2003-07-02

I�m back, and much the worse for wear. New York is insane. How do people actually LIVE there? Why don�t their heads explode from over-stimulation? How has this cranial adaptation occurred in such a frenzied sea of riotous cultural carnality? This is a phenomenon I may have to study further. Perhaps I�ll apply for a government grant.

Friday night I hooked up with your friend and mine, Discothekid. Fun and frivolity ensued. We were going to go see 28 Days Later, but instead ended up at a Tiki bar in Brooklyn called �The Zombie Hut,� drinking � what else? � Zombies. (We had a whole theme going on there � didja catch that?) Some creepy barfly became extremely enamoured of Shandy�s ankles (and lovely ankles they are, naturally). He waxed poetic about their beauty and kept trying to touch them, forcing Shandy to back away in rather a comical manner. I think she should have kicked him in the face, but you know how pugnacious we Canadians are.

Next day: Coney Island! Woo! A word of advice to you, my friends � roller coasters are for children, and not for hung over and prematurely decrepit so-called �grownups.� The Cyclone kicked my fuckin� ass, or more specifically, my spine. Chiropractical inconveniences aside, Coney Island was fantastic. Doug was a great pretend-boyfriend for the day, despite his failure to win me anything cute and fuzzy on the boardwalk by demonstrating prowess with launching projectiles or any similarly manly activity. Here I am setting foot in the Atlantic Ocean for the very first time:

Here's Doug looking saucily rockabillicious.

We engaged in an anthropological expedition on the beach, surreptitiously observing the bestial mating rituals of the Great American Tourist. You can see from these photographs the frightening proximity of some of these creatures. We risked life and limb, not to mention losing our lunches and quite possibly our eyesight, in the interests of science.

Crikey! That's a big one!

That evening I was off for some Universal Donor action. I accompanied Jeremy to a very happenin� roof party somewhere in the depths of Brooklyn, and got to meet various eminent online personalities, including the spectacular Gregor Samsa (of Universal Donor fame), who looks much less like a giant cockroach in person. I holed up in a comfortable corner of the roof with a very cute couple from Philadelphia and spent the evening mocking the attire and behaviour of my fellow party-goers, which I�m sure comes to you as precisely no surprise at all. We engaged in some speculative musing as to whether the girl being pawed by a cretin in a David Lee Roth shirt was under the impression that the shirt was �ironic,� which the more sober of us decided it may not have been. How embarrassing to wake up the Morning After in a basement shrine to David Lee Roth, having mistaken genuine but misguided fandom for fashionably postmodern irony! Ah, we�ve all been there, haven�t we?

Sunday was Pride Day. I was a dick and totally overslept, so I missed Doug�s big debut as an honorary homo as Marshall of the S.W.I.S.H. float (Straight Women In Support of Homos � a fabulous organization started by friends of Shandy�s, and the very first straight-themed float in the Pride Parade ever! Viva fag hags!). However, whilst trying to avoid the glut of rainbow-hued crowds in Greenwich Village, I bumped into the illustrious couple on their way to post-parade festivities, so at least I got to congratulate Drunky Doug on his assuredly great job as Marshall. (How do you fucking �bump into� someone in New fucking York, I ask you? Weird mojo.)

Hooray for drag queens! And...some guy!

I took off on my own for an impromptu pub crawl, and I assure you that crawling was indeed engaged in by the end of the night (and so were one-armed pushups, although I�m not quite sure what spurred me to such bizarre bravado). I met a local ambassador who took me to some great landmark watering holes, including the very spot where Dylan Thomas collapsed on his final not-so-gentle venture into that good night. Cool. Next up was Marie�s Crisis Caf� for a classic New York Pride Day moment: singing along to old Broadway tunes, clustered around a piano with a hundred washed-up old queens.

Then it was off to Marion�s on Bowery, whereat I drank frighteningly stiff cocktails (had to have something �stiff� in honour of the Supreme Court Decision, right?) and giggled over the fact that Christina Ricci was in the back of the bar. At the end of the evening, after the place was locked up and I was schmoozing with the bartender, because that is what I do, I saw a solo performance by Ms Ricci of a truly amusing and very inebriated little dance. Snort.

My last day was spent wandering around Soho, Noho, Greenwich Village and the East Village, wishing I had about a million bucks to drop in all the fucking amazing shops. After bidding a fond farewell to Jeremy, Doug and Shandy, I headed down to the Baggot Inn for �one drink� (I love that little fiction I tell myself to rationalize an immanent bender). Ronin the Lovely Irish Bartender is now a friend of mine, along with his adorable Irish friends, who told me of their plans to form an Irish rap group called the Vatican II Cr�e (T-shirts to read �My other car is the Popemobile�). We all bitched about Premier League football and got fucked up until six AM, rather stupidly on my part since I had to be at LaGuardia for ten. I arrived at the airport hung over and unwashed to discover, to my great lack of excitement, that Alec Baldwin was on my flight to Montr�al. �Woo.� He�s even more disturbingly swarthy in person, ladies! Quite the weekend of celebrity spotting, eh what?

Anyway, I�m feeling barely sentient today, and wholly depressed at being back. In conclusion, Robin loves New York City, and New York City loves Robin.