Happy New Year - NYC style
"Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is selling something." -Wesley/the Man in Black/the Dread Pirate Roberts (sorry, did I just ruin that movie for you? Oh well)
It was new years eve. In New York City. Manhattan. Fuck I love that place. It had been a horrifically bad year. In fact, it had been two. Two nightmare years in which I had become totally lost to myself and those around me. But there I was, in the middle of Times Square, 46th and 7th. At the epicentre of a million people plus mob of tension, excitement, and joy. It was, frankly, something I had never thought to do until I thought to do it. But it's one of those 'once in a lifetime' experiences that make up so many peoples' bucket lists.
And there I was. I was, unfortunately, painfully aware that this was unlike any new years I could recall. It was in fact the opposite of pretty much any new years I could recall in that I was alone and surrounded by strangers.
Usually, I spend new years with those closest to me and looking through them as though they are ghosts. Usually I am sad to let anything go, even just numbers on a calendar, even just a period of time in name only. It makes me profoundly sad. But instead of having my annual existential crisis, I had spent the evening in a supreme state of focus and it was only once safely inside the barriers that reality set in. I was alone. My husband, my friends, my family, my ex-boyfriends, my ex-friends, etc etc and everyone I ever knew or cared about were hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away. My husband was heavily on my mind. I didn't know it exactly at the time, but he was in Los Angeles, that other epicenter of America doing I have no idea what. And there we were, another milestone. Another nail in the coffin. I was once again, profoundly sad. And just lost feeling. Confused and dazed.
The strains of "Imagine" trail off. Confetti starts to fall from the sky mysteriously, people are shouting and counting down, the ball lowers, a horn blows, fireworks go off. Everyone hugs and kisses and some patriotic American tune starts up.
How did I get here?
In the fall of 2010 several big things happened (in chronological order):
And so, while my credit card balances said the rosary, I decided to forgo spending time with my friends and family for the holidays - I'm going to New York Baby! Screw all y'all! The Times Square New Years thing was a total add-on of the "I guess if I'm already there" variety.
So along comes December, and with it the sky crashing down on me again. All of the issues I had been tightrope walking my way through during the fall came to a head. And several became major crises. With one exception.
During a time of abject despair, I decided to put aside certain shit and with various firm parameters in my head/awareness/changes/recognitions/resolve, reestablished contact with one of my oldest friends, as a friend. That was, cautiously, a good thing.
In every other way, my life was a fucking shit bag. The worst of these, by a wide mile, was my discovery that husband dearest had orchestrated to spend the holidays in California, where the mistress lives. That promptly put an end to our little rendezvous relationship (actually not promptly) and thrust me into a terrible fit of despair. But I'll get to that.
Then, on the day of my flight back to the homestead I was told in less than glamorous terms that I had an early form of cervical cancer. Caused by none other than an std. Little Miss 'Im ambiguous about life' was suddenly right up against her shit. This development was ironic and cruel and inopportune. I had enough shit on my plate!!
The time in Boringsville was a blurr. I spent my waking hours yo-yoing between being upset about being mutilated by the medical community/how to deal with having the plague, and a torrent of vicious flashbacks and realisations along the lines of:
Various strained and unpleasant encounters ensued, and eventually I was on a bus heading to New York City and I just didn't care about anything. Along with me for the ride was my teenage brother, with whom I have maybe spoken for a grand total of 3 hours cumulatively in his entire life. So, basically, a stranger.
The bus ride was a nightmare. The hotel check-in, brother fit throwing, room option investigations, room switch, re-check in was a fucking nightmare. Things were not off to a good start.
I saw my plays. They were amazing and astonishing and disappointing and brilliant. It's a long story (but aren't they all?!) And suddenly I'm putting on my 5 layers in preparation for Times Square and walk out of my amazing hotel to discover that it's such a busy new years people have been penned in up to 59th. That's a problem.
We dutifully get in line. Get searched. Get separated because brother does not know how to manoeuvre his way through a crowd, get searched again, get reunited, get herded along. And then it happens.
There was a miscommunication between the police officers herding the crowd. Some said go left, some said go right. Left was further away, to Central Park, which seemed inherently wrong, so we went right. That was a mistake.
Within seconds we are outside of the pen system going up Broadway and 7th Ave. Fuck! We had 3 choices: go back and re-do the previous hour 45, beg a police officer to let us back in, or take our chances on heading south and trying to get in elsewhere. We chose door #3.
You gotta love New York. They have cute things in New York like entrance ways on street corners that straddle both streets. You can walk in the door of the pie shop on 55th, through the shop, and out the front door onto 7th, thereby by-passing the cops limiting access just a foot further north than the 7th Ave doorway. You can wave a hotel reservation sheet in a cop's face and tell him it's for some obscure hotel on 52nd and he won't know that the hotel is actually at 59th, so he lets you through. But I won't lie. It was a long and hard struggle, block by block.
So we decided to grab some pizza. At some point, we encountered such sufficient resistance that we went East to 6th Ave. We walked, ran, and skipped amongst the crowd for a about 4/5 blocks until we reached 46th. At that point we agreed to pay some con artist $25 each for what could have been fake tickets to some comedy show that brother was too young to get into. But those golden fucking tickets got us past the police barricade and heading West again.
Until we came among the magnificence that was the Nivea stages in Times Square. Thousands of people wearing horrible foam top hats that said "kiss and be kissed - new years 2011". The world had gone insane with blue joy.
But the thrill came crashing down when my ambition caught me sneaking through a bent gate and across the police line under the keen eye of the NYPD. I was nearly arrested but freed through a strategic beg for mercy. Brother and I then worked the corner like a pair of good whores, back and forth, trying not to be noticed. We eventually hid out in the only stench-free McDonalds I've ever encountered for 90 minutes, watching the clock, changing clothes and seats every half hour until it closed.
Then luck and male weakness for hot girls shone upon us and I took advantage of an opportunity made by a statuesque blond. And suddenly we were admitted into the mob, the swell of people enveloping us as the pen gates closed behind us. It was a great moment. And suddenly, just like that, after 4.5 hours of plotting and waiting and stress, I was in Times Square for New Years.
Tres Bizarre. There was music. There was singing. There was dancing. There were fireworks.
And then it was over. Except it wasn't over.
The joy and revelry continued as we all hung out and then tried to leave and then loved anew in the streets of Manhattan. Soccer and beach balls were tossed around, songs were sung, drinks were spilled, hugs and laughter. But the energy was palpable. And we couldn't get in anywhere because brother was underaged in Americaland. So eventually, we went back to the hotel.
He went on facebook and I went to the Library.
A word about the Library. The Library is officially my favourite bar ever. It is housed in the hotel of pure awesome. It is as you would expect: stuffy, British, multi-storied, dark, moody, funky, weird, cool. The previous night I had snuck brother in there and we had bore witness to a scene from "Eyes wide shut", complete with mostly naked sex acts, feathers, masks, lots of animal print, wigs, wips, leather, boots, and general weirdness. This night, I could not get him in.
Blah blah, time passed. I watched some people playing pool while two chicks humped and grinded (ground?) each other on the back of an overstuffed leather couch across the table from me. One of the pool players decided I should taste her drink and then decided that maybe I should more than taste her drink. After she kissed me, I laughed and handed her drink back and encouraged her to continue with the game. I exited and talked to some very drunk but hilarious guys in the outdoor/indoor garden attached to the Library.
Upon my return from the garden, I hung around not long before meeting London while we were both at the bar getting drinks. He looked annoyed and sad and bored and lonely. But suddenly thrilled to notice me. I have never been picked up in this way before and found it extremely bizarre and surprising. We chatted about New York, about London, about Vancouver and Whistler and travelling and families and nothing really. And I couldn't help but bring up husband and the obvious fact that husband was not there.
We kissed. I was surprised. We talked, we kissed some more. We went to the other bar, but I did not have the requisite $25o wrist band to let me in, so we went back to the Library, but the music was bad. I was quite drunk at this point. We left. We made out in the elevator. We made out in the hallway. And the whole time my brain swollen with alcohol could only think that he is so much like husband was back when husband was wonderful, and I can't give him the plague so this has to end. He tried endlessly to convince me to go to his room. But despite all of my broken down inhibitions, I couldn't give him, or the next girl, cancer. I just couldn't. And there was nothing he could say or do to dissuade me from that reality.
So I suddenly opened the door to my room and closed it on him. I went inside and changed into my pjs and went to the bathroom, washed my face.
When I came out, brother said "someones been knocking on the door." I stumbled over and looked out the peephole. London was confused as to the rooms due to his own intoxication. He turned from our door and knocked on the one across the hall. A man came out and yelled that it was 4:30 in the morning. London turned and looked at my door. I held my breath. He turned and walked away. I didn't move for long seconds.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd opened that door. Sometimes I wonder what kind of person it makes me, both that I didn't and that I left things in that way. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't lost the paper with his room and number on it, or hadn't forgotten it. But I did.
And it doesn't matter. It was a night in New York City and nothing more. I don't pretend that it was anything more than New Years Eve in that town.
The next night I got brother into the Library. We played pool with some Australians. I got incredibly drunk, ranted about my cheating lying husband who gave me diseases, vag cancer and had destroyed any hope of a life after him. Brother laughed. We all went to the other club in the hotel, with it's neon green lit floor, Edwardian and clear plastic furniture, like Marie Antoinette as a stripper. I got into an argument with the waitress because of brother's inappropriate attendance. I danced for what seemed like hours. I threw up violently several times and made friends with a sweet black girl who held my hair, then slept in my clothes and boots.
But whatever, it's just a night in New York City. It's just the new world of 2011.
2 months after that night, a doctor across the country indicated that perhaps the earlier test results were a mix-up. It would seem no vag-cancer for me. But they weren't sure, too many conflicting indicators. More testing required, blah blah blah.
As I walked out of the doctor's office I thought of London and cursed the medical system for costing me the cherished experience of the young and divorced: my one and only coulda-been maybe woulda-been, one night stand. Oh well.
That said, there were many beneficial, both from a development/understanding perspective, and from a self-esteem/loneliness perspective results from that night. And I am perplexed by but grateful for them. I have learned and benefited a great deal from the events of that evening from the time I opened my eyes until I closed them again and am still working through some aspects. The sex clock however, did not get re-set.
Here's to 2011 hopefully being better than 2010 or 2009. Happy New Year!
It was new years eve. In New York City. Manhattan. Fuck I love that place. It had been a horrifically bad year. In fact, it had been two. Two nightmare years in which I had become totally lost to myself and those around me. But there I was, in the middle of Times Square, 46th and 7th. At the epicentre of a million people plus mob of tension, excitement, and joy. It was, frankly, something I had never thought to do until I thought to do it. But it's one of those 'once in a lifetime' experiences that make up so many peoples' bucket lists.
And there I was. I was, unfortunately, painfully aware that this was unlike any new years I could recall. It was in fact the opposite of pretty much any new years I could recall in that I was alone and surrounded by strangers.
Usually, I spend new years with those closest to me and looking through them as though they are ghosts. Usually I am sad to let anything go, even just numbers on a calendar, even just a period of time in name only. It makes me profoundly sad. But instead of having my annual existential crisis, I had spent the evening in a supreme state of focus and it was only once safely inside the barriers that reality set in. I was alone. My husband, my friends, my family, my ex-boyfriends, my ex-friends, etc etc and everyone I ever knew or cared about were hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away. My husband was heavily on my mind. I didn't know it exactly at the time, but he was in Los Angeles, that other epicenter of America doing I have no idea what. And there we were, another milestone. Another nail in the coffin. I was once again, profoundly sad. And just lost feeling. Confused and dazed.
The strains of "Imagine" trail off. Confetti starts to fall from the sky mysteriously, people are shouting and counting down, the ball lowers, a horn blows, fireworks go off. Everyone hugs and kisses and some patriotic American tune starts up.
How did I get here?
In the fall of 2010 several big things happened (in chronological order):
- I moved in with my sister for the first time since she was 7
- I became profoundly disillusioned by my one closest friend/sort of ex, and we ceased contact
- For long and complicated reasons my other closest friend and I essentially stopped speaking
- I discovered that I wasn't actually very interested in being alive
- I haltingly and skittishly got re-involved with my estranged husband, despite the vehement protests of everyone in my life
- The company I worked for quasi-dissolved into various other companies, resulting in confusion, distrust, wars, competition and I in the middle, torn by various factions
And so, while my credit card balances said the rosary, I decided to forgo spending time with my friends and family for the holidays - I'm going to New York Baby! Screw all y'all! The Times Square New Years thing was a total add-on of the "I guess if I'm already there" variety.
So along comes December, and with it the sky crashing down on me again. All of the issues I had been tightrope walking my way through during the fall came to a head. And several became major crises. With one exception.
During a time of abject despair, I decided to put aside certain shit and with various firm parameters in my head/awareness/changes/recognitions/resolve, reestablished contact with one of my oldest friends, as a friend. That was, cautiously, a good thing.
In every other way, my life was a fucking shit bag. The worst of these, by a wide mile, was my discovery that husband dearest had orchestrated to spend the holidays in California, where the mistress lives. That promptly put an end to our little rendezvous relationship (actually not promptly) and thrust me into a terrible fit of despair. But I'll get to that.
Then, on the day of my flight back to the homestead I was told in less than glamorous terms that I had an early form of cervical cancer. Caused by none other than an std. Little Miss 'Im ambiguous about life' was suddenly right up against her shit. This development was ironic and cruel and inopportune. I had enough shit on my plate!!
The time in Boringsville was a blurr. I spent my waking hours yo-yoing between being upset about being mutilated by the medical community/how to deal with having the plague, and a torrent of vicious flashbacks and realisations along the lines of:
- this time last year husband was having an affair and lying to my face every minute of the day and making me feel like shit while I worked tirelessly to figure out and fix our relationship
- this time last year they were plotting their rendezvous
- this time last year I wasn't alone
- this time last year I still had my life and didn't wake up confused every morning
- this time last year was the beginning of the worst time of my adult life
- my husband is miles and miles away
- what is he doing? who is he with?
- why did he go to california?
- where the fuck is her husband?
- was he just using me all through late 2010?
- what on earth was the point of our little reconnect?
- did I do something wrong? was that my opportunity to fix our lives and I blew it?
- he chose her again
- how did I let this happen?
- how did this become my life?
- people cannot be trusted
- a multitude of reminders of my break down the previous year
- it's almost the anniversary of the worst week of my adult life
- I can still feel the pain as piercing as I did then
- this is my future. this is the rest of my life. why bother?
Various strained and unpleasant encounters ensued, and eventually I was on a bus heading to New York City and I just didn't care about anything. Along with me for the ride was my teenage brother, with whom I have maybe spoken for a grand total of 3 hours cumulatively in his entire life. So, basically, a stranger.
The bus ride was a nightmare. The hotel check-in, brother fit throwing, room option investigations, room switch, re-check in was a fucking nightmare. Things were not off to a good start.
I saw my plays. They were amazing and astonishing and disappointing and brilliant. It's a long story (but aren't they all?!) And suddenly I'm putting on my 5 layers in preparation for Times Square and walk out of my amazing hotel to discover that it's such a busy new years people have been penned in up to 59th. That's a problem.
We dutifully get in line. Get searched. Get separated because brother does not know how to manoeuvre his way through a crowd, get searched again, get reunited, get herded along. And then it happens.
There was a miscommunication between the police officers herding the crowd. Some said go left, some said go right. Left was further away, to Central Park, which seemed inherently wrong, so we went right. That was a mistake.
Within seconds we are outside of the pen system going up Broadway and 7th Ave. Fuck! We had 3 choices: go back and re-do the previous hour 45, beg a police officer to let us back in, or take our chances on heading south and trying to get in elsewhere. We chose door #3.
You gotta love New York. They have cute things in New York like entrance ways on street corners that straddle both streets. You can walk in the door of the pie shop on 55th, through the shop, and out the front door onto 7th, thereby by-passing the cops limiting access just a foot further north than the 7th Ave doorway. You can wave a hotel reservation sheet in a cop's face and tell him it's for some obscure hotel on 52nd and he won't know that the hotel is actually at 59th, so he lets you through. But I won't lie. It was a long and hard struggle, block by block.
So we decided to grab some pizza. At some point, we encountered such sufficient resistance that we went East to 6th Ave. We walked, ran, and skipped amongst the crowd for a about 4/5 blocks until we reached 46th. At that point we agreed to pay some con artist $25 each for what could have been fake tickets to some comedy show that brother was too young to get into. But those golden fucking tickets got us past the police barricade and heading West again.
Until we came among the magnificence that was the Nivea stages in Times Square. Thousands of people wearing horrible foam top hats that said "kiss and be kissed - new years 2011". The world had gone insane with blue joy.
But the thrill came crashing down when my ambition caught me sneaking through a bent gate and across the police line under the keen eye of the NYPD. I was nearly arrested but freed through a strategic beg for mercy. Brother and I then worked the corner like a pair of good whores, back and forth, trying not to be noticed. We eventually hid out in the only stench-free McDonalds I've ever encountered for 90 minutes, watching the clock, changing clothes and seats every half hour until it closed.
Then luck and male weakness for hot girls shone upon us and I took advantage of an opportunity made by a statuesque blond. And suddenly we were admitted into the mob, the swell of people enveloping us as the pen gates closed behind us. It was a great moment. And suddenly, just like that, after 4.5 hours of plotting and waiting and stress, I was in Times Square for New Years.
Tres Bizarre. There was music. There was singing. There was dancing. There were fireworks.
And then it was over. Except it wasn't over.
The joy and revelry continued as we all hung out and then tried to leave and then loved anew in the streets of Manhattan. Soccer and beach balls were tossed around, songs were sung, drinks were spilled, hugs and laughter. But the energy was palpable. And we couldn't get in anywhere because brother was underaged in Americaland. So eventually, we went back to the hotel.
He went on facebook and I went to the Library.
A word about the Library. The Library is officially my favourite bar ever. It is housed in the hotel of pure awesome. It is as you would expect: stuffy, British, multi-storied, dark, moody, funky, weird, cool. The previous night I had snuck brother in there and we had bore witness to a scene from "Eyes wide shut", complete with mostly naked sex acts, feathers, masks, lots of animal print, wigs, wips, leather, boots, and general weirdness. This night, I could not get him in.
Blah blah, time passed. I watched some people playing pool while two chicks humped and grinded (ground?) each other on the back of an overstuffed leather couch across the table from me. One of the pool players decided I should taste her drink and then decided that maybe I should more than taste her drink. After she kissed me, I laughed and handed her drink back and encouraged her to continue with the game. I exited and talked to some very drunk but hilarious guys in the outdoor/indoor garden attached to the Library.
Upon my return from the garden, I hung around not long before meeting London while we were both at the bar getting drinks. He looked annoyed and sad and bored and lonely. But suddenly thrilled to notice me. I have never been picked up in this way before and found it extremely bizarre and surprising. We chatted about New York, about London, about Vancouver and Whistler and travelling and families and nothing really. And I couldn't help but bring up husband and the obvious fact that husband was not there.
We kissed. I was surprised. We talked, we kissed some more. We went to the other bar, but I did not have the requisite $25o wrist band to let me in, so we went back to the Library, but the music was bad. I was quite drunk at this point. We left. We made out in the elevator. We made out in the hallway. And the whole time my brain swollen with alcohol could only think that he is so much like husband was back when husband was wonderful, and I can't give him the plague so this has to end. He tried endlessly to convince me to go to his room. But despite all of my broken down inhibitions, I couldn't give him, or the next girl, cancer. I just couldn't. And there was nothing he could say or do to dissuade me from that reality.
So I suddenly opened the door to my room and closed it on him. I went inside and changed into my pjs and went to the bathroom, washed my face.
When I came out, brother said "someones been knocking on the door." I stumbled over and looked out the peephole. London was confused as to the rooms due to his own intoxication. He turned from our door and knocked on the one across the hall. A man came out and yelled that it was 4:30 in the morning. London turned and looked at my door. I held my breath. He turned and walked away. I didn't move for long seconds.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd opened that door. Sometimes I wonder what kind of person it makes me, both that I didn't and that I left things in that way. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't lost the paper with his room and number on it, or hadn't forgotten it. But I did.
And it doesn't matter. It was a night in New York City and nothing more. I don't pretend that it was anything more than New Years Eve in that town.
The next night I got brother into the Library. We played pool with some Australians. I got incredibly drunk, ranted about my cheating lying husband who gave me diseases, vag cancer and had destroyed any hope of a life after him. Brother laughed. We all went to the other club in the hotel, with it's neon green lit floor, Edwardian and clear plastic furniture, like Marie Antoinette as a stripper. I got into an argument with the waitress because of brother's inappropriate attendance. I danced for what seemed like hours. I threw up violently several times and made friends with a sweet black girl who held my hair, then slept in my clothes and boots.
But whatever, it's just a night in New York City. It's just the new world of 2011.
2 months after that night, a doctor across the country indicated that perhaps the earlier test results were a mix-up. It would seem no vag-cancer for me. But they weren't sure, too many conflicting indicators. More testing required, blah blah blah.
As I walked out of the doctor's office I thought of London and cursed the medical system for costing me the cherished experience of the young and divorced: my one and only coulda-been maybe woulda-been, one night stand. Oh well.
That said, there were many beneficial, both from a development/understanding perspective, and from a self-esteem/loneliness perspective results from that night. And I am perplexed by but grateful for them. I have learned and benefited a great deal from the events of that evening from the time I opened my eyes until I closed them again and am still working through some aspects. The sex clock however, did not get re-set.
Here's to 2011 hopefully being better than 2010 or 2009. Happy New Year!
posted by venbot | 2:18 a.m.
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