I'm Supposed to be Packing

I'm moving tomorrow morning. The movers are going to be here in about twelve hours and I'm supposed to be packing. I've been "packing" now for about a week and a half. It's slow going.

My friend Eric just said that I'm being lazy. I think it's more a problem of hating everything there is to hate about this move. Everything.

I haven't blogged at all about the move, because those of you who've spoken to me in the past three weeks (my God it seems like so much more than that) know that I've been a miserable lunatic about it since day one. Up to and including today, nothing has yet to go right, smoothly, or easily. It's been a nightmare. And I know I say this every single time I move...(which I just counted, has been ten times in the last five years) but after this one, I'M NEVER MOVING AGAIN.

First and foremost, one has to completely discount everything one knows about logic and reason when shopping for an apartment in New York. Take what you might consider reasonable in the way of size and price, and cut it in half and double it, respectively. Then remove the closets, add six flights of dark, smelly stairwell, a pushy, manipulative broker and ten other people who want it more than you, and you've got yourself an apartment in Manhattan. It's magical. Throughout this ordeal, I have truly been exposed to much of what makes this city an ugly, frightening place. And a lot of it comes to you directly from brokerage offices and apartment buildings on the Upper East side.

Compounded by constant disagreements with not one, but two prospective roommates, faxing applications, W2s and letters of reference, losing two apartments, lugging myself around the city on my lunch hour, after work and on a few illegal days off...Baller finally talked me into abandoning the island and moving to stupid Brooklyn. We spent two weekends roaming around out there, and finally stumbled upon a broker who didn't ask for our first born son as collateral. He found us a great apartment in a condo building, (corner unit, 1st floor walk-up, washer/dryer, dishwasher, walk-in entry closet, yet still way too small and three times what either of us can afford) and we took it. But even that wasn't easy. For three days, we haggled the price, signed promisory notes, called the broker who called the landlord who called him back and told him to call us...and EVENTUALLY despite being a pretentious douchey idiot...the guy agreed to let us pay a mere $2100/mo. and we signed the lease and emptied our bank accounts.

After he signed on the line, Baller immediately gulped down a glass of wine (our broker's office seconds as an art gallery which was having an opening complete with wine and cheese after hours... leave it to Brooklyn) and sighed in misery. "That was the hardest thing I've ever done," he said.

I couldn't have said it better myself. But part of me was relieved. I think I'll be even better off tomorrow, once out of Harlem, or hell...as some people have come to fondly call it. But the packing is the last of the tiresome moving ugliness that I am presently unwilling to face. So I think I'll take an uncomfortable, short shower in the now curtainless tub, and head to bed. 7am comes early. Especially when you're moving to Brooklyn.

The Remnants of Wine Week

Ahhhh wine week. The time in New York, when contrary to the amount of work piled upon your desk, and all of your better judgement, you flee from the office one to five afternoons in a row to slug down glass after glass of free wine and expensive steak at the cost of your company's expense account or the companies of your clients. The Maloney and Porcelli group, which consists of a handful of restaurants throughout the city, sponsor the event in March, and once again in September. The food is outstanding, the wine...unlimited. It's a joyous holiday.
It's Christmas for grown-up's.

But sadly, like all good things, wine week comes at a price. Some potential losses incurred by this holiday of excess can be one's clothing (which by the end of any given wine week lunch may be covered in part or entirely with purple, gloppy stains) one's immediate health (puking in the sink at your office when returning to check your email and voicemail before heading BACK to the restaurant for part two), reputation (too many stories to cite) and in some cases, even their jobs. As far as I know, no one was fired on account of their behavior at this year's wine week celebration. However, I was party to a conversation between my manager and a media buyer, whom he somehow coersed into purchasing $6,000 worth of Mets spots on the UPN station in Hartford Connecticuit. Without explaining all of the reasons this is wrong...allow me to tell you this particular buyer will be regretting the deal on Monday.

This year, I only made it out one afternoon. One of our AE's managed to add an extra seat onto their reservation @ Smith & Wollensky's on Friday afternoon, which some of you might know...is nearly impossible. But sadly, due to a last minute project deadline, I had to send Dallas-Ryan to the lunch in my stead. So my entire bar time was probably only four hours. In that time...I came up with a pretty sizeable top-ten list of reasons that wine week is absolutely fabulous. And also the worst idea anyone has ever had. Here goes:

One~
Me: Look, there's P.L. Who's he with?
My Boss: The chick he bangs when his wife and kids aren't around.

Two~
Smith & Wollensky waiter: (shaking head in horror) I've worked here for ten years. I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen adults act like this. I've never seen so much wine in my life. I'm going home.

Three~
Coworker: (Shouting across the bar) Don't slip a rufee in my drink! I'll make out with you anyway! I don't need the date rape drug!

Four~
Me, puking in the sink @ the office. Yeah... that was me.

Five~
The entire table of MMN employees singing karaoke at their lunch table.

Six~
After the above mentioned Mets deal was struck, the same buyer accidentally dousing our ENTIRE table and eventually himself with an entire bottle of white wine. Then passing out in his chair.

Seven~
Someone gave me a bag of weed, which I don't smoke, so I handed it to a total stranger in the middle of the croweded restaurant. And shouted, "Here ya go! Do you smoke?" As far as I know, I didn't get arrested.

Eight~
EVERYONE'S teeth were black. Which is gross.

Nine~
I ran into JW, a previously mentioned coworker, in the ladies room after lunch and before moving to the downstairs bar. She was shaking terribly and had a wild look in her eye. "What's wrong with you?" I asked. "This is my fourth lunch this week," she said sounding frightened. "I don't think I'm going to make it."

Ten~
One of our clients, who is all of about 5feet tall and 90lbs, being lifted up by a member of upper management and carried, football style, across the restaurant. "Because look at her! She's so tiny"

God love you wine week. And thanks for not killing me!

We're All Crazy

I just spoke consecutively with two of my best friends. Presently, both find themselves trapped between not two, but THREE boys each.

One of each is committed, one is in love with them, and the other they are in some desperate way in love with. The exact same situation, with minorly different variables. Both are completely miserable as a result.

As you can imagine, the word "crazy" surfaced an awful lot in both conversations. They would say, nearly in sync with my having thought it, "Why am I upset about person A, when I am doing the same thing to person B! Am I crazy?" In either case, I didn't know what to say.

I have always maintained, and have yet to be proven wrong, that just about everybody cheats. (At least to some degree.) If you haven't yet, it doesn't mean you won't. Or that it hasn't happened to you. Or that it won't. Cheating doesn't make you crazy, it makes you human. Period. Call it cynicism...but I think it's only realistic. People are animals too... and rarely monogomous just like the rest of them. The problem, however, lies in how we handle ourselves as a result. I have found myself at one point or another on every possible end of the cheating spectrum.

Presently, in fact, I find myself between two boys; feeling similarly confused, and similarly chaotic. And I can't for the life of me seem to get out from under it. It makes me crazy. Or what's more likely, is that I was already crazy, and this is just a biproduct of that. Chicken and the egg, so to speak.

The trick, however, is to understand the consequences of whatever actions you're facing, and to not lose respect for yourself in the process. Guilt, insecurity and self-doubt are three HIGHLY prevelant reactions associated with the mess of cheating. Whether you're the victim, the perpetrator, or just an accomplice...it quickly becomes clear that even the most sane among us can find themselves on shaky mental ground in the wake of a complicated relationship.

But what I told my friends, and have been trying to tell myself, is that right or wrong... our choices to date, not to date, to date more than one person...are based not on our insanity, but rather on the very sane desire to know what it is to feel. To have different kinds of attention. To experience different relationships, with different people. These are the normal things that normal twenty-somethings have to do in order to finally wind up with the one thing we then know for certain is what we want. We want to wind up without regrets. Without having to wonder what we missed. And despite being driven completely mad in the process... I have to believe it's all worth it.

The process of sorting through all of the people, all of the problems, and all of the passions can be maddening...for anyone. But the trick is to keep an open heart, an open mind, and most of all...as much of your sanity as possible.

Path of Thorns

"On my life I'll try today, there is so much I've felt I should say, but...Even if your heart would listen, doubt I could explain."

It was the kind of friendship that began without warning, exploded with meaning all over my life, and ended immediately, terribly. And we never spoke again. We were friends for such a short time, but our friendship changed very much who I was and how I saw the world. In the end, having hurt her more than I ever knew I could hurt someone, I was left to wonder what on earth it'd all meant. And why we'd even bothered.

I was eighteen, and it was my freshman year of college. I was away from home for the first time in my life, and exposed to ALL SORTS of chaos I'd never known existed, both in myself and the lives and worlds of the people around me. (For those of you who lived in Grace Hall with me...you know without my having to explain, that it was quite the parallel universe in comparison to most college dorms.) All sixty of us were somehow secluded -both emotionally and geographically- from the rest of campus, and somehow managed to become closer more quickly than, in hindsight, even seems natural.

She is an example of such closeness in my life. We were friends immediately. And in no time at all, she was one of a dozen people who I not only lived with, but relied on as every source of support a person has any right to expect.

I was drinking a LOT, I was bulemic, depressed, terrified, and I was lying. To my friends, and especially to myself. Night after night, and day after endless day she listened to me, cared about me, gave to me without question, and picked up my pieces when they fell to the ground around her. Somehow, despite claiming she'd never run across anyone like me, she was able to handle me perfectly, to settle the waves of hysteria that gripped me without cause or warning each and every time. She entertained my delusions and supported my neurosis, somehow without judgment. She loved me, simply, in spite of all of my flaws. Possibly, even, because of them.

As the months of that year passed by, and I began to grow capable of coming to terms with myself as a person rather than myself as a daughter, sister, member of a family, friend... but a person over whom I needed to gain some fucking control... I started to realize that I didn't have to depend upon the closeness we'd established, which at the time was starting to feel more like co-dependence. Extenuating circumstances aside, I took it upon myself to push her as far away as the situation would allow. It is, simply put, far too easy to hurt the people we love. We understand what it is that makes them tick...and when given the opportunity, we possess the ability to take advantage of that. Which is exactly what I did. It was horrible, yes...but at the time it felt more like self-preservation. Or at the very least...I'd convinced myself that's all that it was. And in no time at all, our friendship had dissolved, and so had she.

I couldn't believe how quickly it got away from me. I intended only to push her away from me...mostly because I was afraid of depending on her so very much...and in turn, I alienated her from everyone. My campaign to end our friendship took on a life of its own, and eventually, she couldn't walk into our building without her head down. She never looked at me again. And then it was over. The semester ended, and everyone went home.

I left Cabrini one year later, and only when I arrived at Gannon, and felt the rush of starting college all over again...did I remember how much I had loved our friendship, and how important it all had been to me. It sounds strange...but I was never able to think of her in the constraints of Cabrini's campus. After I left, then, I had to face how very much I missed her.

I tried, a few times, in the last few years to get in touch with her. I joked occasionally with old mutual friends about what I'd say if I saw her again. But alone, it haunted me. There was someone in the world who could claim that I'd destroyed something in them. That I was the cause of their pain. However brief. I'd hurt someone that badly. Sometimes you think about people you used to know, and wonder where they are, how they are. But I couldn't help but thinking that I'd actually be better, somehow, if I knew what she was doing. That she was OK.

Five years later, I finally got the opportunity. I'm cynical where the stupid internet is concerned, but it's how I happened across her again. And it's how we started talking. And I know now...that she's not only OK...but fantastic. And somehow, she's forgiven me.

The past is unfair, because no matter how close to us it may feel, there is no greater distance in this world. I can never repair the damages to either of us that were done that year, but the lessons they taught me remain with me still, as though it all happened only moments ago. When I heard her voice, I felt like she was sitting right next to me again. I could see the way her eyes went away when she smiled, the way she leaned back when she laughed. I remembered the way she told stories, and the look she gave me when she knew I was lying. Five years have passed, and everything has changed for us both. But it's good to know that sometimes, some people...remain somehow, right where you left them.