The Break Up

It’s Not You, It’s Me

The madame from door number 2 would ignore me when I happened to run into her waiting in the vestibule at the bottom of the first floor. I always spotted her first, as I descended the long flight of stairs down where she would be leaning her shoulder against the wall, just inside the street level door, waiting for her car service.

Her day seemed to end about the same time I needed another six-pack so it was always dark outside.

I thought it odd she barely glanced or even took notice of me most nights. She was too busy counting the large stack of bills in her hand. Flipping through them deftly with a finger from her other hand, it was easily more than the stack I walked around with, having no bank account at that time.

In any other environment, a much larger male passing a tiny, middle aged woman with thousands of dollars in her hand on a dimly lit stairwell in NY of all places would be cause for concern. Or at least the opening of a poorly written crime show. Head writer: ‘Why would she be flashing money? That’s too obvious’.

This place was not normal and while I stood out, I was invisible to the neighborhood occupants.

She obviously managed or owned the brothel I had accidentally been led through a few months prior, courtesy of a flicked lit cigarette onto a pile of garbage on our second floor landing. The firemen and the police never came back to ask any questions, so why should I?

My relationship with the neighborhood was implied, and it took me most of the year to understand. We were both untouchable, but for both the opposite, and same reasons.

I was winding down my last year in Manhattan, and was gliding along and just biding my time in the remaining days before Sarah and I were to move to Seattle.

My work in fashion and as a stylist had transitioned into events and production. Not by choice, but 9/11 made the city that never sleeps at least pause and take a long exhale. Those of us on the fringe, relegated to stringing together stretches of ‘day rates’ to pay rent were suddenly just put on indefinite pause.

I secured a 3 month job with a florist turned event producer to work on what would be a one-day ‘picnic’. It was the company retreat for the Bloomberg Corporation and Michael had yet to become the Mayor and humble brag his commute to city hall on the subway every day.

This 14 hour event that took most of a summer to plan was a production, the budget was huge and it made our little florist/ event companies entire year.

I was a minion on the event org chart, one of dozens and dozens - I was in charge of route signage for the Roosevelt Island takeover. Thank your bus driver and me if you went on that picnic and didn’t get lost once crossing the Queensboro Bridge.

I was important!

I was just making money to pay the rent and had stopped even looking for fashion gigs. The industry had passed me by and in my petulant defense, I lied to myself that I was simply turned off by the superficiality of the business. Because flying to Hawaii in February for 2 weeks all expenses paid was just too much, Chris.

Right.

The fashion world didn’t blink an eye and seemed to do just fine without the input from the straight kid from Northern Virginia.

No picnics would be held in honor of my absence.

The city was breaking up with me. I didn’t even notice I was somehow getting pushed further and further away from what I thought I came to the city for, and the expiration date on finding ‘it’ had passed- i was just too drunk or in denial to realize it.

I lived in a neighborhood that didn’t speak my language, and the magazines and runways didn’t prefer the way I talked.

The saying goes that you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve spent 5 years in the city. I had at least achieved that, so maybe the city was letting me off easy; ‘It’s not you, it’s me’.

It was definitely me. But back then, I didn’t understand why. I was still so many years away from acknowledging that alcohol was dominating my life, and it made me ignorant of the time it demanded, time that I could have devoted to becoming more successful. Or at least giving myself the chance to succeed.

I was gently getting shown the door, a thank you for your time but also, please move on.

~~

As a white guy in Chinatown, I was untouchable as long as I didn’t interfere in the nuanced business of the neighborhood. If anything happened to me, more white and more foreign administrations might be called into the neighborhood and western cops were too much to handle.

Conversely, The madame didn’t fear me because she was part of the underworld of Chinatown and I’m sure could make me disappear. We both knew this.

Therefore, we lived in harmony, albeit with a mutual invisibility to each other.

Sarah and I moved the Friday before Labor Day weekend. It was damp and grey, not at all the typical last hurrah of summer weather the Hampton’s crowd was hoping for, I’m sure,. It was however a prediction of what I would soon get accustomed to in Seattle.

Three young Russian guys from the moving company we sourced in The Village Voice showed up to gather our belongings. They just double parked on the always busy street and gave no mind to the anxious looks I gave them. I deferred to the experts and showed them the five flight journey they would repeat for the next hour.

Strike one for team morale.

We were now several hours away from our flight out of JFK and our paltry load had been neatly packed in the back of the much too large moving truck.

Because we had no money, we used the cheapest service advertised and I cannot stress enough to never, ever do this.

We were quoted a pre-estimated square footage, and to save money our belongings would be packed along with other shit outta luck folks for a long three week journey across the continental United States. Multiple stops along the way, and I’m sure ours would be the last delivery as we were, in fact the first load placed in this massive truck.

Coach for us on the plane, and back of the bus accommodations for our stuff.

We may have made a fuss about the now higher payment the Russians demanded. It’s always higher than the quote folks.

But we had so little. How can this be? It’s only like twenty boxes and a little wooden chest?

It’s hard to argue with twenty-somethings who now have all your gear in their truck and have somehow completely forgotten the English language as tensions rose.

We finally let it go and paid, Lets just get the fuck outta here.

A month later, our belongings arrived at Sarah’s parents house.

We had moved into a little studio with surprisingly level floors (and a carpet!) above Sarah’s parents garage and were still basking in the late summer freshness of our new beginning and surroundings.

As we unboxed our clothes, a familiar scent climbed out. It was old smoke for sure, but also… despair? I couldn’t exactly place it and maybe it was reliving the things that were in that apartment but it made me feel like we had made the right decision.

In two months I would propose to Sarah in the bathroom of that little studio.

The last box to unpack was our little fake vintage footlocker, bought one hungover Sunday at the Chelsea flea market. It was our makeshift coffee table in New York, but for the move it stored all the loose odds and ends that didn’t have a home in a single other box. Art supplies, photo scrap books and some errant tools that were hastily tossed in at the last minute.

I cut open the taped up lid and was greeted with the strong stench of month old urine that had baked away inside.

Perhaps the language barrier with the movers wasn’t as bad as I thought.

A final send off from the City, and a reminder that it really was me after all.