This is an attempt to re-collect as the days pass in the Notorious Yup, those experiences which I would otherwise forget and never share with anyone beyond a vague bleurb of an incident, no doubt explained half wittingly on a long distance call to friends back home, only serving to add to the mountains of scrappy conversation taking place all the time. And there is too much trash here as it is, clogging up the sidewalks, whipped up against shop doors, decorating the bare the trees with tangled tape for tinsel and plastic bags for borbles. I wondered how the trash managed to reach such heights, imagining very stressed out New Yorkers emptying their trash out of their 4th floor apartment. Then I felt the power of that wind last night which almost picked me up off my feet. I didn’t feel any safer inside the apartment either, as the whole building shook like there was a minor earth tremor.
“Did you feel that!” I glared at Tyler.
“What?!” he smiled guiltily.
“The whole building is moving.”
“Oh yeah…” he said in his slow Californian drawl. “It does that sometimes.”
This is the kind of building with large pipes running up the wall that whisper gurgling-nothings all night long with apartments that are shaped like one long corridor, so you have to walk through three peoples bedrooms to get to the toilet at night. It's got character someone like me might say! Most would feel like they are living in a train carriage.
~
It's 5 days since I left for New York and I'm still not really sure why I am here. As I write this my friend Aj is practicing his 7th set of scales on the trombone and Tyler is pouring out a fountain of notes on his sax, in adjacent rooms. I can't complain as I am living here voluntarily and rent-free but if I was a paying neighbour I might be driven to banging on the ceiling politely once in a while. So I asked Aj straight out,
"So has anyone complained yet about the noise?"
"No-Why?”
“Well, I don’t know, I mean…you guys are practicing every night for like, 2-3hours.”
“Yeah…I know.” He looked a bit put out. “I know I'm not that good but Tyler is?"
"It’s not that, it’s just your both playing different tunes in separate rooms. It's not like your playing a beautiful tune together."
"Well, the lady downstairs is an opera singer.”
"What?" I shake my head in disbelief.
“Haven't you heard her yet?"
“No!”
"Yeah she often practices in the morning. You must have heard her. She lives right beneath where you sleep.”
“Nope, not at all!”
“And the guys next door complimented Tyler on his sax playing one day. That’s about all the response we have had."
"Wow that’s lucky."
"I guess.” He looked a little put out that I appeared not to relish in the beautiful brass sounds I get to enjoy every night here. As I write this I have ear phones on as both AJ and Tyler are making all sorts of incredible music at one end of the apartment and the other, but if it weren’t for their devoted practice I wouldn’t be here writing and living the life I often dreamed of.
~
Today was Valentines day and I am proud and surprised to say I didn't get one pang of love-longing despite the fact the recession seems to be about the only thing that has penetrated my love life recently, which should be impossible by definition. It's Valentine night and I'm sitting here staring lovingly into the screen of my laptop whilst the majority of New York spends their night eye gazing. I was asked to a Rubalad party tonight by a girl who's most defining attribute is the fact she hitch-hiked across Africa to Zanzibar by herself. She travels by summer and works by winter. A girl after my own heart! However I wasn't up for all the live music and crazy artist scene, which is unlike me. Along with the fact I haven't had a drink since the flight over here. No celebratory beer to refreshingly ground me in my new circumstances. Absolutely nothing! And I haven’t even craved it, weird, some might say worrying. Even this evening when I opened a bottle of 3 buck chuck, I still managed to let it sit for an hour before gulping down a glass. I have had a lot of alternative reality checks though. Similar to the sort recommended by a Guatemalan Shaman who told me to walk for half an hour on the earth every morning in bare feet because I was too up in the air and I needed to start physically manifesting my ideas. Lets just say there has been a lot of didgeridoo in my life recently and I’m all the better for it.
~
If anyone could have been a fly on the wall last night and seen me flat out on the bed, Tyler blowing with his didge into the base of my spine and Aj with his huge didge over the nape of my neck, moving in circular motions around my head, you might view it as some kind of tantric new age hippy revival ritual and in my position run a mile. Not to deny that the whole didge blasting thing acts as some sort of phallic tool acceptable to parade around in public, like a motorbike with an obnoxious growling exhaust or a four wheel truck with all that added suspension so the driver doesn’t have to push as much. Anyhow I take it for what it is, and that is vibrational pulses that enter into your body and release any stored up tension, which for me is all knotted in the back of my right shoulder. I realized last night that all the tension I have stored up there is because I have this literal hunch that someone or something is about to ambush me out of nowhere. Anyone who knows me well, knows I am easily pounced on. Even if I know you are about to jump out at me, I still scream. The vwerring noise of the didge at my back that intensifies then ebbs away in a circular breathing motion, made my whole body flinch and I had to start diffusing all that knotted fear out of my body. As I focused my mind on the back of my right shoulder the whole of my back began to vibrate with the sound of the didge and the muscles began to fizz, release then relax. It felt like all the cells which had turned black with tension were blown through with a sliver of fresh breath, shimmering from black to silver like a school of fish in sun shot water.
~
Right, enough from doolaaland, and back to today's happenings, which made me want to stay and leave all in the same day. I set off before midday to hand out resumes in the multitude of cafes, bars and shops littered around this area. At the first café, the owner looked at me like I was talking jibberish while I was trying to spurt out some intro of mine about how I had worked in a wine bar once which served coffee in the morning. I’m not very good at pulling out all the stops to sell oneself, which basically means having the skill of being a convincing liar these days. This did not work as he was trying to serve about 5 other people at the same time and being an Italian New Yorker he had a quick reply, “Sorry hunny, but we are in a recession, yo know, why else do yo think I’m trying to whip up 3 capuccino’s, a latte and Americano at the same time!” Good point. Good start. Another bar told me they only hire friends and family. Is that not discrimination, these days? That pissed me off actually. It was the tone he said it in. You know.. it’s the way you tell it! And he said it like, I don’t know you from Normandy, with the ‘And, who are you?” look on his face.
I don’t know why I had ruled out clothes shops as an option, until I went in and enquired about jobs in a few. Then I remembered how girls can be really bitchy when a new girl turns up. They sort of look you up and down, smile in that sickly way which makes you want to gag, whilst telling you they will hand in the resume to their manager, when really, as you step out the door, they chuck it in the trash. So I crossed clothes shops off job options. Also because I couldn’t lie to someone if it looked awful on them. Those “Oh wow, that looks so good on you” with a surprised tone, lines are so classic and yet we all fall for them because we want to.
“You know I actually got those in red last week. They are so comfortable.” I bought some boots for work, the other day (mum you would be so proud!) They are very smart and sexy and sophisticated...all the S words because I was a sucker for a sale. It even crossed my mind in the shop that the customer who was more enthusiastic about the boots I was buying than I was, might actually have been hired by the shop to spend the day in there trying on shoes and cooing delightfully over them. Seriously we are fickle enough these days for that to work. She even said, “ You know I come in here all the time to get my shoes. I just love shoes. They really have the best stock here. Its amazing you know because if you buy another pair you can get one free.” I am still undecided as to whether she had a severe shoe fetish or was a hired con-artist.
~
I understand that being female makes you an object of perversity whether you’ve got a low cut top on our not, but in the last few days, the number of titty stares I’ve got from desperate old men running cafes so they can hire young women in tight tops and watch them frothing milk all day long, has exceeded itself in general expectation. (Yes I am going to use the word titty because that’s how cringy the whole thing is). I was hoping this last place would be different, the menu being a little more pricey and therefore the staff more classy. However the manager of Coffee, chocolate and wine turned out to be just the same bitch-sniffing wretch as all the rest. I should have guessed after his crap jokes yesterday, that he was having problems getting laid.
“You know this new guy is already 2 minutes late, so we might be hiring again after all.”
“Ok well here’s my name and number and I’ll bring in my resume tomorrow, Damn the pen doesn’t work.”
“The pen doesn’t work?! That’s not a good start is it!”
Today was even worse as I approached him while he was serving a customer, who he then completely ignored while turning his attention entirely to my chest. The customer actually walked off and as soon as I realized what was going on, while he was mumbling about ‘maybe there being some work and what was my experience again?’ , I wrapped my cardi self-consciously round my top. Instantly he withdrew from my inch of cleavage and snapping back into the room, abruptly put my resume away and bluntly said he would contact me if something came up otherwise goodbye. Another rejection based on the grounds that I won’t put out. This had happened the day before, if not a little more graciously, at Ozzie’s, where I was foolish enough to believe that the manager was simply interested enough to spare half an hour of his time to talk about my life and I. I should have noticed the half glazed over look in his eyes before he arrived at the crash boom wollop question that asks what I was doing that evening.
“Oh, nothing.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend?”
“No… No” I shake my head awkwardly like that was a ridiculous suggestion.
“Oh.. well..its Valentines night. You have to be doing something?”
“I will problem just hang out with my room mates.”
“Who do you live with?”
“Just two guys I’ve known for a while.”
“Ok…”I could tell he was going to risk it. “Well if you wanted..” Please don’t…He looks at me, see’s I’m going bright red wondering how I’m going to get out of this one and looking down to where his feet are if he could see over his beer belly, looks up at me and says… “I was wondering if you wanted to meet here for a drink later.”
“Oh…Oh” As if I hadn’t guessed that wasn’t coming. “That would be really lovely but I think I’m just going to have a quiet one.” What ever that means? It is just something to say without having to think. Eitherway, I was not going to have a drink with a hazy-eyed plump Latino dude who slurred his words in an all too recognizable stoner state of apathetic murmurings, even if the alternative was spending the evening on my own with a book. I realized I had said all I could possibly say to this stranger in the last half hour and further conversation would be virtually impossible if I wanted any kind of response. Which, at my fault entirely, I realized he hadn’t needed to give so far, as I’d been in monologue mode the whole time, streaming off a whole series of explanations and aspirations, at the poor guy.
“Oh…ok then.” He joined me, with a flush of red draining down his face. “Ok I understand.”
“No, no.” I stutter. I don’t know why I cared so much about hurting this sorry creeps feelings. “Its just I don’t really fancy doing anything tonight.” Wow, what a way to try and make the situation any less awkward. I had basically just told him that I would prefer to sit and stare at a blank wall than hang out with him.
“Ok” he sucked up the air around him in an attempt to pull in his mid-drift and maintain some pride before shrugging it off, “don’t worry about it.” Then he just stood there saying nothing, so I thought about reminding him why I was there in the first place.
“So you will call me if you need me to cover that girls shift next week, when she’s away.”
“What?” he looked at me as if miss-hearing me, rubbing his eyebrow. “Oh yeah, yeah, I will call you.” He said hopelessly in his lacksidasical mind-state that inferred he had no intention of the sort. At which point a scary thought crossed my mind, which is not only that I can’t believe I still wanted the job but even worse that he is looking at me as if he can’t believe I still want the job, after his blatant attempt to get in the my pants. And looking back there is no denying that is exactly what is was, since he had been mildly implying that he would get rid of the other girl who was taking an innocent week off if….
~
Cafes are a great place to hang out in though, if you are looking for inspiration in any aspect of the human life form.
I have to admit I am a bit of a gawper, but humans never fail to interest me, especially if I don’t have to talk to them! A pair of middle aged women sat spurning out a whole history of family issues for all to hear. With sentences that could mean anything for all I know…
“And now he’s just going even though I know he doesn’t want to. Just to get at me you know.”
Mmm mmm, her friend shakes her head in understanding.
“I know, it must be so frustrating but you’ve just got to let him do what he wants to do, you know. It’s always been like this between you two.”
“There is just so much tension all the time.”
“That’s why you need to let him go.”
“It’s just so sad though.”
The lady trying to be there for her hurting friend is doing a good job at comforting her. It is always hard not to say what you really think. I sneak a look at her sympathetic expression and as an outsider I don’t believe it. It is like walking into some cheesy rom-com half way through and laughing at the sentimental dialogue while everyone else is welling up. In my head she could be cheating with the subject of her friends concern trying to persuade her everything is ok when really she is the one having all the sex with him.
I zone out and back towards another crazy character who had caught my eye earlier, with wild knotted hair, like a self made afro from the friction of too many ruff nights grinding up and down on the sheets,
“Hey, can you help me or are you too busy!” She bitched to the new guy who was busy handing me a glass of water after he had given me a cup of boiling water by mistake. Her square black-rimmed specks gave her that air of edgy sophistication, along with tats up her skinny arms and a holey pink jumper. Everything she said was said in a loud statement for the whole room to hear if they cared. She loved herself. She was mates with the other girl my age in the place. The girl who kept re-adjusting the position of her cell phone next to her mac computer. Another OCD, along with the couple sitting next to me, on their Sunday routine trip to get a coffee and a bagel. Unusual for the cliché couple - she reads the business section of the New York Times and he reads a novel. I wonder how repressed their sex is. I imagine them gyrating back and forth in a jarred fashion of the sooner this is over the better! Pasty white and flaky skin on greasy hair. Eurgh. I am terrible and sick minded but come on we always wonder, what it must be like to be them. They look normal and content though so nothing more to say really. Then there is the slightly plump lady curled up next to me on the couch, heading in the direction I believe I am, sloth-ly leafing through pages of a huge book. Then the man sitting in an arm chair to my left, with not a hair out of place, smoothed down into the nape of his neck, typing away swiftly, another article for fun, free and with such uniform pleasure. The smug type who is never bothered by anything because his life is always in such perfected immaculate order. He checks his watch with a flick of the wrist, and his expression reads, “O look its 3 on the dot, I have just finished in perfect time. I must be off!” And up he gets, after wrapping up his headphones neatly and in consistent motion around his I-pod and heading out the door. His empty glass stands perfectly empty and positioned squarely on the table. I glare at it in a burst of pure spite. How very dare he be so right and un-hassled. I never leave anywhere unless I am rushing. My nemesis!
