Happy Valentine's Gay

Here we are again. It’s February. It’s time for chocolates. It’s time for potpourri scented teddy bears. It’s time for diaper wearing babies to go around shooting people with arrows that make them fall in love. Awwww. Isn’t that sweet. Except for one thing. When you shoot an arrow into someone, there’s a very good chance that THEY’RE GOING TO DIE. And if they happen to make it to a hospital in time, they’re still likely to have a very bad month. “Oooo look, I’ve got a love arrow in me. And gangrene. Thanks a lot asshole.”

Face it people. Valentine’s Day is gay. See it even rhymes. You think that’s a coincidence? Now I know I’m not the first one to complain that Valentine’s Gay is nothing more than a Hallmark holiday. But the real reason I hate Valentine’s Gay is that it has turned into a giant bribe between two people. Valentine’s gay is a GIRLY GIRL holiday. Guys don’t like this crap. They only pretend to like it, because what they really like is fucking. And ever since this stupid holiday was marketed, the recipe for fucking on and after the 14th has been buying crappy chocolate and pink cards with nauseating text. Guys also enjoy when we do things like cook, and not bitch. And since it’s pretty hard for most of us to cook a proper meal and bitch at the same time, they buy us dinner, chocolate and pretend to like this fucking holiday. And if they don’t, we withhold sex. This isn’t love, people. It’s cleverly masked mutual hatred.

And if he actually likes Valentine’s Gay, sorry, babe. Your man is a homosexual ticking time bomb. It may not be till you guys get married and have two kids, but sooner or later you’re gonna come home to find him plugging away at the sweet cheeks of your “eclectic, artistic” neighbor.

To help illustrate Valentine’s gayness, I’d like to get a little help from Hallmark. Here are a few examples of cards that the in-the-closet gay homosexual ticking time bombs will be presenting to their sex withholding bitchy girlfriends on the 14th.

“You and I are connected in a way that goes beyond romance, beyond friendship, beyond what we've ever had before...We're soul mates. I can't explain it. I just feel it.”

Yeah, maybe you can’t fucking explain it because you’re not smart enough to see how stupid you’re acting. Oooo baby, me wub you. Wub make me feel good inside. Wub make me feel not so much like retard. Wub make me forget dat my bus short.

And another...

“I look into your eyes and I see the sparkle and warmth that first made me fall in love with you. I hear your voice and the sound soothes and comforts me as it always has. I feel your touch and I am complete. You fill my senses with all that is you”

Yeah. That really gets me in the mood. So does the vomit I just got all over those satin sheets. Oops.

I’m sure some of you are probably pitying me. “Oh this poor girl got her heart broken by some asshole, and she’s too hurt to see how precious love can be.” Well, sorry to throw you off, but this isn’t the ranting of some jaded broken hearted girl who has to keep wiping away the tears so she can see what she’s typing. I’ve got the Rican. I’m happy. That’s enough. And we don’t need to prolong sex by exchanging scripted nonsense by wannabe writers who probably dabble in spoken word and listen to Savage Garden. (Plus, cards in the bed puts us at higher risk to paper cuts in places I’d rather avoid being sliced.) My happiness has simply provided me with enough clarity to realize that Valentines Day is gay.

That, and when your freelance job doesn’t provide you with health insurance, avoiding contact with flying arrows is always a sound financial decision.

i'm too sexy for this day

I have to work all weekend. Friday night. Saturday. Sunday. And holiday Monday. On a crappy brief that I’ve been struggling with for the past week. My writing has been shit. I’m really fucking depressed about it. I barely see the Rican. I’m really fucking depressed about that.

I was six-hours-of-sleep-bleary-eyed this morning, crawling up the stairs from the subway, while I pondered this mess. In front of me was this huge black guy. Arms and legs hanging haphazardly at his side. He was probably drunk. But at the time I wasn't thinking about that, I was just trying to get past.

I don’t know about you, but I like to walk up stairs quickly. Sort of a jog climb. The type who trudge very slowly step by step up the stairs in front of me are the type that make me rush home and compose a blog about people, as why I dislike them so.

This guy was zigging. And zagging. And walking very fucking slow. I tried to zig and zag around him, late for work, trying to get past. I finally found my exit hole and, careful to say excuse me, quickly slipped through it, and made my jog up the rest of the stairs. Totally normal, right?

I’d made it past the gate and onto the sidewalk, where I resumed my internal self-reprimands about how I’m New York’s worst writer.

Then I heard behind me, “Bitch! You think you’re cool like Tyra Banks, bitch?”

I turned around to see him, the big black guy. His arms were no longer haphazardly hanging, but now flailing. And he was following me at a pretty fast pace.

While I did appreciate the super model nod, I’d like to point out that it’s a pretty inaccurate comparison. Ok, I may stand above your average girl height-wise. But anybody who’s seen me recently might notice that I’m not that well, er, tan. My skin color has fully assimilated to the color of a white New York native. Even in my darkest of West Palm high school laying out days, I don’t think I still could have ever been mistaken for an African American supermodel. So thanks for the shout out, but you might wanna check your references.

References or not, he was still following me.

“This ain’t no test, bitch. This for real, bitch!"

Then I heard glass shatter. I looked behind me, to see he’d thrown a glass bottle in my direction.

“This ain’t no test, bitch!”

Ok, I think it’s time to walk faster.

More glass. More screaming. And then THUD! I probably shouldn’t have looked back but I turned around anyway.

He was hitting, and I mean really smacking the hell out of everything on the sidewalk he walked past. Punch the payphone. Bang the bus shelter. And the worst part was, no one else around me was paying any attention.

CRASH! More glass bottles. “This the real thing, bitch!”

Luckily I made it to a crosswalk. The Don’t Walk sign was flashing. But I ran across anyway, eventually holding up traffic as the cars waited for me to get to the other side. But I made it, safe on the side-walk with him blocked by the now moving traffic. But I'd escped him, only to face the very “real thing,” of a very bad day.

At work I couldn’t write a headline to save my life. It was bad. Really bad. I could tell my CD was doing everything he could to keep from screaming at me and kicking me out of the office. Writer’s block has had a hold on me for over a week. Or maybe it’s not even writer’s block. I’m just making excuses for the fact that I can’t get my mind wrapped around this brief. Instead of screaming at me, (which he doesn’t do, by the way) he channeled that frustration through a little light ridicule. But I can usually spot the truth in jest. And coupled with my own frustrations of not being able to write, it felt like shit.

Then I left a blank Word document at work, to go to… work. When I got to the club, I glanced at the schedule for next week to find my name. But it wasn’t on it. “It must be some mistake, I thought.” But as it turned out, it was the “real thing.”

Last Saturday night, a table came in the club, on the condition that they would by a bottle. The door-man sat them in my section, gave me their credit card and IDs and walked away. I was insanely busy, so I promised them I’d be back in two seconds. When I came back they told me that they’d changed their minds and weren’t going to by a bottle. When this happens, I’m supposed to escort them back out of the club. They’re admitted on the condition that they’re going to spend $350+ on a bottle, not buy 4 or 5 drinks for 50 bucks. But since I was busy, I just told them to leave and showed them the door. Instead of getting security to escort them out like I’m supposed to. When the door staff asked me what the guys bought that night, I told them I’d kicked them out.

Today my manager explained that to me that later that night, one of the door guys saw them inside the club. I guess they hadn’t left. He asked these guys why they hadn’t left and they told the door guy they’d given me $200, no, let me rephrase that TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS to let them stay in the club. Now, I got no $200. If I knew that I could make those kinds of deals, the Rican would have gotten a much better Christmas gift. But my bitch manager, the one I’ve known for 3 years, decided to believe these guys over me. And fired me.

It rained a lot today. The subway ride home was soggy. So was my head.

So I guess it is true what they say. Being a supermodel isn’t as glamorous as it looks. Even Tyra has bad days.

¡dame mas gasolina!

Being that I am an advertising copywriter (albeit a not very good one) I should try and think of something clever to say if I am going to plug the rican’s designs. Some crispin BK-like copy, but I’m going to use this tactic instead,

please buy the rican’s $hitI AM SICK OF BEING THE SUGAR MAMMA!

We both earn about the same amount during the week. But I haul in truckloads on the weekend. And since I wont let him leave the house in a cocktail dress, he’s forced to spend his Saturday nights alone, dreaming up new designs to earn enough for his monthly eight.

And this was the case way before New York. It’s pretty much been this way since before we started dating. And yeah, okay, I’ve had good luck in the service industry. I’ve always had the jobs where, at the end of the night, I slide $500 in the back of my pocket like it’s nothing. But still, I would so love to believe that one day he might become successful enough to take me out to dinner. Also, if he does achieve said levels of fame and success, these might even be worth a lot of money one day. And best of all, he’s Puerto Rican. That’s in right now. Ask Daddy Yankee.

So have a heart. Buy some $hit. Cause a girl’s gotta eat. (On someone else’s tab)

(And baby, don’t get mad at me for selling it this way. People can recognize insincere copy. And trust me, this was heartfelt.)

the switch (or crappiest and most unorganized blog ever, sorry guys)

I’m sitting in Starbucks during a three-hour intermission between my two jobs. Everyone leaves the office by 6 on Friday. And given that the agency and the club are within a block of each other, (how that happened, I don’t know) I’m forced to sit here in dread of the next 8 hours on the clock.

This is when I must make the switch.

I’m not the first person with two jobs. I think Jamaica has already pioneered that frontier. And since advertising entrance salaries aren’t exactly forgiving, I’m not the first copywriter who was forced to find outside employment. But how many copywriter/ cocktail waitresses are there? I’m sure there’s lots of bartender/copywriters. And perhaps a few restaurant/cws as well. But copywriter/cocktail waitress? It’s like the Skittles’s sheepboy of employment.

In my observation, the smartest ones in the service industry tend to gravitate towards bartending. There are plenty of idiots behind the bar, sure. But the ones in aspiration for callings higher than a Grey Goose martini, seem to earn their interim income flipping bottles. Then you have your waiters. Respect them. They know more about wine than you do. A lot of them are just between jobs. And some just can’t figure out what the fuck they wanna do with their lives. And I don’t think any of us can judge a person for that.

But then you have the cocktail waitresses. A totally different deluded breed that manages to squeeze $80,000 + a year from society, while remaining completely ignorant to anything outside the world of expensive jeans, manicures, and facials. (You are free to interpret facial either way you like.)

I once walked in on a conversation between two of my coworkers who were discussing the absence of high tippers in the past 5 years.

“I used to walk out the club with like $2000 maybe $2500 in my pocket. But, you know, it’s ain’t like that no more.”

“Prob’ly cause of the recession.” I offered.

They stared at me like I had just proudly announced a case of the crabs.

I made the mistake of trying to explain, “You know, 9/11, the .com burst, decline in consumer confidence…”

It was like trying to teach Neitzsche to eight year-old boys. They’d stare at you for a second, and then go back to giggling at each others’ farts.

Yet, I’m one of these girls.

Yeah, yeah…. I’m on my way to other things, my day will come…bla, bah. I’m sure I’ll be the fucking president come February. But for two nights a week I’ve got to play the roll. Because customers don’t want to deal with anything unexpected. They want the same vodka tonic they drank last week. They dance to the same Kanye West song that was playing on the radio while they looked for a parking spot. They don’t want to be confronted with a sarcastic bitter half writer wannabe who’s trying to prove she’s more than this. So, I’ve got to play the role. I’ve got to make the switch. But luckily I’ve got abundant access to the remedy.

I take a shot. It doesn’t do much. I take a second. Score some champagne. That Shakira song sounds a little better now. More Patron? Sure. You sell insurance? Really? Oh my god! My friend used to do that! By the way, that’ll be $675. Eight-fifty, with gratuity.

Enough champagne and I forget about everything. The music is great now. My vocabulary plummets. (Yet my Spanish is strangely more fluent.) If only my Monday morning Starbucks could provide a champagne-like transition back.

On the morning after my two job collision, sore headed, I’ll wake up to another rainy New York Saturday. In between the time I regain consciousness and stumble to the bathroom, I’ll resume my incessant, narcissistic, fruitless pondering. Who the fuck am I? Stupid waitress or half ass copywriter? Who the hell are any of us? Who the hell are you? And why are you reading my blog?