Hot Wax in the City…will miss?
I have this one defining moment that I always refer to as ‘the most humbling experience of my life.’ Funny, as I get older and my humbling moments are compounding themselves into a rather lenghty list. One of these days I’ll tell you all about the big gay rugby auction. Only in NY…but back to this story.
A few years back, I was taking a trip to Acapulco with my BF. I thought I would spice the whole thing up by going in for a wax. You know, a waaaax. You knowwww…for the hair. Down there. Alright, we all on board now?
I had the appointment at the Aveda salon. Nice, clean, fresh smelling. Everyone speaken English (this has become a very important telling sort of distinction in my story telling these days). They placed me in the waterfall room, candles lit, soft music playing, gave me tea and told me to relax. It wasn’t hard. I did.
A soft spoken woman came to get me and lead me to the wax room. She gave me privacy and told me to change into these little disposable cotten panties that were on the table. Cute! The lights were somewhat low, the ambiance serene. I was getting myself psyched up. ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ Now I can be all for a little rough housing in the boudoir, but the idea of dropping hot wax down there, only to tear it off with a strip of cloth moments later is so far out in S&M left field, I can’t even fathom it. So my trained wax tech enters the room and chats with me. I’m nervous. She knows. Then she starts pawing around down there, touchin hairs, making faces and I am now too pleased. I’m paying her to claw at me and belittle my region with looks of disgust? I hadn’t gardened down there in like 2 weeks!! I was going crazy! I knew it was bad, but her reaction was a bit much. I could feel my face warming with the heat of judgement. I was so embarrassed.
Turns out, I hadn’t let it grow out long enough! Ick! I asked her to do my legs (not long enough) and various other parts of my bod. We couldn’t even do my brows cause I’m an uber plucker. So, I left a bit furry, not quite hairy enough for removal, but with a whole new complex: I have a hair removal addiction.
Fast forward to…couple days ago. I’ve spent a couple months now drilling everyone I know about bikini waxing, Brazillian waxing (uh-uh. no way am I ready to go there) the pain, the fear, how drunk I can be to just get myself in the door without them kicking me out. I had heard good things about this salon in my neighborhood. Heard it was pretty cheap too. (PS: in the future, whenever looking to invite people near your lady bits with hot wax and cloth strip, rippy offey things, do not allow money to play a factor. Just an FYI. Go all out. Shuck out the big bucks.)
So I hop off the train one stop before mine and decide to just look into it. I don’t have to commit to a thing! I step into the nail/massage/facial/wax/UPS shipping outlet/vegetable stand/flu shot distributer salon. I mean it. They did everything. And all in little tiny rooms off to the sides. Hmm. Tiny little Asian woman #1 hops up from the tips she’s applying and shouts/asks ‘what I want, what I want’. Uhh, I ask for the menu, she gestures to the entire freakin wall o’ options and I ask about waxing. (gestures and misunderstandings, quizzical looks) Bikini. Ah, I got her now. She leads me back and I assume she’s giving me a tour of their state of the art facilities. Yeah, you guys get it, don’t you? I had just made an appointment. For right now.
She ushers me into a tiny room, with a table thing, sliding door (does not close all the way, thank you very much. Yes, I see you out there painting nails) and a high wattage, could heat Pluto to it’s frozen core, heat lamp, er, lighting scheme. I was feeling a little exposed, but I didn’t know the half of it yet. I really didn’t know what I was doing there. Was someone coming to give me a pep talk, discuss how it all works and set me up with an appointment? I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there on the table. Fully clothed. Silly rabbit.
Asian woman #2 (aka, my wax tech) lands in the room (and I use ‘wax tech’ loosely as I have come to believe this woman may have done her training on chickens) and starts yanking on my pants. Hey, hey, hey! We’re rounding first and heading to second, ok, ok. I’m cool. Let me help you with that. When she starts yanking at my panties and checking things out down there, I realize that my standards to hair removal are a bit high and I suddenly feel cold, afraid and alone. I sniffle. There is no tea. There is no waterfall room. No paper disposable panties. Instead, I’m sweating to death in this chamber of waxing hell with this woman yanking down my skivvies and smacking my ass to boost me up on the table. Then she stares at my legs and makes a comment (something to the effect of) them being very long. Super. Thanks for turning your attention there.
I wasn’t certain if she had understood my instructions of where to go with this and where to clearly STAY AWAY FROM. She sort of nodded and muttered, but it wasn’t quite the same as hearing ‘yes, I understand that you do not want me to scar that which is most important to you in your small shallow world, and I will thusly avoid that area.’ I was stiff as a board, ready to bolt from the room and cling to the first nail painter I saw, throwing her out in front of me. I was also trying to bear in mind that if bolting happened, I would have to maintain a safe crotch distance from people/things/children/pets so as not to glue them to the wax that would surely still be attached. Deep breath in….and…well that wasn’t SO bad. I mean she was slapping it on and ripping it off so quick that I barely had time to register, whoah! yikes! There’s third base! Woo-hoo! Can’t say she wasn’t thorough.
So, I left, slightly bow legged, and no longer happy with the underwear choice, but otherwise feeling as though I had just become a woman. Again. Or for the first time. Not the current issue.
I’m recovering and doing fine. Enjoying the view and dying for a slip and slide. The funny thing is, I kind of miss Asian woman #2. She never calls. She never writes. She never even told me her name. I wonder if she’s thinking about me too…
On A Different Level of Crazy from Old Man River
Baseball is a big deal here in NY. You have the Mets, the Yankees and the thousands of spastic fans between the two. And I am not kidding in the least when I say that what happens on the baseball diamonds greatly affects the atmosphere of the city. Allow me to illustrate me point.
I tried to get into the baseball thing here. I’ve been to Mets games. They’re fun. But I think all baseball games are fun. You sit in a seat while people walk around and serve you beer and food. Right in your seat! It’s pretty much a genius set up. But I just can’t get as into it as people here tend to get. Earlier in the season, the Mets had a tough loss and I was told, in a whisper, at work to avoid our boss because he was really upset that day because of it. I was stunned. I’m from Milwaukee and a Brewers fan. But I’m pretty sure we do it differently. It may be because we tailgate (They don’t do that here. At all. Isn’t that weird?) so the game just sort of becomes a different venue for drinking and getting together. Half the time we don’t even make it into the game, finishing up our brats and beer, listening to the radio and hooting when we hear a roar from the stadium. That doesn’t make us lessor fans, we’re there, showing solidarity and that’s pretty good. Win or lose, we still have a six pack to finish. It’s just a different perspective. However, this is what happens when the Mets lose:
Let’s first bear in mind that the Mets stadium is in Queens, where I live, so the folks here have really made the Mets the Queens team. They’re sort of seen as the underdogs who are playing stick ball on a dirt field next to the Yanks who have clean uniforms and real bats. Sorta like the kids in ‘The Sandlot’ (For-ever. For-ever. For-ever. Those of you who get that are my favorites.) So when something happens with the Mets, Queens feels it pretty strongly.
Now, our landlord has had some problems with the Neighbor (now to be known as: RN, or ‘Roid Neighbor) on several occasions (not Old Man River. This guy is on the other side.) It’s a drainage issue. Our landlord needs to run rain water out to the street, since the boys backyard is concrete and their basement bedrooms will flood, so he’s come up with several solutions. He attached plastic pipes to the gutters and ran them along the fence that separates the properties, to the back of the yard. Away from both buildings. RN reaches under the fence and pulls the pipes apart. I would like to point out that this shortens the pipe and allows the water to run closer to the buildings, instead of running it further away. This guy is already way up there on the genius meter.
Next, our landlord busted up the concrete at the back of the lot and ran a plastic pipe, away from RN’s place, for it to run out to the street. RN was not happy again. He plugged up the pipe. He claims that the water then floods his basement. Which it would do either way. The water just needs to be redirected.
A week ago Sunday, I was visiting with the boys downstairs, watching football, having some beers and chatting with the folks who wander into the revolving door of the their apartment. It was about 8pm, we were sitting outside, a couple of guys strumming on guitars. And just regular guitars, not amped up, electric guitars (I’m sure there’s a word for those, just don’t know what it is) when I noticed someone on the other side of the fence. It’s a double gate fence that has green stuff threaded through it so you can semi see through. RN has a lock on the fence and the boys decided that they didn’t enjoy him having sole control over when he can get in and out of their backyard without having an option of their own. So they wrapped a thick, bike chain around the base of the fence with their own lock on it. It was the best thing they ever did. Let’s see why.
I was having a conversation with one of the boys and told him about the someone on the other side of the fence. We watched him sort of wander back and forth for a bit, wondering if he would complain about the music. Finally my friend gives a ‘hey man, what’s up’ and RN mutters a ‘hey’ back. Ok. We’re fine. Huh.
Friend goes toward the fence, to check the food on the grill and RN says that he wants to talk to him about the drainage issue. Uh-oh. I hear friend say that RN needs to talk to the landlord since they just rent here and I hear RN instigating the issue further. I went in to get the other roommate and tell him what’s going on outside. I thought he should know. He goes out, gets involved, and at one point says: ‘What the fuck do you want us to do about it?’ and RN loses it. He starts screaming at Roommate not to swear, he doesn’t appreciate cursing, why is he saying these things to him, he’s gonna kick his butt, and a flurry of other such statements. Then he starts climbing the fence, trying to get at Roommate. Thank god there’s barbed wire at the top and he didn’t get very far. Not through lack of trying.
Roommate goes back inside and I followed, apologizing that I told him to go back out there. I had no idea it would get like that. As we’re inside, we hear a loud ‘Dooooong! Doooooong!’ coming from outside. It’s the sound of reverberating metal pipe. Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser. People start running inside and I peek out the door to see RN beating the fence with (what we later learned to be) a wooden bench. He broke the lock and was trying to squeeze his fat ‘roid head through the fence, which is now only being held closed by the bike chain at the bottom. (see? Told you it’d come into play!) RN is threatening everyone’s lives and totally had that ‘Wendy, I’m gonna bash your brains in!’ The Shining/Jack Nicholson look on his face. So, a bunch of us are on our phones, calling the police and telling them to get out here.
I went to the front door of our building, looking for the police so we can let them in and I notice this big guy walking towards me. Then I notice another big guy come around the corner, stalking towards me. It was Roid Neighbor and his Roid friend. I slam the door closed and run into the apartment and tell them not to answer the buzzer that’s ringing off the wall. Isn’t that just enough to make you hate someone? Incessantly playing out a long toned tune on the buzzer?
Anyway, the police show up, talk to the residents and we listen to RN try to explain why the fence is broken. From his side. We didn’t see him anymore that night, but I check in on the downstairs boys often cause I don’t trust a roid head.
But as it turns out, the episode occurred right after the Mets lost their biggest, most crushing defeat that booted them out of the running for the World Series and may have cost their long time coach his job.
Curiouser indeed.
pizza, tour guides and disposable cameras
(NOTE: I began writing this several weeks ago. Who says procrastination dies after college?)
I haven’t written lately, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, clutching your computers, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, ‘WHEN??!?’ you scream into the wan evening air, yearning for a new post. My mom was here and then I left town and they keep expecting me to work for some reason. Anyway, here is the first in a few…
So, my mom came into town for a visit. Bear in mind many things as we get into this: 1) she has never been to NYC. 2) This is her first flight in a good 10 years. 3) All things outside of a Midwest suburb, ie: grass (my astroturf on the balcony did NOT count), chatty, friendly neighbors (our neighbor threatened us and our tikki torches with a garden hose) and bodega free neighborhoods (ours is downstairs and specializes in Mexican goods), are to be considered a ‘ghetto.’ Right. And we’re off.
I couldn’t get out of work quite when I wanted, so that I could be there at the airport to greet her. Her darling, angelic, only child. Instead, her realistic, spastic, basketcase of a kid, made a frantic call on her way to the bank, before getting on the subway to begin the trek out to her place in Queens. (Yeah. Not Manhattan. Screw you too.) And this is all after her plane had landed.
I explained to her that she needed to get in line at the taxi stand, tell them where she was going and sit back and relax. Thank god I had a demented, speed freak, train conductor cause we tore through the underbelly of Manhattan and shot out into Queens in record time. I called to check in on her and let her know I was minutes away. I asked where they were and she said they were going too fast for her to see the street signs. Awesome. And super. I asked if the driver knew where he was going based on the address she had given him. She mumbled that she wasn’t sure. I asked what happened when she gave him the address and she said she wasn’t sure because he was speakin something she couldn’t decipher (my folk are suited quite fine to the non-descrept midwestern accent and not much else) and, out of fear of looking silly, didn’t want to inquire further. Aww. In’t she sweet?
From a block away, I see her step out, line up her bags on the sidewalk and spin around in a tight, slow circle. Hmm. I couldn’t get a read on that. So, I rush up, hug her, sniffle at the sheer joy of having her here on my turf and drag her luggage upstairs.
Now, anyone who has lived in NYC understands a ‘nice’ apartment versus a god-forsaken, rat infested, shithole is a pretty fine line to teeter on. It may, to the eye seem not so quite as pristine as in Sex in the City, but I have a great apartment. You can live in a closet (many do) but if it’s clean, and your closest bug/rat neighbors are not hanging out, eating dinner with you, then you get a couple big thumbs up and may even get laid in there. Now my place is large, 3 bedrooms, a kitchen I can spin around with my arms open in, view of Manhattan (Empire State AND Chrylser buildings), great balcony (not just a fire escape. I have my chairs, grill and turf out there) and completely rat and mostly bug free (I’ve seen 1 bug in the year I’ve been here. It took me a week to get over it and we had to throw the rug away that we had killed the bug on, but I feel pretty good about it now.)
Apparently I should have written this post before she got here. Mom’s did not so much agree with the ‘awesomeness’ I had told her my apartment exuded. She said it was ‘nice,’ but it was said in that slow, sort of, ‘I feel like this is what I should say so you don’t cry, but I’m really puttin on my acting skills with this one. And not very well.’ It was the way we used to refer to less than desirable girls in my sorority when you wanted to be diplomatic but clearly wanted everyone to know you totally mean the opposite.
It was a rough start to say the least. But, we walked, ate and did the requisite touristy things. I took her on ‘The Beast’ (if you ever some to NYC, go on it!) It’s a huge speed boat with green eyes and sharp teeth painted on the side. We bought the tickets and stood on line waiting as she told me over and over how she wasn’t getting on that thing. But she did. And we did. And it was fantastic! Whipping down the river at 40 mph, music blasting, and our illustrious guides threatening anyone who might be a Red Sox fan on the boat. (baseball is taken very, very seriously here. Very.)
We did a more tame tour that evening to see the city all lit up. We cruised under the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. We had dive pizza and classy pizza. We talked and I think she wasn’t so much in awe of the city as she was with my place in it. I had to distill the idea that Sex and the City is totally realistic. You have to bust your ass to have just a fraction of what those chicks had. But, I did take her on the Sex and the City bus tour, which was fun (even though I don’t really know much about the show) but they gave us cupcakes and that was good. And some guy proposed to some girl on the steps of Carrie’s brownstone and we all pretended to care (maybe everyone else did care, but I couldn’t get over the newly proposed to girl’s choice to wear tiny short white shorts, in the rain, and these hideous strappy, white, 3 inchers to go hoofing around the city in. You can call me a bitch. I call myself a Fug Girl in training. Check my side bar. We’ll all get there one day.)
On Monday evening, I picked up a copy of NY TimeOut magazine to find something worthwhile to do. We decided stand up comedy was in order for the evening. We set off to find the bar and when we got there were told that it was a bit early for us to go in, so we stepped out, grabbed some nosh and came back a little later. We wanted good seats, dammit! We came back, and were told that the show had to be cancelled. Grr. BUT, silver lining! They have Monday night bingo! woot-woot! So we headed into that, took a seat and the real fun began.
The host was a slick haired chap with full on mustache and a circa 70’s suit. It was all very classic game show host. Then host spoke. Oh. Why that’s not a boy at all. Uh, mom, just so you know, that’s a girl up there. Don’t freak. But she was distracted by the girl that was coming around selling bingo cards. Oh, not a girl. Right. I see what’s going on here. “Um, mom, that’s a girl and that’s a boy. No. The other way around. Ok. You’re ok? Yes, please bring her another beer.”
All joking aside, we had a blast! She loved the all of it! She may have been disappointed if the hosts were the actual gender they were portraying. They were great and even gave me mom a shout out for being the Midwest Mom in the house. Aw. We ate a block of deep fried mac and cheese and fought feverishly battled for the burger bank prize. We didn’t get it. Damn. Anyway, if in NYC, go to Mo Pitkins over on Second Ave. on Monday nights for bingo. All the money they collect from the bingo cards goes to the grand prize. (We didn’t win that either. Oh well.) Super gay bingo night was mom’s favorite part of the trip.
My favorite part of the visit was on our evening cruise. A guy behind my mom stood up to take pictures with his monster telephoto lens, digital camera and my mom stood up right in front of him and clicked a picture with her disposable camera. Not only was that part great, but it was the last pic on the camera, so it went ‘click’, and then she kept thumbing the little plastic wheel in that oh so distinctive, ‘disposable camera out of pics now,’ sound. God I love her and her casual, midwestiness.
At least she didn’t wear a fanny pack.
The Law of the Land from Ol’ Man River
For all who have feared the fate of that Ol’ Man River, (I always referred to him as ‘Old’, but Wikipedia has bested me again as it smacks me on the hand, wags it’s finger in my face and tells me that when referring to the song from the musical Show Boat, it is in fact, Ol’. Blast you Wiki and your boundless intellect! You win this time. But I did learn that there is a dribble of water in Canada named ‘Oldman River.’ Gee. How original. Just smoosh the 2 words together and it looks like you came up with it all by yerselves, eh. And back to the story…) fear no more!! He is alive and well, kickin it here in Astoria. And while, yes, I do realize that my ol’ man bears real no resemblance to the true nature of the song, the musical, it’s context or content, it is nonetheless…well, fun to call him that.
Here’s how we met him: our apartment boasts a fabulous balcony as well as roof access which affords us a most beautimous view of the NYC skyline. Naturally, good balcony + great roof + gorgeous view = BBQ Sunday’s. So, on one fine afternoon, I dragged some folks to the top of my world and we leaned against the low wall, chatting, sipping some beverage and checking out the folks on the street below.
And then we were introduced to him. Ah, what a glorious introduction it was. Him: two stories below, sputtering out sentence fragments, 1/3 English, 1/3 Italian (was our best guess) and the rest pure gibberish as he was sportin’ more gaps along that jaw line than actual teeth. He hollared, gestured and spit for a bit and after several cups of the ears, ‘what was that’s’ and conferencing, we sort of picked up on his particular dialect and realized that he was informing us of several items that were of some importance to him. 1) IT IS ILLEGAL FOR US TO BE ON THE ROOF! 2) DO NOT GO ON HIS ROOF (which, as alluring of a temptation as his roof is, with it’s lovely view of the school across the street, and a protective wall that just barely tickles the ankles, we didn’t have a chimney sweep handy, so alas, rooftop cavorting was not to be had that day.) 3) HE IS GOING TO CALL THE COPS CAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL FOR US TO BE ON THE ROOF!
Right. So, we simply stepped away from the wall, twirled out fingers around our ears (which is a gesture that simply makes no sense. I’ve seen a lot of crazy in this city, and never has one of them ever sat around, holding their arm upright, while drawing imaginary circles next to their ear. There’s just no time. There are imaginary people to talk to. Imaginary guitars to play, etc.) and proceeded to head down to the balcony to check on the food status.
Now, those of you who know me, know that I love to entertain. So for this festive summer season, I decked our balcony out with astro turf, tables, cushions and tiki torches that I lashed to our railing for that Survivor ambiance that’s so necessary of a BBQ. Well, ambiance be damned! Because as it got dark, as we fired up the torches and basked in the glow, lo and behold, who should pop up on his roof? You got it! Ol’ Man River. As the first level of his roof is lined up with our balcony, we were granted the opportunity to bask in his gummy, spitty glory as he now took up issues with the torches that were hell bent on burning his house down. He smacked the little wooden fence that protects us from him…er, that he erected to keep us OFF OF HIS ROOF and now informed us that the fire department was going to be called in to settle this matter. I chuckled and scoffed (I was distracted by the empty beer can in my hand. Where HAD it all gone?)
But Ol’ Man is clearly more bark than he is bite…um, gum, or he lives in the duplicitous world where he is both subjucated neighbor and policeman/fireman/rescue/savior because his next step was to stomp off, only to hoof himself back up on his roof moments later (which I reminded him was illegal for him to be on) armed with his garden hose in order to snuff out the villainous torches. I gotta say, for a guy who appears to be a hundred and thirty years old, he was quite spry, hopping up and down that roof.
So, he threatened and waved his hose around (he so could have gotten us good too, cause he had one of those super duper serious gardener, 12 different spray option nozzles) while everyone ducked and covered, but once one of the downstairs neighbors chimed in with a string of obscenities of his own, well, it was past Ol’ Man’s bedtime anyway, and he packed it in and slithered down to rewrap his hose, brush his tooth, and call it a night. He’s even said hi to me on the street a couple of times since then. I’m not sure he’s all that plugged in to the here and now, if you get what I’m sayin.
I encourage one and all to attend the next BBQ, cause I can’t make this stuff up. Maybe we should just toss a chicken bone at him and avoid the whole thing next time. What? It would be just been cruel to give him one with meat on it, now wouldn’t it? I think you’re picken up what I’m puttin down.
