Permanent Loss

Taking a full time after working freelance is great because now you have a place you can call your home. However, warm security of home is only one of the perks. You also have the new influx of possible friendships you can build with your new co-workers.

In my office, there are two desks. One, obviously mine, looks onto the other and the door to the office. That other desk? It's a bermuda triangle of employment.

The true inhabitant of that desk is on sabbatical at the moment and will be returning in August. In the meantime, the desk is filled weekly (sometimes for weeks at a time) with freelancers.

Working in close quarters with a freelancer, or anyone for that matter, you begin to develop a working-bordering-on-friends relationship. The longer you work with that person and the longer they are here, the stronger the bond you make, and likewise the more you start treating that person like a member of the staff.

But then poof....they're gone.

More money, bad planning, double booking, or any number of factors have pulled this person away from the desk, usually never to return.

The pisser of the whole thing is that some of those freelancers I have considered friends. Peoples I'd like to hang with. My types of peoples.

Problem is, I am still a freelancer at heart, working all the time to make that coin. And they are the same...so we never have time to communicate.

Then there are those I don't click with....in that case, I think it works out for the best...but seriously, it's not you...it's me.

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Scar(r)ed For Life.

About a week ago, we were going out to celebrate the completion of the wife's first year of residency. It was a special night, so we figured we would go to one of the better restaurants in the city, Peter Luger's.

We arrived there, lickety-split. Found the parking lot with ease. Parked. Jumped out and began our walk to the restaurant. Nothing out of the ordinary.

As we made our way down the street, we heard sirens. Still, nothing out of the ordinary. But as we walked to the restaurant, we saw a fire truck approach the intersection pretty quickly. Perpendicular to the truck was a motorcyclist.

He too was moving pretty quickly. The motorcyclist had the light I think, but when he saw the fire truck, he slammed on his breaks.

The next part happened pretty fast, but I think that the cyclist flipped over the handlebars of his motorcycle which was in a low-side fall. As he flipped over, the truck came around the corner. He went under the truck and got caught under the front axle as the truck started to pull off to the side to check out the accident.

They dragged him a good 20 or 30 feet before they slowed to a stop. People were flagging them to stop from the sidewalk. Windows were jammed with on-lookers. And we all felt stunned. We all reached for our cell phones to call 911 as the doctors in my group went to check in with the fire fighters to see if they could assist.

They guy was yelling at the fire fighters. Cursing. But alive.

We went into dinner shortly thereafter. I think that even if we hadn't had this as an appetizer, the restaurant would have just been okay. But it's hard to eat when your heart is in your throat.

He was not cursing in Spanish so far as we could tell.

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Thwap.

When living here, I become slightly barely more thick skinned to the grossness, muck and stink of the city.

Today's 90 degree weather meant a few things. It meant that cross street breezes, which typically are pleasant, are offering a barrage of scents that will destroy your olfactory nerves for the next 25 years. It meant that the dog urine, once thought quaint by NY standards because the dog who did the deed was so adorable, is now a waft of hot stench rising to your nose like a sledgehammer to the face.

Likewise the urine in the subway is only drowned out by the thought of the moisture accumulating betwixt my legs. Every effort is made to enter the station at the very last minute because the slightest movement opens up the floodgates of crotchular perspiration that I can imagine is only rivaled by the Cave of The Winds Tour at Niagara.

But forget all of that for a second. Get it out of your mind. Cleanse your mind and walk down the street towards the decadent air conditioning. You hear the whirring and blowing of other air conditioners in the window above. Until you hear "THWAP!", and realize that someone's grimy, slimy, unattended for a year air conditioner has just unloaded it's compressed spoils in a single huge drop all over your head.

Fuck, I hate that the most.

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Polite New Yorker.

At Gray's Papaya, for one buck, they sell a button that says "Polite New Yorker."

Every time I have myself one of their delicious recession specials (2 dogs, and a 16oz Coke for $2.75) I'm tempted to get one of those buttons.

I think the feeling spawns from my internal need to be nosy and help foreigners (read out-of-towners) when they visit this fair city of mine. An open subway map is a signal flare that help is required. Berlitz? Frommers? It's my calling card.

I thought that in my down time, I would offer some sort of service where for a small fee, food and transportation, I would take people around the city to neighborhoods, restaurants and shops that they wouldn't normally venture to.

I find that each time I travel, if I know someone at that destination I usually have a better time because I get to go to those local hangouts rather than the usual touristy fair.

Sure my being paid to be your friend...but better that than eating at T.G.I.Friday's everynight at hugly increased prices.

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