NoWa 4 Life

What you need to know is I that love Manhattan’s Upper West Side like a crackwhore loves the free clinic. Greenwich Village is lovely for an early dinner date, Soho is great for 2hrs on a sunny afternoon, the East Village is perfect late night’s out with friends, Midtown is cool when you need a meeting point for destinations to be determined, and the Upper East Side… well, despite the myth of Carrie Bradshaw’s life, the Upper East Side isn’t good for anything —- it’s all corporate highrises and doctor’s offices and stuffy department stores, and there’s only one lousy subway line all the way over on Lexington. But for me, the Upper West Side has it all. Everything. Columbus Circle, Tower Records, w72nd Street, the Museum of Natural History, the Riverside Park gardens, all the diners on upper Broadway, Morningside Heights, Columbia University, and 7 major subway lines running — SEVEN! Local AND Express, bitch! It’s home to some of the best Sunday brunches in New York. I swear I can spend hours just wandering up Broadway, enchanted like a damn fool. Yes, the UWS is the shit.

My friend Meg just got a really cute one bedroom apartment on w84th. Fucking w84th street, bitch. She’s a total UWS yuppie and she loves it, just up the street from Ray’s and a block away from Cafe Lalo. Her life is You’ve Got Mail. I hate her ass. The worst/best part that is we make pretty much the same money and I could totally swing her rent.

So, my apartment lease is up for renewal in April 2006 and I’ve gotta start thinking about what I want to do. I’ve been ignoring the form my landlord slipped under my door for a few days now… I’m just not sure what my plans are. Do I renew? For one year, two years? I mean, I love my apartment and all the space I have, and I love that I have a pretty good deal on it. I love living alone and not needing a roommate. But I know I want to live on the Upper West Side, my dreamhood, and if that’s going to happen I should start by setting a date on it. Like April 2007. Or 2008. If it’s going to happen, I have to pull myself together and figure some things out. Pro’s and con’s. Over the last 5 years, I’ve had to endure a myriad of shitty living conditions/weird roomate rotations and upgrade my income job by job before I could get to a point where I could finally get and afford this apartment all to myself. Roomates are out of the question. But as much as I love my apartment, do I really want to endure a 40 minute subway ride downtown for the rest of my NYC life everytime I go out? Not really. As badass as I’d feel living on the UWS, do I really want to up my rent AND give up all my space for some tiny cramped room in the west 80′s? Not really. Do I wanna live a great place that’s a little outta the way (that’s NoWa — North of Washington Heights; use it, I’m still trying to spawn the catchphrase), or live by the skin of my teeth in my favorite mostly unaffordable neighborhood? Am I lucky to have what I do — should I quit searching and feel glad I secured something good? I just don’t know. I’m even torn on whether or not to post this entry b/c it puts it out there in the universe: the fact that I’m a little unsatisfied with that I’ve got. Plus I like it more when ppl read this blog and think my life rocks and that I’m light years cooler than they can ever be… b/c you guys think that, right? Right? Shit. Sorry, I got a spriteboy email the other day from one of the jocks I went to highschool with, I’m tripping a little.

I’m fascinated lately by young people I know who have their shit together. I’m not talking about people with interesting lives and jobs (in New York everyone leads a fabulous life in their own way), I am talking about slick youngish mofos not that much older than me who have their professional lives either on the rise or totally in order AND have the bank account that goes with it. My exboyfriend Jeff was so on top of everything in his gorgeous life that it was damn intimidating sometimes (construction on his new loft is almost done — that’s a brand new building, too. No really, it’s just sick.), but I was able to keep it check b/c he’d had a damn good start what with his 16yrs on me. Yeah, 16 years — I was blinded by the smile and charmed by the rest, man; like the Katie to his Tom but without the pregancy and all the freaky religion. Anyway, his success kind of got me thinking about this stuff and lately I’m meeting more and more people in their late 20′s who seem to making that crucial transition into Finanicially Solid Adulthood. I know that they’re out there, I’m meeting them all the time. I went on a date with this yummy Aussie the other night and nearly slit my wrists when I saw the view from his midtown high-rise. After he dried my tears and took my mind off things for a few hours (he’s a keeper), he drove me home. In a BMW. That he owns and pays parking space for. He’s 29. It’s a damn shame he’s doing so well, b/c I kind of liked him (the accent kills me) but now he has to die. When did these people start making money like that? Was it a sudden promotion? Was it part of a gradual business plan, or the result of one of those 4yr personal plans? Should I be looking into investments? I don’t want to be 30 and find out I should have started my shit years ago when I was 20.

I like my life. I enjoy my job, I leave with a sense of accomplishment each day and I go home to an apartment I love having. Though my job keeps me securely afloat, I am nowhere NEAR being able to afford buying a place. My mom in her Texas mindset encourages me to start saving, like it’s actually possible that I could afford it one day. The only way I could was if I won the lottery or got hit by a bus and sued the city (hmmm). Just a single unit in a brownstones alone can go for like, $3 million — and that’s in Brooklyn. At best, I think if I saved and saved and sold a kidney I’d be able to one day own a closet in Far Rockaway sometime. I don’t see any of this with bitter eyes, really. To me, it’s just the way things are in New York.

But I could, maybe, afford to swing my ass from distant and roomy NoWa zipcode into a little place on the UWS at some point. If I work it out hard. The question is, as a man of Manhattan, is that an upgrade or a downgrade? And also, can I kill the Aussie and resume his identiy w/o anyone being the wiser?

All Good Things for Joey

December 11th, 2005 / 6 comments »

Yesterday morning my colleague @ Concierge, Joey, called out for his night shift, and I rolled my eyes cuz this is the 3rd weekend in a row I’ve worked alone with no mid-shift. The city is insane if you haven’t noticed. See all the tourists and ppl with baby strollers running through the sidewalks taking pictures of department store windows and fighting over cabs? Yeah those are all my hotel guests. I get to deal with them. Yay me. Needless to say, I was fucking annoyed when he called out. I refrained from getting bitchy, just cuz it’s pointless to do when you know they’ve already decided not to come in… but I just knew he’d probably show up hungover the next day as always and tell me all about his wild night out, accidentally giving away the fact that he was never sick in the first place. Happens all the time.

Turns out, he’s really sick. Apparently, he couldn’t feel his arm yesterday when he got up, so he went to the hospital. They decided to operate. Serious shit, right? They don’t just perform surgery on ppl who’s arms have like, gone to sleep or something. Turns out he’d had a stroke in his sleep. Here’s the great part: when I heard he was in the hospital, my first response was, “I’m not working his evening shifts. This is the holiday season and I’m stressed enough already. Maybe this’ll make the hotel see how fucking short staffed we are and they’ll HIRE someone.” Bad ppl like me? this is how we think. Well, he had his surgery and it turns out his kidneys are failing. A friend of his called us to tell us he’d be out for a week at least… and possibly may lose function of one arm. An hour after surgery, he went into cardiac arrest. An actual heart attack. He’s not doing so well now. Pnuemonia. He could die. His mom is flying out to be here.

I feel horrible. I feel scared for him. But it doesn’t matter how I feel. I learned firsthand once that when somebody’s sick, you’re job as a friend is not to identify your feelings out and take this time to work through your weirdness — your job is to drop everything and help. Be there and listen and check in and remind them they’ll be ok. The truth is? Joey’s not my friend, not really. He’s not even in my top 5 favorite ppl @ work. He’s usually unprepared @ our desk, always out of the loop for what’s going on in town, rarely owns a task from start to finish, and never stops taking smoke breaks. It’s annoying. But Joey’s also a doll; always kind and loyal, he’s handsome and always invites me out for drinks over and over again even tho I always say I’m busy (b/c I’m a fucking bitch and hate interacting with work people)… he still invites me out anyway. And now he’s in Intensive Care, where you can’t get phone calls or flowers or visitors or anything. I just can’t stop thinking about him, how lonely and freaked out he must be (if he’s even awake) right now. I can’t go back and make us better friends. But If I can’t do anything else, I can @ least be that friend who’s praying for him.

And I am.

UPDATE: No word yet on Joey’s status, but as for and my house, I am getting up off this complacent kick and marching into HR tomorrow to organize my health insurance. I became eligible for it at the end of October but never filled out the paperwork or anything. Yes, I — the CANCER SURVIVOR — have slagged off on getting health insurance. What the hell, right? Throw your stones, dudes, I deserve the ridicule. I just overdid putting the whole thing so far behind me and it’s just been SO nice having big fat paychecks w/o any insurance taken out of them that I got used to it. But Joey’s ordeal has been just the kick in the ass I needed to get myself together. My company’s health & benfit package is sick, there’s no reason not to have it. Goodbye, spending sprees. Hello, medical/dental/vision.

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We All Shine On

December 8th, 2005 / 3 comments »

I was never a big fan of John Lennon’s music, mostly out of ignorance. My dad looked a lot like him from the high school pictures I’ve seen, and I kinda like that “Penny Lane” song but for the most part I just knew he was one of the Beatles who everyone hailed as this master songwriter. Then earlier this summer I went to see Lennon: the Musical and absolutely got sucked into the story of his life. 9 different actors played him throughout the show — black, white, men, women, older, younger — and so all of their renditions of his songs sounded way different than I’d ever heard, which worked. I fell in love with the songs. “Instant Karma” is my favorite one so far — my dad text messages me random Lennon lyrics all the time so I’m slowly discovering a lot more.

Today was the anniversary of his death 26years ago (…er, 25. I’m the big 26. Sorry, projecting again). I bundled up in my winter coat, grabbed a peppermint hot chocolate from Starbucks, and joined thousands of other New Yorkers @ his candelit memorial this evening in Strawberry Fields. I don’t know why it was important to me to go, I just wanted to lay a flower on the IMAGINE mosiac and show my respect. It was moving to see so many New Yorkers standing together, some of them crying, most of them smiling. There was a lovely, completely untacky sing-a-long, which was kind of beautiful to be part of. In true New Yorker fashion, however, there were still complainers and whiners bitching about the long lines and the big crowds. But that cracked me up and comforts me in a way. I didn’t stay long for fear of it turning into something annoying as sing-a-longs tend to be (nothing in the world induces eplosive vomit from me like a faggle of drunken, teary eyed frat boys having a somber moment singing “No Woman No Cry”) but it was still nice. A really nice night.

Even after his death, John Lennon affects so many people. And we all shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun.

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Free Me

December 6th, 2005 / 2 comments »

There are days when I know I’ve still got this feeling inside me.

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