It's been three Metrocards since you left me. This one was by far the hardest.

“Her fetish is being a bitch.”

Today I left my loving family to go to work.  It was so god awful that I left before midnight (!).  I promised I would be a good boy this week.  No canoodling with Rihanna for this boy (this week).  But I had a ride downtown and I could visit my sweetheart at work.

The difficult part was that I had one me a series of antiques that we had bought at my Mom’s house that weekend.  We found a store, half a block from my the Dalai Mama’s new place upstate.

The whole family agrees that this is the nicest house we’ve ever lived in.  It was built in 1872 and has four bedrooms (not including the unfinished servants’ quarters).  All brick and wonderful.  It’s owned by the church, so those pedestrian concerns about heating bills and repointing the brick work are nonexistent.  Furthermore, my own Dad was out of work at the time that she got that job.  My dad—first guy in last guy out ever since he got a paper route—was now learning about craigslist and monster.com.

For my entire life my parents have been the hardest working people I know.  Dad worked 8-8.  Mom woke up before anyone and worked from home.  She got two graduate degrees after finishing her undergrad at community college.

On my first day at the Hartford Courant I got an assignment and worked the phones.  I made a spread sheet and called in favors as an eighteen-year-old journalist for the most respected paper in the highest earning per-capita state in the nation, two doors from the capital.  I remember on my first day on the job in the newsroom I came back to my parents house in my ’89 Corolla.  “How was work today, honey?”

“I came half an hour early and I was the last guy out the door in the Features Department.”

“Ah’right!!” Dad pumped his fist in a way I’d only seen when George Tate sunk a full-court hail-mary for UConn in second grade.  (I actually wrote a song about that moment in college basketball history and I can only assume that Interscope will keep it a secret.  The refrain was “…That’s when I first said out loud/”Someday I’ll make Dad that proud.”)

Andrea works one night a week at the club that used to be called Life on Bleecker and Thompson.  Its name translates from French as “the little red fish.”  But you’d have to be illiterate not to get the joke.*

So I went to visit her, which was a very difficult act.  I came straight from Grand Central to get to work on time.  This included (full post about this to follow) carrying my new, eighty-pound oak, velvet-lined case that holds my new 140-piece silver set from Singapore.

Mom now lives in Orange County, NY (you ever seen the motorcycle show Orange County Choppers?)  Mom is down with OCC.

This morning I woke up to the realization that I had fallen asleep on an air mattress and woken up on a sheet of deflated plastic.  It was awful.  Only because it was partially inflated.  My ungrateful sonofabitch mentality got the best of me.  Mother laid out a bottom sheet, top sheet, pillow shams, and a blanket.  But when we got back from Sweeney’s I found a fully dressed girl passed out on a half-inflated air mattress.

You have those moments when you’re a boy from a proper New England family where you’re like, “Really, Ma?  That was your plan?  You have us up for Dad’s birthday/Fathers’ Day and think that our drunk-asses are going to master the air mattress and put shams on the decorative pillows?”  I didn’t wake up Andrea because I knew that the only way one of us would have a goodnight’s sleep is if she stayed passed out and warm.  I threw blankets over her at 2AM.

At 6:30 I awoke.  Either that or I gave up.  The worthless, shamless, pillows were no help.  My head was supported by the remaining air.  My feet were lofted.  The small of my back was seated on the original oak floors.

Thank god I love adventures.

So me, my new deer-hoof gun rack, my 140-pieceflatware set, Andrea’s three decanters, art deco mirror, two lamps and three dresses had to get our way back to New York. 

After work I went by her party (which she does kind of as a favor for a friend).  There were girls whipping guys.  There’s a guy known as “The Human Carpet” who basically wears a black body bag and lays on the floor hoping you’ll step on him.  If you do step on him other men will ask you to step on them.

The thing about a fetish party is that you can’t possibly be offensive enough.  Off in the corner is some guy in an Abu Graib mask getting whipped, shirtless.  Meanwhile, my friend Amber is GOGO dancing and her boyfriend is sitting there waiting for her to be done.  It was cute for a while because all the boys had that feeling of waiting on the couch together beside the shoes department in a women’s department store.  If we had anything to say it would’ve been:  “Women, huh?!?”

Tessa and Katie were there when I got there (I put the flatware set on the bar and showed everyone all three levels. It’s awesome.)

Someone asked them to step on him.  Meanwhile there’s a fifty-eight-year-old man with a 19 (?) year-old Asian girl’s foot ankle-deep in his mouth (it’s been 45-minutes in the making).

Around the corner is another girl who is wearing kid-pajamas and doing unhygienic things with teddy bears.  Another girl matches her.  There’s a guy at the throne by the bathroom who wants you to ask him, “Anybody in there?”  So he can say, “No, you wanna change that…?”

These are the hot topic kids from high school.  It’s a $15 cover to get in (AKA $2.75 more than a movie in this neighborhood).

My friends are all, by request, stepping on a guy who got down on his knees and begged them to stand on his chest.  What’s really crazy is that theses guys are ready for a variety of mishaps.  They’ve been there before.  They all get down on the ground on top of a sweatshirt and put a knit cap or bandana over their hair (you can imagine that the floors here are 1% grosser than any other club).  Their knees go up and their feet are A^2 to the B^2 of their Femurs.  They hug their faces with biceps and elbows.  This is all to prevent you from stepping on their balls or noses.  Which is exactly what you’d love to do when you’re doing someone a favor by stepping on them.

Amber’s fiancé, Matt, is there.  Matt is a huge fan of Mercutio because Matt was doing graduate-level research on stage-fighting and how to do it safely and effectively when he decided that ten people would care about that.

We all went out for a smoke and at the ticket window (as if this is a fucken Indie-movie snob house) there was a woman sitting there.  She was clearly a dork in high school, then she got weird.  Then she got old.  Bitch musta been 45.  “Can I get a stamp.”

“Are you on the list?”

“No, but I want to smoke five feet from here and I want to get back in here.”

“If you’re not on the list and you didn’t pay: you can’t get back in.”

Now, I paid about half that to see The Hold Steady last week.  Is going to a weird party really half as uplifting as “Separation Summer?”  No.

We got back in by going to a five-piece-band-plus-DJ thing in the main room.  It was sad because I’ve always thought, “You can do anything you want with a DJ in the band.”  But it turns out that instead you have four guys standing around while one  (who can sing pretty well) also stands around the others look like a-holes.

I walked out onto the streets of Greenwich Village and said, “I wonder what that guy’s fetish is?”

Turns out he’s just a crazy guy with tubes up his nose.

There were schoolgirls, boys in leiderhosen, old guys who wanted feet in their mouths, Matt who just got a job at Manhattan Ministorage, and then a small herd of boys who want you to kick them in the balls or massage your feet.  Luck of the drawwwwwww.

The other thing about a fetish part is—maybe you want the non-weird version of what they offer.  Foot rub?  Walk on your back?  Hard day?  I’ve never come home from work and said, “God I wish I could whip someone/something now.”  But I’m a hardworking Irishman.  I can get a free whiskey that came with a small (Asian) walking on my back and rubbing my feet? 

So we’re on our way to say goodnight to Katie and I go to take her into a cab.  The bitch at the main door get won’t stamp my hand because she knows I didn’t pay to get in.  “I’m with the bartender.”

The bitch looks like Jeaneane from Ghostbusters.  Tart face, red lipstick, only she also dies her hair nutrasweet blonde. 

“Ugh,” I said on my way out.  “That girl’s fetish is ‘Being a bitch.”

*The Red Herring.  The ruse.

Ever since you called me I've had a back ache.  Just stop.  Stop with your smug satisfaction and all the personal gratification you get out of making me miserable.  Just about the only thing I have going for us now is I can only assume that the less time you spend with me/talking to me/emailing me: the happier you are.

Your curt, prompt response to my email was more than sufficient enough to answer my question.  I certainly did not require a several-hours-later phone call just to appease all the great comebacks you thought of between waking up and bitching about it to [           ].  Who is your prime enabler, after your mother.

Instead of calling me, why don't you go out and find a positive female role model to replace all the crazy unstable bitches.  Maybe find a girl who has a job you might want someday and figure out how she got there by asking her informative, direct questions?

I emailed you last night because you still have my laptop and I am working with a singer who needs a laptop because she's poor and wonderful and talented.

I need to email her reference vocals and new tracks for rehearsal.  She's unbelievably talented but she is rough.  She is raw.  She's in the prime of my life.

But let's get one thing straight: there is no point whatsoever in dwelling on the ways that I've made you unhappy.  You are the kind of person that enters a wonderful environment and looks for ways that it can make you unhappy.  The sad part is that this is a matter of self-esteem.  You don't think you're good enough or skinny enough to be good for anyone or anything and so you don't respect anyone who loves you.  Last summer I made a tremendous amount of money and I took you on wonderful trips every week and you managed to have a freak out on every single one of them. 

We go to the beach and you complain that I read too much (reading on the beach is just about the most wonderful thing on the planet)--did I mention it was Mercutio research?  I looked up every few pages to kiss you.  Nice big forehead kisses from my plush Celtic lips.  For lunch we had a bottle of white wine and we were having such a nice time that I iPhoned where there was a hotel near a movie theater.  We took a cab to some cute little village.  Our day trip became a weekend.

We had dinner at some goomba place.  We saw "Get Smart."  We snuggled under the coarse hotel sheets and we were very happy.

I understand that train schedules are difficult at times and carrying a bag full of makeup and outfits and crap gets tiring.  But that's what traveling is like.  It's hard, satisfying work that lets you see the world and escape the city.  There is absolutely no reason to ever groan and say, "Ugh, Paris is so loud."  BECAUSE YOU ARE IN FUCKING PARIS.

When we were having a rut in the winter I took you to Miami so that we could see the sunshine and dance with Eurotrash and sun topless.  When we were looking for a little spring break I snuck you into a forbidden island in the Caribbean.

Also, your brothers and sisters were sweet and I really liked your Dad.  I'm going to miss these people.  But that Christmas card from your grandmother that said not to waste your time with me?  "It's much easier to marry someone with $ than someone who's poor and doesn't deserve you.  You're too beautiful."

Yes.  I'm poor.  I have big bills (most of them credit card bills from taking you around the globe).  But that doesn't make me any less tall, handsome or talented.  Do you have any idea why I drink so much?  It's so I can dumb myself down to planet earth.  That way I don't alienate too many people with my incandescent  brilliance.  Last week in the studio Justin asked me for the perfect hook and it was out of my mouth before I thought of it (and I had a mouthful of whiskey/diet coke--which is something I only drink with him).

So yes, instead of starting the financial crisis or getting my MBA or bilking poor people out of their land rights, I wrote four novels and a hit record.  No big deal.

I forgot to mention this: you probably think I'm sleeping with the singer.  I can only assume this is the reason that you won't help me out.  God forbid you support me--just this once.  Remember at my first show with the full band, right after we finished the single when you fucking freaked out because I didn't pay enough attention to you?  What is wrong with girlfriends?

You've assumed I've been sleeping with every woman in my life who isn't my mom.  Why?  Did your Dad cheat on your mom?  Why don't you spread the word among all the girlfriends of the world: WE ARE NOT YOUR FATHERS.  We are the most dynamic generation of young men who have ever existed.  We do not have their insecurities (we invented new ones) we don't have the onus of providing for a family until we die (women of our generation tend to go start new careers just as ours tapers off).  We're also the best educated and we have the most amount of pornography that has ever existed.  Which means: we don't feel like we have small dicks and if we need some bullshit fantasy to make us feel like big men we can watch any number of black guys cum on some trailer park bitch's face.

I don't watch porn (it's boring and unpoetic).

I don't cheat on girlfriends (you do it once and it becomes your stupid game.  If you don't have the balls to break up with a girl so you can fuck some waitress: you are not a real man).

According to the Hans Eisnick study: you should maybe drop out of whatever therapy you think is working for you and just ask yourself a few questions.  Do I feel like every relationship is a rerun?  Am I capable of being happy?  Is there something I do constantly to sabotage my own happiness?  What about the happiness of others?

Is there something I can do today to make one person happier?

Yes.  You can drop off my laptop at the bar of your choice, text me about it, then delete my number, start taking yoga and maybe treat yourself like the wonderful, beautiful, caring big-sister that everyone loves.

Because you're too good for this.

But it does change how I feel about the indominable spiritual force that is Diddy.

You give me a prompt and I’ll make it a story about my ex.

I went to just about the perfect college for people like me.  If I check your ID for a party and see it’s from Ohio we start to talk.  And you say, “Kenyon?  Wow.  Are you a writer?”

I majored in James Joyce and minored in literature.  Today is “Bloomsday” which, in case you’re illiterate, is the day that the novel Ulysses takes place.  But this is what I think about when I remember Joyce.  Which was my major.

I had a roommate, a WASPy-jackass from Minnesota.   I know that he reads this and I hope his fb status is “…is a WASPy-jackass from MN.” He was the other complete-asshole English major.  The guy who would correct  your subjunctive in the dining hall.  Years after college we both worked at MOMA.  He dated a girl in Fort Greene (near my house).  I dated a girl at the Lorimer Stop (near his house).  We never saw each other.

In the summer of 2003 I was back with Amanda and we lived together at her parents’ beach condo on the Atlantic Ocean in Delaware.  It was a magical summer and I wouldn’t’ve changed a thing.  Somehow—in that way that girls can always manage to ruin something so perfect—we were unhappy that summer.  Each day I woke up—still-drunk—and stepped out on my balcony over the coastline.  At 9 I was on the beach.  At 2:30 I went back inside to watch I Dream of Jeanie.

This was the summer where I first discovered dressing.  Rehobeth Beach, DE is known as “Rehomo.”  I suddenly had a hairdresser.  I owned all of the Ben Sherman shirts I couldn’t afford in high school.  I paid no rent.  Four nights a week I would hop on my 50cc Pusch All-State 1965 Seers-Roebuck catalogue scooter and drive my ass down highway-one to a Mexican Restaurant where I waited tables in khakis. 

I made about $200/night and went out drinking with the rest of the revelers.  Luckily I was a local!  Dipshits from DC would come down to party and have unprotected-sex for the weekend.  But I was so above that.

The scooter I had at the time had no electric start.  It didn’t have a battery; it had something called a “Magneto.”  It’s a thing that takes the power from your backwheel and powers your lights and turn signals.  If you idle too long at a stop sign your head-light go dim.

So on that magical summer, the summer that Springsteen keeps emailing me about.  The summer when nothing could have possibly been better. The summer when life has never, ever been happier for a single human being in the world (if I could do it over again—now that I’ve grown bravado—I would throw shit back in asshole’s faces.  You think you own this town because you have a timeshare?  Suck my Magnum, Karl Rove.)  On that summer she was unhappy.

My mother still refers to him as “Evil-Peter” to delineate him from “Wonderful-Peter” who polished the silver on Thanksgiving 2007.  Eight men, total, visited me when I lived in Delaware.  Seven of them hooked up with her when we broke up.  Fuck all of you guys.  Seriously.  I don’t know where you come from or who your older brother is: but didn’t anyone ever explain propriety to you?  Did you bother to read novels?  If you died today I would go to your funeral and help myself to the lectern and say, “He was a complete piece of shit from 2000-2004.  I’m glad he’s dead and if he resuscitated right now I would choke that bitch.” 

Open casket.

In college we had a 28-hour reading of James Joyce’ Ulysses.  September 8, 2003.  You might think that I had to look that up. But no.  That was the day I died on the inside.  Before this day I was optimistic.  I was an activist.  I cared about things like Mumia.

On that day I was supposed to be woken up by my roommate.  We were Those Asshole English Majors together.  Maybe you were working on cancer-research.  We were wondering how the best minds of our generation were driven by madness, starving hysterical naked cursing through the negro streets at dawn—looking for an angry fix.

I missed the beginning of the marathon reading of Ulysses.  Because my roommate was sleeping at Amanda’s.

I have a platinum record in my apartment.  I have been cheated upon.  I have lost more than anyone who isn’t a Hearst-heir has lost at my age.  And nothing will ever hurt as much as that did.

When I was too-young there were cop cars parked in front of my house. 

Please don’t call it a “domestic” over the radio ever again you dumb, ignorant officer.  But that was my fault and I don’t want to talk about it.  There is literally nothing you can ever say that will change my mind.  I’m sorry.  It was my fault.

But nothing has ever imploded my psyche the way that you did that day.  I saw you at breakfast.  You hopped on my 50cc scooter.  The bike I could only start by running it down a hill and throwing it in second.  “Sorry we couldn’t make it to the beginning at eight.”

“Yeah.  Whatthefuck?  I thought we were going together?”

“I was at Amanda’s.” 

(Amanda got married last month.  She married the guy she dated after us.  I should be over it, right?  Who cares?  I don’t.  I tour the world playing records.  For a living.  Right?  Why am I crying?)

I sat in that reading for 26 hours.  It wasn’t fandom.  I was just getting ahead on my reading for the semester.  I read every word of James Joyce’ Ulysses while I was majoring in a novel that takes place on one day on June 16 in Dublin.  Imagine for a second if I took a walk from Beauty Bar to St. J’s and wrote 600 pages about it.  Okay, just imagine that you’ve never read this website.  And then imagine that I’m hallucinatory.

“You don’t have the obvious-tells that other people have.”  Really?  That’s your reason for sleeping with my ex the week we broke up (they didn’t sleep together until one illicit night in the spring)?

“What you do is your own business.  I don’t own her,” is what I said as we cruised down the main drag of Gambier, OH without helmets on.  I could have, maybe, dumped the bike and forgotten French.  But instead I went to the cover-to-cover reading of James Joyce’ Ulysses.

I don’t speak French very well anyway.

We never hang out in New York.  But, earnestly I’d love to, anytime.  But, yeah, you have to buy the drinks.

SUBJ: I cried when Mike Stone died in your book.

And there's another thing I forgot to tell you about this book of yours:

My good-for-nothing uncle read it soon after it came out (how he found it is a mystery) and decided that he was meant to go back to a magical place called school. That was probably 1995. His wife had just got back from another visit to Iraq. He announced that he was going to become a teacher and he went back to school.  

Today he is in his first year as Principal of a k-6 near a shuttered factory. He loves it.

You really are a writer's writer. I read these sentences and think, "How come I didn't think to describe things that way?"

I'm going down to Elizabeth St. for dim sum now to celebrate being alive. Thanks, Kluge.

-B

P.F. Kluge  to me

show details 12:07 PM (1 hour ago)

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your postcard made my day. you liked alma mater, you'll love gone tomorrow. money back guarantee. and best regards from the heart of the liberal arts gulag.

Then I'd go to soundcheck I and I'd know that it's over; know that you're well.

You will let her dress you, let her teach you new dances, take you to new clubs, new bars, because even though you know it does not really matter, it matters to her.  You will let her take you to a dirty Thai restaurant that has mediocre food and when she says, "How was it?" you will say, "Great," and she'll say, "I told you!" and you'll leave it at that because you can't explain and you'd rather she was happy and ignorant that informed and miserable.  In fact it is because of this very quality that you are drawn to her and those like her and why you can never be with one too long.  Because then they become like you, when they become like you, when they become too informed, they become tired like you, jaded.  But when they still do not yet understand the world, they can still remind you of joy.  They are little bundles of joy, they are.  You can live your life through them even though you are dead.  These little bundles of joy in string bikinis who are not too tired to go parasailing, still thrilled at the prospect of skydiving, who have no yet discovered that there is nothing worth discoverin.  You want to possess them, yes.  But like a spirit, no an owner.

-Nic Kelman, GIRLS  (buy it!  It's $0.01 on Amazon!)

And I don't know how to handle that. Because I remember being eighteen. When that wasn't Her dream anymore.

The scene is a small party and one of my exes walks in. She's with an older man, he's clearly more mature and very wealthy. And I say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know this party was BYOBGYN."

Then I put my almost-full drink down and leave.

BACK LOG:  SOHO HOUSE

So that very night at work Katie said to me, “Dan can’t go to SOHO House tomorrow.  Do you want to come?”

The answer to that questions is always yes.  The Soho House is not in SOHO.  It’s a private club that started in London and has been branching out ever since.  All of the other locations are basically just stuffy restaurants where assholes can go.  But the one in the Meat-Packing is a full-time hotel with a Members-Only policy toward access to the rooftop pool.

Rooftop pool?  ROOFTOP POOL!

It was 11 AM on a Friday and I was an invited guest an exclusive club.  But not like the clubs I work in.  You don’t have to be on the list or not-be-black to get in there.  You have to be a bonafide member or a guest.  The new members can only bring one guest, but Katie’s friend is an OG who got the membership through a guy he was dating.

I was so excited that I went to Urban Outfitters and returned my shoes so I’d have money for drinks and food.  I’ve never been to a country club before, but I understand they can be quite the scene.  However, as a professional noticer-of-things I have come to pride myself on being a good guest. 

Katie's friend was this wicked-nice gay guy and because I went topless he told me to come back any time.  Even though I love getting freebies I would have joined this club if I knew they had a 1/2 membership for people under 27 (which I was until last month).  It's $700 and for that you get a private rooftop pool full of cool people, towels and monthly open bar parties.  So, for me, if I went 7/year it would be worth it.  I did get the membership directors name, though and she's very sweet and because I had the right member-intro I would be able to bring 3 guests instead of just one.  Pool parties!

It is a very imposing building in the meatpacking and you automatically feel humbled by the design and I couldn't help being  more-polite than I normally am.   They gave me a sharp looking guest pass and when I went up to the elevator they were waiting for me at the top of the stairs.  I wore the vintage Gucci pants that Conrad gave me.

Since I am tattooed and yet I speak English and have good table manners: there's a certain kind of social environment where I am always welcome.  The members were diverse enough to introduce themselves to you if they thought you were cool.  I had a margarita for breakfast.  Then Champagne with Katie.  Then I ordered a series of spicy margaritas with cilantro leaves in them.  So good!  I ordered the club sandwich just to be clubby.  It was made with whole chicken breast, bacon and avocados.  

I then went swimming and one of the lush chairs poolside became available.  I immediately fell asleep (drunk!) but since there was a waiter I never got dehydrated.  I awoke at some point later to a text message from Andrea that said, "Reapply!"  I smiled and then I reapplied.  And then I went back to sleep.

The nice thing about an owner-ship environment is that it breaks down a few barriers.  When I finally woke up this big jolly guy approached me and shouted, "I thought you mighta been a goner in the sun that long.  I thought I'd have to flip you over like a broiled stake."

I smiled.  And somehow I didn't get sunburnt.

I paid for lunch for me and the member and put $100 towards are substantial and decadent drinks tab.  Then I got up to go because Katie was leaving and then I had this moment where I was like, "What?  No."  I sat back down and ordered another round of drinks for me and the gay guys.  It was $50, or the cost of a pair of new Chuck Taylors at Urban Outfitters.  We had fun talking and they said I could come back any time.  The gays even left and I stayed to hobnob with the locals in my little blue Vilebriquin swimsuit.

That night I DJ'd in Williamsburg and somehow made it out alive and even made it back to the East Village in one-piece.