The NYC Journals, Part I: Two Weeks In
2005 was a good year to be a bad girl going mad in Manhattan
When I was about five years old, I decided to move to New York City. I ensured everyone, including strangers in line at the grocery store, knew my plan.
I can't tell you what sparked that young motive, and I fired little Ashley last year, or I'd enlist her to help, but as I scrub these remnants of my working memory capacity—dwindling far quicker than one might imagine—I struggle for a definite.
Bigger—that's what little I sought. There has to be more to it—bigger, no, this isn't big enough. Or, maybe it was the Rockettes—after all, I was a ballerina and a pageant queen long before I was a Lower East Side kid living out of a storage building off the Westside Highway in Hell’s Kitchen. But, even in my roaring 20s (and beyond), I chose dissatisfaction every single time—because the only alternative I knew was disappointment.
May 3rd, 2005 Starbucks at St. Marks 6:20 pm
What do you mean by New York is amazing?
Its springtime. And everything around me has a smell. And a color and a song. And there is never a moment to write, but so much time to little.
May 4th 2005. Starbuck's Broadway Soho. 11:30am.
I should be sleeping. And my stomach aches and I have $4 to my name. I think of David nonstop, and sometimes wonder if I should just stop.
Why am I such a stupid fucking idiot when I do the skeet [recte cocaine]? And why do I give in when know I don't have to?
For a week, I saw him like every day.
Now, not as much, but I know him more.
Calls, kisses, walking, holding hands, dumplings in Chinatown, making out in the DJ booth, sex in the shower.
Is it everything we expected? More.
But feelings are sketchy and not handed...
….always well by those like us.
Drinking has been my vice.
Today is two weeks since I got here. One week ago, I crashed with alcohol poisoning after a one-week drinking binder.
Two weeks, geez, where does it go?
And could you believe I'm in love? Well, meg has a twisted idea of love, I guess. He says things like, "We should get married," or "Let's go to London."
Sebastian arrives on Saturday to ruin my life. Will he succeed?
I need money. Broke is getting broken. I'm falling. But it always crashes and burns before it becomes great again. New York is always moving. Paths crossing, styles and opinions evolving. Drinks pouring, drinks spilling.
There is so much shit to be talked.
So much heart to be touched.
So much knowledge to be consumed.
And we are all dreaming. We all have an agenda. We're all bored with something.
I lived in South Beach when I bought the one-way plane ticket to NYC. I used to say that my first husband's biggest mistake regarding me was our move to Miami, but that's not true—his biggest mistake was marrying a teenager.
Anyway, Miami gave me a talented and beautiful transatlantic circle of influence—ninety percent of whom I still consider my friends. Within the UK unit of that tribe, I found and then fell for a gorgeous Swede—a Dior model whose actual first name, I’d later discover, was Jan.
In the memoir I've promised published copies of since the first time I lied to myself about its completion five years ago, "he walked like he owned the goddamn earth and stars."
He probably still does. I can’t say for sure, though; he falls into the other 10% of those friends I mentioned before.
I lived on First Ave. between 60th & 61st in a third-generation illegal sublet with the girl who invited me wild many times before she died three years later.
I only discovered once I arrived that the room she offered me was the whole apartment, and a guy named Raydar lived in the only closet on a pallet atop the clothing rack.
2005. Cinco da Mayo. 2am. NY not easy.
I didn't go out tonight. The first time since I've been here. It felt amazing. Two opportunities to leave and consume complimentary alcohol while looking charming and enjoying small talk that will soon be forgotten, followed by the ache of the crack out.
But I had a bath and cleaned Summer's flat. She is bringing home the flying movie director tonight. He is nice.
That puts me where I am right now.
I am a little bit hurt by a boy, a little bit hurt by a girl, and alone in the bed of a flatmate I rarely see, Raydar, whom I can't resist flirting with but am not sure if I am attracted to.
I called Sebastian today, he's coming in 3. I haven't spoken to him in a while and didn't really want to. He answered. I hung up.
The year before I moved to NYC, I was a working model, a scenester, and a household name on the VIP list of every door that mattered. I also dated Miami's favorite party promoter and popped bottles with Lil Jon.
I threw it all away for bigger. Year after year, never satisfied, and at anyone's expense, rung after rung to nowhere—searching, searching, searching.
No, I never found big enough.
It did find me and finds me still, but always and only when I'm not looking.