Out with the Old, In with the New

I'm super bittersweet. Everything that should be utter amazingness has a silver lining. Moral hangovers, as I like to call them. But, being the creature of contradiction that I am, I sometimes wake up feeling like all of the previous night's mistakes were the right ones to make. These are my mornings of pure bliss. Sure I may've gotten a bit slurred, maybe went home with a random, probably spent all of my food money, but it was worth it. Walking on sunshine so please clear the sidewalk. (Full disclosure: Sometimes I'm just still drunk but I take what I can get.)

I'd love to resolve to wake up in this mental state after every everlasting night next year but I'm way too realistic for that. Instead, I'll indulge in a little reminiscing of the years I began on Cloud 9, confident that I could block all blows no matter what punches life might throw.

2000
Everyone said the world was going to end. Big. Fucking. Deal. My first apartment and everything I owned had burned less than two weeks before. My world was already in shambles so I was RTR in the worst possible way. 18-years-old, fresh off of house arrest, nothing to lose. Atlanta was not ready. Of course we waited until the last possible second to book our room so, naturally, we ended up at the Ritz paying premium rates. I was the eldest and, thus, in charge. I Sharpie'd my name and phone number on each of the boys' arms (this would become tradition), donned my black leather/red fur Guess coat then hit Underground. Never mind the smeared residue of a few hundred dollars on the bathroom counters or the bottles littering every other disposable tabletop. Like I said, it was the end of the world and we were still heady off the late 90s boom. Fuck the Ritz-Carlton. Blur, blur, blur, then I started losing guys something serious. As it turns out, a certain someone had engaged all the others in getting rid of a significant number of stamps. All good and well except it was snowing, vulnerable stamps were in pockets, sweaty coke hands were in pockets and, well, the rest is history. It was like herding delirious cats. Finally (finally) I rounded up the crew just as the Peach dropped and pandemonium broke out. 10 candied, bedecked big bodies whipped onto Peachtree Street in formation with bass so deep the buildings echoed. The streets shut down. It was Freaknik on uppers. The police cavalry closed in with their pepper spray and pretty soon everyone scattered. If there was one thing I knew how to do then, it was run. I ended up with a rag-tag crew on the other side of 85 around MLK, heel gone and fur ripped. Eventually I made it back, talked the front desk into a 3pm check-out and semi hooked-up with a kid with a tongue ring. All my boys eventually stumbled in with only one emergency phone call from a concerned stranger at a pay phone. The next afternoon we dipped quickly, stopped for $3 pizza buffet at Cici's then quite nearly ruined our year (and life) in a domestic dispute with a neighborhood meth head at the gas station 10 miles from home. I slept a full 24 hours then woke up to make my 2000 time capsule that never got buried. Inside I placed a Crown Royal bag, a chewed up glow-stick and one quarter, all I had left.

More New Year's Eve stories to purge. Stay tuned...

Strangers with Cigarettes

Life, I suppose, is linear but my memory is not. One thing leads to the next to the next. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about and, even if you don't, you're going to have to deal because I'm rewinding just a bit. September 2009, to be exact. That would be the month I officially lost my New York virginity...

I'd been to the city before but with a school group led by an uber-chipper McDonald's owner so I don't count it so much. Highlights include roping my mother into chaperoning so I could smoke in the hotel room and buying an entire briefcase of fake Movados to sell on the Block when I got home. I went home, applied to NYU and put a skyline pic with the Twin Towers on my senior yearbook page. Then something happened and I ended up in Miami for 10 years. Whatever. I'm distracting myself.

So, back to 2009. I was in the Big Big City to see an art opening in DUMBO. I didn't know the artist opening at the time (friend of a friend steez) but I'm always down for a random adventure in a new city. I totally expected to be spending the long weekend with Athens Neo-Hippies but ended up in a group of certifiable Rednecks. They got schwasted and chanted "Tennessee!" in bars. They loved The Levee and made out with skinny Hipsters that probably got mad Ironic Points that night. Some of them had female mullets. But, even though they called me "uppity," it was all good. Not bad people, just not my people and that was probably a good thing. Expand the horizons, you know.



Had dinner with James Rosenquist. Watched the sunrise from the Williamsburg Bridge with total randos. Thrifted in Williamsburg. Went to Max Fish with an old roommate, ate Pomme Frites and ended up sleeping in some 4-year-old's bunk bed in an Upper Eastside doorman building. Bloodied my feet in cool boots and saw, like, the edge of Central Park when I made it 10 minutes before sunset. Usualness.



Then, on the last night, there was the Trouble and Bass 3-year Anniversary at Le Poisson Rouge. I hollowed my eyes out with super zombie red shadow (which makes my greens glow), wore my guidette disco t-shirt (pre-Jersey Shore, naturally) and downed two Sparks and a 40 of OE prior to setting out solo. Setting myself up for the spiral. What's new?



The party itself was a blur in the way most fantastical parties are. T&B swallowed my soul; I swallowed lots and lots of Tropical Homos. I lost my wallet and found it. My long-lost friends found me then I lost them. I stumbled out to street lights long after the club closed because, you know, I was talking to my new friends and they didn't kick me out.

Then, all of a sudden, I realized I was seeing tequila tracers and had no idea how to get back to Marcy on the train. I would most definitely get lost/raped/robbed. I had zero Blackberry comprehension. I decided to post up on a street corner and wait for a familiar face. But, I was out of Parliaments. I couldn't cope. That's when I met the Russians.



These two dudes were total Boiler Room material -- trenches to the ground, wrinkle-free, shinny shoes, fat cigars, kinda hot. They bought my cigarettes, they had a car and they were headed to Brooklyn. Win-win-win. But, of course, there was a catch. Isn't there always? I had to drive. Whatever I had this.

I will never understand how I made it back to my Hotel Toshi digs but I did. Let's just say the one-eye-closed trick is mad complicated with all those red rails and passing trains on the Williamsburg Bridge. But, in my stupor I was a magician and somehow I pulled the rabbit from the hat. The real trick would be getting myself out of the car and the clutches of Brighton Beach's finest. It took lots of finessing and lots of false starts. I got one of the best voicemails in history from the crew assuming I was kidnapped and alerting me to a sketchy black car parked and running on the street below. Little did they know, I kinda got a thing for sketchy vehicles. Finally, my taxi to the airport arrived promptly at 8:30am to extricate me. So that was that night and that was it for me and New York...for another month. Never talked to those Russians again but they're somewhere in my Little Black Box of Business Cards so maybe I should make a call. Or not.

Unless you want to hear about my glorious and completely unplanned layover in Charlotte, that's the end of this story.

And so it began...

Live with Eccentric Writers
Date: 2009-10-21, 2:25AM

Oh, hi there!
We're looking for a new roommate, as the old one is moving out soon. "We" in this case is myself and the other roommate, both males, late '20s.
The other roommate mainly works as a chef in high-end French restaurants, but is also a rather accomplished B-movie screenwriter, actor, and production assistant - he co-wrote and appeared in some terrible comedy/porno called XXXorcist, for instance, along with a bunch of other stuff for Burning Angel plus such other random things as late-night Italian horror television marathon lead-ins - "Bikini Bandits" and that sort of degenerate thing. He's also the author of a book called The Hobo's Guide, which he wrote at the age of 19 (he's 30 now) drawing on his experiences as a homeless teenager and all-around scoundrel, and is currently working on a couple of comedy projects. He's also in the middle of a divorce from this crazy woman he married, which is not to say that she was necessarily at fault just because she was crazy as I think he may have actually drove her crazy himself. The guy's a pornographer, after all. But he's not a douchebag pornographer who wears a bunch of rings and shit; he does ironic porn. He's an ironic pornographer. Very well.
I'm a freelance writer and regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, The Onion (just features for the NYC print edition, not satire), and Skeptic, wrote a political humor book that came out in 2007 and working on another that will be out next year, serve as director of communications for a political action committee that advocates for the Establishment Clause, and working on a couple of other things here and there.
The apartment is quite handsome, with hardwood floors and a big arch in the ceiling and that's it. We're a two-minute walk from the Flushing stop on the JMZ and an eight minute walk to the Morgan stop on the L, as well as less than a block away from a laundromat and two blocks from a grocery store. Directly across the street is Lumenhouse, a popular Bushwick gallery/studio/all-around venue run by a charming couple who live above the place. The husband fellow even gave me a basketball pump when I was in need of one.
We're looking for someone who's intelligent, creative, laid-back, and reasonable. You must enjoy reading. You can be loud if you'd like; we're usually not, but we enjoy noises.
As noted, the roommate is an incredible chef and he'll make us whatever we want to eat. We've got a Wii, a rocking chair, a punching bag, and a shelf of books consisting mostly of history. We spend most evenings drinking and plotting against our various political enemies. In a couple of weeks we'll begin doing a weekly ten-minute show from our living room for a popular neighborhood website/blog thingy for which I write, and you can be a guest if you're clever or cute or in the room at the time.
Get in touch if you're awesome.

Park Street at Broadway

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From: Tiffany
To: [name withheld]
Date: Thur, Oct 22, 2009, 12:24a
Subject: I'm awesome... (re: room for rent)

General fact but specifically in regards to your roommate search. So, where to start?

I'm female, 27 years of age and originally from Georgia, where I currently reside for various reasons that I can't remember. I spent the last 10 years, give or take, in Miami doing the whole journalist thing for alt-weeklies, regional mags and various web entities. As a result, I've become quite the expert on blown-out nightlife, real estate inflation, dirty (but highly amusing) politicians, preening artists, litigious neighborhood associations and avoiding the Commie conversation in mixed company. As for publications that you might recognize, I was Flavorpill's Nightlife Editor for about three years and penned a few chapters in Blackbook's Miami City Guide for two years running. Nothing too grand. The plan for this year was to escape to nothingness and actually write something substancial but the current economy has left me in a position requiring various creative hustles and more bland freelance assignments. I'm sure my proclivity for red wine and spontaneous, costly adventures has nothing at all to do with the anything. I'm an expert conversationalist and enjoy intelligent banter. I know when to use the right fork but also have no problem talking my way out of a sticky situation in an alley in the wee hours. There are only three magazines I pick up with any regularity: Vanity Fair, GQ and US Weekly. As I child I subscribed to Atlantic Monthly, Robb Report, Spin and Seventeen. Make of that what you will.

As for me as a roommate, I'm extremely laid back, not noisy, definitely a night owl, relatively neat and very independent. My vices are wholly unoriginal -- alcohol and cigarettes. The latter I hope to be rid of upon my arrival in the city as they are such a waste of money, require unnecessary trips into the cold and make me breathe like an old hag when climbing subway stairs. I've had more roommates than I can count on all my fingers and toes. None of them have anything bad to say about me. My rent/utilitity/etc payments are always prompt. I've had my clothes lent out, my furniture "borrowed" and the last of my smuggled chocolates eaten, much to my dismay, so I always err on the side of respect to avoid unnecessary, deserved wrath and becoming "that roommate."

So, that's it. I can move in by Nov. 1 and I'm sure I can rope a friend into dropping off the rent/deposit and picking up a key beforehand if that's necessary. Unfortunately, I can't come by to meet and see the place beforehand as I have about twenty million things to do and cover in the next week and a half. That's usually the sticker but, in lieu of me actually coming by, feel free to web stalk me. I'm most often found here: http://www.twitter.com/rainey305. And, naturally, you can always e-mail back or call me.

t

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From: [name withheld]
To: Tiffany
Date: Thurs, Oct 22, 2009, 2:01a
Subject: Re: I'm awesome... (re: room for rent)

Hi, Tiffany-

You're certainly superior to our other applicants, and we've had some damned good applicants (we've also had some bad ones, particularly the fellow who started by noting that he was in "post-graduate limbo" and whose e-mail I promptly deleted out of righteous contempt). It's particularly swell that you've done a bunch of event/venue listings type stuff; I've been doing the same thing on and off for years, and in fact still do to some extent; I can actually hook you up with at least one nice little paying gig doing similar stuff for this site for which I've been writing lately.

I just left you a message but I'm assuming you're asleep or some such; give me a ring tomorrow if you can.

Word