Boys Life

I didn’t know Gawker was obsessed until I started writing this. I went snooping for a little background on Leigh Lezrk, soon I was knee deep in an endless stream of articles and snippy anecdotes about our favorite bird.  I’m not surprised.  Who wouldn’t be obsessed with her?  I don’t often go in for the It Girl infatuation;  I’m mostly confined to my own style of attraction.  I’ve been mocked time and time again for finding beauty in strange places. My friends are always teasing me for sleeping with the relatively unattractive.  They can say what they want, but for me it just comes down to a feeling.  Some people just grab you.  So why does Leigh seem to grab us all?  I have no fucking clue, but I’m going tell you why she gets me and maybe it will help.  Hopefully after this I can go to a fashion week party and not feel like I’m settling.  I know she is in the room and I’m feeling like a second rate romeo even tho I’m making out with some cute stylist.  I mean I’d be lucky for that to happen. Usually I’ll just grab a drink and hold up in some corner wondering why Leigh, or some girl just like her but not so ambitious maybe, is not my girlfriend.  By the time I come to Its too late.  By 3 a.m. every decent girl has gone home and I’m for sure riding the J-O Express back to the Lower East Side.  OK.  Lets exercise some demons.

From my first week as a New New Yorker I was in awe.  Joan Jett haircuts, Dark hair and bangs, Morrissey t shirts, tight jeans and Jordan 3s, Chanel, and on and on.  Rich girls, poor girls, middle class girls, around the way girls.  Everywhere i went i saw girls who looked just like everything i ever wanted.  Was this some oasis of women outcast from their home towns for being smart funny and cool?  Was growing up or coming of age in new york the secret ingredient that turned the average girl into some whip smart style queen?  I dove blindly into the fray, examining as many as would let me.  A years worth of investigation proved beyond a doubt that these were the same women I had always known.  Sure they were better dressed and had the perfect face framing hair cuts but their obsession with cool made them intolerable.  They were always scurrying around downtown hooking up with people that were a “good look.”  The right person to help your image as a downtown photographer, the cool guy that a jewelry designer is supposed to date, that girl or guy in that Polaroid in that Vice article, and on and on.  Id like to think i made it through this experimentation with my value system in tact.  I’m still the guy who’s willing to get to know someone even if her shoes are ugly and she cant dress for shit or has a lame job?

WRONG.

I’m still obsessed, and I still play these games.  I know it’s retarded, but i do it anyway.  I went on a date recently with a really cool girl.  She showed up in a Jean Paul Gaultier one piece shirt and skirt combo, black stocking and the perfect heels.  The date was really nice.  We ended up fooling around but not sleeping together.  It never went anywhere and I remember her clothes the most.  I blame new york.  This is how it is here.  You either drop your small town baggage and dive the fuck in or you’re stuck out in Williamsburg, hooking up with girls just as ugly as the ones you fooled around  up with when you lived in Portland.  No fucking thanks. 

I still believe my perfect match is out there, Gaultier on Saturday night, Cure T shirt Sunday during brunch.  Her clothes and music taste don’t define her but she always looks amazing, and when she opens her mouth to speak I don’t cringe.  She’s always saying something smart and funny.   Although her words are occasionally dark, collateral damage from her stint as “mildly goth” in high school, she always manages to be positive and keep me pointed in the right direction.  The perfect combination of style and substance.  New York has heaped these unhealthy expectations of opposite sex upon me and I would not have it any other way.