A poltically incorrect question

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Elaborating how un-politically correct I am, last night I led a conversation (with members of the junior committee and other prospective dancers) on whether the Holocaust could have happened in a place other than Germany, specifically in a Mediterranean country. This came out of a conversation that I had with my Aunt and Uncle over the FL wedding weekend.

My uncle is a pretty serious Jew, especially since he was the youngest and the last to get married after both of his older sisters married outside the religion. He is the last hope for my mother’s side of the family to add to the Jew gene pool, a responsibility that he takes very seriously to provide 100% offspring. Unfortunately, he fell in love with an amazing woman who was not only not Jewish, but also German. However, like all things, love won out instead of God.

As his hobby, he has taken up genealogy, and has begun to chronicle how my forefathers fled the programs in Russia and immigrated to the US. Once you reach a certain point in family history, however, it is insanely difficult to trace all of your lineage, so he started on my his wife’s side of the family. And I am sure that part of this is fueled to find out if there is a Jewish relative hiding someplace so that his son could be deemed 100% Kosher. He stumbled upon a name in her lineage that, for NYC Jew standards, is pretty Jewish sounding. So he constantly tells her that she has to be Jewish, no matter what her family says. She responds that because the Germans kept such careful records she would have known if a relative was a Jew.

He goes unconvinced.

But it led to a discussion. Having spent some time in Berlin when I took some time off during my undergrad career, I can attest that those Germans are some anal-retentive fuckers. This is the land where you do not cross against the stop light because a plain-clothes police officer would nab you, they ride the subway on the honor system, and if you have ever encountered a German, they are fastidious in everything they do. They keep hard-core records and are amazing at organization.

Living with a gay Greek man and my 3 trips to Italy, I feel that I can speak with some authority about Mediterranean Culture. People who live in Southern Europe are some of the most relaxed people and with their 2 hour siestas, cappucino drinking, long meals with wine and the like, I am suprised that anything gets done. Hell, I can't even have my gay Greek roomate take out the trash, nevermind think that him and his people could ever commit genocide.

But keep in mind, I posed this politically incorrect question, to people who I am supposed to try to impress with my social graces and presentability. People, one of which was a kid from BOSNIA ("ethnic cleansing" in the 1990's ring a bell?!). Which I am great with...except after the fourth Grey Goose and tonic. Except this case it was after the 5th glass of wine.

$2400 to live like the homeless

When confronted with the cold and rain, I hibernate and stop going out to party. I wrap myself up in my blankie, the cold preventing me from wearing my normal repetoire of booby revealing shirts and strappy Manolos, the only things that make me look presentable when trying to compete with every other Jewish girl in NYC trying to land her future ex-husband.


When I go into hibernation and stop partying, I rationalize since I am not taking in the extra calories drinking, I could put those calories towards my vices of Ben and Jerry’s and General Tso’s chicken. Which I have done way too much lately, in addition to drinking like an addict on break from Betty Ford...yea, I put back on my meningitis weight.

This is my Fri night: on the couch, cuddled with my blanket, the General and Ben and Jerrys with some bad TBS movie. And I am also wearing my fleece jacket, scarf, and 2 pairs of socks on my feet because I have no heat because there is a huge fucking hole in my living room wall. Yes, I have a hole in my wall, and it is in the low 40's in manhattan at the moment.

Sloth induced coma, I am ready for bed by 3am, looking forward to sleeping in. Cuddled with my down comforter, fleece jacket, and scarf because I have no heat.

6:00am, I wake up to this ungodly screeching and banging, smoke in my room, and this putrid smell filling my nostrils.

Holy fuck, there is a fire in my room.

And all the smokey the bear I watched growing up flew out the window, I was shaking, wanting to get out but I couldnt connect my survial instinct with my legs. I spent minutes scared shitless that my apt was going up in flames and I had no rental insurance to cover my shoes and handbags, minutes before I thought to leave the apartment via fire escape.

I run out to the living room, calling to John, ready to save him and whatever Latino man he has in his bed but when I open the door to my living room, there is nothing except for a blast of cold air from the hole in the wall. The living room has no heat and my room evidently is getting its leftover, causing steam to shoot out of the radiator and make my room look like the set from Michael Jackson's thriller.

But since it is the first time the heat came on, I dont mention it to the super, figuring that it has to be a one time only thing, right?

Well, I have an excuse to go to the gym in the mornings because I have been up at 6am every fucking morning. It is especially nice when I am severly hungover from the night before.

I could go sleep in the living room until the problem is cleared up, right? But there is a 2 1/2 feet by 2 feet hole in my wall, which wasn't a problem during the summer since it provided the apt with extra ventilation however, as the temp drops and my roomate is being is relaxed Greek self, we have only a plastic bag covering the hole. Which in the rain and cold is not at all effective.


The homeless man who lives in a box has better protection from the elements than I do.
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I don’t know how many of my readers live in NYC/keep up with NYC weather (you should get a fucking hobby)…but as I write this it is in the low 40s. Just above the temperature that ice freezes…and we haven’t even gotten to the coldest point in the night.

I would be better off with a fucking card board box outside with a sleeping bag next to toothless bob and vomiting NYU frat boy. And we pay $2400 a month for the privilege to live here. Yes, mom and dad your daughter is building quite the life for herself.

On balls and cajones

This ball that I am a 'prospective dancer' is going to be the end of me...

I am about to reserve my spot at Betty Ford. An excuse to drink on Tues nights.

Why is it when I get drunk, I tell everyone my life story, want to continue drinking beyond recognition of the evening invite them to gay Karaoke, and then wake up with bits of Pizza stuck to my face.

It is a viscious cycle that I infict upon my body.

Only this 'ball season' it will occur with regularity.

And it is a bad bad idea to tell people about your blog...especially when you are going to end up writing about them.

I was up at 6:30am this morning, when I woke up to the heat in my room clanking away, steaming, and leaving a condensation on my windows, leading me to believe at 6:30 am that it was raining in my room. Granted I was also severely alcohol and pizza hungover from the night before, so my judgement was a little off.

Hence why I am writing this at 7:45am, with the big bottle of Gatorade permanently attached to my face as I type. With each sip to electrolyte balance, remembering how if I keep my drunken behavior, drinking on an empty stomach, as I have for the past few weeks at the 'Libations' after rehearsals, I will no longer be a 'prospective dancer' for this ball, but instead be a kicked out dancer, an ex-dancer…and no more cute Italian for me to make eyes at. And I am hoping this one is not gay.

Although, judging from my performance last night, I think they discovered that I had 2 left feet, do not know my right from my left, and am really not “dance presentable”, especially since I hate tucking in my shirt. And I smoke ciggs which is evidently a bad thing in the ball circles society (aka pretending that such a thing still exists in the face of celebrity which has it trumped) circles. And I think I also made a few enemies (and of course they are women) but also a bunch of friends who I am super excited about.

This quasi-'society' stuff, I am coming to realize, was made for people without jobs, or perhaps it is in the process of training us how to be like functional alcoholics, while taking our money to give to some philanthropic cause helping white upper middle class people. But in the words of the Junior Committee, I am going to be “useless” on Wed. mornings. I guess they didn’t receive the memo that I am pretty useless in my job, and if it wasn’t for my ridiculous rent, I would have quit and would be waiting tables and writing. I already want to crawl back into bed.


Fuck, as I am coughing right now, I feel something in my lungs. I could have lung cancer. Would serve me right for chain smoking and treating my body like a trashcan.

Now I have to look for jobs to become a dominatrix, or in other words, a sex worker. And yes I am serious. Getting paid $200/hr to lob grapefruit at men’s asses or whatever humiliation gets them off without me having to sucky-sucky them is a great thing. Especially I could trade in my job at sitting at my desk for 9-10 hours a day.

So, your author, is attempting to become a member of 'society', the same person who is a participant in the White Trash Tour 2004, who was lecturing about feminist ideals last night, who brought up issues of class and class consciousness during conversations, and who is seriously contemplating becoming a domanintrix…

I am slowly realizing that I am a fish out of intellectual waters…my hair smells like an ashtray and I am too lazy to wash it this morning. So, I am leaving you with 2 questions my readers:

1.Why is it the old Woody Allen adage correct, “I don’t want to be part of a club that would have a person like me as a member?”

2.If a ball is entertaining the idea that someone like me, who is the antithesis of politically correct and dance presentable could become part of it, does the idea of 'society' really exist or has it too like most things, lost itself on becoming democratic?

We all share vices

You know what is humbling?! Perusing the ads on Craigslist (I know I know I promised I would stop internet dating but…when you are too lazy to get dressed up and all you want to do is sit in your apt and eat Ben and Jerry’s because you are too tired from partying and working during the week…old habits die hard) and stumbling upon someone who looks familiar. And I read the ad, Latino mid 40s, 5’4, saying how lonely he is. It reminds me of someone who I know...but I can't put my finger on it…and I scroll down to see the picture...

Oh my God!! This explains everything!

It is my Stats professor!

No wonder why he gives so much HW!

See, sexual frustration, the root cause of people causing misery to other people.

It gave a whole new meaning to the class when I went today, knowing that he shares the same vices that I do…craigslist personal ads. Worst comes to worst, maybe he’ll trade a sucky-suck for an A? He did say that he is lonely.

I’ve been trying to figure it out, ever since I moved into this apartment, I have had the worst dandruff problem that I have ever had in my life. It’s gotten so bad that I have to leave my hair pinned up in a quasi-messy bun so that I don’t have little flakes drop onto my black sweater encased shoulders. This definitely creates a problem at work, where my nervous habit involves me scratching my head…yes, I know, I look very monkey-like, especially since I have this dumb looking face ½ the time because I am so bored/shitty at collecting receipts and following up on media buys. So here you have me, hunched over my desk, worried look on my face, and scratching my head as a mini-blizzard falls upon my shoulders.

Interestingly, the dandruff subsides over the weekend—could this just be another reason for me to quit my hellish job?! Or maybe it is my cursed apt, with the really bad chi that is causing this?!

And to top it all off, I ran out of deodorant this morning. I didn’t think it was going to be too bad, I mean, I have gone to work w/o deodorant before. However, the heat was turned up to ‘Arabian Desert’ at the office and I was wearing a sweater and a scarf, trying in vain to hide my hide the stain left over from last week's dinner... So I began to sweat.

I smelled something a little funky, while sweating and I leaned over and caught a whiff. Shit, it was my armpits smelling. However, unconvinced for some sick reason, I kept leaning over and checking my armpits. I knew I smelled the first time around, but for some reason the whiff of my armpit didn’t convince me the first time, nor the second time, nor even the fifth time. So here you have me, no clean clothes, having to wear a febreezed sweater with stains from my dinner last week on it (it was Monday and I dropped off ALL of my clothes to the nice Chinese launderer), sniffing at my armpits continuously at my desk, and since I am nervous that I smell, scratching my dandruffy scalp.

I know HR is going to have a field day with me when I am up for my 6 month review.
“Shannon, in addition to your jumpiness, your moodiness, and your inability to keep track of receipts and do simple mathematics, we noticed that you don’t keep hygiene in the highest regard.”

My 6 month review is at the end of January.

On less self-deprecating news, my Halloween costume makes me look like a sex Godess and I am so excited for this weekend, since I have a few of my MoHos coming up. At first I wanted to be a sexy can-can girl, and you know Halloween is the only time where prudes and the sexually mis-adventerous like myself could dress up like a slut, and have it be perfectly ok. So in my sick sick world, where I like to live in a dream that I have cultivated, I wanted to capture the old school sluttiness of those sexy Moulin Rouge dancers. The glamour that moves like Moulin Rouge and the Mr. Brightside video tried to capture. I wanted part of it. Sexy yet fun. How cute!

How not me…come on, when have I ever not pushed the envelope and been happy with what everyone else has? Or been happy acting like a sorority girl?! There is a reason why I never went to SMU. (Southern Methodist Univeristy, the waspy trustafarian southern belle school).

As I donned my corset (uhm, big boobs even bigger…), my short petticoat, my fishnet thigh highs, and my stilettos, I realized that I looked like something else besides a Moulin Rouge girl. With the ad of a prop, I would have a costume that I would be proud of, a costume that expressed a lost side of me. Fuck the sweet Moulin Rouge girl... I got a paddle instead of a boa. A leather paddle. My alter ego Mistress Shannon, that has been on hiatus since the Harvard Debauchery party in 2000, is making an appearance. Last time I wielded a whip, I had a lot of fun, I wonder what the paddle will bring.

I can’t explain what came over me as I slid into my Halloween costume and held the paddle. The costume unleashed this part of me that I forgot existed, this part that owns her sexuality, that used to take boys and throw them against walls in bars…

“Have you met my friend discipline? You look like you could use a little bit of him in your life!” was my mantra at the Harvard Debauchery party. Boys against the wall, me pulling their hair, telling them to thank me for each smack with the whip. I almost won that night, if it wasn’t for girls who pooled their money together well, and also if I didn’t spend ½ the night making out with some boy in the broom closet. But I almost won. And Mistress Shannon is making her appearance NYC Halloween 2005 and wanting a repeat of my appearance at Debauchery.

And of course being all excited about my Halloween costume, I had to wear it around the apartment the day I got it. Without any curtains, as John had called for Chinese delivery. As I am prancing around the apartment, his food arrives.

I decide to answer the door dressed up as Mistress Shannon, wielding my leather paddle. The poor Chinese man had the most confused look, trying not to laugh, but also trying not slightly frightened. He timidly took the tip, then scurried down the stairs.

I am thinking this could be a great rouse for my landlord. Next time he wants to stop by unexpectedly/come by at an off time (like 9pm), I should be wearing my corset, with my paddle in my hand, John on all 4s. I answer the door and tell the landlord that he stopped by at a bad time because John has been naughty…

Love for the landlord and self-blacklisting

I ignored the warning signs when they were all there. It’s just that I wanted to live in the Village so badly in a decently sized apartment that I ignored my gut and handed over my signed check for $5K to the sketch realtor who posted the apt on a “No Fee” section of Craigslist. Ignoring my knowledge of basic contract law, ignoring the fact that the lease agreement also included a sketch addendum with sketch requirements such as a NYC phone # (LI and the area code 516 are considered long distance), having the super inspect all air conditioners (try waiting days for the super to ‘inspect’ your installation when it is 100 + degrees—luckily we said fuck it), finding out that the landlord’s son lives UPSTAIRS…directly above you, him watching all the sketchy Latin men come in and out of your apartment and hearing your roommate having loud sex with those sketchy Latin men. And you have my living situation.

My landlord and his family hates John and me. Yes, I said family. He works for mommy helping her manage the building of yuppies, a satus he doesn’t qualify for since he has to get yelled at by his mommy on days other than the requisite Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t think he hates me as much as he hates John; in his eyes I am just a fag hag who got caught up under the influence of a crazy Greek.

He is on a landlord’s son fueled power tip—trying to make our life a living hell since we live the life that he will never have. One of independence and real live people sex.

In his desire to make our life a living hell, he has taken a ‘special interest’ in the apartment, coming over to look for things wrong, calling me at work to bitch and moan about how much he hates John, sending over an incompetent super to fix things, withholding my mail key for a week…the list goes on, I am not going to bore you. The problem is that he harasses me just not enough for it to be considered harassment (I called the city this morning) but enough to annoy the fuck out of me.

At first I was polite and he answered my politeness with condescension and disdain. I then tried to be short with him and he still spoke to me like I was a child. Now it has gotten to the point where I have begun to answer his snotty comments with, “Listen, let me tell you my schedule. I leave my house at 8:30 am every morning and do not return home until after 10. I don’t have time to deal with this. As soon as Q4 hits, I do not know the inside of my apartment.” I sound important don’t I?! What he doesn’t know is that the reason I do not see the inside of my apartment is that I just resumed my heavy drinking since the weather got cold and the days got short.

At first I thought that his attitude came from him being a landlord’s son. One of those spoiled rich kids who were never able to hack it on their own so they get to take orders from mommy for the rest of their lives by running her buildings. Since I dated one of those types (went on 2 dates and only because my mother insisted because he was a rich Jewish boy), I learned their secret. Since they work for mommy…they have no idea what the real world is like. So you could make up the craziest shit that you have to do for work…and they believe you! My job has me working 80+ hours a week according to the schtick that I tell him!

Trying to figure out where this attitude came I analyzed our last few conversations after my preliminary analysis, and decided that it needed revision or an addition. His fucked up attitude has to come from something else…I have never encountered an attitude like that before. After a few conversations, and trying to hold a coherent conversation with him and him not being able to follow, I came to the realization that he had to be mildly retarded/incredibly socially awkward. That could be the only way for me to rationalize his fucked up attitude. After speaking with a few of the tenants (I am in the process of trying to organize them—he doesn’t know who he’s fucked with. I will fuck him over), they told me some real horror stories. Remembering that kid from that ‘80’s tv show “Life Goes On” you know, Corky, the kid with down syndrome? Could you imagine Corky yelling at people?! He just wanted to be understood. So that hypothesis went out the window…too mean to be like Corky.

And that is what I have been trying to do. Understand him. Empathize with him. And by imagining myself in his situation…living alone, being in my mid 30’s, living in one of mommy’s apts as I worked for her and never having friends over (I have never seen him with anyone and when I saw him waiting outside I jokingly asked him if he was “Waiting for a hot date”. Let’s say he was less than receptive to that joke), nevermind a real live woman to have sex with…I realized that his attitude is from pent up sexual frustration and jealousy of my roommate’s life. I bet he hasn’t gotten laid in a really long time.

So I decided that he needed my help. I selflessly stepped up to the challenge.

I posted an ad on Craigslist for him as shown below: (Click on it to read it):






I figured if he is getting regular sex and has a woman to occupy his time, he’ll stop being a dick to me and leave me the fuck alone. And if he gets a ‘present’ in the form of a puss filled nodule then score one for me.

If this plan doesn’t work, then I am going to have to involve God.

I think he’s Jewish so I am putting a Mezuzah up on my door. Traditionally, they are supposed to ward off evil spirits, I am hoping to ward off an evil landlord. If he thinks I am a fellow member of the tribe, maybe he’ll stop treating me like a warring nation. And if he isn’t Jewish and says that the mezuzah is permanently ruining his doorpost (it has to be nailed in or stuck on), then he is infringing upon my religious right.

But it is nights like tonight that make me question whether my high rent, fighting with my landlord, and having a poor Feng Shui apartment are worth it as I was with an old friend, looking for a cute place to have a drink around my apartment. Whether its all worth it considering that I can no longer take advantage of my awesome area because I have self-blacklisted myself from 90% of the cute bars and several streets in a four block radius. .

Self-blacklisting, a term I invented and perfected, involves going to an awesome place, either on a date or with a group of friends and making such an ass out of yourself either by drunkenly making out with random dudes, dancing on bars, vomiting anywhere in the bars vicinity, or just being an asshole. You made such a drunken ass out of yourself that you are embarrassed to run into one of the people who you embarrassed yourself in front of.

I have realized that I am self-blacklisted from all of my favorite places and a few blocks around my apartment.

This became abundantly clear when we had to walk a block out of our way as to avoid passing some guys apartment who I made an ass out of myself in front of, and it felt like an enlightment from Jesus when I realized we had to walk into the SoHo Tribeca area because I have a high probability running into people who I would much rather forget that I embarrassed myself.

Just add me to the do not fly list

My sister and I have a bizarre relationship but it works for us. We scream, fight, will even smack each other and at the end, one of us will always start to cry. We walk away, we both simultaneously call my mother, pout. Then we walk over to each other, get invaded by the spirit of Dr. Phil, use ‘I feel’ messages and come to the root of our problem—usually blaming how our parents raised us. Promise never to fight, then have some of the most intense conversations that shed light into our characters.

Knowing how important it is to my mom that we present the ‘good’ rendition of ourselves, we try to keep these outbursts in check whenever we go down to FL. Despite all of the nuttiness such as my mom fighting with her sister and putting us in the middle, we have this uncanny ability to remain composed, be thoughtful, soft spoken, people think we are well bred young women…until the airplane.

We have nobody to impress on the airplane, and unfortunately it is there that all of our pent up aggression from the weekend gets let out. It begins on the way to the airport, my mother resentful that my Aunt didn’t drive us and that we had to take car service. She spends the 45 min journey talking the ear off about how crappy her sister treated her to the poor retired Jewish Floridian who drives his mini-van so that he doesn’t have to eat cat food. My sister and I interject that to keep harping that my Aunt is a terrible hostess is just bad karma and poor taste. Meanwhile my mother can’t get over that her sister didn’t drive us to the airport. My sister and I go into a fantasy world of talking about our perfect wedding. Mine with an ambulance parked outside.

Confronted with “If you gain anymore weight, you’ll have saggy boobs” (I have actually lost by the way—my sister lost weight and I just look heavier compared to her) and a horrible case of wedding fever (my brother’s engagement and having attended weddings back to back weekends), my conversation with my sister revolved around weddings: where to have one, the theme, color scheme, all the stuff that women love. And of course, talk about weddings and being confronted with hoards of cute babies by women who are YEARS younger than me, makes me develop a case of baby fever.
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This may come as a surprise, but when the fag hag of Greenwich Village got to the airport, I almost bought Modern Bride as reading material for the flight back, about to forgo my Atlantic Monthly and its Upper West side liberal intelligentsia values. With my brother’s engagement, all these weddings and friends getting pregnant, this maternal part of me reared its ugly head. I can’t explain it. Holding my cousins’ and Uncle and Aunt’s (they are not under 25) babies, made me realize how much I want to have children and have the white picket fence enclosing my compound.

Granted this is all coming from the girl whose friends have given her future dog a weight minimum because their biggest fear is that I come home drunk from an evening partying and accidentally puncture my small dog with my stiletto as it runs to greet me. Without realizing that my dog is attached to my heel, I keep on walking around the apt in a drunken stupor as I stuff pirates booty into my belly to satisfy the post-drinking munchies, as the dog’s yelps for mercy falls on deaf ears.

My sister knocks me to my senses and convinces me it is a terrible idea.

We see that our flight is boarding and board the plane, my mother and I simultaneously cursing my sister under our breath for booking us seats at the back of the plane. The way back. The second to last row which is dangerous for people like my mother and me who are PETRIFIED of flying since you feel all of the turbulence.

As we board my sister reminds me of my promise that I would help her with her HW assignment, developing her ideas into cohesive sentences. I tell her that I need to take a nap but will help her by the flights end. She tells me that I will help her in half an hour.

Oh she did not!

But she did! Telling me when I will help her…

I try to doze off, listening to some Franz Ferdinand, and find that I can’t sleep. She takes my inability to sleep as an open door that I am ready to help her.

We begin to fight.

“When ever you want me to do something, I drop what I am doing and help you!” she wails.

“I understand, but you need to understand that you are asking me to be creative and I can’t just be creative at the drop of a hat.”

“You are such a bitch!”

“Fuck you!” I yell, as passengers look towards us. “I don’t fucking get it. How many times do I help you with your HW. You have to respect my time.”

She replies with some remark in a condescending voice.

Out of frustration, losing control and in a blind rage, I take the tray in front of me and hit it as hard as I possibly can, repeatedly.

I shook the seat in front of me. The woman turns to her friend and says, “That bitch is lucky that my back wasn’t to the seat, or else I would have smacked her across the face.” But I am in LI girly mode having spent a weekend pretending to be one. Instead of being worried for my personal safety, I think that she may sue me for whiplash.

At this point my mother looks up, with her pen and paper in hand. She was writing the answers to the trivia game that you can play on Song against the other passengers. Nothing would stop her from getting the top score. Everyone would know that Lynn B. on the Flight from Ft. Lauderdale to JFK knew the most trivia.

“Mom! You were writing the answers to the trivia game?!” asked my sister in disbelief.

In all seriousness, did winning at that trivia game mean that much to my mom that she had to cheat?!

As we are probing my mother for her motivations as to why she feels it necessary to cheat, we see a Hasidic with a secular Jew walking towards the back of the plane.

An aside: Hasidics will routinely walk around and ask usually men if they are Jewish so that they could wrap Telfin so that a Jew who ordinarily wouldn’t could perform a mitzvah.

My mother continues to stare as other passengers stopped staring.

She is staring so hard that it is embarrassing.

“Mom, stop staring it isn’t polite!” my sister says.

“Yea, mom, you look a little weird.” I say.

“I just want to learn about what they are doing! Shannon, what is it?!” she asks.

My sister interjects, “If you really want to learn more, read a fucking book! You are embarrassing us!”

“Uhm, yea mom.” As I am explaining about Hasidics and the telfin, I stop suddenly and ask, “Mom, you’re the Jew. You grew up with this, I don’t understand how you don’t know this.”

Mom continues to stare at the poor Hasidic and then busts out laughing at him! She is laughing at her own kind. It isn’t malicious but more of a nervous laugher because she noticed people watching her stare at the Hasidic. She turns her head, but continues to glance over and chuckle. Over and over again. I put my sunglasses on and the hood over my head, and ask loudly for a drink.

My sister goes to the bathroom, not wanting to be associated with us and as she is gone we encounter bad turbulence.

My mom and I, at the exact same time, make small yelps, grab onto our knees and put our hands over our heard. I start to develop tears in my eyes, “I am so sorry, I hate flying, I love you mom, I am sorry that I am mean to you sometimes.” “She grabs my arm and the plan starts to shake. We both scream.

The turbulence stops, and my sister returns to her seat, with my mom arm in arm, scared shitless, saying how we both hate to fly.

“You know, this is just turbulence. This is perfectly normal. I just don’t get the both of you.” She says.

Yea, I don’t get it either. And the passengers wanted to throw us out. The problem with flying in the back is besides the turbulence, if you make an ass out of yourself, there is no quick graceful exit when you are forced to see the passengers around you face to face. As we learned when we landed, waiting for the passengers to disembark. What made it even worse was that my mom began to talk to the passengers around us about their trips as we waited for them to let us out.

And we were the sophisticated NYers.

Cultural Relativism and Mark

Theme of my 20 hours in Florida: Cultural Relativism

I just got in from FL, having attended another wedding…my second in the last 2 weeks. We are so close to my mother’s side of the family that out of my family of 6, only 3 of us attended and we left for my cousin’s Sat afternoon wedding, Sat morning—having spent a whopping 20 hours total in the state of Florida. I didn’t even have time to burn my naturally fair skin.

I know God tried to intervene by having us almost miss the flight. My mom waiting for over 45 mins for us inside the terminal called every 5 mins, trying to figure out where we were. (Getting a train Sat morning out of Penn Station to the air train is tres dificil). With 33 mins before the plane departs, my sister and I are running through the Song terminal, calling out for my mom. We find her with tears in her eyes, convincing the woman behind the counter to check her in without all of us being present, which she does successfully and gets us moved into the Emergency Exit row! Mom rocks. Until she stars to worry about having a “cash bar” at a wedding (what would Emily Post think?!) and she envisions out loud every single scenario where she could stick the bill to my Aunt. PS, there wasn’t a cash bar.

However, like 90% of the “family vacations” aka when my mom and sister and I go to FL together, I realize how it is small miracle that my mother is not more crazy. Although these vacations make us closer, we also fight like rival gangs at Riker’s Island. Especially on a plane, especially without sleep, especially when my frustration with my mother and sister was illustrated as I punched the seat in front of me, almost getting into a fist fight with the woman’s seat I hit. But I’ll elaborate on that part a little later.

My mother is the black sheep of her family. And like the geeks in HS who lost 50 lbs and made a billion dollars the min they left their hometown, she looked forward to this reunion with a vengeance. Me and my sister were her ticket to tell her family, “go fuck off, I made it, your kids are all pregnant and uneducated, look how smart AND beautiful my girls are”. But with that desire to show my sister and me off like dogs at the Westminister dog show (I swear she almost lifted my lips to show off my teeth and gums to the recipients of her bragging) she inadvertently brought us into her sick little game. She presents me as women’s college educated-applying to Columbia for her MA in Quant Methods-perspective NYC society ball dancer-budding ad agency career. (Fuck, I do sound like an amazing catch, by the way).

Which would be all fine, if we were at a party on LI, where children are used routinely as trophies of good parentage. But we were in South Florida, in a tiny “country club” seated next to people our age with babies and marriage certificates and fascinated that my rent is $2400 for a 2 bedroom. Our outfits only served to reinforce how out of place we were, all black, simple jewelry, and hair straightened to perfection…

Fine , I just described my sister but since she is related to me, I looked like that by association. Granted I had to sniff test the pants I wore to the wedding, febreeze the shirt, and only had one toe-nail painted b/c only my big toe was exposed in the shoes that I wore…but I digress.

I was confronted with a culture that expected me to be on my way to getting married and having children. I experienced my Bridget Jones’ “when are you going to get MARRIED! Shannon?” Who the fuck asks a 23 yr old that question, anyway?! I replied with a smile on my face, “When I stop dating gay men.” The look of shock from my cousin, the groom, and the bride’s father was priceless. Especially when my cousin asked me, “really?!” Yes Jake, really. Obviously my cousins only hear the good parts about me and my mother fails to tell them the sick and twisted sense of humor fate has when my life is concerned.

But that is exactly what it was like at the wedding, a cultural schism exposed. I am a NYer. The neurotic Jewish variety who name drops, star fucks, pays too much rent, and who doesn’t know the name of her Chinese launderer who cleans her underwear. I wanted so badly to relate to the guests at the wedding but realized I lost them when I uttered, “Hey, let’s go steal golf carts from the clubhouse. My friends and I got loaded during our college reunion and rode around as campus cops chased us.” That would have been fine in the Northeast among the upper middle class quasi-snobs whom I grew up with. The kids who I was talking to stole real cars in their day and got chased by real cops. None of them went to college, some had children/were already married and that left my sister and I grabbing at any type of small talk. What do we talk about?!

Weddings are always interesting things because they take people who never see each other for 20 yrs, throw in a lot of booze and you have the exposure of family secrets and embarrassing moments that will never be forgotten. My mom running around telling my Aunt’s ex-husband how he fucked up the kids, my Aunt getting smashed, and my mom basking from validation that she is the good person since her kids are living this middle class dream, that I honestly want no part of, as she shoves it down all the guests throat. I guess the family missed the memo about this blog. When things seem the most perfect, they are usually the most fucked up. My job at a prestigious ad company in point---I cry at my desk for hours on end! But they just see the grad school applying, college graduate, NYer and not the details that make my life go from charmed to semi-charmed to sometimes downright frustrating. Hence, we didn’t get an invite from the Uncle Henn drinking cousins to hang out with them post party. But I did get to listen to my Aunt tell me "If you gained any more weight your boobs will saglike mine." Well at least I will never be a nasty bitter hag like you!! And BTW, I have never heard anything less than glowing reveiws about my boobs. And the day that they do sag? I have a boob doctor already in mind...

Tomorrow I’ll write about the flight home, which was fucking hysterical. If you ever see 3 women traveling together, one older woman with dark graying hair and 2 girls who look like each other, except one looks like the Jewish version of the other, save yourself a headache and run off the airplane. We have a nasty habit of speaking really loudly, yelling at each other, crying, and smacking each other. And yes, my sister and I are 22 and 23 respectively.

And a shout out to the note on the main door to my apt. Mark, I hope you met up with your friend at Café Vivaldi on the corner of Bleecker and Jane because he couldn’t keep standing there. He has a bum leg (swear this is what the note said).

Mark, I hope you found your friend with the bum leg.

Cultural Ambassador and Not Being Funny

I had my test Tues night and when confronted with either going to my stats test to show how I am the stats queen at my ghetto Hunter College class or singing gay Karaoke to celebrate John staring 30 in the face aka his 26th bday, guess what I chose? I’ll do what I did in college, cry to the professor and tell him that I am going through a rough time and I had a personal breakdown. I hope he buys it, or else I my not be getting into Columbia again.

That decision sealed me as the cultural ambassador to the gay community, as I am self-crowned queen of fag hags in Greenwich Village. Gay men fawning all over me, buying me drinks, and cheering me on as I sang ‘Don’t Tell Momma’ and the Drag Queen loved my bag, by the way. I fucking love Gay men…except for the Bear Party that we almost ended up because we thought that was the Gay Karaoke place. Instead of cute theater fags I find large hairy gay men, who are not fans of women since they gave me and my female friend shit for going into the place. Which we did not because it was a bear party. I love gay men so much, they are outgoing, friendly, and buy me free drinks without expecting a blow job.

However, when you go to a gay bar with a gay man, expect to go home by yourself. Especially when it is his bday. As I learned on Wed. morning.

A quick aside, my landlord’s son lives upstairs he is not a fan of us for a myriad of reasons. I can’t tell you why except that he has taken a strong dislike to my roommate, and by default me. He is such a tool that I am about to call the city on him and say that he is harassing us. Back to the story…

John gets home at 5am as I am asleep, and evidently, he had such loud sex, with doors slamming, knocks against the wall, et.al. that the landlord begins to bang on his floor to tell him to shut up. My friend is sleeping in the living room, listening to it all ensue, getting her final dose of her gay culture lesson. I am so drunk that I sleep right through it. Suffice to say, the landlord hasn’t made the copy of our mail key yet, hasn’t sent the super to fix our leaky tub, and is being a fucking jerk. Little does he know that I am a vindictive bitch who will make his life a living hell with the help of 311 Landlord Tenant Relations. And isn’t withholding my mail key a federal offense, impeding upon the delivery of mail?!

A wedding narration

The wedding last weekend taught me 2 very important things: 1. My friends and I are not like most girls, even when the occasion requires it our maturity can be lacking at times (I mean we are the girls who tried to light our friend’s farts on fire during our last spring break) 2. We should have booked the stripper and got some booze as a post wedding after party. It would have beat wandering the Four Seasons Hotel, and later in the night the city of Boston, looking for an after party to continue the carnage upon our livers.

There is always a turning point that occurs during a crazy evening, when it goes from mundane benign fun to this point where the line is crossed and you are full on rager. The line began getting blurred at the cocktail hour at the martini bar where I began to play ‘around the world’ trying to sample all the flavored martinis. The line got further blurred when we noticed that they were keeping the bar open and we passed the bar on the way to have a cigg. The line got muddled when a group of my friends ended up skipping dinner because our cigg/alcohol breaks lasted so long that the waiters scooped up the dinners when became cold. So here you have excessive drinking on an empty stomach at a Sat night wedding at the Four Seasons.

Houston, I think we may have a problem.

We knew the line that separated the mature grown ups from the alcoholics was long overstepped when a group of us ran to the dance floor next to the bride and began to make the blow job motion, inviting the bride to partake. I don’t think the wedding photographer captured that Kodak moment. Once the metaphorical line is crossed, it is all over and you might as well load up on the free booze and embrace the fucked up evening ahead. Which we did. And a fucked up night which we had.

Post wedding once we realized that the band wasn’t coming back to our hotel room to party, Lu and I decide to go with some other people to this paramedic bar someplace in Boston. As if we weren’t drunk enough, we thought it would be a good idea to continue to get drunk. The Russian who I was flirting with came along (I should preface that he flirted with every single homo girl at the party until he stumbled upon me.) and so did his friend.

We get to this blue collar bar, dressed up in our wedding clothes, and Lu and I are surrounded by Irish men. Evidently this bar is like an Ellis Island of sorts, every guy was fresh off the boat from Ireland. My song starts playing, with a bottle of beer in hand I begin to dance on tables and later make friends with some Irish boys. Twin Irish boys. Again, I have a dilemma, do I continue to flirt with the Russian and begin to build my men of Eastern Europe collection or do I flirt with the Irish twins and build my men of the UK collection? And Lu and I could get Irish twins and we are sharing a bed…

The Russian and his friend stay close by, me and Lu begin flirting with the Irish twins and as the bar begins to close, Lu and I suggest that we go back to our hotel room. Irish Twins and the Russian and his friend…and since Lu is ½ Asian and I am ½ Jew, I guess this is like a mini-UN. We all get into the car with a very very drunk Irish twin driving and make our way back to the hotel. Once inside the twins are telling us to lose the Russian and his friend so that we could all ‘hang out’. AKA I get to fuck an Irish twin! As my friend gets to fuck an Irish twin! Score!! Until Lu sees a man in our lobby asking for assistance because he is a diabetic as his pleas fall on deaf ears of the hotel staff.

The night has officially come to a screeching halt.

Lu begins to yell at the hotel staff for not helping him and then starts to talk to the man to find out what she could do to help him. I guess I should say right now that he claimed he was a diabetic and needed SODA to boost his blood sugar. Evidently I found out from the guys who were paramedics that a true diabetic would never ask for soda but would ask for fruit juice instead. I think there is a flag on this play.

The Russian and his friend who are paramedics intervene and tell the guy that he has serious problems and that he isn’t a diabetic and that he needs to stop scamming Lu. The Irish twins are getting pissy because they want to get more drunk and fuck us. As I want them too. Crisis averted, 30 mins later we make our way upstairs back to our hotel room, as the lesbians who we are shaking up with are having sex. Irish twins have never seen real lesbians have sex or at least sleep naked. For the next 45 mins they were in the room they kept asking the lesbians, “You really fuck women?!” Score one for diversity and introducing people to new cultures.

I don’t know how drunk we were but I was thinking that as long as we got to the room, we would magically find booze, magically have a good night, and Lu and I would fuck some hot Irish twins. Didn’t happen. Instead we all sat around watching porn. That is until the lesbians, Lu and the Irish twins left with the Russians friend to go to the twins house. I stayed with the Russian. Didn’t have sex. Almost did but realized he would have been my second one night stand in 3 months and I am aiming for an American to fuck me.

That was my wedding story. With some of the juicier one-liners omitted to protect the innocent.

Forgive me

Readers, I am tired and my professional life is horrible. I am taking a break from writing tonight because I have a stats test tomorrow night and need to get at least an A- so that I may get into Columbia.

I am tired (working 11 hours and crying at your desk yet again will do that to you) and promise to write how my life mirrored a porn this past weekend rather than a sweet romantic chick flick.

To wet the palate:
martini bar + flirtation with a russian + after party in some blue collar bar + 2 nutty drunk Irish boys + drunk driving + nutty schitzo + a hotel room with lesbians having sex + porn = my Saturday night.

Oh yea, and the wedding was absolutely beautiful and found that the ceremony instead gave me such a respect for the institution of marriage. Through that respect I realized that I could never tarnish its beauty with not marrying someone who is not my soulmate. So in the pressure cooker that has become my life: get into Columbia, find job that gives me intellectual satisfaction and doesnt make me cry, get accepted for the Q-ball (this society ball in NYC--poofy white dresses and men in dress tails), get published, and while doing all this simultaneously, find my soulmate.

Instead of studying, I am going to bed right now.

The end is the beginning...

Wow, I have a fan club. Well kinda. I mean a kid from NJ is hardly a fan club but I have to take what I can get at this point. All I ask in return for telling you my inner-most thoughts and sharing with you what a fuck up I am is that you forward this link to all of your friends. Seriously. I am issuing a challenge to all 5 people who read this. Prove to me that you have a lot of friends, and the only way that I will believe you is to increase my readership. Please, do this for me. I am not even selling out and putting up ads to drive traffic…

Please. I do not have a lot going for me right now and this is all I have. You read about my life, you know this is true. I am reaching out to you. Help me.

So, on news from my last internet date:

Jdate boy and I were supposed to meet up to go rollerblading. I sent him those unflattering pics on Tues night to in not so many words say, “Please, I am too tired to meet you/think that all men who I am attracted to are fags so I want to cut the disapointment/do not want to waste my time with some asshole online, but since I told you I would meet you, I am doing it so you can see that I am the cute busty red head that I was hyping myself up to be.” Which, by the way, is true when I get dressed up and am wearing cleavage exposing clothes…men love me-- I am a little-girl virgin/dick sucking whore rolled into one.

On Tuesday night, after he received the pics, he called me “hottie” over IM and said that he still wanted to meet me and he would call me the next day (Wed.). I am thinking to myself at this point, fuck fuck fuck.

Wed I get dressed up for work because all of my clothes are at the Chinese launderers and all I have left are knee length skirts and a pretty black sweater. Being a Jeans and T-shirt kinda gal, all of my co-workers are asking me if I “have a hot date.” I blush and tell them that I do but that it is actually to go rollerblading that evening and that I “just felt like dressing up.”

The day gets hectic and its 4pm and I notice that he hasn’t called. I know that he was at a meeting during the day but find this slightly odd that he didn’t call to tell me that he was running late. 4pm rolls into 5pm and still no call. My friend Diana invites me to a Rosh Hashanah dinner and I accept the invite b/c no boy should expect that I wait on him. I leave to go to the party and still no call. I go to the party and still no call. I come home from the party, still no call. I sign onto messenger and check my email—NOTHING.

I accomplished my goal! He didn’t call me and has blocked me. He thinks I am fat, ugly, and hideous. When in reality, I look a lot more like the first pic I sent him than the pic of me stealing a golf cart, drunk with whip cream, and studying for my GREs. I know I should be offended, but I am not. I am just too tired to give a fuck. But what gets me, why couldnt he just tell me that the unflattering pics scared him away. I do not get it.

And tomorrow I am off to a wedding in Boston for the weekend. Evidently the groom has picked out boys for each of us, and each of those boys has his own hotel room. I am getting a brazillian and buying a box of condoms tomorrow. I am going to finally get to fuck an American this year!!!

So all in all, I could give a fuck because I am going to get fucked. This weekend.

Sensitive much?

Tomorrow is my last date off of the internet. I am serious this time. I will find material in better places than meeting psychos off of the internet for dates. Since this is the last time, I decided to give it a valiant attempt and used Jdate-- the site that has been keeping the Jew bloodlines free from contamination..since..since…fuck, when did Jdate begin?!

But we know how my subconscious loves to sabotage me in any attempts at establishing a grown up relationship with a non-emotionally fucked up human being or fag. First I tell the perspective dater that we should go rollerblading for our meet up because, “if its disappointing at least we could still get in our exercise.”

That’s a way to meet my future husband. Sweaty, no make up, wearing work out clothing. However, he thinks it is a great idea because he is an avid rollerblader. Fuck. My not-so graceful out didn’t thwart his attempt.

I then decide to send him the most unflattering pictures, the times that I was drunk, 15lbs heavier, STEALING A GOLF CART (committing crime here people!!)…I mean, the photos that would warm any guy’s heart, make him think the words, “Mother of my future children’. He doesn’t budge. He still wants to meet me. Double Fuck.

And he thinks I am cute in the unflattering pics that I sent. Fuck Fuck Fuck.

I mean, I know why I do not want to meet anyone, why I have channeled my energies into work-a-holism, openly complaining about the one thing that has enabled my sanity. Working long hours, class, writing; combined they allow me to detach and half-experience things. A full schedule with only room to sleep, bathe, work, and get fucked up do not allow adequate time to relish uncomfortable feelings and memories. But what scares the shit out of me, I am much much happier when I keep my emotions in check. To not give myself permission to feel the sadness of people who I pass on the street to pretend that I am powerless at making people feel good. To openly ignore the obese man walking his dog on the pier, who tried to start a lighthearted conversation with my sister and me-- we ignored him as I wore my Gucci sunglasses and my sister with her Scoop NYC bag, wrapped up in conversation about something. Ignored his attempt at reaching out to someone to include him in something, even just a meaningless conversation.

Think about the feeling of being openly obviously ignored when you attempt to reach out to people, to validate that you are apart of their world when you are most uncertain. I know that feeling from my childhood and, presently, at my job. Yet when given the chance, I inflicted that pain to a total stranger.

Why did I do it?! The conversation didn’t leave me engrossed so that I didn’t notice, I recanted the story here. Why did I do that to a stranger? How could I be so cruel to someone when I have felt piercing cruelty first hand. To know what it feels like to not belong, yet when granted that power to make someone feel included for a split second, I turned my back. I pretended that power did not lie within me when it clearly did.

But you cant get pissed off at me when you read this because, we are all guilty at some point in our lives.

On Irony

I love living with my gay faux-boyfriend 90% of the time. He is smart, funny, always has the right thing to say to me, and puts up with my newfound interest in cuddling. As you know, I have been battling this dilemma of seeking out a LTR. All of my friends are Noah’s Arked aka in serious relationships, and to be quite frank between work and school and writing in this blog, I have no desire to ascend the Ark with them. Unless there is a cute Jewish boy who is just as busy as I am and wants a cute big breasted cuddle buddy, and nothing else. No dating, no phone calls, and definitely no having to listen how his day is going. I am just too emotionally exhausted to deal with anyone else except for people who I care about. However, just because I am not dating, doesn’t mean that I do not have…’physical’ needs. But my germ-phobia and something called ‘not being entirely over London boy’ prevents me from cultivating/calling the potential fuck buddies on my list.

Last night I had the worst case of insomnia that has hit me in a very very very long time. I went from feeling entirely tired one min to feeling entirely wired ½ hour later, and this I blame a lot on the stress of sucking at my present job. For the guys who read this and my friends who went to MHC, you’ll feel me on this one. There is nothing that helps me sleep like a baby better than masturbating. Get ichi and peter the wabbit, throw in some hott erotica and you have a very happy girl who is out in 2.5 (seconds that is). So, last night, feeling a little randy and wanting to get to sleep before 3am, I masturbated and then laid in bed watching some Discovery Health shit.

Suddenly I hear a soft tap tap tap. I ignore it and think that it is the wind. But I hear it again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I open the door and see John in a pair of PJ pants (he never wears PJ pants) peering over and whispering, “Do you have condoms?!” There was a boy in his bed. He was getting ready to have real live people sex as I just made love to my mechanical latex vibrating dildo.

Fate, you have one sick twisted sense of humor.

Especially since I bought 2 boxes of condoms (first time that I ever have done it…go me and reveling in my sexual freedom that living with a gay man will grant you) and have given away 1.5 boxes. Yes, out of 2 boxes of condoms I have 4 left. And I even bought the special dual pleasured ones…

In other news, I decided that I am throwing a Kwanzaa party in my Greenwich Village apartment with mezuzahs adorned to the doors. I mean, after the OC and Seinfeld, there are no funny things that I could do with the holidays. Picture it, a Kwanzaa celebration complete with Kente cloth, Ol’ E, Hennessy, and of course no party is complete without a stripper. And to get into the Kwanzaa spirit, I want my stripper to be black.

If you think that will rock, you should see how I’m going to reenact Passover next year! The people in my building will not be amused (see, I even make racist jokes about my own people).

Oh the sick fucking things that entertain me…

Thursday night was a fucking mess and, in turn, has led to my further confusion in this navigation of alcoholic party girl vs. responsible member of society.

The Set-up:
As of late, I have become a huge cunt. My niceness that I have learned at my Women’s commune has been replaced by a Manolo Blahnik, straight haired, Gucci sunglasses wearing Karen Walker wannabe. Perhaps it is because of my dissatisfaction with my new job and how it leaves me with no time for family and friends, the 2 most important things in my world. Instead you have a dense social calendar and a self-proclaimed geek using the terms, “babe, I’m going to have to pencil you in because I don’t know my work schedule for this week.” Or “Hon, you get the ball point pen! Nothing, and I mean nothing can cancel our PHONE DATE to catch up!”

I am ball pointing in my friends to chat about how their lives are doing, on the phone. This is sick. Especially for someone who is far from type A.

The Background:
Last week was Ad Week in NYC and coincidently one of my friends from college who lives in Italy came into the city and was slated to hang out on the same night as a very big Ad Week party. In the long and short of it, I wouldn’t even think of passing up my friend and going to this party, but the media supervisor for the account that I am working on asked me if I was going and after I told him about the conflict with my friend from Italy, he suggested that I just stop off for a short while. AKA, “you really should go”. I didn’t want to bring my friend because I am still trying to make a good impression on these people, and to bring a friend to a work party just seems tacky. Long story short, I get to the party and it is like fucking HS cliques. Nobody talks to me, everyone keeps to themselves. I feel like I am that girl in second grade who moved from Queens to the North Shore of LI and started a new school in October when all of the cliques were made. Social Pariah understated term for the way I felt; except today, I am rid of my horrible Queens/LI accent that plagued me in my youth. I run into the media supervisor to show my face, and he is surprised that I made it because my friend is in town. He suggests that I bring her, and within 2 mins I am on the phone begging both my out of town friend Shayna and our other friend from college Diana with whom she is staying with to come to the party.

Once they arrive, we exploit the free-drinkage and try to begin the night off right. Unfortunately since this is a ‘work function’ I am sipping 1 martini in a dark corner, hoping that nobody would see that I am actually drinking. Unlike my co-workers who are visibly drunk. Shayna and Diana want to meet my co-workers, however they are all engrossed in convos and nobody is acknowledging my presence. It is so bad, that they think this hoard of ugly overweight guys who keep on staring are my co-workers, and instead are disappointed to learn that those guys are just checking us out. Shayna calls her friend, many martinis in between, Shayna’s friends meet us to whisk us away into the night.


The Cast of Characters:
Shayna: absolutely stunning, models on the side in Italy, but also brilliant and trying to get into j-school (to call her the total package would be an understatement)

Diana: Another stunning girl, philipina, studying pysch at Columbia, head turner

Miko: Shayna’s friend from HS who oozes sex appeal, dates models, and knows what seems the important bouncers in NYC.

Shannon (your author): red head, big boobs, cute, but totally out of all three of their leagues

Example of how beautiful they Shayna and Diana are, we ask some guy to take a picture of us at the Ad Week party, you know as a memento of our time together, and he asks if he could take a picture with his own camera, as a memento for himself.

The celebrity of beauty. Can we see where the night is going?

The Plot Line:

As soon as we walk into the party, on top of a very chic restaurant in SoHo, I feel as though I have found my holy grail. Despite the fact that it was a model hang-out, or the bottle service of stoli and Veuve Cliqueot, or even the fact that I was at a trendy NYC hotpot in SoHo…I found what I had been looking for ever since I moved back to this city almost 2 years ago. Great music, people so self-involved that they do not give a shit about anyone around them and just out to have a good time. For the first time in YEARS, I did not need to be excruciatingly drunk to have a good time/make me feel more confident/pretend I was someplace else. I felt more comfortable at a party with models than I did at some stuffy Ad Week party. So maybe I am meant to be famous?! Or perhaps the Ad Week party was that bad.

There was something about the crowd (yes all beautiful models and the modelizers who flock to them) that had this, ‘I do not give a fuck, let me dance the night away’ mentality. I didn’t think about my job, what I was doing with my life, flashbacks of what my asinine drunken behavior cost me, it was for those moments that I was in that place, dancing with my girls, that I was free. And no I wasn’t taking drugs, just listening to great music, with a beautiful crowd, hoping that the ambiance of opaque-facaded perfection would rub off on me and my current uncertainty. We hop onto another trendy place, more dancing, not caring that I need to be at work in a few hours…I do not get home until 5am.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that there is this HUGE meeting with the senior management and vendors the following day. And, that I do not have hot water in my apt for me to take a shower.

The Punch Line:

I stumble home and get approximately 3 hours of sleep. Since I do not have hot water and my apt is freezing because my roomie and I left the windows open all night, it is too cold to take a shower without hot water. It is too fucking cold for me to even wash the caked off make-up on my face, especially under my eyes. My hair reeks of cigarettes, there is caked on make-up under my eyes, and I have a stamp from the club we went to on the inside of my forearm. To throw in another hygienic caveat, since I have been too tired to take my clothes to the Chinese launderer (yes she did save my 600 thread count sheets, thank you Moses), I have to sniff test my ‘dress clothes’. Attractive, as usual. All I have is a wrinkled button down and no time to iron, so I throw a sweater that I wore last week on top.

Sniffing my hair, I come to the realization that I smell like a bar—sweat and ciggs and have no way to wash the stench. I could have gone to my gym to shower but a) I did not have enough time and b) I have not been there in like 6 months and would be embarrassed if I ran into my personal trainer because I am thinner now than I was when I worked out with him. Without Febreeze, and not wanting to just throw perfume because we all know what perfume and ciggs smell like—cheap tart who walked out of a bar exponential, I take the only odor neutralizing spray that I have. I spray peppermint foot spray on my hair. Whiffing, I realize that I smell like peppermint foot spray and go into panic. I take my Chanel Allure perfume and begin to douse my body. In an effort to disperse the smell, I begin to air myself out my running to the bathroom. What is left is this scent that is not quite clean, definitely a little minty, with a touch of expensive perfume.

And of course, at the meeting, who decides to sit next to me?! Oh yea, the group director. So there you have me, trying to make a foray into the Ad world, and instead praying that she doesn’t smell me, notice my wrinkled shirt, nor notice the stamp on the inside of my forearm. Basically, not notice me.

Conclusion:
I can’t say that the party girl is back, I do not think that she has ever left. Knowing that places like that are left, it gives me hope. It also scares the shit out of me because when confronted with the choice between a stable career or partying with my friends and having time to spend with my family, I am at the point where I am seriously contemplating grad school. Yet again, not knowing if this is out of loathing my current position or because I am truly meant to sit in the ivory tower and criticize a world that I cannot be apart of for whatever personality clash I have with the institution of big business.