There are so many important things to get to BUT on Saturday I had a nightlife experience I would like to share with you. Jaclyn texted about halfway through saying she would come by. She stood in the booth with me all night and people watched.
We had lots and lots of fun. The brunch a-holes had left their set up, so in addition to not having to set anything up, I also had the off-limits lighting controller going.
--Christ, why can't I get this goddam story going already? I've been staring at this forever and all I can think is that I think I've lost the ability. Shit.
No, I know why. There's got to be a better reason. Shit. That's what it is. I was giving an interview tonight and (I'm not going to pretend I don't do this) was wearing my sunglasses. Did I mention this was a phone interview? Okay, so the guy goes to me something like, "And are you writing this for your website?"
And I went fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. What am I going to do if anyone gives a shit about my website? Do you know how many people I've named, on purpose, over and over? What am I going to do if I lose that outlet? A few weeks ago someone found my website by googling "My Fullname" "My Profession" and "The Borough I live in." And I was like, "Who the fuck cares about my actual first name in googleable connections to DJ'ing. I don't even ever DJ in "The Borough I live in."
Crap. Have I said bad things about former bandmates? Maybe once, but...shit. They can quote any thing they want in any context. That will be the end of breakfastanytime.
Anyway so this girl comes in that I had hooked up with once. I actually don't remember it very well. I've never once had a moment where I wake up in a strange bed in horror. Mostly I'm just trying to be a "good guest." I get up when you do, I try and make out again just in case we didn't get to it last night. And, I mean, I even do this when the girl wakes you up early so she can go back to sleep without you around. In this I would include that time I was awoken at 10AM by a very cute complete stranger, "I think you should leave," she whispered. I had to check the mail to find out where the hell I was and even then I didn't get her name.
The questions I have is: how on earth am I smoother when I'm totally wasted? Wouldn't you think I'd be like this sparkling guy you'd want to have coffee with and then kiss? This guy--he's sharp and up-to-speed on so many things.
So when I'm cleaning up this girl comes in. I tell the manager, "You gotta get rid of her."
"But she used to be a waitress here. We always let them stay."
"She did? God dammit." I hid in the office for a few minutes while they scooted them out. Jaclyn and I got another beer and did bad things like smoke cigarettes. For a long time I would go out every single night with Jacklyn and her friends, whom we affectionately dubbed "the sluts." Actually I called them "the planeteers" because hanging out with five pretty-awesome girls makes you feel like you've met one amazing girl.
We've drifted apart since then. We all have. And it's not a bad thing. I was explaining to this interviewer today that there just comes a point when you're over it. You're no longer 22 or your friends have all finished sleeping with each other. I'm actually literally over it now, I'm over the bullshit and now I remember why it was fun. Fuck those guys.
We decided to meet up with My Fairy Godmother at an afterhours party--mostly for old time's sake. I wanted to take the subway, since we were already at 14th St. and going to Williamsburg by cab means that you have to go down to Chinatown and then come back up to what is basically across the river from Midtown.
"Brendan. I'm not taking the subway. Let's get a cab."
Right then a limousine honks and motions for me to get in. So we do! I love gypsy limos. Sometimes they are guys who are just killing time and can't park these goddam things anywhere and don't have to pick up their contact party for another hour. I always wonder why they do this, though. Don't you think that people who want to rent a limo, on the spot, on a Saturday night are going to puke in it?
Rarely, but sometimes you'll get in one and there will be champagne dregs or a mini bar.
Also, these limos tend to be the kind that are a little off-market. This one had basically the same radio I had in my car in high school. We rocked it. Only what I really would have wished is that someone had left a Prom Mix 2k10 CD.
We pull up to this afterhours warehouse in Williamsburg on Ainslie St. Probably the best part--and I can't tell how to play this--is that no one seemed to give a shit that we pulled up in a limo. I caught looks, but no more than you get anywhere in Downtownistan where everyone either wonders which one of their friends who looks exactly like you you are.
It's a $5 cover inside. They have actual security, rather that door-bitch style friends. They even have a security guard at the stairs to the VIP loft, I think this is because that is some persons actual bedroom. Downstairs is a folding table where one guy hands out $4 Miller High Lifes until they run out. The music was just non-stop soul 45s and everyone there was awesome.
Today my friend Julie's twitter said, "Last night's Bklyn parties were like what I thought HS parties should been like when I wasn't cool in high school: boys, cool clothes & no rules!"
Jaclyn felt really uncomfortable, always asking if she should leave or apologizing when she didn't have any cash and I had to buy her another beer when I offered to buy her another beer. But I always like seeing old friends. Especially friends who have funny stories about partying 'til noon and then having 7 girls pile on your bed until it collapses (way less exciting story than it sounds). But still fun.
Angus asked me to stay and wing-man him, which is actually a good deal because his game is getting girls to see what a great photographer he is by having them take pictures with me. So I spend the rest of the party being paparazzi'd in the DJ booth and upstairs.
I stayed late, but others stayed later. It was early enough when I left that I could take the G train home.
In case you're wondering: don't ever do this, even if you're with a really good friend.
Julia called yesterday seeing if I wanted to meet up at Gorilla for coffee. I'd already been there this morning (in my same clothes from my gig last night) and I was still running on the high from some of the writing I've done this week. I walked into Gorilla, took off my sunglasses and smiled at the busy counter girl. Normally there they give you way-too-much-attitude but instead she just blurts out, "You're adorable."
Free coffee!
So Julia and I meet up there later. She asks me what I'm working on and I gave her a brief overview and I tell her the story I posted below. "...and when I look back now that summer seemed to last forever." And I pause for a second because it's impossible, as a DJ, to speed up a line of lyrics--even if you want them to get relayed to the other person faster. So I awkwardly skip to the unrequited couplet that seals the song. "Those were the best days of my life."
We're walking down fifth ave in Brooklyn and Julia says, "If you want my honest opinion: it sounds kind of schmaltzy."
"I don't want your honest opinion," I snap. "Maybe if you actually read it then you might have an opinion. An honest one, even."
"I'm just saying from what you've told me--"
"From what I've told you while we're walking and talking--from what I've told you you haven't read a fucking word." Then I calmed myself down by saying that if you had to explain the song "Summer of '69" to someone it would sound kind of "schmalzty."
Moments after writing this I had to dash out to get to a gig. I walked to the subway and someone reached out and grabbed my arm. It was my roommate. "What? You walk right by me like we've never met just 'cause you have your sunglasses on?"
I couldn't recognize her. I was floating on an air of pure, unadulterated happiness.
And that's why I write stories.
Later I met up with Her at St. J’s. “Sorry I’ve been in Kentucky. How was Lollapalooza?”
She looked me square in the eyes, “It was really rough.” I’d never seen her look like anything more than the commander of her ship. Something must have gone really wrong. “I shouldn’t say that. I did have a lot of fun.”
“Did people recognize you?”
“Not exactly?”
“How do people ‘not exactly’ recognize you?”
She laughs. (And before I tell you the punchline you have to remember that we’re standing on Rivington St.in the summer of 2007. Since Madonna came on the scene twenty years before there has only been one breakout female singer who wasn’t made by Mattel like Britney or just plain faking it like Christina. Music—especially in the era when everyone had to have a brand new $16 copy of whatever record they heard on the radio—was straight-up terrible. Female singers were little more than the audio version of the Swimsuit Issue. But there was one—really only one right before She and I once loved her very much, but she was sick and no one could help her. Even if I swear I tried.)
“What?”
She could barely hold it in. “Somebody screamed when they saw me backstage and goes ‘AMY!!! AMY! I LOVE YOU!!” She whipped her raven haired mane aside and made these fierce glare come through her dark eye make up and put on her foggiest, East-London accent, “And said, ‘Oi! Feck off!’”
“You’re terrible. How was the show?”
Her face dissolved. “We had a lot a lot of tech problems. The stage was made of these matched risers, gaffertaped at the legs. Starlight had feedback in everything and the speakers vibrated her turntables.”
I knew exactly this kind of problem. Wherever you DJ, no matter if it’s in your own apartment or in the most famous club in the world, every DJ booth has one tech problem and it’s your job to find it. “That’s awful.”
“People were screaming, shouting while we have out limited time on the stage. It was awful. And I’m standing there behind my synth with a microphone in front of me and every minute that goes by is one less song I can play.”
“What did you play? Blueberry Kisses?”
“Yes. But I had bought these new turntables with the advance on my record and they gave us a folding table to put them on.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Why aren’t you touring with a coffin stand and shock-absorbing harnesses?”
“With what?”
“I love Starlight, but if she’s going to be your DJ she’s got to be on her instrument. You would never put up with a drummer who didn’t bring his own sticks.”
“Go back to the coffin thingamajig.”
“Okay, every device that makes a sound vibrates. You keep each one independent for a reason. Your drummer is usually on a riser, your guitarist doesn’t play with the hardback sitting on an amp, etc. You need to tour with everything together and your turntables should hang—not sit—in the coffin case suspended by bungee cords so that the record doesn’t skip if someone jumps on stage. Even at Beauty Bar in the front room if someone jumps up it makes the record skip. But in the back room the turntables are set up for a dance setting.”
“You’re going to have to show me how to do that.”
“So what did you end up doing? Did you play it off your laptop?”
She looked up at me with her show-must-go-on eyes.
“Forget I even asked,” I said. “How was the rest of the festival?”
“I got a citation from a bicycle cop for wearing ‘hot pants.’”
“WTF are ‘hotpants’?”
“I dunno, but I guess I was wearing them. Starlight and I came out on stage in dresses and then stripped down to bikinis, performed the whole show and lit hairspray can on fire.”
“That sounds crazy!”
“It would be here at home with the lights and the fog machine going. But it’s, like, 3 in the afternoon and it’s Chicago and windy. I don’t give a fuck what anyone says about why they call it ‘the windy city.’ Fucking place never stops blowing in your face. We’d blow the smoke machine and in about a second it’s gone. The day before was kinda sunny, but we just had these grey Chicago clouds over us.”
She looked really discouraged, like a girl who threw a NYE party only to have every looking for their coats at 12:15, checking their watches. But I really didn’t want her to give up. You’d think that somehow in the densest music scene on the planet one day one of these goddam bands would go from being losers on my couch to being losers on the iTunes charts. But they don’t because after all those days “practicing”—basically mugging different ways in your bathroom mirror—every artist has a show like this. On Sundays Sh, The Darkness, our friend Dino and I used to go bowling way out in Brooklyn. The bartender in the bowling alley is this great guy who once explained to me that all work is a performance. “This is theater. I got lights,” he points to the ceiling. “I’m in costume,” he snaps his suspenders and straightens his bowtie. “And I’m performing.” He pulls out a roll of papertowel, on which he has scrawled a manifesto. “But let me explain something to you. Theater depends on an audience and their approval. But once your circle of creation is complete, once you have labored and created your art to your own satisfaction,” he made his hands into a circle, “You will never need to look outside of your creation for approval.”
The difference between Her going to Lollapalooza and people downtown coming to see our show is simple. We invited people to come see what we were doing. In Chicago she asked people to come and see her. And she hadn’t completed that circle of creation, which can be exhausting, like the dog who leaps every time he hears someone at the door. She would have to take what she does as a gogo dancer—the way she struts alone on a stage in the dark—and translate it to being a singer.
So before I left that night I told her this. “I’m doing a thing at Beauty Bar next week. We should do it together. I think you need to get back into the spirit of your home scene. Fuck those people out in the dirt parking lot.”
She calls me later and I pull over the Vespa to pick it up. I had twine-wrapped a garbage barrel to the rear passenger seat and filled it with paint, party supplies, glue sticks, pink caulk and a sparkly paper table cloth. “You get everything?”
“Yep.”
“We still meeting at 9?”
“Yep.”
“Are we really doing this?”
“Yep.” I hung up the phone and spent the rest of the day in my backyard trying to turn a (clean) trash can into a cake that said, “Happy Birthday Mike!” in pink bathtub caulk.
I showed up at about 9 to get my records ready and put things together. Normally I had some friendly-competition against the guys who threw the party there on Wednesday or I had some work-place beef against the guy who managed and dicked me out of money periodically. But that day we all busied ourselves around, glad to work together for a fun cause. All of us at one point have stayed with Mike, called him after losing a job, reeled over a break up at the end of the bar with him. And now together we celebrated Mike.
“Before it gets totally trashed I just want you to see one thing, Mike.” I pointed to the back of the room at the cake.
Mike gave me the appreciative look you would expect from someone when presented, on their birthday, with a trashcan decorated like a cake.
I opened the set nice and early. The AC in the back room gave you a cool kiss on your arms. If you ventured to the front you had the fetid sweat of the summer air clinging to you. Every time someone bumped into you it left you with the feeling of being two obese thighs rubbed together to the point of a rash.
Sometimes you plan a party so well that it can’t go wrong. But nothing can prevent it from raining or from the Yankees to play a number of games well in a row or to have someone who could make it as an actual musician perform on one of those music contests on TV where professionals judge amateurs and people at home treat them like disappointing professionals they’ve paid to see.
But by 10:00 the backroom filled. Dino showed up with L--- G--- in a trench coat and I was so glad to see him. Sometimes at these parties you have to deputize someone as security so the back bathroom can be a dressing room or hand someone your camera so they can be your photographer. I needed Dino to be her roadie. “Whatever she needs, man. I need you to do it.”
“Go it.”
“Do you know your cue?”
“When the announcer calls out ‘President’”
“Right, anything else?”
“Do you expect me to fit inside of this cake?” I realized then that we had a big problem. I had gotten too small of a barrel. This one barely went up past her knees.
“Are you going to be able to?”
“I’ll make it work.”
“Okay,” I said. “Dino?”
“We got this.”
I didn’t have a fork to tink against a champagne glass so I cut the music right before the second chorus of “Satisfaction” right at midnight. Everyone looked straight at the booth and I grabbed the microphone. “Hello everybody, don’t you all look beautiful tonight. Can I have a moment of your time? I would like to honor a very special friend of mine tonight. He’s brought joy and happiness to all of us over the years and when I was just a kid from Chicago looking to make it as a DJ I turned to Mike and he gave me a chance of a lifetime here. And just to show my appreciation, Mike, please stand right in front there because this cake is going to really blow your candles out. Dino?” I handed the mic to Dino and hopped into the DJ booth to press play.
“Mr. President,” Her hand pierces through the paper icing on the cake. Mike takes her hand gingerly, like a man helping a lady out of a horse-drawn carriage. “…Marilyn Monroe!” The audience on the recording claps and everyone and Beauty Bar hoots and cheers. It’s a long walk from when the announcer introduces her and when she starts singing—she must have walked on stage in heels that May night in Madison Square Garden in 1962 before she died.
No one has any idea what’s going on, but they all stare agape at this tiny trash can with a whole woman inside. Dino hands her the mic and she steps onto a gogo platform. “Happy Birthday,” she sings over Marilyn’ wavering voice. “To youuuuu.”
The crow can’t believe it. This is the first time anyone in Manhattan has seen the new L-- G--- the performance artist. Her voice destroys Marilyn. She belts into that cheap carny mic. “Happy Birthday…Mr. President. Happy birthday to you!”
The thunderous cheer resuscitated the LG I knew. Instead of Lollapalooza where she put herself on stage, hoping that people would come over and check her out, she put herself in a box and didn’t ask anyone to see what’s inside. But they wanted to know. She stood radiant in the light of the disco spotlight, her chest heaving as she stood with perfect soloist’s posture, looking down from her two foot gogo cube, smiling. Laughing.
Before the moment died completely I did a family tradition of mine. I threw on “Birthday” by The Beatles. Just as she stood there, on the cusp of maybe getting off the 3’x3’ stage I threw on a song with a hard four-on-the-floor beat. And she gogodanced her ass off.
You say it’s your birthday?
It’s my birthday too yeah!
The whole room—and keep in mind this is July in Manhattan—starts dancing along with her. Mike and his twin sister are thanking her, posing for pictures. People cram huge tips into her garter belts and she puts on a big show, bending over and having them stuff her opalescent sequined bra. I want to hold the mood right there, so I throw on “The Clapping Song.” She gets everyone clapping along. It’s Mike’s 38th birthday, but it might be his 5th if I can keep the music right.
She steps off the Gogo platform only once. She walks across the backroom to the bar, pulls two dollars out of her bra, says something to the bartender and walks to the DJ booth, carrying two shots of Sauza Hornitos tequilla in one hand. She hands me one, rams her glass into mine and goes, “I love you, Vh1—here’s to rocknroll!” We down the shot and gets back up to the platform, headbanging her glorious dark mane.
The next DJ is about to go on and I can’t wait. After spending all day on this damn cake I didn’t have any time to eat. I think I have enough time to go next door to Bite. Just then Justin comes up to me, “Frontroom DJ can’t stay. We need you in the front booth.”
I see that he has on a bunch of CDs so I pull out my 45s case so he can clean up from the CD trays. I keep my records, even my 45s, categorized by tempo. There are a few exceptions, but I keep those up front. So I pound out something to meet up with the Bowie song he has going. Something in the back beat makes me count extra—even through I know I shouldn’t. I don’t even put on my headphones yet—with the two of us crammed into the DJ booth like two newspaper kiosk clerks at this change—but I watch for the green light as I cue up the little record. The light goes orange. Perfect. “You ready?” I drop the guitar in.
I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five and time
Played it til my fingers bled
Was the summer of ‘69!
Just then you see her spring out from the backroom, where she can’t even hear us. She leaps into the DJ booth.
She sings, “Me and some guys from—Rivington High School / Got a band; we try real hard!”
Every single room this girls enters she shines like this. I hope she never plays outdoors ever again. Everyone in the whole bar has one eye smiling at her.
“I don’t like the music those boys are playing back there,” she says. “I just wanna be your Gogo dancer. I’m not for lending out.”
“Okay, babe, but there’s no Gogo stage up here in the main room. There’s no dance floor either.”
“I’ll make due.”
She hops up on the bar, hoisting herself on the brass of the beer taps wearing nothing but fishnets and her bikini top. The fishnets barely reach her crotch. I look over as she pushed people’s drinks aside, gives the bar a quick mop while Justin’s not looking and in one swanlike motion she rises up on her white leather heels.
I never did get that dinner break. I didn’t leave the booth for more than a minute the entire night. The only thing I did do was join Her on the bar dancing whenever her spirits would fade. I earned an extra fifteen dollars this way from people cramming money in my belt. On my final time up to the bar I was so out of it that I crawled up some girls’ chair and when I went to put my foot on the bar I ended up kicking a full glass of whiskey on the rocks right at Justin. “Hey!"
“Sorry, man!”
“You better watch it.”
I look up and she has the biggest smile on her face.
A when I look back now, that summer seemed to last forever. And if I had a choice; I’d always wanna be there.
As a person who has well-documented distaste for flippant use of Harlem-renaissance-era slang in general, I find eternal joy and happiness in what I read today on Gawker.
Sincegetting my new residency, I have been unable to be a good friend. I can't really go to movies on the weekends or go to anybody's party unless they start promptly at 8 and they serve food. I have to DJ at 1030 and I don't want to show up half-in-the-bag.
While I was upstate with my parents last week I got a text from Jackie asking if I could make it to her birthday party. "I could really use a hug. Hard week."
I love my friends' unbearable pain. It's such good source material! Then I remembered that I kinda never told her that I was writing a novel based on her. So I innocently responded, "Sure. I have to leave at 10 for work. Would you mind if I based a character on you someday?"
She responded in kind, "Sure."
So today I get a text from Ben, he's quitting his job to make a feature movie which I am soooo excited for. It was a fun kind of 2006 reunion in a way. Elyse came with a friend from high school, Monica was there (it occurred to me that I had no way of asking her if she had managed to lose her virginity in the 4 years since we were 23). Sam was there playing pool which was fun because he tooooootally hooked up with Leila last weekend.
"I have a present for you."
"Oh, yay," Jackie's wearing this adorable dress that's a cross between a babydoll and a cocktail dress, holding a drink in her hand and playing the part of hostess very well. Even though it's at The Abbey there's still a pretty nice spread of food back there and they've given us the whole back room. "Have you met Sam before? Oh, right," she turns to Sam. "We had sex at your girlfriend's party." And then she laughs like it would have been rude of her not to mention that.
"So you remember last week when I asked if I could base a character on you? Well, I already did," I pulled the 204 page draft out of my bag. "It's finished and I brought you this for your birthday."
Alright, I can't resist. This I wrote today about some fun memories of mine.
The first time I ever walked in the doors of Beauty Bar I came for the redhead’s birthday in 2004. It seemed like heaven. Beauty Bar Manhattan used to house Thomas’ Beauty Salon, a mid-sixties old-lady spot where women got their hair ‘did to Elvis’ “‘68 Comeback Special” before they took the kids to shul. About ten years before that, when your average commuter would have been scared to go that far from Union Square, a few partners took all the good things about Thomas’ Beauty Salon and turned it into Beauty Bar. You can still sit in hairdryer chairs and gab with your friends or whoever happens to be around. And now you can get a martini and a manicure for $10 (total!) and Elvis has never stop singing there.
I knew—in that naive way of the fresh-off-the-boat-New-Yorker you hear about in Irish songs—that someday I would make it here. The Redhead and her big sister (also a redhead so we’ll call her the REDHEAD) took me here for Redhead’s birthday in 2004. I stepped outside at one point and saw a man in his mid-thirties opening a hatchway into the sidewalk. He wore genuine-nerd coke-bottle glasses and had tattoos on his arms. I figured he must run the place, “Excuse me, but this is my first time here and I love it. I was wondering: are you hiring?”
He took a deep breath (“What mud hut did you live in before that this is your first time at Beauty Bar Manhattan?”) and said, “We’re never hiring.”
“Never?”
“The people working here now have all been here for ten or more years. I’ve been a barback here for nine.”
I would later hear the same story from everyone. The manager has the same key from opening day. The Saturday bar tenders haven’t missed more than one weekend in ten years. The Monday night guy never gets bumped up to the weekend; never asked to.
Right around this time they opened the “Blue Rinse Back Room” by annexing some office space in the rear, putting in another bar and a disco ball. I then started begging the owners for a shift in the back room—any shift. Dj’ing, bartendering, whatever—”Sorry, we owe those shifts to our employees and we have a few people who’ve been waiting for a shift to open up for ten years.”
So in the time it takes to get one shift (not even a job—4-7 hours behind the bar here once a week) at Beauty Bar you could redo your undergrad in neuroscience, apply for medical school, finish your residency and open your own practice next door. And everyone would be so impressed!
You know when the first Jewish President was sworn in at the inauguration his mother said, “See that man with his hand raise?” Yes. “His brother’s a doctor.”
The first scenester President’s mom will said, “He gave up two shifts at Beauty Bar for this.”
For as along as I’ve lived in New York the high light of my summer has always been Mike Stewart’s Birthday Party at Beauty Bar. Actually my own personal solstice and equinox both happen at Beauty Bar. Mike’s Birthday and the Beauty Bar Christmas Party—July and December. The first time I ever went to Mike’s birthday it was advertised as “Featuring our Best DJs and Promoters.” And that didn’t include me.
The first time I heard about the Christmas Party I got a text inviting me to meet everyone after the staff had their gift exchange and annual Christmas feast. Here I’d gone so far from my days hiding on the school bus, I played records in my room, I made flyers and friends—and they still wouldn’t let me join in any reindeer games.
Next Christmas I got a call from Brock who used to be the barback on my Tuesday shift. They all agreed that it wouldn’t be a Beauty Bar Christmas party without me but that I couldn’t tell the other DJs since I was the only one invited. The owner rented out this gorgeous restaurant downtown for a prixe fix four-course dinner and all of us tattooed dirtbags crammed ourselves into suits and cocktail dresses. Some enterprising soul had brought a mid-course of chocolate chip “Blondies”—I capitalize this baked good’s namesake because it also promised “Rapture.”
By now half the crew is pushing 40, but with backstage passes. After the main course we exchange gifts. I got Raul, who was the barback who discovered Jackie Daniels marooned in the bathroom at the very rear of the bar around closing time. The lock had broken off and she had resigned herself to making a nest of toilet paper and c-fold towels until someone came the next day. So that year Raul’s secret-Santa gave him one of Jackie’s sexy, pouty MisShapes photos autographed to say, “Raul es me HERO. <3 Jackie Daniels.”
Brian, one of the security enforces gave me a book called “Get in the Van” by Henry Rollins. It tells the story of how a lowly ice cream store manager in the scene got yanked aboard to collaborate and then go on tour with this awesome band. “That’s a pretty implausible premise for a book,” I thought.
I want to write so well that when people meet me they will expect me to be some kind of rainman/Stephen Hawking type. As if my writing were the only method I had available to prove that I were human.
So I have decided to (I can't remember if I already wrote about this) write the time-specific first-person novel-length story about a certain person I did some work with. At first I thought this might be a sell-out move or taint the rest of my writing. One of my biggest worries was actually that I might have a year or two where no one cared to critique my writing or help it get any better.
I decided to do it for a few reason.
Foremost I think of myself as a journalist. Dj'ing is fun, but part of me feels like DJ'ing is a demonstration of how informed I am musically. Stories are important to me. And a good journalist never misses a story.
A Good Friend of Mine sat me down at Freddy's a few weeks ago and said, "I went to college to be a writer and if I had to sit down and write my memoir today it would be: Girl from Montana moves to New York and gets a job in the media. You have a story that should be told and you won't--why??"
About a month ago I got lost in Central Park and I remembered the last time I was in that section. Valentine's Day 2008:
She had to hurry and get ready for our show that night. So I took her back to her parents house uptown as the sun set over the city. We cut through the park and she was on the back of my Vespa and she said, "I think this is already the best day of my life, Brendan."
"I think so too."
"This is what I've been waiting for my whole life."
"Won't this be fun? We can play all over the place."
"Ohmygod, can you imagine if we had a tour?"
"I hope we do."
"I hope we do to. You can write your novels in the tour bus. I'll be a star and my DJ will be the poet laureate of his generation."
There are moments like that. They're mine. All mine and I get to keep them forever.
So I have decided that I can write as many of these as I want. It's fun. It's terrifying and embarrassing--it's my life. Anyway, I wrote an email to a friend of mine from college and I said basically, You're in publishing. What do you think I should do?
She actually gave me this really terse response. I emailed back something more polite. I said I had something important to talk to her about weeks ago and she couldn't make any time for me. She said something like, "You sent me one coarse email and I said I could meet in two weeks and you never followed up."
I was vaguely pissed. I get it that people I went to college get sick of people sending them bad manuscripts. But this is serious.
The hard part is to not-convey the hurt. Actually the easy part would be not taking everything so goddam personally. But I'm not very good at that.
I guess I feel like these people still treat me like a freshman. And I don't deserve to be treated like that, pretty much because of things I've been through and done and this manuscript will tell the whole story. Because writing is my life and everything else is a huge waste of my time: I get irrationally emotional and upset when it comes to how others handle my work. I get weird. Straight up weird.
Weird like sending flowers to my agents when she read Mercutio. Weird like writing letters in sharpie on old editions of Romeo & Juliet to agents in London. Weird like the time I told Harold Bloom that it was okay that he couldn't meet with me because he was sick, since he could die right then and I'd still have plenty of his scholarship to read ("Maybe you'll die in the middle--like Mercutio!")
Whatever. I'm weird.
She was nice about it and said she'd ask around. A week goes by and she says she has someone interested. Only here's the thing.
I am not putting you directly in touch with him/her because—well—Brendan, you tend to not take very good advice and sometimes not know when to back off. I still like you very much and do enjoy your writing. But this is how I’d like to handle it. If you are agreeable, please send the 100 pages.
Whoa, whoa, me? Difficult?
When Leila's agent signed her I met him at a party. Within about fifteen minutes we bonded over the Decameron which is a collection of medieval oral tales of sex, dirty-deeds and boners--most of which involves nuns and priests. The Decameron is a great deal of the source material for Mercutio.
He'd heard about my new MS a few weeks ago and asked to read it. He asked me, on a Friday, to meet with him. His only available date was two fridays from then. The anticipation was killing me. It was the day of the snowstorm and so after all that waiting he cancelled our 3PM appointment. That motherfucker. I didn't even respond to his email.
I called up Leila and went down to her office. That's where I discovered that most publishing houses were closing early for the snow. Oops. Her receptionist couldn't buzz me up. She had taken a snowday.
Leila and I had a great meeting, which is easy because Leila is my favorite person anyway. I'll give you an example. A girl and I agreed to exchange mixes and I spent five hours in the studio on mine. She gave me a copy of one she'd made for her high school friends. "She gave you a second hand mix?" Leila texted. "That's like regifting an STD."
That's the kind of amazing shit I get from her. Freestyle.
So another one of his clients had a book out this we and we are mutual fans. She was asking me about my writing and I said I hated it. Writing is the easiest thing in the world for me, and I just can't stand people. There's nothing I enjoy like writing.
I took a meeting with their agent yesterday and I was at a loss for words. I don't want to say, "I'm my favorite writer." But what I want to convey is that I love writing so much that I don't care who publishes it or even care to tailor it to their needs. My writing has nothing to do with me. Even when I write I feel like I'm reading something written by a much better writer, one I can really relate to.
I walked out of the elevator to his penthouse office and saw this:
We actually had a great meeting. I stayed for almost two hours. We talked about "problems vs. conflicts." He asked me what I'm looking for in an agent (it's usually the other way around) and I told him that I worried that I might get an undeserved deal just because I was in the position to make a best seller out of pictures in my cameraphone. I also don't want to be "that writer" who people think of as only getting a deal on fiction because of celebrity non-fiction. AND I don't want to debut with The Heiress because then I will be expected to write that same novel over five times.
He said, flat out, that he was interested in my writing. He even said that he wouldn't be the agent for the kind of book that I'm writing. But he is interested in the rest of my work.
Last night I went to the party that I always thought I'd go to someday. At Adrianne's advice I wore the polka dot tie and the blazer I got in Italy and walked to the Chinatown duplex of one of Laura's friends for her book party. When I walked in the door I saw a sea of cute girls in pretty dresses. All the dudes were parents or publishing industry types or boyfriends of the older Dr./Lawyer type.
I had just finished Laura's book the day before and really enjoyed it. But when I walk into the party she's busy and surrounded by people, so I go to hang up my coat. "What? No love?" the guest-of-honor shouts?
Laura stands 6'1" in her backless dress and heels. She has just signed another three book deal with her label and the news came out today that her debut charted on the NYTimes best seller list. And she's calling me over.
"This is the one I was telling you about," she says to a group of her friends. This happens to me a lot and I'm getting ready to field questions about who does or does not have a lady-penis.
"Oh, the writer who went to Havana?"
"Yes."
Wow.
I don't know anyone at this party whatsoever and Leila's not here. Their agent is here but we'd just spent two hours together today and it was like trying to play it cool with a coworker you'd hooked up with. So everywhere I go in the room people are introducing themselves to outsider. "How do you know Laura?"
The thing is: I don't. We met through Leila and the magic of facebook, but we've only hung out IRL once when she was my date to Romanticide. This is the first party where I've ever introduced myself as a writer. (I have since retired the joke, "Sorry, that's a typo. He meant to say I'm a waiter.") This is also the first time I've been to a catered affair since I was a caterer.
A smiley black dude and a plump white girl manned the pass-through of the kitchen, serving Sancerre, White Bordeaux, Pinot Noir, Something I can't remember and Champagne. There were so many people packed into the little Chinatown duplex that I didn't know there were crudités.
"And how do you know Laura?"
Normally this is where I tell people I'm a bartender or a DJ."Uhm, we're both writers."
"Oh, fiction/nonfiction?"
I still have my crippling, Irish superstition about calling something a "book" when it's really a "word document" so I skipped to other things I do. "I write for Esquire Magazine."
Immediately after making this statement, Royal Tenenbaum realized it was true.
At first I do my socially-awkward, hide-in-the-corner-so-no-one-can-bump-into-me but this is a book party. Everyone in here isn't cool. The guy who asked about Esquire is a lawyer and he decided that we were party friends.
Laura pulls me over. "You get to meet my dad," she hands me off to a tall jew. "This is Brendan, your future son-in-law."
He took this as well as a guy can. Or as well as the father of a smart-ass daughter can. "And how do you two know each other?"
"Brendan is a brilliant writer. I'll send you his stuff. It's amazing, dad. It's like some people can write well or tell a story or describe something, but every single sentence Brendan writes just flows perfectly into another. You can tell he's a great writer just in his sentences." I never know what to do when people discuss my talents right in front of me. I would like it if I could find a way to shrug appreciativeely in a way that would make them never stop talking about me. But I'm told that one of my best qualities is that I am humble. Or whatever.
"I met with Stephen today."
"You did! I told you you needed to submit more. Dad, Brendan rewrote Romeo & Juliet from Mercutio's perspective, showed it to two people and then gave up."
"That sounds like a good idea for a book."
I said, "I told Stephen you'd said that. But we also spent an hour talking about your book. I loved it. We also both agree that our favorite day is Day 5, when she calls in sick to play with her sister."
One of the cute things about Laura is she still has her posse-group from high school. It's these 4 girls who mean the world to her. Their parents were all there and very proud. I got to meet the moms.
Finally Leila showed up. I had just read this really hilarious piece by her about how the only extravagant thing she's done since getting her book deal was getting her teeth bleached.
This has put me off voluntary medical procedures for life. I will not be getting a nose job, nor a boob job, nor will I be selling my eggs to blue-eyed Ashkenazie couples who want to lie and tell their children that they really are their biological parents. Because you know what? When you're in that much pain, even chanting to yourself, "I'm going to look so pretty once this is done!" doesn't help one bit.
I have eaten five Advil already this afternoon, and I want more. And I haven't opened my mouth in hours, nor do I want to. AND I can't eat chocolate for two days. (Also forbidden: tomato sauce, balsamic vinegar, peanut butter, jam, pesto, oranges... a.k.a everything I eat.) I feel like an invalid. But since this was a total vanity project in the first place, I feel like a VOLUNTARY invalid. So, basically, I feel like an idiot. An idiot whose mouth hurts.
"Show me your teeth, monster. Was it really awful?"
"It was the worst. I don't know what I'm going to do. It STILL hurts. All I could think about was child birth. They bleached my nerves! It was the worst pain in my life and now I can't get any medical procedure ever. I can't get pregnant because I can't handle the pain of childbirth, but then I can't get an abortion either because it's a medical procedure!"
Leila is fucking awesome.
It was fun being at a party with people who don't work at 230. But, alas, after having a smoke in the upstairs bedroom with the guest of honor I had to excuse myself. Because I had to go to work.
I had to take a cab over because it got so late. It was fun seeing that little world and honestly if every day I could have a no-commitments meeting with an agent and then go to a book party I'd be happy.
Periodically I think maybe I should just get over the past 27 years of my life. It's all on me to be the person who has to deal with my own past.
Sometimes I hang out with people from my old life (god that sounds so conceited) and I am surprised and slightly offended when they treat me like they always have.
I get facebook messages from my high school friends parents (Jesus Christ) asking when I'm going to write a song about riding in their daughter's car or making vegan cookies on a saturday night (??). I'll run into Ashley at a party and she tells me what an ass I look like on Canadian TV.
The problem is that the people who know me don't see the alter-ego international scenester. If they did, maybe I wouldn't be such a dick about things around them. It's like they are keeping me down. They're like my older brother try to pound me down and keep me in my place. Even though they only ever treated me like I didn't belong there.
This sends me on an alter-ego trip, reeling from a bunch of losers who want to treat me like their service bartender. I spend my days in meetings and lunches with one publisher or another; I go to Guitar Center for headphones and the clerks want to get a picture with me*; I sign tits for chrissake.
Again, given the above asshole-ish statement: why should it bother me? I don't really know. Yesterday on my connecting flight to Kentucky I was on the phone with my brother (who never pulls the aforementioned bullshit on me) and I look up and there is a table of teenage girls staring at me. One of them is taking a cameraphone picture of me.
What does a nondescript group of girls see in me, a stranger, that my own friends and former coworkers don't? And then I land and I get this fucken message from my old manager at 230. He's running a new place and thinks shit like this is hilarious:
"Check out my waiter. This guy hates me cause I keep calling him Sullivan. He's your twin. You should go in wearing the same outfit and see if you can rip a hole in the space time continual."
*I assume if I could find them on facebook there'd be my picture with the caption, "This asshole'll buy ANYTHING."
It probably shouldn't bother me so much, but I'm a huge fan of my second novel--even though no one has ever once expressed any interest in it. Today by, sheer coincidence, I am writing about a day that happened three years ago when I finished writing the first draft of it. HolyshitwhathaveIdonewithmylife??
Here's the opening scene where the narrator gets his first phone call from his father in ten years and seeing his child hood number on his caller ID confuses the hell out of him:
Chapter 1
I awoke this morning to a terrible ringing in my head, a piercing, skull-plate separating pitch that sounded too awful to have started in my phone. But it did. The number on the screen seemed familiar. Too familiar. But I can’t place it. Oftentimes in the moment just before I fully wake up I find myself in a terror coma, unsure of the world I’ve just left, but frozen in place, cautious about the one I reemerge into. I look around the room and find that I can’t trust it either. Men’s causal button down shirts hang in this closet next to dozens and dozens of solid colored skirts, blouses and a cascade of tank tops, seven or eight to a hanger. The man’s shirts look sturdy and pressed—original tags still dangle from the buttonholes. And just as this apartment looks like it’s my own or someone I’ve never met, so does this strange phone number that doesn’t match anyone in my phonebook but which reminds me of a number that may have even been mine as a child. Is that what it is? Is my fifteen-year-old self calling just to check up? In that case I cannot—should not—answer. Why disappoint the kid? Or why not just pick up and lie? Pretend you’re the machine? Pretend you’re a big famous rock star and spare your fifteen year old self the truth? "Hello, and thank you for calling the management office of Liam Boycott. Liam and the Heartbreakers are on tour right now and can’t come to the phone. But if you leave a message, someone will be sure to send you an autographed picture, so please spell you name after the tone."
BEEP?
As the dimensions align and I step back into Liam’s skull I start to find it less likely that my fifteen-year-old self would call. First of all I was once fifteen-years-old. I think I would remember if I had called myself in the future.
But how else do you explain this?
I grasp for the phone through an ocean of sleep that won’t let me go. It keeps ringing in my hand and I still can’t bring myself to answer it. It is my childhood phone number, calling me for some reason. The same number that the phone company printed on that once state-of-the-art touchtone phone that probably still hangs on the wall in the kitchen of my father’s thin, pine-wood home. The number I dialed from the nurse’s office in school. And just as in dreams where I fear ridiculous things like apples for some reason, I swim out of my nightmares and find myself scared to pick up my own phone when my old phone number comes up on the screen.
The ringing stops. But I still hold the curious machine in hand, perplexed at its nature. I squeeze my eyes open a few times, hoping to somehow jumpstart my brain. Slowly I begin to trust that this bed is mine, that the room is mine.
In the kitchen I find a note left from Her, just on top of the still rumbling dishwasher. The note has nothing to do with Her regret in leaving me or how She might never forget our time together. She left me a list of chores. Bills to pay and which half was mine and whose turn it was to pay what. The most charming thing is that out of habit she still signs it “Love, Me.”
I pour the last dusty bits of health food store cereal. She already took the coffee machine with her, and in an act of nonchalance I throw on the spotted black kettle for the first time and decide that not only does Her sudden absence not bother me, but that from now on I will be perfectly content starting my worthless days with a civilized cup of Constant Comet tea.
Tea with honey. I squeeze the sticky plastic bear full of honey into my cup and search the drawers for a spoon. I don’t know why this should bother me so much, why I didn’t just hop back in bed and wait for the dishwasher to finish. But it really, really pissed me off to be spoonless. Here I am, marooned in California and a guy can’t even have a goddam spoon?
I grew up in a house of boys. But I was still (a) mama's boy. When she complained about piss on the toilet seat--and then later about the toilet seat being up all the time I came up with a compromise.
I shut the seat and the lid everytime.
That way I could appease the lady, even if it didn't please the lady.
So a couple of months ago I decided that since it would be possible to read all the work of Jay McInerney that one should. So I did. It was great to watch a writer who had outlived all the people he once looked up to (anyone can be a young writer, but outliving Fitzgerald and Dylan Thomas means turning 45).
McInerney is the kind of person that nothing gets by. Sure his first book was about heartbreak, nightclubs, drugs, and being dumped by girls named Amanda--but he goes beyond that. His third novel is about a socialite (oops) named Allison Poole, the real-life version of her is the woman who now has John Edward's li'lest baby. He has a follow up in his amazing collection How it Ended about prototypical mid-eighties Allison Poole (she always sounds exactly like Alex Magnetic to me) at an older age:
I read about the Great Man theory, which is basically the idea that individuals can change history. But I have my own theory, call it the Little Man theory, which just basically says that if you want to understand any Big Swinging Dick, you just have to figure out who he was when he was a ten-year-old boy. Tom seems pretty honest about how his childrhood made him who he is. In his mind, he's still wearing hand-me-down-overalls.
On Friday I was on the phone with Esquire Magazine, fulfilling a life-long goal of writing for Esquire Mutherfucking Magazine. In school in England I realized that every great writer I admired had written for them (Tim O'brien, David Sedaris had a column, Gay Talese--lots of handsome dudes). Before our Christmas break the boy my mother calls "Evil Peter" came to visit me in Brighton before we left for the semester and I sent him off with my copy of the genius issue with Bill Clinton on the cover.
Then he must have been like, "Hey, it was great staying with Brendan in Brighton. I can't wait til we're seniors and I we can be roommates. Then he and his girlfriend can break up and I'll fuck her two days later."
So Esquire is wrangling with me on the phone and the editor/writer-at-large has a denotation question about which quotes we can attribute and which we will have to leave in italics. And I say, "Ideally I'd like to do it like you did in your coverstory about Blake Lively."
And he was stunned. You...you read the articles in our magazine? My articles? So you, the DJ who can type words, manage to read other things when you're not, y'know, scratching records or uh...shit..what do DJs do?
My entire life people have been underestimating me like this. And I kind of prefer it.
