Piss Off, New York

I’m not going to miss you for the following fucking reasons:

• Rats. Oh god, the rats. They are terrible. Sometimes they make their way into your apartment; other nights they can be seen feasting on other dead rat-roadkill, terrorizing a subway car, or running between trash piles at one in the morning.
• Bed bugs. They suck your blood in the dead of night and hide in bed springs while your away at work, slaving away to afford a Manhattan dwelling space. Speaking of…
• The rent. No one on the island pays less than a grand for 200 square feet.
• Crime. Swear to god the same overweight teenager who swiped my iPhone last year robbed another woman in the LES Chinatown park tonight. Bastard.
• Winter. You haven’t experienced real pain until you’ve walked a mile during a New York winter. I’m talking December, January, February, and March. Bonus if there’s a foot of snow on the ground and/or freezing rain pelting down from the heavens.
• The men. I’ve gone out with some LOSERS.

Black Wednesday

Black Wednesday.

I got to work at 7:45 and knew something was… off center. Like when you forget a teaspoon of salt in a batch of cookies, or your singing just a quarter of a step sharp. People I had never seen before were dressed in business formal and rushing around the VP offices, looking grim and worried. A cheer, the news, a dismissal, and then nothing. A bright afternoon with nothing to be done except make a choice.

I moved to New York three years, two months, and eight days ago. I had a couple thousand dollars, a stack of mediocre resumes, and a window-less apartment in the village. I learned my way around the city with a map and a list of important addresses (Hayley’s apartment, H&M, the library). I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had no idea what I wanted to be. I just wanted to make it in New York.

It feels like the loss of a dream, having to leave. I accomplished everything I set out for, but I never counted on falling in love with this place. I know life is a choice, and I could choose to stay. But I just don’t think I could go through trying to find my way again.

WOW

Guess it will be time to wrap this up soon.

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Free Bird

You would think that after 7 years I would have learned how to say goodbye to Arkansas. But every time I drive through the Ozarks on my way to the airport, I get the same feeling I had when dropped off at summer camp. A sick panic, like when you oversleep or get broken up with. The separation anxiety is familiar, but not any more manageable than it was the week I started college.

The most masochistic factor in all of this is that I chose to leave. It wasn’t like I got shipped off to war or exiled to a foreign country. I high tailed it out of my hometown with a smile on my face and my middle finger hanging out the car window. I never considered the consequences: missing my brother’s entire college experience, my Granny dying, my cousin planning her wedding… family reunions and 21st birthdays. And so I’ve become a weird, long-distance relative, blowing in and out of town every Christmas and 4th of July. Not a member but not excluded.

It’s easy to forget the South in New York City. I work 50-60 hours a week, drink on the off hours, and plan out every weekend so I never really have the time or solitude to analyze my life and realize… that I don’t sing anymore, or paint. I don’t go to church and I use boys just as much as they use me. A free bird, lost in the city smog and just trying to survive.

Will I ever find my way back?

‘I’m a Romantic Schizophrenic’ with the ‘Music of My Soul’

A ‘fantastical,’ fabulous weekend. Mama was in town up from Arkie to get a little buck wild with her now 25-year-old offspring. The rain was fleeting, the beer was flowing, and the cash flow outgoing. I guess I could give you an hourly play by play (complimented by photo reel), but that kind-of blogging doesn’t exactly blow my skirt up. Though I can tell you that I just adore a good musical, and ‘Memphis’ did it up good. Set in the controversial Southern city circa 1950, Memphis is a love story but more importantly: a story about music. Loved. Loved. Loved.

You know what else was fan-fucking-tastic? The Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met. Holy mother of God, that man was a genius. McQueen is notorious for his Fall 1995 runway show ‘Highland Rape;’ also Spring 1994, when he splattered his collection (and models) with blood and dirt.

McQueen was inspired by gothic romanticism, Edgar Allen Poe, and Tim Burton. Some of his pieces are of strong resemblance to sadomasochism and the plights of Scottish people throughout history. McQueen’s main objective however, was to always empower women.

“Love looks not with the eye but with the mind.”

Never Enough Tiiiiiime

It’s summer!!! And my social life is officially a selfish, controlling mother f*cker. Seriously, I have been RUNNING from one event to the next. NYC, Miami, Chicago… Arkansas and the beach are next!

Cheers, maybe I will have a spare minute to update at least once in the next couple of months!

Beauty & Essex

Beauty and Essex is a tapas restaurant hidden behind a pawn shop in the LES. It is three stories, with two bars (not including the champagne lounge in the ladies’ restroom), Gone With The Wind staircases, $25 cocktails, and a chandelier 10 feet long.

It opened this past winter and has been a hot spot ever since the bridge and tunnel caught wind that there was yet another pretentious watering hole in the only neighborhood they can navigate.

The typical celebrities have been spotted dining at B&E: Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, blah blah blah. To me, these people are just posers. They jet set around the world and spend time on movie sets and stages with sold out audiences. They have houses in Aspen, Malibu, and Florence. What the fuck do they know about the Lower East Side? Their publicist probably read about the hot spot in Time Out and sent them to the downtown, immigrant neighborhood to slum it at a speakeasy for a few hours. They probably had a driver drop them off at the front door so they wouldn’t sprain a million dollar ankle on the street garbage.

Wannabes. Get off my block.

Old New York

Old New York can be hard to sniff out in Gotham. What with Disney World neon lights in Times Square instead of sex shops, art galleries replaced by Old Navy in SoHo, and rich yuppies inhabiting the village instead of heroin addicts, one can become a little perplexed wondering ‘what in the FUCK happened to my city?’

Last week I inadvertently stumbled across a little piece of old New York… it was so perfect, so epic, I almost didn’t want to tell anyone. But who reads this blog anyway, right?

Thursday nights. The art galleries in Chelsea. No, I’m not talking about bullshit Chelsea by Bed, Bath & Beyond. This flaming New York neighborhood west of 10th Avenue has not progressed in thirty years. The streets are dark, isolated, and crooked with cobblestones. Hipsters ‘gallery’ hop to take free shots of vodka and mingle with strangers, discussing Tarentino films and the latest Sufjan album until the galleries close at midnight. There is a mystery about West Chelsea that reeks of expensive art and cow’s blood from the old slaughterhouses.

Bad. Ass.

P.S. I am blogging from my iPhone. My PHONE! Isn’t technology amazing?!

A City of Superheroes

When I’m running under the Brooklyn bridge on a foggy night or stepping over a manhole on 5th Avenue, I do not think of Sex and the City or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’m reminded of turtle superheroes and a detective in a canary yellow smoking jacket, flying through the streets of Gotham to save ghost-possessed Sigourney Weaver.

Why? I have no idea. I think I’ll blame it on having a younger brother.