I spend my days below 14th St. and generally above Canal. I’ve had girlfriends. I’ve been in love. I’ve had my heart ripped out and handed to me by numerous women. I’ve done my share of ripping too. These are stories of my New York.
I don’t plan on doing much blog recycling, but I thought this was great and deserved a re-posting.
1. Find yourself driving your friend’s girlfriend and her underage friend to the Kibbitz Room on Tuesday night.
2. As you walk up Fairfax, you feel the pangs of excitement and nervousness that precede a night out drinking with your friends at what seems like the coolest place you’ve ever been.
3. It really must be the coolest place you’ve ever been, because you’ve devoted the better part of what would have been your last semester of college going to this bar every Tuesday night.
4. “what would have been your last semester” may have actually been your last semester if you hadn’t been going to the Kibbits Room so much.
5. The other reason it isn’t really your last semester is that you have been spending the rest of your week way across town from school, pursuing an impossibly cruel and distant woman who lives in Culver City.
6. This impossibly cruel and distant woman is even more distant now, as you’ve stopped seeing each other.
7. When things were good between the two of you, which admittedly was seldom, she told you that she got you a ticket for her graduation.
8. That would have been a week ago. You didn’t end up going to her graduation. You didn’t end up going to your own graduation, because you didn’t end up graduating.
9. Part of your excitement in going to the Kibbitz Room tonight is knowing that she won’t be there. Once, when you invited her to join you there on a Tuesday, she said, “I never go there. The only time I would ever go to the Kibbitz Room is if I were looking for a dumb skater to hook-up with. I don’t need that now, because I have you.”
10. At the time, you took that as a compliment.
12. Mull that over as you walk in the door and the first person you see at the bar is her.
13. Pretend not to see her, and go to the other end of the bar (it is a very small bar) and drink as much as you can, quickly.
14. When it is just entirely obvious that the two of you are aware of each other’s presence, try to saunter over as nonchalantly as possible.
15. She tells you she is meeting a friend here.
16. No, she doesn’t want to go around the corner and make out.
17. The burning question of who her friend is and what the exact nature of their friendship might be is only slightly doused with more alcohol.
18. Despite having been so excited to see the usual cast of characters at the bar, you keep glancing over in her direction.
19. She is outside, smoking. You don’t smoke. You are outside, watching.
20. You see her give another guy a hug, and he kisses her on the cheek.
21. You get between them, and though what exactly you said isn’t entirely clear, it is emphatic. So emphatic, in fact, that to illustrate your point you use your open palm against this guy’s cheek.
22. She grabs your arm and pulls you away from the now angry guy. She tells you that you have just slapped a very dangerous drug dealer.
23. She also tells you that she does not approve of your behavior.
24. She leaves you there, tottering against the wall. You see another girl, a friend of your friend’s girlfriend, who you have always had a small crush on.
25. You pick her up, and say the most romantic thing you can possibly muster, which is something along the lines of, “Paula, why don’t you like me?”
26. Her response is “Dude, I just say you piss against the wall in front of everybody.” You don’t remember doing this, but it sounds about right.
27. The next morning, you peel yourself off of the black leather couch that you must have been dragged to. It is 2 in the afternoon, and you have no idea where your car is.
28. You find your car parked near Fairfax, and you drive it back to your apartment in Eagle Rock.
29. The impossibly cold and distant girl tells you that you almost got killed last night, that you humiliated her, and that she never wants to talk to you again. That sounds about right, too.
30. With very little else to keep you in LA, you get your roommate to give you a ride to the Burbank airport, and take the first flight available to Austin, where there is no Kibbitz Room, and where the angry drug-dealers can not find you.
