[Weathered the storm- She had something to say, Though our great thirst compelled us, To unremember that day.]

I haven’t updated in over a month. Although I still like to maintain the idea within my own head that I am active, avid, regular blogger and writer.

*Sigh.

Isn’t it sort of funny how we sometimes subsist on a mental diet of unarticulated rationalizations of a penetrating procrastination that pervades our true reality?

Or maybe that statement only applies to me. Right now. Maybe most of the time….

Whatever. We’re all here now. How ‘bout a travel story?

I stopped over in New York City in late August on my way back from Italy this summer. Spent a few days in the Village with my dear friends Jill and Jessica who have been there for about a year working on their master’s degrees. There’s something about the big city that brings out a side of people that was never obvious before. For Jessica and Jill, two non-conservative ladies from conservative rural Texas, it’s the previously unexplored freedom of self-expression and open mindedness not afforded to them anywhere else.

Actually, it’s so much more than that. You have to see it in people to understand. You’re right in the middle of the action, there’s always something going on around you. Sometimes it’s a simple Wall Street protest that eventually makes it’s way around the globe, other times it’s just real gay-looking straight white dudes in khaki’s glee-clubbin’ it up in Washington Square Park when you’re just trying to digest Dostoyevsky by yourself. Either way it’s a pretty severe catalyst for anyone to take the dive head first into whatever element they need to be in -if only to avoid getting swept up in the current and drowned by a city that regularly preys upon and destroys it’s weakest residents.

So there was a “hurricane” while I was in town.

Ok, really the local authorities decided to over-compensate for past severe weather prep failures and shut down the entire New York City Transit Authority for 24 hours because of a little rain and some high winds.
Wandering the streets of the Village during that period of time was a singular experience. Very post-apoc. I heard one say, “For the city that never sleeps, it’s definitely taking a nap right now.”

Jessica, Jill, and I decided to handle the situation with hours of reading, pointless YouTube videos (read; “bro-nado”), Netflix instant-cue movies, bottomless bowls of lentils and rice, naps, and a photo shoot or two with their adorable schnauzer/ yorkie mix, named “Pan”.
(Like this one)


In all we probably spent 36 straight hours in their apartment bedroom just waiting for the subway to open up again.

By about 3pm the second day (Sunday), the rain had cleared and people were starting to come out of their caves onto the streets again. The subway was still closed, but there’s plenty to do in the Village, so we decided to venture out to St. Mark’s and get an afternoon beer. No big deal. Just a little Sunday brew before we went back to the apartment and continued on our quest toward sedentary internet enlightenment, right?*

[*Foreshadowing...]

We started the afternoon off at McSorley’s – NYC’s oldest bar opened circa 1854. Hay on the floor, looks like an old saloon inside. In fact I would have sworn I actually stepped back in time (think ‘Gangs of New York’) had the patronage surrounding me not been conservatively clad in crew-cuts, khakis, Ralph Lauren polos, cut-off jeans, all toting some travel guidebook-or-other doting on the unequivocal authenticity of this must-see tourist draw.
As such, we chugged our pints standing up at the bar and promptly bounced before reality set in.

On to Grassroots around the corner. This bar was more your general dive and offered $7 pitchers, an obvious rarity in this booming metropolis. We were the first ones through the door and we posted up at the bar. The conversation rambled and we ordered another pitcher. The bartender eventually opened up to us and started recounting tales of trips to Burning Man. We all got to laughing and he started handing us the free shots. Inhibitions disappeared. Plans dissipated. Time fell away…

We had that moment between the three of us where we simultaneously realized/declared that we were…over-served (in layman’s terms, Ready to Party).
Things get hazy here. The next thing any of us remembered was yell-singing the ever-epic “Don’t Stop Believin” while sloshing beers up in the air and onto other people in a dark and neon-lit Karaoke bar called “Sing-Sing”. Behind the deeply tinted windows and surrounded by unfamiliar but similarly “over-served” Asians spilling just as much beer as us, it felt like it must’ve been 4am.
For awhile, there was this obnoxious Japanese dude who kept coming up to the three of us and trying to wiggle his way into the group, hitting on us in broken English with a big shit-eating grin on his face. We were about 3 Shania Twain songs deep when I vaguely remember cornering him, looking him square in the face and slurring, “Dude. Go away. Nobody wants you to be here. Why are you STILL here?”

Eventually I escaped outside, apparently moved by the spirit(s) to drunk dial.

I recall somewhere in the fog an ostentatious jaunt through the aisles of a local organic food market, wherein I proclaimed to every employee in dramatic soliloquy our dire need of boxed macaroni and cheese and it’s corresponding ingredients.

They obliged me, kind souls, despite the fumbled merchandise aisle-for-aisle in our wake. We made it home, drowned in the buttery elation only midnight mac and chee can offer the pack of hungry wastoids and…if only I could remember any of this.

I woke up hours later unaware of my whereabouts in time and space. Am I on the floor? Are these my clothes? Is this real life? What room am I in, wait, what city am I in…better yet, what continent is this?
Putting some of it together I felt around in the dark for my phone. Instead I found 3 unopened water bottles. What Luck! The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy may be a farce, but for that night and that night alone, the Angel of Hydration saw fit to manifest herself in that tiny apartment and bestow upon us her divine tears of unopened Dasani.
I chugged….too. soon…..The room swelled. I crawled to the bathroom, through the spinning vortex. Lifting the seat, I gripped the bowl and… well, no need to get graphic. You guys know where this is going.

When it was over, I slumped over the sink and splashed water hap-hazardly near my mouth, with one hand. Eventually I remembered who I was and where I’d left my dignity. I promptly turned off the water, wiped off my face, stood up, and walked calmly back to my palet on the floor of the bedroom.

I lay down on my back, looking up at the street light gradating across the ceiling from outside the open window. It soon became clear to all three of us that we were all lying awake doing the same thing in this dark bedroom – trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

The conversation which ensued was as you would imagine – laced with questions like “where did we go after that?” and followed with statements like “Oh shit, we DID go to the Karaoke bar!” and “...wait…What grocery store? …I ate mac and cheese??”

It wasn’t until the next afternoon when we found the photos.

[I’d explain, but it’d be a shoddily pieced together narrative of rationalizations and postulations rather than an actual recollection from memory. Plus, I’d like to allow you the same perspective we had upon discovering this delightful surprise cache of artifacts.]