Happy birthday to my big juicy Kamburger!
It’s a pleasure to spend another birthday with you, Kameroon, and not just because you’ve agreed to do all of the things I want to on your special day.
Happy birthday to my big juicy Kamburger!
It’s a pleasure to spend another birthday with you, Kameroon, and not just because you’ve agreed to do all of the things I want to on your special day.
I always get a little freaked out when I get into an elevator and push the button for my floor, and then someone else gets on after me and doesn’t push a button. I wonder, “Does he really need to go to my floor, or is he going to follow me to my apartment, tie me up in the bathtub, and drip acid on my naked body for nine hours?”
It happened yesterday as I was going to Kamran’s apartment after work. I stepped in, pushed the button for my floor, smiled politely at the man who came in after me, and then glared at him menacingly when he didn’t push anything. In my mind. I pictured myself jabbing my keys into his eyes if he came too close, snapping my compact mirror around his balls if he stopped near Kamran’s door.
But just before the elevator doors closed, an extremely hot girl walked in and pushed the button for a floor two below Kamran’s. She was taller than I am, thinner than I am, wearing fewer clothes than I was, and had a less butch haircut than I do. She was chatting obnoxiously on her cellphone, and when the elevator stopped at her floor, she didn’t even notice that the guy followed her off instead.
And I cheated death another day.
Last night at 8 p.m., Kamran and I exited a movie theatre in Times Square, accompanied by our friends Jack, Beth, and Nik, Jack’s friend Chris, Jack’s friend Alex from Romania, and Alex’s Romanian girlfriend, Simina. We were walking down 42nd Street, trying to decide which is scarier: the flesh-sucking monsters we’d just seen in Zombieland or NYC tourists. Mid-conversation, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone bent over with liquid spilling all over her legs and the ground. She was out in the street, facing traffic, with her back to the sidewalk we were on, and I just assumed she was vomiting. She had wavy, shoulder-length black hair and a black suit jacket on. Her bottom half was nude-colored, but I just assumed she was wearing peach leggings. I couldn’t imagine a middle-aged woman wearing leggings without a long shirt covering them, but that seemed much more likely than what was actually happening, which was that
In Times Square. Which, if you’ve never seen it, is basically the center of the world. We’re talking thousands of people milling around a few blocks at all hours of the day and night, with enough lights on every building to make it seem as if the sun never sets. And mostly people who don’t live in NYC, which means a woman with her pants down in the street is about the most exciting thing they’ve ever seen. Traffic was stopped right in front of her, so people in cabs had their noses pressed to the glass not two feet away from her bare bits. The lights glared off the urine clinging to her flabby backside. People stopped and pointed her out to each other, and Kamran yelled for me to get my camera out.
But it was too late. She finished, pulled her pants up, and walked into the subway unashamed.
Oh, birthdays. I never thought I was one to flaunt THE EXTREMELY SPECIAL DAY THAT’S ABOUT ME AND ME ONLY, but as it turns out, I’m actually very much into flaunting it. As early as October 1st, I was writing e-mails to everyone in my office to tell them things like, “Your monthly subway passes are in, and oh yeah, my birthday is October 9th.” Strange.
So far, the two best birthday wishes I’ve received have been from:
1) My best friend, Tracey, who wrote this amazing birthday blog post for me. And I use the word wrote very loosely. As you’ll see in my comment, I first read the post from my BlackBerry this morning and had no idea that someone out there was actually making cakes that look like babies. The creepiest babies ever at that.
2) OkCupid, who sent me this e-mail:
This is the third year in a row they’ve had to send me the “sorry you’re in a relationship” e-mail thanks to Kamran being great. But I really love how they can’t help themselves and have to include links both for me to login instantly and to find my birthday matches. Way to wreck relationships, OkCupid.
I’ve invited my ten closest friends to a marathon of karaoke tomorrow afternoon, but tonight, I’m going to have a quiet evening at home with Kamran that will involve pizza, several kinds of chips, cupcakes, ice cream cake, and playing with the Wii we bought each other for our joint birthday.
When I first moved to NYC, I was dating this great guy named Todd who had this terrible friend named Sarah. On my first night in the city, she took us to eat at the Sea in Williamsburg, which would later become the neighborhood I’d move to and live in for three years and counting, even though I’m not even sure I knew we were in Brooklyn at the time. I thought Sarah was a little bit bitchy and a little bit glamourous, which is exactly what I look for in friends, and I assumed we’d be likethis soon enough.
But then Todd came home from hanging out with her one night and told me that Sarah said my taste in music was not indie but singer-songwriter. As I’d prided myself up until then on knowing all the music my friends didn’t, I was super-offended that this Goldfrapp-loving rich girl was calling me “not indie”. When I thought of singer-songwriters, I thought of John Mayer and Jack Johnson, who I just don’t consider my guys.
The other day, though, I realized that actually, yeah, I’m totally not embarrassed to like certain singer-songwriters:
But I hate all the others, and I’m totally indie, so there.