New York City on April 7th, 2016
1.
I walk to Chelsea to get a new debit card from the bank. Mine was lost at last weeks happy hour somewhere between the West and East Village.
There is a blonde man with a chiseled jaw and a matching blonde woman with a perfect ass in line ahead of me.
I bet you they’re not American, myself bets myself.
How can I help you, asks the bank teller.
Pourrez vous s’il vous plait…..
The bank man tells me to follow him so I do, into a room with two windows. It’s still raining. I close the door and he says, You can leave it open. I need a new debit card, I say.
More people lose their debit cards than their cellphones, he tells me, Can you believe that? I can.
He says, You don’t need money! Just go to a party Uptown and pick the first and oldest guy you see, you’ll be set! Ha Ha Ha! Is that Kara with a C or a K?
2.
I refill my subway card. I take it Downtown even though I prefer to walk, I am already late, and one should always show up to a Downtown dinner fashionably on time.
We are at a restaurant where all the servers are male models, and therefore, teenagers.
What came first, our desire to look youthful or to fuck the youthful?
Like my Mom-mom always says, You’ll never be more beautiful than when you were young!
They are. So is my Israeli friend Manny, young, not a male model. The weekend before I got drunk on tequila and uppers and thought, I could make-out with you. Today I had two fruit cups and a coffee and think, I could mother you.
3.
Happy hour is almost over. Melissa says, Let’s order three drinks at once so we still get the prices!
4.
I am really feeling it now. We’re sitting at a booth in a Lower East Side bar with neon signs and tiki lights and I keep sneaking pictures of Josie and Nicole. Flash.
I want to be a photographer! I exclaim, because I am a writer.
They keep talking. Josie is showing Nicole texts from her latest Tinder date. A Scottish guy who came here to work in SEO. She gave him head in Tompkins Square Park. American Dream.
Flash. Flash.
5.
My ex sends me a screen shot of his TimeHop: 4 years ago we hiked that mountain, such a great day!
I thought he was going to propose once we reached the top. When you’re 20 you think in long term.
Time flies, I respond.
6.
I get a text from an unknown number: What ya up to tonight?
I think it could be Dave but I’m not sure, I hadn’t saved his contact. When you’re 24 you think in short term.
7.
I’m back in Brooklyn and everyone’s pretending.
You don’t know Real Brooklyn, a girl with green hair once said to me, You don’t know it at all. What she didn’t know was the one thing I did know: I do not know Real Brooklyn.
8.
A guy on Tinder tells me he likes pee and asks if I’m freaked out. I’m not. I want everything I don’t have and everything I don’t have is cool, including fetishes.
9.
I am well drunk now and almost home. I stop at the bar with the pinball machines. An ex moved to London and said, Remember me by that bar! I said, Bye!
I can’t remember him by that bar because that’s my bar. A guy asks the bartender to change the song and she leans in and says, I’m pouring the drinks and I’m picking the music, dammit!
I say, double whiskey please!
Don’t be the first one there and the last one to leave, Mom always tells me, History will repeat itself, you know? I really do.
10.
I pay my bill and smoke a cigarette with the brown haired guy that’s always there.
Why are you always here, I ask him
Because my friend used to work here, he says. This confuses me but I do not push as pushing is something I do not do.
11.
I leave and go to the bodega where the deli guy makes me a turkey sandwich. Bodega-men are the unsung heroes of New York, so I say, You are the unsung hero of New York! And he says, five bucks.
12.
I walk up the apartment steel steps. Last summer I fell down them and had a bruise the size of Africa on my leg. At parties I never lifted my dress and said, check out this bruise! Because I’m not of the sorts.
13.
It’s 4am and I’m fully clothed in bed but it’s fine because it’s still before last call, in New York.
