Dear Diary (Ignore magazine, 2007)

With Girls on air now and Lesley Arfin co-writing, my review of Dear Diary for Ignore magazine (RIP) back in 2007 suddenly seems slightly (barely) relevant. Posting it here for those curious as to why it didn't impress me oh so much: 

A few thoughts crossed my mind after letting the magnetized closure on Lesley Arfin’s Dear Diary snap shut. First, where can I cop a bundle quickly? (Forget about it) Second, how ridiculous would it be to get a call about jamming someone’s locker in sixth grade? (Extremely) And last, was I this lame in adolescence? (Pretty much)

Though Arfin’s collection of diary entries and updates hit mild peaks of interest—junior high girl-on-girl action and a long, lazy summer of opiate love—there’s a reason that the diaries of suburbanite girls rarely get published. They’re boring. If you’ve lived through the agonizing years of adolescence, then you’re over the whiny self-deprecation and novelty of getting felt up in the back bedroom. Those still in the teenage trenches are too absorbed with themselves to give a fuck about a girl that lived in the dark ages of raves and Zima. The person that seems to get the most out of Dear Diary is the Vice columnist herself. Arfin confronting every demon in her childhood closet smacks of the 12 steps but (thankfully) without the usual NA lingo.

All that being said, the first thing I did when I finished the book was pull out my own diary. Part of me was pretty pissed that I slept on the opportunity to rake in mad dough from something that’s been stashed in the top of my closet for so many years. Diaries and drugs are hot right now. A bigger part of me wondered if I was as clueless and misguided in my formative years. Affirmative. Though Arfin was a Long Island JAP and I was playing out New Jack City fantasies in small town Georgia, we could’ve been fast friends. Where she was constantly downing herself, I was so cocky it was embarrassing to read. She took drugs, I sold them. It was like yin and yang. But despite the obvious differences, our diaries were so similar they could be sold as a set. We both got into multiple girl fights, fell in love with unattainable guys and followed losers down the perilous path of drugs, music and promiscuity. I think every good American girl does at some point.

This is not a book for intellectuals nor will it replace Go Ask Alice as required reading any time soon. At best it’s a romanticized ode to H and a reminder that none of us were as cool as we liked to believe back in the days of backpacks and bubble gum.

The Endless Blur (Or, A Week In The Life) #PPP

It ends with you sitting on a dilapidated Chinatown Bus at a random exit off the Jersey Turnpike waiting for some bitch to return from the bathroom where she is most likely glassy-eyed on her back with a needle dangling. That part is easy to pinpoint. Its the moment where you are suddenly outside of yourself just long enough to wonder how in the fuck the last few days went down and how you ever ended up sardined on a creaking deathtrap amidst dozens of foul-smelling strangers plotting to coup the driver that's giving this girl more leeway than her $20 fare should allow. Yes, that moment is concrete. Its where this particular spiral began its marvelous plummet that is the puzzler.

I suppose it began with a random Facebook message. Doesn't it all? It was September and I'd just returned to New York from a self-imposed exile following the last time my days had run drunkenly together and ended rather, um, interestingly. A friend on tour with Of Montreal was passing through the following night. Did I want tickets to the show? Sure, why not. My father was in town but, by that point, his dry drunk mood swings were wearing a bit thin. I needed out. The show itself was as fantastical as one would expect and I got rather sloshed between the requisite train beer, the bottles backstage and a stop off at some tiki bar in midtown. By the time I made it back to Brooklyn I was definitely well beyond the point of no return and not in any hurry to make it home to Father. I Twitter requested an after and it was @replied in short order. I made my way to a random door on Grand Street, played Spades and accidentally cheated, then totally blew it when I thought I'd left the cell phone that I found moments later in my coat pocket. And, somehow in the midst of all this, I gained a follower of the Ginger variety. We split a pack of Winstons and argued excessively before I finally resigned myself to the fact that I would be returning home to my father (and roommate's father and middle-aged brother) at 8am with a random dude in tow.

We made it home just in time for coffee. It all felt very The View on testosterone. Three men on a couch volleying jokey asides our way in their discussion of whatever. I have a tendency to slip into this hyper-awareness when I'm drunk that makes me believe I am starring in a television show or, at the very least, being webcammed. This was definitely happening and I honestly think it went down very much outside of my imagination. Ginger, naturally, sat down and launched into real estate conversations with my father. The bullshit exchanged between these two was legendary and I was hanging in there until I got a text from JFK. My girl from San Francisco, E, had landed and was en route via public transit. Fuck. I excused my self to take a quick "nap."

Several hours later I awoke to the beginnings of dusk. E was cleaning my house, Ginger was long gone and we were having a barbecue. Um, okay? The barbecue went the way most barbecues do -- beer, food, talk, more beer. I think it was the "more beer" part that got us in trouble. Some idiot poured beer onto people's heads from the roof before getting an open container ticket from the 83rd precinct. Ok, it was me. At least I didn't chuck a bottle at the Puerto Rican Puberty Posse on the stoop across the street and ignite a war of broken bottles and Spanglish threats that ended in shirts torn off Superman-style and heads ducking low to avoid open windows. We all survived...barely.

The next few days were spent pulling my father from beneath the wagon wheels. Holes were punched in the walls of Roberta's, there was some hungover puking on the A train and there was lots of getting locked out of my own home/car. I had a slight side adventure at a job interview-cum-after party-cum-rooftop rendezvous in Hell's Kitchen but that was something else entirely. I got a nasty corneal infection and copped an eye patch to match my ankle brace. Hectic week.

Then it was time for the Virgin FreeFest in Baltimore. I was just this side of dead by the time we loaded into my Jeep and hit the road but sometimes you just have to push through. I'm a trooper like that, unfortunately. We arrived just before dark, applied make-up in the visor mirror and got dropped off at the Virgin Records Pre-party. I ate lots of sliders supplied by cater-waiters and tried to not drink. That lasted, oh, two hours? Eventually I succumbed to open bar Diet Tropical Homos and pretty much fell in love with the shirtless, wisp of a lead singer for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Of course I lost everyone in the post-party tumult and was in the process of securing a seat on the Artist Bolt Bus when I was discovered and returned to my shitty hotel room for a few hours of sleep.

In my hungover hurry, I'd only packed two t-shirts to choose from for FreeFest Day, one bearing a pirate and the other a Oakland Raiders jersey hybrid. All well and good except now I was really depending on that eye patch and, um, this wasn't Halloween. I proceeded to the Baltimore fairgrounds pretty much blind. You know how everything kind of gets blurry, traces and sways just before you blackout? That's pretty much my level of vision without corrective lenses. And the pain was searing. This day could not end well.

I'd like to say I saw lots of amazing bands and totally discovered some new music but, yeah, I didn't really leave backstage. There were hammocks surrounding a serenely green pond, lots of free alcohol, outlets to charge my Blackberry, a bounce house and a midday Low Country Boil poured onto table upon newspaper-covered table for everyone to devour. I've really got to develop some musical talent. I did wander the wooded golf cart trails a few times to check the scenes (okay, the variety in bars and bottles) but I stumbled upon nothing more than a few super random conversations and my Jamaican Arch-Nemesis. Eventually the headliners were finishing their encores, fireworks were bursting overhead and I discovered that some of the New York Twitterati was in attendance. Dare I make that final leap down the rabbit hole? Or, more appropriately put, after 12-odd hours of drinking pretty much everything intoxicating known to man, could I possibly go back to the hotel and shack up with a couple? You know that 90s beer slogan, "Know when to say when?" Well, I don't.

I joined the crew, motley though they were. They'd just finished painting a wall and were popping ecstasy like TicTacs. I had a conveniently empty backpack and a surprising lack of paranoia. Concession stands were raided and we made it back to the Rape Van with all the makings of a side street bodega slung over my shoulders. After that it gets a little dark. Like dimly-lit-van-on-dark-highways-with-way-too-many-heads-smashed-in dark. Finally we stopped at some random party. I had, like, one beer then got cut off. All good. The Intern couldn't get in so I had company in the fenced in alley. I'm the queen of lurking outside spots usually because I'm chain smoking and definitely because you catch way more strange character conversations that way. In the end that's what its all about anyway -- encounters with the most interesting of nightcrawlers. Sometime around here The Intern and I got entrepreneurial and found a calculator with which we were going to negotiate the market value of the remaining alcohol stash in my backpack. That little plastic calculator -- now Sharpie'd #PPP -- still serves me well to this day. Ahh, souvenirs.

Eventually S emerged and was down for adventure so he and I traversed the tree-lined streets -- it was quite quaint there -- listening for the tell-tell signs of a house party. Found! S let himself into a cookie cutter bungalow playing loud music while I stood on the porch smoking. We were very quickly ejected. I think there were, like, 10 people inside. Would love to hear their take on the situation...very curious. I should post a Missed Connection.

Finally everyone was ready to go and we loaded into the Rape Van once again. This time joined by Jamaican Arch-Nemesis and two broads that I want to call dumb but actually can't remember so well so I'll hold off in case its you. Obviously I wasn't happy about our new additions and remember being quite the bitch about the whole situation. Hate that dude. All I wanted to do was crawl back into that narrow little trunk space between the third seat and the back door with P. But, by this point, he was screaming and flipping out in a way that made me want a needle of whatever it is they use in movies to chill people out when they don't have straight jackets at the ready. I vaguely recall blue lights, everyone trying to bail at one point or another, and someone encouraging seat belts (yeah, right). Super surprised I'm even remotely alive.

Perhaps the sharpest memory I have of that entire night is arriving back at the hotel. It was like a sailor reaching dry ground...immense relief. I've only felt this way once before and that was after accidentally driving while I was tripping. Obviously some kind of memory suppression concerning that fateful ride. Yeah. Walked to get cigarettes and more alcohol (really?) then went out on this cute little pier overlooking an expanse of glassy water. Why did I think this was the Delaware? Would they put a pre-fab Sheraton/Hilton/Chain Lux-ish Hotel on the same river Washington pioneered? Blame it on the alcohol.

So, I'm hot, dusty, happy to be alive. Of course, I jump in with P and O. Swimming seemed so sublime. Too bad it was a waist-deep swamp and I immediately sank into oily black drudge. I'm talking muck to the knees, shiny spots floating on the surface and weeds clinging. P was all about it and seeing him flit about yards from us like some naked man porpoise made me stick it out for longer than I should have. Looked so fun! I even took a few hits from the bottle of $4 whiskey he'd been frolicking about with. Yes, I drank the water. But, once he started catapulting old Dell monitors at us from the depths, I figured it was time to make it to safe ground. Everyone else was in varying stages of fade, some more pronounced than others. Time to seek shelter. Then P pops out screaming and streaking across the manicured turf that all industrial complexes have. Maybe it was just me, but I think everyone was just too shocked/stoned to really stop him. I think we were paralyzed in laughter that was both appropriate and utterly irresponsible. Que Sera.

Showered with that cheap hotel soap that totally didn't remove the streaks of crude oil all over my body. Slept in a wet clothes in a King-sized bed with too many bodies. It all felt very Hardy Boys Gansevoort circa WMC 2009. Woke up to dozens of missed calls from the people that were going to leave me. Borrowed a shirt from M and caught a cab to the D.C. Metro. Met my crew, took my seat and realized people were snapping cell phone pics. What the fuck? Looked down to realize my newly acquired t-shirt read, "Get Loose." Add that to the crazy bedhead I had from sleeping with wet hair, my still-dripping shorts and my swollen shut eye and it becomes totally apparent why I'm fodder for Worker Bees early on a whatever-day-it-was morning. Ate some dumplings then ascended the bus stairs. Three or so hours later I found myself at that fateful rest stop awaiting the return of some girl that would never show, realizing that almost two weeks had passed without my knowing.

So, you see, the beginning is always more complicated than the end. This should have been a short story about a night but one night always turns into two, then three. Before you know it you have thousands of words to tell a tale that is remembered as nothing more than an eternal thread of events that never really ends, only breaks in deep hibernation once and again. I'm still undecided as to whether this is a happy life or a sad one. Either way, I have stories to tell.



(If you made it this far, you should totally give Dostoevsky or Faulker a go. You got the chops for it. I feel like I owe you a cookie or something.)

Photos jacked from @slutlust. Read his version of FreeFest Night Here: http://tinyurl.com/3dtvmkx

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