I have a lot of shortened versions of my name, with various spellings:
Pris, Prissy, Priscy, Pricci, Prissi
Pris Killingly isn’t exactly a nickname, but a pseudonym from which other nicknames have been derived from:
Killer, Killa, Killingly
Yup, yup…
Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future
I don’t.
Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy
Texas normally does not make me happy, but I should be taking a trip out of here soon to go there. Travel makes me happy. Reasons for travel make me happy.
Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
Oh, man. This one’s tough. On the one hand, I want to say someone really spectacularly awesome, but then I realize coming back to my own life might end up sucking, whereas if I chose someone with a terrible life, maybe I would end up appreciating my own much more? This all sounds terrible out loud, er, in writing. I’d probably switch lives with a bird or something, and just fly around for a day and see what that’s like. Maybe i’ll come back to this one at a later date… Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have
Hrm. Guessing this is long term? I’d say that ultimately, I want to be able to support myself with my writing/editing skills, working remotely while I travel the world. A lofty goal, but I don’t think it’s impossible since others are doing it. I’d also like to publish a few books and do some book tours. That’d be pretty fantastic. Essentially, i’d love to meet someone to travel around with. As much as I enjoy the single life (and believe me, I do), i’ve got a soft side too and wouldn’t mind (eventually) meeting someone I can hang out with for long periods of time, who actually gets me and who I actually get, who digs traveling as much as I do, who’s very much a constantly evolving work in progress, who I can have insanely awesome sex with but can also have incredible conversations with. So far, this person either a) does not exist, b) never lives anywhere near me, c) doesn’t know i’m alive, d) I don’t know. Maybe i’m just picky. But this would be nice to have eventually. I’d also like to live abroad for a few years, maybe in different countries. Hell, maybe even a year on every continent. I’d also at some point like to own a bar, just for the fuck of it. I think that’d be a whole lot of fun. Oh, and I want to eventually hitchhike someplace, just not alone. Am I missing anything?
Disclaimer: This part of the travelogue doesn’t have much about the travel aspect. It’s about a moment during the trip that needs documenting. There’ll be more travel-related destination banter in the next one. So there you go.
The next day, I woke up in the Bronx with a pounding headache, lying next to a near comatose Italian* chef from Detroit. This man was NOT the DJ; this man was not who I was supposed to end up going home with. So what the hell happened?
I wish that I’d taken pictures that night, because my memory is not quite as sharp as I wish it were…
When Lisa and I got to the DJ’s gig, the first thing the DJ did was take us inside and make sure his bartender friend Neela took care of us. We sat at the bar and got comfortable with the plethora of shots that began making their way to the bar, into our hands, and down our throats. The DJ was in good form. He was always in good form. He’s one of those people who always maintain the perfect amount of positive energy. You know when people say “your smile could light up a room”? He’s one of those people you’d say that about. And boy did he like to keep those dark rooms bright.
Throughout the night, we saw the crowds come and go, mixed bags of yuppies and out-of-towners and aging hipsters and people just looking for a night cap. The DJ played on, and took cigarette breaks as often as possible, and then began taking dance breaks as often as possible; his tall, lanky self pulling Lisa and Neela and I out on to the dance floor, smiles aplenty. And the drinks, and the drinks, and the dancing and the drinks until my head was swimming and I wanted to grab him and kiss him and tell him that he still meant something to me, that he always had. The streets of Manhattan were quiet outside while the noise in my head was only muffled slightly by the alcohol.
The hours went on and the party did too. I would sneak over to the DJ while he worked sometimes, and I held his hand, and he squeezed his fingers in mine, and I would get sad because I knew that it might be years before I got to see him again, and how long would this go on? More drinks, more smokes. And then another man walked in, and this one knew the DJ well, so much so that he and the DJ began to dance. Then the DJ introduced us, flinging me into the strangers arms as he made his way back to the DJ booth. This is how I met Parker.
Parker hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s not the right way to say that. He didn’t hit me. But something about him hit me. He had another one of those smiles, though nowhere near as endearing as the DJ’s. But still, he had a good one, and I’ve always been a sucker for a nice smile. Parker was working overtime that night. The way he’d look at me. The way he’d do anything to force me to stare back into his eyes. And my god, did he lay it on thick. “Beautiful.” “Baby.” “Gorgeous.” I would tell him he really didn’t have to, but then he’d spew another “I’m not a player or anything, I’m being serious,” and i’d laugh it off because there really wasn’t anything else to say or do. Lisa began sitting out more dances, buying us more drinks. Parker kept on, and on and on. Until he’d invaded every inch of my personal space, and with his finger tips lifting my chin up, he kissed me. It hit me. Like a ton of confused, awkward bricks that have landed everywhere after an explosion. It was fantastic and awful and i’m pretty sure the only thing I said or thought for a good while afterward was, “Oh, fuck.”
The DJ saw everything. The DJ kept playing music. The DJ kept drinking and smoking. The DJ, the DJ. Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ…
I ran to him like some scared little girl, unsure of what to do next. The DJ was still my friend. I felt terrible about Parker, and worse about what I knew would happen next. I grabbed the DJ and asked him what he knew about Parker, what he thought.
“He’s a good guy.. I like him. You should go for it.”
…Alright, It’s been over 6 months since this incident. It’s taken 6 months for me to say all of these things and be (almost) okay with them. But I’ll tell you this: at that moment, it was one of the worst things I’d ever heard anyone say to me. Ever. It’s tough to admit when we’re wrong about something, and even tougher still to admit when things just don’t go your way. Because I know deep down I would’ve wanted there to be some kind of jealousy, or at least a sign to say “hey, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” Nothing. Go for it. So let’s just say this: It fucking hurt.
Why didn’t he care? This plagued me to no end. He didn’t seem thrilled about the situation, but I couldn’t tell if he cared at all. At that point in our lives, we hadn’t been talking very much. For all I know, he was seeing someone. Maybe having an affair with Neela the married bartender. Maybe he had a girlfriend that he didn’t like to talk about. Maybe he’d just finally stopped feeling that chemistry that had existed between us for so long. I couldn’t be sure. When you’re plastered at 3am in the city that never sleeps, it’s hard to be sure about anything.
What I did know was that Parker seemed to have taken a liking to me. He wasn’t the DJ. The DJ was lost to me now. Parker was real, and his arms would wrap around me, and his lips would kiss me deep, and my head would spin. So I said fuck it.
“Parker wants me to go home with him,” I said to the DJ on our final cigarette break alone.
Parker was back inside, maybe talking to Lisa or Neela, maybe drinking more, I can’t be sure. I couldn’t care less at the time. He was a man I didn’t know and the man I did know was doing everything possible to crush all the feelings I’d harbored for him for the better part of a decade. He smiled and hugged me tight. I wished with every fiber of my being that I could read his thoughts, that he would tell me something that would reassure me that I wasn’t insane. That whatever that thing was that existed between us still did indeed exist. That this would not be the last night. That he cared in some way but didn’t know how to say it, just like every other time had been, when he’d act like everything was fine only to tell me months down the line how much I’d actually been wanted and missed. For fuck’s sake, anything.
“He’s a good guy. Like I said, you should go for it.”
I’m surprised, given how drunk I was, that I didn’t cry or yell or even get angry. Maybe I knew it was coming. I could hear tires driving over the slick streets blocks away. It had rained again, just like it’d rained every day that I was in NYC. I met his gaze and gave him the saddest false smile I’ve probably ever given anyone, and I let him go.
Parker was eager to get out of Manhattan. Lisa thought I was crazy to go home with a near-stranger, but I trusted the DJ. He wouldn’t send me off with a total nut job. At least, that’s what I figured. Parker bummed a final cigg from the DJ and I said goodbye to Lisa, Neela, and the infamous Mr. DJ. Parker and I walked/stumbled down the street, searching for a cab to hail. I could see his Squee tattoo on the back of his calve and figured he couldn’t be so bad if he was a Squee fan. I grabbed his hand and decided to go with it.
In case you're not familiar with Jhonen Vasquez's Squee...
A cab ride to the Bronx. My first time in that most avoided of boroughs (aside from Staten Island, although I’m not sure which one is avoided more – any native New Yorkers wanna take a stab at it?) And then we were inside the apartment, which was by far one of the most spacious NYC apartments i’ve ever been in.
“Just one of the perks of living in the Bronx,” said Parker, who actually absolutely hated New York City, and who had plans to move back to Detroit to open up a fine dining establishment someday.
Sigh. From there, you can guess what happened next. The sex was alright, but not terribly memorable, probably for numerous reasons (we were both too drunk, I was still hurt about the DJ, we’d only just met a few hours before, etc). I spent the next morning hydrating and smoking (his very low grade) grass while he snored away, sleeping off the hangover. I felt terribly awkward about not coming back to Tyler’s for the night. Not that I owed him explanations, but all my things were there and he’d been nice enough to let me stay with him for the duration of the trip. I tried to come up with different excuses as to why I hadn’t made it back to Manhattan. I tried to forget all about the DJ.
Parker had to get to work that afternoon, so we took the train back to Manhattan that afternoon. He got off two stops before I did.
“It was nice to meet you,” we both said, with the knowledge that we’d likely never speak again. I thought about how ridiculous life could be sometimes. So many years feeling one way about someone, regardless of time and distance, and now it was over. 6 months later, I still don’t know how I feel about all of it. Except maybe a little grateful.
The DJ and I discussed the matter about 2 months or so later. I told him how awkward the whole thing was, how strangely I felt about it. He was candid, telling me he just wanted me to be happy and have a good time. That he didn’t feel like he had any claim over me, and that he genuinely felt that Parker was a good guy, that he also wanted him to be happy and have a good time.
“I may be perpetually unavailable, but I’m not a bastard; you’re still a good friend, and I do care.”
…And that’s it, really. That’s the anti-climactic conclusion to the longest non-relationship i’ve ever had, all wrapped up in one New York City night. It feels strange to write about it now, but I couldn’t have written it any sooner. So much has happened since then that I’m able to be somewhat disconnected about the situation. The DJ and I have spoken very briefly online since, but for the most part he’s rarely around and it’s for the best.
By the end of the next day, I wanted nothing to do with anyone. Sometimes people need a night away from the world, to walk silently with ones’ thoughts and memories in a city of eight million people. Lonesome as can be. And that’s just what I did.
But I’ll write about that later, because that night did take me to some unexpected places, including making my first friend from Amsterdam. For now though, it’s 5am and definitely quitting time. Quitting on the past, and quitting on tonight.
Here’s a song to keep you company that’s been helping me out while writing all this.
Part 9 in this series will be up soon!
*He was Italian and a chef, not a chef of strictly Italian cuisine. There’s a difference.
Taken from the Neutral Milk Hotel official website.
If there’s one thing I love about meeting new people, it’s getting into new (or old) music. Last month, I met a pretty fantastic boy that was really in to Neutral Milk Hotel. NMH is one of those bands I had kind of put on the back burner. Not because they’re not an amazing band. in fact, Jeff Mangum’s voice and lyrics have been haunting me for years now. I first heard about them through WVUM 90.5 FM (the radio station that, funny enough, I wound up working for year later) and then later through my friend Hector who put a few NMH songs on a mix cd for me.
From then, i’d kind of forgotten about them until 2005, when I met a boy in California who absolutely loved them. During one of my trips to Los Angeles, he even tried to teach me how to play Two-Headed Boy on the guitar (I got a little of it but have forgotten since). But after I came back to Miami, and after that short-lived romance had ended, I stopped listening to them. Things didn’t work out with the boy and although I wouldn’t admit it in those days, enough time has passed to say that I was really heartbroken.But It wasn’t their fault that things didn’t work out with that particular boy. The music is never responsible. It only serves as a reminder of things that might have been, things that once were, things that can’t be. And that’s alright. Because it’s making me realize something important.
See, I’ve spent about 3 hours now listening to this song on repeat, going over so many things in my head that might’ve mattered, that could matter, that probably shouldn’t. The great thing about listening to something over and over again is that eventually, the song means something completely different. It’s like when you say a word over and over again until it begins to deconstruct, decompose. It gets pulled apart, shredded, torn, and eventually it’s completely unrecognizable. The same is true for music. You can analyze a song to death, you can cherish it until it’s gone, you hold it close until you can’t remember why you were holding on in the first place.
And so it is with this particular song, Three Peaches, that I’ve gone through all of this, that’s seen me go through this, that continues to exist. I didn’t even bother to look up the words at first, but then I did, and of course it took on more meaning. But the more I listen to it, the less I want to cry and the more I want to be inspired, the more I want to do. It’s the kind of song that shackles you to the bottom of the ocean just long enough for you to find the key and rush back to the top. It resonates- because we’ve all felt that thing that sits in the back of Mangum’s throat. It’s the same thing that’s in the back of our minds and at the bottom of our bellies and hidden deep within the cavity of our chests, a harsh reality that simultaneously slaps you in the face and then cradles you until you’re okay again.
This song isn’t just a song. It means so much in its simplicity. So much emotion in each note. And to me, it means more than that. It means moments, it means history, it means everything i’ve felt for so few, on such rare occasion, when i’ve actually been capable, and it means a fresh start when it’s finally all behind me.
So listen. Just… listen. And if you hear it, if you know what i’m talking about, well.. then that’s all there is to it. That’s all I can say about that.
I know so many people. I know so many people. Sometimes I try to think of all the people I’ve ever met in my life, and it baffles me because it’s such an infinite amount. A new friend of mine recently said that with the advent of social media, that whole 6 degrees of separation has now been whittled down to 4 degrees. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, or if the 6 degrees thing was ever true to begin with. Anyway, that’s not even what I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is people. And most importantly, their impact on all of our lives. I know, I know. Kind of vague. But from the moment we’re born (barring extreme circumstances), we are surrounded by other humans. Our mothers, for one, are there when we are born. If we are born in hospitals or houses, there might be doctors or midwives, family and friends. As a baby, on the whole, you are never left alone. Those around you shape the way you learn, grow, and eventually your entire outlook on life. We are a composite of endless minds and emotions, all trying to show us what is best, all trying their hardest to give us the tools we need to one day be self-sufficient humans. We are raised to inevitably be alone.
And so we grow and grow. We make our first memories as we begin to understand language. One of my very first memories is of being about 3 years old and running into a house we were considering renting. The place was enormous from my perspective, but I’m sure it wasn’t much to behold – a duplex in Hialeah, FL. I found my very first treasure there on the side of a bathroom sink. It was a small gold earring, slightly bent. I took it to my mother and asked her if it was possible to find a matching earring. She took the sad little piece of jewelry and put it away and said we would try to find its’ pair. My mom still has that earring locked away in a box somewhere. I don’t know if it means much that my mother still has that earring, or what she thought about it when I presented it to her so proudly, or if she’s even thought about it since. But that moment, in some way, changed my life. Because if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have this story to tell. Life is funny that way.
My 7th birthday, neither Natalie is present, but all these people changed my life somehow.
Then, time passes and we get older. I got older. We make our first friends. We have our first misunderstandings. Like when I was 6 and my best friend was the 4 year old next door named Natalie and we were best friends until the other Natalie moved to our block in Midway Point. Natalie #2 was older, and therefore in my mind, wiser and cooler. I don’t know why I assumed that. Maybe it was the cartoons I watched. Older kids were always way cooler. After all, they’d been around longer so they’d had more time to learn just what was cool. And Natalie #2 told me that it wasn’t cool to hang out with babies like Natalie #1. And how much it hurt to tell my first best friend that I didn’t want to play with her anymore. How that changed me life – knowing that I, too, could be cruel. How I know that had to have changed Natalie #1′s life. Over time, we actually all became friends, but that moment sticks out in my mind so strongly. Sometimes I wonder if she remembers that at all. After I moved away the next year, I never saw her again. I never even knew her last name.
“My, people come and go so quickly here.” It’s one of those quotes that always sticks in my head, mostly because it’s true. I left the Natalie versus Natalie situation behind me when I moved, and then came 2nd grade. We’d just been through a major hurricane that wound up not scaring me one bit (I suppose I was much too young), and now came the more terrifying aspect of being the new kid at school. At the time, it all seemed so important and so endless. When you’re young, your world is so small, and because we’ve only been on the planet for a short while, our sense of time is skewed.
Or maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe we just say that as we get older because that’s what we’ve been taught to say, and maybe certain feelings are never-ending. Like your first love, or at least the first person you really feel something for. I had a crush on a boy named Danny in the first grade, but I wouldn’t say that was the first one I cared for a great deal. My first long term “like” was Jonathan, and i’ll use his real name now because it’s been so long, it doesn’t matter any more. But maybe he does matter, because I’m writing about him again. Whether he knew it then, whether he’ll ever know it, he changed my life.
I met him in the 5th grade and my love for this boy ran deep for about 5 years. That’s a long, long time for a kid (at the time when I finally gave up on him, I had been fawning for him for ONE THIRD OF MY LIFE). That’s a long, long time for anyone, really. I don’t know why he affected me so deeply. He just did. How is it, why is it that some people impact you in such a strong way while others barely make a splash? Are we the ones that decide from the get go? A subconscious decision that states: yes, you there. I will let you make my life wonderful. I will let you destroy me. How does this happen? Why do we continue to let it do so?
People change our lives simply because we care. If we, as a species, did not care about anything at all, we would have self-destructed ages ago. I’m not sure if we learn to love as children, or if it’s inherent, or what, and I don’t imagine anyone will ever understand the complexities of human emotion wholly and fully. But that’s just the state of things, and over time, the only thing that has changed is how these situations are handled.
And this is where it gets tricky. Right now, a lot of people I know are in a state of transition. Maybe it’s the start of the year, or something to do with the way the planets are aligned. Who knows. All that’s certain is that many of us are being affected by others, because that’s what always happens. That is what is always happening. It never ends. All we can do is sit back and wonder why these people come in to our lives (why we let them?), what it means (if anything), and where we go once they’ve affected us. And my god have we been affected. Sometimes it’s a minimal influence, sometimes completely life altering, but always important.
I’m currently writing this while hanging out in the apartment of someone that has affected me (and will likely continue to affect me) a great deal. All the while I’ve been hiding out here, I’ve been wondering about others that have recently changed my life. This kind of thinking is cyclical and does not lead to much productivity.
That is, unless you turn it in to a project.
So I’m going to attempt to take at least 1 person that’s affected me (maybe weekly, maybe biweekly), that’s changed my life in some way, and write about how they actually went about doing that. It might be interesting to see all the people my memories bring out. I’ve met so many and with every passing day, I know i’ll continue to meet more. The people that changed my life so long ago, most of them i’ve lost touch with for good. As for the people changing my life right now, inspiring me to write long posts like this (among other things)? I don’t know what will happen with them. Maybe they’ll be lost as well. Or maybe something else will happen, as things tend to do, and i’ll find them again, and maybe i’ll actually get to change their lives just a little bit. Because really, isn’t that usually the thing we want to hear anyway? That we affected people the way they affected us? Every musician likes to hear the roar of a crowd, every chef loves a good compliment and a plate licked clean, and us writers? Well, we’d settle for a simple message that gives us some indication that you might’ve understood what we were trying to say.
For now, thank you (all) for changing my life. This is the best I can do for now, the most that I can possibly say without saying anything at all.
I know I haven’t written anything in here since October, and I do apologize for it. It seems I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut I’m only now beginning to kick. Maybe I’m finally feeling the pressure of the end of the year. I began working on another couple of stories but started this one up tonight and I’m kind of hoping I can start up a little ritual, writing a bit of it each night after work. I should also be writing up another (LONG overdue) piece for GlobalGrasshopper.com this week and maybe I’ll try to get back to my NYC Stories soon for those wondering what happened (or didn’t happen) that night with the DJ, not to mention more tales from my adventures on the road earlier this year.
Anyway, this is obviously a rough draft, so keep that in mind. In any event, meet Alice and Floyd:
Alice could feel the mucous collecting in her sinuses, and her throat getting scratchy and sore, and her eyes watering, and the muscles surrounding her bones aching more and more, and how there was nothing she could do. She would have to ride it out.
She didn’t want to be sick; didn’t really need to. There had always been a good excuse to stay home from work, hiding under the covers, craving the attention of Floyd. He was never more attentive than when she was sick. That whole loyalty bit really kicked in when she was sick. Floyd Nightingale, with the Vaporub and the hot chamomile tea and the remote control for the television; her clammy fingers pressing on the little rubber rectangles, feeling the painted numbers as she switched from channel to channel. He even brought her the pink slippers her mother had bought her one Christmas, which she rarely remembered to use. That was, until she got sick twice a year, and she recalled her mother’s nagging: Put on your slippers before you catch your death!
“Need anything else, baby? I gotta go or I’ll miss the train,” Floyd’s smooth as silk voice echoing from the bathroom as he finished fussing with his hair. He’d gotten a haircut a few days before but the barber had gotten a phone call half way through and his distractions were obvious near the right ear and all around the crown of his head.
“No… I’m okay. Well, wait, no. Actually, can I get some more water please? And you said there’s money for food, right? I don’t think I can get up to make anything today. I feel so weak,” she said, going from one thought to the other as she usually did.
“I left you a $20 on the counter for whatever you need,” he said as he entered the bedroom with a fresh glass of water. She took a few steady sips and smiled, putting the glass back on the window ledge where she normally kept it on nights she slept over. It all felt so familiar. Back in his house, in his bed, which had once been theirs. She had even helped him pick it out, even given him $50 for it, and ridden home with him in the Buick that day. She could remember it. A Sunday, and they had been afraid of rain but luckily they made it home in the nick of time.
And now here they were, 31 and 43 respectfully. And he was still the same but not at all and she was nothing if not a composite shadow of who she once was. Floyd knelt down to give her a quick kiss on the forehead, and she reached her hands up to adjust the navy blue tie around his neck, and it all seemed so foreign, to see him going to work in a tie, to see the pomade in his hair, his teeth freshly whitened from a visit to the dentist the week before. He’d really made it, or at least he was finally giving the appearance that he had. Her fingers stroked the side of his cheek, the stubble pricking like men’s faces will do sometimes. A grin on his face, he kissed the palm of her hand.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Watch your TV shows and tell me all about them when I get back, but don’t get up unless you have to!”
And out the door he went, the ghost of his cologne lingering on everything he’d touched before he left, including her forehead, including her palm, and on the water glass as well. She drank some more and settled on an episode of the Brady Bunch, where Bobby and Cindy try to make it in to the Guinness Book of World Records.
_______________________________________________
It wasn’t that Floyd was a bad guy and it wasn’t that Alice was a bitch, although Alice could certainly see how it could be interpreted that way, and Floyd could tell that was how people might have seen it at certain moments. It was just a matter of timing, so to speak.
They met so many years before, working together at a little music shop. He was a manager there before she’d even heard of the place – a local business that her mother had been going to for years when she was growing up. It was the holidays and she was just shy of 19, looking for a little part time job to stave off the boredom while on break from school. In she went with resume in hand and not a hair out of place, walked right up to the counter and said, “Hi, I’m Alice and I was wondering if you might be hiring for the season. I’ve got my resume right here and I’m ready to work.”
Floyd was shuffling through a stack of papers. He looked up and saw her: big brown eyes, lashes fluttering, braces catching every light in the store.
“I see. Yes, we are hiring right now, just a temporary thing. But let me get you an application, just a second,” he said, pushing back the hand she had extended with her resume and walking to the back of the store.
He hired her 3 days later and on the 4th day he knew it hadn’t been a mistake, but that it also had been. She was a hard worker, albeit a bit clumsy at times. There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t knock something over with an elbow or a hip or that she didn’t step on someone’s foot or that she didn’t accidentally hang up a telephone call when taking an order. It was endearing. She was endearing; so much different from Becca, his wife, and yet they both had a similar laugh, the kind where it sounded as though they’d been shocked into hysterics and then slowly subdued into a light chuckle. The whole thing made him uneasy.
Constructive criticisms and other musings always appreciated!
CJ was really busy the entire time I stayed with him, which was unfortunate, but I understood. The freelancer life must be quite the hustle. After getting settled in to my new home away from home, he took me to the corner bodega and we got a cheap breakfast – egg and cheese on a roll. For some reason, every sandwich in New York City is automatically cheaper if served on a roll. Regular sliced bread or some other variation seems to almost always automatically incur additional fees and I kind of wonder what kind of bizarre deal the city as a whole gets on these rolls. Or worse, I wonder if anyone has the real ingredients list for these mystery carbs that sustained me for a good part of my NY adventure. Regardless, they taste fine and at $2 for a breakfast sandwich, there’s really no need to continue wondering.
After brunch, we walked down the street to get a key made for me, which was fortunate since it allowed me the freedom to come and go as I pleased, without getting locked out (which, unfortunately, was a scenario that I encountered twice later on in my trip – more on that later, in detail). I asked CJ where I might go about buying some second hand shoes since I only thought to bring one pair of shoes (and a pair of flip flops) for my adventuring. He showed me a few places and then he went home and I opted to go hunt down some new footwear. Two thrift shops in, I found a comfortable pair of sneakers and a cheap pair of shorts, since I had underestimated the heat when I was packing back in Miami. Living my whole life in a sub-tropical climate, I figured i’d prepared for 26 years for summer conditions anyplace. But I was wrong. There’s a definite difference between the heat in Miami, which we constantly avoid by never going outside unless we’re in bikinis jumping in large bodies of water, and heat in a New York City subway, basement, or basically anywhere in that city during the summertime.
New (old) shoes in tow, I decided to head in to Manhattan. I’d read about a bar that gave free bread and cheese during happy hour in the Village and I figured that’d make for an excellent lunch/dinner. When I got in to the area, I realized it was much too early and feeling famished, I decided to pop in to the pizza joint near the bar and had a delicious slice of NY’s finest. When I finally made it to the bar, it wasn’t what I was expecting. Excellent beer list, but chock full of yuppies who all seemed to be running in the same pack. Wearing my thrift finds and about a pint of sweat, I began feeling out of place and letting insecurities get the best of me. I stuck to my cellphone and began texting my friends in the city.
There was Mark, whom i’d stayed with last year for a brief stint, who had a girlfriend now. I was almost sure we wouldn’t end up hanging out. Not because we weren’t friends, but also because we weren’t really good friends. There had been a short-lived semi-intense meeting of the minds with us which wound up fizzling into nothingness when it became painfully apparent that we probably weren’t meant for each other. And there’s just always that unspoken rule that you almost always end up staying away from ex-flings once they have new, steady relationships, so I didn’t press too hard for the company.
Then there was Carlo, a good friend from high school, who was also living with a girlfriend. He was good people, but like most New Yorkers, severely busy. I would get to see him later on luckily.
And then of course, there was the DJ. Anyone who’s known me for a while knows about the DJ. If you’ve ever had a long-term, non-relationship with someone, maybe you know what I’m talking about. He’s that guy that for some reason you’ve never really been able to shake. Time passes, relationships come and go, and there he always is, kinda smug, always sharp, but only showing just enough interest in your friendship that it makes you almost wish you never met them. But then you see them again and you don’t know what to do with yourself because it always feels like regardless of all the other bullshit in the world, this was the person you should’ve been able to have something with, but you also realize that it would never actually happen in reality. Yeah, that guy. More on him later.
So I texted one and then the other and then the other and then texted friends and proceeded to empty my wallet into some really great tasting microbrews. An older gentleman sat next to me and began chatting me up about beer. His name was John and he had just retired a few days ago at the not-so-old age of 63. He would be the first of two recent retirees I would spend hours conversing with. He recommended beers and then bought me a few but he didn’t act like a creep so I was fine with the arrangement. We talked to people who came to the bar and left and made recommendations according to their tastes. After a while, I realized that I never even got my free bread and cheese, as it was never set out at the bar, but rather at a small table on the opposite end of the room that had so many guys exchanging business cards that I couldn’t even see it. It was okay though. I had beer and company and that was good enough.
After a few beers, I decided I should head back to Brooklyn and get some shut eye. It had been a long day, after all. On the way back, I got absurdly lost on the train and wandered around in circles a few times and then it began to rain. Rain would become a highly prevalent and not-too-amusing theme for the last month. When I was a little girl, my mother would tell me that people would catch colds if they got caught in the rain. I believed this wholeheartedly growing up to the point that I think I almost psyched myself into always getting sick, or at least developing symptoms, every time I got rained on. If I still believe this old wives tale, let’s just say I would probably be dead considering the amount of times I got soaked in various cities.
The walk back to CJ’s started off somewhat miserable, but after a while, realizing I was in New York and not in Miami, realizing that I was actually traveling, realizing I was working toward making my dreams come true, and realizing that I in fact would not be catching a cold, I said fuck it and slowed down and enjoyed the cold drops of water falling on my head, streaming down my face, making my clothes heavy but my heart light. It reminded me of how fun it was to play in the rain as a kid (right before the faux colds hit). I smiled to myself, hiding under the shelter of bodega awnings whenever I needed to wipe my glasses a bit. I made it back to the apartment and wished I had something to smoke. Everyone was either asleep or not home. I stumbled down into the basement, changed into some dry clothes, and passed out.
(Part 3 coming up soon!)
*Names have been changed more or less to protect the innocent and guilty alike. If you happen to guess real identities, keep it to yourself.
