NYC/LGA: the abbreviated version

This post has the potential to be so long, so, in the words of the baseball legend Kenny Powers, “listen here you beautiful bitch—Imma bout to fuck you up wit some truth:”

I was NYC this past weekend hunting for an apartment while the boyfriend studied 12 hours a day for the bar. I flew out Saturday morning, and even though Michaelnub wanted us to see Bruno with him, I was upset and stressing about the move and finding a new place, I went home, cried, ordered Thai and watched Shaft with Jer.

Flew into LGA Saturday morning & took a cab to Peter Cooper Village. MM met me (behind schedule, of course) and we looked at places there. In the interim, I got an email from BF about another place listed by New York City Apartments that looked good, so I called and drove over to their office (in MM’s beamer, with the top down, natch).

We walked into a sweltering “office” that consisted of just desks and computers in a big room. If the office hadn’t been situated in the Empire State building, I’d have thought it was a front for a prostitution ring. What an impression for my first visit EVER to the landmark.

The shitstain that is New York City Apartments spread across the east side of Manhattan, as some twit showed us apartments. They kept telling me, “For your price range, you’re not gonna find anything in the East Village that’s more than 800 square feet.” I didn’t really care, since it was my job to look and that was why I was there. But I did not expect to see some of the festering places we were led to.

After two decent but tiny places Ana showed us in the East Village, she took us to several shoeboxes. Or tried to. We couldn’t even get into the first building on St. Marks, not that we didn’t have keys. Ana tried them all and none worked. So she started buzzing everyone in the directory.

“Hello, would you be so kind to let me in? I’ve forgotten my keys, I would very much appreciate it.”

20 apartments later, someone let us in, where we passed a sign letting us know that the building is sprayed yearly to deal with infestations. Awesome. A couple apartments later, Ana wanted to show us another 10X10 cell in the same building, but MM and I just walked down the four flights of stairs in the 85-degree heat and said no thanks.

“But you haven’t seen apartment D!”
“Yeah, I’m all right with that.”

We thanked Ana and got the hell out of there, and I called BF’s sister, the Starlet, who offered to show us her boyfriend’s apartment for a basis of comparison.

The comparison showed us that most other apartments are unique, in that they actually use the air conditioning unit, are not shared by four guys (and are therefore filthy), and every room does not normally have a shrine to at least one bong. Things I learned: boys don’t know how to clean, and MM knows what a bong looks like (even a makeshift one from a Pepsi bottle and duct tape).

We headed down to Alphabet City to meet another broker, where we stepped over the homeless sleeping on the hazy street and narrowly evaded being accosted by one of the broker’s disgruntled clients.

At the end of the day with both our feet in blisters, MM and I went back to Peter Cooper where I signed the lease.

The next day I did a whole lot of nothing, except got myself a tingly sunburn and some time with MM’s pup, Cotton Ball, while we waited on Number 2 to return from his night of partying. He had a flight to Geneva at 7:30pm out of JFK and we needed to leave the house at 2pm to get him there. It normally takes 2 and a half hours to get there from our house, but God decided to take a dump on us in the form of SUVs clogging the Verrazano Narrows.

Number 2 didn’t even notice, since he didn’t take his Adderall and couldn’t pay attention to anything for more than 14 seconds. When we were actually MOVING, he looked at the truck next to us and said, “Oh my God, haven’t you ever wanted to just jump from the bed of one truck to another? That’d be awesome.” Later, he wondered what would happen if we slammed into the car next to us trying to edge its nose into our lane. “What if I broke both my arms and collarbone and a leg. Wonder how much money I’d get for THAT!”

Before he left I gave him a hug and three valuable gifts: a business card, a CVS version of the Oral-B brush-ups, and a condom.

But because Cement Hands’ navigation system sucks, I almost missed my flight. I don’t mean “I almost missed it” like I was there 5 minutes before boarding. I mean I almost missed it like I SPRINTED for the gate. I almost missed it like I had 2 and a half minutes before the flight took off. I almost missed it BECAUSE the goddamn GPS says “take a left onto Busy St.” and “wait behind a line of dump trucks until we get to the intersection Impossible to Take a Left,” and then “wait until you’ve been sitting in traffic for 15 minutes before you fucking kill someone before finding an alternate route.”

It was 5:15. My flight left LGA at 6:30.

We pull into LGA at 5:30, and we see a mass of buildings that are not organized. All I knew was I had a flight from Delta. As you can see from the figure below, Delta has its own terminal:

However, what you can’t see is that Delta also has flights leaving from the Central Terminal (Terminal A) and its shuttle flights leave from Area A, the Marine Air Terminal. You also cannot see the line I waited in to go through security in the Delta Terminal, until a second before I entered I was informed that I was in the wrong terminal. I was told to go downstairs & get the Route A airport shuttle to A.

6pm: I got on the Route A bus and was brought to the central terminal. 8 minutes later, first stop: Terminal A. I ran up the stairs and asked where my gate was. What? I have to get on Route B?? I have to the Delta Shuttle terminal? FUCK. I almost started to cry but settled for a nasty look instead, ran down the stairs, got on Route B at 6:10. On Route B, I looked up and saw the airport shuttle map: Route B did not go to Area A, the Marine Air Terminal, aka where the Delta Shuttle is. A TSA guy got on and I asked him if this bus went to the Delta Shuttle terminal.

6:13: “Naw, you need to git on Route A for that.” I almost punched him in the face. Marine Air Terminal is barely part of the airport. It was a 10-minute trip there AFTER I got back on Route A.

It’s 6:22 when i finally get to the Delta Shuttle security spot. “How are you, Miss?” Not good. My flight leaves in 3 seconds. “Understandable.” I shot like a load through security and sprinted to the gate. Again they wanna know how I’m doing. “Out of breath.” Ha-ha, out of breath, she says! I know, I am very fucking funny, just let me on the plane.

Finally, I get on, sit next to some stereotypically, rebellious-via-mismatched-fashion Azn girl, and collapsed in my seat. Called BF, said I made it, please pick me up on time. Don’t forget. Please don’t forget. “In fact, be there early. Please.”

Plane takes off to the worst turbulence I’ve EVER encountered with a possibly epileptic pilot and I am thinking, I ran to catch this goddamn plane and now it will crash and I will die and the last thing I said to my boyfriend was pick me up on time.  Fuck you Alanis Morissette.

To which Trish said, “You are so emo sometimes.”

So the turbulence finally evens out, the stewardess comes through, would I like somethign to drink? Yes, I want the Sutter Home, thank you very much. Chugged it in less than 10 minutes.

I wished it had come with some vodka because I would’ve had myself a red wine-vodka martini.

Trish: Ew.
Me: Yeah, well I was of the mind that death was imminent. So.

In an ironic role-reversal, Trish told me I was being crazy.

“But the turbulence was over! And wouldn’t you want a yummy drink before you died?

“I was afraid it was gonna come back and I didn’t wanna be freaking out when I died. I was so tempted to down the whole bottle of my anti-anxiety meds, but then I was like, what if the plane doesn’t crash and I accidentally kill myself instead? Then that would suck.”

Thankfully, the plane did land, albeit we did a nose-dive into National (thx Delta, selling your stock right now). And my boyfriend was not only on time to pick me up, but he was early and brought puppies.