Draft 1 project 2

I’m sick of the past, the god damn past. Every story I have takes place in the past. It’s happened. Even right now the previous sentence is in the past. So many books and movies and you-tube videos and bloopers and shows about shows, and reality and the dreams are over run by the newly massive population.

Everyone is predictable or I am only meeting the ninety-five percent of the population that is simple and repetitive and thinks they are wheeling or dealing or even honestly believing that they know what they are speaking about. I've looked back on so many situations realizing now what I didn’t fully understand then. I was stupid and I did not get it. I was trying so hard and it’s too many words to explain right this second on this particular paragraph. We will bring this up somewhere randomly in this book. I might have been crazy.

The people who once represented my heroes and models have fallen. Some to fall far, far below myself.

Dominic had once found me in a second hand store named Stella owned by Kathy named after her grandmother that I frequented. I was back to NYC from New Jersey at 10 in the morning trying to get more coke and having a beer to calm down from the long hot drive. He was with Ester at the time and I really loved her and she loved me, as friends. She was Dom’s girl so as sidekick you and the girlfriend of the boss end up spending a lot of brother and sister type of time toghther. I would become Dominic’s sidekick as I sobered up in the weeks that would follow this encounter. He was an awesome speaker, thinker and charismatic man. A good role model.

Closer to now, but still in far in the past I would drop him off at Washington square park or if it was Tuesday nights he would vacation in Central park, five blocks from the show I did every Tuesday. He was looking like shit and nobody was his friend any longer. I didn’t know at first until I had arrived back from Australian where 

I spent the last three previous years. I found a burnt spoon within thirty minutes of seeing him.

I came home for my cousin Jonathon’s wedding to his wife Kitty. Aunt Bette needed some weed and since I was back from a foreign country after three years for more the twenty four hours, naturally ask Josh. I was sitting in Dominic’s apartment and waiting for the delivery guy whose number was still working. I did have to explain I was in Australia and help them remember me but they actually don’t care that much. I was searching for a pot pipe in Dom's room. I found a burnt spoon and a needle and a pot pipe, I smoked. Id talk to him later.

The wedding was in a fire hall and it was fun, it also happened to be, what would have been my third wedding anniversary. They wanted me to pull the garter belt off the bride’s sister; I wasn’t feeling that at all. As much as I am a tough guy I do not want to pull a garter on this day. It was also my grandparents wedding anniversary.

I live with them. Well right now I live with her, Grandpa Dave died a few months ago on his ninety-fifth birthday. The light in his room was on and I was totally annoyed at the nurse’s and grandma and even mom who was visiting. “How come I have to do every f%&king thing around here”? I found him in his bed; he looked the same but drawn and extra still. He was dead, I wasn’t surprised, but I was weirdly calm. It was befitting that I found him and that mom had arrived two days sooner. The craziest part was the fact that the family was scheduled to arrive on Sunday for his ninety fifth birthday party. Which we quickly converted into a funeral. It was the Friday night before or should I say Saturday morning within twenty for hours of ninety five years.

I literally almost passed out standing there in the heat putting the last shovels of dirt on Grandpa Dave’s coffin. Jewish people cannot leave until the coffin is covered. I was wearing an all black suit, Grandpa Dave was wearing my grey wool pencil cut style suit that I had purchased second hand many years ago, but as Dave aged he had shrunk out of every other suit in the house. I tried to get him buried in my MARC suit.

If the MARC suit went into the grave I could be free from its ghost of my past. Sally was Lisa’s best friend. Lisa was my Australian wife that I had known for about ten month’s total at that time, married for maybe three months. Sally worked at a clothing Public Relations showroom and loaned clothing and shoes out to television shows for their presenters, actors, and guests to wear on the air or in print ads.

I was on television at this time. It was a very low budget music video show called Ground Zero and I did little badly acted ads for the local liquor company and then for Sony. I borrowed the suit for the Sony sketches before Lisa left and finished with it after she was gone. I was too fucked up and bent up and angry and hurt and mad and vengeful and fearful to even consider going near Lisa’s friends so I just held the suit to a later date which slowly just became a straight out theft. I still have it. Grandpa Dave was too small. It’s is a beautiful suit. I should have returned it; I should have done something about the suit and maybe something about the Lisa marriage situation as well.

Lisa seemed to like me, I liked her back. She cocktail waitressed at Shine and she never ever stopped dancing. Once I got to know her she said she loved the job because she could always dance while there. Her skin was soft white with pretty and light colored freckles. Her hair was brown and shiny and long. Her eyes were blue. She had an arch in her back that caused her bum to be shapelier and made her appear to push her chest forward with beautiful full breasts. She was quick to smile and quick to laugh. He voice sounded like Drew Barrymore’s and her Australian accent never shone through. She always wore a slip and cowboy boots.

She had a more naive vibe then the rest of us. Because she was new in town. “If you live in NYC long enough you can actually watch the evolution of a person who has just arrived all the way till they fully acclimate to the lifestyle. Men like to get to the girls before they become street wise because they will be just hard and unemotional and street wise soon enough. Plus they are more difficult to sleep with once they toughen up.

Then there are the simple things such as trust. Old people in New York simply do not trust. New people do, why wouldn’t they, aren’t good people trustworthy? Anyone who isn’t from an urban environment or a road weary world traveler must learn the ropes of the city. Once you have city experience and develop truly street wise thoughts you will be able to survive any modern social circle until you die.

I’d just come off a nightmare relationship with Tamara. She was either stupid or deceitful, ill still never know. But I loved her roommates and the apartment they all lived in made me feel at home, so naturally I moved in with her. Earlier in that year but after a year and a half of me being completely sober, Ethan showed up sweaty and twisted for my birthday with the gift of cocaine. Needless to say I lost all my waiter jobs due to this and was once again given a lifestyle change via Ethan. He got me a job with him in the marijuana distribution industry. It was a great job; boss was lenient and always strung out on heroin. The customers loved us. I smoked weed with the customers at every other delivery, their treat or tip. I purchased tons of cloths and best of all; at this job cocaine abuse doesn’t constitute job loss.

Don’t get me wrong it was the nineties in New York City, when Ethan and I met we were working as waiters in the Bowery Bar and once during a waiter and staff meeting the owner asked us to “please do fewer drugs during your shift!” “Don’t order drugs from the pay phone because it’s bugged,” and “don’t sell drugs to the other owner because he is doing too many”.

Ethan and I went separate ways for awhile because we weren’t really Seeing Eye to eye. It wasn’t that we had differing moral issues and beliefs or because we had separate political views. It was the fact that I was snorting blow and he had started shooting heroin.

I had switched over to hanging out with Stuart because Dominic was now getting married and Stuart and I were both left without a proper wild party friend. I tried bringing Ethan around here and there but he wasn’t really fitting in because the dope was starting to make him paranoid and withdrawn.I worked at Shine in many odd capacities; Shine was this week’s hottest nightclub in NYC. I would do comedy sets or host, some nights I held the rope for those allowed in and almost rejected the editor of Rolling Stone one evening, thankfully, one member of the rock band the “Fun loving Criminals” let me know what was up. Other nights they would pay me to sit in a booth and drink free whisky. I only made one hundred a night for drinking free whisky, Dominic and Stuart each made two hundred a night to sit in the booth and drink free whisky.

I also made illegal substances find their way from the people holding them to the people wanting them. My friends and I spent quite a bit of time in the club basement, which unbeknown to the common customer was actuality the VIPs room of VIPs rooms. That was until I was blamed for smashing the staff’s stereo and we were all banned from the basement. Stuart did it, but I’m not a rat. I actually found out from someone beside Stuart. He eventually confessed.