I am not a success story by any measure, but one thing I've realized is that I'm never going to ask someone to tell me if I'm good enough. I feel like even wavering on the memoir project is just me waiting for people to tell me how to be myself. That doesn't work really well.
I'm just going to keep being Brendan Sullivan and not asking people if I'm doing it the right way.
When Lucy Elliot died in high school she was the first pretty girl who ever spoke to me on my first day in Junior High.
Literally, my first day of Junior High School the prettiest girl in school came up to the punk with long purple hair and said, "You must be Jay''s little brother. Do you have someone to eat lunch with?" The first time I ever had a name to drop was when the girls from my church-group asked how Junior High was going. Did I have first lunch?
Yes, I said. I have first-lunch and I am slated to sit with Lucy--who was known among the girls on the back of the bus as the only woman in the world who had ever given a blow job to a man in Connecticut. Lucy Elliot would always look out for me and I loved her as my inverse. I was a loser that no one cared about; she a winner that everyone wanted to love.
My sophomore year she died in a car accident. I hitched a ride with her guidance counselor to visit the driver in the hospital. She was the survivor of an awful, unnecessary accident on a dark road with a couple of prep school boys from Avon Old Farms. I remember feeling like I was not cool enough to visit this girl, but then I saw her in the hospital where my Dad worked. She wore the degrading hospital gown and I could see from the flower and cards that the only people who came to visit her thusfar were teachers and her parents' friends. Killing the most notorious girl in school wasn't cool. And dropping by her killer and telling her that we were glad she still existed was even less cool.
I went to Lucy's funeral at The Barn, which was a church run by a guy named Brad who my dad worked with as a consultant for Arthur Anderson in the 80s. Brad was a pastor that I looked up to in Junior High. His head-pastor's daughter was the first girl I ever dated. She broke up with me--our relationship was based on a dare--and that hurt just as much as any relationship would ever hurt again.
Lucy's funeral happened too early. I went to the overcrowded barn where her last rites were held in my best clothes, which included the suit the Navy gave me for being a Sea Cadet in the Clinton years. I wish that I had other thoughts in my head. I already wish that I were a better person than I was at 14 when I came to the internment of the first girl that ever spoke to me with regard.
But I remember looking around that packed funeral service and thinking, I wish there were three hundred people gathered in a church and talking about how great I once was.
The reason that I do not write short-stories is that I do not feel that I ever need to ask permission from a small band of believers to accept me as a person who had just said something out loud.
My scant publications do not speak for any body of work than anyone might be sitting on.
During Fashion Week last September I was backstage at the Geren Ford show. Reporting on fashion is something I do, but not very professionally. People enjoy reading my fashion writing because like most people I don't understand stitching, but I can look at someone and decide if they look ridiculous or stylish. It ain't rocket science.
Honestly I don't have very good vision, which serves me very well. Yesterday I was at Soho House with a friend and I realized that if I took a look around the room I might catch the glance of several captains of respectable industries (Soho House is a Manhattan country club which made the decision this year not to renew the memberships of anyone who works in finance. It also has a pool on the roof--woohoo!) but then all I would accomplish is making someone feel uncomfortable. Anyway, this means that I don't really have a handle on which shade of blue might match, so while everyone else is in their designated folding chair I usually get sent backstage with the models and watch their stylists spray and powder them.
The Geren Ford show had seventy models, all in heels and most of them actually taller than I--which is unsettling. I went down the line (modeling is a surprisingly boring profession--your job is to wait around and not wrinkle anything) and just asked the girls where they were from, how they got mailed to New York for Fashion Week. Many of them were abducted from Kansas and the Urkraine. All of them tired from making the most of their week in New York.
At about 2:40 I had to leave because I still worked 3 nights a week as a bartender then.
I was trotting down 23rd St. trying to catch a glimpse of The Chelsea Hotel when, out of nowhere, I saw Leigh. We had not seen each other in person since the previous April when we were "trying to work things out." My heart exploded in my chest and even just walking required no small amount of duct tape. It's Leigh!!
And it was perfect. I'm dressed for a fashion event but late for work. I will say hello, I will be taller than she remembers, I will have to leave immediately.
She looked fantastic. I kept thinking that she must have been getting more modeling work because her shoulders were taut and smooth. I discovered that I was running.
She must have also been late for something because she walked very fast. LEIGH!!--so excited. As I skulked up behind her I took a moment. Leigh always had a very severe countenance. She's the eldest of four and she always has this look on her face as though she wonders if her younger sister turned in that term paper or if her brother heard back from his girlfriend. It's what attracted me to her. The girl had a big heart.
Just as I'm about to tap her on the shoulder I look at the shoulder in front of me. Didn't Leigh have an Obama tattoo on that shoulder?
I'm not behind Leigh at all. I'm in the middle of fashion week in Manhattan and I've just hallucinated one more leggy blonde girl. I have problems.
The apparition of faces in the metro, petals on a wet, black bough. I couldn't stop thinking about her. I went to my bullshit job (this being a monday) and the new waitress gives me a look. "What's wrong, Brendan?"
"Nothing I--" one of my big problems is that I'm more comfortable with strangers that I am with my own friends "--I thought I ran into my ex girlfriend."
This new waitress had just moved in from Toronto to become a big famous actress. She had skin lesions from a tragic hair bleaching accident. Whenever there is a blonde waitress in New York City one might wonder if I have tried to sleep with her. Sam was cute, but by now I have met a thousand former drama-club girls and I wish them all the best but I also wish I could mail them back to their parents and help them open a bakery so they could give up on acting. "Awww, you really miss her, don't you?" Sam says
"I--I don't know. I thought it was getting better."
"She must be a great girl," Sam volunteers. "Do you think about her all the time?"
"Yeah. It's just hard." I must have spent 15 minutes talking to this damn girl. This was an awful job I had doing service bar for an army of nineteen prostitutes. One of them was actually Leigh's roommate so I had to watch my mouth because she's a fiery Korean girl who would ream me out if I ever expressed an emotion in her section. We've since made up but whatever.
Right then my phone buzzed. "What is it?" the new waitress asked?
"What?"
"Don't give me that."
"It's..." I couldn't believe this. "It's from Leigh. The message says, 'I just thought I saw you in Sunac and my heart jumped into my throat. Not sure what that means.'"
"That's insane! You mean the same day that you thought you saw her and you went nuts she thought she saw you and went crazy?"
"This is crazy," I went to the bathroom to compose my reply.
A couple weeks later I bought my Jetblue unlimited pass, quit my job and left bartending for good. It's just not a part of who I am anymore. I would rather pay high interest on my credit card and count myself lucky to be able to make a living as an artist.
Leaving was the best decision I've made and although things have gotten difficult since then I have also been lucky enough to take myself seriously in the right ways. I don't mind being 27 and thinking of myself as a grown up.
Part of leaving bartending was just not returning to the scene of the crime. Doing the same exact job you had at 22 is tiring and I had lost my erection for it long ago. When you're young you can go to it every night and think that tonight's the night and the cast of some Broadway show will take over and never leave and throw you twenties and all the girls who talk to you won't have shrill voices and will volunteer their phone numbers. When you're old you just hope it rains and you can leave at 2.
For my last shift ever I was very lucky. Sunny fall day lead to a spot at East Service bar at 230, an outdoor bar on the 20th floor terrace of a building in the Flatiron. I got a nice tan from 3 to 8. When the sunset the barback brought me a forgotten bottle of Herradura Anejo, which is basically a fine Scotch made from tequilla. It's delicious. I wish I didn't have to finish this story because I would walk to the package store with a straw right now and bring my own paper bag.
Everyone wanted to do a shot with Dirty (I have mentioned before that my nickname at work was "Dirty Nerdy" and I had a reputation because the only black pants I owned were from a video shoot I did and they gave me really flattering camel toe. The girls used to rub it for good luck). I let them live with the legend that I had gotten in on the ground floor of a new club opening. I made no small show of the gorgeous new girl I was dating. People make up their own assumptions and whenever you return to a place you've once worked it is always satisfying and nostalgic to tell the others there is a world out there on the other side of the bar.
I cleaned my last ice well, put my liquor bottles in a bus tub, pulled the rag out of my belt and realized that I was finally done. I felt like no amount of high-fives would make it feel official. I did a shot of Herradura Anejo with anyone who had a mouth. Doing service bar means you don't have to count any money or turn in tips so when you get clocked out you can be as wasted as you want.
My phone rang. About a million years ago I ran this iPhone app that put everyone's facebook photo as their ID photo when they called. I never ran it more than once. This buzzing thing in my pocket lit up and displayed a happy picture of me in a three piece suit on New Years Eve, DJ'ing with a beautiful girl next to me. Leigh.
Leigh was calling me.
"Fuck fuck fuck you. How dare you tell Sam a word of this? Don't ever contact me again."
"Who's Sam? What are you talking about?"
"The new waitress. The one who looks like Ladyhawk. You fucking told her about me thinking I saw you in Sunac you fucking fuck. Fuck you. Don't ever contact me again."
"What are you talking about?"
"Sam. The new waitress who works Mondays. Her other job is she's a waitress where I work in Williamsburg. She told me the whole story."
My brain went into flashback mode. Sam in the locker room asking me why I look so glum. Sam in the kitchen during family-meal asking me if that girl who came in last night is my new girlfriend. Sam coming with me to Beauty Bar, never quite leaving my side and never volunteering information about herself. Just questions.
Sam was a newcomer to the city, waiting tables "for now" and one day at the service bar on a brunch shift she chatted up the pretty waitress from Virginia. What else do you do? Oh an actress? Oh and you also work at a club in midtown? Oh, yep. My roommate works there. Watch out for this bartender, he and I just broke up.
"Leigh, no. I thought I saw you the same day. Don't you see you--"
"Fucking fuck fuck you. Don't ever contact me again." I put the lifeless phone in my packet, took my clock out sheet to the office, said goodbye to my few friends at the club. And that was my last night as a bartender.
Epilogue.
When my laptop got smashed last week I borrowed my moms so I could DJ. Then I brought it back to her and I borrowed Theo's. This involved using an ancient external drive of mine. I designed my own DJ system, so using someone else's equipment handicapped me immensely.
I did an intense amount of research because I am a complete Apple dweeb. By all fair standards there should have been a new Macbook Pro delivered at the iPad conference. The ones on the shelves now are from last April which, if we're staying on topic, means that when Leigh and I were "still working it out" and she was fucking that golden retriever of a desk clerk--the processors and hard drives in today's Macbook Pros were just being debuted.
Leigh still has my old PowerMac G4 from Chicago. Actually the only three things I did not get back from her in the divorce were my iPod shuffle, my PowerMac and my Apple Airport Express.
I was walking to a meeting at Soho House with my cane when I realized that I needed a laptop for the weekend. I can't buy a new one because it will be obsolete in weeks and I'll miss out on the upgrade. But I'm a busy person who needs a laptop. I called Leigh, reminding myself of that line in High Fidelity, "I'll leave a nice polite message and she'll never call back."
She does.
"What is it?" Soon I would discover that if it is possible that even though she broke up with me after Havana--I obviously ripped this girl's heart straight out of her chest. Because every one of her stilted sentences was utterly heartless.
"I'm calling to see if you've gotten a new laptop."
"No."
"I just got out of the hospital with a fractured pelvis. I didn't get a spinal injury because I landed on Z0ey," yes my laptop had a nickname between us because when it came in the mail the first 4 letters of its model number spelled out a cute name. "But you still have my old laptop and I need it back so that I can DJ."
"No."
"Look, let's just be grown up about this. You still have your old computer and you're using mine. We can do this a number of ways. You can password protect your files and give me my own account and I can use it for a few months until I get a new one."
"Do you have an external hard drive I can have," she says.
"I don't but we don't have to make this complicated. I don't want to go prying into your pictures and saved passwords. But I need this for work."
"No. Just no. Go to a fucking library."
"It's not for writing," Thanks, by the way, for asking if I completely lost all of my music and writing when the laptop died. "I can still plug in my Macbook to my external monitor. But I do need something for DJ'ing. Just give it back to me for a few weeks and you can leave your files."
"No. I don't want you in my life. I don't want to even see you to give it to you, let alone interact with you enough to get it back."
"Leigh, I wouldn't come to you if I didn't really need your help and if I weren't counting on you to do the right thing here. I have a cane and a limp and a fractured pelvis and I need my laptop back."
"No. Goodbye. Do not contact me again."
The thing about Leigh which I've probably not really discussed before is that I lied to myself for months about the effects of her Bipolar Disorder. I've done an unnecessary amount of soul-searching over this. Before we got together she was suffering from a long winter of depression. It improved greatly with the serotonin increase and joy of new love.
I told myself that we were two halves. Mercutio told me "Nothing is complete without its complement" and that us being different people was like how night and day make up what we call a day or how death makes life complete.
I asked myself one day if I really loved Leigh or if I were just fooling myself because Manic-Leigh was so big hearted and loving. No. I love all of Leigh. Night and Day.
But really I loved having a fun girlfriend, and it didn't hurt that depressive-Leigh was very upfront about how much of a drunk, loser, terrible-writer, thoughtless, self-centered, worthless piece of shit I am. She has the same complaints about me that I do. I hate myself and I'm in love with a girl who also does.
Her bipolar disorder means you never know which Leigh you're going to get. Maybe if she hadn't just gotten out of class or if she had just had a nap she would be loving, caring-Leigh.
Leila explained to me a long time ago that I had developed a classic case of intermittent reinforcement, meaning I was like the ballplayer who had developed a series of superstitions and ways of doing things just right because one time it worked and if I could just do everything perfect things would be fine. But you never know which Leigh you will get.
More often you actually get both.
She calls me back two minutes later, my iPhone ID photo for her is still us. Young and carefree in the DJ booth. I wish my iPhone would change the picture depending on which Leigh was calling. Evil-Leigh with her arm around her new boyfriend, loving-Leigh happy on the beach in Havana. It's actually from the same night that the picture of her Obama tattoo was taken.
Her bipolar disorder is rampant in situations like this. We are in love in Havana, we return and break up. She calls to tell me never to speak to her again, she emails me later to tell me she misses me. She writes a story for Newsweek about why women like jerks and then she calls to tell me I was not all that bad.
She calls to tell me that fine, if I can bring her a hard drive and she can get her files and access them on her PC I can have my own laptop back. I'm not real crazy about this solution. But it's the best we can do. She vacillates again.
"Let me think about it. I'll let you know tomorrow."
"I really need it tonight. I DJ on the weekends now."
"I'll let you know."
I called Theo to see if I could borrow his again. Of course I could, so I hobbled to the package store and got him a bottle of Johnny Walker Gold because that's a thing I do for good friends.
When I got out of the subway at his house I got a text from Leigh, "Final answer is no, absolutely not. Borrow your moms, girlfriends, Whoevers...please don't contact me again for this or anything else." There were a million cathartic ways I could have responded. I could go the legal route to reclaim my own property. I could remind her that she left me for an illiterate moron just because he was prettier than me and by never having original thoughts in his head he was free to shower her with all the attention she craved. That she left him for someone even more worthless. I wanted to recommend that her best chance for survival at this point, as a person waitress-ing herself to death and still finishing her undergraduate degree at 27, would be to find a way to get pregnant by John Edwards.
But I didn't reply.
So that--even though I've been sitting on the ending for months--is how the Leigh story finally ends. In this bullshit epilogue. If this were a novel I were writing I would add one of those Annie Hall final scenes where the doomed lovers make it halfway to the door and then change their minds. I really wish this story had a happy ending because Leigh and I had a long and important relationship. It's not really fair that I have to pretend she wasn't the love of my life or that I became better as a person because of proximity to her.
In retrospect, if I had the option of which bone to break I would not have chosen one which required 11 sterilizing X-Rays of my balls. If I had known that I was in for this many expensive doctors visits watching radiologists squint at black and white, pressed-ham renditions of my ghostly testicles, while they tap the end of a pencil eraser at a transparency of my balls and try to get me to see a hairline fracture in the joint behind it--I would have preferred a broken kneecap.
If you see me on Facebook, just pretend that we're at a party and smile and nod at whatever I post. If you see me at Freddy's tonight: ask me who hung up on me today.
Last night was pretty awesome. I was editing the YA novel at home, celebrating the finish of my top-secret novel and making notes for my upcoming article in Esqire Motherfucking Magazine. Then I spent about fifteen minutes looking over that sentence and wishing I had someone to high-five.
Then my friend who just got out of rehab called me. I feel like we've become better friends since he got out and I think that's partially because his pre-hab friends are a bunch of a-holes. He called to say that he was heading out to the city with his girlfriend and they were going to get dinner in Little Italy at 8:30.
I really love when my friends make early plans on the weekend because I can actually hang. So I met up with him and his girlfriend and their nice friend at Vincent's on Mott. I had the spicy gnocchi and I wanted to take back all those things I've said about Italians.
We were outside smoking and he goes, "No cane!"
"Yep. I went to the doctor yesterday and they said they need more x rays and lots of expensive physical therapy but today I took a hot shower and decided to limp to my gig tonight."
"Are you in a lot of pain?"
"It's hard to say. But I do limp. I think I forgot how to walk normal."
"They give you anything good?" smiled my friend who had to be sedated in a hospital to help him get over his Oxycotin addiction.
"Some muscle relaxers and basically advil. It doesn't do shit. I wear those therma-wraps and take hot showers."
"If you want I could give you one of mine. I'm on buprenorphine to get me through the withdrawals. I have an unlimited prescription and you're more than welcome." He pulled out a prescription bottle and doled out one pill. Then he thought about it and chopped it in half. "Don't drink with it or take any benzies or tranquilizers. You'll feel a lot better. It's sublingual so just let it melt under your tongue."
I tucked it into a folded movie ticket stub and left it in my leather jacket.
At my gig that night the monitor was out. This is a really terrible thing that all places have no sympathy for: but because of the speed of sound you need a speaker right next to you in the booth or all of your mixes will sound like shoes in the dryer. My laptop is shattered still, but I had borrowed Theo's iBook and routed in from a hard drive.
I kind of designed my own DJ system by merging a Novation Launchpad Midi Controller with the Serato System that Interscope got me. You can add or remove turn tables and at this point I'm so good at working with it that I don't like using anything else. Also, if you're going to use digital equipment instead of flaunting your records: you mind as well look fucken dope doing it.
The dinner posse was supposed to go meet Dino's new singer at Tenjune (she's a waitress there), which is the bullshit club next door to where I was DJ'ing. Perfect. I left early to set up and they followed. They came in for a drink, which I got them from the bar and we had a fun time. "You take that pill yet?"
"No. I'm gonna drink tonight. Plus tomorrow is a long day so I'll just crunch away at it then. I hope that if it kills the pain I can stop limping."
Without the monitor I really needed it to be loud in there. I also needed to up the tempo because it's harder to screw up (for some reason) mixing at 128beatsperminute ("Shots!" and "I Gotta Feeling"--the killer and totally misspelled song that all cultures agree on) than 87bpm (pretty much only "Empire State of Mind" but "Paper Planes" is 86bpm). I finally had the crowd going and Dino comes back from Tenjune maybe two minutes later. "Fuck Tenjune."
He walked in there with three pretty girls to go see a promoter and a waitress friend and they wouldn't let them in because some people in the group didn't look Meatpacking enough. Fuck places like that. Frankly, I wouldn't want to hang out in a place that wouldn't let normal people in. He has a few more girls with them now so I get them all drinks.
This skinny kid keeps coming up to the booth to stare at my screen (people do this a lot). He tells me he wants to learn to DJ and he wants to watch me work. Whatever. But he keeps interrupting with questions or trying to talk to me while I'm scanning for a song (in general you want to play music of the same tempo and fade in with the same key--which is impossible, but really hot if you get it accidentally). But, you can't always do even that and you don't want to just climb around tempos because that's boring. I dropped in a Biggie song and my new admirer had something like a shoegasm. "How did you do that? You just leapt tempo and no one noticed."
"You can do anything you want as long as you can count to eight," I told him, which is something I learned as a backup dancer and it's helped me with DJ'ing.
The girls who came with Dino get it in their heads that this skinny dude is a gay guy who wants to tickle my varicoceles. So they took it upon themselves to cram into the booth with me and dance. This hurt so fucking much. Now I have people bumping into me and I might have fractures in my sacrum.
So the guy isn't actually gay, and he takes this girl's advances to me that she wants to tickle his functioning testicles. Now both of them won't leave me alone.
Last week I decided to change my tune about "requests." People make requests and the only time anyone has ever made a good request in the history of drunk people: was how I met my good friend Jackie! We met at Beauty Bar because she asked for awesome songs that would go with what I was playing.
I used to say dickish things when people say, "Do you take requests?"
"Nope!"
"Does it fucken sound like I need requests?"
"Astonish me, Pete Tong."
The weird thing is that people are fundamentally asking if I take requests and when I say no they won't give up. I had a gig on 19th last week and this girl kept at it for an hour and I wasn't even DJ'ing, "Okay but could you--" "I said no." "Could you just---" "No." "--play some hiphop." "That's not a request."
But now I've decided a new system. When girls sail by and say, "Do you take requests?" I now smile and say, "What do you want to hear sweetie?" And then I tell them if I've already played it or I say that I will play it a little later on.
So that's the nice way of not taking requests.
But people makes requests in the stupidest ways. They either want exactly what song they played in the car on the way over from Jersey or they ask for "Jay Z 'New York'" which isn't a song (it's called "Empire State of Mind" and you don't have to fucking request that on a Saturday night in New York City). Or they want obscure house and they're going to yell the name of it in my ear (I keep note of all these bands so that I'll never accidentally download their records). This one Scottish guy last night wanted all that Chemical Brothers Euro Bullshit and every time he demanded it he would step up on stage bully me down to his level and I wanted to kill him. I had to have the bouncer get him out of there. Or they want shit I'm just not going to play ("Tik Tok" is just about the worst song I've ever heard. There's a theory that Garth Brooks only existed because there was a 4 year period where Bruce Springsteen went into hiding and the market created a replacement. Ke$ha only exists for people who don't listen to lyrics but who get embarrassed by playing 5 LG songs in a row and want another artist in there.)
Also, I know that I'm the greatest fucking DJ alive and I mix so masterfully that people ask me if I premix at home and all so I must make it look easy--but why the fuck do people only request songs when one song is about to end and I'm transitioning? I'm not the band at your prom that strums out and then asks for requests. This was literally the first thing I ever noticed about DJ'ing when I started in college.
Dino and his crew end up staying the night and this girl won't get out of the booth. She was nice but after two vodka cranberries she got very stupid for a person who had to drive back to Princeton, NJ that night. She kept grinding up against me in her li'l dress/top/poncho which would have been cute if I weren't in pain and if she weren't wearing a really terrible padded bra. I felt like I was getting a lap dance from Teddie Ruxpin.
And then Theo came! Yay! I was missing his birthday party at Freddy's so he brought the party to me! And he happened to bring the girl who once asked him why he hangs out with an arrogant asshole like me and another girl who I forgot I hooked up with after Annie moved out but who went to Kenyon and asked me--the morning after--what my major had been. (To be honest I was kind of offended that she didn't remember me from our 1400 person campus. I was more offended that she didn't know me as the Great English Major, scourge of obscure Joyce references. Also, me? Arrogant??) But they were both really nice to me. Theo also brought his hot new Italian girlfriend.
Then my cousin showed up. This isn't really like my old gigs when I was a promoter. I just show up and play music and don't have to worry about bringing people. Let alone a dozen.
There were all these people in the booth and the whole club could not have possible fit one more person inside. I probably had fifteen coat in the booth just of friends of friends.
This Asian dude kept shaking the booth, though. I don't know why guys-----only guys do this--need to lean an arm on something. They lean on the booth when they're waiting for drinks. They lean an arm when they're talking to a girl (presenting her with armpits). Occassionally somebody will walk up to the booth and rest a drink on it and I scream in their face and ask them what the fuck they think they're doing. Politely. But Jackie Chan wouldn't stop fucking with the booth. Normally when guys lean up I tap their hand and they flinch. I said, "Hey buddy, I got sensitive equipment up here and you're shaking the booth."
And he smirks, "You've got a piece of shit iBook, a USB hub and dick-else. Your mixes are shit. So I doubt that."
This fucking guy.
I'm getting heckled by over-the-hill Data from Goonies. I told him politely that I don't see what the version of laptop I'm using has to do with it and that I've asked him once nicely to please respect my wishes. Only I said it the dickest way possible and asked him if he wanted me to throw him out of if he wanted me to get the bouncers to do it a better way.
"Whatever," he leans his arm on the booth again. The only reason I didn't throw him out is because he was talking to this sweet, plump girl who had actually made a good, well-timed request early (MSTRKRFT "All I Do Is Party."). I took a deep breath and told the girl that either he moves or I throw him out. Diplomatic. I'm not a rude DJ just because I'm in mortal pain, being danced on and fielding drink orders.
I spent half my time DJ'ing, half my time crying that people were hitting my fractured spinal sacrum and another half ordering drinks for everyone from the service bartender. If that's an improper fraction then that explains everything.
The manager got piss drunk by 11:30. One of the gay boy waiters decided to do his gay manager a solid (heyo!) and wait and count the money. He decided to wait by standing directly next to me and gogodancing. None of us got paid until probably 5:30. The bitch of it was that I had to get back to Brooklyn and then get right back in the city by 8:30AM. Rebecca had me stay over at her place in Chelsea, which was nice because she's half Irish and has four brothers and treats me like the fifth.
When I got up today my back hurt. Lots. My muscles were sore from clenching and trying to limp. They hurt from flinching when people touched me. I put my tie back on and headed over to Scholastic. On the way to Starbucks I put the little pill under my tongue and hoped it would kick in soon.
I took a cab to Soho and when I got there they had too many judges so I want to the Apple Store to drool over new laptops. Then I started feeling the pill.
I was hoping that it would be a safer version of Oxycotin and that I could count on feeling cosmic and happy for the day. I had a couple of them a few years ago and it almost made me feel like Nikki didn't break up with me.
But then I realized all I'd had was pills and coffee and I wasn't working for a major record label anymore so I should probably go home. The pain was receding, but I felt a bit nauseated. And the train felt nauseous*.
I got home and was getting ready to finish my Esqire article when I had the desire to run to the bathroom and throw up my Vitamin Water. About ten minutes went by and I had a big glass of iced water. I threw that up immediately (my vomit was still cold from the ice).
When I steadied myself I went to the store and got some saltines.
Then I had a string cheese.
In between: I threw each thing up. Dino texted me to see how I was feeling on the pill and I was a little bit embarrassed. I told him I had no pain, but I did take it on an empty stomach.
I told my roommate what happened and she was very supportive.
The rest of the afternoon I don't think I ever felt worse in my life. I was depressed. My roommate asked me where Prospect Heights was and I almost started crying because I figured she wanted to know because she was moving out. I wanted to go work on my Esqire article but then it occurred to me that I'm a complete failure of a human being.
I was every junkie cliché. I was completely self-centered, irritable, I was itching all over. Why did I--a person who's never had Nyquil or Pepto Bismol--think that the cure for my back problem would be to take a friend's fucking methadone?
We watched the Grammy's and she goes, "Hey, tomorrow's Magic Mondays**are you excited?"
"I don't have any quotes for my Esqire article and I can't edit my novel. I hope I die in my sleep."
"I hope you don't. But I'll go through with the plan and tell your mother that I was pregnant with your child and we were going to get married, but the stress..." (My end of the bargain is that if she dies I have to go back to Seattle and tell everyone we were engaged and that neither of us failed to meet someone by the time we were thirty.)
We ordered Indian food, which was really great when I started vomiting Chana Masala through my nasal cavity. I do not remember the last time I felt like this.
Tomorrow I'm just going to limp around because I won't even take an Advil. That was the worst mental day of my life. I felt like there was a gay waiter in my stomach doing the gogo-pogo against my gag reflex.
I was having trouble with edits today when it started to get cold in my apartment. I was already dressed for work (I have this new thing I call "Three Piece Saturdays" which is the opposite of casual-Fridays when the last day of your three-day work week is Saturday) so I went to the back of my closet and pulled out an old North Face down jacket I bought in high school.
Part of the trouble is that I wrote a YA novel, but I hate teenagers and wasn't very good at being one. I got distracted and found myself on iTunes and was struck by a song I loved in high school. When I went to download it I was like--fuckit, I'll get the whole record.
From the first note I was instantly transported back to high school. I remember what is smelled like. I remembered delivering pizza and feeling out of place. Then I turned back to the YA novel.
Why a straight-edge kid from suburban Connecticut loved this song is not something I am interested in explaining:
It's all about the drugs and the money. The drugs, money and sex. No shame in my game, I love to get high, doing blow, blinded by snow, still reaching for the sky. XTC and weed is all that I need. I know it makes me insane. Yeah I chill down town, but I ain't down with sticking needles in my veins. Check this out, money talks, bullshit walks, it's all about that green. Gotta get paid, keep foes afraid, gotta get the cream. So look and listen, watch my diamond glisten, can't let them scheme, dealing coke, can't be broke. It's the american dream. Here's a verse, I don't need to rehearse, let's talk about sex, everyone knows from coast to coast, that Ezecs the best. Don't be a tease, just get on your knees. TIme to go down low. White, spanish or black, as long as you got back, I'll be your Papi Chulo.
It should be noted that when I got into Kenyon I kept my sanity by changing the words to "Financial Aid / Keeps foes afraid."
Finished the top-secret novel yesterday. It's awesome and it's already my favorite novel. Yours too. Update your facebook profile.
Editing the YA novel today. Normally I don't work on Saturdays but the chiropractor told me he can't look at my back until the x-rays prove that I didn't fracture my spine. I learned about a new bone yesterday that seats your spine into your hips. I landed on that one and can't leave the house.
Of all the places to go for solace after a break up, I never thought of the anonymous, cruel world of internet-commenters. Today I woke up to an email which commented on a youtube video that portrayed an ex:
No betr way to tell the world and all potential suitors...'hey get ready guy, Im a fukn slutty ho-bag douche coal burner with no world experience and some fukn rndm presidents black face on my lilly white body.' Who in the fuckin world besides some shitty wife-beating jigg would not run screaming from this sad mixed up excuse of a human. My good lady you deserve nothing but all the beatings, bastard children and stolen belongings only a nig could supply u with. go chek out a singl mom help book
If Apple does come out with a tablet device today I look forward to it because then I can use big words and people can click on them for definition without making me feel like an ass.
e.g.
It was my first time seeing Candy's apartment. It looks exactly like her purse, with papers and receipts on the floor, exuviated bras, high heels and orphaned jeans everywhere.
Also, Lolita and Ulysses will be more approachable and the first thing you'll learn is that a know-it-all-device is no substitute for reading.
I woke up with the wind knocked out of me. My mouth rang with the disgusting taste of something metallic as I heard rats scurrying around me.
"Yo, hellooo." There's a rule in New York: any time anything awful happens the first person on the scene is a bona-fide wise-crackin' New Yawker. (If a yellowcab slams into a hot-dog cart, don't expect some midwestern housewife like the neighbor on "Small Wonder" to be like, "Oh gosh! Is everybody okey-dokey?") The ground beneath me started to vibrate.
I was facedown on the subway track.
This was not my first time down on the tracks. One time on the way home from Beauty Bar I saw a fat homeless dude go ass-over-teakettle onto the tracks with the Q train coming. I leapt down there (it is sooooo much farther than it looks). Since I was the first one on the scene I was all like, "Yo, hey Tony, pizza-pie get offa da tracks.
I was shakey, but quite alive and decided I would like to continue to do so. I lumbered up and took a deep breath, mounted the track for a boost and hopped back up the platform with a little help from Anonymous Tony. Everyone rushed over to me. Police, undercovers, MTA people, "Are you okay??"
Yes, I said as the train came. I am perfectly fine because I'm not down there. Thank you very much everyone. Whatever happened to me happened so fast that I had no idea and the miracles of trauma helped me forget the especially painful parts.
Within five hours I was not okay. I heard my roommate downstairs and I called out for her. She pranced upstairs in a towel to see what I wanted so urgently. She could tell by the look on my face, "Is it your back?"
"I need to go to the hospital." She ran downstairs to get dressed and when I heard her on the phone with 911 I started crying even more. "Hang up the phone. I can't afford an ambulance." I told her which car service to call. They brought me to Methodist in Park Slope in a Lincoln. Hospitals in New York are just like the schools. You need to go to the nice areas to get the nice ones. The other end of my street is the hospital where the busses let out from Bed Stuy. Not only do you have to get in triage behind gun-shots and people with homemade colostomy bags, but the only thing ever on TV is Maurie Povitch.
I tried to peel myself out of the cab and made it from the door in the parking lane to the lamp post on the corner before I gave up. Courtney went in to get me a wheel chair. I waited outside in the rain, stooped over, clutching the lamp post.
Courtney wheeled me in and I was still shaking so she got me a coke and some peanut butter crackers.
Sitting in a wheelchair hurt, coughing or exercising my diaphragm at all hurt. And for no reason this made me want to become Mr. Funnyman.
"Mr. Sullivan we want to get someone to look at you as soon as we can. We just need to fill out your medical information. Are you allergic to anything?"
"This may sound weird, but I've never had any allergies. But last night I discovered that I'm allergic to subway tracks."
The nurse is smirking, "Okay, now from 1-10, 10 being the worst pain you ever felt how much are you in pain?"
"I'm not I will say this: I wish the train had hit me." They wheeled me into room 34 and told me to get onto the gurney. I think I invented a new Winter Olympic Sport just to get up there. Fuck this hurt.
"We're going to bring you something for the pain."
"Can I ask you a favor? Could you blow into that IV bag and squeeze a bubble into my veins so I asphyxiate?"
"We'll bring you something for the pain quick. I promise."
"That's what I'm saying. It'll be quick and painless. People will just think I had an allergic reaction to something. Pretend it was peanut butter." They brought me a valium and something or other else.
The nurse asked if I was able to roll over so she could give me a shot. I knew where this was going. "I just need to get it in a big muscle and..."
"I know, I don't have any big muscles."
"Mr. Sullivan..."
I rolled over and again wished the train had hit me. I pulled my pants down so I could get a shot in the ass. Courtney turned away and I said, "Courtney, does this needle make my ass look fat?"
My brain drifted somewhere around Barstow when the drugs kicked in. Courtney asked, "Is the pain medicine working?"
"Like Sodium Pentathol."
"What?"
"Truth serum. Go ahead ask me anything. I can't lie."
"But how is it for the pain."
"Sometimes I use your laundry detergent."
"I know you do, Brendan. I use your toilet paper. We're roommates. But are you feeling okay"
"I keep pretending that I'm just borrowing some and that I'll get more. But I never do."
"That's fine."
"Sometimes when the dog makes a huge mess I don't clean it up and 'notice' it when you get home."
"That's okay." I was crying to the point of dehydration.
The unwritten rule about X-rays is that they only work when you put the injured person in a position of great pain. I broke my shin skiing when I was 7 and they needed to stretch my foot flat on the gurney. I broke my ankle singing at my band's last show in high school, same thing. Now they want to put the X-ray plate under me and take the picture from above.
How is it possible that Pixar could scan my body and reanimate me on the screen if I die, but if you break a bone they use 19th century technology? Like, if I had a rash is the fucking hospital going to have a daguerreotype made up and sent off to the Mayo clinic?
"Normally when you get an X-Ray taken you have to cover your genitals with a lead blanket, right? So you don't render me infertile, right?"
"Yes," the X-Ray tech says.
"But in this case you are pointing the Rays right at my junk, huh? So I'll be infertile for how long? Gimme a window."
"Are you always this funny?"
"I think I'm having an allergic reaction to that Subway rail."
Courtney wanted to go get coffee, but she worried that they might not let her back in. I told her she could just go. It would be hours. She wrote her number down (I didn't have my phone) and told me to call her if I needed anything. Hours later I saw my X-Ray (you can't see my junk, but you can totally see my asscheeks somehow.
Nothing was broken. I have a boney ass and managed to land exactly on the meatiest part of it. I would have broken my vertabrae but I had my laptop bag on me and I landed smack on my macbook pro. It won't turn on. I'm not very good at backing up files, so my last two novels are buried in that grave of a hard drive. I can't rewrite them, it would be too heartbreaking to know that I already did it better once.
The volunteer brought me a phone, but it wouldn't work. I just decided I had enough. I pulled the wheelchair over and grit my teeth while I tried to dress. I pushed it to the door and they gave me a cane. I hobbled to the door and took a cab to Target.
The cab dropped me on the corner and getting to the pharmacy was hell. They should have given me crutches. I should have asked. The only way to make it was to hold the cane with two hands, press it in front of me like a tripod leg and scuttle after it. Click and drag. I put my sunglasses on, but it didn't hide the fact that I was crying. Every part of me felt awful. I hated my legs for being skinny. I hated my head for making me so tall that I can't take a hit without falling.
I hated myself for not having insurance.
At Target I got a shopping cart and used it like a walker. "Hey Lilly." (I'm chummy with my pharmacist.)
"What happened to you." I told her and the old Puerto Rican ladies in line made the sign-of-the-cross. I had a gig that night but I wasn't about to miss it. I hobbled in to the same club I had left maybe 30 hours before.
Have you been a dick to anyone lately? Those are usually my favorite stories. I really like it when you take something innocent and routine and scream and shout about it.
Sincerely,
One of your three readers.
Dear Big Three,
Luckily for you and the other two: I went to pick up my stereo today from the repair shop!
On my first date with Annie we took a walk around Wicker Park on a fresh summer day. We walked by this thrift store across from the Jewel Osco grocery store and in the window I saw a gorgeous, dusty stereo receiver. A Technics original.
I had been looking for a receiver forever and I decided that everyone in the world would know how I am totally a real DJ if I had a vintage stereo receiver with dials and knobs instead of computer speakers.
The reason the profession of DJ'ng exists at all to the degree it is practiced today is because in the 1970s Technics wanted to make a turntable that was heavy, balanced and adjustable so that if, say, you had a party and people danced it wouldn't shake the turntable. Also, turntable motors tended to wear out because they were designed like wheels instead of using a belt system. The scratch, fade, reverse and even the sound of a record slowing to an abrupt stop are all things original to the Technics. They also added a thing to control the speed, which is how we DJ-types trick you into dancing faster or thinking two songs can go together.
We are all still using the exact design from 1972. Technics didn't mean to do this. They basically wanted a turntable for dweebs to buy. They never envisioned that everyone who bought these would want two.
So I pick up this heavy stereo receiver by a company that doesn't exist anymore (Panasonic makes the Technics 1200, though) Annie thought she was dating this cooky DJ character so we hauled the heavy unit home and then made out in my room at about four in the afternoon. Double score!!
Well so I did. Only my Vespa battery died and I am a big-shot DJ now (I have a monthly metrocard now) so I get on the subway and take it to Grand Army Plaza even though I could probably just walk. Only I don't. I get on the completely wrong train, which takes about ten minutes to reach its first stop because I don't pay attention very well. I decide I'll just switch at the next station, only I can't because it's one of those local stations where all exits are final.
I end up riding it to the end of the line where I can switch (I was reading my George Plimpton book so I really didn't mind). But when I finally get off at Grand Army Plaza I am greeted by a blustery, shit-your-pants-for-warmth wind. It blew in my ears and I ached all over. What the fuck, world?
So I pull my phone out with a shivering hand and realize I'm still pretty far from the TV repair shop on 7th Ave in Park Slope. I recognize the guy at the counter by his dumb, Brooklyn accent. He calls me every week or so being like, "Come get your stereo. Hey, pizza pie, yo Tony, whatsamattafoyou, huh? Fuggetaboutit "
It costs me $95 to get a bunch of stereo parts put in. Fuses and tubes and whodingies. I go to pick it up and I hear a crackle. I flip it over and discover it's held together with packing tape. "The fuck is the packing tape for?"
"Oh," he picks up the notecard attached to it. "It says here no screws."
I look around the side and they've crammed two different screws into one side (one flathead--which you're not supposed to use for electronics because if you slip you'll ram your screwdriver into something either delicate or electrified--and the other is a hex bolt). "What is this?"
"I guess, uh, I guess they stuck these in here."
"Stuck? I didn't spend $95 to get things stuck in my stereo." I had forgotten that I also dropped $20 on a deposit.
"You don't like them? I'll take them out." He goes after the one and then instead of using a hex bolt socket wrench he takes a pair of needle-nose pliers to get the bolt out.
"Whoa. Nevermind."
(In an effort to adjust this story for people whose big brothers didn't force them to learn about handy-things I've italicised anything that you're supposed to be shocked by.)
Do you use vice-grips for things because you don't have a crescent wrench? Please stop. Call me if you need help with things around the house. Using things that pinch for things that scew in is very bad for the threads of your screws and sockets. "I don't want you to cut the threads on my vintage stereo because your guys botched the job. Who did this?"
"What do you mean who did this?"
"What is the name of the guy who did this? I just spent $115 for two fuses and for him to fuck up my casing. Look at this," when he put the wood casing back on he chipped it.
"We don't do body work."
"It's considered body work to spray some windex on this and put four screws in?"
"Look, you dropped this off in May, okay?"
"Okay what? Did your guy pull a screw out for every four weeks I didn't come by? I'm busy. I travel a lot. I called in and in six months you couldn't find four screws and polish these dials up a little?"
"Fine. Are you going to be around tomorrow." I am. But I can't let him know that. I'm not taking this cold walk again.
"No. I'm never home."
"Do you have a few minutes?"
"Fine." It takes four guys fifteen minutes to put four screws in. Halfway through I walk in and see they've pried the whole thing apart and they're in back looking for screws again. "Nevermind guys."
"Hang on, hang on. We just had to pull it apart. We're going to need longer screws than we thought. But he had to pull it apart to check." They ram 4 mismatched screws in, then rub the whole thing down in English oil, wipe the display and still don't do anything about the dirty knobs.
A couple of weeks ago I took a meeting with a publishing industry ne're-do-well. At this meeting it was suggested that if I were to write a certain kind of brief, true-to-life account about something I had seen over the past few years, I could expect to be in a position to own my own home next year.
Now, I have a very specific master plan of becoming a serious novelist and I will continue to do so for my entire life. This is not a part of the plan, but I thought it might be a fun exercise or at least be a platform to get more work.
I came home and repeated the large sum to Andrea and she didn't seem to think it was a good idea. The thinking being that John Updike doesn't go around writing trashy books and then expecting people to slog through 1500 pages of the Rabbit series waiting for mentions of famous people. Then I came up with what seemed like a perfectly good idea to me.
I would just give the entire sum of the advance away. Maybe after that if it sold well I could keep whatever trickled in. Either way it would be good for my brand.
This was not a very popular idea to bring up at 4 in the morning when drinking. My arguments ("I could build 1000 wells in Africa!" "...I would do it for free on my website anyway." "...what's the difference between not writing it and writing it and giving the money away?") It was then alleged that I am no good at being mature about money or anything and what am I going to do when the heretofore non-existent kids of mine need money for school.
I then did the really brilliant thing to end a late night argument, which is to take something tragically personal. ("So what you're saying is I can't write this under my DJ name because it's the only book I'll ever write that will sell. Is that what you're saying?") At Christmas I proposed the idea to my parents (y'know why not--it's Christmas!) and they seemed to agree.
"It might tarnish your reputation?"
"My reputation as a story teller?"
"You want to be taken seriously. What about someday when you want to teach creative writing at a university level?"
"I could either teach creative writing for 20 years or write this book in a week."
None of this got settled and I felt like I had more arguments ("...I went to school so I could be a reporter and then newspapers disappeared. Halfway through I set my sights on fiction: what am I going to do when books disappear? What if a book iPod catches on? I'll still write but for dick-all.")
I was informed that there are more polite topics of discussion in the few remaining hours we had of family time before they dropped me off at the train.
So then I was reading about George Plimpton in this great book I'm reading and it mentioned something about blue-blood-as-hell George Plimpton's Grandfather fighting in the civil war and being called a "carpetbagger" as the yankee governor of Mississippi in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. I didn't know Kennedy did other things than just be handsome all the time so I wiki'd it and learned that it was actually his third book. His first was actually his Harvard thesis, which his dad turned into a best seller.
The article ends with this:
Release
After publication in 1940, the book sold 80,000 copies in the United Kingdom and the United States, collecting US$40,000 in royalties for Kennedy; those from the English sales were donated to Plymouth, England, recently bombed by the Luftwaffe, while Kennedy bought a green Buick convertible with the American income.[2]
If I seem kind of hush-hush about my new writing project it is because I am. I don't really have a fan-base or devoted readers so I can't afford to blow your mind just yet.
But trust me when I say it will be a work that shall look very familiar to you. Doing a work this personal takes a lot of careful work and it may turn out to be my Pinkerton, meaning it's not what anyone asked for but I like it anyway. I also have to be very cautious about doing anything cliche or stealing shit from movies.
Last night I met up with my friend from college way down by Grand Army Plaza. I like that area and like every single part of New York: I never get down that way enough. Grand Army Plaza is just about the most magical place after sunset when you're riding your Vespa and you curve right around the arch in the piazza to go down Prospect Park West to that old movie theater with a girl on the back holding you.
However, my Vespa battery won't start and I'm not in the habit of drinking and scooting. I went down to the subway to take the 9* and my card ran out. I did the math quick and decided that I would just walk. My whole neighborhood is fucked right now because they're raizing half of it to build the Barclays Center. So I live on the edge of a chained-off rail yard. It's taken five fucking years for them to renovated the entrance to the subway and so half my neighborhood is in the shadow of scaffolding. It's bullshit.
Halfway home from Grand Army Plaza around midnight I was getting excited to get in bed and read my George Plimpton book when I heard a howl. Ahh, the call of the wild. I passed the 88th Precinct and saw their gorgeous green lights and it reminded me that once they finally build the goddam stadium I won't be able to go to Freddy's anymore.
It was cold enough that doing a little Irish-commute seemed like a brilliant idea. I had twenty bucks in my pocket and I walked in to warm up. This bearded guy at the bar starts smiling at me and I realize that I know him. "It's Dave," he says. Dave is Pete's friend from home and current roommate.
Dave's friend just got engaged so they're celebrating. Matty, the bartender, gives me a big smile and shakes me hand and the four of us do a shot. It was delicious.
I can't remember if Theo got back yet but I text him to see if he wants to meet up. Theo is having just about the best 2010 I've heard of. He got a new job and girls are all over him these days. He had just finished a hot date and he came by for high fives.
If they had piano in the front room of Freddy's I would have planted myself and done the Alicia Keyes part of "Empire State of Mind."
*I'm going to keep calling it the 9 until I remember that the 9 doesn't exist anymore or they bring it back.
Things you can blog about (but that you can't put on facebook):
Man I feel fucking brilliant today I wrote like a billion chapters this morning, read the paper, got take out and when I went to the bookstore on a walk I felt like I could've written the perfect funny-blurb for every cover. But you can't tell that to too many people. Not all at once, at least.
