Clublife

Saw You Again

2012-05-10T20:00:00.000-04:00

The better question, at least to me, is why you think it's okay to look at my personal website (which has nothing to do with the subject matter you should be working on) multiple times each day on company time.

"Please help me! He's writing stuff on his personal website!"

If you dislike me so much, why have you been checking my personal website multiple times every day (at work, on company time) since you've had your job? Why is that acceptable?

Grow up, you little half a man.

Hey Dickhead

2012-05-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

Stop reading my personal website. I have a tracking application called Statcounter. I know you looked at this site at 10:13 this morning. You've caused enough fucking problems. Leave well enough alone.

I'll do you a favor. Here's a summary of what might be said about you here in the future:

1. You're a pussy and a coward.

2. You suck at your job and have neither the intelligence nor the talent to ever get any better.

3. You're little more than a pussified little pain in the ass who'll never amount to jack shit.

There you go. Now go away before I actually start getting legitimately pissed off.

Twenty More Minutes

2012-04-26T04:00:00.000-04:00

Here’s something else I’ve learned this month:

When someone fucks with you – assuming, to steal some legal terminology, you’re the “reasonable man” – your initial reaction, provided you don’t strike back right away, will be to seek out advice from rational people. You’ll explain your situation to these rational people, and most times, they’ll advise you to “handle things professionally.” This typically entails keeping your mouth shut, ignoring the problem, and getting your work done. By staying above the fray, at least in theory, you’re demonstrating far more by your actions than your words.

This advice, I can tell you from experience, is absolute shit.

You’re being fucked with. Someone is doing something to you that negatively affects your job and your life. You listen to your rational friends and do nothing. You keep quiet, you say nothing, and you simply go about your day in a professional manner like nothing’s wrong. This goes on for a while until you eventually get engrossed in something else and forget you’re being fucked with. You get used to cruising above it.

You know what this approach does? It gives the guy who’s fucking with you a several week head start. It also gives them the impression that you’re not going to do anything back – which, in turn, gives them license to be even more audacious in how they fuck with you. Seriously, if you fuck with someone, and the guy doesn’t do anything back – and you’re still at a point where you haven’t gotten his attention or anyone else’s – it’s human nature to want to escalate things until someone takes notice and you start getting your way. Of course, that’s not how grown men operate, but that’s not the group I’m referring to here, obviously.

My advice, after having this happen to me, is to go the opposite way. You can’t keep your mouth shut. I knew this perfectly well going into my most recent situation because I’ve been fucked with before – by people who are professionals at fucking with other people. When you’re dealing with amateurs, however, it’s very easy to feel a false sense of security and assume nothing’s going to come of it. Don’t fall into this trap, though, because it’ll drag you straight into their fucking morass of bullshit – especially with amateurs, because they get sloppy and go for broke after a while. They’re too stupid and impatient not to.

The lesson here?

When someone fucks with you, particularly with regard to your money, you need to make it stop. Immediately, especially when you’re being fucked with by stupid, talentless people who don’t understand the consequences of what they’re doing.

And for people who fuck with other people? Fucking with your superiors then tattling on them when they complain about it only lets the world know for sure what it already suspected – that you really are a Grade A pussy.

Twenty Minutes

2012-04-25T04:00:00.000-04:00

Revenge is a bitch to sit and want. I’ve had to learn this the hard way over the past few years. Someone does something to you, you figure out what that something is – and the true extent of it – and then you want a piece of that someone, but you can’t have it because Johnny Law says you can’t. The frustration can rip your guts apart if you let it.

Twice, in recent years, I’ve wanted to get at someone very badly for something they’ve done to me – and twice, my hands have been tied. This is no good. I’ve had to sleep on this shit for many, many nights, but I’ve learned a few things.

When you’re in this position, the rational people around you will counsel restraint. Let it ride, they’ll say, because the guy who fucked you over will “get his in the end” – which sucks, because the denouement you’re looking for takes far too long, and you want to be the one who gives him “his.” You sit there at night and it churns around your fucking head, and all you really want is to be the guy who teaches the lesson, not the guy who has to constantly be learning them.

I’ve got a guy like that in my life right now. Something happened that I didn’t provoke, and I’m frustrated like a motherfucker. If this came to a fistfight, it would last all of about fifteen seconds. I’m trained and he’s not, and he doesn’t have the faintest notion of what that would be like for him – otherwise he likely wouldn’t have done this. It can’t happen that way, however, because it’s not how society solves its problems anywhere but in combat – and in nightclubs (see first five years of this blog for details).

I’m trying to learn how to do this the other way – the one that tells me to set the guy free to hang himself with his own rope. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and it’s been working. I’d hate to wake up and be this guy, that’s for sure. I’d hate to have no appreciable means of making a living. I’d hate to royally suck at doing something I love more than anything else in the world, with a piss-poor work ethic and no hope of ever getting better. I’d especially hate this last part if I happened to be delusional enough to actually believe I was any good at it.

It makes me sad for the guy sometimes, but then I remember why I’m thinking about it, and it makes me happy all over again to know my worst day on this planet is his wildest wet dream fantasy.

Yeah, dude. You suck massive cock at what you do to the point of being an embarrassment. Must be a nightmare to have hit your ceiling so early.

Twelve Minutes, Thirty Seconds

2012-04-24T04:00:00.000-04:00

I miss being in funny environments – and having jobs where people are funny. I’m talking about really funny, and not the kind of bullshit funny you’ll find in offices, where you can’t say anything really funny because you have to watch every little thing you say. I’m still not used to that. Sometimes I say things, and people stare at me like they can’t believe I just said what I said. When people do this, they lose me. If this reaction is real, and what I’ve said is shocking to you, you’re not my kind of guy. If it’s fake, you’re an asshole. I used to think I was the problem. I don’t anymore. I’m really not that off-color. Compared to where I've been? Fuck. Come on.

Where I work, a lot of people think they’re funny. Some are, but most aren’t. This is hard for someone like me, having been around some sincerely funny people throughout my life. Until the past few years, I’ve never had to cluster around some guy’s cubicle to watch people do funny shit on YouTube, because I had funny shit, perpetuated by funny people, happening all around me. I’ve never had to live vicariously through someone else’s jokes. That so many people have to do this makes me very sad. It accounts for the success of movies like The Hangover, which are targeted at guys who’ve never seen anything funny before. I’ve been to multiple bachelor parties where funnier shit happened. I watched that movie – I haven’t seen the second one – with the same look on my face that I get when someone who’s not funny in my office tells me a story about a paper jam.

People in my office are about as funny as bone cancer.

I can’t do charity laughs, either. Humor isn’t Little League. Not everyone gets to crack a funny joke. If you suck, you suck, and if I sit there watching you clinically without breaking into hysterics, it’s your fault, not mine. This happens every day at work. People try, and fail, and then get offended when 1) I don’t laugh at their lame-ass attempts at humor, and 2) I fire back with something that actually makes people laugh, violating their sense of office decorum and fairness.

This probably makes me sound like an asshole, but I don’t care. These are not my people.

2012-04-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

This is going to sound ridiculous to those of you who actually work for a living, but you’re getting ten minutes of “work” out of me with this post. It’s my version of rehab. I’m been monumentally undisciplined lately with regard to doing any writing outside of what I have to do for work, so the idea here is to sit down and get ten minutes of uninterrupted “pleasure writing” in the books. I’m forcing myself to do it.

When I sit down to write something, I typically have a dozen tabs set on my browser, and my phone is sitting on my desk to the left of my keyboard. I’ll type a couple of shitty sentences, get distracted, then look at something online, respond to some texts, and then check my email. This is absolute suicide when it comes to being productive, so my plan tonight is to work for ten solid minutes. Just ten – with no distractions, no phone, no email, no interruptions, and no bullshit. Just work.

Tomorrow, you’ll get twelve minutes, or maybe fifteen. Tuesday, I’ll try for twenty. At the seven minute mark of this deal, I went back to do some edits. I omitted one full paragraph of filler that I think I typed simply to keep typing. The copy itself made sense, but it wasn’t in the flow of what I’m trying to say here. I’m sorry this is such a shitty, boring post, but if I’m going to get back to doing anything interesting, I have to relearn how to get that done.

So there you go. Ten minutes got you 280 words, with one pass-through of editing. That wasn’t so bad.

A Review

2012-03-29T04:00:00.001-04:00

I’m running on about four hours of sleep right now, and I just walked in the door from work (my posts have always been written the night before they appear), so all I have for you today is a quick review requested by a regular reader from Emerson, NJ.

Vin Diesel frequently claims to have been a bouncer at clubs in Manhattan. I have no idea if this is true or not. Maybe he was. I never worked with him, nor do I know anyone who ever worked with him, but I’ve never had any reason to doubt his claims.

Until now, that is. This is why.

He’s apparently producing a show about a crew of bouncers working in New York. I have no idea what network is airing this thing, I don’t know what night it’s on, and I have no intention of ever watching it. I couldn’t even get past the trailer, so that’s the basis for my review. Here it is:

I’ve seen some stupid shit in my life, but this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Nobody who’s ever spent more than five minutes working in a club would ever produce anything resembling this absolute and utter horseshit. I’m very sorry, Vin Diesel. I like you. I’ve actually liked some of your movies, and you’ve had a nice career. I think you’re an interesting guy. But seriously, did you really ever work in a fucking club, dude?

You didn’t even come close here.

A Date

2012-03-28T04:00:00.001-04:00

Here is the story of a very bad date.

I met a girl a few months ago and got her number. We talked on the phone several times and had some things in common, so we went on a date. The date went well. We ended the night in a bar on the Upper West Side, where we drank until four in the morning, had fun, and decided a second date would be appropriate.

Second dates aren’t first dates. They’re more formal. You have to dress well, plan ahead, and, unless you’re an asshole, expect to spend some money. This is something I’ve learned. The whole thing is a process. It’s a shitshow. You’re supposed to be having fun, but there are rules you have to follow with this nonsense – and when you’re a little fucked in the head, as I was at the time, the whole affair can border on the fucking absurd. I’m not fucked in the head anymore, but I certainly was – at least in a dating sense – for quite a while, which didn’t exactly help my cause.

I took her to a sushi place the second time around. I love sushi, and she said she did, so I assumed it’d make for a very good start to the night. We sit down. She orders a bottle of sake. I think, “Okay, she wants to drink tonight. This is good.” I don’t particularly need to drink on dates – more on that in future posts – but it’s a big help, unless I have that one sip that zips me across that whole “What the fuck am I doing here on a date?” line I have a tendency to cross.

I always order the same thing: the sushi/sashimi deluxe, with one special roll. It’s plenty of food, but it’s not enough to bloat me to kingdom come if I’m planning on having a few drinks afterward. She ordered first, and that’s where our story begins.

She kicked off the extravaganza with the sushi/sashimi deluxe, then moved down the menu $20 at a time, ordering (I think) four different chef’s special rolls to go with her entrée. She also told the waitress to “keep it coming” with the sake.

At first, I’m thinking, “Okay, this might be cool. She understands how I like to eat, so she doesn’t want me to walk out of here hungry.” I wasn’t entirely sold on the situation, and I was a little worried about the check – there were drinks involved, remember – but whatever. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. I was rooting for her not to be out of her fucking mind. Rooting very hard.

The food arrives, and the plates cover the entire table. It looked like a corporate fucking buffet: two full boats, five plates of rolls, two bottles of sake, and a 20-something ounce bottle or Kirin. Time to go to work, right? I started in on the tuna roll that came with my sushi boat, then made the mistake of veering my chopsticks toward one of the extra rolls she’d ordered.

“No!” she shrieked. “Those are mine! You can’t touch those!”

Mine?

See, this could have gone one of two ways. Either she was being cute and playful, or she was a fucking loon. Really? Seriously? You had to turn out to be a fucking loon? But yeah, she did. She barely touched any of her food, content to sit there, drink sake, and blather on about some certification course she need to take for her job, like I gave two shits with all the number crunching going on in my head.

She then flags down the waitress and asks to have all the rolls she’d ordered wrapped, then orders yet another bottle of sake – her third. At this point, there’s smoke coming out of my fucking ears. I stare off into the distance for a few minutes, and then the waitress comes back with the containers and the bottle of sake.

The girl looks me straight in the eye, smiles, and says, “Now I’ve got lunch for the rest of the week!”

BACK

2012-03-27T04:00:00.001-04:00

I’m back. I know you’ve heard this from me dozens of times, but I mean it. Seriously. I’ll be posting here regularly from now on, because I want to write and I need the practice. I’m no longer afraid of who’s reading, and I no longer give a shit if anyone I know wants to send angry emails or make snide comments. I spent years writing on this site before any of these people even knew it existed, so why I’ve let anything get out of my control in that regard, I have no idea.

I can also beat the living shit out of all of these people – and everyone they know – so I’m no longer worried about any of it.

And no, that last sentence wasn’t a joke. It’s crude and immature, but there’s a lot going on in my life right now, and I’ve been really fucking edgy lately because I’ve blown way too many opportunities for my own good over the past few years. There are myriad reasons for this, but those don’t matter to me anymore. If anyone I know has a problem with anything I have to say from now on, come see me personally. You know where to find me. Other than that, I don’t give a flying fuck.

So, yeah, I’ve been annoyed – at myself more than anything else. The past few years have been a nasty cycle of self-sabotage, procrastination, feeling sorry for myself, and a glaring failure to apply my energies to actually getting ahead. I haven’t gotten jack shit out of this deal but a few years older, either.

You know what, though? I’m still here, I’m still alive, and I’m several years wiser. I’ve been in the business world (sort of, kind of) this whole time, I’ve learned my ass from my elbow in myriad ways, and I’m not the same ignorant jerkoff I was five years ago. I’m convinced, however, that it’s essential to have gone through some shit when you want to create something, because if you haven’t gone through anything, whatever you’re trying to create will be total bullshit, and people will see through you. You write about what you know, and at this point, I know about “going through some shit” better than I know anything else in life.

So there’s your update. I’m going to make time to write here, I’ll do my best to make it good again, and we’ll see where things go from there.

From the Dark Ages

2012-02-27T04:00:00.001-05:00

I have to go to parking ticket court on Long Island tomorrow morning. This is happening because Nassau County tells me I owe them over $3000 for parking violations at the Long Island Railroad Station from which I used to commute into Manhattan. They’re right. I owe them $3000. I’m not paying it. I can explain.

About a year ago, after getting off the train and walking down the platform stairs, I saw a parking enforcement guy writing me a ticket for an expired inspection sticker. This happened on the first or second day of the month, so he’d just caught me. I’m pretty good at keeping up with shit like this, and although I don’t remember exactly what happened, I probably figured I could get away with it until the next Saturday. Apparently not. I ran over and asked him if he’d started writing the ticket yet, telling him I was about to move the car. He decided to be an asshole about the whole thing.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re moving it or not,” he said. “You should have thought of that before you didn’t get your car inspected. Now you’re getting a ticket.”

“Yeah? Fuck you, meter maid. I’m sure your parents are really proud of your great fucking job.”

We were both wrong. And although I understand the purpose of enforcing the law, a fucking LIRR parking enforcement guy placing a ticket on a well-maintained vehicle with an inspection sticker that’s expired by one day should save his mouthing off for someone who deserves that shit. I know I could’ve avoided the situation altogether by being more conscientious, but that, to me, isn’t the point.

So, as usual, I couldn’t help myself, and it led to me getting ticketed every day for the next month – and every violation was for an expired registration, which was total bullshit because the car was properly registered, and the sticker was on the window. After a few days of this, I actually went to the DMV and paid for a replacement sticker, which I placed on the dashboard next to the existing sticker, along with a note telling this motherfucker to stop writing me tickets.

I sent a letter to every agency in existence explaining the situation. I had the DMV send me a registration history abstract that shows the car was properly registered. I even have pictures of my daily tickets next to my two registration stickers, along with that day’s newspaper – for seven straight days. So, if they’re reasonable about it, I’ll get out of this little mess.

Have I learned anything here? Probably not. And yeah, this post sucked, but so what? It’s a post, right?

Why I Haven't Been Writing

2012-02-24T04:00:00.000-05:00

I didn’t go to school for this shit. So when I started talking to people who knew what they were doing – literary agents and editors – it was the first time, seriously, anyone had ever told me about the concept of “voice,” as it pertains to writing. I heard, over and over again from agents, that I had a halfway decent voice, but I didn’t really understand what this meant because, again, I’d had no formal training, and because although I’ve read a ton in my life, the process of discerning the good from the bad was handicapped quite a bit by not having someone explain the basics when I was younger.

To me, “bad” writing meant poor grammar and spelling. “Good” writing was something I could give a shit about or that entertained me – like a Tom Clancy novel or something in Sports Illustrated. What the fuck did I know? And how the fuck would anyone expect me to know it? And no, I’m not talking about reading shit I don’t enjoy simply because it has literary merit. I still read garbage from time to time if it kills off a flight. I just know whether it’s garbage or not now.

Anyway, as I’ve gone on with this, I’ve learned a shit-ton about voice, and I’ve even practiced writing in multiple voices – tones other than the ones rolling around in my head that make me want to carry a chainsaw on the fucking subway. I’ve learned that I pretty much like my own writing voice, but that I don’t always have it at any given moment when I sit down to write – and that I haven’t really had it at all for a few years now. So yeah, I know I've sucked.

When the voice I want isn’t available, it’s for one of three reasons: I’m delusively writing in someone else’s voice, I’m too pissed off about something to sit and think coherently, or I’m on some totally bullshit psychological plane where I’m trying to get style points for using thirty words to make a point that’s worth three or less. For a few years now, this mediocrity’s been caused by a combination of these three things. I’m either trying to be something or someone I’m not, or I’m preoccupied with some other crock of shit that’s keeping me from thinking coherently about what I want to say.

That’s changed – legitimately, this time. I’ve had some negative shit happen to me lately that, instead of knocking me for a loop, has motivated me to go back to trying to get better at this. In other words, it’s good negative shit, having nothing to do with relationships, sick family members, or anything like that. It’s just bullshit at work that’s making me ask, for the first time since approximately 2006, what the fuck I’m doing with my life – and that’s a good thing, because the last time I started asking questions like that, I actually did something about it.

As opposed to back then, however, I’m now equipped to handle questions like that. I’m doing well. The people I give a shit about are doing well. I’ve climbed the ladder at work. I can’t even remember the last time I had a drink. I’m busting my ass at a competitive sport again (this one is fucking huge). I’m engaged with life again. This process took a while – longer than I expected it to – but I know I’m good at this point because I can sit down and write shit like this. It’s no literary masterpiece, but it’s me writing – not the jerkoff imitator, the pissed off lunatic, or the dildo who thinks he’s Faulkner. It’s a good start.

Update

2012-01-19T04:00:00.000-05:00

Lots of funny shit has happened to me over the past several months, but I've been afraid to talk about any of it because people I know read this site.

I don't care anymore! I have nothing to lose anymore, because I've already lost it and I'm perfectly fine! As a result, you're going to hear it all.

More to come.

100 Words and Done

2011-12-28T04:00:00.000-05:00

My last few posts can happen to anyone. I used to think it was a sign of weakness. I’d keep it to myself when I had feelings for anyone or anything – especially when something was lost. It never paid to show it. I don’t think that anymore. You wake up, you take your best shot, and then you go to sleep. Then you do it again. Some days you hit. Others you don’t. It doesn’t matter either way, because what you saw was where I was for the past week. It’s all over now. Everything ends, and everyone moves on.

They Put You In A Corner

2011-10-17T04:00:00.001-04:00

The way stupid shit starts on Facebook is a six-step process.

1. I post an innocuous status update about a frequently aired television commercial that I think is stupid.

2. I get a stream of comments from people who think my comment is either on-target or is itself rather stupid and unnecessary.

3. My friend's father responds with an out-of-leftfield political comment that has nothing whatsoever with my original post (although I think he thinks it does).

4. Several more people post comments arguing his point and ridiculing it.

5. My phone predictably rings, bringing Facebook into real life, where it doesn't belong.

6. I get exasperated and give up.

Ironically enough, this was the highlight of my weekend.

Gesture

2011-10-13T04:00:00.002-04:00

Three months of taking on some challenges of my own showed me two things.

1. I can make it on "the other side." It's not ideal, but life goes on.

2. You were right and I was wrong. I took some of your suggestions and have come to the conclusion that there's no sense in continuing to stick to an unloaded set of guns.

You didn't have to thank me. I just wanted to do one thing to not be thought of in perpetuity as an asshole. It's a good thing you're doing, and I'm proud of you.

Back

2011-10-12T04:00:00.000-04:00

I was in a very bad bar last Friday night. I’m not going to tell you which one, but it’s in the Financial District, adjacent to the Occupy Wall Street protest’s base of operations, and it sucks. The service sucked, the music sucked, and beer after beer, no matter which ones we tried, seemed to come, as my British friend said, from a “dodgy line.”

I didn’t get drunk.

I really don’t get drunk very often anymore. That’s a nice change. The last time I was drunk was at a Yankee game two months ago. I was celebrating finding out about the free New York Waterways boat from South Street Seaport to Yankee Stadium. I started drinking at 10:30 in the morning and finished up approximately sixteen hours later at a bar on the Upper West Side.

I didn’t curse at anyone, lose my phone or wallet, or get in a fight. My bladder held up well. I was relatively coherent when I made it home. Life was good. It seems to be staying that way.

Update

2011-10-05T04:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't been writing much lately. I mean it. I actually am sorry. It's kind of a generic, bullshit excuse, but I have the stereotypical "lot of shit going on." I've been getting home really late a lot for the past few weeks, and it's kind of hard, in that case, to sit down and do any writing-for-pleasure. It sucks, because I enjoy doing this, but that's life right now, I guess.

Tomorrow (today) I'll try writing some shit from work and see how that works out.

We'll see. In any case, all is well. Very well, in fact.

More Free Advice

2011-09-26T04:00:00.001-04:00

I'm always amazed at how different life is from the pictures painted by everyone in the peanut gallery.

"You know what you need to do? You need to walk right in there and tell them you need more money, otherwise you're leaving. They're fucked if you leave, so they'll give you whatever you want because you threatening to leave will scare them to death."

No, actually it won't. That's not the way it works. Don't tell people to do that, because you'll probably just get them fired.

Update

2011-09-16T10:58:00.001-04:00

I probably should have pointed this out, but I'm away from New York this week.

Not that I mind.

Closure

2011-09-14T04:00:00.001-04:00

I realize I said I was going to address 9/11 at some point here, but that turned out to be a crock of shit. That's because I listened to what everyone was saying last week and realized I had nothing of value or substance to add to the discussion.

So, I did what I thought was the correct thing to do. I kept my mouth shut, missed people I knew who died that day, thought about everyone I know -- and so many I don't know -- whose lives have also been changed over the past decade, and watched football.

Holding

2011-09-08T04:00:00.001-04:00

No, I haven’t bailed out yet.

One thing you learn when someone who’s close enough to you for you to be responsible for them has a serious illness is that shit happens – and by “shit,” I’m talking about stuff that’s out of anyone’s control.

I’ve been a little preoccupied with that this week. I’ll write more tomorrow (today).

Trucks

2011-09-02T04:00:00.001-04:00

Old Me came back today. I like that I’m able to keep Old Me under wraps for professional reasons now, but I also like that Old Me is still around. Over the past year or so, I’ve had to take a long, hard look at the way I handle situations, and I’ve realized the futility of getting all bent out of shape when stupid people act the way we all should logically expect them to act. The daily commute in Manhattan helps build calluses that way, and I’m not nearly as half-cocked as I used to be walking around New York.

Old Me, however, knows not to take excessive amounts of shit when they get a little too far into my personal space – and Old Me is still capable enough, or at least capable looking enough, to get their attention when they do. I’m more likely to throw my back out these days than throw a solid punch, but nobody needs to know that.

That was self-deprecation, by the way, and it’s insincere. I can still do some shit, and I’m trying my best to keep it that way. Nothing’s changed in that regard.

Where I work in the Financial District there are lots of truck businesses: hot dog trucks, Mexican trucks, Italian sausage trucks, coffee trucks, bagel trucks, yogurt trucks and newsstand trucks. I’m a gum chewer. I like Orbit gum. Some days I like minty flavors like Spearmint and Peppermint, while other days, I like fruity flavors like Pina Colada and Tropical Remix. This depends on the weather and the mood I’m in. This is important.

Today it was Spearmint, and I bought it at the newsstand across from South Ferry – the one adjacent to the entrance to the 1 train and 1 New York Plaza. That’d be the southeast corner of Water and Whitehall if you’re not from around here and want to scope it out on Google Street View. I do that all the time when I’m reading. When a book I’m reading mentions a street, I whip out my Droid and take a look at what the author’s talking about. Usually it looks nothing like what I’d imagined. Either the authors I like are incapable of describing physical locations, or I just suck at reading. It’s probably the latter, because all published authors know what they’re doing. It’s true.

I only had a ten-dollar bill on me this morning, so I had to wait for the guy behind the counter to make change. This newsstand is busy in the morning, so I had to stand in line to buy my gum. When it was my turn, there were four people standing behind me, in a line that fanned off to my left.

I showed the guy my gum and handed him the ten, but while I did that, a soft-looking foreign-guy-of-indeterminate-origin came alongside me on my right, yammering away on his phone, and started his own line, leaning on his hand where the newsstand guy was counting out my change. This put him approximately six inches away from me, and since we were about the same height, he was now yelling in my ear. I didn’t know why this was necessary, so I turned and looked at him, but he didn’t notice and continued yelling in some rather abrasive language I couldn’t identify.

At this point, I had two choices. I could’ve waited ten seconds, taken my change, walked away and forgotten about it, or I could’ve done what I did.

“You better step the fuck back, motherfucker.” I raised my voice.

He stared at me and kept talking, but he took several steps back and stayed back. I knew exactly what was happening, because I’ve seen this shit thousands of times as a club bouncer.

People will push you. When you push them back, they’ll stop. But if you don’t push them back or say something to get them to quit pushing you, they’ll push you even more. Guys like this aren’t looking for a fight. They’re calling your bluff, figuring you’d rather get the fuck away from them than say something. This happens on the subway – on every car of every train, every single fucking day in New York. You carve out your little space in the world where you’re hanging onto a pole with nothing but air around you, and before you know it, someone’s touching you. You move six inches in one direction in order to not be touched, but then you’re being touched again. And so on.

When you wake up to what’s actually happened, you’ve moved two feet over, and the motherfucker who was rubbing against you has now co-opted a space you thought you had to yourself. That’s how it works. They’re counting on you to move, though, so if and when you do, they’ve got you. This dick figured nobody would say anything if he cut the line. He thought I’d stand there and let him yell in my ear. He thought the woman behind me would just let him take care of his business, because doing that would certainly be preferable to dealing with him. Just let me go, and the unpleasantness will stop.

People make a valid point when they tell you not to dwell on this shit or let it affect your life when you live here, but when does it end? Where do you draw the line with the walking dead around here? How many times a day, when you’re out in public, do you have to stand there and swallow it when someone pulls some bullshit on you that you wouldn’t even think about doing to them?

Thinking about moving to New York? Work out that balance in your head before you come here, because this place will give you a fucking stroke if you don’t.

Relationship Advice For Women

2011-08-31T15:13:00.002-04:00

If you and your significant other have pet names for each other, and the two of you have a disagreement in front of his friends, don't repeatedly refer to him by your pet name for him. If you do, two things will happen:

1. His friends will now refer to him by this name.

2. You will look ridiculous and nobody listening will take you seriously.

Thank you.

Good Night

2011-08-31T04:00:00.000-04:00

I rode the subway to work all hazed over this morning. This is because I turned Irene weekend into a couch-to-couch bender that didn’t get me much quality sleep. I suppose the high note of the weekend was the fact that I only urinated in public once – in a backyard in the rain on Saturday night because I didn’t feel like going back inside – but when you live like that for a few days, you eventually have to pay a price for it, and I did that today. I’m doing it right now.

I’m very tired, is what I’m trying to say. I need some sleep. Some good, solid, high-quality sleep that has me waking up on my own, as opposed to being jarred awake by my fucking alarm clock. That’s one of my goals in life – to earn my living doing something that doesn’t entail being forced awake by the screeching piece of shit that’s been sitting on my nightstand since college. I’d like to simply sleep until I wake up, then go make a lot of money doing something I can do while I’m well-rested. I should also buy a new alarm clock, but this one’s woken me up for some important shit over the years, and I don’t want to hurt its feelings.

Of course, this isn’t how anything works. I’m figuring once I get to the point where I’m financially and professionally able to do something like that, I’ll have some other shit going on – like kids, maybe – that keeps me from sleeping no matter what I do. Or maybe I’ll continue a lifelong theme and have some asshole neighbor somewhere who likes using woodchippers and chainsaws at 6:30 in the morning. Or I’ll live underneath a trio of trust fund club sluts who walk around in heels all night screaming about nonsense – a phenomenon that seems to be a citywide epidemic, and one from which I’m hardly immune.

They’re hot, to be sure, but people who go to clubs have diseases. I worked there, so I know. The next time you see one, think about toilet seats first, then see if you’re still interested. Toilet seats seemed to be a theme among hot girls who hung out at clubs when I was in that business. This made no sense to me because public toilet seats are disgusting. That’s how I knew these people were very different from me. It was a stunning realization.

Tonight, however – it’s the night before you’re reading this, obviously – none of it’s going to matter, because I’ll be out like a damned light as soon as I’m done writing this. I won’t be fucking around online, making any calls, texting anyone, or watching the two Breaking Bad episodes I’ve DVR’d over the past week and a half. I won’t be doing any of that. The idea right now is to brush my teeth, wash my face, get in bed and turn off the fucking light so I can take advantage of every minute I have between now and tomorrow morning. Sleep will solve everything. No longer will I have these bloodshot eyes, this dried out skin or this feeling of looking at life through a pair of toilet paper rolls with screens taped over the holes.

Everything else can wait right now.

Placeholder

2011-08-30T00:23:00.003-04:00

Was too busy tonight to write anything. Back on my grind tomorrow (today), if you will, so I'll write about my commute to work, or something. For a change.

We'll call tonight an uptick. That's a good thing.