Two chicks terrorizing Brooklyn

When I first moved here, I noticed the (in no logical order) the abundance of stupendous street food, the fabulous dive bars, the cutthroat work environments and the CYNICISM. I guess the last bit makes sense: Street smarts come with the package of living here, and thank christ for that. To some people, this distrust may be exhausting, but I find it refreshing. In my previous life, I lived in Northeast Florida, where trust is common courtesy — but OH GOD life was so boring. The ennui exhausted me, and I arrived in NYC as a corpse of enthusiasm. In Florida, I went through the wringer. My apartment? Broken into by a nutcase. My job? Gone, thanks to the economy. My social life? Devastated by friends’ impending marriages and gestations. But back in Florida, everyone was just so NICE. When I got here, I welcomed the upheaval. I didn’t mind when guys lied about calling the next day., or that strangers blatantly used my new job for their own ends. Because I was in on the joke. Florida is a sunny, happy place filled with non-depressed people who pretend they’re depressed. New York has the opposite problem, and I love it. Everyone here knows what they’re doing. I respect calculation. But EVEN MORE, I respect people who realize the inanity of cynicism and just TRUST. Example: My boyfriend knows how miserable I am in my Brooklyn apartment. One day, he handed me his keys and said, “Come whenever you want.” I was flabbergasted. My guy lives in New Jersey for work and commutes to the city for the weekend. Essentially, I have free reign over this apartment the other four days of the week. My friends, that is TRUST. That is some straight up wonderful, generous shit, and you know what? I’m gonna do him proud. I won’t even smoke in his apartment — well, because his co-op board complained. So, I’m sitting on the fire escape, watching hundreds of taxi cabs vroom by, there’s a Corona waiting for me in the fridge and an arsenal of Tivo picks to plunder and DAMN — it feels good to be trusted.

I’ve kept journals since I was 7 years old. Most of the early entries were lighter fare, dissertations about nothing more meaningful than my slouchy socks and the latest Oprah episode. Earlier tonight, though, I found my 2008 journal. I was 24 years old, and my life was a wreck. I had just cheated on my already-cheating boyfriend, then I crashed my car and soon after, my professional life succumbed to the crumbling economy. It was the darkest moment of my life, and to make matters worse, I was stuck in Florida, a state that’s a cultural and intellectual wasteland. I read my 2008 journal in horror. Most of the entries were about justifying sex with a vengeful ex, creative differences with my soul-destroying job and INEXPLICABLY some guy named Mike. I read the Mike entries over and over. I couldn’t remember him at all. I haven’t dated a Mike since high school. I don’t have any Mikes saved in my cellphone. My Facebook Mikes are gay or purely platonic. WHO THE FUCK WAS MIKE? I have an encyclopedic memory for men, especially guys I waste 13 trees’ worth of journal pages for. I don’t know if I was drunk when I wrote these journal entries, or if I was suffering from the emotional equivalent of 17 Klonopin pills, but I couldn’t remember Mike for the life of me, and that was unacceptable. I read the journal cover to cover, deciphering the sloppy scrawl, trolling my memory and trying to remember ANYTHING about the man who was once so important. And then I remembered. I made out with Mike twice. That’s it. I realized that my angst for Mike had nothing to do with the man. I had just dumped my long-term boyfriend. I had crashed my car with my best friend in the passenger seat. And then I got laid off. Those entries weren’t about Mike, the human — they were about entropy, my cozy lifestyle unraveling. In my entries, I alternately pined for Mike and HATED him. I wasn’t writing about a crush — I was depressed as fuck and looking for any scapegoat, ANY at all, as long as I wouldn’t remember it. This is all very melodramatic, but hey — worse shit has happened. But let’s give Mike his moment in the anonymous spotlight — He was certainly good looking. He spoke somewhat fluent Spanish. He once wore a vintage Laura Ashley sundress to a costume party, and he wore the exact same beige corduroy jacket every time I saw him. (You wouldn’t BELIEVE the BO stink.) To the utterly forgettable Mike: I will never forget you ever again. Thanks for reminding me how far I’ve come.

The jig is up. I am a huge sap. I know I’ll want to delete this when everything goes to shit, but for now… Guysssss I am soooooo falling in like, and is there any better feeling? I’ve never skydived, but this is probably as scary.

I’m going to admit something really embarrassing in about a minute. First, I’m gonna take a deep breath and finish the rest of this cigarette. Okay, my lungs are sufficiently blackened — let’s begin. One — I pride myself on being an anomaly of my gender. I don’t cry ever, not at commercials with Army wives being reunited with their Army husbands, not during Marley and Me, not during my period, not even during break-ups. I cry when someone dies or threatens to kill themselves, you know the serious stuff. I don’t daydream about weddings, I don’t fetishize chocolate and I hate Russel Crowe, George Clooney and the rest of the female boner Hollywood brigade. But earlier today, I was gchatting with my Indian man candy about his cousin. Who’s about to get an ARRANGED MARRIAGE. I can’t even believe those still exist, especially between two people who LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES and have dozens of ways to achieve marital rapture without the help of a fucking matchmaker. Anyway, his cousin is doing it all traditional, and submitting to background checks (genealogical background, not criminal). He hasn’t met his future wife, he hasn’t even seen a photo. Yet he is confident that this marriage will be blessed and prolific with many offspring. WHY? Because the horoscope said so. My kinda boyfriend was FURIOUS that something as inconsequential as a birthdate was the auspicious impetus behind the union. I was stunned too. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I typed, feeling stupider my the keystroke. “But I believe in it too.” Look. I’ve dated members of every single zodiac sign, dozens of them, enough to notice significant patterns within each sign. Aries dudes are down for anything. I love them. Gemini dudes are insane and loquacious. Love them too. I dislike Virgos, and I won’t deign to message back Taureans if they ping me on OkCupid. I’m deeply attracted to Leos (most recently, Yves) but they tend to be too stubbornly lazy. I know this sounds insane. But when someone tells me their sign, I tend to know the direction our relationship will take after the first whoosh of lust wears off. I’ve done it enough times, and I am firm in my assessment — you can call horoscopes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can say it’s New Age bullshit, you can call me the most ludicrously GIRLY chick on the planet for actually giving a shit. I don’t care. I’m just chagrined that this hard-held belief basically stemmed from my subscription to Seventeen magazine. After my kinda boyfriend and I signed off gchat, I wondered if I really was so different than every other chocolate-craving, Gossip Girl-loving bitch out there. And then I bought a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream on the way home. Fuck.

I’ve been feeling mad introspective lately. Is it the changing seasons? Is it the crest of yet another menstrual cycle? Whatever, I dunno. But I’ve been thinking a lot about LIFE with a capital OH FUCK, and I’m teetering between exhilaration and tedium. On the one hand, I have a fantastic career, at a place I dreamed about as a lowly college frosh. On the other hand, I picked my career in third grade, and I never wavered or explored other options. I am doing exactly what I set out to do, and it took me only a few years to accomplish. Pardon me for sounding like a yuppie dickwad, but sometimes I fantasize about pulling a Christopher McCandless and donating my motley pile of possessions to the Goodwill on Bedford and making a run for the Pacific Northwest border. (Minus the whole dying alone in the wilderness part.) Should I make a break for it and get my PhD in linguistics? How about working at a clean tech NGO in Africa? Maybe I should couch surf across South America and finally learn fucking Spanish. But I know what I REALLY wish I could be — an assassin. I’m absolutely and totally obsessed with female mercenaries, something that stretches back to my childhood affection for Cruella deVille. (Really, a dalmatian coat doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me. Have you met a dalmatian? They’re mean little fuckers.) I don’t conjure Beatrix Kiddo when I daydream about this. Kill Bill was a great fucking film, but a maternal mercenary is just so YAWN. I prefer the lone wolves, the ones who don’t trust their henchmen to do what they are perfectly capable of executing themselves. The image that always comes to mind is this batshit insane glamorpuss I saw in an anime called Here Is Greenwood in 7th grade. (I’m putting my nerd flag out here — anime is great fun, even that Sailor Moon bullshit they played at 7:30 in the morning.) I can’t remember the name of this character — although I’ve got the DVD on my bookshelf, so there’s really no excuse. Anyway, this bitch was epic. She wore slutty white dresses with cut-outs in the torso, paired with stilettos and a toussled raven hairstyle. She was an embittered lesbian who kidnapped people and sexually harassed them, and she basically spent all day peering through the business end of a sniper rifle from her glamorous penthouse balcony. She never wins, but fuck I just loved her. She was snarky and sexy and ugh I totally want to have a fling with her stateside, IRL equivalent. My sniper fantasy is patently ridiculous for a couple reasons. One, it’s totes illegal, and I couldn’t even get away with shoplifting a lipstick in elementary school. Two, I don’t fancy killing people, especially for political reasons. (People, I can’t even sit through an hours of CSPAN.) Three, I’ve never shot a gun in my whole life, and anyone who’s seen me flailing around during a game of Buck Hunter knows why. But fuck it, sometimes I wish I were a badass.

It’s another lovely Saturday, and I have nothing new to complain about. Life is good. Sue me. So let’s talk about more dealbreakers. Because they are funny. 1. People from a cold climate. I dated a guy from Pittsburgh once. We met in Florida, where the coldest temperatures maybe dip to 22 at midnight in the middle of February. Whenever I slept at his house, he kept the temperature at FORTY-FIVE degrees, I shit you not. Worse than a meat cooler, because UNLIKE a dead slice of sirloin, I am a human being with feelings and nerve endings and shit. Our passive-aggressive, clandestine thermostat fiddling culminated into WW3. Look. Florida peeps are cold when it’s 60 degrees and sunny, so shut the fuck up and let’s make a compromise with the thermostat. 2. Video gamers. Okay, this actually isn’t a big deal to me. I’ve dated several dudes devoted to their consoles, and whatever. Go. Play. I don’t care. Just don’t start insulting me when I check into my local bar on Foursquare. Because my useless technological habit takes approximately 30 seconds, and YOURS wastes 17 hours and a fistful of brain cells. 3.Non-smokers. Again, this is a huge over-statement. I adore many men, and 90 percent are non-smoking. But that 10 percent? Yeah, I like them more.

Oh fuck, I like someone. Like, I like LIKE him. Jesus. Little background: He was my childhood BFF’s roommate at NYU. She introduced us via Facebook. He is hot, Indian and works for a pharma start-up. I went on one date with him back in October, but because I was in the throes of my post-breakup slut phase, I had no interest in anything serious, so I forgot he existed. Then his hilarious exploded all over my Facebook feed a month ago, and I got all curious again. “Why didn’t I realize he was so clever? How did I miss the brilliance? Maybe his penis is bigger than I remember.” We’ve gone on about seven dates in two weeks, which is insane, as I am easily bored. I took him to the Tribeca Film Festival last Friday, and it was easily one of my biggest brain boners of all time. After watching “Freakonomics,” we shared microbrews and chatted about all kinds of high-brow shit, stuff that’s too pretentious to blog about. But he’s Fraggle Rocked his way into my cold stony heart. When my girlfriend lost her job two weeks ago, I invited her to our date. I was nervous — would he be pissed? Would he be insensitive to her plight? Nope. He acted like a super-hot angel, and I realized I liked him so much I wouldn’t even sleep with him until we went on two months of dates. On sunday, we watched Beetlejuice with six of his friends, then we danced to some old school Genesis, and we made out for hours, and now we talk every single day and OH LORD, I like him way more than Yves or even my past three boyfriends because he is kind and hysterical and his Netflix queue is bananas and YES his penis is way bigger than I remembered.

I’ve officially been an NYC resident for one year. 365 days ago, my U-Haul rumbled up on this bitch, collecting 4 parking tickets. I am incredulous. How could it be a year already? My NYC life has been surreal. Even flipping through my Blackberry photos makes me nauseas. I dumped a long distance boyfriend my second week here. Then he grabbed a steak knife and threatened to kill himself. Then I got a new boyfriend and he dumped me when we were pet-sitting my boss’ lab retriever. Then I went beserk and dated actors, unemployed idiots and wonderful, nice people I have no interest in. I have called my mother every Saturday. I have gone to events at both Fashion Weeks. I have made and lost friends, I have made mistakes, but I have no regrets. (Thank you STD test!) My most wonderful moments are almost unbearable: Like when my French roommate ate sushi off my nude body. (I even have photos.) The first time I saw the Bergdorfs Christmas windows. The first time making a snow angel IN THE MIDDLE OF TRAFFIC. When I went to the Hamptons and said, “Wait. This looks just like Florida.” I’ve eaten cow tongue and live shrimp and some weird Japanese thing that begins with an O. I’ve seen dicks of all shapes and sizes, mostly on the subway. I’ve met fascinating folks, with great jobs and marvelous stories and I adore them all. I am easily bored, but New York never fails to entertain and disgust me. I have traveled most of the globe, but no place enraptured my imagination like New York. This city is my home. I love it. I cherish it, and I will be here until something else moves me as much as NYC. I have a feeling that’s gonna be never,

Today, I got to work at 8:45, I produced work I can be proud of, I had a lovely beef stroganoff soup thing for lunch. It was a gorgeous day, so I took two smoke breaks and closed my eyes, soaking up the midtown sun shower. I wore Vans slip-ons without feeling like a corporate America slob, because my office is just that awesome. Then I had happy hour drinks with Amber along with a crisp Harp followed by half a dozen Camels on a smoking patio. I walked down 6th avenue for a long time until I reached the L train and then I stopped by the bodega to buy some baked cheddar Goldfish crackers. Now I am in my bedroom, my neighbors are blasting Cheech and Chong and I’m about to finish Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. By the time I am finished, my latest crush will end his bartending shift in Bowery, and I will get laid. If I fall asleep before his shift ends. I will get 8 solid hours of pure zzzz. I just can’t lose. Tonights gonna be a GOOD NIGHT.