even saw the band for more than a minute (part of the no-cover thing was that we had bands play in separate rooms.)Drew’s band then was called Money Paper Hearts and his girlfriend brought a friend of hers.Leigh.
I didn’t get introduced to Leigh through Drew, but through social forensics I discovered this little bit.One day Leigh and I had brunch at Lodge and I saw Drew and waved.Leigh said, “That’s my friend who took me to Pianos on the night I met you.”
I went over to their table and said, “I just want to thank you.You bringing Leigh to Pianos that night is what made my life complete.”
Leigh came in with that group of friends and sat at the absolute perfect spot on the bar for me to talk to her.I’ll never forget seeing her that night for the first time.She had chin-length blonde hair with this unbelievably cool brown shading in back.She looked like a mermaid who made a deal with a sea witch for just one night.
Her beautiful blue eyes smiled through grey eyeshadow and her big, beautiful Scottish teeth smiled at me through red lipstick.
I was just so happy standing there, making drinks for my friends and hoping their bands might get noticed.This was the club where The Bravery were plucked out and put on TV.
It was such a wonderful night, too.It was that first nice three day weekend in May where everyone suddenly expresses the collective joy of having Monday off.And me?I’m just standing there and for once I have another bartender working with me, so I can stay right there in front of her and watch.Everytime she looks up at me she smiles.I couldn’t believe this.Why is this girl smiling at me?
I had gone to Coney Island that morning with Brina and so I was wearing my contacts.Just about the only way I ever get girls to notice me is when I catch them looking at my glasses.But I was just regular Brendan with a fresh coat of Coney Island freckles.
She was in coed a group of friends whom I mistook as being onlookers.She was trying to meet up with more friends so every few minutes she checked her Razor.I mistook this for her either getting or giving her number out.So played it cold.
I would like to say that I’m somehow an expert on playing it cool and getting a girls number or something like that.But I’m not.And I certainly wasn’t.I’d never even been on a date.I’d only had school girlfriends and then Annie.The only reason I ever met up with Annie is because I found out which bar she worked at and I went back until she was there.What are people supposed to do?What if she has a boyfriend?What if he’s one of these guys or something?
A friend of hers came over and she spoke to him.And I heard her voice for the first time.That voice.What a sonic rose.She spoke like an Ivy educated violin.
Eventually we started talking.I bought her a drink.I bought her another drink.I poured so much Ketel One/Soda away that night that I’m surprised the bar is still open.
The night went beautifully. All the bands had a great show. Everyone had fun. I made $700.
But what a night it was.When she was going to go I said, “Look, I don’t want to be the fiftieth guy to ask for your number, I…Why did I say that?”
“I haven’t given any guy my number.They’re just friends.”
“Look, the thing is: I love you.” I don’t know what came over me or how I didn’t completely freak her out. Maybe without my glasses I don’t look sarcastic. This was in my early days of Mercutio research when I was studying up on the biology of love. And when I said that I loved her I watched as her eyelashes beamed and her beautiful blue eyes dilated. “Will you give me a kiss?”
And she did!
I had just met the love of my life, tomorrow was my day off, she has the day off after class--!!! She reads!! Literature!!!—and I’m kissing her goodnight before I see her tomorrow. I could have floated up into the clouds and joined the migrating hummingbirds of Jamaiica on their yearly trip to Michigan.
I stepped out of line to buy mints at the bodega. When I found the right lifesavers I read the label, "Guaranteed to make you not smell like you were out all night and drinking at home before work."
The guy behind me from before stepped aside and let me back into the line where I was before. I'm not late for work. I'm next.
"Did you call your mother yesterday?"
"I spent the whole day with my mother yesterday."
And I said, "Call your mother today. Tell her that you are a good person."
I never get a Saturday off. In my adult life there's maybe been three. Total. Usually I'm playing bullshit music or working with some band that I'll never talk to again. But this Saturday: I was off! Yay! Spring Break! Party!
At about 9 I left the coffeeshop. I am shomer shabbos when it comes to writing. A long time ago I had awesome roommates and I promised that I wouldn't get grumpy about having a quiet house on the weekends. I also told myself that Sun-Mon I would have some repose. Give myself a little time to think of things so I wouldn't band my head against the keys come monday.
Instead I find that Saturdays become Sketch Day. Instead of writing a novel or a scene I end up sketching whatever I've seen. It's not a big deal. I just write about what I've seen. It's just practice. I don't think about it as work and that's makes it worthwhile.
I left the Gorilla Coffee as the sun went down over Park Slope. All the nice people with nice apartments went indoors to watch their Netflicks and be in love. I work weekends. So I had no idea what to do.
Coincidentally I was hungry. I iPhoned Thai Food and ended up ordering take-out from Mango Thai on 7th Ave.
This awful thing happens when you're on your breakup diet. You have no one to eat dinner with on Date Night. There's really no reason to eat. You just graze.
If there's non-necessary food around you might eat some of it. But for the most part you just eat until your first fill. Then you wonder how many more days you'll eat these leftovers.
I ordered takeout from Mango and I just have to say this one thing: Great Pad Thai. Many years ago I had Pad Thai for the first time and it was transcendental. I have never had it so good again. Until now.
Saturday I found True Love as far as noodles are concerned.
The noodles were so good that I wanted to sleep. It was 10:30 and I was ready. I've been very busy lately. Late-nights, early mornings, editing novels, holding meetings, running interference, sleeping rarely. A waitress came up to me the other night and was like, "You ever get the feeling in the back of your throat like maybe you've been partying for the past five years straight?"
I went out to Tomas Beisel--the restaurant across from the opera house on my block (I know, theoretically I live in a wonderland.)--and went looking for Lisa. Last Friday--dipshit--I went there for Vienerschnitzle and it was $22.75. They were cash only. I ate dinner alone with a copy of A Moveable Feast. I had the cash on me. But I couldn't tip.
I told Lisa I was sorry and she gave me a recession-index-guarantee, "Don't worry about it. Next time, maybe?" A girl like that is a very special thing in an self-interested city like this. It actually took me a few days to get the money together. Even the Money from monday got consumed by something called rent. Not the play. The thing that ruins you every month.
I walked back to Tomas Beisel and asked for Lisa. She has blonde dreads and a saucy attitude. She was in the garden where you were caught in the rain and spent that glorious Saturday last summer under an umbrella with your entire band from high school. "Can I help you?"
Clearly this situation warrants a twenty. There are a couple of times when you're my age when you can totally pass someone a twenty. They include:
Free hotel upgrade on the vacation you can't afford.
Any bartender you know at a place where you're going to drink with friends for three hours who won't charge you.
The bouncer--only on the way out--who let you backstage on nothing but your honor--and only as you exit. It's just to get the word out that being a great person is always worth it.
When you get older a twenty only affords you youth. The twenty is what makes the cool-but-bored bartender buy you a drink against the $20 you tipped on the first one. It gets you into that club you read about but where you know no one. It goes to the concierge who got the flowers, charged your credit car, but put them in the room.
But you can't afford the $20 right now. Your favorite bar has offered you partnership and extravagances like subway fair are on a short leash these days. You hand her $10, which is really $7 in non-blog dollars, and she says, "For the tab?"
"For last Friday. Thank you."
She smiles. It's 11:30 on a Saturday night and you've gotten your first smile out of an extra from "Bohemian Like You." You kinda want to apologize and be like, "No, I haven't heard your band 'cause you guys are pretty new but if you dig on vegan food..."
But you know you've been hiding in song lyrics and the second-person for too long.
This is the first saturday night of my adult-life. I'm not DJ'ing anywhere. I'm certainly not "hosting" a party at some club I'd never got to.* But I'm coated with the feeling that maybe I should do something tonight. I DJ'd last night. I'm rich.
If I go to my beloved Lower East Side at midnight on a saturday I will get sad. The only reason to go to the LES on a saturday is to pick a fight or make money. Or go to a house party. I'm terrible at house parties.
That's when my Fairy Godmother sends me a text, "At a INSANE wharehouse party in B'wick. Bands, hipsters, bboys, models, dj's. 100 Thames. Get ye tuckas here pronto and bring 40's." My FGM is a 39-year-old Tracy-Jordan-Type who was divorced about three years ago. He decided, out-loud, that he would like to go back to being 26 for the rest of his life. I'm 26. We get along.
He grew his hair out and sprouted a soul-patch (I know, right?) and bought a leather jacket. Yes. It's that easy. Four weeks and $40 in New York City can change your life.
"It's like Dumbo in the 99's." I lived in Dumbo in 2001 and all people do in New York City is talk about how how things used to be. I remember everyone talking about how it.
A warehouse party is a wonderful thing because it's not an apartment party. There are no flyers, no plan, no facebook invite. The only reason you get invited to a warehouse party is because you're some kind of artist on display OR someone you know is there and they ran out of beer. Then you get the text. Bring 40s.
I went to a loft party on New Years a few years ago and fell in love with a girl I hadn't seen since high school. I made her the love interest in my second novel and even left her name unchanged as Naomi and she still didn't fall for me. What the fuck? Was it because I let it slip that you live with your parents?
I went to the Jamaican store. In Brooklyn you have to get the ethnicity of your package store down. Al Quaeda Smokes and Snacks will stay open 24 hours a day and sell you cigarettes and Blacks on Blondes but not beer. That's a sin. The Koreans only $13 sixers of Heineken and the South Koreans (you must have two ways to discuss the Koreans Store in your neighborhood) aren't open late. But if you go to the Jamaicans all you will find is: 600 magazines that don't sell, 20 kinds of rolling papers, bubblegum flavored stoagies. Get into it, alright? This is Brooklyn, New York City where they paint murals of Biggie. In cash-we-trust; this ghetto-fab-u-lous life look pretty. What a pity blunts is still 50 cents--it's intense.
The Jamaicans keep their store stocked with reggae, incense, Vitamin Water and those big bottles of Red Stripe that make you feel like a winner in level-5 of Super Mario Brothers 3. You're in big world. Enjoy it.
I went up to Havana Outpost to catch a cab. I don't know why this was a good idea but I hate to double back on myself and go to Electric and Flatbush. I am going places in life and I'm not going to get there by going back where I came from. Savvy?
There must have been 200 motorcycles parked in front of Havana Outpost. At the risk of making my eighth racist poke of the week, I think it was the Jaimaican Puerto Rican Day Parade. Everyone had 'locks flowing and all the couples had brand-new shirts with the Jamaican flag on them.
A Jersey Cab pulled over. The funny thing about hailing a cab in Brooklyn is that now that all the gypsy cabs are illegal the only thing you can ever catch is a luxury car service. They're not expensive, so you might roll up to your gig looking famous, stepping out of an Escalade like Obama.
The driver was a nice black dude who knew how to get me to Bushwick, but he spent the whole time describing the different biker gangs over the radio, "Looks like the Vipers came down from the Bronx." He actually knew one of them and holla'd out the tinted window.
One of my stupid Pet Peeves is when someone is meeting up with me texts me or calls me upon arrival. It just smells a little too much like ringing the servant's bell. When I go to a party where I know no one I like to walk in alone and take a look around. I also really enjoy watching a foreign city wake up for the day.
The other thing about a luxury cab is maybe you have an account with them? Maybe the guy on the phone said it'd only be $10? Sometimes, also, they cost more if they have nice seats. I handed the guy $20 for taking me 3.4 Brooklyn miles, across all the imaginary lines of subway track. He was a cool cab driver and spent the whole time telling me how much he loves a warm sunny day where you can almost see through women's dresses. I didn't know what it would cost but hoped that $20 would cover it--or that he would think the dispatcher told me it would be $20. New York City is ridiculous--it costs less to visit my parents in Connecticut on MetroNorth. He handed me $8. I was delighted. I gave him a tip.
"You know this is a $5, right?"
"Yes. It's for you. Thanks for being awesome."
The warehouse is like an abandoned mall. Large hallways, big court yard. Every room is a different party. One of them is some house music DJ. Three of them are bands. There's no cover charge. Apparently someone put this together because they just like Awesome.
Each room is walled in glass, so if you want to you can go party shopping along the broad hallway and look at everyone's outfits. Everyone is here. I don't know anyone. The great part of party's like this is everyone's included. There are fat people here! 19-year-old art school girls heard about it from the cute-boy who works at the paint store. Jersey kids heard about it from their gay-brother's friends. One room is pulsating with beats and the corresponding video-art installation.
Next door is a beer stall. $2 to let the sweet darkness fall upon you.
I have more to say, but it's time to go to work.
*This is the degrading thing you do for money or for the idea that it will lead to something better. Some club pays you a bottle of Jameson and way-too-much-money to sit around with your friends and get your picture taken. That kind of job belongs in a Sophie Kinsella novel. And the thing is: I read Proust.
Right now I'm going to take a break from the unending agony of my life because I need a high-five. Yesterday I found out that Zadie Smith is teaching at Columbia. Today I'm going to a party at her house!
I have always dreamed about going to a party at Zadie Smith's house. She is my celebrity exception and frequent guest on my phone's wallpaper. Not only is she the single coolest author on the planet: but she's into skinny Irish dudes!
By the time Kiki returned to 83 Langham, her first guest had arrived. It is the unnatural law of such parties that the person whose position on the guest list was originally the least secure is always the first to arrive.
-Zadie Smith, On Beauty
That's me! No one invited me! I'm the +1 of a stranger! I'll be there at like, 6:30! No one will've even gotten ice yet and there'll be mail out on the kitchen table and then me--three piece suit, asking about that bottle of champagne on the counter.
Jay's friend's found it first. His dirtbag loser friends were tromping down West Street, looking for a way to cut through suburbia to get over to the deli by the Factory.
In the suburbs there's basically two towns coexising. There's the suburbs with the houses and the cars and the empty living rooms all day. Then there's the actual town, which is full of life and coffeecups. In the suburbs you talk about traffic. In the town you talk about The Town. For those of us in New England it's usually a town surrounded by some kind of central manufacturing plant. Which is always known as The Plant. Or maybe Da Factory, depending how close to Maine/illiterate you are.
Actually I'm forgetting one thing: The Farms. There are you always out in The Fields.
Back to the house. Fat Maria found it one day, tucked driveway-less behind some overgrown trees. She only took your brother there because she found an opening. A door to the basement with a missing plank. She's too fat to fit in it.
The exploration mission was a success and that day after school you got to be included. Skinny freshman Brendan got to hang with the cool Juniors who smoked cigarettes on the edge of school. Before we go any further you have to mention these terrifying creatures. They hang out in every high school in America and they are too-cool for words at a certain age. In Junior High you find yourself with anxiety about starting school the next year--what if they get you? In Simsbury High School these kids were called "The Easties" because they would all come to school in their piece-of-shit-cars, park in the East Lot and then walk over the official campus border to where they could smoke.
The Easties are always in the back of your mind. You kind of want to get a pair of Doc Martens but you don't want your teachers to think you're an Eastie. If you wear black pants to school with black shoes you have to take your black coat off. Girls might think you're an Eastie.
In the spring when the St. Mary's Carnival lights up the town you are spared. The other eighth grade badasses are not. One by one they get picked off. They get beaten-in. If you're a badass but you ain't gonna be an Eastie next year when you start high school: then they just kick your ass. And if you take the beating and you want to smoke with them and be disaffected: you're in.
That next day at school is a flurry of low-slung baseball caps hiding black-eyes. In the Boys Room everybody has their shirts off, boasting about how many punches they took, turning to admire their bruised backs in the mirror.
And you are the luckiest boy in the freshman class: your big brother is King of the Easties.
Wherever you roll in school there is a secret, wheezing army of badasses who are looking out for you. Rumor was one day that Allan Ostaf pushed you at lunch. Rumor was later that day that Allan Ostaff was at the nurse after he slipped and hit his face on the bathroom sink, twice. We don't know the whole story. There were no witnesses.
You don't belong with these kids. They know that. If you ever went out there looking for your brother they would watch out for you. They would never let you smoke. They don't want you to turn out like them.
In another year the Eastie culture will collapse when the school makes a new rule: once you park on campus you cannot leave without a note. At first the die-hards park at the convenience store, walk to the east, smoke, and then go to class. But what about all the kids who take the bus? What good is a culture that can't convert the youth? Now that spot is just a bald patch of grass and vintage cigarette butts.
"Meet me in The East." You go and stand there with all the cigarette smoke and the attitudes. There is a general attitude among the uninformed of "What's he doing here?"
Fat Maria catches the 'tude. "Lay off Little Jay* he's coming with us today. And you're not."
"Where are you going?"
"None of your business."
You walk down West Street. No one carries a bookbag. (Doing your homework is not cool here. Every single one of these people gets all their homework done everyday after school. In detention.) But Fat Maria has a bag of supplies.
Twenty long-stemmed candles.
Tilex.
Waterbottles
Two packs of cigarettes.
One bag of dish gloves.
Bleach.
We have to keep this on the low. No one can know about it. You wait for West Street to clear and you steal away into the woods.
There is a door at the basement. It is waiting for the servants to come back with coal.
"That's the opening you're talking about?"
"Yes." Fat Maria says.
"How the fuck do you expect us to fit through that?"
Fat Maria takes off her jacket and starts to slide in. And she screams, "Ahh!!" What? Are you okay? "My boob is stuck!" She debauches herself and stands outside of the house, inexplicably out of breath.
"Get Little Jay in there first."
All eyes are on you. Can you do it, Little Jay? Can you make this adventure a reality? You dump your bag and take off your jacket. A minute later you're on the inside, kicking the rusty iron lock and sliding the bolt. You welcome them to your house like the hostess.
Fat Maria calls a meeting in the parlor. There is not a single surface in this house that isn't destroyed in some beautiful way. The wallpaper retreats from the cement-slatted walls. Every oak floorboard must be tested to be trusted. Fat Maria brashly goes ahead so you know it's safe.
In a few minutes the candles are lit. You're in a house from 1853. 14 rooms, 7 fireplaces, all oak woodwork panelling. Windows are dirty and stained glass. A few of them are doors to the wrought-iron balcony. The ceilings are frescoed. Hand frescoed by an itinerant painter.
What a funny thing to think of, right? In 1853 this was the house of the owner of The Factory. He had a distillery on the corner of West St. and Hopmeadow (gin) where it taunted the Baptist Church.
The stone was quarried locally, it feels the same as so many buildings in your life: it's the same stone from your elementary school, which used to be called The Belden School after Horace Belden who built this house and built the school just to be nice. It's the same stone as the town hall--which also used to be the high school. Built by Belden. What a great guy.
He also built the Simsbury Free Library, which is where you were first introduced to a curious monkey named George. Where you learned to say good night, Moon.
"Ground rules." Fat Maria announces, "Be safe. Work in pairs. Watch your candles. Everything must be shared. Food, cigarettes. If anyone gives Little Jay a cigarette you are ejected."
You are still basking in the glow of having saved the mission.
"Be safe, be careful. Do. Not. Tell. Anyone about this place."
"Should we smoke up?" This is the question on everyone's mind in the years before 420 gained currency. Should we smoke up? We had no way of know when exactly we should smoke up. "Or maybe we could just chew on the stems I have." So much swag and so little time to chew it.
Drugs are nixed. Fat Marian decides it would not go with the mission and it would be just like my parents to think we broke in here to party.
We agree that we will not. The mission today is to clean this mansion so that we can make it our own. We will never party here because that's all it takes. One party and word spreads and then the assholes will come.
Caroline, Matt's older sister, stretches on the dish gloves and heads to the bathroom. You're the only one with a library card and are kind of shy about being a know-it-all. Should you tell them that this was the first indoor-bathroom in Simsbury?
Should you tell them that it's not wallpaper on the ceiling? That it's a complicated Italian technique and that means they were probably-a done-a by-a some-a Italiano?
There's a romance novel from 1910 that takes place here:
There were no idlers in the settlement that winter for while the men were all industriously driving the saw or swinging the axe, and the boys hauling logs, the women and girls were as busy indoors, doing up chores, getting ready the substatial and abundant meals which the hearty appetites of the wood-men craved, and making and mending the heavy garments which their severe labors required.
You're not a smartass yet. You take the science class where during lab time you draw with colored pencils. There's a retard in a wheel chair in your English class. When you read Great Expectations it's the adapted for children version. With pictures. Your history class is basically a place to go for 40 minutes a day to watch some historical movie. You know about India from Gandhi, you are an expert on Vietnam because you watch Good Morning Vietnam.
Caroline makes the bathroom sparkle. It's just gorgeous. If you could you would draw a hot bath in that eighty-gallon boat and read a book for the rest of your life.
Little Jay and Regular Jay have to clean out the upstairs. This is like that scene in Ghostbusters--every scene. If you open a closet something is going to tumble out in a terrifying cloud of dust. No one has lived here since 1945. Your parents weren't even born. Your grandparents were your age then.
You get lost in rolls and rolls of film. Negatives, developed slides. All of the pictures are of The Town before the soldiers came home and tore up the streetcar and built muscle cars that could heroically climb Talcott Mountain everyday and commute to Hartford. Your first impression is how beautiful it all was.
But isn't it still? For all the complaints about suburbia it's all still here. The hills are rolling along, the only thing missing are those gargantuan chestnuts that used to house the Sasquatch. In one of the photos you can't believe your tiny eyes. It's a picture of a family on a picnic. Mom is tending to one of five children. They are sitting on a blanket. Maybe eight people total, eating on fine china and drinking out of silver cups. In the background is a chestnut tree that is literally eight feet in diameter. Maybe ten.
Then one year some cheap Asian lumber pulled into the port at Hartford and infected the chestnut trees with some slanty-eyed blight. One in four trees at the time were Chestnuts. They're all gone and all we have is Christmas songs to prove they once existed. That was 1904. That's all you have to go by. The photos are all undated.
You all reassemble in the parlor. Candles prick out of the gas chandelier. It's not that anyone chickens out but we know it can't last. It's like we all had that "I'm running away!" day and we've run out of sandwiches. When you run away from home you take off in disdain for that prison you've left behind. But you always glance back once, real-quick. Is anyone going to miss me when I'm gone?
There's no running water. We're all pretty dirty and it's getting dark. We could all use a shower in a real bathroom. It's been a long afternoon. The dining room is ready to serve guests. The parlor now has a couch--but everyone's scared to sit. All the floors are swept and we agree: next time we come back we'll mop. Let this dust settle. It was a big day.
School starts on another year. You don't know anyone who reads the New York Times, but there was a story in it. It's kinda pre-internet so you never see the story. But you don't need the New York Times to tell you what's up in your backyard.
The answer is yes. They will rally around it. But that's it.
The Factory says, point blank, they will give the house to anyone who wants it. Free. You can have the freaking wrought-Iron balcony and the 14 bedrooms and fireplaces. You can personally own the frescoed ceilings and lay about on the fainting couch (included!) and wonder who was this magnificent Wop who came to Simsbury in 1853? You can have it all. On the condition that you move it off their property. Estimated cost: $750,000.
Another year and it would be dotcom time. Some nerdy kid from Connecticut would escape silicon valley with his millions and move this house to his fantasy island. Another year after that and it would be real estate time. Somebody with no job or money would get a loan and flip it for twice that.
There are no takers. "This is preposterous!" cries the town historian. "I myself have been in the Belden House this week and it is spotless."
He pleads. Town history site. Living history museum. "A great field-trip spot within walking distance of three of our schools--all built by Belden."
The Factory's main product has always been The Safety Fuse. That brilliant little device that blasted the railroads across this country. The blastmaster that trimmed West Virginia. The safety fuse that would come for the house and destroy it. The Factory was clear: you can having the whole house or nothing.
I drove by it a few years ago. The trees haven't grown in and its just a blank in suburbia. And somebody built multi-unit condos for empty nesters. There must be alot of them by now. Because none of us ever come home anymore.
*I was not permitted the dignity of a first name until Junior Year.
I was 15. We had a summer reading list that would have been insulting. Had I gave a shit.
I hated books and I wanted to be an electrician. In the Navy.
Brendan J. Sullivan was a member of the Naval Sea Cadet Corps. I had a shaved head. I wore my uniforms. I sang the bullshit songs. This was a pre-9/11 universe. I was controversial. Because I was all about being the one. The one you knew. The one you saw.
The one. Two, three, four, Naval Sea Cadet Corp.
Five. Six. Seven Eight.
Army brats just masturbate.
The summer reading list for 10th grader's was ridiculous. But I hated reading. I got that list in the mail and I literally thought out loud, "Which book on this list is the quickest, stupidest book that I already can get. Fuck books."
My beloved, Irish grandfather had just died and I was going to spend that summer cleaning out his house on Good Harbor Bay across from the port of Leland on Lake Michigan.
By some perverse accounting the summer reading book was waiting for me at Horizon Books in Traverse City, MI. This is also the first bookstore where I ever found a copy of the Goosebumps series. My dad saw how into them that I was and he said, wisely, "Why don't you pick up a couple of them?"
I'd love to be one of those artists who had shitty parents who are ashamed of them. But that would be disingenuous. My parents are equally as impressed with my white-trash brother as they are with my neo-Shakespearean fan-fic. I may possibly have the greatest two parents in the world.
At this point I could trade a bitch-faced-Mom for what-a-great-Pops-I-Have. Honestly I could top you in the how-supportive-my-Irish-dad-is contest. Seriously, I could exchange my uncle's interest in making-me-the-next-Irish-American-James-Joyce for all of your Jewish guilt.
Sorry, prep-school assholes, my parochial-schooled family is sitting around and waiting for my movies to come out on Showtime.
Anyway, none of this gives me any ego-points. Ego points are for only-child-cases. In my family we like Elvis. But we know that Elvis was never a real man because he killed his twin in utero.
In my family we prize the Kennedys.
It's as if they're from the neighborhood.
Sometimes my white-trash-brother will call me in the middle of the night, "The thing about Ted Kennedy is that's he's the Uncle RJ of the clan. No one knew he was going to carry the torch so he never had the stress. Did you read the Boston Globe Article about what a great guy he is?"
In an Irish family: you can be the horse's ass for 40 years and then pull a surprise that your own Daddy didn't see coming.
And linguists are surprised when they read Joyce?
Anyway, it's a story that deserves more inches.
My first day of any non-retard high-school class I hand-wrote an essay about my summer reading. The teacher was named William Provost. I'll never forget what he wrote in red marker on the margin. "You are a good writer."
All I did was read the single-most bullshit book on the list. And I read one story by an Irish dude. I liked it. I read another. It was the same. All Dave Barry did was tell a story like my Uncles did. "Listen to me. I'll tell you one thing. You can't believe that? I'll tell you something. It's the same as that one thing I said in the beginning!"
So someone told this teacher that I would be a great writer. Sometimes I wish that my old drill sergeant had dropped by, "I need those pipes to sing out cadence. Don't tell him about the subjunctive mood."
Unfortunately Bill Provost liked me. He was that teacher that people who have that teacher have. He wanted me to write and essay about Huck Finn to pass his class.
I have to be honest: I was fucking illiterate. I didn't get Huck Finn. Apparently it's a funny novel. I don't know. I read it last year for the first time. I don't know if it had finished an entire book by then. No. I know: I hadn't.
I hadn't read shit.
I only got in this mess because there was a book on the list at Horizon books. Thanks mom!
This moron believed in me, because he was an idiot. And a jack ass. He was a son-of-a-bitch too. I hate him more than I hate all of my ex-girlfriends (combined) because he betrayed my bullshit-essay that one day by writing in the margins. "You are a good writer."
I spent my sophomore year at the public library. I read all of it. Do you want to know what my hometown thinks of the theory of relativity? I can extrapolate any gaps you might have presupposed.
Short ending:
Anyway, before I ever really read Huck Finn I read some criticism of it by Harold Bloom.
Then I magically ended up at a country-club college in Ohio.
I was--suddenly--the right person to have the right meeting. I was the research-assistant to an Australian Poet.
His editor was Harold Bloom. Yes. The guy who first told me how to feel.
I was 21 and visiting CT to hear what my professor thought of my very, very first novel. He said to meet him at Yale.
I'm walking through the hallway and I see a sign "Professor Harold Bloom." Who gives a shit about this guy, right? I do. Harold Bloom taught me how to think for the only 7 years that I've been thinking.
Knock, knock.
"Hello, Professor Bloom. I'm Kinsella's research assistant, visiting from Ohio. I just thought I would come and say hello."
Harold Bloom has a voice like Virgil in that first scene of The Inferno.
chi pe lungo silenzio parea fioco.
He talks like someone who, for long silence, has grown hoarse. He said, "Has anyone seen the bard?"
"Haven't seen him yet. Just got into town." I was so young then that I had parked at a meter for my hours and hours in New Haven. I didn't even think about going to a parking lot and I'm pretty sure my plan was just to ride out the free parking and hope no one came to give me a ticket. Now that I'm old I would just eat it and pay the $5 to park in the lot where no one would key my '89 Corolla.
"Well, if the poet doesn't arrive by seven we may just have to have you take his place."
I'm 21. I'm an English major at a prestigious college. And Harold Bloom just asked me to replace a poet at a reading at Yale. I think I peed my pants. We exchanged some other words. But I can't remember them.
The poet arrives on a cloud of synecdoche. Harold Bloom give his introduction and says how one day he read a poem by Kinsella and called him up in Australia long-distance. He thinks he is a voice from the Wilderness.
A reading at Yale is quit the affair. It looks exactly how you would envision. All wood-panelling room, walls acoustically lined with the private library of some deceased alumni. Stained glass windows provide the bare light.
The poet was insane. He is what we would now call a "divo." He sleeps two hours a night. He wears only black. His pet peeves include: natural light when he his indoors and leather. He's a vegan who makes the whole room around him vegan or he leaves. He won't sit in a leather chair.
After the reading we have to walk old, aged Harold Bloom home. We banter around like a bunch of nerds and I try not to speak (although I did get a laugh out of HB by mentioning that the Inferno begins with Dante being chased by three animals that do not exist on the same continent).
And the poet says this, "Harold, I'm really glad you had the chance to meet Brendan. Brendan Sullivan is going to be--and already is--one of the greatest minds of his generation."
Then, out of completionist anxiety, I also shit my pants.
I am not the kind of person who takes compliments well. This is probably because I don't believe you. I know I'm not really that bright. But, like, you can keep trying to convince me...
They're also teachers and teachers are nurturers who get you to believe in yourself even thought there's no reason to.
We have to walk Harold Bloom home because he's old. He lives in exactly the place you'd imagine him to live if you only saw his picture on a book jacket. Inside the fence on yale. All stone building. Harold Bloom was born to Yiddish-speaking parents in the Bronx. He has a book called How to Read and Why and the answer is thus: often, out loud and then reread.
I wonder if his house is lined with books or if he owns no books because he puts on a suit everyday and goes to the beautiful, translucent-marble library at Yale.
If you ever think, "I wish I had one book with all the poems in it that I'm supposed to know" pick up HB's Best Poems in the English Language. If you ever think "I want my niece to know all the great children's stories of all time." Pick up Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages and if you manage to deliver it without reading all of them: you will be the first.
He goes inside and Kinsella turns to me, "What did you say to Harold?"
"Nothing. I told him hello. I'm with you and you were late and he said I might have to take your place."
"Harold does not like a lot of people, Brendan. But I can tell he really, really likes you."
"Shut up."
"Do not tell me to shut up. Have you ever thought of studying at Yale?"
"Yes. I'm also working on turning lead into gold. We've got all this lead. But what we really want is gold."
He takes me out to an Indian restaurant on Howe St. I'm dying. Howe Street is the place you go for Mamoun's Falafel after you leave a hardcore show at Toad's place. This is where you talk about how you totally stage-dove ontop of those yuppies. This is where you had a contact-high after seeing George Clinton on a school-night. This is not where you have this conversation:
"Brendan. Your novel is brilliant and I have to say that I like the way you're destroying the concept of the travel narrative. I want to publish it on my press, but it's going to take a lot of work. I want you to go further with the dialogue."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"The dialogue? Huh. Never saw that coming."
I backed out of this plan and the novel never came out. Not even on a small, Australian art-press. Because I am incapable of being happy. But I do have this one wonderful memory.
You come very highly recommended from Elisabeth [LAST NAME]. I was telling her about my new novel--which is a retelling of Romeo & Juliet from Mercutio's perspective--and she mentioned that you would be the one to talk to. In my research I've discovered that the Prince from R&J was a very important patron of both Dante and Giotto. This is not a pretentious historical farce, but more of a behind-the-scenes with bold face names dick jokes.
Would you be interested in reading some? I really respect your list and I like that you have some intelligent titles, which never neglect interest.
Best,
Some Dipshit Writer-Loser
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show detailsMay 6 (2 days ago)
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Dear Author,
Thank you for your query which we have now received and will consider carefully. Please note that because of the number of queries we receive we cannot respond individually to every submission, but we will contact you if we are interested in seeing more material.
Yours truly,
Some Bullshit Literary Agency, LLC
Fucking auto-reply. Jesu Christo.
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show details7:04 PM (8 hours ago)
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Dear Brendan,
Thanks so much for following up on Elisabeth’s kind recommendation. Unfortunately, I’m afraid this doesn’t really sound right for my list at this time, and so I must decline your offer to read the MERCUTIO. I strongly encourage you to try other agents, and I wish you the best with this, and all your publishing endeavors.
Yours truly,
Jessica Q. Bitchface
.
You know what's funny? Rejection letters are really charming when you have an in-person acceptance letter to hold on to.
Last week I was jumping on my bed at the Chelsea drinking champagne, and if you've been paying attention all week: my two weeks has been just one big champagne romp. I have figuratively been jumping on the bed all week. So, like I should be ecstatic, right?
I am so depressed. At first I thought I was just coming down from what a great week it was. Then my old band came to town in a million dollar tour bus and everyone was texting me for backstage passes and party info. So then I thought I was just a little miffed about being a big hasbeen.
I didn't even go to the show.
I can't believe I'm even writing this right now, because I would rather just pretend I'm upset about something else.
This is what I dreamed of my whole life, right? One day I'd be in New York City and a big fancy agent would take me out to the coolest restaurant in Manhattan and tell me how brilliant I am. Then what would I do? I'd buy a big bottle of Champagne and drink it. With you. Because I know that on that night alone is the only time it will all be perfect. Before rewrites and before the imprint sends me the ugly jacket sample and before the sales tank.
We would sit up all night, picking out a jacket photo and scheming about how we could get the publisher to pay you a photocredit. In the morning I would catch you on your laptop, looking up waterfront property in Rhode Island. For us. This is our ticket out of here. We are off to a land of people who have families and last names. The novel'll get sold to become a crappy hollywood movie that goes straight to DVD and we'll use the money to open a coffee shop on the water. We'll grow old in bandanas and aprons and our children will smell like coffee and fresh baked muffins.
But you're not here.
It's like it never happened.
Last night a friend texted me--knowing that I was the only person who wasn't happy about this--and said, "Quick, tell someone awesome."
So I went back up to Chelsea to my Australian friend's apartment where she was having a Cinco de Mayo party. I was in a room full of guacamole and strangers and the Australian made a big announcement, "Everyone make sure you meet Brendan. He is going to be the voice of our generation! His new novel is going to be huge!"
The party was full of kids who all went to the same art school in California, so they responded with a mix of fuck-that-guy and shrouded jealousy. I think I would have been more welcomed to the party if she had just said, "Everyone, Brendan is a Magnum. Hung like a clipper ship. Isn't that wonderful for him?"
I pretty much never get invited to house parties, which is fine by me because I hate them. In house parties there is a hierarchy who who gets to sit on the couch. Were you friends in high school? Then stay in the kitchen. If you stay in the kitchen then people have to bump you every time they need something. Manhattan houseparties never have anything dignified like a keg or enough wine to go around and so people basically show up with beer for themselves. THEN if you put your beer in their fridge the assholes will get at it. So then you go for a Negra Modelo (which you brought) and there aren't any left so you grab the can of Budweiser. Then the Budweiser guy walks up and is like, "Yo?"
You can always do something completely fucking classless like hide your six pack in your purse. But then you're that girl. I think Jesus' second miracle was really just watering down the wine that was hidden in some bitch's purse the whole time.
People my age in Manhattan, as a rule, live disgusting lives on street-found furniture. This means you can't put your drink down on the table because--oops--that's her laptop stand and Sarah is already a little drunk. It's like you're a dorm room party only you can't go into her room ("Oh, it's a mess shut the door.") and do something ridiculous like sit down.
I had to get out of this fucking party. Theo came with me and so I texted Tessa, "S-O-S."
"Come to Norwood. We're almost done."
Norwood is a townhouse on 14th and 8th that looks like the house from Lady & the Tramp. It's up about twelve sex-and-the-city steps from the street, 7 stories and all the furniture looks like it was stolen from a Rockefeller. The mainfloor bar is the whole breadth of the main floor. It looks like a boutique hotel with no rooms. Like, if the lights all went off at the same time you can be sure it would be the beginning of a murder mystery.
It's a private club for members and guests. I cannot think of a single reason for anyone to join, but I'm told it's a British literary society that owns it. The owners are out of town for the month so the place is a mayhem of free drinks and cigarettes getting stubbed out on the hardwood floors. Tessa got us some drinks and we saw her new tattoo. Marvelous.
The Australian girl texted me saying they were going to meet us downtown. I didn't mind this because the people were probably nice art school kids who had exhausted the topic of megapixels for that night. I told her to meet us at 7 Spring, which is a newish place on Bowery next to that bank that everyone thinks is condemned but is really the 132-room home/studio of a great photographer.
Tessa had to do her paperwork so Theo and I took the elevator to 3, where were were told we'd find "lotta ladies up there." I guess the nice thing about an actual private club is that you can do things like have a nice bathroom, keep respectable art on the walls, etc. This place had a guitar nook where two gorgeous Gibson guitars were there waiting next to plush armchairs and a vintage black upright Yamaha piano. No one was playing. They're just there. In case you need to jam.
The bartenders gave us a shot of Jack Daniels (they have a really low-brow liquor and beer list--it's clear that this club exists so John Varvatos can smoke cigarettes and drink canned Budweiser) which was nice of them. It came in somebody's-grandfather's-oak-table-scotch-glasses.
We went to 7 Spring and it was d-e-a-d, but they wanted me to tour the place and talk about throwing a party there. It's cool. But it's not on my side of Bowery. It does have a backroom with a lower level dance floor. It would be fun to throw parties there if I were at all in the mood to be throwing parties. They don't have a cabaret license but it would be a great place to have dancers and maybe bands of a certain level.
We left and were maybe just going to go to Gatesby's (sometimes it's nice to go to a bar that has TVs on the wall--like the way all girls have that one fat friend) but instead went to Motor City. It was pouring rain and Tessa insisted we take a cab. I'm not complaining at all. Sometimes it's really great to have a girl around to make princess requests. You start to miss it when you don't have a girlfriend.
Motor City is one of my favorite places to go to die. It is a Detroit-themed bar with muscle cars everywhere. The bartender's bottle opener hangs from the plastic coil of an air compressor. It also has this hilarious, malcontent discoball that hangs from the ceiling and doesn't spin. The disco mirrors flutter a little when the door opens and closes. Then the light spots all settle down and when you look at them they're like, "What? What are you looking at?"
That's Motor City. Daniela was there with some boy from England. I told her happy cinco de Maya (she's half Mexican). "Ugh, Cinco de Mayo is the St. Patrick's day of my people."
"You mean it's awesome?"
"It's an embarrassment."
"You mean it's the Puerto Rican Day Parade of your people."
Daniela just got back from Australia and I introduced her to the Australian.
I walked home through Chinatown in the early morning. There's nothing so terribly gross and sad as the scent of Chinatown at that hour. It smells like forgotten take-out.
I took the D home and when I woke up today I wanted it to go back to being yesterday, back to before I knew how yesterday would end.
Since age 12 I have spent about 75% of my reading time reading song lyrics. There's about 50 websites for this and I want to permanently block metrolyrics (can't copy, also asks first if you want to buy the ring tone--I hate ring tones) and lyricsdownload (more bullshit) and remember that azlyrics.com is all I'll ever need.
A waitress I used to know posted on facebook, "Jess is banning tv and facebook for 7 days... if you need me you can use this crazy invention called a telephone to reach me."
She and I actually used to have the same choreographer--this fiery bitch who is constantly accusing you of not counting. There is nothing so shrill as some bitch yelling at you in an expensive, sweaty rehearsal space. The empty walls are also disappointed in you. It's like in college when everyone takes all their Jim Morrison posters down in that last week of class and you walk into their room and it doesn't sound the same. Only, like, you're getting yelled at for not keeping your head up.
I was excited for this friend because she is on the management team of another band and I assumed that this was good news! Yay! Somebody's putting a tour together! She's home hand-printing band shirts!
"Yo, banning facebook and tv for 7 days? Lent is over, babe! Text me your number and I'll send you pertinent updates while you're in the bunker."
"Great. Here it is. UPDATE: I'm about to spray a porn star's ass crack with tanning solution."
The universe as we know it exists under rules that didn't exist before the universe was created as we know it. Ever since then we've lived knowing things like "matter cannot be created or destroyed." Knowing this ruins any movie about a superhero who can grow ten times his size/weight.
Anyway, whatever happens next will have a different set of rules and that's hard to get your head around.
Leigh and I broke up and the same rules don't apply anymore. I can't call her and tell her how excited I am about something. I can't text her just because I'm having iced coffee. I can't make her smile just by pointing out a bird. Now if I do those things they just one of us sad.
Get an umbrella. Not that one, that one. I know it's inconvenient. So is rain. No, goddamit. Not the collapsable kind--you're not Inspector Gadget. There, your umbrella should be tall enough to reach your waist. That way it's long enough to cover your head from a comfortable position (Davinci figured this out via armspan/leg hypotenuse). Don't buy those two-foot handle bullshit umbrellas from dethroned Nigerian royalty unless you're a circus bear with a unicycle.
Waterproof shoes. I wear Sperry Topsiders, but then again I'm a goddam Kennedy and I can get away with it. Get anything. Wear some Wellington's and you can rock around the streets all day while everyone around you scowls. Splash!
Wait a minute. Is this a pre-autotune synth voice masterpiece? Where did I hear this before? What year is this from? What planet it is from?
Is this a rock song or is an electronic flyer?
Did I dream this song? It blares in my ears like an iPhone app reading me the mass text about the party everyone will be at tonight.
There's a party in the house and we'll be rockin' tonight So bring your body with you, baby, and I'll make you feel right It's a freaky celebration of a natural kind And the pleasure you'll experience will blow your mind
Everybody will be dancing to the beat on the floor You will encounter situations never thought of before Satsfaction's guaranteed if you know what I mean And when you walk into the door it's such a freaky scene
Fuck it, I'll go.
I went to a party and what did I see?
The girls were wearing leather skirts and see thru jeans I asked the D.J. to tell me what was going on He said Freestyle's having a Freak-A-Thon.
Don't stop the rock! These are the great things that can happen when you don't let the rain get you down!
Oh yeah! Sing along! Why? Because I only feel aliiiiiive when the VU's flashing and alarms going off in my heaaaaaaad! I want to grab you and just squeeze you and maybe I should sit down the party's crashing us now!
Go ahead and sing a little: no one's looking up from their umbrellas. What's a VU? No idea, but that doesn't mean I don't get it. That's the only time I feel alive anyway.
We made LOVE like a pair of black wizards! (What?) You freed me from the past! You fucked the suburbs out of meeeee!
Yeah! Now you're not thinking about the rain. You're not wondering if you should text your ex. You're thinking about wrapping up that meeting with your agent tonight and escaping into the anonymity of Greenhouse!
Greenhouse where you may see all your friends, you may have champagne with Katy Perry again. Or you will just be in a room of beautiful strangers, all smiling like idiots. Escape the cool police that feel the need to live-blog about the other people in the room with you. Shut up! You're young and this is supposed to be fun!
Out of the way slow moving assholes walking in pairs and not sharing your ugly umbrellas. What is that advertised on top? Glamour Magazine? Aren't you a dude?
Move over, toughypants. You're embarrassing yourself. You look like a goddam circus bear. At this point you should just get wet and own it.
Or you should imagine all the booooys! Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahahaha!
Pardon me. Who are you to get in my way?
Who am I?
Nothing but the local DJ. Said he had some songs to play. But what went down from his fooling around gave hope for a brand new day.
Oh, you're working on a screenplay? And me?
I'm blowing your minds in a life unkind. You got to love the BPM!
You skip down the street to a coffee house and remember. Maybe two years ago now. That band. They were so British they barely spoke English. They came to Beauty Bar and danced their asses off. What were they called? Conrad was there. Maybe he met'em? Wait, oh my god, is this the second pop song to come out this year with--
You walk into the coffee shop. Always look for the umbrella bucket. And when they don't have one go ahead and ask if anyone can give you directions to New York City. What? We are? Oh, I was beginning to think this was Sioux City. My bad.
Your umbrella does not belong in your purse. It's not a tampon. It's a raincoat that doesn't smudge your profile. Leave it at the door so you don't drip all over the floor and make someone's grandmother break her hip.
When you put it down say to yourself, "I will not forget my umbrella, I will not forget my umbrella, I will not forget my umbrella, ella, ella, eh eh."
And you won't. Because that's your rain face. Remembering your umbrella reminds the world that you currently have your shit together.
Also, today is the perfect day to get going on that garden you always talk about starting.
We all pile into The Slipper Room, two years ago I was in a little pop outfit here. No big deal. I am more excited to see these girls of the Babes in Boinkland than I think I was to see any show. I was like a teen fan for them.
Only, remember: I'm having the best day of my life already. I go to the bar in my tuxedo-detail jacket, polka dot tie, and new skinny boy American Apparel pants. My single greatest accessory right now is my smile. I forgot that I loved smiling this much. I love the feeling of my cheeks pressing against my eyelids.
I'm a winner in the game of life. Today. I order a bottle of Champagne.
Adrianne is fully dressed for the show. She has on white thigh highs, sparkly booty shorts, sequined top and--this is killer--a wedding veil. I know, right?? She informs me that they're not even going on until after intermission. I later learn that she's in costume because of a problem with the dressing room and she really wanted to be in normal clothes when we met for the first time. You wouldn't know it to see her. She looked like maybe she drove the van there in this outfit.
She totally owns it. I really wasn't ready for this. Adrianne writes like a tortured lonely girl, like maybe she has a lazy eye. She sometimes employs whatever the female version of bravado is. Like, she's puffing herself up because she knows deep down that she can't claim to be anything great. She has long, gorgeous legs and a winning smile. I can't believe how un-Boston she looks. Her jawline is classically gorgeous. Her Burlesque waist-cincher appears to be doing no work at all. Her ribcage tapers into mannequin proportions.
Adrianne had written before about her breasts, but she failed to mention that when she's writing the words I love so much (for so many years) she apparently sits on a pair of harem cushions. This girl has Buridan's ass.*
Burlesque is very weird because it's sexier than pole-dancing. It truly is theater. The girls on stage have a blast, the girls in the audience are the ones yelling the loudest, and instead of cramming money in them Sugar Dish is trolling about the audience with a bucket and a hand made sign that says, "It's Hip to Tip." How wonderful it is, to those of us who grew up in puritan colonies, to just be in a non-creepy place in the LES and be in a room full of women of all sizes going, "Shake what yo mama gave ya! Whatever that is!"
The Champagne was only $40, which is awesome. Sometimes there are nights that call for Champagne. Sometimes when you're with the people you love you don't want to say, "You want a drink? What are you drinking?" You wanna say, "Wanna have what I'm drinking?"
I was nervous still. Flopsweat in my nicest suit. What if I talk to her and all the magic is gone? Am I ready to leave the matrix? I'm missing the show. I'm in the bathroom downstairs. I'm outside smoking. I'm certainly not talking to Adrianne.
At one point I'm outside smoking again (god I sound like Denis Leary this week--grow up, Brendan!) and Sugar comes outside. She's also wearing the same, white slutty-bride costume. Sugar is talking to a friend of hers from high school and being very standoffish. I mistake that for her hating me. Which is what I want. I need to be persecuted in my hometown. I later realize that this is how a woman acts in the shittiest neighborhood in a city of ill-repute when she is wearing only underwear.
Her friend, however, is talking a twenty-sack-a-minute about how great it is to see her and how they haven't seen each other in like 10 years! So there are two pairings who are meeting someone tonight while someone is in pasties. Wonderful.
The friend turns to me and says, "So you. What do you do?"
Because of my own neuroses I can never tell people what I really do. There's probably a graph where one axis is "Demand to Know What I Do." and another is "Supply of How Soon I Want to Hear The Lyrics of a Song I Wrote Ring-Toned Back at Me." But today I'm not writing pop songs. I finished a high-five-myself worthy novel. And for maybe the first time in New York City I introduce myself as a young writer, working on a novel that I just finished.
I am congratulated! Twenty-sack-a-minute girl whips out her phone and suddenly broadcasts, "My bestfriendintheworld wrote A Book About Chicago That You Actually Like and would totally talk to you right now!" A minute later I'm on the voicemail box of this big famous author, talking like the Casius Clay of Shakespearean Fan-fic.
This is also the worst possible week, girlfriend-wise, to be meeting someone. I suck. I'll never change. I'm disgusting. I'm a walking cliche without an original thought in my head.
And yet it is the single greatest day of my life. I've got literary agents telling me I can have a big ego and I've got myself finishing my novel and trying to high five myself.
You know what feeling I have all over? I'm in love. Literally. I'm in love with the world right then. I'm there with Pete--whom I haven't seen in person in months. My other closest friends are right behind him. These are my real-life friends. Not my party friends. They all know my last name and have met my brother--except Alex and Alex is so drugs that he deserves to be there too!
"Let's go backstage." Adrianne grabs my hand and it's like a scene out of the Sistine Chapel. I'm floating above the audience of a crowded burlesque bar. There is a scene-change before her act and we have to get backstage before that. If I had a brain in my head I could've mentioned this before. I could've told her all about the hilarious toilet with no partition that you can see from the DJ booth. I could tell you wonderful stories about future pop stars in there.
We get backstage before the next dancer goes on, which means we have a whole act to go through in the cramped little backstage area of The Slipper Room. Keep in mind that the LES is so thirsty for new bars that there is no earthly reason for the slipper room to still be open as a single-floor $5 cover drinks-only performance space. The only thing that keeps bars like this from ringing serious money is the people there. At this point in the LES there's only St. J's and Motorcity that still run like members-only clubs. If Slipper Room closed today it would reopen in a month as a restaurant. The stage would be the bathroom where cokeheads line up and snif their nostrils and talk about how good their connection is. The downstairs would be the kitchen and maybe a little private dining room for assholes. And the bar would be pressed all the way against the windows. They'd have specials on Ciroc. The main floor would be full of assholes looking down at their blue light of their blackberries and smiling about the smug text they got from somewhere else.
I'm time traveling. It could'nt've been a year since I've been in this dressing room. Me and a gorgeous girl in a sequin bralette. How is it that the 4'11' ex-GOGO dancer of mine is on tour without me and this gorgeous, statuesque creature in front of me is part-timing it for NPR?
There I am. I'm back at the Slipper Room like that kid from college who comes back for summer send-off. Life only got more complicated from here and I'm just looking for a taste of the awesome I left behind.
The dancers coming on and off stage are in various states of undress all around me. I'm staying at the Chelsea. All of my closest friends are here. I'm in a confined, public space with Adrianne and surrounded by all different kinds of breasts. It's not even my birthday!
When the act starts we're alone in the dressing room. We have to hide a little. So we don't interrupt. For the first time in our relationship we have a minute to talk. Several minutes. We don't have to small-talk. If there's a such thing as Big-Talk we do it. I know everything about her life. She knows everything about mine. This girl knows I have had diarrhea all month! I know about her weird, gross band-aid allergy! What else can we talk about?
Everything.
We're in there maybe five minutes and we go right into the deep shit. I wouldn't even know how to type the words we exchanged. It's just not blog-material. I confess all of the things I can't say out loud. I have a website devoted to diarrhea and bad sex and when girls tell me I'm bad in bed/life. But there's even more that I just can't share. It all came out in that dressing room.
Pete is outside with his girlfriend who I am finally remeeting. I peek through the curtain and see that Theo and Emily are having a conversation that is none-of-my-business but makes me smile anyway. What did Diddy say? Tell your friends to get with my friends. And we can be friends.
At showtime I strut out on the stage. I sit down with the Times (kinda wished it were the Globe--how exotic!) and the song "Strangers on a Train" starts up. I am a little bit upset that someone pilfered Thursday Styles from my prop. That's my section! At least the one I appear in the most.
Adrianne walks out and I sit down. The song begins.
pardon me sir is this seat taken i overheard you say not stirred but shaken and i could really throw one back such a thirst doesn't always permit forward tact so, if you would sir pardon me a stiff one is my specialty
Oh my god. I just met this girl and we've already shared our first dick-joke.
oh, you're very charming Sir now here's to you i don't want to know your name or what you do i know, here's to strangers on a train strangers on a train oh, i think we're going faster from the mount to the pasture just look at that scenery
Adrianne, probably the most brilliant writer I know, is leaning up against me in a prop-chair in a gauze blouse.
i really like to ride the train especially when i forget where i'm going i really like the way it feels the motion of the wheels
Her hand is on my thigh. I hide behind the art section.
I drop my newspaper. Or she takes it away. Who can remember? She unwraps that gauze blouse from her gorgeous physique like Florence Nightingale. She's massaging my weary shoulder. I've had a backache since the break up. I'm sleeping funny. I don't know how to sleep alone and in my nightmare I awaken spooning someone who isn't there. That pain is fading.
as the raging sparks are flying from the wounded rails still crying
battling the scenery it's lovely, it's lovely it's lovely, it's lovely i really like to ride the train especially when i forget where i'm going
I googled the lyrics. I can't hear the music. I can't see the crowd through these stagelights. Photoflashes cry out from the blackness like the cheers of friends I can't hear in the deafening silence. Everyone is cheering, but I can't hear.
i really like the way it feels the motion of the wheels mountain, meadow oh, i.. i'd better go this is my station, you know i've had a lovely time oh the pleasure's mine all mine
She's shaking. Her back turns to the audience, who is hooting and wolf-whistling. She whispers, "(This is the part when you hold me.)"
And I, in my email-persona-expertise whisper--as if I'm telling her about Yogatoes or titty-tassels--"(You're doing amazing. Breathe in your stomach like a swimmer and you'll never shake. Own it.)"
We are out of The Matrix. She straddles me, dives back, and places my hands on her hips so she can do her back bend. Earlier, in emails, she told me that she needs my help so she can pretend she has abs. She doesn't need my help. The audience is a snowstorm of flashbulbs and applause.
She sits down next to me after the show and I bring over another bottle of Champagne. The first one was transubstantiated into flopsweat. This one is for us.
We talk about life and the world like you would with that best-friend-for-life who knows everything but whom-you-never-get-to-see. It was nothing short of magical.
They leave for Boston and I leave for my return to my life as a miscreant. I miss them already, before they even put their pasties away. There was talk of them getting a room in the Chelsea. Hotel Party! I even offered that--since I had to check out in 7 hours--that they could stay with me and we could have a sleepover. Me and the Babes in Boinkland would made s'mores and braided each other's hair.
Oh god. That would've been too much.
That would have tasted too much like heaven for a long-overdue meeting with someone I've loved in this way for so many years. Onetime I wrote a novel about this:
There is nothing like a church wine brung freshly from a barrel chilled in the cellar beneath the crypt and kept fresh by the cold dead bodies that surround it. What sweetness does death bring to life! And by taking life out of death we are left with only the sweetest parts and we are able to hold it gladly like a de-clawed rose. I lick my blushing lips and swallow my dry throat in anticipation of this perfect joy, this one-night-stand with a stranger I’ve loved for years. For a sinner like me, an instantaneous and guilt-free satisfaction such as this borders on the pornographic.
I would've woken up in the Chelsea in pretty much the same way the 9/11 hijackers thought they would. What else would I have to shoot for in life if I had woken up on a rollaway cot? I would have snuck out in the early dawn hours of 23rd St. I would have gone to that gay bakery called "Hot Buns" and brought back a bag of treats and a box of Jack's Coffee and thoughtfully have gone to the bathroom before the girls woke up?
Instead they drive back to Boston and arrive at 8AM.
At that time I am in bed.
In the morning I get a call from Sugar's friend's friend. This huge, famous author. Saying she wants to meet. As we big, famous authors do.
*If you don't get that then you should probably read more. Buridan's ass is a philosophical conundrum whereby a donkey is equidistant from equal sized bales of hay. The donkey cannot chose between them and so he dies of hunger. I'm saying this girl is enticing, symmetrical and totally killing me.
At 6:30PM I made my playlist and took my excellent mood for a walk. Elvis Costello and I both don't wanna go to Chelsea. I never get over there so I took a walk down 23rd St. to the High Line. The High Line is just about the coolest thing I've ever heard of that doesn't have breasts. It's an old elevated industrial railroad that goes from 14th, snakes around buildings and then ends up on 34th. Now they're making it into an elevated park. I know, right?
Jake called and asked if he could come over. I thought for a minute that maybe something was wrong (he just got engaged) but it was just my paranoia. I was smoking, which is something I don't do during the day normally but I was celebrating and blaring MGMT. Smoking makes me anxious when I'm not drinking. I was walking around in heavy traffic and wondered if I might die right then. Get hit by a streetcar like my great grandfather. Wouldn't that just be a thing? I finish my beautiful novel and never get to even meet the agent.
I was just being stupid.
I go downstairs in the Chelsea to get ice and Jake is there with Alex Breakshearts. That was a nice surprise. We three used to have a party together called One Night Stand, and that name should've been a warning to us: we all got fired after taking too many liberties.
Alex is one of those awesome people who just likes to be awesome. He's like the Tad Alagash of my life. He walks in with a big smile on his face, "Check out my new boat!" He pulls out his iPhone and shows me a hundred pictures of a boat. "I'm going to keep it at the 79th St. boat basin. I'm moving there for the summer. Everynight BBQs. You meet a girl. Bring her to my boat."
He walks into my hotel room and immediately sits down, lights a cigarette and goes, "Man, this chair is so drugs." He is complimenting the terrible furniture in the Chelsea Hotel by mentioning that it has fun and exciting qualities. He goes on to say that the Chelsea Hotel, in general, is "drugs."
We ordered pizza and opened a bottle of Champagne, drinking it out of the mismatched unwashed glasses that we found in the cupboard. Theo and Elyse came and then Leila and her friend Emily with the breasts came.
Julia came too. We played music off my laptop and loved life together. I have to admit that I spent maybe twenty minutes untying and retying my tie. I'm going to meet Adrianne tonight. I have to look absolutely drugs.
On the way out a group of Swedes that always come see me DJ showed up. I think some people had the wrong idea about coming to my party at the Chelsea Hotel. I think they thought it wouldn't be drugs I think they thought we were all going to do drugs.
We were out the door at 10, waiting under the awning to catch a pair of cabs downtown. I walk in the door, I'm nervous about meeting Adrianne. And then there she is, standing there in heels, white garter belts and stockings, smiling. She's gorgeous, skinny and taller than I expected. She knows its me. I know its her. We walk right up and cheek kiss.
Hours ahead of schedule I was in my hotel room at The Chelsea crying. It had nothing to do with a girl. I read my own words in my own story about a character I created and I read his dying words. My. New. Novel. Is. So. Fucking. Good.
I sniffled and had to remind myself that this was fiction. But the character I drew is so wonderful it is heartbreaking to watch him go. It was brief, but it was what girls call "a good cry." I stepped out on the balcony and was delighted, for once, to discover that I was alive. I don't wanna die. But I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.
I went down to the lobby to use the WIFI and I saved a draft of the first half of The Confessions of Mercutio, ending the story while Mercutio is still alive but watches his best friend die in the opening scene of Romeo & Juliet. I'm giving away the plot but it doesn't matter. You will cry too. It's that good.
I sent half because you always have to get off stage while they're still applauding. If you're wondering about how to stay happy in nightlife: you should always leave the club when they're playing a song you like. Then you can exit feeling like you're in a music video.
I emailed it to the agent:
Subj: Spank bank deposit
Body:Here's your homework assignment. I'd like to be all John Updike about it and grumble about how it could be better or how it didn't come out the way I thought it would.
But that would be disingenuous. I'm really happy with it and it's really, really good.
We'll get drinks Monday just the three of us. You, me and my ego.
And she said.
I'm glad to receive it and look forward to drinking with your ego. Fitting, now that I've read the first pages
That's what she said! She said I can keep the ego because it's that good. I made a playlist (see below) and took my infectious mood for a walk. How great did I feel!
Can I tell you something that actually happened? I was feeling so radiant and wonderful all over that when I crossed 23rd street a fashion photographer turned around, pulled out his camera and started taking pictures of me. I gave him blue steel.
I smiled and strutted about the city. I don't know where I'm going. But I'm going to try for the Kingdom if I can. 'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man.
When I put a spike into my vein and I'll tell you things aren't quite the same. When Im rushing on my run and I feel just like Jesus' son.
I have made the big decision. I'm gonna try to nullify my life cause when the blood begins to flow when it shoots up the droppers neck when Im closing in on death and you can't help me not, you guys. And all you sweet girls with all your sweet silly talk. You can all go take a walk.
I went over to Lou Reed's apartment, knocked on the door. "Can I help you?"
"Lou if you think Heroin is so amazing, you should try some of this stuff I've got. It's called Writing a Brilliant Novel. Uncut."
I put a cigarette out in the peep-hole and kept walking.
It's no secret that I've been having an affair. For years. Maybe since I was about 20 when Ben first linked to her website. I have had an intellectual love affair with Adrianne since I first read her words.
I talk about her like she's my best friend. All of my girlfriends have always thought that I had a thing for her. But we never met. Not even in the three hundred times that I visited Bard or stayed with Ben.
When Leigh told me she wanted to go to Harvard for grad school the first thing I said is, "We should go up and visit. We'll stay with Adrianne!"
"Ugh, that girl that you're in love with on the internet?"
"She has a boyfriend. It would be fun. We can escape New York and meet a nice normal couple that freelances for NPR and works at the office from The Office."
Whenever a girlfriend breaks up with me Adrianne emails me to remind me that it's sunny somewhere outside. When she thinks I'm depressed she emails me a depressing song. She got into burlesque this year and I used to be in a burlesque act. When she got her first pair of serious heels I emailed her about the wonders of yogatoes. I told her how when performing you always breath in through your stomach like a swimmer and you'll never get shakey.
I read or reread her website every day. It's just wonderful to meet a girl who will say things out loud. My favorite posts are her most honest. Like about how she knows she great breasts, but that doesn't change how she feels about her stomach. We also both were in long term relationships and shared a secret desire to have a one night stand with someone who would be impressed with our bookshelves. Which was actually a story about having a one night stand with ourselves and being like, "Ohmygod, you keep Voyage of the Beagle next to your bed?"
Her honesty is beautiful. Her sense of adventure! is inspiring. I am not in love with her in the way you might think. Sometimes when I think life is hopeless I fantasize about how she and her boyfriend are having a quiet night on the couch. Does that sound creepy? Me locked in a bathroom somewhere in the LES, maybe thinking of shattering the mirror and wondering if they kiss goodnight before they turn out their twin reading lamps? Well, whatever. I can say that out loud of Adrianne.
So. Onto the awesome part:
She sent me a flyer a couple of weeks ago to a burlesque show at The Slipper Room where she would be performing. The Slipper Room is this gorgeous, single-floor affair in the LES about a block away from where Nikki works. The owner of the building is the real estate guy who is the only reason that there are great places left in the LES. That and Katz have both had realtors beg them to sell their plot. One of them even said they would build condos on stilts and let them keep their storefronts. And, uh, I used to have a residency there when I was in a pop group.
So here I am, working on the new pages and I emailed her to see if she was still doing the show.
I was going to do my solo at this thing but Boyfriend is in it and came down with the Swine Flu. Want to be in my dance?
And I said
I don't know Adrianne. My girlfriend is really getting me down and she just emailed to say that she hopes I grow up to be half the man her new boyfriend is. Then she called me unoriginal and insulted my poor, defenseless writing. I don't think sitting in a room while your friends take off their clothes, make jokes and dance will be any fun.
No wait: my god that would be perfect. Yes! A thousand times yes!!
We're nerds. We don't just say yes. We quote Joyce.
Hah!
I think this will be an amazing way to meet someone for the first time. Your job will be to sit in a chair and keep a straight face. Oh, and in one part I will mount you and you'll need to conspicuously support me from the hips/lower back while I bend backwards so that I can pretend I have abs.
Do you have a suit? Trenchcoat? Fedora? (The latter two I can bring -- I think you and Boyfriend are around the same height. He's 6'3" or 4.)
This is the single greatest way to meet a stranger I can think of. It makes me feel like a trophy. I am going to be mounted.
Also, how does she know how tall I am? (Oh, right, it was in a story.)
Also, this setup was absolutely perfect because I was very nervous about meeting her. I assume that I am a huge, huge disappointment to people when they finally meet me. About the only two things I have going for me is my mom bought me a really nice pair of Prada glasses and I'm probably just a little bit taller than you'd expect.
I thought about what I would wear. She probably reads my nightlife stories and sees my music videos. I must look awesome. Leather jacket, Topshop, three million dollar jeans. But wait...that's not an option: I have to be in costume.
Then this wonderful calm came over me: Adrianne actually knows me. Adrianne knew me years ago when I would post things like, "I had a beer last night!" She knew me when I lived with my Mom. She knows I'm exactly how uncool I am. What a relief!
I left The Chelsea for the first time all week, rode back to Brooklyn, packed my handsome playboy tuxedo and turned in the final pages to the two agents who are after me.
