As I mentioned, the past couple weeks were surreal. I moved out of my apartment, waiting to do the bulk until the last few days, which proved to be extremely stressful and challenging. I said goodbye to quite a few people I love in those last few days, while attending a close friend's wedding, completely dismantling and disbanding my home, and working up until the evening before my flight cross-country. I was packing the entire night through, until an hour before my flight.
I made the flight, however, using my first-class upgrade to zip me through the line, and then was actually able to recline in my seat and fall asleep (after warm nuts, a four-course meal, and a couple of those lovely complimentary drinks to fill me up and knock me out). A few hours later, 4:30 am EDT, I was sleeping between my best friend from high school and an exposed-brick wall in a 400 square-foot two-bedroom apartment in the East Village in Manhattan. My three suitcases and I were officially living in Manhattan.
I spent that entire next day in bed as I'd somehow pulled my neck removing shelves from the wall in a fury the hour before my departure, and dropped a solid-wood butcher block table on my bare foot the day before (a lovely wound to show for that), in addition to oh yeah, not sleeping for something like forty hours.
When I finally rose and left, around seven thursday night, it was to go out for cocktails.
And I didn't stop drinking until today. Night after night of meeting up for drinks- the ten-dollar manhattan-priced well drink, the huge Halloween bash (this city really knows how to do Halloween, be it full of some really shitty made-in-china, slutty-fill-in-the-blank costumes, or creatively fabricated ones, everyone's decked out)... or the Halloween bash the following night, or the multiple election parties... I have been going and going and going and if I don't slow down I'm not sure what will give first, my dignity, my liver, or my finances.
I located two unique Manhattan sublets after almost no luck finding a good permanent place to live, minus one scary tiny dirty West Village "two bedroom" that had a frightening bathroom and no common space or real kitchen.
One was a room I'd be renting from an eccentric indie movie producer traveling to India for work. He has been purchasing the top floor of his old and dilapidated tenement building in the East Village over the past ten years, a sunny and bright but nearly unfurnished space with exclusive access to a giant roof terrace rented to Google and political candidates for aerial advertising. He was wry and intelligent but also kind of a savant- extremely opinionated and emotionally needy. In the hour he trapped me there (I'm so stupid and polite, the walk-through took ten minutes), he told me all about his ex-girlfriend and how difficult she was and how he'd let her walk all over him, and how horrible and consumptive americans were, and how he didn't have any friends. The floorboards had half worn off their paint, and the light from the tall, narrow windows, and the giant skylight was reflecting off of them and the bare walls.
The kitchen was pretty scary, though he blamed it on the maid not making her twice-monthly visit, and the bathroom was scary, as New York bathrooms are, too often. The second place I came to see was on an edge of SoHo, not quite yet to TriBeCa, in a large, huge, old building. Something like an old manufacturing-esque building, the scale was very large for lower manhattan, and when I found and knocked on the kn0b-less door, I was greeted by a thin girl with an afro, a fiftyish male photographer, and a very large Newfoundland dog, all British.
The girl was showing the apartment for her friend (also travelling to India, oddly), and I currently live with the dog and the photographer who takes care of him. The space is huge, with fifteen-foot ceilings, 42-inch diameter (min) concrete columns breaking up the space, walls set at odd angles, and a random hodgepodge of manor-esque wood and leather furniture grouped about the common areas. Supposedly there's a guy that occasionally comes home, and rarely emerges from a back room. Hopefully I won't meet him. My room has a column running through it, and high windows above to let light in from the common areas, as it's precariously set at an angle within the center of the loft. The girl I'm subletting from travels for work and has a love affair with Paris, so her room is furnished accordingly- red, black, Chat Noir poster, and Eiffel Tower pillow included. I'm right at home in cheesy Paris memorabilia.
Unfortunately, feeling right at home here took three days of running all over lower manhattan trying to figure out how to get 2600 bucks to someone in Canada when my account was frozen for fraud investigation. 5 lost hours and a couple blisters later, and repeated encounters with the flighty but friendly and patient afroed friend, including one in the SoHo loft where she is an assistant to an artist selling paintings for over 10,000 dollars a pop (yelling coked-out red-eyed, potbellied artist blaring extremely loud music included with bonus tiny Pug-Chihuahua mix with glaring erection standing on hind legs air-humping me for fifteen minutes straight), I have keys and a bed, and cooked myself a real meal tonight. This was after spending sixty-five bucks at whole foods, so cooking wasn't a money-saving success in this instance.How does the city manage to do that? I bet I'll somehow manage to blow fifty bucks in Central Park when I finally get back there this weekend, at this rate.
I figure that given the culture in this neighborhood, which is really cool and unique and glamorous/ arty but extremely chic and somewhat too commercial/snobby and generally beyond my means (full of who's who's), it will be a fun experience for a little while, but maybe only something that's right for a short time while I look for the right lasting neighborhood/apartment. Fingers are crossed. The options are greatly narrowed with pets.
Damnit, I'm up late again, and this evening I even stayed in to get to bed early. Ciao for now.
note- Afroed friend had to cue me in on the coked-out status of her boss, which was supposedly no big deal so I just went along, like, oh, of course... (It's how I work, too. I just can't draw perfect paving section details without inspiring myself with a little something extra in the ladies restroom at work...)
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