I’m a Jinius

so i was listening to this song before going out last night and i think it subconsciously led me to smoochies!

chromeo is the bestest.

But I’m too hungover to read it.

Annals of Drinking: A Few Too Many (The New Yorker)

i am running on three hours of sleep so please forgive the scatter brainedness.

friday
we go to spitzers and nurse betties. i have about twenty beers. at this point i am drunk and really want smoochies but i cant text the bartender because i deleted his number after his drunken incident last sunday. i try to cajole my phone to ring. “caaaaall meeee. caaaaaall meeeee.”

saturday
i go to arrow bar for a friend’s party. my roommate and her friend show up and we decide to bounce and go to another bar. we pass by this italian restaurant that is blasting sean paul. it looks like there’s a private party inside but we decide to crash it. as soon as we walk in some guy just hands us all beers. we dance like crazy and this midget molests my roommate and tries to dance with her. i am not kidding when i say he’s a midget. he was even shorter than me!

we leave and go to pyramid but only stay for one song because as much as i like new wave, i dont really like the people who like new wave.

at this point its like three am and we contemplate having a night cap at this bar near our apartment. we decide to go in. i head into the bathroom. as soon as i come out, my roommate comes up to me and says, “girl, your bartender is here.”

jigga….what?!

“are you sure it’s him?”
“yeah, i recognized his shoes.”

And i spot his top siders. I notice that he’s hanging out with people from his restaurant. my roommate and her friend tell me i should go over and say hello. so i walk over and pinch his waist. he buys me a drink and says, “i was pretty sure i would never hear from you again.” evidently he doesnt remember much from last week. i remind him that he was pretty obliterated. anyway, so we are hanging out and having a good time when the bouncer comes over and tells us it’s last call. except the bouncer was being a real dick about it. the bouncer tells the bartender that he needs to hurry up and leave and my bartender says something along the lines of “fuck off.”

and one things leads to another and before you know it the bartender and the bouncer are fighting eachother on the street. soon there are like twenty dudes on the street trying to break it up. it’s like all the dudes from the bartender’s restaurant squaring off against the dudes that work at the bar.

i dont understand how my night went from dancing to depeche mode to witnessing fight club.

anyway, it gets more dramatic and the bar owner tells the restaurant people that they’re never allowed to come back again. great,  i hope the owner does not think i am associated with them.

so the bartender and i walk away and i tell him that he just can’t pick fights with bouncers who look like they eat small children for breakfast. he doesnt care and seems amused by the whole thing. “did you see me pop him? i knocked him to the ground!” i roll my eyes.

we approach the subway and he says, “well, i guess i should catch my train here.” i don’t say anything. then he says, “this is the part when you say ‘why don’t you come over my place?” “oh, sorry. do you wanna come over?”

so he comes over.

and it’s really nice to wake up on a sunday morning to someone kissing your neck. and it’s also really nice to just stay in bed all day and forget that’s there’s a world outside of your door.

but eventually we both get hungry. “go make me some breakfast,” he says. ummm, yeah, little does he know that i avoid the kitchen as much as possible. we settle on going out for brunch.

after brunch we go to st dymphnas and have drinks outside. and we just chat about everything and nothing. he tells me i have a “clean personality”. is that a euphemism for boring? he laughs and doesn’t say anything. hmmmph. he also says that we have nothing in common. this is truly evident in our literary tastes. i am the type of person that likes jane austen and he prefers bukowski. we also have divergent movie tastes. he leans toward all the christopher guest movies and i like dance movies.

oh, and another thing we don’t have in common is that he loves getting into fist fights. he tells me that he did go through a brief peaceful period but then decided he was tired of it.  apparently he has had the shit kicked out of him by a gang of guys. one time he was on the ground and the last thing he remembers is someone’s foot kicking him in the face. he goes on to say that when you’ve had someone kick you in the face you kinda lose your fear of getting into fights. and that all men need to fight because they’re full of testosterone and rage and competition. i was like dude, you’re not tyler durden.

then we talk about the first time i met him and he remembers that ursy and i were sitting at the end of the bar and drinking nut brown ales. “you remembered our beer?” i am surprised. this is the same guy who doesn’t even remember how he got home last week.

after st. dymphnas we go back to my place to watch a movie. he looks through my dvds and shouts out, “M:i:III”

umm, okay, so the guy who favors bukowkski and henry miller wants to watch the cheesiest action movie of all time?

so we watch mission impossible. i make him sit on the other side of the couch because i wanted to watch juno. “i thought we’d get some major cuddle time.” did those words just come out of mr. fight club’s mouth??

and then we have another sleep over.

swoon.

as he leaves my apartment this morning, i tell him not to get into fights.

“On the subway? It’s inevitable.”

he is belligerent and uncouth and wayward and we have nothing in common. but we sure have a swell time.

im screwed.

my roommate and i were talking about how it takes so much more energy to be depressed than to just be chill.

and that happiness is not an objective like a better job or a better body or a better significant other. sure, all those things may amplify your state of happiness but they can’t make you happy unless you already have a foundation.

and i think when you realize that those things will not necessarily make you happy that it’s alot easier to appreciate little things. like omigod i saw my neighbor saying goodbye to her 2 year old son this morning and it was so freaking sweet i couldn’t stop staring like a creepy person!please don’t put me on amber alert!

not that i am the poster child of happiness and optimism–hell, i almost killed someone in the buffet line today. some woman accused me of cutting her and i was like bitch, you’re taking too long!– anyway, where was i? oh,yes, being soooo happy!

anyhoo, i guess my bro’s visit made me re-evaluate what it takes to pull yourself out of a depression. i think that if you stop taking yourself and your life so seriously, you will see that there is so much more fun to be had. god is laughing with you not at you! although, when i fell flat on my ass at the gym the other day im pretty sure that god, along with all the other gym patrons, was laughing at me.

you should be grateful for the things you have in your life. sure, you may hate your 9-5 job but if you didn’t have it then you wouldn’t be able to appreciate things like happy hour!!! and how awesome is happy hour???

i think i am still feeling the effects of my runner’s high.

happy friday.

yeah, so my title references a bad ninetie’s show with carl winslow and urkel.

anyhoos, my bro and i emailed and everything seems to be fine. just wanted to share the last paragraph of his email because it made me laugh and captures the kind of rapport we have.

“i could not have asked for a better trip or a better sister. i think you need some diapers cuz you is da shit! i know that was corny but that message is madd deep.”

So now I have a vague sense of what it’s like to be a single mom.

And now I know why so many rappers have “dear mama” songs. Although rappers’ moms had to take care of their kids for years, working three jobs just so their kids could have health care. My 19 yr old brother and his girlfriend were only in town for a week.

Don’t get me wrong, we all had a great time. But I didn’t realize that young people asked so many questions and had so much energy. By the third day I just wanted to be like, “Mama needs a nap and a whiskey” or “look it up on google!!!!” And this was all directed toward brother jinius. He is the type of person that will ask me subway directions to my apt and then ask me again an hour later and then ask me again the next day. If it were any other person, you just deal with it and give them the info, but for some reason when it is your flesh and blood you just want to knock them on the head.

My brother and I have always had more of a parental relationship. Afterall, we have a nearly ten year age difference. While my parents were at work, I changed his diapers, fed him, and basically ensured he didn’t fall and hit his head too many times. I think I succeeded. Although I may have let him slip here and there.

Wednesday
They arrive on Wednesday. I take them to Esperanto and my friend Dave meets up with us. My brother and his girlfriend try goat cheese for the first time. It’s amazing when you are older you forget how trying new foods can be so amazing and eye opening. They were both like omigod this is so good! It was really cute. And the way they interact with eachother is also very cute. It’s so heartening to see your baby brother act like a real gentleman. He is the type of person that will give his sweater to his girlfriend when she is cold. And give her half his meal. It’s also really disheartening to see such young love in front of your eyes. Dave and I were like, “when did we get so jaded?” I think it happens between the ages of 21-25. When you are taken out of the safety of the campus environment and thrown into the real world. Or maybe your significant other dicks you over senior year and says “I’m going away this summer and I want to sleep with other people.” That could be it.


After dinner we try looking for places that won’t ID. We hop into this hookah bar in the east village and the waitress comes over and asks for our drink orders. My brother orders a screw driver and his girlfriend orders a long island iced tea. They get carded. I was like um, those drinks are a dead give away that you are college freshmen!!!!! You need to order old people drinks like Ketel One and Tonic or Brooklyn Lager. That’s what my friends and I drink!

Thurs
They come by my office and I take them to this Japanese restaurant for lunch. His girlfriend is amazed by the bento boxes. Again, another thing that my jaded ass forgets to appreciate. Later that night we walk around St. Marks and I yell at my brother for trying to buy some, uh, smoking supplies.

Okay, so I’m not exactly the hip sister that will let their little brother do anything. In fact, I almost didn’t let my brother and his girlfriend even sleep in the same room. I eventually let them sleep in my bed but they had to keep the door open while I slept on the couch. Dave was like “but they’re on vacation!” Yeah, not under my roof. By the end of the trip, brother Jinius was calling me mom but it was not in a reverential way.

Friday
Brother Jinius and his girlfriend go to Long Island for the night to stay with my aunt. Freedom! This is what I mean by single mom. While the kids are away, mommy can play! So I go to Brooklyn and meet up with Sabbie and co. for bbq at the smoked joint. Afterwards, I head to Williamsburg for Emi’s party. This is where I meet the hot guy named Peter. It is one of those instances when I am standing by the door and immediately notice him walk in and it’s like HUMMANA HUMMANA.

He is tall, with dark, floppy hair, and black framed glasses. Yeah, a total Brooklyn boy. I must have been making a face because he says to me, “Why are you making that face?” Ummm, this is my “which beer should I drink?” face. Anyway, I end up latching onto him like a kodiak bear on a salmon for the rest of the night. It turns out he is from Florida so of course I am like omigod I’m also from Florida! What a small world! He is also half Asian and half Latin. And I’m like omigod I’m also Asian! But whole! Okay, I’m going to stop talking in exclamation points!

So the end of the night approaches and he’s like “Well, I’m gonna go, it was nice meeting you.”

And that is it.

I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, I think you forgot to ask for my number.”

But I thought that would have been too presumptuous.

The next night I ask Dave and Vid what could have gone wrong. I think of these options:

a) he wasn’t interested
b) he’s gay
c) he has a girlfriend
d) he has no game

We conclude that it’s probably all of the above.

Saturday

Brother Jinius and his girlfriend come back. We walk around the West Village and Soho and have lunch at Soho Park Cafe. My bro and his girlfriend order food and I order a Hoegarden. Sometimes nothing quenches your thirst more than an ice cold beer. Some people would argue that perhaps water is more likely to quench your thirst but those are also the same people who have healthy livers. My liver probably resembles Ted Kennedy’s.

For dinner, I make this dish that Vidya and I concocted a couple of years ago. It is so effin’ good! If you ever want to impress company but don’t really feel like cooking then make this dish. Basically, it’s linguine with shrimp, mushrooms, and onions in vodka sauce. It is the hotness right there.

Dave and Vidya come over for dinner and we are amazed at how drinking Brooklyn Lager out of a glass makes such a big difference in taste. Yeah, we are constantly expanding our palates and our minds here at the jinius blog. We also spend the greater part of the evening listening to Ludacris’s “Southern Hospitality.”

I am sure my brother and his girlfriend must have thought we were so cool as we kept chanting, “Pretty ass clothes/pretty ass toes/Oh how I love these pretty ass hoes”.

So then toward the end of the night I get a text and of course, OF COURSE, it is from hot bartender. Oh, except he has officially been demoted from hot bartender to just the bartender. I’ll explain why later.

It is a universal law of booty that your person of interest will only contact you at a time when it is least convenient for you.

Anyway, my bro and his girlfriend are asleep so Dave, V, and I meet up with the bartender at this bar nearby. He looks like he has been drinking for five hours straight. He says, “I forgot how cute you are, you should have warned me.”

Ugh, it is so pathetic but I clearly suffer from Justin Bobby syndrome. If you guys don’t watch The Hills (which I’m sure is like all of you) then you won’t get the reference but basically it involves being attracted to a guy despite the fact that he is a total fuck up and lewd and crass and his only saving grace is telling you semi sweet compliments here and there. Maybe it’s because I spent my high school years going to a performing arts school and only crushing on closeted theater boys but I never went through my “bad boy” phase and now I’m making up for it…at 28.

So the bartender wants to come over but i tell him that he’ll have to sleep on the couch and that we can’t hookup. He agrees. So we go back to the apt and pass out. I eventually move to the other couch because he is literally passed out on top of me and I can’t breathe.

Sunday

Oh, and remember when I said that I shouldn’t eat indian food before going on a date? Well, now we can add linguine with vodka sauce as a pariah. My indigestion (euphemism for really bad gas) was so intense that I decided to leave the apartment at 8 in the morning and relieve myself outside. Except my dumb ass forgot to bring my keys so I was locked out of my building for a good fifteen minutes. I ring the intercom and my bro lets me in. The bartender was like where did you go? I make up some lie about buying coconut water and forgetting my keys.

My bro and his girlfriend leave to walk around so the bartender and I use the opportunity to pretend we’re in highschool. Aka fool around while the folks are away. Ugh, he may be crazy but the physical chemistry is also insane. As my friend Sarah pointed out, it’s like that old nymag article that talks about why men are attracted to crazy women. It’s hard to walk away when crazy comes wrapped in a beautiful package. Not that bartender is adonis but there is something about his craziness that I find hopelessly appealing. Ugh, call it the Babyshambles/Pete Doherty syndrome. You think you can lift them from being at rockbottom.

So the bartender leaves to go to work. My brother comes back and tells me he thinks bartender looks like a douche bag. I ask him why he thinks he looks like a douche bag. He tells me he doesn’t like his beard.

Later on, bartender and i text and I make plans to meet up with him after his shift. He tells me to come by his restaurant because they just bought a bottle of wine and they are drinking outside. So Sabbie comes over and we go to the restaurant together. We show up. Evidently, the bartender has been drinking mimosas from 10 in the morning. It is now around 5 pm.

So at this point he is in complete babyshambles mode. He is slurring. His eyes are crossed. He knocks over glasses of beer. At one point, he just walks away from the table and talks to some servers and I’m like “why the hell am i here?”

But then this is the point that pissed me off.

He says to me, in front of the other servers of the restaurant, “How’s your gay brother?”

Jigga what?

i was so pissed off that he said that not only to me but in front of his co-workers and friends who i dont even know. it was just embarrassing. i mean, that’s like making a your mama joke. No one is allowed to call my brother gay except for me.

That’s when I had it and Sabbie and I leave shortly after. We tell him that we’re leaving but I don’t think it registers. He is so obliterated that I doubt he could even register an 8.0 earthquake if it him.

So Sabbie and I go to caracas and have a lovely dinner of arepas and beers. The perfect ending to a Sunday evening.

On monday morning I get a text from the bartender “Not sure what happened to you yesterday. Or me. Yikes.”

I was going to text back. But didn’t know what to say. The scorpio in me wanted to respond with something vicious. But the Babyshambles in me just felt sorry for him. He is a wreck. And even if i did say something like ‘i left because you called my brother gay, delete my number” he probably wouldn’t even get it. I decide not to respond and to just erase him from my memory.

Isn’t it funny how a crush can go from so sweet and innocent to just disastrous?

Oh, and how appropriate that I read this today: Depressed Dudes More Likely to Drown Sorrows in Drink

If a guy is named Peter then he will be hot.

i’ve been really into eating these kabobs from the street vendor for lunch. so convenient! and i was thinking that more foods should be offered on a stick. because sometimes you want to eat while you walk. and sometimes utensils require too much effort.

these are my ideas for meals that should be on a stick:

lasagne on a stick
french toast on a stick
baguette and brie and apple on a stick
chicken caesar salad on a stick
pancake with bacon on a stick
biscuits n gravy on a stick
california roll on a stick
cubes of mac n cheese on a stick

So I figured out one of the reasons I was stressed out about my brother’s visit and I think it’s because I’m kind of resentful of his girlfriend. I won’t be his number two girl anymore (after my moms) and that made me a little sad. He even told me that she reminded him of me which is weird–is she a bitch, too? Anyway, I’m excited that they’re coming. I went to trader joes last night and bought all these snacks that I figured college freshmen would like. i had to avoid the stinky cheese and prosciutto and just stocked up on chips and cookies. I guess these snacks are more for me than my bro. Ha.

Um, so we all know that i have a high tolerance for reality television and that i have a propensity for becoming addicted to certain tv shows (LOST, 30 Rock, Yo Gabba Gabba) and my current addictions are The Paper (MTV’s reality show about a high school newspaper. So cute!) and Bravo’s Work Out.

I love The Paper because I had always wished that my highschool had a school paper but the administration wouldn’t fund a newspaper club because we were a performing arts school and kids already had so much on their plate. So in my junior year i started my own underground paper and called it The Earthworm (get it?) and lassoed my friends into writing columns. I used my lunch money to make all the copies.

The Earthworm lasted one issue. But it was a darn good issue!

And then last night I was watching Work Out and I’m embarrassed to admit this, dear readers, but I cried.

So in this episode Jackie (the owner of Sky Lab Gym) has a heart to heart with one of the female trainers Erica (who has a history of bulimia) and says ” I noticed that you’ve been eating alot more…like practically 20,000 calories a day and you don’t look like you’re gaining any weight, in fact, you look like you’ve lost weight…”

Then Erica reassures her that she’s not throwing up and that things are fine although in life there’s always one thing that’s not perfect and Jackie asks her to explain and Erica says, “Well, I don’t know, I guess there’s the whole dating thing…maybe that’s why I’m eating so much” and then she starts crying and then, oh dear jesus, I START CRYING.

I don’t know if this is a gendered thing but I, along with alot of women, am an emotional eater. When things in my life are fine, I’m very disciplined, I eat in moderation, I work out regularly. But when I’m stressed out I tend to obsess over everything i eat to the point that I write every single calorie down and freak out if i go over.

And it’s sad but this obsessive behavior is usually aligned with feeling unhappy in my dating life. And I think what really triggered it was last year when I tried to re-connect with this guy who absolutely wanted nothing to do with me and it killed me that I couldn’t control the situation and that I couldn’t make someone want to be friends with me. So I transferred these control issues through eating. Or not. I subsisted on coffee and laughing cow cheese (all of this was done in private, of course, and to this day I can’t look at laughing cow cheese without feeling sick). I think you stop eating because you literally just want to disappear. Anyway, things got better. I eventually confided in a friend, in the bathroom of a karaoke bar of all places, and wasn’t going to let this guy be the reason I wanted to disappear.

Aaaaaand now I don’t know how a benign post about cheesy reality tv shows turned into a missive on eating behavior.

I’ve given you too much information. I will have to kill you now.

ed note: This post was originally titled half empty but I changed it because i think,ultimately, i am an optimistic person. And that is the energy id like to project.

ive been really lazy and not capitalizing letters yo.

So my baby brother and his girlfriend are coming to ny tomorrow and staying with me for five nights. FIVE. While most siblings would probably be elated at the idea of their baby brother visiting them, i have greeted this with stress and anxiety.

The thing about my family is that they always, ALWAYS, see me as their benevolent donor, willing to lend my money, my apartment, my time to whenever they need it. And being the dutiful daughter/sister has just further cultivated their dependence on my assistance. If they had a marshall plan for families then i’m pretty sure i could write the charter. Except the Marshall Plan eventually lifted Europe out of their economic woes. I still have no idea how to make my family less dependent.

It doesn’t even cross my brother’s mind that maybe five nights at my small nyc apartment would just be a tad inconvenient. And on top of that, I asked him what his plans are during his stay and he said that since I live in New York, he figured that I could just show them around. Oh, and he’s only bringing a total of 300 bucks with him which means guess who is paying for everything else during his trip?

And while I am sitting here complaining about it, I also feel immensely guilty. Guilty that I am complaining. That I’m a horrible sister and a horrible daughter and why can’t I just show my brother and his girlfriend a good time?

My brother has always accused me of being selfish. And I guess it’s because once I left Miami I never really looked back. Meanwhile, he’s still in college, working two jobs, and even paying for his own plane ticket as well as his girlfriend’s. So I can’t accuse him of taking advantage of me.

I don’t know. I guess family is just stressful. Especially my family. And sometimes it’s just easier to send them aid from a distance then having to actually interact them.

I don’t know what is worse: being completely unaware of your own brattiness or being aware of it and continuing to act like it anyway.

I think I answered my own question.