Crossing Park Avenue

All Billy Blue bullshit aside, I had more important things in life to worry about than the mind games and trolls he would bring to whatever bar I was working at this week. About two months ago I entered into what I like to call my quarter-life crisis where I quit my miserable job making eighty cold calls a day at a market research firm so I could avoid jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, to rather spend my days focusing on my writing career while continually kicking myself for ever quitting my job in the fashion industry, and bartending all along the way to pay the bills (which sadly no longer even included basic cable).

About one month into the "post-real job" phase of my quarter-life crisis, between dealing with beyond inebriated Europeans who vomited on each other and non-tipping college kids who called me fat, I quickly grew sick of working full-time in the bar industry. I felt like a vampire, going to bed at 4:00am, waking up at 2:00pm, and wandering from Starbucks to Starbucks on the Upper East Side just so I wasn't stuck in the lonely melancholy of my silent, cableless apartment for hours on end. It was a sad, pathetic version of Twilight, sans the blood and flock of 'tweens following me around.

Not only was my professional career and mental stability at a crossroads, so was my relationship with Alejandro. I felt as if I was crossing Park Avenue but didn't make the light in time, so there I was, standing on the center median with the dying tulips of the summer past, with cars and cabs whizzing by me on each side.

On one side of the avenue I had my friends like Annie Smalls, Jenny Saurs, and Pookie. Annie had just moved into a new apartment with her boyfriend while Jenny and her boyfriend had just bought an apartment together in Hoboken, spending the past month thigh-high in bathroom renovations and the trials and tribulations of picking out a new mattress. Then there was Pookie who was recently engaged, her free time now consumed with wedding dresses, flowers, venues, and one very demanding, soon-to-be mother-in-law.

Conversely, on the opposite side of the street were friends like Emily, who was still recovering from her traumatic Saturday night of bringing home a 5'11'' nameless blonde in a Red Bull and vodka haze. After coming to in the shower with flashbacks of the Stumble Inn and penetration, she found the nameless man face down and naked on her futon. In between a slurred conversation and Emily trying to push the John Doe out the door with his pants still in his hands at 6:30am on Sunday morning, a phone call to Emily's mother back in Wisconsin was somehow placed, and a conversation that a mother should never hear was overheard from an odd 900 miles away.

And then there was me and my relationship with Alejandro smack dab in the middle. Over the few months we'd been dating, we had established the boyfriend-girlfriend titles, the exclusivity, the routines, and more. But between my new lifestyle as a writer/bartender working five nights a week and Alejandro's schedule as a real estate broker with only Saturdays off, I didn't get to see him as much as I used to back in my nine-to-five days. One of us was always tired or hungover or stressed. We enjoyed each other's company, no doubt, but life in general was tough, not to mention the pressures of New York City, the high cost of living, and the even higher cost of stress that came with it all. So last night when a customer berated me for not making his Cosmopolitan with Absolut, although he never specifically ordered Absolut, I had reached my breaking point (and for the record, no straight man should ever order a Cosmopolitan in public, and this man was straight, and therefore deserves a Cosmo made with rubbing alcohol).

So when my shift wrapped up around 12:30am and I called Alejandro only to be sent straight to voicemail as he was out drinking with his friends, all of my pent up anger and frustrations of failed careers, relationships, making rent, and goddamn Cosmopolitans came out in an irate string of BBM's to Alejandro--not one of my finest moments.

I finally received a reply to my relentless messages this morning at 11:17am saying:

Your behavior is ridiculous. I don't want to see you today or tonight. Please respect my decision.

And Alejandro was right. My behavior had been ridiculous and I couldn't take it back. So there I was, stuck in the middle of Park Avenue, alone.

So Happy Halloween, Upper East Side. I'll be the lonely, somewhat slutty Chilean miner at the end of the bar drinking alone...