1979 : 7th St.

I found a place, a home of my almost own. I’m sharing it with Nada–she’s willing to sleep in the living room, which is great, cause I’m not. I paid $500 under the table for the rent stabilized lease–we’ll split the rent, $175 a month. It’s a dump, but it’s my dump. It’ll do for now.

I’d found a beautiful place on Avenue D with wood floors & skylights.  Hamid wanted to split it with me, but seriously, how the hell do you get to Avenue D? No cabbie’ll go past First Avenue. Except for that one block, everything east of Avenue A is a fucking war zone.

Hamid had in his head if we lived together we’d actually be living together and wind up married. Uh, no. Tech is mostly foreign men, all claiming to be exiled princes. Hamid is a Persian prince–I’m not sure Persia even exists anymore, but for sure it’s not a place for chubby Jewish girls to call home.

So I took the place on 7th & 2nd, with the radiator sunk half in the floor, the bars on the windows, the holes in the walls, the cockroaches inside and lots of small shriveled babushka wearing Ukrainian women outside, sweeping the stoops. There’s a small bookstore to the right and a little market to the left. The West Village is all touristy, but there’s no reason to be in the East Village unless you live here. Ukranians. Junkies. And me. It’s quiet, cheap, and walking distance from NYU.

I made it through NCC by the skin of my teeth, transferred to New York Tech, and now, NYU. I had to get off Long Island.  I lasted one semester at NYT, what with all the princes running around, knocking on my door, demanding that I cook them dinner. Hullo? Are you out of your royal fucking mind? Cook? I’ve eaten the same meal every single day for an entire semester. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Two slices of Kraft processed American cheese evenly divided onto three Stoned Wheat Thin crackers and a glass of iced tea for a total of nine crackers & six slices of cheese a day. No more. No less. Seriously. I fortify myself with Kahlua & Vodka, sure, but as far as food goes, it’s all you’ll find in my little refrigerator in my little room at the Henry Hudson Hotel. The Henry Hudson (353 W. 57th Street) passes as a dorm for Tech. It’s really just a cheap residential hotel whose current claims to fame are Channel 13 and Nipsey Russell wandering the hallways bothering girls so young they giggle hysterically when he hits on them.

I’d really spread myself too thin there, it was time to go, man, go. Like a pressure cooker with the top nailed down, it was ready to explode. I’d put too much into the mix: My boyfriend, Rey from the Bronx. My other boyfriend, Hamid, the Persian prince. Bobby Lee, someone else’s boyfriend entirely. Maurice, who won’t come when we fuck–he doesn’t want to waste his seed on me & his brother Michael who has no problem with that at all. Milan, a Romanian gardener  & Charles Bronson’s body double, barely speaks any English. George the Greek, another “prince”. Duke, (prince-lite) the box boy from the shoe store. My professor, Abe–I got an A, ’nuff said. Hamlet, and finally, his cousin Tulio who likes to sleep in my bathtub.

It’s a wonder I got to any classes.

dirtygirl wonders...
If anyone has ever really manged to outrun themselves. Is it always “where-ever I go, there I am”…? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.

Posted August 11, 2009 at 12:02 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.