So Ninja told me she would take me into her place in Bed Stuy. Granted it would be my first interaction with black people in awhile but I didn’t have much of a choice. At Peter’s big Food Feast event, as it was off-season for “Survivor” and the guests needed to follow something else that was equally mindless, K-Tron asked me how my move was going. I announced that the road trip to Poughkeepsie ran out of gas and that Ninja had picked me up in her 18-wheeler and was going to take me in, at least temporarily. [The fact that I wrote “18-wheeler” has nothing to do with the 18” depth of Ninja’s vagina which I have only managed to reach bottom on two occasions, one requiring the attachment of a 4” extension to my penile unit and the other involving a tantric technique called “Shove Your Leg In First,” not to be confused with “Shove Your Head In First,” which requires one to build up their lung capacity to that of David Blaine’s in order to avoid suffocation.]
It was a Thursday night, D-Day minus 9 days, that I called Ninja up and told her that she should sleep over my soon-to-be ex-place on Friday night, as my brother-in-law and sister would be coming Saturday morning with their van to help move my stuff into her apartment. She got back to me at 2:15 on Friday morning and told me that I couldn’t move in with her.
I was aware she was dodging her landlord for many months but we had talked about me moving in with her and she said I was good to go and so I never thought the “not paying my rent” factor would be an issue. Well, it was an issue and now the second plan was bad to the bone. What the fuck is up with these women giving me like no notice before kicking me to the curb, somewhat literally?
The last week in my soon-to-be ex-apartment involved my mother scouring craigslist (hey, she found my last apartment. If you can put up with a little nagging—okay, a lot of nagging—the woman is good with fieldwork!) and spending every day out of the apartment before 9:00 a.m., visiting various places and brokers and bears, oh my. I had some annoyances, from waiting half an hour for a 9:00 a.m. meeting with a broker who never showed and never called thereafter, to a broker, shall we say, “grossly overestimating” (read as lying about) the square footage of an apartment, to searching in Brooklyn, Queens and finally Washington Heights, areas I had never really explored and felt like a stranger in a strange land. In between all the researching and calls and emails, any free time I had was spent boxing and bagging everything I’ve accumulated over twelve years [See George Carlin classic on “Stuff” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPOfurmrjxo&feature=youtube_gdata] and fitting in a client or two here and there in order to pay for my crack habit, and by “crack” this time I am referring to Ninja’s vagina.
One night after a full day of being a walking zombie in a hellacious search to not become homeless, my parents called me and bugged the shit out of me. When I reported the latest places I had checked out my Mom said, “Why are you looking in that crappy area?” I lost it.
“You sent me that listing and I fuckin’ went!” Needless to say, my Mom got upset and got off the phone and my Dad was telling me what “you have to do” and I was like, “I’m already fuckin’ doing it! What the fuck is your petty advice accomplishing?” Granted I was a bit strung out, and by “strung out” I am referring to the shell shock of going down on Ninja and finding myself tangled up in a tampon string, but my parents useless needling felt like an acupuncture school drop-out with no graduation day for you-oo-oo. My parents hung up the phone and looked into adoption.
In the search, I did meet a few nice brokers, including Anthony who I talked with about the dead-end life of living just to pay bills and the life-end death of bullshit religion. Unlike the other broker pimps I met, Anthony genuinely wanted me to find a place and be happy, whether it involved him smacking around one of his bitches and getting paid or not and I now consider him a friend.
I went from considering a huge place in a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn, to a smallish place in nice neighborhood in Kew Gardens, Queens and finally settled on Washington Heights in Manhattan. The decision was in part because I wanted to stay in Manhattan so I could get to Grand Central to take a train to my brother’s once a week to go hiking with him and our dogs, as this was a great bonding moment between brothers that we had only started to enjoy about two years ago; since they don’t let dogs on the subway, if I were living in Queens or Brooklyn the only way to get Abandon to Grand Central would be via a cab and I’m just too cheap for that.
I also finally found a place that felt a little more “homey” and by this I don’t mean black. Unlike other places whose windows faced a brick wall five feet away, this one had a nice amount of windows and a big set of windows in the main room that faced the sidewalk where I could actually see trees from it! It was the last place I saw on a day when I was completely punch-drunk and I had hoped it wasn’t going to be one of those nightmares that you wake up to and say, “Jesus Christ! You were much prettier last night after drinking three pitchers of beer by myself!”
I remember The Jefferson’s theme song, “Moving on up (movin’ on up), to the East Side (to the East Side), to a deluxe apartment in the sky-y.” I was moving on up, alright—116 blocks uptown. But it was no “deluxe apartment in the sky-y” and there wasn’t an Asian guy and black guy dancing and lip-synching! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcggr_23WJU]
It is mostly a Hispanic area. That’s “Spics” to you and me. When my parents and I went to lunch on the day of the signing, the waitress barely spoke any English and when I stood up on the table and shouted, “THIS IS FUCKIN’ AMERICA! SPEAK FUCKIN’ ENGLISH OR GO BACK TO WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU CAME FROM!” everyone just applauded, thinking I was doing the famous, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” scene from Network [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGIY5Vyj4YM]
I didn’t hear back from Ninja. Day after day I called and texted and sent Morse Code and talked through my two Styrofoam cups connected by fishing line and still—ring around the collar [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3N_skYSGoY]. I finally looked up and contacted her sister and mother to ask if they heard from her, as I was worried. I wrote the piece “What A Relief!” telling how I got to the point where if she finally got in touch with me relief would be my feeling of non-choice before anger, as I was hoping for irresponsibility over injury. [http://rebelyogi.com/what-a-relief.html]. Her sister told me to go to Vegas and put $1000 on “Irresponsible.” I didn’t have a thousand dollars or a bunch of friends to go with on a road trip and kill and bury a stripper and so I wasn’t in it to win it.
A week later I received a text message from Ninja saying something completely irrelevant to her not responding to any of my, “JUST LET ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY!” messages, making me think she was off her medicine and back to salivating into her drool cup. Just like how if I were to screw around with other vaginas that would be a deal-breaker for her, communication is almost as important to me as pussy. Her lack thereof was my deal-breaker.
There’s more drama to tell: from non-stop music blasting all day and night…to working my Spanish to the level where I am street fluent, which means I can ask, “Is this crack cut with anything?” to either a drug dealer or a pimp…to major drug dealing across the street and in my building…to cheap fruit and, of course…cockroaches.
How does Abandon like her new place?
Unlike humans, dogs that aren’t made dysfunctional by their caretakers adapt to just about any situation pretty quickly. Abandon looked in excitement at the new smells and sights and places to pee. One time she pee’ed in the apartment, which might have been nerves from the lights being out and drug dealers in the hallway. Or it could have just been she really had to go
.
Or, maybe she was making sure anyone who smalled that apartment knew she was there. Sophie is always happy to be where ever I am, too. But she prefers places that have room for wandering around and sniffing. Also, squirrels for chasing are a plus.
Cheap fruit sounds good. Drug dealing across the street doesn’t.
When I lived in Charleston, I learned the ridiculous habit of calling cockroaches “Palmetto bugs”. I never did learn why they were called that. They were skateboards with many legs and I delighted in stomping them. I found that boric acid under appliances helped keep them out of my apartments. It wasn’t harmful to me or my cat, but did a number on the bugs.
I’m sorry your plans with Ninja didn’t work out.
They say the way to make God laugh is to tell him your plans—that, and doing a “windmill” with your penis. But alas, there is more to the Ninja story yet to be shared…
God said to me the other day, “Hey, I haven’t had a good laugh in awhile. Why don’t you tell me your plans.”
I said, “Thanks to you, I no longer have any plans, bitch.”
He said, “Oh, come on! Surely there is something you are planning?”
I said, “I was planning suicide by blowing myself up while shouting, “ALI AKBAR!”but I don’t want to have to be any closer to you. And while I like making people bleed in the world of form, the thought of all those etheric virgin vaginas bleeding in Muslim Heaven was just too much for me.”
“You’re a sick fuck,” said God and if I weren’t afraid to look directly at him and risk my face melting off my skull like in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” I think I’d see a fuckin’ smirk on his face.