Last night was pretty awesome. I was editing the YA novel at home, celebrating the finish of my top-secret novel and making notes for my upcoming article in Esqire Motherfucking Magazine. Then I spent about fifteen minutes looking over that sentence and wishing I had someone to high-five.
Then my friend who just got out of rehab called me. I feel like we've become better friends since he got out and I think that's partially because his pre-hab friends are a bunch of a-holes. He called to say that he was heading out to the city with his girlfriend and they were going to get dinner in Little Italy at 8:30.
I really love when my friends make early plans on the weekend because I can actually hang. So I met up with him and his girlfriend and their nice friend at Vincent's on Mott. I had the spicy gnocchi and I wanted to take back all those things I've said about Italians.
We were outside smoking and he goes, "No cane!"
"Yep. I went to the doctor yesterday and they said they need more x rays and lots of expensive physical therapy but today I took a hot shower and decided to limp to my gig tonight."
"Are you in a lot of pain?"
"It's hard to say. But I do limp. I think I forgot how to walk normal."
"They give you anything good?" smiled my friend who had to be sedated in a hospital to help him get over his Oxycotin addiction.
"Some muscle relaxers and basically advil. It doesn't do shit. I wear those therma-wraps and take hot showers."
"If you want I could give you one of mine. I'm on buprenorphine to get me through the withdrawals. I have an unlimited prescription and you're more than welcome." He pulled out a prescription bottle and doled out one pill. Then he thought about it and chopped it in half. "Don't drink with it or take any benzies or tranquilizers. You'll feel a lot better. It's sublingual so just let it melt under your tongue."
I tucked it into a folded movie ticket stub and left it in my leather jacket.
At my gig that night the monitor was out. This is a really terrible thing that all places have no sympathy for: but because of the speed of sound you need a speaker right next to you in the booth or all of your mixes will sound like shoes in the dryer. My laptop is shattered still, but I had borrowed Theo's iBook and routed in from a hard drive.
I kind of designed my own DJ system by merging a Novation Launchpad Midi Controller with the Serato System that Interscope got me. You can add or remove turn tables and at this point I'm so good at working with it that I don't like using anything else. Also, if you're going to use digital equipment instead of flaunting your records: you mind as well look fucken dope doing it.
The dinner posse was supposed to go meet Dino's new singer at Tenjune (she's a waitress there), which is the bullshit club next door to where I was DJ'ing. Perfect. I left early to set up and they followed. They came in for a drink, which I got them from the bar and we had a fun time. "You take that pill yet?"
"No. I'm gonna drink tonight. Plus tomorrow is a long day so I'll just crunch away at it then. I hope that if it kills the pain I can stop limping."
Without the monitor I really needed it to be loud in there. I also needed to up the tempo because it's harder to screw up (for some reason) mixing at 128beatsperminute ("Shots!" and "I Gotta Feeling"--the killer and totally misspelled song that all cultures agree on) than 87bpm (pretty much only "Empire State of Mind" but "Paper Planes" is 86bpm). I finally had the crowd going and Dino comes back from Tenjune maybe two minutes later. "Fuck Tenjune."
He walked in there with three pretty girls to go see a promoter and a waitress friend and they wouldn't let them in because some people in the group didn't look Meatpacking enough. Fuck places like that. Frankly, I wouldn't want to hang out in a place that wouldn't let normal people in. He has a few more girls with them now so I get them all drinks.
This skinny kid keeps coming up to the booth to stare at my screen (people do this a lot). He tells me he wants to learn to DJ and he wants to watch me work. Whatever. But he keeps interrupting with questions or trying to talk to me while I'm scanning for a song (in general you want to play music of the same tempo and fade in with the same key--which is impossible, but really hot if you get it accidentally). But, you can't always do even that and you don't want to just climb around tempos because that's boring. I dropped in a Biggie song and my new admirer had something like a shoegasm. "How did you do that? You just leapt tempo and no one noticed."
"You can do anything you want as long as you can count to eight," I told him, which is something I learned as a backup dancer and it's helped me with DJ'ing.
The girls who came with Dino get it in their heads that this skinny dude is a gay guy who wants to tickle my varicoceles. So they took it upon themselves to cram into the booth with me and dance. This hurt so fucking much. Now I have people bumping into me and I might have fractures in my sacrum.
So the guy isn't actually gay, and he takes this girl's advances to me that she wants to tickle his functioning testicles. Now both of them won't leave me alone.
Last week I decided to change my tune about "requests." People make requests and the only time anyone has ever made a good request in the history of drunk people: was how I met my good friend Jackie! We met at Beauty Bar because she asked for awesome songs that would go with what I was playing.
I used to say dickish things when people say, "Do you take requests?"
"Nope!"
"Does it fucken sound like I need requests?"
"Astonish me, Pete Tong."
The weird thing is that people are fundamentally asking if I take requests and when I say no they won't give up. I had a gig on 19th last week and this girl kept at it for an hour and I wasn't even DJ'ing, "Okay but could you--" "I said no." "Could you just---" "No." "--play some hiphop." "That's not a request."
But now I've decided a new system. When girls sail by and say, "Do you take requests?" I now smile and say, "What do you want to hear sweetie?" And then I tell them if I've already played it or I say that I will play it a little later on.
So that's the nice way of not taking requests.
But people makes requests in the stupidest ways. They either want exactly what song they played in the car on the way over from Jersey or they ask for "Jay Z 'New York'" which isn't a song (it's called "Empire State of Mind" and you don't have to fucking request that on a Saturday night in New York City). Or they want obscure house and they're going to yell the name of it in my ear (I keep note of all these bands so that I'll never accidentally download their records). This one Scottish guy last night wanted all that Chemical Brothers Euro Bullshit and every time he demanded it he would step up on stage bully me down to his level and I wanted to kill him. I had to have the bouncer get him out of there. Or they want shit I'm just not going to play ("Tik Tok" is just about the worst song I've ever heard. There's a theory that Garth Brooks only existed because there was a 4 year period where Bruce Springsteen went into hiding and the market created a replacement. Ke$ha only exists for people who don't listen to lyrics but who get embarrassed by playing 5 LG songs in a row and want another artist in there.)
Also, I know that I'm the greatest fucking DJ alive and I mix so masterfully that people ask me if I premix at home and all so I must make it look easy--but why the fuck do people only request songs when one song is about to end and I'm transitioning? I'm not the band at your prom that strums out and then asks for requests. This was literally the first thing I ever noticed about DJ'ing when I started in college.
Dino and his crew end up staying the night and this girl won't get out of the booth. She was nice but after two vodka cranberries she got very stupid for a person who had to drive back to Princeton, NJ that night. She kept grinding up against me in her li'l dress/top/poncho which would have been cute if I weren't in pain and if she weren't wearing a really terrible padded bra. I felt like I was getting a lap dance from Teddie Ruxpin.
And then Theo came! Yay! I was missing his birthday party at Freddy's so he brought the party to me! And he happened to bring the girl who once asked him why he hangs out with an arrogant asshole like me and another girl who I forgot I hooked up with after Annie moved out but who went to Kenyon and asked me--the morning after--what my major had been. (To be honest I was kind of offended that she didn't remember me from our 1400 person campus. I was more offended that she didn't know me as the Great English Major, scourge of obscure Joyce references. Also, me? Arrogant??) But they were both really nice to me. Theo also brought his hot new Italian girlfriend.
Then my cousin showed up. This isn't really like my old gigs when I was a promoter. I just show up and play music and don't have to worry about bringing people. Let alone a dozen.
There were all these people in the booth and the whole club could not have possible fit one more person inside. I probably had fifteen coat in the booth just of friends of friends.
This Asian dude kept shaking the booth, though. I don't know why guys-----only guys do this--need to lean an arm on something. They lean on the booth when they're waiting for drinks. They lean an arm when they're talking to a girl (presenting her with armpits). Occassionally somebody will walk up to the booth and rest a drink on it and I scream in their face and ask them what the fuck they think they're doing. Politely. But Jackie Chan wouldn't stop fucking with the booth. Normally when guys lean up I tap their hand and they flinch. I said, "Hey buddy, I got sensitive equipment up here and you're shaking the booth."
And he smirks, "You've got a piece of shit iBook, a USB hub and dick-else. Your mixes are shit. So I doubt that."
This fucking guy.
I'm getting heckled by over-the-hill Data from Goonies. I told him politely that I don't see what the version of laptop I'm using has to do with it and that I've asked him once nicely to please respect my wishes. Only I said it the dickest way possible and asked him if he wanted me to throw him out of if he wanted me to get the bouncers to do it a better way.
"Whatever," he leans his arm on the booth again. The only reason I didn't throw him out is because he was talking to this sweet, plump girl who had actually made a good, well-timed request early (MSTRKRFT "All I Do Is Party."). I took a deep breath and told the girl that either he moves or I throw him out. Diplomatic. I'm not a rude DJ just because I'm in mortal pain, being danced on and fielding drink orders.
I spent half my time DJ'ing, half my time crying that people were hitting my fractured spinal sacrum and another half ordering drinks for everyone from the service bartender. If that's an improper fraction then that explains everything.
The manager got piss drunk by 11:30. One of the gay boy waiters decided to do his gay manager a solid (heyo!) and wait and count the money. He decided to wait by standing directly next to me and gogodancing. None of us got paid until probably 5:30. The bitch of it was that I had to get back to Brooklyn and then get right back in the city by 8:30AM. Rebecca had me stay over at her place in Chelsea, which was nice because she's half Irish and has four brothers and treats me like the fifth.
When I got up today my back hurt. Lots. My muscles were sore from clenching and trying to limp. They hurt from flinching when people touched me. I put my tie back on and headed over to Scholastic. On the way to Starbucks I put the little pill under my tongue and hoped it would kick in soon.
I took a cab to Soho and when I got there they had too many judges so I want to the Apple Store to drool over new laptops. Then I started feeling the pill.
I was hoping that it would be a safer version of Oxycotin and that I could count on feeling cosmic and happy for the day. I had a couple of them a few years ago and it almost made me feel like Nikki didn't break up with me.
But then I realized all I'd had was pills and coffee and I wasn't working for a major record label anymore so I should probably go home. The pain was receding, but I felt a bit nauseated. And the train felt nauseous*.
I got home and was getting ready to finish my Esqire article when I had the desire to run to the bathroom and throw up my Vitamin Water. About ten minutes went by and I had a big glass of iced water. I threw that up immediately (my vomit was still cold from the ice).
When I steadied myself I went to the store and got some saltines.
Then I had a string cheese.
In between: I threw each thing up. Dino texted me to see how I was feeling on the pill and I was a little bit embarrassed. I told him I had no pain, but I did take it on an empty stomach.
I told my roommate what happened and she was very supportive.
The rest of the afternoon I don't think I ever felt worse in my life. I was depressed. My roommate asked me where Prospect Heights was and I almost started crying because I figured she wanted to know because she was moving out. I wanted to go work on my Esqire article but then it occurred to me that I'm a complete failure of a human being.
I was every junkie cliché. I was completely self-centered, irritable, I was itching all over. Why did I--a person who's never had Nyquil or Pepto Bismol--think that the cure for my back problem would be to take a friend's fucking methadone?
We watched the Grammy's and she goes, "Hey, tomorrow's Magic Mondays**are you excited?"
"I don't have any quotes for my Esqire article and I can't edit my novel. I hope I die in my sleep."
"I hope you don't. But I'll go through with the plan and tell your mother that I was pregnant with your child and we were going to get married, but the stress..." (My end of the bargain is that if she dies I have to go back to Seattle and tell everyone we were engaged and that neither of us failed to meet someone by the time we were thirty.)
We ordered Indian food, which was really great when I started vomiting Chana Masala through my nasal cavity. I do not remember the last time I felt like this.
Tomorrow I'm just going to limp around because I won't even take an Advil. That was the worst mental day of my life. I felt like there was a gay waiter in my stomach doing the gogo-pogo against my gag reflex.
I was having trouble with edits today when it started to get cold in my apartment. I was already dressed for work (I have this new thing I call "Three Piece Saturdays" which is the opposite of casual-Fridays when the last day of your three-day work week is Saturday) so I went to the back of my closet and pulled out an old North Face down jacket I bought in high school.
Part of the trouble is that I wrote a YA novel, but I hate teenagers and wasn't very good at being one. I got distracted and found myself on iTunes and was struck by a song I loved in high school. When I went to download it I was like--fuckit, I'll get the whole record.
From the first note I was instantly transported back to high school. I remember what is smelled like. I remembered delivering pizza and feeling out of place. Then I turned back to the YA novel.
Why a straight-edge kid from suburban Connecticut loved this song is not something I am interested in explaining:
It's all about the drugs and the money. The drugs, money and sex. No shame in my game, I love to get high, doing blow, blinded by snow, still reaching for the sky. XTC and weed is all that I need. I know it makes me insane. Yeah I chill down town, but I ain't down with sticking needles in my veins. Check this out, money talks, bullshit walks, it's all about that green. Gotta get paid, keep foes afraid, gotta get the cream. So look and listen, watch my diamond glisten, can't let them scheme, dealing coke, can't be broke. It's the american dream. Here's a verse, I don't need to rehearse, let's talk about sex, everyone knows from coast to coast, that Ezecs the best. Don't be a tease, just get on your knees. TIme to go down low. White, spanish or black, as long as you got back, I'll be your Papi Chulo.
It should be noted that when I got into Kenyon I kept my sanity by changing the words to "Financial Aid / Keeps foes afraid."
Finished the top-secret novel yesterday. It's awesome and it's already my favorite novel. Yours too. Update your facebook profile.
Editing the YA novel today. Normally I don't work on Saturdays but the chiropractor told me he can't look at my back until the x-rays prove that I didn't fracture my spine. I learned about a new bone yesterday that seats your spine into your hips. I landed on that one and can't leave the house.
Of all the places to go for solace after a break up, I never thought of the anonymous, cruel world of internet-commenters. Today I woke up to an email which commented on a youtube video that portrayed an ex:
No betr way to tell the world and all potential suitors...'hey get ready guy, Im a fukn slutty ho-bag douche coal burner with no world experience and some fukn rndm presidents black face on my lilly white body.' Who in the fuckin world besides some shitty wife-beating jigg would not run screaming from this sad mixed up excuse of a human. My good lady you deserve nothing but all the beatings, bastard children and stolen belongings only a nig could supply u with. go chek out a singl mom help book
If Apple does come out with a tablet device today I look forward to it because then I can use big words and people can click on them for definition without making me feel like an ass.
e.g.
It was my first time seeing Candy's apartment. It looks exactly like her purse, with papers and receipts on the floor, exuviated bras, high heels and orphaned jeans everywhere.
Also, Lolita and Ulysses will be more approachable and the first thing you'll learn is that a know-it-all-device is no substitute for reading.
I woke up with the wind knocked out of me. My mouth rang with the disgusting taste of something metallic as I heard rats scurrying around me.
"Yo, hellooo." There's a rule in New York: any time anything awful happens the first person on the scene is a bona-fide wise-crackin' New Yawker. (If a yellowcab slams into a hot-dog cart, don't expect some midwestern housewife like the neighbor on "Small Wonder" to be like, "Oh gosh! Is everybody okey-dokey?") The ground beneath me started to vibrate.
I was facedown on the subway track.
This was not my first time down on the tracks. One time on the way home from Beauty Bar I saw a fat homeless dude go ass-over-teakettle onto the tracks with the Q train coming. I leapt down there (it is sooooo much farther than it looks). Since I was the first one on the scene I was all like, "Yo, hey Tony, pizza-pie get offa da tracks.
I was shakey, but quite alive and decided I would like to continue to do so. I lumbered up and took a deep breath, mounted the track for a boost and hopped back up the platform with a little help from Anonymous Tony. Everyone rushed over to me. Police, undercovers, MTA people, "Are you okay??"
Yes, I said as the train came. I am perfectly fine because I'm not down there. Thank you very much everyone. Whatever happened to me happened so fast that I had no idea and the miracles of trauma helped me forget the especially painful parts.
Within five hours I was not okay. I heard my roommate downstairs and I called out for her. She pranced upstairs in a towel to see what I wanted so urgently. She could tell by the look on my face, "Is it your back?"
"I need to go to the hospital." She ran downstairs to get dressed and when I heard her on the phone with 911 I started crying even more. "Hang up the phone. I can't afford an ambulance." I told her which car service to call. They brought me to Methodist in Park Slope in a Lincoln. Hospitals in New York are just like the schools. You need to go to the nice areas to get the nice ones. The other end of my street is the hospital where the busses let out from Bed Stuy. Not only do you have to get in triage behind gun-shots and people with homemade colostomy bags, but the only thing ever on TV is Maurie Povitch.
I tried to peel myself out of the cab and made it from the door in the parking lane to the lamp post on the corner before I gave up. Courtney went in to get me a wheel chair. I waited outside in the rain, stooped over, clutching the lamp post.
Courtney wheeled me in and I was still shaking so she got me a coke and some peanut butter crackers.
Sitting in a wheelchair hurt, coughing or exercising my diaphragm at all hurt. And for no reason this made me want to become Mr. Funnyman.
"Mr. Sullivan we want to get someone to look at you as soon as we can. We just need to fill out your medical information. Are you allergic to anything?"
"This may sound weird, but I've never had any allergies. But last night I discovered that I'm allergic to subway tracks."
The nurse is smirking, "Okay, now from 1-10, 10 being the worst pain you ever felt how much are you in pain?"
"I'm not I will say this: I wish the train had hit me." They wheeled me into room 34 and told me to get onto the gurney. I think I invented a new Winter Olympic Sport just to get up there. Fuck this hurt.
"We're going to bring you something for the pain."
"Can I ask you a favor? Could you blow into that IV bag and squeeze a bubble into my veins so I asphyxiate?"
"We'll bring you something for the pain quick. I promise."
"That's what I'm saying. It'll be quick and painless. People will just think I had an allergic reaction to something. Pretend it was peanut butter." They brought me a valium and something or other else.
The nurse asked if I was able to roll over so she could give me a shot. I knew where this was going. "I just need to get it in a big muscle and..."
"I know, I don't have any big muscles."
"Mr. Sullivan..."
I rolled over and again wished the train had hit me. I pulled my pants down so I could get a shot in the ass. Courtney turned away and I said, "Courtney, does this needle make my ass look fat?"
My brain drifted somewhere around Barstow when the drugs kicked in. Courtney asked, "Is the pain medicine working?"
"Like Sodium Pentathol."
"What?"
"Truth serum. Go ahead ask me anything. I can't lie."
"But how is it for the pain."
"Sometimes I use your laundry detergent."
"I know you do, Brendan. I use your toilet paper. We're roommates. But are you feeling okay"
"I keep pretending that I'm just borrowing some and that I'll get more. But I never do."
"That's fine."
"Sometimes when the dog makes a huge mess I don't clean it up and 'notice' it when you get home."
"That's okay." I was crying to the point of dehydration.
The unwritten rule about X-rays is that they only work when you put the injured person in a position of great pain. I broke my shin skiing when I was 7 and they needed to stretch my foot flat on the gurney. I broke my ankle singing at my band's last show in high school, same thing. Now they want to put the X-ray plate under me and take the picture from above.
How is it possible that Pixar could scan my body and reanimate me on the screen if I die, but if you break a bone they use 19th century technology? Like, if I had a rash is the fucking hospital going to have a daguerreotype made up and sent off to the Mayo clinic?
"Normally when you get an X-Ray taken you have to cover your genitals with a lead blanket, right? So you don't render me infertile, right?"
"Yes," the X-Ray tech says.
"But in this case you are pointing the Rays right at my junk, huh? So I'll be infertile for how long? Gimme a window."
"Are you always this funny?"
"I think I'm having an allergic reaction to that Subway rail."
Courtney wanted to go get coffee, but she worried that they might not let her back in. I told her she could just go. It would be hours. She wrote her number down (I didn't have my phone) and told me to call her if I needed anything. Hours later I saw my X-Ray (you can't see my junk, but you can totally see my asscheeks somehow.
Nothing was broken. I have a boney ass and managed to land exactly on the meatiest part of it. I would have broken my vertabrae but I had my laptop bag on me and I landed smack on my macbook pro. It won't turn on. I'm not very good at backing up files, so my last two novels are buried in that grave of a hard drive. I can't rewrite them, it would be too heartbreaking to know that I already did it better once.
The volunteer brought me a phone, but it wouldn't work. I just decided I had enough. I pulled the wheelchair over and grit my teeth while I tried to dress. I pushed it to the door and they gave me a cane. I hobbled to the door and took a cab to Target.
The cab dropped me on the corner and getting to the pharmacy was hell. They should have given me crutches. I should have asked. The only way to make it was to hold the cane with two hands, press it in front of me like a tripod leg and scuttle after it. Click and drag. I put my sunglasses on, but it didn't hide the fact that I was crying. Every part of me felt awful. I hated my legs for being skinny. I hated my head for making me so tall that I can't take a hit without falling.
I hated myself for not having insurance.
At Target I got a shopping cart and used it like a walker. "Hey Lilly." (I'm chummy with my pharmacist.)
"What happened to you." I told her and the old Puerto Rican ladies in line made the sign-of-the-cross. I had a gig that night but I wasn't about to miss it. I hobbled in to the same club I had left maybe 30 hours before.
Have you been a dick to anyone lately? Those are usually my favorite stories. I really like it when you take something innocent and routine and scream and shout about it.
Sincerely,
One of your three readers.
Dear Big Three,
Luckily for you and the other two: I went to pick up my stereo today from the repair shop!
On my first date with Annie we took a walk around Wicker Park on a fresh summer day. We walked by this thrift store across from the Jewel Osco grocery store and in the window I saw a gorgeous, dusty stereo receiver. A Technics original.
I had been looking for a receiver forever and I decided that everyone in the world would know how I am totally a real DJ if I had a vintage stereo receiver with dials and knobs instead of computer speakers.
The reason the profession of DJ'ng exists at all to the degree it is practiced today is because in the 1970s Technics wanted to make a turntable that was heavy, balanced and adjustable so that if, say, you had a party and people danced it wouldn't shake the turntable. Also, turntable motors tended to wear out because they were designed like wheels instead of using a belt system. The scratch, fade, reverse and even the sound of a record slowing to an abrupt stop are all things original to the Technics. They also added a thing to control the speed, which is how we DJ-types trick you into dancing faster or thinking two songs can go together.
We are all still using the exact design from 1972. Technics didn't mean to do this. They basically wanted a turntable for dweebs to buy. They never envisioned that everyone who bought these would want two.
So I pick up this heavy stereo receiver by a company that doesn't exist anymore (Panasonic makes the Technics 1200, though) Annie thought she was dating this cooky DJ character so we hauled the heavy unit home and then made out in my room at about four in the afternoon. Double score!!
Well so I did. Only my Vespa battery died and I am a big-shot DJ now (I have a monthly metrocard now) so I get on the subway and take it to Grand Army Plaza even though I could probably just walk. Only I don't. I get on the completely wrong train, which takes about ten minutes to reach its first stop because I don't pay attention very well. I decide I'll just switch at the next station, only I can't because it's one of those local stations where all exits are final.
I end up riding it to the end of the line where I can switch (I was reading my George Plimpton book so I really didn't mind). But when I finally get off at Grand Army Plaza I am greeted by a blustery, shit-your-pants-for-warmth wind. It blew in my ears and I ached all over. What the fuck, world?
So I pull my phone out with a shivering hand and realize I'm still pretty far from the TV repair shop on 7th Ave in Park Slope. I recognize the guy at the counter by his dumb, Brooklyn accent. He calls me every week or so being like, "Come get your stereo. Hey, pizza pie, yo Tony, whatsamattafoyou, huh? Fuggetaboutit "
It costs me $95 to get a bunch of stereo parts put in. Fuses and tubes and whodingies. I go to pick it up and I hear a crackle. I flip it over and discover it's held together with packing tape. "The fuck is the packing tape for?"
"Oh," he picks up the notecard attached to it. "It says here no screws."
I look around the side and they've crammed two different screws into one side (one flathead--which you're not supposed to use for electronics because if you slip you'll ram your screwdriver into something either delicate or electrified--and the other is a hex bolt). "What is this?"
"I guess, uh, I guess they stuck these in here."
"Stuck? I didn't spend $95 to get things stuck in my stereo." I had forgotten that I also dropped $20 on a deposit.
"You don't like them? I'll take them out." He goes after the one and then instead of using a hex bolt socket wrench he takes a pair of needle-nose pliers to get the bolt out.
"Whoa. Nevermind."
(In an effort to adjust this story for people whose big brothers didn't force them to learn about handy-things I've italicised anything that you're supposed to be shocked by.)
Do you use vice-grips for things because you don't have a crescent wrench? Please stop. Call me if you need help with things around the house. Using things that pinch for things that scew in is very bad for the threads of your screws and sockets. "I don't want you to cut the threads on my vintage stereo because your guys botched the job. Who did this?"
"What do you mean who did this?"
"What is the name of the guy who did this? I just spent $115 for two fuses and for him to fuck up my casing. Look at this," when he put the wood casing back on he chipped it.
"We don't do body work."
"It's considered body work to spray some windex on this and put four screws in?"
"Look, you dropped this off in May, okay?"
"Okay what? Did your guy pull a screw out for every four weeks I didn't come by? I'm busy. I travel a lot. I called in and in six months you couldn't find four screws and polish these dials up a little?"
"Fine. Are you going to be around tomorrow." I am. But I can't let him know that. I'm not taking this cold walk again.
"No. I'm never home."
"Do you have a few minutes?"
"Fine." It takes four guys fifteen minutes to put four screws in. Halfway through I walk in and see they've pried the whole thing apart and they're in back looking for screws again. "Nevermind guys."
"Hang on, hang on. We just had to pull it apart. We're going to need longer screws than we thought. But he had to pull it apart to check." They ram 4 mismatched screws in, then rub the whole thing down in English oil, wipe the display and still don't do anything about the dirty knobs.
A couple of weeks ago I took a meeting with a publishing industry ne're-do-well. At this meeting it was suggested that if I were to write a certain kind of brief, true-to-life account about something I had seen over the past few years, I could expect to be in a position to own my own home next year.
Now, I have a very specific master plan of becoming a serious novelist and I will continue to do so for my entire life. This is not a part of the plan, but I thought it might be a fun exercise or at least be a platform to get more work.
I came home and repeated the large sum to Andrea and she didn't seem to think it was a good idea. The thinking being that John Updike doesn't go around writing trashy books and then expecting people to slog through 1500 pages of the Rabbit series waiting for mentions of famous people. Then I came up with what seemed like a perfectly good idea to me.
I would just give the entire sum of the advance away. Maybe after that if it sold well I could keep whatever trickled in. Either way it would be good for my brand.
This was not a very popular idea to bring up at 4 in the morning when drinking. My arguments ("I could build 1000 wells in Africa!" "...I would do it for free on my website anyway." "...what's the difference between not writing it and writing it and giving the money away?") It was then alleged that I am no good at being mature about money or anything and what am I going to do when the heretofore non-existent kids of mine need money for school.
I then did the really brilliant thing to end a late night argument, which is to take something tragically personal. ("So what you're saying is I can't write this under my DJ name because it's the only book I'll ever write that will sell. Is that what you're saying?") At Christmas I proposed the idea to my parents (y'know why not--it's Christmas!) and they seemed to agree.
"It might tarnish your reputation?"
"My reputation as a story teller?"
"You want to be taken seriously. What about someday when you want to teach creative writing at a university level?"
"I could either teach creative writing for 20 years or write this book in a week."
None of this got settled and I felt like I had more arguments ("...I went to school so I could be a reporter and then newspapers disappeared. Halfway through I set my sights on fiction: what am I going to do when books disappear? What if a book iPod catches on? I'll still write but for dick-all.")
I was informed that there are more polite topics of discussion in the few remaining hours we had of family time before they dropped me off at the train.
So then I was reading about George Plimpton in this great book I'm reading and it mentioned something about blue-blood-as-hell George Plimpton's Grandfather fighting in the civil war and being called a "carpetbagger" as the yankee governor of Mississippi in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. I didn't know Kennedy did other things than just be handsome all the time so I wiki'd it and learned that it was actually his third book. His first was actually his Harvard thesis, which his dad turned into a best seller.
The article ends with this:
Release
After publication in 1940, the book sold 80,000 copies in the United Kingdom and the United States, collecting US$40,000 in royalties for Kennedy; those from the English sales were donated to Plymouth, England, recently bombed by the Luftwaffe, while Kennedy bought a green Buick convertible with the American income.[2]
If I seem kind of hush-hush about my new writing project it is because I am. I don't really have a fan-base or devoted readers so I can't afford to blow your mind just yet.
But trust me when I say it will be a work that shall look very familiar to you. Doing a work this personal takes a lot of careful work and it may turn out to be my Pinkerton, meaning it's not what anyone asked for but I like it anyway. I also have to be very cautious about doing anything cliche or stealing shit from movies.
Last night I met up with my friend from college way down by Grand Army Plaza. I like that area and like every single part of New York: I never get down that way enough. Grand Army Plaza is just about the most magical place after sunset when you're riding your Vespa and you curve right around the arch in the piazza to go down Prospect Park West to that old movie theater with a girl on the back holding you.
However, my Vespa battery won't start and I'm not in the habit of drinking and scooting. I went down to the subway to take the 9* and my card ran out. I did the math quick and decided that I would just walk. My whole neighborhood is fucked right now because they're raizing half of it to build the Barclays Center. So I live on the edge of a chained-off rail yard. It's taken five fucking years for them to renovated the entrance to the subway and so half my neighborhood is in the shadow of scaffolding. It's bullshit.
Halfway home from Grand Army Plaza around midnight I was getting excited to get in bed and read my George Plimpton book when I heard a howl. Ahh, the call of the wild. I passed the 88th Precinct and saw their gorgeous green lights and it reminded me that once they finally build the goddam stadium I won't be able to go to Freddy's anymore.
It was cold enough that doing a little Irish-commute seemed like a brilliant idea. I had twenty bucks in my pocket and I walked in to warm up. This bearded guy at the bar starts smiling at me and I realize that I know him. "It's Dave," he says. Dave is Pete's friend from home and current roommate.
Dave's friend just got engaged so they're celebrating. Matty, the bartender, gives me a big smile and shakes me hand and the four of us do a shot. It was delicious.
I can't remember if Theo got back yet but I text him to see if he wants to meet up. Theo is having just about the best 2010 I've heard of. He got a new job and girls are all over him these days. He had just finished a hot date and he came by for high fives.
If they had piano in the front room of Freddy's I would have planted myself and done the Alicia Keyes part of "Empire State of Mind."
*I'm going to keep calling it the 9 until I remember that the 9 doesn't exist anymore or they bring it back.
Things you can blog about (but that you can't put on facebook):
Man I feel fucking brilliant today I wrote like a billion chapters this morning, read the paper, got take out and when I went to the bookstore on a walk I felt like I could've written the perfect funny-blurb for every cover. But you can't tell that to too many people. Not all at once, at least.
So, like everyone else in our generation who apparently never has sex, I was reading this Times book review piece on Sunday (y'know, because of all this free time we have by not having unprotected sex with our neighbors like in a John Updike book) about how modern Phillip Roth sex scenes make you vomit and how sex scenes tapered off into the 90s and ended up with "just cuddling" in writers of our generation (as defined by books written ten years ago).
It was weird, though, because the only writer for our generation was Dave Eggers. Dave Eggers I always think of as that gen-x guy who put in his first books "acknowledgements" section "the author would like to acknowledge that he sometimes has sex without condoms." And then I was thinking about in How We Are Hungry how he has a short story where the main character yanks a girl down on the beach and forces himself on her ("...that hurt.")
But the only other writer of our generation is the universally hated-on Bejamin Kunkel
The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex. Prototypical is a scene in Dave Eggers’s road trip novel, “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” where the hero leaves a disco with a woman and she undresses and climbs on top of him, and they just lie there: “Her weight was the ideal weight and I was warm and wanted her to be warm”; or the relationship in Benjamin Kunkel’s “Indecision”: “We were sleeping together brother-sister style and mostly refraining from outright sex.”
So:
Have you seen the books that get table space these days? They're pink-jacketed porn.
Wait a minute. These graphics don't prove your thesis at all. You're saying Russian-roulette, fuck-me-dry-and-unprovoked Dave Eggers just wants to cuddle? Man, have you read all his books, professor? You should probably quick-change them graphics between when the book review get delivered on Saturday and when it goes online on Sunday. Get rid of those good authors that detract from your thesis and just stick in some guy who only wrote one book and have him speak for everyone born in the last 35 years by the time it goes on-line.
This is pretty much why I would never want to write a half-century-spanning book review.
On the day of the show I woke up and discovered I was in the newspaper that everyone's mom reads. Once you sifted through five thousand grocery story coupons you see my dumb Irish face wearing headphones at St. J's with a much better looking future-starlet's arm around me.
They had seen the article I had done before and realized that I gave them the same interview, so they had to pull the story and rewrite it because the other paper had all the good quotes. I would feel bad except they're owned by the same corporation and go fuck yourself, Puerto Rico, you still have newspapers.
I went to the beach for a while and then moseyed over to the club. They had been working on it all day, installing lighting and screens and visuals and a stage for me. The place isn't that big and most of it is out doors.
The thing about DJ'ing is every single club has one tech-problem and it's my job to find it. Only this time there wasn't one. I plugged in my new red serato records, cleaned my needles with vodka, status-noted my fucking gorgeous new midi-controller and the owner says, "Gimme a beat."
I drop the remix I had just finished, which I made as a gift to myself. After six years of always playing "Satisfaction" and slamming it into "Pretty Woman" halfway through (these songs are made for each other). I did this when I had just a bunch of burned CDs at beauty bar ("I can't get no, no no no" (drop in the opening beat and bass of "Pretty Woman," cut the bass on the Stones, slide the fader halfway) "Hey hey hey! That's what I say!" I've been doing this mix so long that whenever I'm at a party and "Satisfaction" comes on I get antsy around the second half. So I decided to reverse this, I sampled the beat to "Pretty Woman" and then lets the Stones use it and I added some disco-bullshit so it's a dance song, then I throw it into Roy Orbison.
The owners come out of the back, "What was that?"
"Something I'm working on."
"You gotta make me a copy of that it's awesome."
So then I made the mistake of thinking that somehow a flawless soundcheck and admiration from Puerto Ricans of all ages meant that the gig would go fine.
I'm back in my hotel room getting dressed for the gig, and I get a call from the promoters. The opening DJ wants to plug in and wants to know what to do with my shit. I should have knowwwwwwwwn! Ugh, other DJs are the fucking worst. In Chicago I had this gig where they were going to switch me off with the other DJ every hour to pick who would get the residency. That must have been the worst night ever for the audience because everytime we had to switch one of us would put on the worst song imaginable and duck off stage, leaving the other one there to mix it out.
(Fair warning: if you are not a petty second-rate DJ like myself you might want to skip the next three paragraphs. They are shop talk.)
I hate other DJs. First of all: you're a fucking jukebox and you do not need sunglasses in doors. You look like a moron dancing in front of a computer because that's what you are.
I charge over to the gig and this moron has unhooked everything. I'm not going to say his name here because I'm supposed to be an honorable member of my profession and I was also informed in Puerto Rico that I have a very charming humility. But he has one of those stupid DJ names (it's not Darthfader, but something like that, only it also incorporates Moronistan's national devotion to Mafia-movies). So Stepfader, or whatever his name is, has unhooked every element of my system and replaced it--to the point of bringing his own mixer, the fuck--with his. My needles are sitting on the table. My Serato box is plugged into to the club's unplugged mixer and he has the turntables plugged into his mixer.
He took my fucking slipmats off the decks.
They have to adjust the entire system so this fucking prom-band reject can use the exact system I do, only his version from 8-midnight.
I decide the best thing to do is to get drunk and let people take pictures of me in my sunglasses. Mission accomplished!
One of the girls from the night before it there, waiting for me right at 8 sharp and since I have no one to talk to we share the sushi that the club made for me. My Twitter Monster shows up soon after with his friends, all of whom want a picture with me. He (and this is the cutest thing) has brought a blown up picture from my website of me and LG and had it made into an 8x10 and brought a silver pen so I can autograph it. This is the first autograph I have ever signed.
"To Ivan, My +1 forever." And then I signed it with my DJ name and put one of my stickers on the bottom corner to make it look official.
At 11:30 I tell DJ Stupidname that I'll switch early with him so he can get to his other gig on time. We have to plug in my iphone and switch it over one output at a time (the left speakers cut out, then the right) and of course he's playing hip hop and shit I can't match up to. There's a salsa beat behind most of the dance music in PR that is like a dog whistle to me. I'm told it exists but I can't hear it. So I go behind the curtain, I take a deep breath and I remind myself of something Ms. Roach told me in Kentucky, "It won't matter." That's what she told her younger daughter when the in-laws came over for the first time and she balked at cleaning the house. The details won't matter because people are so blown away by the beauty of their mansion, that they're almost relieved if they can spot dust on the floor. If they can take their eyes off the elephant-skin wallpaper.
"It won't matter," I said. People are here to look at someone who knows the girl that makes them feel like they're not alone in the world. I step into the booth to a cheering crowd and I throw on "Limb by Limb" which is the only song that can make all cultures dance at the same time.
In looking over my set list I don't think I did a very good job. But I also don't think anyone could tell. Everyone wanted to party with me and I let them. (Although this fat dude kept offering me blow, but you can't take blow from fat people because it's obviously entirely something else).
They all took me out to The Vatican and I just hung out in the DJ booth, enjoying my life and being wicked drunk. I had them drop me at the fake-hotel, walked into the casino floor and changed my last $20 into chips. They let me drink this time and I sat at what I thought was a blackjack table and which turned out to be a Bacharat table. It didn't matter, though. The dealer went bust on the first hand. I won $5 and the drinks are free if you are gambling. I downed my Johnnie Black and took my $25 home with me, which was a smart thing to do since I did this gig in Puerto Rico for free and I had pretty much no money until Christmas Eve, when I would return to my job in New York, where I am the DJ in a restaurant.
Okay, actually I did spend the next day on the beach at the hotel where I pretended to be staying. I even ordered a few beers and a sandwich to my pretend room (I paid for it). At around six I went back to the club to get my stuff and the owner's dad gave me a ride with him. We went out for dinner and I paid as a thank you for bringing me down. My card was declined. I checked my balance on my phone and discovered that I had exactly enough to get my broke-ass home from the airport. I pretended that I had given him the wrong card and put it on my Visa card. Whatever, 2010's problem now.
So, my trip to Puerto Rico was a success and the second autograph I've ever signed immediately granted me a new level of rock stardom:
I don't actually remember doing this, but this nice young lady mentioned it in her twitpic the next day about five times. So there you go: I went on a trip to spice up my facebook and ended up brightening everyone's twitter when I got there.
Given my troubles with GPS I figured I should get some professional help getting to the casino. So I posted on twitter that I was going to this party and it got reposted a thousand times. I still didn't have anyone to go with, but I knew I would see some familiar faces.
I also felt bad about that kid who was staked out at the airport to take my picture. This month in Esquire there's a quote from the 21st century poet laureate Fitty Cent, "I sign autographs because I know one day people will stop asking for them." So I tweet the fanboy's name and say, "I'm heading to this party, you wanna be my +1?"
I didn't realize this but I had added the kid on facebook the week before (somehow these people find me) and so while I'm at dinner I see that at 8PM he posted "Long day tomorrow. Going to bed early." Then at 11 he's all over twitter because he's getting up and getting dressed and meeting a famous DJ.
I get dressed in an outfit that is more befitting someone who is on MTV at least once a day (okay, MTV2). I put on a tuxedo with blue shiny pants and my obnoxious silk red ascot-thing and my famous-guy yellow sunglasses. My hosts are all at the bar doing another big party for Johnnie Walker Black and so I drop by to get some flyers.
All of the taxis drivers in Puerto Rico log onto twitter at that moment* and RT "Man, stay away from Calle Canals. Some New York nancy-boy is looking for a lift." I even get a cab and I open the door and taste the delicious air conditioning and he won't take me, but pretends to radio for another cab. The door-guy from the club wants to help me out so he calls around to his friends. They're all out driving, but have agreed to the Calle Canals appartheid.
So I'm smoking with some Amigos (the paper that day said I'm from Hartford, which is like Prison for Puerto Ricans: they've either done time there or they have a cousin there now). This one guy just straight up says, "I know who you are, but I'll keep it cool. But I'm a huge fan."
I thank him for whatever he thinks I've done and then when I still can't get a cab he gives me a ride. One of the better privileges of being a white male is you can accept a ride from strangers and you almost never turn up pregnant. The door guy vouches for him and it's almost midnight and I'm worried that the kid from twitter is waiting for me.
One thing I maybe should have done was ask this guy that I just met at a bar how long he was drinking that night. I could have asked this anytime from when he snuck his drink out of the bar and put it in his cup holder and when he merged into an SUV, while fumbling for his cigarettes. "My car is a mess, man I'm sorry."
I figure out an answer for what he might like to hear and I say, "You should see our tour-bus."
"Haha!" He turns out to be pretty cool. He went to Public School in Hartford and then to Medical School in Santiago, Cuba of all places. He regales me of the tale of landing in Santiago (the black city) and being probed for drugs.
I have him drop me off at the gate so that he doesn't have to pay to park. I know that he didn't get in a drunk driving accident that night because he texts me now pretty much everytime he thinks of me.
This casino is about 4 miles from where I'm staying, which means I'm in for a $50 cab ride at the end of the night.
When I get to the casino I am lost and don't know anyone. But this kid comes right up to me and I assume that he's my twitter fan, but it's actually someone I had met the night before and he's the DJ. Oops. He gets me in and puts the twitter kid on the list.
The problem with this party is I had no wing man. This DJ guy was in the booth and the girl I had met the night before with the fake tits was the party hostess, so she was in charge of greeting all of the hot girls in tiny dresses that arrived. It turns out she's not so much of a bimbo as the scenesters say she is. Her fake tits are just to undo what anorexia did to them. You would have to be told they were artificial. And she only knows all of these people at the party because they are all in their third year of medical school.
She gets me a drink and we talk for a while. I meet her friends and I hand out buttons. Here is how every introduction goes:
Her: This is Brendan (in English).
Her hot friends: Nice to meet you, except secretly I could care less.
Her: (whispers something in Spanish)
HHF: (eyes inflate) OH! Awesome. Nice to meet you for real this time.
Me: You too, whore.
We're sitting in the back booth and the club keeps bringing us bottles of Johnnie Walker Black. Like the braziers surrounding me: my cup runneth over. Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of debt, I will fear no evil. My social anxiety is probably something I should have shed by now. It isn't.
I feel like we're all on a bad blind date together and we're all only doing this to make our mother's happy or something. The only time I feel comfortable in this party is when I go visit my new friend in the DJ booth and we talk about needles and midi-controllers or whatever.
It's kind of embarrassing to admit: but I really want this goddam twitter kid to show up so I'll have someone on my side. I go back to the table and sit with hot girls and keep my sunglasses on.
Then (and this is adorable) I check Twitter** and this kid's friends are SOS'ing me. I didn't give the kid my number for obvious reasons, but he can't find the place. But then I look up and in walks a kid, dressed up like I was in one of LG's videos wearing an LG shirt that says, "I'm a MONS†ER."
There is nothing more that this kid wants in the world right then than to take pictures of me and tweet that he was my plus one. That's adorable. I introduce him to the girls and they are all more than happy to have fanboy take pictures of us. I offer him a drink and when he declines I ask how old he is (18) and realize that meeting me must be a huge let down. Like I've said before, the only thing about meeting me in person is that I'm probably a little bit taller than you expect.
I forgot to mention this, but the theme of the party is "Naughty or Nice" (this being the week before christmas) so if you've been nice you're supposed to wear white, if you've been naughty you're supposed to wear red. Like every party dresscode ever: all of the straight men decline any involvement (I feel like some of them went home to change out of all their red or white clothing) and all of the girls realized that following the dress code means they gotta have a new dress.
When they are 9 and 10 it's the same old thing again.
They gotta have a new dress.
might be a meeting, might be a party
might be a record-hop
When they want something, they're sure to sweeten
you better look out mom and pop!
When they are 22 and they start chasing you
Look out! They gotta have a new dress.
I borrowed this (like a dress!) in Mercutio, who makes the same comment when he catches his aunt whining about not having anything to wear to a funeral:
While I’m in the middle of saying terrible things, let me add just one more. Here is a woman who has taken the head of our male dominated family. She is somewhat like the Abbess who visits the Abbey just to check up on the health of the boys inside and whom all should respect and admire. But the Abbess will only appear to us if she has on her fullest vestments, her cleanest robes, her least revealing habit. So I just have to ask: what have we done that is so terrible that every woman’s first question—funeral, graduation, wedding, birth, bris—what have we done to these creatures we love so much that they should answer each occasion with but one response: “I haven’t a thing to wear!”
Anyway, so every time another hot girls joins the party she debuts her dress color and then one of each of them stands on either side of me devil/angelish to get their picture taken. I am the goddam Mickey Mouse of San Juan tonight.
Now that everyone has a camera on their phone and digital has erased the sanctity of photography (remember when it was only for special occasions?) something has changed. Instead of asking for your autograph now, people want their picture taken with you. These then become their facebook picture and I'd like to pretend that by being micro-famous I'm above this, but then again you can browse my profile pictures album and see what a whore I am.
[Fair warning: I debated deleting the next paragraph because it makes me look like a total ass. But I did kind of promise that I would focus on things you're not supposed to write about. I guess the good thing about writing the story of your life is that you're in control of all the times you may look like an ass. But if I can't make myself look like an ass then it won't be very believable when I make other people look like an ass. Which I love doing.]
Somehow this translates into wanting to souvenir-fuck me. That same urge to whip out the cameraphone that people feel when they spot an actual celebrity at a party turns into something less than Christian. This is hugely unnerving to anyone who has spent as much time as I did wishing that libraries would stay open later. Being micro-famous gives me a power over (drunk) women who would never give me the time of day before (including ten minutes before), so I am just careful not to use my powers for evil. I am much more comfortable being treated like a dorky kid from Connecticut. It fits me like boatshoes.
Okay, so that's the paragraph I didn't delete. But let me explain this topic in a better way.
From the standpoint of trying to sleep with cute girls, being micro-famous is the equivalent of having an iPhone on AT&T. It kinda works in New York. You can try it in Miami, but I wouldn't count on it. You would think it would work great in LA. Also, you get huge roaming charges on it in Canada. Two years ago it didn't work at all outside of major cities ("...sorry, who is this?") but now it actually works better than you think in the country. The blue areas on the AT&T map are basically places that have a high strike-out rate. But for everyone of those there is a college reunion in Ohio or a place like Puerto Rico that doesn't get GPS.
Now if I were an actual celebrity--which I define as talent in action--that would give me a Verizon-level of service in the blow job world. I could count on it, but at what cost? Am I gonna run out of minutes? Also, celebrity is sexually transmitted, meaning that if I were Adrienne Brody or Dave Eggers there would be hundreds of young pert women who have already made up their minds before meeting me that they would like to have sex with me. But part of why they would do it would be back to the cameraphone-fuck conundrum. Wouldn't it, therefore, become inversely harder to meet someone?
It has never once been my goal to make it harder to meet someone. Not even when I was into hardcore or had a mohawk.
I guess I feel like a fraud sometimes. I get flown around the world and given the star treatment because there was a time when I had a job carrying my laptop around and wearing sunglasses and fronting the cab money for the back up dancers. This feeling probably explains why I don't have a single close friend from this experience and why I prefer the company of people who know me as the constantly-broke schmuck from college who couldn't afford to get his stupid Lensecrafters glasses fixed and hasn't had health insurance since the nineties.
When my new friend finishes DJ'ing they turn it over to this portly local guy who looks like a morning-radio DJ. The club sends over a bottle of Jaggermeister (gross), a magnum of Belvedere, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and another two bottles of Johnnie Black. Puerto Rico has a Jack Daniels apartheid. I meet the club owner and he says he wants to have me back to spin, which would be great because I already can't wait to come back to Puerto Rico and it would be so much fun if I we're crying like a little bitch about having a substandard hotel room.
In the lobby of the hotel I run into some of the Hartford boys I met the night before. The reason I was in the lobby is that I left the club to go to the bathroom (somehow in the incongruously brightly-lit lobby of this Waldorf Astoria property) and when I'm out there I discover that I really enjoy not being in that club. When I get back inside the fake-tits girl*** has come down with drunkorexia. I feel really bad for her too because she obviously was busy planning the party all day and wanted to look cute in her dress and probably didn't even mean to forget to eat.
The reason I can tell is that when I get back she is very happy to see me. She grabs my arm, "Why don't you come upstairs with me?"
You probably figured this out before I did. I assumed "upstairs" meant "to the other club we talked about before" and not "to my room to do me."
I thought I was saying, "Yes show me the other club where I have been told I will DJ in eventually" and not "Yes take me to your Waldorf Astoria hotel room where you have stashed the drugs necessary to erase your alcohol intake."
Luckily the owner walks over again and it turns out she's doing the guy. She gets this guilty look and lets go of my arm and pretends to be telling him something about me.
"I know, honey, you told me that before."
I have to escape, but I am on the other side of the island from my hotel. It's about 4 in the morning and I have an unending thirst to get the fuck out of there. Somehow I have to find that $50 cab ride home. I break away from the girls and find the dweeby boys I was hanging out with before. They're all friends with the DJ I met at the door. "We gotta get out of here," the fat amigo says. "I'm starving."
"Ohhh, let's get Greenhouse."
In Puerto Rico Greenhouse is not a club. It's the restaurant across the street from my hotel. It is the Vaselka of San Juan.
"You wanna ride with us?"
Fuck yeah I do. I drink a beer while they order a drunk-feast and drop ten dollars on the table and pretend to get an important phone call and walk to the fancy hotel where I lied and said I was staying. I had no one to high-five, but I needed a high-five.
Instead I went to the casino and the bar was closing. They said I could drink if I gambled, but when they brought my drink over to me they had sophisticated technology that could prove that I had no intentions of gambling. Also, I was standing up watching people playing black jack and didn't buy any chips.
They wouldn't give me the drink so I left, circled the block and walked to my hotel from the back entrance.
*I'm pretty sure that everytime I talk about twitter I sound like Your Dad.
** Do you "check" twitter? You don't really "log on" or anything. It's just there.
*** I'm not being crude. I sincerely don't remember her name and when I got back to NY the promoter's friends here all wanted to know if I met "the fake-tits girl."
Okay so the second night in PR I have a million people following me on Twitter all the sudden. Everyone is "mentioning" the shit out of me and asking me what party I'm going to. Thing is my host has to stay in and work. I want to go out and promote the party because that is what I do.
So the night before we were out and this hot girl comes up to me an invites me to her party. The second she walks away I get the gossip on her. She's a total scene-whore who has slept her way through the party world. Puerto Rico is small enough and class-based that a certain kind of young, well-off person tends to know all the dirt on another young, well-off person. The thing about New York, and even Brooklyn, is that every year we get more and more scenesters. Sometimes I'll go to a show and be surprised that I don't know a single one of them.
I want to go to this girl's party at this Casino, but I want to get something to eat. So I iPhone this restaurant that Darlin's sister told me about. I'm on foot, but I like taking walks so I find the place and head out. Right before I left, though, I went to check where the Casino was and this should have been my first clue:
By now I'm super excited to swim out to this underwater dance club by the airport. But first I need to eat so I iPhone my way to Tijuana's, because Darlin's sister promised that when you're in Puerto Rico you should eat Mexican food.
Just to get you oriented: I'm about a mile north of this place on the other side of the highway, but I am alone and actually a little bit lonely. Andrea really wanted to come on the trip, but I told her it was business. You can imagine how well that went, but I really didn't have the money to turn my free trip into a vacation. I didn't so much as give up bartending last year as bartending gave up on me. I don't miss it, because it's exhausting and degrading and I'm sick of hearing people ask the same six questions when they ask if I'm in a band. However taking a week off of DJ'ing so you can have exciting facebook updates isn't exactly good for your retirement savings.
So I walk through the dark in downtown (Puerto Rico has a very cheeky attitude toward street lights). I scurry across the highway, froggeresque. Then I come to these two giant government towers where this amazing Mexican restaurant is supposed to be. I walk until my GPS tells me I am standing directly on top of Tijuana's (Unverified). That's when I get stopped by a security guard who wants to know lots of things that I could tell him if I hadn't dropped Spanish for Latin.
Him: ¿¿??
Me: Donde esta am I?
Him: ¡ ¡ !!
He sends me around the building, suggesting that I should get off the government property and I walk around a high way entrance in the dark only to discover that this restaurant is nowhere near here. I call the place and they confirm that I have the correct address. I give up and run across the high way again.
I walk back to my hotel through the dark and on the way I pass an obscenely authentic Puerto Rican cantina, which I discover is called a Chinchoro. The goal of a chinchoro is to be a cross between a diner and a bodega. You can watch telenovellas at lunch and soccer all night in the florescent lit, grease-shined diner and in the next room you can eat with your giant, grease-fed family. I had been eyed a few times along the road and a passing honda civic suggested that I was a male prostitute, so I was pretty excited to see this beaming lantern of a place.
The night was hot and my shirt clinged to my back like an annoying girlfriend.
The men outside were all the sort of caballeros you see everywhere. They had on cowboy boots and so did I. We got along great.
At the counter I ordered a Medalla Light, which I figured was worth it to them because they flew me down there. I didn't understand the woman because she was Puerto Rican and I only speak prissy-Spanish. She said some kind of number and I handed her a $20. She motioned for the other bills in my hand (3 singles) and so I handed her that instead. I thought she may have said, "$3" but she took only 2 and then repeated the price in English, "$1.50."
So I still handed her the three dollars. She shook her head at the white guy because there was so way to express how I am so pleased to be indoors and drinking this delicious, glistening can of ice-stored beer. If you're going to have a beer for a dollar fifty: you deserve the extra fifty sense, amiga.
When I walked back I found Tijuana's. It was one block from my hotel.
