I recognize the beauty in the compromise of things, sometimes, giving you more opportunity to learn and come into things differently.

I realized some things about myself yesterday riding on the back of a Harley for some 4 hours…which unfortunately doomed me to the couch for much for much of the evening, given, as my sister said, you are supposed to drink twice as much as what you drink in coffee, every day here, at minimum. And given I had maybe half a glass of water in the morning and enjoyed that giant latte, one beer, and one burger, well, let’s just say throwing up in the bathroom is not a sexy look guys. Trust me on that.

To feel yourself literally immersed in the landscape, but a second existing in time and space, to feel the hum of the engine arching up your back, the wind in your ears, literally flying on land. That is something I dig. The places I have seen and the views I have had expanded out in front of me, to the sides, and behind…ohmygod so beautiful.

It’s a heavenly little place, this state, a literal empire of mountains and rolling blankets of green carpet dotted trees, separated by the land sometimes looking like a calico shadow, farms dinning the slate blue mountains shadowed to the west of the plains.

If you consider where you are,  you can also understand my reference to this being like Jack and the Beanstalk type fodder, the kind of place you imagine being even at its lowest point even 3315 feet. The average elevation here is 6,800 feet above sea level. This is the highest average of any of the other US states, hovering literally thousands of feet above most of the US…

I need that flying sensation…I need to capture it somehow. I did get a sweet gift of this, which probably necessitates the need for some kind of health insurance given I am not the most graceful little thing on two feet. I assume my increasing yoga practice should solidify some issues of core strength and grace in my body, and of course using my rec center membership should certainly help that situation.


neversummer prettiest

I realized today that I have a number of people around me who seem to provide a good calm blanket of understanding and comfort to my general social well being. People I can hang out with, talk to, everyone from T to M to R…very good company indeed. And as I recognize that R said something to be super beautiful I have not forgotten the other day:

“You’re never alone, you’re just by yourself right now.” Clever advice indeed and if I took all of the dudes I know and combined them into one package, that would almost provide me with a boyfriend-type dude…one of them takes me out to do cultural things, movies and music and all that. One of them is just always fun…motorcycle rides and yes, even pool out at the bar, the impromptu baseball game. One of them is just easy as pie to be around, to imagine myself lip-locked with and well, the rest remains to be seen. I like having friends, it’s actually a fuck of a lot less complicated than the alternative.

And um, yes, camping. I need some. And some drives into the leaves. Someone should take me on a damn hot air balloon ride for my birthday, nudge nudge. At first that came out as nude, nude and that really is probably closer to what I need, hahaahah.

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In any case, today is 9/11 and I am happier than anything that I am not there. I was there then, and it was fucking terrifying. I watched those towers fall live, and you could see the towers from my front porch at the time. I was dating the mayor of Jersey City, as I called him, and we spent the time almost clinging together, me crying and not sure what had actually gone down. I was woken up to my friend Meagan calling me, asking where I was. I told her I was asleep, clearly, and since I was a bartender, that was the case that early in the morning.

I woke up and called the Mayor, and walked up there with Asa, and stayed through that entire day. We all came together to go up to the hospital to donate blood, ready to do what we could, watching the ferries coming over from the city.

None of our friends died then, as we were still just irresponsible enough to be too drunk to show up to work on time, if at all. I do recall hearing the story of someone being in the path train that we knew, the last one, as it was pulled backwards with such frightening ferocity that people fell from the force of the train going back as fast as it possibly could.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner the night after and invited everyone to come over and eat, given we thought it was a better time for that than waiting a few months. That was good fun then, and it felt nice to be a part of something.

I had started another new job then as well, stepping in as the first manager and creator of the Jersey City rock club, Uncle Joe’s. I had ventured in there one day and had seen the space, the backroom with fireplace, the pool table, the outside patio hosting enough space to bring real music in. I grew up going to shows in Mass, at a place called the WAG, venturing to Babyhead, the Middle East and all manner of places in Boston. So naturally it was easy for me to picture a place inviting all manner of live music, even rotating the art. I knew next to nothing about booking bands, but I did know the internet, so I started booking bands diy style, finding their music, putting up ads for demos. I was still working a few evenings for True then when they had a shift to give me.

I was working that fall, managing and working every day and booking bands at night. A bunch of the cleanup crew used to come into my bar and tell me about what was going on there with my probing. Knowing me, I probably made some inciting statement to get the conversation going but there were a few things that struck me and terrified me at the same time.

One man told me they were literally shoveling up people’s faces, children’s faces into garbage bags to be sorted out later, body parts, electronics, that they were doing their part in digging to see if they could find people, any hope of survival. They told me their rubber boots melted to the ground when they were down there, and that there was no possible way there were any survivors, period.

People walked around with white dust on them, even in Jersey City, and to see the white ghosts arriving in their office best, very zombie town for sure.

That night, September 11th, I was supposed to work at True for a bachelor party for someone who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and it was supposed to be a pretty big one and we were told we would be making a ton of money since they expected a few hundred people.. Every one of the firms 658 employees, minus the CEO, were trapped and nobody made it out alive.

This is a photo of what I looked like working at True, me on the left with the reddest hair, yeah, I know, I am double sexy, hahaahah. Yeah, right. I will pull some photos out of that life I lived back in the day here very shortly, for sure. But I made him a shot I called, The Bitch, as it was sweet and unassuming at first, only to knock you out on your ass later.


the reddest head

That whole week was terrifying and once the pieces started coming together it became even more so. I had just started talking to my birth mother only a few weeks before, and she also was terrified given nobody could get a hold of anyone in that part of the Eastern seaboard because the lines were literally flooded, and some tower I believe was on those, perhaps? I don’t know, and I didn’t much care. Everyone I knew was okay and I worried about all of those families who did not fare the same, aware they should be able to make the calls, use up the lines.

I was hyper aware of the anger and ferocity with which people of muslim heritage or questionably dark were treated on the trains even with just a look. And you know I imagined the beat down, the place and time when I had to really come to the aid of someone in the name of justice, people not realizing that judging everyone to be guilty when we were all clearly suffering, wasn’t the thing to do. I did tell someone off in one of my delis, he not understanding that he needed to remove himself from the store, or the cops would be called.

I mean, we all heard about all of the people who were arrested up on that hill above Jersey City- But Jersey City is probably wayyy less white than even most parts of NY, and it just made no sense to me to harass and taunt women with children on the trains when they were clearly beyond terrified to start with.

I did work a party that Thursday evening at True, and I was totally overcome with the insensitivity of the people who were there, neglected Fashion Week rejects, the shows largely canceled due to the event. I asked one dude how his trip had been, and he lamented his canceled show with one sentence I have never been able to wash out of my brain since “It’s like having sex and not being able to cum,” he insisted, declaring that all his hard work had now gone to waste. And I replied, “Well, at least you get to go home, enjoy yourself here, throw a few back. People are dead, dude and you have the luxury of that bubblegum LA life to keep you distracted with what’s really going on.” Now, flit along. And that, my friends, is a douche.

That Sunday we tried to play volleyball as we always had, as if we could continue on normally, and that time and for weeks afterward it was so hard to breathe down there, and I couldn’t get over the fact that we were all actually inhaling cremated bodies and jetfuel, and all manner of building materials and synthetic things.

But it was the inhaling of bodies that got me the most, and that week I took a car home down the West Side highway, and the stench was so rotten and ashy, I just couldn’t wait to get out of the car as soon as possible.

I don’t remember when things started feeling back to normal, but I tried to keep everyone entertained at my little rock club…and I did my part before certain douchebag elements intervened, emasculated because a girl turned the $600 per week average into $6000 in under 5 months. ASsholes.

But, eventually things did start feeling normal, and we all swelled with pride, happy we were New Yorkers and tougher than most. We were not going to be beat down, and we all united together, steadfast in our resolve and committed to going on with our lives despite the fact that our days literally involved continuous sightings of M-16’s and the heady reminder that things just really weren’t ever going to feel the same again.

And so they really didn’t, but I stayed another 10 years convinced it all meant something, and it did in many ways. New York gave me my personality, and my ability to interact with ANYONE, no matter who they are, and to survive. I moved maybe 17 times of the 24 houses my parents had..I am unafraid to leave and try new things and I think I needed to experience that run run run run run mentality for as long as I did to recognize that I of course can do ANYTHING (I mean, really, who do you know who works a full time job and goes to an ivy league school full time and still manages to squeeze out a 3.4?) I could do better, of course, but shit, I needed a damn break.

I am here now, and would love to set up even some kind of semi permanent base here. I have been considering housing swaps, my Denver home for your Peru beach vacation has been one I have been looking at. But I think I need a roommate, and I need to find someone who can afford $500 a month…student loans be knocking, and I am making them go poof in under a year. That is the goal, and I will fucking make it happen. So buy my book(s). For serious. The tshirts are going to start fueling through 50% of the proceeds, the heart surgery scholarship whose details I haven’t quite verified yet.