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.