1
Exchange #1: The Price of Beer
Benjamin: Before you go, finish me off.
Blipsterette: Finish you off…where?
Benjamin: In your mouth.
Blipsterette: If I let you come in my mouth…can I drink all your beer?
Benjamin: …sure.
(Blipsterette gets up and
walks out.)
When she came back we had sex, so the contract wasn’t technically fulfilled, but she drank all my beer anyway.
The next morning:
Blipsterette: Thank you for being so sweet to me last night, Benny.
Benjamin: You’re easy to be sweet to.
I never know what nights
she’ll slip into my room. She
slides into bed next to me and presses against me.
If I respond, she backs off, but if I back off she attacks me.
Always at night. I’m just
along for the ride with no say. In
two weeks I’ll move out and she’ll never slip into my room again.
2
The Little Town of Williamsburg
In
the little town of Williamsburg
Everyone is talking about Brooklyn
How they live there and how cool it is
Fake-fur-lined parkas and hoodies
Advertise BROOKLYN
in faded, pre-faded letters
The girls are so record-store cute
They always say they have boyfriends
They’re always with boys
But nobody I know has ever dated them
I think they’re into British guys
There’s apartment flatware with paper plates
And a man who cries as he masturbates
Town meetings over the coffee rates
All in the little town of Williamsburg
That Barista is so fucking cute
She wears a Kangol hat and drinks vermouth
Tip her a dollar she’ll spare you a smile
That oughta tide you over a while
The men keep their laptops on their person
They submit their novels on signals that pass through your head
I think some of their glasses are non-prescription
They roll out of bed
And spend an hour to look like they just rolled out of bedSomeone's starting a new restaurant
In the little town of Williamsburg
Someone's looking for an untaken band name
In the little town of Williamsburg
We’re just fifteen minutes from the island by the L
But sometimes it doesn’t run on the weekend
I should start a band with a name like “liminal”
and mix a harpsichord with a theremin
It amazes me that I’m one of the blank faces you’ll see
If you ever walk into a coffee shop
Wearing a hoodie emblazoned with BROOKLYN
Dating a girl with a dog-in-a-bag, cornrow extensions
And a fake-fur-lined parka
In the little town of Williamsburg.
3
The Trustafarian, the Blipsterette and the Big Gay Troll lived in a Dominican apartment building in South Williamsburg. Families in the building have lived there all their lives. They sit on the stoop to all hours and play in the hydrant spray. The men draw elaborate designs in chalk on the pavement and flick bottle caps to play an obscure game called “skelly.” At night they smoke glass in their weed, the angel dust has a sticky, smutty smell. They’re used to us artists, bohos and hipsters have shared the space forever, the new wave is old news. Maybe they underestimate the coming tide and it will soon wash them all from their homes to some strange place.
Glossary:
Trustafarian – does not worry about money because parents/grandparents have a trust set up in his name.
Blipsterette – feminine diminutive of “Blipster,” or “Black Hipster.”
Big Gay Troll – Troll that is Big and Gay.
Blipsterette took me out drinking but it was a thinly veiled excuse to mount an assault on my choices and style. As usual, the lecturer’s own insecurities power the argument. Threatened that I wear plain clothing and forego trucker hats, she was playing the role of enforcer, making sure I understand that if I’m not willing to dress to match the environment I don’t belong in the neighborhood. I don’t belong in any neighborhood so it didn’t have its intended effect. She flipped out when she sent me to get her a Maker’s and I got her a Knob Creek instead. She can drink it on her own time; if I’m buying I won’t let her drink pisswater. There was this French dude with premeditated facial hair and a white/black striped Henley that made him look like a sailor-clown. He had a fat friend who looked like Jonah Hill with a Strokes t-shirt on two years late. Blipsterette and her blonde over-surgeried friend were both swooning over Sailor-Clown who must have been very physically attractive to make up for his zero personality or charisma. Blondie cornered Sailor-Clown and Blipsterette wanted nothing to do with Fatty so she wouldn’t let me take off even though I was over her spiel. Of course she didn’t understand my position of wearing what’s comfortable and looks good, drinking what tasted good and not dressing up like a fucking clown just to get people to pretend to like me. So there was very little progress. She made me come to the next bar, a 15-minute walk. When we got there I told her to buy me what she thought I should be drinking. She got me a Miller Lite. At least it wasn’t PBR.
4
Exchange #2: Dirtbag Poetry
-Did you?
-Ummm…
-Tell me you didn’t.
-Shouldn’t I have?
-Why weren’t you wearing a condom?
-Because you put me in without a condom on.
-Why didn’t you pull out?
-Because you said, “baby, come inside me.”
-Well you shouldn’t have.
-Don’t blame me, I don’t think so well when a beautiful naked girl is on top of me.
-We’re gonna have to get the morning-after pill.
-…okay.
-Why are you so calm!? I’m freaking out.
-Eh, you take the pill tomorrow and what’s to freak out about? We were stupid. That happens with sex.
-What if I got pregnant? I’ve had two abortions, Benny, I don’t want more. What would you do?
-You’re not going to because we’re getting the Plan B. You should be on the pill anyway, why aren’t you?
-The pill makes me fat and crazy and you know you’re supposed to wear a condom!
-Yeah, I know, I know, I was being stupid.
-You knew!?
-Sort of, but I figured you wouldn’t do it if you weren’t on birth control. I mean, condoms are so unreliable. And they suck.
-Oh. Well, we can’t do that anymore.
-Do what?
-…forget.
-…okay.
And, because we were getting the morning-after pill the next morning anyway, we proceeded to have unprotected sex again. Twice. Then again right after she took the first of the two pills the next morning.
We got up the next morning and went for brunch at The Lodge, then walked around the neighborhood on the way to the pharmacy and she showed me bars and restaurants I’d missed, camouflaged from the street.
She took my hand and held it as we walked.
5
Among the People
On a local corner I saw two people from college I didn’t want to see. One was this girl who always struck me as ditsy, but apparently she won a bunch of playwriting awards for writing about oppressed women in Serbia and Darfur and all sorts of places. She wore these green tracksuits every day. She was having brunch outside The Lodge at Grand and Havemeyer next to a lady who’d shaved her Chow Chow dog to a full-body Mohawk (the poor thing had its muzzle hidden in its paws). She was still wearing the same green tracksuit. The other guy was sitting almost across from me. He was on my floor freshman year. A create-nothing hipster, he once quizzed me on Bob Dylan songs to determine if I was cool enough to qualify as a true Dylan fan.
Sarah the Swiss Story Stealer rooms with my friend Acoustic Jesus. She came here to slack off for a summer and, as her name implies, steal their stories. Her M.O. is to get people to spill to her and then to transcribe them as her own. I asked if she ever got permission. She almost looked offended: of course not!
My friend Lyra’s ex-fiancé, the Red Giant, got word to her through the grapevine (completely “by chance,” of course) that he got a story published. In his new blog he brags about how everyone is so excited and inspired by it that a whole bunch of bands are writing a soundtrack for it. Oh, and one girl is recording an interpretive dance. With 10 minutes of research, Lyra finds out that a) no one is publishing it, he’s created a fake media company to ePublish it, “premiering” it in a few weeks, 2) the bands and the interpretive dancer are all friends from college, z) he sent a copy of the story, “Two Blue Wolves” to Zach Braff because his film “Garden State” spoke to his Red Dwarf heart so deeply. At the pre-launch website you can read a “teaser” first two pages of the story. So Lyra opens it up and finds out it’s all about her. It portrays the Red Giant as a tormented artist clashing with her as a spoiled child whose family wants to keep them apart. Somehow he conveys their break up without mentioning that she had been in Europe all summer, he decided they were broken up but didn’t tell her that the wedding was off until the first day he arrived in Paris to travel with her for a month.
Doesn’t that just sound like ham-fisted satire?
6
Exchange #3: Happy Hipster Hunting
Blipsterette: They made me get a physical before I can start back at F.I.T. They made me take a pregnancy test.
Benjamin: And it was negative.
Blipsterette: Yeah, but they took a really long time before giving me the results and I was all crying about it.
(Benjamin reaches for her
hand, she withdraws it)
Blipsterette: (cont’d) Do you think it would be tacky if I macked it to that French guy? Manda’s out of town and he’s leaving for France soon so she shouldn’t mind.
Benjamin: Go for it. Happy hipster hunting.
Blipsterette: Very funny, Benny.
I wondered how Blipsterette could drop $300 on a dress when she’s unemployed and spends most of the day on the futon, watching MTV reality shows on her laptop. Turns out she told her parents she was taking summer school classes for college and pocketed the money instead. Then she inherited more money when her grandmother died. There’s also something she does she says is vile, but she won’t tell me what it is, only Trustafarian. I’m not sure I want to know. The only think I could come up with was prostitution but I’m not getting very imaginative about it. On her MySpace page she lists her occupation as “Party Girl.” Mine says “Drifter.”
7
The Trustafarian
I am lodging in his room for this August month. He hasn’t yet come into his money, but his parents don’t let him go without. The roommates used to go on subsidized dinners once a week, the bill often reaching three or four hundred dollars. Meanwhile there are roaches in the kitchen and half the lights in the apartment don’t work. He didn’t tell me this originally, and even engaged me in a conversation about getting a more demanding job to have more money. I thought he meant money money, but he meant pocket money. He also dated the Big Gay Troll for a while during a characteristic episode of confusion.
He went to Cornell undergrad for philosophy or English, now he’s attending an online university that meets for a summit once a year in Switzerland. It’s internationally renowned and embarrassingly expensive, Slavoj Zizek appears there regularly.
The school is devoted to the study of pure philosophy, entirely apart from any practical concerns whatsoever. This is a concept I have had extreme difficulty grasping, because every possible solution to a problem must be separated from the consideration of how that idea might actually realistically be achieved. Basic example: you want to end car pollution? Increase public transit to the point where every bus is a cab and nobody needs individual conveyance. Problem: people love their cars. Yes, that example was lifted from the movie “Singles.” This method of consideration (one can hardly call it instruction) refuses to deal with and is entirely hostile to the small practical consideration that the pure solution is nearly always impossible to implement successfully. Furthermore it is insensible to proposing any tactical incrementalism to bring about their ideas.
The school meets for one month each year at a ski resort in the Alps. The students are housed in chalets; an ivory tower on a magic mountain.
8
The Big Gay Troll
The Big Gay Troll is the worst roommate on Earth. This is certainly an exaggeration, for as a person he is most cordial and even volunteers his help not infrequently (though ineffectually), rather the distinction comes solely from the fact that the areas in which he is deficient are all of those that include sharing and consideration, all that consists of being a roommate. The BGT empties the trash, yes, but then he throws new trash into the can without putting in a new bag (occasioning the not infrequent transferring of used condoms). He cannot remember which towel is his and every towel he uses smells like his ass. He cannot keep any water in the shower, thus anyone having a midnight pee will find their feet or socks soaked with his used bathwater. He leaves his bicycle in the center of the living room or kitchen. He is always having either shouted phone arguments or shouting anal sex with a rotating cast of characters. He walks around the apartment naked. He is late with rent. He is 46 years old and an Associate Professor at two Ivy leave colleges and depends on charity from 2 people 20 years younger than he in a roach infested apartment. He “cannot afford” a computer so he uses one of the Trustafarian’s cast-offs, but that one doesn’t have Internet to he uses Blipsterette’s computer all hours of the day and night. Blipsterette can’t stand him and asks me to ask him to move out, which I don’t. Meanwhile, his 1000+ books are ordered by Dewey and woe unto him that alters their arrangement, for the Big Gay Troll would verily devour him whole.
9
The Inside Man
Blipsterette started sneaking into my bedroom at night a few days after her boyfriend dumped her. The boyfriend was perfectly nice, surprisingly nebbishy and worked in computers. I just assumed that she dumped him because she was too hot for Nebbish anyway. With this assumption I went to one of his barbecues (his name was “Paul,” which was unusual for a Jew, shouldn’t it be “Saul”?). I wound up being followed home by an 18 year-old I wasn’t that into and who wouldn’t take her pants off, but anyway at the party I foolishly offered to act as a spy for cupid. I didn’t reveal that Blipsterette spent the entire day crying (and watching “My Super Sweet 16”). He took me up on the offer. This way I could stay friends with them both and keep going to his parties.
A few days later I spoke to Nebbish on the phone, we planned to hang out and I sent him a phone pic of a previously discussed delightfully Jewy storefront: “Home of Spilke’s Fruitcakes!” at the corner of Marcy and South 4th. He asked me for an update (she was at the Ted Leo concert at McCarren Pool) and referred to me as his “Inside Man.”
That night she came back with a mop-haired blonde boy named Blake. They seemed like friends with benefits but he might have been gay. Then Blipsterette emerged from her room wearing only a wife-beater and spandex hotpants with knee-high socks, all from American Apparel. She walked by me and I muttered, “Holy shit.”
Blipsterette: Oh, come on Benny, don’t get weird on me now.
Benjamin: Nothing weird about it. I’m only a mortal man.
She brought me in to smoke with them. During the conversation it was revealed that Paul dumped her, which seriously confused me because he’d never told me that and I’d obviously indicated I thought it had been otherwise. Blipsterette and Blake took off, maybe to hook up, and I went to bed.
That night my door opened stealthily and she slipped into bed with me. I was immediately perplexed and aroused, her perfect smooth toned body adhered to mine. I was on my back, she was on her side, I felt her abs against my elbow, my shoulder between her breasts. The room’s normal occupant was her best friend, did she come for the comfort she missed with Trusty? Did she think I was a neuter? She began interrogating me about my conversations with Nebbish and what I thought they meant. Her feeling was that Paul wanted an on-again off-again relationship where he decided when was on and when was off. She couldn’t trust him if at any time he could decide to dump her, then just decide to pick back up at his convenience. I tended to agree but didn’t want to be caught in the middle. I did tell her that due to the circumstances, him dumping her, me being her roommate, me knowing her better, that if she made me choose a side I was on hers. That’s when her hand wandered up my leg. Still, she kept her interrogation casual, going over my conversations with her ex over and over again like a cop with a witness. Meanwhile she began writhing against my side and hooked one of her legs over mine. She took my hand and moved it to the electric blue spandex hotpants. While going over the exact words Paul used to ask me to spy on her she kissed me. Guilt and lust combined are very powerful. Her hand slid down the front of my pants, she asked me a question, I was incapable of an answer, she squeezed and asked again, I managed to. “Benny,” she whispered, “do you like blowjobs?” Trying not to laugh, I said, “No, they’re just terrible.”
Resulting in Exchange #1.
10
Soul Burlesque
The next time I saw her was again at 2am in my room. On a work night, she favored those. She was crying hysterically, quite beside herself, over her boyfriend before Nebbish. Apparently he was the major relationship in her life and she still felt so strongly about him, but concealed, that whenever in his presence she couldn’t stop picking fights, causing scenes and generally making it painfully obvious she wasn’t over him. He had a new girlfriend but would occasionally drunk dial Blipsterette and hold out promises that wouldn’t materialize. That night he showed up unexpectedly at a dinner with their mutual friends and she exposed his late night calls. She felt damaged. As if this soured relationship had damaged her capacity to love. I said you’d only know if it had if you fully tried to love again, and as we never do, fully, it’s like as not she still has more than she’s ever tried to use. She wanted to make love again, though she was still crying intermittently. I wasn’t so sure, so she jumped me. It was actually really beautiful to make her feel so good after feeling so shitty. We actually successfully slept next to one another.
While men often begin a relationship with a manic love assault, a smothering exhibition of new toyitis, wherein either the toy is discarded when it loses its sheen or the eject button is pushed at the first signs of actual emotional connection or impending need, women (in my most probably not-common experience) tend to lure with a sort of “soul burlesque” where they confide everything, take off the mask and display all their vulnerabilities. Then, little by little, the shield is put back up until I’m speaking to the mask again hoping or praying that somehow my words are registering somewhere deeper. It’s a reverse striptease where they acknowledge the cracks in their armor up front, the human under the performance, the messy emotions and doubts; it is these genuine emotions, this vulnerability, that attracts me, invites my instinct to protect and love most of all. But I never get to see it for long, and almost always it’s only in the middle of the night. Next morning the shields are up again, all connection presumably forgotten.
Once there was a beautiful girl named Jenny, she went to my college. She looked like a porn star, but in a good way. I knew some of her friends, but she intimidated me. She wore kohl eye makeup with glitter and rouge. One day she had the flu and I ran into her at the student center, I didn’t recognize her without any makeup on. I came over and sat down at her table and we spent an hour talking about her Buddhism class and current plays. Then she had to go to class. The next time I saw her she was wearing the makeup and we never spoke again. Now she’s in LA fronting a pop-punk band and listing herself as five years younger than she is.
The next night Blipsterette came into my room and jumped me again, occasioning Exchange 2. The next night after was the Hipster Inquisition followed by asking me if she should go fuck the French Sailor-Clown. I was supposed to move out over the weekend and she took off for the Delaware Shore on Friday not asking if I’d be around when she got back. My next place wasn’t ready for a move-in yet but when Trustafarian arrived back from Switzerland he invited me to stay on the futon for a few days.
11
The Results Are In
Trustafarian returned to the states with his British girlfriend, Emma, with whom he has a somewhat one-sided open relationship: open for him but she doesn’t want an open relationship. He shows up his second night back with a poetess from Columbia, she gets into a debate over the finer points of Heidegger’s biography with the Big Gay Troll over Three-Buck Chuck Shiraz. Then Trusty and the Poetess go to his room to fuck.
Blipsterette returns a few days later and I don’t have the desire to talk to her anymore. I’m cordial but curt and acidic; I’m finding I’m angrier with her than I thought. She seems to sense it and tries to speak to me more than ever before. I overhear her talking to Trusty, apparently his family finally told him how large his trust fund is and it isn’t big, maybe enough to support him for a year or two. He’ll be off with Poetess later and one of Blipsterette’s boys won’t get back to her; I know that, even in the main room on the futon she’ll be coming for me that night.
I’m right. At 2am I’m under a mountain of quilts with my head sandwiched between two pillows. She sneaks in but I hear the curtain on the door move. She sits next to me.
“Benny, are you up?”
“Benny? You awake?”
“Benny?”
I shift to show I’m awake. She sidles closer and I feel her warmth through the blankets. She takes the pillow off my head.
“Benny, it’s so early, do you want to get up?”
I don’t move. In the dark she can just barely make out my face.
“Do you want to hang out? You’re acting so different.”
I’m still. I can only see her outline. She puts her hand on my leg though the blankets and squeezes slightly.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?”
I lie there for what seems like minutes, still as I can. But I feel my head nodding so so slightly. I don’t know if she can detect it. I almost stop it but I don’t. I can feel that she sees it. She slumps a little, then places the pillow back on my head. I hear her slow footsteps leave the room. I burrow down under the covers with the pillow over my face and mouth and my knees to my chest.
12
Likes long walks
Trustafarian is trying to decide if he should dump Emma, his devoted girlfriend who has come from England to spend a month with him, and take up with the Poetess, who is new and exciting. Emma arrived a week ago, they spent the time in Vermont, now he’s considering dumping her. He says with the Poetess he doesn’t have to deal with Emma’s childish temperament and possessiveness. I refrain from pointing out that having someone come all the way to the US and choosing that moment to drop them seems pretty childish but he’s so focused on himself and what he feels that he’d never follow.
I try to go to sleep early and avoid interaction, it’s my last night, but my dreams are a stew of Freud, Dalí and R. Crumb so I wind up in the darkened kitchen talking to Blipsterette at 2am. She and Trusty popped muscle relaxants but didn’t offer me any. At least they didn’t try to snort them like the Vicodin. She starts off talking about this date she went on earlier that night and what a magical connection she had with the guy. How she likes him so much she’s going to hold off on having sex for, like, at least three weeks. I can’t help it. I laugh right in her face. The pills are kicking in and she doesn’t notice.
Blipsterette: He has the same sense of humor I do, he likes my jokes.
Benjamin: What jokes? I’ve never heard you say anything intended to be funny.
Blipsterette: The same things I find funny. You wouldn’t understand them. We played this game where we were already engaged and planned our wedding and children and our future jobs and stuff.
Benjamin: That is from a Miranda July movie! You stole that from a fucking Miranda July movie.
I storm off into the bathroom and when I come back the room to her door is closed. Trusty’s door is closed and I hear Nebbish, Blipsterette’s ex in there with him, he probably invited him over to start drama. I go back to my R. Crumb dreams. I should have told her to sleep with the guy fast, not to hold off on anything, because it isn’t going to last and at least she’d have that.
13
The next day I’m moving out. I decide not to linger or leave things to retrieve later, a clean break. I know nobody will be there to help, and I eventually wind up slashing my hand open on the back grating of an air conditioner I’m carrying by myself, but for now I’m just heading into the building, worried about whatever drama awaits me.
I get to the bottom of the stairs and hear the door to the apartment open and close. I try to predict who it is by the force of the door closing, the steps to the stairs. I start up, from the mid-level landing I see it’s her.
She looks at me.
Blipsterette: Hey.
I look at her.
Benjamin: Hey.
She heads down, I go up, and that’s the last time I ever see her.