In Search of Lost Time

Days without an update: 18

Wow, time flies when you’re on drugs. At least I think that’s the case for my opioid addict boss, Hundo, who didn’t realize that it was no longer August. He was blind-sided by the Jewish New Year and took off for the holiday, leaving me a few work days without visiting every Duane Reade in the city. Happy New Year!

I haven’t behaved much better than (allegedly) Hundo has, with my alcoholism lapsing into black outs all over the city. Thus the lack of updates, time for both blackouts and recovery is all my social calendar can handle.

About a week ago I cleared time in my social calendar to meet with Georgia Ann, Times Square and a few other friends that I’d been neglecting. We all met at El Rey Del Sol on 14th and enjoyed ourselves, along with a pitcher of margaritas. Part way through the evening we began to notice that the seasons were slowly changing from summer to fall, that we’re all becoming more accustomed to the city, and that the guys sitting behind me were very attractive.

Ten minutes later I had become BFF with Carlos and whatever the other guy’s name was, and found my conversation at their table leading very promising places. My gaggle of friends decided to move on to Flannery’s (love it) and I decided to stick around for ten more minutes and a cigarette (which is practically unveiled code for “let me seal the deal first”).

The next thing I know, its 6:30 in the morning and I’m on the E train in Queens. No cell phone, no iPod, and no idea how this all happened.

After only an hour and a half of sleep in Harlem, the Harem awakens me and informs me that moving day is upon us, just like autumn weather and the winter of my discontent. I pushed through a brutal headache and managed to drag my roomies belongings down the steps of our fifth floor walk-up and into the moving truck before nearly passing out on a subway train to our new home in Brooklyn. Unfortunately surviving one headache meant sucumbing to a new one- Straight Boyfriend’s bed was too big for our staircase and could not be pushed up the one flight of steps into our new (huge and awesome) apartment.

There was a brief moment when I pulled the box springs over my head that I worried I might faint, but when Straight Boyfriend literally threw his bed and I caught it by the loose fabric and pulled it over our second story balcony everything turned out ok. Then I immediately collapsed on our new couch, physically exhausted from moving and mentally not quite sure what happened the evening before.

Eventually the clues fell into place- my friends had called all night because I had simply disappeared (though I lost my phone and couldn’t call them), my hangover never included the slightest twinge of nausea, my memory lapsed for an epic 8 hour span, my bar tab never increased during the night, and I only had two drinks of the margaritas…. at 9 pm! That does not explain feeling entirely out of your own body at noon the next day.

Too confused and perturbed to venture out on Saturday, I chatted with a friend over mimosas and goat-cheese omlettes about my night. The conclusion: rohypnol. Perhaps GHB. Either way, fantastic.

Less than a year in a city and I already can’t remember the boys I’m going home with.

Jokes aside, the entire event does shake your confidence. Nothing of the evening was out of the ordinary, nothing incredibly dangerous or unwise, just incredibly bad luck and the complete ignorance/naivety of a midwesterner attempting to meet new people and have some margaritas. The strange marks on my arm have healed, I’ve retrieved my phone after a lengthy time out of touch, and my friends have forgiven me for disappearing. I have all my money, I am disease free, I was not forced to ingest anything illegal, and I wasn’t sold into black market slavery (that would RUIN my night). I am pretty lucky for all of that, though. The next few weeks have brought a sense of normalty, and the new apartment is coming along nicely. I’m *this close* to buying a real bed! Party.

It’s a shame for the boys though, I would’ve spent the night without the drugs. Bummer.

[everything it seems i like is a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me]

Fight Club

Days back in Michigan: 5

My computer blew up. Ass.

Home is an extremely bizarre place. There are entire fields of grass for absolutely no reason. There are stars at night… STARS?!?! And you can hear crickets when you’re trying to sleep on the couch of your entirely uncomfortable living room couch (not to mention that the house is without air conditioning). It’s kinda nice, though.

Needless to say, I am back in Michigan for a week before heading back out to the city. In a few short days the new job begins. Exciting! Until then, baseball games and Dominicans and ice cream and Project Runway. In that order. It is a far cry from the life I grew to love in New York, which culminated with Burkeman (yay!) and Dude Mathews drunkenly hailing a cab to La Guardia at 5 am. Bars in New York close at 4, so staying up the extra hour at a diner was no problem. Finding my ID in my bags while drunk in line to pass security, that was a bigger problem. When I tripped and fell in the Detroit airport during my layover I realized perhaps I should’ve slept a little before arriving home. Nothing says “you fucked up” quite like eating shit in the middle of a magazine store in an airport. Note to self: drinking on a flight is great. Drinking for six hours and then catching a flight- not so great. On the upside, the crying baby next to me on the flight stood no chance against my binge-drinking coma. I slept like that baby should’ve. However, that only lasted a half hour before arriving home, where my family was mildly horrified that I reaked of Jameson and hadn’t bathed in a few days. New York turns scion into a slob.

There is one large change between home and the city that I’m not adjusting to very well, I admit- my computer. Its on the fritz and cannot be revived until I am back in Manhattan. Only problem, I might not be going back to Manhattan…

While walking home on a Sunday evening Straight Boyfriend (of the Harlem Harem, a group I recently elected to live with) ran into three large men on the street. Well, he didn’t run into them so much as their fists. Multiple times. The attack is believed to have been racially motivated, as Straight Boyfriend is a large white Alaskan dude in the middle of a largely Dominican section of Harlem, but his attackers weren’t Dominican.

Forunately the incident was stopped before it could become to brutal, but he does have some bruising on his face and a severely broken desire to remain in Harlem. Thus the Harlem Harem may soon become the Brooklyn Brigade. It will be a journey.

Oh, and Weather Man will be back in the city when I arrive on Saturday. AND I’m living with the Femme Fellows in Hoboken for the month of August. And work, the first day of the rest of my life, starts on Monday (same day as Drag Queen Bingo).

It’s about to get very interesting.

[we are adventuring, we are adventurers]

The Futurist

Day 52

For a few years now I’ve been involved in an abusive relationship, and in the last few months it’s gotten even worse. My boyfriend, Alcohol, let’s me pound on him all night, but in the morning he treats me like shit. It’s a vicious cycle that neither of us are mature enough to escape. I’m guilty of using him, he (literally) makes me sick. But what are we to do?

Fortunately he’s a great date to almost any occasion. Last week a friend’s girlfriend provided a free pass on the VIP list to a MLB All-Star viewing party at Webster Hall, where my new boyfriend was already awaiting me at an open bar. Considering Tuesday had been a Red Letter Day for me (an interview that turned into a tentative job offer) I celebrated with some Red Stripe. And rum and coke. And rum and coke. And rum and coke. And I lost track eventually, but it ended with rum and coke. Regardless, the evening was perfect- I got to watch some baseball (hot), some baseball players (hotter), and had my free reign over an open bar thanks to a shinny little badge (hottest). Plus, a few of my favorites were there, and I wound up chatting with my friend Bad for Your Organs Brooke- perhaps my closest friend in NYC and also the only other individual I know who’s as intimiately acquainted with the world of binge drinking. Anyway, BYOB and I started chatting and the night blurred past quicker than ever. We had a riot laughing about … I don’t even know, everything. I even got to chat with her roommate, the inevitable Straight Boyfriend that I don’t yet have. He’s great, Alaskan, and entirely easy to ply with drinks. BYOB and Straight Boyfriend share an apartment together in Harlem (thus now known as the Harlem Harem) and by the end of the night I escaped Webster Hall with a VIP pass to become the newest member of the Harlem Harem- BYOB and Straight Boyfriend are performing a hostile take-over and removing their third roommate, thus making the way for Burkeman! RIOT.

Within the course of 12 hours I was offered the perfect job and the perfect apartment, for a starter New Yorker. Needless to say, the next few hours were going to have to go down hill from there. And then some.

Vaguely hungover but entirely chipper at work, I got some good advice from Jersey Queen who suggested I play the field. Considering Jersey Queen has played both sides of every field at this point, I’ll take her word on it- at least when it comes to apartments.

In Brooklyn that night I met a nice guy named Borwen, who was less than amusing but incredibly kind. He offered me the apartment on the spot; I was forced to admit that I had actually committed to another place and was just checking this place out to play the field. And honestly, the two meth-heads on the stoop and the myriad of broken fire-hydrants on the 90+ degree hike to his place didn’t tempt me enough to stray from my Harem, even for 50 bucks less a month. Meh, we’re both hopeful we can still be friends….

That weekend I brushed off my apartmental infidelity and let some friends whisk me away to the trashy beach. Literally, garbage everywhere, beach. I lost my Coney Island virginity on a hot day in July with a bunch of girls and a live band that sucked, which probably isn’t too far off from where most people lose their virginity, anyway. The park was fantastic, Coney Island is perhaps the biggest what-the-fuck location of all time; literred with fat chicks, hot dog stands, economically priced french fries, and life guards who blow whistles and wear needlessly enticing swim-suits, it’s as if the park in Pinnochio (where all the boys became donkeys) was recreated in New York as a tourist attraction. PS- the Cyclone is over-priced and hazardous for your health. The Cyclone is disturbingly like anal sex-unnecessarily rought but if you ride it multiple times, it gets better.

My day soaking up the sun on Coney Island passed all too quickly, as has my time as a fellow at *B&, the major network that has been providing me work lately. The acceptance of a job at a major sales orginization has brought an onslaught of *B& employees out of the woodwork to wish me well (aka buy me lunch in attempts to build loyalty for when I’m hire-able in 8 years). It’s been a generous outpouring, and I’ll have no qualms about returning to the network in a few years, especially if I can get a few more free meals out of it. The president of national television sales took me out for lunch, bought me a margarita, and then told me his daughter was troubled. I’m not sure what that means, but I had a free margarita!

As exciting as beaches and guest lists and working-margarita-lunches with executives can be (more lunches in the next week, yay!), it is impossible to overlook how frighteningly straight these last few weeks have been. After nearly two months in (arguably) the gayest city in the nation, I’m still play-less. What’s that about? Not even a kiss. Ouch. I exchanged digits with Cute Clerk a while back, but after ignoring Facebook messages and never calling him, it’s clear I’m not about to redeem that one (oops). However, a friend from DC is traveling to the City this weekend, perhaps with intentions of changing this situation. After a year of being close “friends” it is clear this friend, Weather Man, and I are going nowhere very quickly. As my emotions subside, his begin to swell… typical. Which means while he’s traveling to NYC to drop the L-bomb, I’m bunkering down in my apartment in hopes of surviving the fall out.

Meanwhile, my feelings for our mutual friend, Great Scot, have taken a surprising turn into the “maybe” category. Of course all of this is further complicated by the fact that both of these men are significantly older than I am… extra typical. And the additional fact that Weather Man may have cancer, and that Great Scot is having brain surgeory in a few weeks, makes for a rather decent checklist of reasons I shouldn’t have gotten myself this deep in either of their lives. Crap.

Elsewhere, I’ve found myself debating crazy things with a few of my friends. Tonight at a brewery, Dude Mathews and I were discussing marriage and my belief that forever simply doesn’t exist. Only today exists, and a promise to try again tomorrow. However, my beliefs are about to be tested… if Great Scot fairs well through brain surgeory he hopes to stay in the US, which means finding his green card one way or another.

Turns out Massachusetts opened a whole new chapter on man-on-man immigration, and as a born-n-bred American, all of the sudden I have post-brain surgeory marriage to consider.

First things first- Weather Man has invited me to a dinner party with his friends. And it’s my last weekend with my fellow fellows here in NYC. Which means two things- drinking with gay men and drinking with straight friends. Fortunately my abusive relationship boyfriend will stay by my side all weekend, otherwise I’d have to take responsibility for the mistakes I’m about to make…

[danger! danger! high voltage]