Get the Fuck Out of my City

My name is Rod Young, yes it's my real name, no I'm not a porn star. At least not anymore. I live in the East Village where I met this guy Kurt who asked me to be a part of this writing thing. So here's my words.

I always said I should write down my memiors and opinions, you know the kind regular folk say to creative types after a few drinks at a grimy bar at 2am. Seems like a great idea half sloshed but in the morning, hangovers and reality come and ruin the party.

But this guy Kurt encouraged me to keep trying and so I'm giving it a shot. I've never really written before, other than the occasional dirty limerick in a Lower East Side bathroom when I had a sharpie on me. Do I have anything to say that you normal folks would give a shit about?

I live in the East Village, not the fucking internet. I don't have Facebook or Myspace, and barely know how to email. I've been down on 7th Street and Ave B for the last few years, bouncing around the neighborhood before that. A lot of couch surfing and crashing on benches occasionally.

I saw this neighborhood change for the worse over and over again. Recently it's become unbearable and I've had to start hitting people in the face. This one fuck in a polo shirt thought that just because his Rugby pals were around that he could talk shit at 7B. I smashed his face into the bricks outside, I think the bloodstain is still there.

I knew we were in trouble when Pinkberry dropped in on St. Marks. Then that shit CBGB store opened up and they filmed some awful rich bitch drama there. That's when I realized what had happened. You post 9/11 fuckfaces had brought LA here.

It trickled in with that Ed Hardy trucker hat bullshit. Then every other girl I had buy me drinks was from Orange County. Pinkberrys start popping up, then Sex in the City the movie starts filming over at the Starbucks near K-Mart in Astor Place. That's when I put it together.

All you little Californian cunts grew up watching that ragged corpse you call Sarah Jessica Parker shamble through the streets of NYC and you knew that life in the OC was so fake and like not cool at all. There was something missing in your life as The Hills took the airwaves and you just knew you'd never be rich or pretty enough to be them.

So you came here, thinking that if you dropped enough on vintage rock band t-shirts that retired before you were even born, but somehow are now making a comeback to sell out one last time, you could reinvent yourself and live like they did in Rent, only with a trust fund safety net.

You're no starving artist, and maybe I'm not either. I'm just a bitter, elitist drunk wandering aimlessly through the streets. But you don't see me going to the West Coast, surfboard and frappachino in hand, complete with bleached blone whore girlfriend in Uggs and a denim skirt.

Go look at Broadway and Houston, marvel at the giant Hollister sign, complete with pier, sunset, and seagull, and then realize that it replaced a giant DKNY (fuck fashion) with NYC skyline, and take another bite of your Green Tea frozen yogurt with fresh raspberries and tell me this city isn't being overrun.

Fuck you California.

Love,
Rod.

Independence

Happy Birthday America! I sit in the new Washington Square Park amid tourists from across the world all anxiously awaiting the fireworks that are going off from the Hudson rather than the East River this year. Seems they're moving with me to the West Side.

I'm wearing my American Flag, I mean Mickey Mouse, t-shirt, vintage 70's style ringer, legit piece of fabric, recalling my days of youth living the dream with my teenage parents as they brought my sister and I to the Magic Kingdom, a pilgrimage my mother still makes yearly.

I drink my large (I refuse to say Venti) iced coffee and eat my chocolate old fashioned doughnut from Starbucks. I got a freelance check yesterday so I am permitted to engage in consumerism today. A pack of Marlboros and I'm off to the park to relax, people watch, and write about my independence.

I never felt okay alone. I always needed someone around, maybe to tell me who I am, a reflective personality mirroring theirs, digging out the chunks that were actually me. Paranoia kicks in as I walk the streets of NYC alone, feeling like a kid wandering off on his lonesome, waiting for his Mommy to have security track him down, bring him home.

As a kid I was always alone. Trapped in my head, happily constructing complex secret agent/private dick/superhero scenerios, friends often found me and dragged me along when I would have been happier sitting at home filming my GI Joes with my PXL2000. When they found girls I wanted to go play Super Nintendo.

Eventually I found a gang of guys, a wolfpack of dorks, nerds, and dweebs. Metal, role-playing, and sci-fi. Anime, comics, and fantasy. There was no girls about, and a varied bunch of guys to bounce off of and find out who I was. After a few years I knew, but I put myself there right away.

I was the clown. The sin-eater of the tribe, enact your anger upon me and let it be purged, for I felt nothing, although I showed you I felt everything. I laughed and made you laugh, quiet but rambunctuous when it would make for a good gag. I had no deeper thoughts, and felt completely at peace in this masochistic persona.

I felt so you didn't need to, poking the wounded animal, watching it twitch. Little did everyone know I was playing possum, building up the resentment and bitterness, pushing down the guilt, overloading it with mistreatment. One day I would feel justified in my righteous anger.

Only that day never came. I let out pulses of strength, pushing me away from situations without letting them overwhelm me completely. I flowed from person to person, relationship to relationship, flipping my personality about, trying new psyches on like the new Fall Fashion. Being an amorphorus personality is the new secure identity.

Now, I'm happy for the first time. Everything is actually proceeding along where I am the one in control. I'm making things happen. I am engaged and now living with my fiancee. She is the female version of me. Yet, with her job I am forced to be alone a lot of weekends and nights.

I freaked out at first. For weeks I would have panic attacks, alone in her apartment, no money to go out, no friends to go out with. A new neighborhood I always thought I hated, my old identity as an East Village King, my only realy NYC persona, now gone, I had to find my way.

So I hit a few bars and found myself suddenly friendly and able to talk casual conversation. I was out at a bar alone one night reflecting on how just 6 years ago I wouldn't have been able to do it comfortably. Not that I was totally confident now but it was miles from where I had been back on Long Island.

I'd try and go out with the few friends I had left but mostly in big social situations, I'd still be struggling. Lost and alone in awkward moments with casual aquaintances, feeling sweaty and underdressed, stumbling through, thinking everyone was scrutinizing me. It's hard not to hate everyone else for that, even though it's only in my mind.

I turn down a few offers to go out and do things for July 4th, knowing that in a sense, I now want to be alone. I stayed in last night and opened a cafepress store to sell t-shirts, edited my novel a bit, and organized my new literary adventure, Sub*Text. I felt good getting things done rather than blowing food money on booze.

I might go and watch the fireworks from the West Side Highway. I'll be alone and looking around at the couples, groups of friends, families that will no doubt be swarming the entire place, and I don't think I'll feel that same sadness that I would normally feel. I think I'll look at myself, there doing whatever I want to, on my own terms, and I think I'll be happy.

I don't really need anyone else.

But if you wanna stop by Botonica in Soho and grab a drink, I'll probably be there, whiskey in hand, typing away.

Happy Independence Day.

K