And Today, There He Was March 31, 2006

Just when I gave up looking for him. Just when I resigned myself to a life without him. A life where he’d hate me eternally and never love me again, and never kiss me again, he was there.

Ten feet away, I looked up, already near tears from a particularly hard morning at work, and he held out his arms to hug me. The boy i could never say no to. Nate. smiling his smile at me, the girl he emailed in December saying ‘I never want to speak to you again, I hate you.’ He hated me. Me? his best friend. the one who loved him, adored him, thought he could do no wrong, thought he could be anything because he was everything to me.

we talked. i don’t remember what i said or what he said really. it was surreal. meant so much more than a casual conversation between strangers, but really that’s what it was. Strangers, that’s who we are now. He can still give me butterflies, he can still make me crawl in my skin. In a bad way. I forget who I am when I’m talking to him. Forget what I’m doing and saying. I hate him, I hate him!

He walked away smiling and kept looking back at me as I stood there, in the sun, on my lunchbreak. My perfect blue suit and black eyelashes.

Tonight when i got home I knew there’d be an email. I know him. There was. He said: I’ve been thinking about you lately….how much fun we had when we were dating…maybe I handled the situation badly, maybe not….but it was nice seeing you today…

The only thing I know is that I cannot re-live the last 6 months of my life. I cannot suffer and cry all over again. My body cannot stand to be sick anymore in that way. I don’t want to ache. I don’t want to be the one mourning for something I have to justify existed, while he moves on as if I was never anything worth pausing for. No! I am NOT prepared to do this again, Nate.

Lessons Learned on the Street March 30, 2006

Interesting Observations from my Day Prospecting on the Streets of Manhattan:

1. Middle-aged white men don’t want to talk to me or acknowledge my existence on the sidewalk.
2. Middle-aged black men stand in line to talk to me.
3. Middle-aged hispanic men work in maintenance, don’t speak English, and are content to stare at my ass.
4. White men my age, look at me, smile, and act like they can’t hear me over their IPods.
5. Black men my age don’t have credit cards, an accurate billing address, and want to know if they can get a ‘deal’ and pay in cash.
6. Hispanic men my age don’t walk the streets that I walked today.

7. Middle-aged white women ignore me.
8. Old white women respond to the phrase “Hello ma’am” with “I don’t know you” and a sped up walk.
9. White women my age give me dirty looks (jealous), and like the middle-aged hispanics, check out my ass as they walk away.
10. Black women ignore me. All ages.
11. Hispanic women let me talk to them for ten minutes then say ’sorry I no speak no english’, and walk away.

12. Crazy hobos follow me around the block screaming: keep your eye on the success!

13. A black guy, my age, said: I’d like to come in and see what you’re selling. He was from Ghana, living in NY for the past 8 months, learning English and waiting for January to come so he could start school and make friends. Right now he’s lonely. He told me his story and actually made me cry. That’s right, my first day on the job and I was brought to tears by a walk-in, FOB.

Oy! So this is my life now.

Surprise, Surpise March 29, 2006

My feet were dragging, but my aspirations were high, when i sauntered into the training center this morning. After 3 hard days and no solid food, the orange gatorade in my hand was not exactly the miracle cure I’d hoped for, but alas, I pressed on because I wanted to walk into the bull pen and see the senior class gone. That’s right, I wanted them out! As a junior in training, my thinking was, until the fifty seniors ahead of me got placed, I’d be stuck in training for the next six months of my life. I was nice, (I figured), I gave them a week off while my class was down at wall street. that’s all they’d need to shape up and ship out.

As I walked in and looked to my right, there was Noelle. One of the best seniors in the group — sitting in the center, planning her meetings for the day. Fuck! I gasped, my balloon of hope deflating around my quivering, physically exhausting feet. That fifteen minute walk turned out to be twenty-five and change today. Oy! Being a sicky ruins my life, every time! Clumsily I managed: what are you still doing here?

Noelle, under her rusty blonde streaks looked up and rolled her eyes. ‘Relax, you’re placed’. Even more shocking was this news. ‘What do you mean?’. Noelle shuffled her papers and played with her pen. ‘You’re the only one of us that got placed. It was a big commotion bc you weren’t here, but you got placed. Some gym pulled for you and you’re out.’

NO WAY! SERIOUSYLY?

Despite my ample trying, I could not wipe the satisfied grin from my face. Then I looked around at the crowded bull pen and the time I wouldn’t waste getting sales for other people and talking to tourists about memberships.

Then I got scared. I’d never done this sales shit for real before.Up till now, it was just playing in between lunch and my co-workers pregnancy tests. Just then my teacher walked in, pointed to me and said: you, come in my office!

At 9:15AM, I sauntered out of the training center and headed east to my new office. Terrified, and totally expecting to be fired. I wasn’t…is that a good thing?

Almost Dead — Part 2 March 29, 2006

Once again I lay awake, wincing against the pain of my own body. Again I thought: this could be it. I could close my eyes and die, just like that. No warning or real reason, just like that. Like Laurel. Like Bianca. Carline. If they could, why couldn’t I?

I reached for my cell phone and sent Daniel a text message: ‘Since 3Am — I’ve been vomitting’. The time now, 10:43PM. Normally my texts are either funny or probing, but this one I sent in case I died and nobody told him. He’s in LA, how would he know? It was my notice: dear daniel, best friend, this is the last text you will ever get from me…

This weekend I went to Hiro and made a killing in men. There was Matt — tall, dark, handsome. There was Garren — short, blonde, ivy league grad. There was the hot model one who let me touch his head…oooh. And yes, on Sunday there was Jay. Jay who’s ad I responded to on craigslist. Poor Jay was in a bind, he RSVPed to a co-workers wedding, got in a huge fight with the girl he was seeing, broke up, and desperately needed a date. Me, being the kind-hearted, wedding-cake-loving girl that i am, responded to the desperate posting and wound up in Starbucks with a funny, attractive boy on Sunday night for tea.

Which brings me to the cause of my illness: the tea. Orange flavored, de-caff tea at Starbucks made me sick. SICK TO MY STOMACH! I will NEVER again go to starbucks. Not for caramel fraps in the summer. Not for chai lattes in the fall. NOT EVER AGAIN on the count of it almost killing me.

It’s an interesting moment when you’re at home alone, unable to get out of bed, unable to call for help, and knowing that any minute now you could just die. Your body could say: ok, that’s enough, and give you up to uncertainty. Nobody said I had to get married, have babies and own a home and a boat before I died. That was just me.

My overlying thought: just when I actual go out and meet decent, potential husbands, I OD on too much of a good thing. Maybe I was greedy, giving my numbers to so many guys. Maybe this was my punishment. And I fell asleep hoping I’d wake up to write this today. Thank God, here it is.

We Women March 24, 2006

Thank God I’m a girl. Girls feel things. they care about people. Relationships don’t end, love doesn’t just stop. Girls care! About other girls, about past boys. They miss their friends. I miss MY friends — the ones I don’t see or talk to anymore! Corinna from Germany who was my close friend in boarding school. We fell out of touch in the past 4 years and I miss her and think about her all the time. Just because she’s not in my life, doesn’t mean she’s not part of it. It’s not a ‘me’ thing either, it’s a girl thing. Every girl I know is this way. We feel and we remember. That’s why boys call us crazy.

While men — that cold, cruel, flippant complimentary gender — are content to drop people out of their lives, women aren’t. Men are capable of loving and leaving. Forgetting. ignoring. They stop communicating after goodbye. Goodbye is the jump off for women — that’s when things start being said!!! But men stop listening because their ability to care closed with the slam of a door.

For every man that’s done this to a woman, the woman is worse off and more afraid to try again with another man. There’s that hurt. The lingering fear of becoming ‘that crazy girl I used to date’ again, with a new guy. Are we women ‘crazy’ though? Absolutely. We are fucking out of our minds and you, as men, deserve it! You make us crazy. You make us feel tossed aside and used! By not talking, by ignoring and forgetting, you belittle the entire relationship! you crush every beautiful moment into a jabbing knife that comes back years later to stab us in the heart, at the very moment when we actually meet a nice guy. When we think we’re over it, we discover we’re not. Because we care, feel and remember.

remember with love.

remember with affection.

So maybe we send an email a few months later, to express the fact that ‘we still care’ and ‘want to maintain a friendship’. Maybe we forgo pride on the ticket of ‘perhaps he misses me too’. We give you a phone call to say ‘what’s up, are you ok?’

We send an email offering no strings attached sex on your lunch hour.

We do it out of love. We do it because we remember how it felt to be happy with you. We women. We ‘crazy-girl-you-used-to-date’ women.

The Cellist March 21, 2006

Classical cello infused the air in Grand central last night. Low, mellow, and heart-breakingly beautiful, it rang through the underground tunnels, permeating the scene with an undertone of hopeless practicality. Busy travellers sifted like ants, in and around others, determined on their paths home. I was coming from my first day on Wall Street. Me and my anti-establishment bullshit, living and working, nine hours a day, on the most profitable street in the country — imagine!

As I de-trained into the bustling lines, I let the music wash over me. I could smell, taste and see the melody, in the dim lighting and the preoccupied faces of the travellers around me. Make that money honey, make that money. Pay the bills, feed the dog, buy some milk, pick up dry cleaning. People gowing through the motions of maintaining their lives. Men in suits, women in fur. No children. The only time I see children in Manhattan is in central park in the summer, occaisionally on the subway, and today in the elevator in my building. I didn’t think kids lived in my building — just old bitties with wheeled shopping carts, and young, obnoxious investment bankers. Poor kid, it must be lonely. Where the hell is the nearest school around here, anyway?

My job is amazing and I love it. Easy for me to say, I’m the star student. Today, the second teacher I had, rushed over to me after a presentation and asked for my name and the name of my general and district manager — she wanted to call and tell them how good I am. Alternately, my grandmother is disappointed with my job. It’s so focused on the bottom line. She says: for a girl with my intelligence, a girl so well-read and so steeped in intellectual curiosity, she’d expected a different job. A more esteemed vocation.

Here’s my take: never have I been satisfied with mediocre — why not be the best in a sea of average, instead of just another bright bulb? (The money’s better at this job too). I’m making double what I’d have made at Martha Stewart. Here in NYC, it’s all about making that money. Right?

Sadly.

Maybe I’m strange because I think the struggle between hard work, disappointment, and the things that make us stop in life — like waiting for subway trains and walk lights — are sad in a beautiful way. We’re all hustlers, not just me. We try and we fail a hundred times a day. We put it out there over and over, whatever ‘it’ is. Our work, passion, love. We get a yes. We get a no. Win some, lose some, try again.

The cellist knows what I’m talking about, that’s why he chose that song and that location. That haunting, pensive, reflective piece that ended the day and welcomed the evening for the movers and shakers of NYC. Like an aria in falsetto. Connecting us all in a city based on serving numbero uno.

Rant March 19, 2006

Am I never going to get over him? Is this how my life is going to be? Pining over some stupid boy from some stupid summer. Comparing everyone to him. Comparing me now to me then. What if he met me now? What if it never happened? This summer! This summer maybe it’ll be different. But the boy won’t be him so why should I bother!

I hate him! HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM!

Leave me alone Nate, get out of my fucking dreams! You’re making me fucking crazy over here! You and you’re hateful eyes and repulsive condescention! You and you’re stupid laugh and stupid pouty lips!

I hate those lips!

I hate them for what they said to me. How they kissed me! I hate your blue eyes and your baby blonde hair. I hate the way you’d be kind to me. I don’t want your kindness. I don’t want your orange juice or a glass of red wine.

I hate red wine. I only drank it because you asked me to. Because you loved it and said: Please try this, Amanda. Don’t say my name! I hate how you say my name with your non-existent mid-western accent. I’m from Detroit, we don’t have accents. I hate Detroit! The whole middle America disgusts me, because of you.

Kaela’s boyfriend broke up with her. She’s crying herself to sleep. It makes me hate you more! How could he do that to her? How could you do that to me! I blame you for every boy who ever hurt any girl! You are the reason. They learned how to be that mean from you.

Get out of the back of my mind, get out of my dreams! leave me alone. Why do I wonder if you think about me anymore? You don’t, right? You haven’t in a long time. I hate you for not thinking about me. I hate you. You make me sick and crazy and bitter. I don’t think any boy will ever love me because of you. I don’t think I’ll ever be good at anything because I wasn’t good enough for you. I hate that you make me think this way. I hate how I feel when I think about you.

It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I put you in my head, I put you in my dreams. But I can’t hate me so I hate you. But I can’t hate you, because I love you, and that makes me want to throw up. I can’t love you, I can’t go back. So leave me the fuck alone! Get out of my head! Get out of my sleep.

Getting Serious March 18, 2006

Look at these exquisite, thin, angel-shaped eyebrows! Look at them! The precision. Each little hair, trimmed and pruned into perfection. What art!

For ten painful, tear-jerking minutes I leaned my head back, my neck as steady as a dingy in a monsoon, ow-ing and ooh-ing myself into stability, while a patient Indian lady guided a double-bladed string in and around the tiny baby hairs on my face, while chatting leisurely with another indian lady in hindi. (Hindi, gujrati, some area dialect that I couldn’t comprehend).

(The string was tied up in her teeth, so it was really a miracle that she was able to speak at all. but i digress…)

My thumb and index finger pushed accusingly down upon my tense eyeball, while my other thumb pulled my skin from the opposite side, taught. In an attempt to soothe my wimpering, I began shaking my left leg like a dog about to urinate on the carpet. My face stung fiercely in immaculate rows, and I didn’t need to look in the mirror to tell you my face was red. It was pain on a micro-managed level. Pain concentrated into the size of a pore. Damn my hairy heritage! Damn the mexicans and their bushy eyebrows, damn the middle east and their light, baby hairs on my upper lip! Damn me for trying to cut my fringe, creating a mess of sideburns running the length of my ear. Damn-Damn-DAMN!!!

As I wiped the tears and sweat from my dampened cheeks, I paid my $23 and teretsed down the wooden stairs. Out on the busy street, I stopped momentarily to regain my composure. A thought dawned on me: I will never feel bad about letting a man pay again, and if he wants, I’ll gladly trade this tortureous, threading business in for the check!

Blindly I walked downtown to Barnes&Noble. My sanctuary. I floated up and down every aisle for an hour, reading the first two lines of each book that caught my attention. At the end, I realized I’d read every interesting book on the second floor. Wow. I need another hobby.

Walking out the door, a title caught my eye: Get serious About Getting Married in the next 365 days! At first I picked it up just to make sure I’d read it right, and then I shuffled off to the side, just to make sure I was doing it right on my own. As you know, I am hoping to have a baby in five years, and my mother strongly suggests I find a husband first. Blah. Fine, I give in.

Daniel once suggested I look for men in bookstores. that’s what I was doing today. However, picking up the marriage book and running off to read it in the sports magazine section may have killed my chances. Hmmm.

As I’d guessed, the book didn’t tell me anything I wasn’t already doing. I’m treating getting married the same way I’d treat finding a job. Right now I’m getting my resume settled: house/job/financial security. Extra-curriculars: cooking,sewing, reading, museums, current events. I’m only looking at potential husbands who can offer me stability and intellectual compatibility. I’m weeding out my essentials from my non-essentials and focusing on finding a man who is good enough for me. Check check check. Extra-extra’s: I’m spending my first pay check on Victoria’s Secret lace underwear and excruciatingly perfect, hair removal procedures.

Excuse me now, I have to go whiten my teeth.

I’m a Hustler March 17, 2006

I’m a hustler. All day I went store to store, block to block, getting numbers and making appointments. Hustling for that commission, my money for the ranch I want in New Mexico. My outfit was killer: Black fitted pants, with fushia pinstripes and a matching fushia button down, layered with a fitted black cardiagan. Black suede boots. Full lips and lined eyes, cushioned by bouncey brown curls. You should’ve seen me, I was on point with the matching Coach Purse.

This is the outfit to attract the men in suits. It didn’t. Those men wore ipods and walked by after a quick once over and a meager smile. Punks. The men who stopped to talk were mostly black, 20-something, American men at footlocker and nieghbouring sneaker stores.

My mouth said: “when can you come in for an appointment, 4PM or 5PM?”, but my eyes said, “don’t you want to see me again, possibly in less clothing, tonight?” Like I said, I’m a hustler. I booked one appoitment for today, six for tomorrow and one for monday. A real hustler.

A thought crossed my mind: here I am, twenty-two, pretty, with a million dollar education under my size four belt, and I’m flirting with footlocker employees to make my paycheck. Do you know I graduated with honors from my New England boarding school? In 12th grade I took a graduate level test on ‘Our Mutual Friend’, by Charles Dickens, and scored a 70%, while the rest of my class scored 10%’s? Yes, that’s right, I’m a bright girl. Do you know I’ve travelled all around Italy, England and Pairs, and driven across the united states of america? I understand Spanish on a near fluent level and I’ve seen some of the greatest works of art this world has ever produced. But at the end of the day, my ability to sell liquid sex to overworked footwear salesmen is what keeps me alive.

But like I said, I’m a hustler, so when I look at my appointment book and see six appointments for tomorrow, I’m thrilled because I’m a hustler that hustles well.

ah….nature March 16, 2006

From my balcony the moon is covered in blood over Queens. This weekend I heard about a volcano off the coast of Spain that’s due to errupt between now and the next twenty years. When this happens, it will send a tidal wave east, across the Atlantic ocean, which will wipe out NYC, much of the east coast, and part of the caribbean. In light of this daunting, horrid news, I will be re-locating to New Mexico sooner than expected. The bloody moon reminds me of this and I keep eyeing the East river to make sure it’s staying within the banks.

In other news, today I ran into Jay what’s-his-name from ‘America’s Next Top Model’. He was walking up Park Avenue talking on a cell phone with an earpiece and some funky, high-tech tiny stuff. You know the kind — stuff I’d never buy because I’d lose it down my clevage. Jay looks exactly the same in person and it’s kind of scary. Men shouldn’t be that pretty. Women shouldn’t be THAT pretty!

Work is getting pretty hectic — not that I’m complaining bc I’m siked (psyched) to be employed — but today I feel like I won’t make any money. There are good days and there are bad days. Today was the lattter unfortunately. Such is a commissioned based life.

My not-drinking is making me kind of miss smoking. If it’s not one vice it’s another, right? I’m compensating instead with exercise and eating. And of course, Access Hollywood. Will I ever have the energy to date again? To actually wash my hair, do my make-up, dress and talk to strange men, all in the same day? no…I think I’ll stick with death and doom predictions and celeb siting for now.

Though it’s not the smartest way to achieve my goal of babies-husbands-and a house in the Hamptons, it’s the most natural way for me to protect myself from getting wiped out by another unexpected wave. Nobody wants that again. (Could you really read another 200 pages of some prick that broke my heart? Didn’t think so)!