Look at me!
I have never had a straight man look at me like that. And he gets paid to. He stared at my body like a construction worker would if Jessica Rabbit walked by. I was wearing my only pair of skinny jeans. I bought them earlier in the day because my regular, ill-fitting jeans I always wear would not get me into this place. I look good in them.
Do I look the bouncer in the eyes as he’s evaluating me? Is that one of those unspoken rules everyone knows but me? “Duh, never look a bouncer directly in the eyes, Lee. They take it as a sign of aggression. Of course you didn’t get in,” they’ll text. I’ll read that text while I’m sitting alone at a table in a McDonalds, slowly stirring a Reese’s McFlurry, while my friends dance on tables and order $800 bottles of vodka delivered to them by supermodels who, curse my luck, are probably also super into Jews.
I’m lost in thought when he asks for my ID.
Nice, I think. I’m in! This is the easy part. I open my wallet and in one smooth motion, I hand him my ID, like I’ve done a thousand times before to bartenders. Except this time I don’t.
Instead I hand him a Jamba Juice gift card that’s been sitting in my wallet behind my ID for six months.
“Ha ha,” I laugh uncomfortably, as I take back the gift card and hand him my ID. “No gift card for you?”
And then, like the stereotypical bouncer that he was, he comes up with the coolest response ever uttered when presented with a gift card with a tropical motif, used in the event a white person wants a flavorful, healthy treat.
“I ain’t want it,” he says.
Damn. There it is. He ain’t want it. Now it was confirmed what I had long suspected, that this 300 lb rock of a man could not be bribed with 20 ounces of Super Yumberry with a Flax & Fiber Boost.
And then he lets me in anyways.
Success! I’m in I’m in I’m in! No one can take that away from me! SUCK ON THAT, all the people in high school who never thought I was cool! I’m in a super swanky New York City lounge and you’re not!
I scan the room. Everyone is dressed to the nines. It’s packed. The music blares a remix with Lil Wayne on it. I listen to a girl drone on endlessly about her apartment renovations.
I sneak out the back, hoping my friends don’t notice. I could really go for a Jamba Juice.
Egg and cheese and keeping your expectations low
I have eaten the egg and cheese sandwich this morning that is king of all the other egg and cheese sandwiches. The other egg and cheese sandwiches should have to change their name to “mehgg and cheese?” so there can be no confusion when eating the genuine article. Speaking of which, this sandwich was so good I want to become a newspaper reporter and write genuine articles about how delicious this egg sandwich is. This will likely cause a rift between me and my editor who keeps asking me to cover the classical music scene (since I fabricated my resume by saying I reported on the fine arts for the Dallas Morning News), and he will be justified in his anger. But god damn I need to keep talking about this egg and cheese sandwich until the world knows about it. I guess I’ll have to start by writing about it on tumblr.
Penelope Cafe
New Egg Sandwich, Cheese York
30th Streeggt and Lexeggington Avecheese
Penny Egg Sandwich (I got it on an english muffin)
SICK lineup. 1800mattress.com is gonna fuckin’ kill it tonight at Gramercy Theater. Their last album got a 9.2 at Pitchfork.
Attention Manhattan residents: a free copy of Daniel Silva’s The Confessor is now available free of charge at the corner of Gramercy Park North and Gramercy Park East. Now I know why people pay so much money to live here! It’s all the free trashy lit.
I was thinking about doing a double feature of Memento and Inception, but I forget where I put my Memento DVD and by the time Inception would come on, I’d probably be asleep.
The things we do for money
I am in Newark, New Jersey for a job interview. Or as the Princeton Review recently named it, one of the Top 20 Cities for White Jews to Feel Totally Out of Place Walking Down the Street Wearing an iPod and a Suit In.
I sure hope I get to interview in some of the other cities like Gary, Indiana and Detroit.
Ouch.
It will shock you to learn I stood by two older jewish women with long island accents and overheard them discuss their medical ailments. This was after they said goodbye to each other. They stood on the street during a heat wave and with the waning moments of their life, complained.
Back pain.
Hip pain.
Other kinds of pain.
If the body is a temple, they could have started a popular jewish rap group called Temple of Pain, and their music would only be played at jewish senior homes, serving as background music to the neverending chitter chatter of pain talk.
When I grow up, I promise to be the only jew who doesn’t talk about his ailments. I’ll probably just blog about it.
Things I have witnessed so far in my 24 hours back in NYC
1) A cab driver angrily arguing with a guy whose bike he damaged. Also at the scene was a third man screaming at the cab driver, but his involvement in the accident was not determined. I can only assume he is a man who simply enjoys screaming at people, which explains how he ended up living in New York.
2) Watched as an alpha male went from successfully flirting with the attractive woman behind the counter at a bakery to making a complete BP/ass of himself. Observe:
“Can I get an iced coffee?” he asked.
“Yep,” she replied.
“Yep,” he mimicked.
“Yep,” she said again playfully.
“Yep,” he said, smiling.
“Yep,” she said.
Dead silence as he contemplates his next move. Thirty seconds pass.
“Yep,” he says.
At this point, I predict she will punch him in the face for being annoying and having a horrible sense of timing. What she says essentially accomplishes the same effect.
“I’m not playing this game anymore,” she says to him sternly.
Oh, how I laughed and laughed on the inside.
3) Duane Reade, McDonalds, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, AT&T, Petco, Chase and TGI Fridays. All without even having to go to Times Square! Times Square is my favorite place in the universe only if every other place in the universe is a room in which I am beaten senselessly without pause. And now I hate you too, Union Square. And for some reason they replaced a great outdoor bar WITH A KIDS PARK? For shame.
Though combining the two establishments would probably provide parents with a small bit of happiness.
GPOYW - Women are always saying to me, “Lee, we know you’re sexy. This has been proven time and time again by science and opinion. But when are you going to be funny?” And I always answer, “Never. I will only ever be sexy.”
(photo by Laura Taylor)
Everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so. No, he thought. The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place. What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?
— from tinkers by Paul Harding
5.
