observations from a monday bar stool

i've learned a lot since moving to manhattan. i've learned new subway routes, explored my new neighborhood, took the first steps in my career. it's all a part of being a grown.

a valuable lesson that i recently learned is if you are a female in the city within three weeks of christmas and a five mile radius of any new york bar, you WILL get hit on by a santa clause.

bar behavior, especially in new york, and especially on a week day always makes me laugh under the condition that i'm not being a participating in it. most guys are either creepy regulars or there to hit on you...quite possibly and probably both. most girls are there to get hit on for the self esteem boost, send copious amounts of text messages, and not pay for drinks. both are there to disillusion themselves into thinking they aren't making a mistake, even though they are, or trying to forget a past one. the girl will hold out hope that it's love and he's different than the previous night's guy and each guy will hope that she's not that special and he can move onto someone else tomorrow. i'm not saying that all great love stories don't start over a guy buying a shot of Jaeger for a girl in a shirt that she cut the back out of with scissors--but they don't.

it's fun to watch people fake love for a few hours. that love can be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or if you're in the village sometimes a ? and a ?. normally it's between a man or a woman and their drink. or themselves.

what's funny is regardless of who you are talking to every conversation is the same. it's starts of polite, you laugh at eachothers jokes, you pretend he doesn't reek of abercrombie and she doesn't look unseasonably tan and underdressed for iceskating weather. i have calculated that as the conversation continues, 92.7% of the time one of the people involved will say i'm just really guarded sometimes" or "i'm not really open when it comes to relationships." this will unhealthily and inevitably intrigue the other party forcing her to pay attention to you, or him to buy you drinks.

regardless of gender, saying "i'm guarded" or "i'm not into relationships" or "i'm focusing on me" is really saying "i'm way too fucking scared to take the chance that my heart may get demolished again," which is fine, especially in a bar on a Monday. but if this cycle is on repeat at the same bar on any day that has a vowel, you aren't going through a "guarded" phase. you're kind of just a big baby who doesn't want to get over it. healing can talk a long time, but if you aren't really making the effort to heal, then you are just scared. i'm not saying i haven't been there, or even that it's wrong, i'm just saying call it what it is. and also that it's kind of wrong. you are classifying everyone else you meet based on an unrelated past experience, screwing yourself out opportunities with great people, and probably stringing some poor other guy or girl along in a "complicated" situation that's only undefined so that you don't have to get too close. girls think it's cute and mysterious, guys think it's clever. you're both wrong. it's just a bunch of unnecessary mind games that you hope will exhaust both of you so that you can call it all off without saying how you really feel.

calculus is complicated and can be solved. people are complicated and can grow. if you could solve for "x" with people, the human element would turn into math, and then i'd have to hate humanity as much as i do equations.

-k.


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Now playing: Dave Matthews & Friends - Typical Situation
via FoxyTunes

fresh is the new stale.

ever attempt to start fresh so many times it becomes routine?

i am thankful. in the noted ugliess of bedbugs, some wonderful things have emerged. i now live with my sister on the uppereast side of Manhattan. the subway ride to my job is 14 minutes instead of 45. i have a job that i love. my apartment was newly renovated and free of all bugs. the kitchen is enormous enough to host Top Chef--or atleast enormous for Manhattan. i have a cell phone that wasn't made in 1991 anymore. the yankees are world champions.

yada yada yada, a world of awesome is at my finger tips.

i'm not bragging about how awesome my 'new' life is, which it is. but when you have made as many fresh starts as i have, and my family has, you duck. you know the other shoe is going to drop and you don't want to plunked when it does. you also learn that fresh starts are purely a mindset thing regardless of how many trips you take to furniture geniuses at IKEA and the moderately trendy and always affordable Kohl's. i started my job two days after moving in, so maybe i just haven't had a chance to catch my breath. but 'another fresh start' feels like 'another period of time until something throws me off track.' making so many attempts at the fresh start that changes everything makes the process rather stale.

this can stem from two places, and i am feeling the pinch of both. first, there is the multiple and simultaneous fresh start syndrome. second, there is "new begginings" thatall come back to the same issue. let's dive in.

new job. new apartment. new stage of life overall. and it gets kind of old.
ripping your life up by the roots can change your perspective on everything. or on nothing at all. sometimes, you feel exactly the same and the circumstances are changing. you still feel stuck, just in a different context. pieces of your life may change--home can be in a different direction, your every day life can take on an entirely new color, and aspects of your personality may change. but there is still that naggging feeling that won't dissipate. and the only thing you can do is coach yourself into trying to feel as great as everyone perceives you feel. except maybe of course for the people who see straight through you, and even they can be fooled. if you are trying to fool yourself for your own betterment, you probably throw them off too. you can only try and convince yourself that this fresh start stays permanently fresh and that the clouds overhead will pass as long as you don't step outside. and you are probably going to stay inside and eat whole pizzas and listening to John Mayer's "Something's Missing." and that is most certainly the same old same old.

our other scenario probably sucks more. it's when you attempt to start over with the same issue or person over and over and over again. and over again. being held back by an issue is no walk in the park, and it usually requires time and hard work. it can hold you back for the smallest incriments of time or forever and ever. grasping how to 'get out' is hard because most of these issues are external, but you have to invest in yourself to come to terms with things. chances are, if an issue has crawled under your skin (bed bugs are now showing up in my writing) then chances are the issue is irresolvable and the only thing you can change is how you cope. when you are pulled down and drowing in the waves of emotion, you are blind to this concept. which is why therapists make so much money. and also probably why you are listening to City and Colour's "Constant Knot."

when it's a person you are trying to start over with, the pain is equally as vivid, but the brightness is sustained because you now have a "past" a questionable and somewhat temporary present, and a future that is directionless, and your compass will have you pointing every which way. whether it's a romantic connection that you have, think you have, or think you should have, or just a delicate friendship that feelings like its breaking, or even already broken in the balance, the pain of interpersonal turmoil it a "different animal," because it's alive. hoping like the "different animal," but chances are if you are attempting to start anew with another you may be beating a very dead horse. or maybe not--maybe one crack of the whip will change everything. maybe a new start with the old will bring the kind of clarity you cannot pay for. but that is not in our control, and attempts to continue doing so don't leave your fresh starts stale, but in regression. it's never fun when you feel more pathetic for the experience. and it's probably why you are listening to Boys Like Girls "Love Drunk." but you SHOULD be listening to Ari Hest's "I Forgive You" or Charlotte Martin's "The Dance." and you know you shouldn't be listening to Love Drunk ever but it's secretly hiding on your IPod with Gwen Steffani's "Hollback Girl" and Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" on a guilty pleasure playlist.

just seek therapy when you get to Miley Cyrus--she ain't far off.

-k.

i'm engaged!

i regret switching from the local R to the express N today.

normally i enjoy transferring to the express. i am just a block away from my apartment rather than a less convenient but far trendier 10 blocks--although that does give me an excuse to buy new boots or a scarf or one of those cabbie hats. other reasons to transfer? until today the weather consisted of rain and cold air smacking me in face.

but this time after transferring i found myself caught between an episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey and a scene from the movie Barbershop, which was more obnoxious than entertaining. i murmured to myself what i announced to my family when Joe Carter hit that devastating HR in the 1993 World Series: 'shoulda walked.' i was in first grade and had just learned what an intentional walk was.

on my way back my entire life plan changed. a homeless man said he liked me, proposed to me, and lured me in by telling me that he had food stamps. it turns out that even though my love was obviously unconditional, my acceptance was as temporary as the data entry job i'm returning home from because he pulled the same gimmick on my sister after her commute. Maury Povich, here we come!

despite breaking off the engagement, i did spare some change. more often than not, i do. it stemmed from an instance where i was applying my make up on the train and i ignored a man who was probably homeless but most likely not blind. i felt really selfish. i had enough money to buy a variety of normal earth-tone & very bright/socially unacceptable since the 1980's eye shadows, but 50 cents so this guy could muster up a bag of Fritos from a Hudson News Stand was too much to ask?

they now announce (repeatedly) that it's illegal to solicit for money on subways. well call me a felon, or i guess an accomplice, but without the money they are garnering from these crime-ridden subway rides, they could die. will some of them feed an addiction instead of their stomachs? sure. are most people doing this because they received those obnoxious gold coins from the Metrocard machine that would otherwise go toward tipping bartenders? maybe.

i still think it's pretty amazing that the homeless can survive off of other New Yorkers generosity, regardless of their motivations. by no means am i endorsing poverty. in fact, poverty is the one socio-political issue everyone can rally around. people are pro-war,or pro-choice, but i can't say i know anyone who is pro-homelessness. unless you're one of those people who yells at them to get off the street and get a job. first of all, if they can get a job and i can't, i'm REALLY doing something wrong considering i have a degree. secondly, i doubt it's a laziness factor--i think most of these people, be it a mariachi band or an overall God enthusiast, simply want to be a functioning member of society. third, if you are one of those people who takes time out of your day to lecture the homeless on being employed, you should probably reevaluate your priorities. also, you're a jerk.

take that you L.A. types that think the Greatest City in the World is entirely cold and hard. we are simply an island with a marshmallow inside, that kind of looks like an apple.

-k.

how much pigeon writing is there going to be in this blog?

life knocks you down.

this isn't the most uplifting or inspirational thing i have even written, but it's t known fact. i am not one to immediately run and protect someone when they are exposed to criticism, especially when you are younger. if there is a bully on a playground, you have to learn to defend yourself. if there is a family member who insists on criticizing everything you, which there is in virtually every family, extended or otherwise, you have to learn how to keep the peace while maintaining your own voice and self-respect. when you have a job, which hopefully someday soon i will find out, i assume that your personality will not click with *everyone* in the office. these in a sense are people skills, as defined by the movie Office Space, or as i like to call it 'a documentary of my temp job.'

but there is a line. there is a line between the bully making fun of your smarts (which generally supersede their brains) and beating you up for your lunch money. their is a line between playful 'we're just family' teasing and personal attacks, and their is a line between two personality's just not meshing and blatant immaturity.

my last blog spoke about being on the outside of the circle, or the 'norm' and questioning what you are doing wrong because of your new-found isolation. sometimes, you have to reexamine what you did. sometimes, what you did was right. sometimes, you didn't do anything and it's just the natural progression of life that leaves you on the outside.

sometimes you are going through a sex change. okay perhaps that's not true for most of us. but for one transgender person on the Uptown N, it was.

it's amazing how judgmental people can be without saying anything. this person was sitting alone on a plastic molded subway bench to--at this point in the process--herself, (formerly a himself) as if being transgendered was a contagious plague. people would rather stand for the 25 minute trek from midtown to queens than sit next to a person who we all decided to label. adults were staring at her like 5-year-old children stare at their first airplane. the most amazing part was the five year olds on the train were the most mature people there, as they just went about their every day truck-playing, coloring, watch-out-the-window-at-the-tiled-walls ways. everyone else, who unbeknown to me were better than this woman, were too busy judging her to tend to their children/ipods/books. ill admit, at first glance of someone going through transition, i think everybody kind of double-takes. but after the second take, a lot of people say 'oh he/she is transgender' and move on with their lives. but this gaggle of business higherups, who were obviously making enough to be living in the ritzy Astoria, which even *i* can afford, decided to grill her, because she obviously wasn't going through enough.

for the first 20 minutes, i didn't say anything.
but the building stares turned into whispers. the whispers turned into laughter. the laughter turned into comments. and the comments turned into pissing me off. i glanced up from Klosterman's IV: a decade of curious people and dangerous ideas.' long enough to realize that i could have an absolute field day with the people who were mocking this woman, and i would. i would take both the high road and the low road. and i did.

first, the high road, because i didn't know when they were getting off of the train and i wanted them to hear this. which i assured they would because i went and blocked the door that they were standing by. i may not have a right to lecture, but they don't have a right to ignore me, and if they were going to have to hop to the other side of the platform to go downtown for an extra stop, so be it. they brought it on themselves. i kindly reminded them (in a stern/borderline yelling tone) that they are not better than anyone else on this train, including but not limited to this woman. secondly i reminded them that she was probably going through enough as it was, and she didn't need to hear their comments. then i told them that nobody else on the train wanted to hear their judgments. it was at this point that one of the guys started getting defensive and saying this was a free country. i told them that the fouding fathers would be disappointed to them. at this point someone started to sing :ee Greenwood's 'Proud to Be an American' which was distracting, but mostly hilarious. in my free speech petition, i polled the fellow yellow line passengers and asked them if 'anyone else gave a shit about what these guys have to say about virtually anything?' an overwhelming no. then i told them that even though half the children on the train could only speak greek, immaturity is a universal language and that they were setting a really fine example. then i told them that i was pissed because my book was awesome, and now because of their immaturity, i lost my page in the middle of an excerpt on the Smiths.

then the low road came. this is all more or less verbatim. and by more or less i mean more:

i told them to take their lucky brand jeans and seductive irish accents and go try and find someone to make out with at a bar, because that's what they do with their time. nobody in the group denied this. i told them that instead of judging this woman, they should go focus on the three hairs that weren't perfectly sculpted with the rest of their overly polished look. i told them that they fall short of their abercrombie hopes and dreams. i told them not to try so hard to be attractive, because their personalities will repel any girls worth their time. i told them that they are going to put alligators on the endangered species list for the sake of their gross Alligator skin shoes. and i asked them if they would like me to stare, whisper, make comments, and giggle at them for 20 minutes or if i had done enough? maybe i spent too much time working for Sirius' LGBT station.

i don't know if those jerks missed their subway stop, or the point. hell i don't even know if all of them spoke english. i don't know if they will think twice before picking on someone else. i don't know if everyone else on the train thought i was annoying, crazy, or brave (although a few of them thought i was funny which is a plus. i'm guessing they hated these hipsters, too). i do know that this woman, who dressed way better than i did already (upsetting), said she never had anyone do something like that for her before, and that her family abandoned her when she decided to make this switch.

i told her about the pigeons, and that nobody can understand what she's going through, but that to a much lesser extent, we've all been there.

be careful what you say. you never know who you are hurting, or what crazy blonde twenty something you might just piss off.

-k.