Dirty Water, Drama City: August 2005

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Geography and Brian Wilson

I remember a long time ago when everything seemed to make sense. When the last of the warm summer nights were spent in my back yard in upstate New York, looking up to the stars (which my older sister informed me were really teeth taken by the tooth fairy, hers of course being the brightest) and wondering where I'd be when I was older. And older then came to mean what is younger now. Time's a funny thing. The shifting of the seasons can be as palpable as the shifting of the earth in an earthquake, yet most of the time, we fail to notice it. Curly (aka 'lil fro) moved out yesterday and I can't help but feel sadness over the intense realization brought about by her departure- that time has been passing, it is currently, and we’re growing up.

Walking to work yesterday morning after hugging her goodbye, (glad that I at least didn’t have to be there as she got in her car and drove away for good), I couldn't help but think about how the end of college is a strange thing. How everyone is everywhere and no one knows where they'll end up. How 24 Symphony won't be the same without her. How friendships are like a good bottle of Glenlivet: they're difficult to find and at times can cost more than you’d like, however they only get better with time.

Kinsey left as well, leaving Boston mere hours after Curly, making yesterday a horrible day, and at the end of it I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of abandonment. Germany will be claiming International Girl in a few weeks as well, and then the group will have officially been split. Growing up making its first of many unstoppable entries on the endless page of the change checklist.

Did I mention that hate Germany? Germany and geography. I hate that geography never took the time to learn about how things are supposed to work. It has an uncanny ability of taking people I care about far away, and keeping thousands I don't even know close by.

It was the Beach Boys who said, “…if you should ever leave me, though life would still go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me. So what good would living do me? God only knows what I’d be without you.”

Well, Brian Wilson has a point (could you doubt it?), albeit a little dramatic. Growing up shows us that life does indeed go on. People come and go on their paths to figure out what they want, but that doesn’t necessarily signify the end- thanks to modern technology you can take comfort in the fact that they’re just a phone call away.

And you don’t even need any help from Rhonda.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Last Night's Tire-ade

Gotta love Restaurant Week here in Boston. For those of you who don't know about this, I'm sorry you’ve missed out. It's the week in Boston where you can go to a list of 100+ restaurants in the city for a three-course $30 dinner or $20 lunch. We hit up Spire on Tuesday for lunch, which was great, and last night we headed out to Cambridge to Upstairs on the Square, one of the most overpriced places in the city to get our $30 dinner.

Having sworn off the T as much as possible, especially any instance where I have to change from the Green line to the Red (or any line at all for that matter), Cramer went suburban on us and picked us up in a car. I haven't been in a car in a while but last night reminded me why I haven’t missed it. Across the Mass Ave. bridge I heard a sound coming from Cramer's car and to which he responded it was nothing. Closer to Temple Street I said "I think you're driving on a rim, you have a flat." After a biker looked over at us with a look of what the?! as we passed him, we ran a red light and pulled over to where a group of cops were hanging out ready to give Cramer a ticket for running the light, until we all stepped out of the car and realized that his back tire, was indeed, flat.

Current time: 8:40. Our dinner reservations were for 8:30. Kinsey was already there waiting. I popped the trunk and, with the help of the cop’s flashlight, located the spare. So there I was in a pleated silk knee-length skirt, squatting over on the side of Mass Ave. screwing off the lug nuts, one little bastard at a time. One of the cops finally decided to help because I wasn't strong enough to get them all free by myself. I jacked up the car which took longer than it should have, while more and more people gathered to watch the scene unfold adding their two cents, saying things like, "how many people does it take to change a tire?" as though changing a tire were as easy as putting on a pair of trousers. I told one butch woman who boasted she could change a tire in less than five minutes that she deserved an award, "really, you do," I said giving her my best rendition of a withering look from my low position on the pavement. She didn't appreciate that very much, but my new cop friends found it funny.

So Cramer and Curly stood with me, Curly attempting to hold down my skirt that was blowing up in the wind, as I replaced the tire, screwed back the lug nuts and lowered the jack. Time 9:10. They applauded my effort, as slow as it might have been, noting the old adage “give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” Trash.

We finally made it to Harvard Square on the donut. I showed up at dinner, hands black with axle grease, tired, and hungry, ready for my last meal of Restaurant Week to commence. Two glasses of wine later, I decided it was worth the struggle it took to get there. Time 9:30.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Its Been Real

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out...

Sunday, August 21, 2005

The Power of Destruction

Friday night Kinsey and I hit up the South End, drinking while watching the Sox game (puke) amidst a crowd of crazy fans who didn’t appreciate me rooting for the other team. We settled ourselves in at the bar at Cleary’s (cute bartender) to make fun of the gross people around us (lots of them), check out boys, and be sad about the fact that Kinsey is leaving Boston in about two weeks and this was one of the last Friday nights we were going to have being fabulous together.

Last night, Diva and International girl and myself went to Sambo’s apartment for a party of destruction. He’s leaving Boston too, (who isn’t) and his apartment building is being gutted for reasons I’m still not quite sure of. So with the go-ahead from their landlord to paint and destroy before they move out tomorrow, it was a free for all to tear that mother down. And boy did they. The girls and I settled ourselves out of harms way as much as possible and throughout the course of the night the walls literally came down, so did the doors, all of which, along with tv’s and chairs were thrown from the balcony onto the street below.

The only thing more surprising than the guy who showed up with his six-year-old American bulldog named Jerome, was that the cops didn’t come.

But boys will be boys, and the more they drank they more they destroyed while us girls looked on in semi-horror and astonishment wondering if this was all to prove their manliness or an attempt to vent very large amounts of pent up sexual frustration. I just thought they were really stupid as most of them literally punched the walls, then ambled up to us pretty drunk sporting their bloody knuckles saying "damn, I hit a stud." Right. And a stud you are not.

At dirty breakfast this morning, as Manuel had our table ready and waiting at the Claremont, International and Diva and I still couldn’t get over the large amounts of ridiculousness we witnessed the night before. Maybe men just never really grow up.

So, goodbye Sambo, we love you, and will miss you. Boston and its parties just won’t be the same without you-destruction and all.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Just When You Thought Romance Was Dead

I was running along the Charles last night in an attempt to clear my head and not die from overheating in the humidity, when I noticed something interesting. In sidewalk chalk written on the far end of the footpath by the boathouse someone had written a message:

Colleen, I love you. Will you be my wife?

Looking back over my shoulder, still running in order to re-read the message, I bumped into a middle-aged man wearing a tank top and shorter shorts than my own, to which I said “sorry,” and he mumbled something of annoyance in return. (This was very similar to the time I literally ran into Steven Tyler on Newbury Street during an early morning run, almost knocked him over, and called him Mick Jagger). This time, however, I merely rolled my eyes, simply happy I hadn’t fallen down in the process or insulted anyone famous.

I got over the fact that the middle-aged man probably wasn’t the romantic who left the message and started to wonder who did. What kind of person proposes marriage in sidewalk chalk? And, much more to the point, how do we know for sure that Colleen even got the message? Does the man in question know she walks by there every day? What if it rains? What if she doesn’t see it? What if another Colleen with a fabulous long term boyfriend reads it and runs home screaming “Yes! Yes!” while said long term boyfriend looks at her thinking, what the?!

All I’m saying is that I guess romance isn’t dead, perhaps it’s just taking weird forms, like chalk. It sort of made me want to grab some chalk and start writing messages to people around the city, things I’ve been meaning to say, comments I’ve always wanted to make but haven’t had the buffer of chalk and the 99.9% chance they’re never going to receive it to motivate me.

When it comes to something as important as a marriage proposal, should we really be leaving it to the fate of sidewalk messaging? I guess we're always playing games when it comes to love- chalk or no chalk.

I just hope that Colleen, wherever she is, says yes.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Sarah Hull Dropped the Ball, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Isn’t it amazing how you can spend so much time on something, invest time, energy and effort on a daily basis and someone who is incapable comes along and ruins it all? So I guess I’m a little upset about the fact that the last three days have been a huge trash bucket because I’ve been working on this book for work and Sarah Hull, the field editor, is a huge idiot and now the whole thing has been cancelled. So, all of this has lead me to realize I’ve spent a lot of time on something, that in the end, amounted to nothing but wasted time and ample frustration and a useless text book. The journey’s the thing, right? Well, I hate Sarah Hull. And I didn’t get a T-shirt either. However I’m thinking of making one and wearing it to the office in protest.

On a lighter note, the power at 24 Symphony is back. The storm of the century on Monday night knocked us out for a solid day, rotting everything in our fridge and throwing us into darkness. It wasn’t until midnight last night did we finally get power back. After sitting in darkness for a while last night I decided to relocate to Starbucks to write for about 2.5 hours. I returned highly caffeinated (after being kicked out at 10) unable to sleep, and lit as many candles as possible-a bit of a fire hazard, I know. But boy am I glad the power is back.

It’s amazing how much you realize you need something when you’re faced with losing it.

It’s like at work, how I’m losing my mind. I figure I really need that, my sanity I mean. But I guess life is like one huge pile of projects. You spend time on things, you invest a lot into them, different aspects of your life, like your job, friends, relationships- all in an attempt to find happiness, to find success. You can do everything right, you can be the best version of yourself and still, inevitably, someone will drop the ball. They’ll leave, or do something stupid, canceling all your hard work, leaving you sitting there wondering: what the!?

But I’m over Sarah Hull. She can lose her job.

And besides, International Girl is here in Boston (holla!), and I have a feeling, that after tonight, I won’t remember or care about any of this tomorrow anyway.

Dirty Water, Drama City