SoHopeless

I moved to the City three years ago. August 2002 meant trash baking in the sun… freedom… a terrible, short haircut… cocktails at “Luna Park”… the overnight shift at “Fox News Channel”… mice on the hard wood floor… “Café Noir”… a crush on Shephard Smith… exactly 2 girlfriends…take-out chicken wings from “Virgil’s Barbecue”…perpetually being lost… thinking “Barney’s” was a children’s program… wishing I had skinny jeans, stilettos and a boyfriend that would take me to “Raoul’s.”

Nothing was definite, nothing was secure. I was convinced of only two things: I could never afford fresh produce again, I would never have a boyfriend in the city.

How did the women do it? I wondered. They were thin, dressed to kill, always a handsome banker-type by their side. They sipped their Grey Goose martinis (“3 olives, please”) and laughed just so. All I had was a pair of kitten heels and a big ass.

“How do you meet these men?” I asked one of the “Fox” associate producers.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“You just do. It’s New York City, for Christ’s sake.” She tossed back a strand of perfectly straightened hair and continued IM’ing her fiancée on the computer next to me.

I think back now, trying to recall my first real New York City date—I can’t. Was it the blind date with the Skadden Arps attorney? The banker I met at the rooftop bar of “60 Thompson?” The washed up 45 year-old actor that topped out with a “Burger King” commercial? I don’t know. I wish I could tell you.

I made a habit of reading Joan Didion before bed. Whereas the men left me despondent, she gave me hope.

“…New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.”

Things would get better. I would find somebody. Somebody would find me. Lights off. The mice scurry around my bed.