Now
OK, I’m going to start updating this thing more than once a year. I would’ve updated more since this time last year had everything not taken off at the same time!
After the February 2009 post I finished the translation, applied for a Rotary Scholarship, drank coffee, got a pay-check, flew to London to visit Dorrie, took an entrance exam for an NCTJ journo course in Wimbledon, passed the entry exam, visited stately homes with Dorrie on a tandem bicycle, applied for a job at Japanese Mission to UN in NYC, and flew back to Missouri.
The day after I arrived, the Japanese Mission called to invite me for a job interview either that day or the next. So I booked a round-trip flight, packed a suit and tie, flew to NYC, interviewed, drank with Jason Stanley and Julia Mushalko, and flew back to MO never having gone to sleep.
The day after I arrived, I interviewed for a Rotary Scholarship, received a call for a second job interview at the Japanese Mission. So I basically re-lived the previous week — I booked a flight, packed a suit, flew to NYC, interviewed, drank, and didn’t sleep. The next day, the Mission called and offered me a job. I accepted, flipped out, went to Union Square and giddily drank coffee, met friends, drank beer, and flew back to Missouri.
It was June 15. The Mission had said my job started July 1. This time I packed my possessions into two suitcases, and flew to NYC for the third time that month, and booked myself into a youth hostel in Harlem for a week while I searched for an apartment.
Dorrie was going to arrive and stay for a week before my job started at the Japanese Mission. So I walked across Harlem and Queens eating deli sandwiches and meeting Jason Stanley at a bar called The Gaf in Chelsey each night.
A french woman named Dawn from Craigslist answered my email and I moved my things to her flat in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn with a little fire escape overlooking the street. Dorrie flew into Newark the next day and I met her at the airport.
We took the subway to Brooklyn together and had an enormous brick of lasagna at a restaurant a few doors down from the flat. The lasagna was cold in the middle and we told the owner who brought the brick back ten minutes later, then later gave us a consolatory brick of chocolate cake. Dorrie and I ate it all and couldn’t sleep that night because our stomachs were so full they barely left space for our lungs to function.
Dorrie flew back to London and I moved to Woodside, Queens where I’d found a three-month sublease on a railroad apartment. That night I discovered I was not living alone. I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink, turned on the light, and was greeted by dozens of antennaed insects on the counter. I vowed to kill them all.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I jolted awake at six am and moments an itchiness crept over my entire body. In the bathroom I saw that my arms, legs, chest, back, neck, and face were covered in large red welts that itched more than anything I’d ever felt.
When I disassembled the futon in the bedroom, black tick-like bugs crawled out in scores. I vowed to kill them all, too.
Wikipedia said that my flatmates were German cockroaches and bedbugs, both of which were infesting New York in numbers unseen since the 1800s.
Work at the Japanese Mission to the UN began the following week. I showed up in a two-piece suit hiding the itchy spots that covered my body.
For the next three months, I performed a series of extraordinarily mind-numbing administrative tasks and occasionally suffered verbal lashings from a crusty accounting head.
I called exterminators who told me my landlords were legally obliged to pay to kill bedbugs. After four or five calls, my aging Italian landlady returned my call. She blamed me for bringing the bedbugs to the building. I shouted into the phone in Italian “Non c’e nella baggaglia!” which is grammatically terrible, but the landlady reflected on it for a moment then said she would get her friend Joey over to my place.
He appeared that Friday with a courier bag and sprayed BB-killing dust all over my apartment. BBs are what I called the bedbugs. We’d been living together for months, after all. Before Joey left, he warned me never to go into the bedroom again unless I wanted to get bitten.
I moved onto the vinyl-covered couch — supposedly BBs can’t burrow into them — and washed my clothes in hot water, drank with Jason on the weekends, and planned my escape from the Mission. I loved the endlessly pulsing City.
After the sublease with the BBs I found another sublease in Jackson Heights. Late one night I took the R train home from Steinway. I stepped in and sat across from a pudgy Latino guy. He was the only other person in the carriage. As the train pulled out of the station, a six-inch kitchen slid off the man’s seat onto the floor.
I began speaking to the man about Queens. He was manic, so I tried to keep him talking about harmless things like parks and restaurants and fruit. It worked, but for some reason the train had started running express, roaring past stops and stranding my in the carriage.
I thought of running to another carriage, but didn’t want to turn my back to the crazy man. I thought of punching the man, but if I went for him, he could reach for the knife. He was completely gone and wasn’t even blinking. I kept his gaze locked on me and off the blade at his feet.
The train began to brake. The man snapped to and grabbed the knife. He came toward me making little stabs. “You got any f***ing money?!! HUH?!!” he said.
I stood, took up my backpack and after that I don’t know what happened. The next thing I remember is walking on the platform to the conductor’s carriage. I told the conductor about the knife man. “Motherf***er! OK, stay here” the conductor said, stomping out of the carriage. Two other men were there. They asked if I was OK. I don’t remember what I said.
The train began rolling in the opposite direction as before. It stopped at Queensborough Plaza and I got off and sat with a homeless man on the platform. I asked if he would pray with me. He declined. I tried to recite the Lord’s Prayer but couldn’t remember beyond “thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”
The homeless man told me I’d be all right. Soon after a train arrived and I took it home.
The next day I took a train to Poughkeepsie to meet my sister, her boyfriend Kon, and my mother. Kon grew up in Queens and Chelsey. I told them what had happened and how much it surprised me because New York City had until that point been “like a big hug.” Kon laughed.
In January 2010, I was offered a placement on a journalism course at Lambeth College in south London. The next day, I quit my job. Three weeks later I flew to London and I’ll have to tell you the rest later!
I’ll start posting weblinks to any stories I publish. If you’ve gotten to the end of this post, congratulations!
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