NY, NY: Day 1
As the plane touched down at JFK, my palms were sweaty and, bizarrely, my nipples got hard. And in my head the same corny line kept repeating itself: This is a whole new chapter of my life.
The thing is, it doesn’t feel like a page has turned. It feels like a total reboot. When I left Greensboro - a city I will not romanticize as others have - I closed up shop, shut things down. Sure I was working while I stayed with my family in Swansboro, but it really felt like my life had been put on hold. No one new was coming into my life; I wasn’t experiencing anything. Had I stayed there I could have lived very comfortably amongst family and casual acquaintances, reading and maybe even working for one of our quaint little local newspapers.
But nothing would have ever happened to me.
So I bought a ticket, packed up way more than I probably should have, and headed for the big city, the apple that never sleeps, le grande pomme. New York.
Tristan and Colten met me at baggage claim. Two of my bags ended up on a later flight, so I wouldn’t get them until the next day. As we drove to the house Tristan gave me the skinny on an internship I’ve been trying to get, and things are looking really good. She’s also trying to hook me up with a job at several of New York’s better sex shops.
The apartment is small but cozy. It’s on the fourth floor of a brownstone in Bed-Stuy. I have a large bedroom and another small room with futon and some bookshelves. There is also a spanking bench and some Liberator Shapes they store up here. I share a bathroom and a kitchen with a really cool real estate agent named Lois.
After showing me around the building, we went out for sushi in Park Slope. Then I got to meet Tristan’s mom, who makes the best cookies I have ever tasted in my life.
Later, I met Kelsey at a Suicide Girls party. By 11 the bar was packed with lots and lots of hot tattooed girls and exactly three really hot tattooed guys. People kept asking me if I was on the site so Kelsey’s friend made up a screen name for me and we started telling people I was.
There was this incredibly cute guy with a Mohawk and tons of dark eye liner. I kept putting myself in his line of vision, but it didn’t really work. At one point a friend of his started talking to me and asked if she could write on my stomach, so I let her. I’m still not sure what she wrote, but it was with a Sharpie so it was with me for days.
Another girl, one of the head honchos of this particular Suicide Girls party, told me her boyfriend thought I was really pretty. She said that he was kinda jealous and that we were hair twins. I wasn’t sure if he was flirting with me or if she was, so I tried to just be amused even though he was one of the three cute guys.
As I was leaving I told the boyfriend I wanted to give him and his girl my number. I lifted up his shirt, turned him around, and wrote it on the small of his back.
“That way only your girlfriend can read it,” I said. Hopefully she could read what I wrote. It was in Sharpie, so it was probably with them for days.