It’s fun going away on business trips, but there’s nothing better than coming home and seeing this view from the plane.
What a way to say “welcome back”.
My boy friends have been pushing me to get back into the dating scene. I admit that my love life has been super lame this year. I’ve met lots of great guys, but they’ve either become platonic friends straight away, or like Jason, I start seeing them, we become close, and all of a sudden he’s my best friend and romantic feelings are thrown out the window. This happens all the time. sigh.
When I moved back to NY last year, I met so many guys and was a lot more confident and daring and brazen. My favorite encounters was this guy and this guy. I used my foreignness to my advantage and threw out my Australian accent whenever I got a chance. But this year, that brazen foreign girl that was once me seems to have disappeared. I’ve become too comfortable with my group of friends and being the center of attention with my guy friends has almost replaced the neediness for sex/love/romance.
So Eric (who has been the biggest pusher for me to get back to my brazen self) set me up with his friend on Friday night. I met Eric, his friend John and John’s friend Jeff at a bar on the Lower East Side.
As soon as I saw John, I thought “Holy crap. Eric has really pulled through”. He was just my type. Brown floppy hair and big, thick, brown rimmed glasses. We had a great conversation and exchanged numbers, but he was far more interested in talking to Eric about business, and Jeff was far more interested in me. But I wasn’t interested. Jeff was a little prickly at first, but the more we got to talking, the nicer he was. He bought me drinks because he told me, “I don’t want you to leave”. Conversation was good enough but I felt like he was trying to up me all the time. There was no spark. In fact, I thought he was gay when I first saw him and ruled him out straight away. John left the bar a little earlier then we did. Jeff ended up walking me home.
Erik messaged me the next morning asking if anything happened with Jeff. I texted back…
“NO”.
Saturday night was another story. Two words.
Drunken. Debauchery.
Stay tuned.
Here’s reason # 8298 why I love New York…
Last week I was walking to work. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was out. It was a slightly chilly morning. I was walking the back streets to work, going along Washington Street.
Who do I see walking his dog but my music idol - Lou Reed! LOU REED!
Velvet Underground is my favorite band and I am such a huge fan of the man. I wanted to scream. Instead I laughed because I thought it was such a typically ridiculous thing that could only happen in this city. Walking to work and bumping into a music legend. Love it.
When I moved to NY last year, I saw him at this small show for $30. I went on my own and had a “NY moment”. I stayed after the show hoping to get a record signed. I stayed for a good hour after the show, only to see him get ushered away quickly into a town car. I was gutted.
I went to a party earlier this year and he was there with his partner Laurie. I was so intimidated by the crowd I couldn’t approach him.
And now here I was. Just me and Lou and his dog. My perfect opportunity. And did I say anything? No. I didn’t need to. I walked to work with an extra spring in my step and boasted about my encounter to colleagues.
And of course… I fell in love with NY all over again.
Well, it’s been an interesting few weeks since my best friend hooked up with GB. At first it started out as just a bit of fun and excitement. But it got out of hand when she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. The whole office found out. Then people she went to highschool with found out. People from her past called her out of the blue to get the story. Chicks in the office who never had any interest in hanging out with her all of a sudden were asking what her weekend plans were. It was ridiculous!!
I was away in Chicago for business and didn’t see it first hand, but on Monday when she returned to work and told everyone, her bosses and random colleagues were coming up to her every 10 minutes asking if he had texted back, some were even so blatantly rude/annoying and rifling through her bag to find her cell phone to check if she had received any new messages! INSANITY! What is wrong with people?!
All this attention and expectations really fucked over my friend. Her bosses said that if she was planning a rendezvous with GB, she could take a day off the next day and not feel bad about it - they just wanted to hear all about it. Which I suppose is cool that her bosses were encouraging of her to take a day off after shagging GB, but it’s not very cool that they were also constantly grilling her for updates.
A week later, after many lectures and crying and all that BS, she has learnt to keep her mouth shut. She’s told everyone it’s over - that he stopped messaging. Only me and another girlfriend (plus her mom) know what’s actually going on. The insanity has stopped, but the crafting of late night text messages has not!
There are a few relatively simple human things that still surprise me and give me warm and fuzzies. These are simple human behaviors that give me faith in the human kind. That is:
1. People in traffic using their common sense and giving way to flashing ambulances.
2. Seeing someone drop a penny or two or a few bills into a homeless persons cup.
3. Merging (in fact, this is a miracle if you ever see it happen in Perth)
I was at work this evening when I got a call from one of my boy friends Nick. He was all panicky and asked if I had heard about our friend Eric. I had no idea. He told me that Eric had collapsed on a side walk and was taken by ambulance to hospital. They had called the last person on his cell phone who was Nick’s friend and more of a business associate of Erik’s. So I am worried and I quickly call Jason - me and Eric’s best friend - but he wasn’t picking up. I call Eric and he tells me he’s in ER waiting to see a doctor, and that he just felt pressure in his head and blacked out and the next thing he knows he’s in hospital.
Half an hour later, Jason, Nick and I are sitting in ER hanging out with Eric. And you know what? That is fucking cool. In New York, friends are all you have. All my friends here moved away from their family and we’re all orphans in this city. You can always count on your family to do the hospital hang out, but knowing I have the friends that would do the same thing is kinda special.
I was going to tell you about this new guy I went on a date with on Thursday night - seriously, this guy is so amazingly beautiful/handsome, I want to make his facebook profile pic my desktop so I can remind myself how lucky I was to kiss the guy, but that stays between us, and I am joking anyway… but kinda not - but now this all seems boring and irrelevant after what happened last night.
I would love to tell you all the details, but I probably shouldn’t.
The short story is…my girlfriends and I went out last night. This actress was there. So was this funny man. This place we went to is literally a 3 minute walk from my apartment so it was kind of strange to have a Hollywood infestation so close to home. Anyway, my best friend here, who happens to be gorgeous and doesn’t know it (one of her best qualities) pashes THIS guy!!!.
They exchange numbers but he was super paranoid about leaving with her because as he says it “I’m kinda famous”. I don’t want to make him sound like a dick, because he was a really great guy. But anyway we are buzzed from the whole night and end up at my besties apartment just drinking. At 4am she gets a message from him asking if she’s awake… and later asking her to “Come say hello” at his apartment at 5:30am. Judge me all you want, but I was encouraging. I told her to go for it and she wanted to, but the rest of the girls made her feel really bad about the whole situation (hello jealousy) and she ended up not going.
This afternoon, imagine this… 6 girls all gathered around my bestie, spending 3 hours crafting a text back to him. We discussed winks and smiles. We fought over the grammer and punctuation. There was plenty of back and forth over the content. We called male friends for their opinion. If only you could hear our conversation - we all couldn’t believe we were women in our mid-20’s discussing this like we were solving the worlds problems! Haha. After 3-4 hours we came up with a one liner…. that sounded a little desperate - but of course we only realized this AFTER we sent it. Funny.
I love New York.
Is anyone out there to hear my NY love stories? Please say hello. I am feeling lonely.
