This put me completely over the edge. Neither one of us was prepared for what came next but this was truly the straw that broke the camel’s back. My reaction was completely out of left field, but I was so disappointed and felt like such a fool that I totally lost it.
I started screaming, at the tops of my lungs, “I am so sick of this shit. You invite me over for dinner and then you tell me that we’re actually going out with six other people. I don’t want to go out to dinner! One second you want to be with me and the next second you are totally unavailable. If that’s how you want to be, you can find someone else to do that with, because I’m not that girl!”
Nico was in shock. And to be honest, I kind of surprised myself. I was not expecting to bug out like that and to be fair, Nico never said a word about an intimate evening or even alluded to anything of the sort. He had just asked me if I wanted to have dinner. We’d had dinner hundreds of times. He had given me no indication that tonight would be any different. Despite the fact that all evidence pointed to the contrary, I had convinced myself that Nico and I were destined to be together. I don’t think he meant to drive me so crazy, but he definitely bit off more than he could chew. I certainly don’t think he had any idea how fucking psycho I was going to get. I don’t think I had any idea how psycho I was going to get either.
Because, of course, anyone who is actually not “that” girl does not need to say she is not that girl. Anyone who is not “that” girl certainly doesn’t need to scream she is not that girl at the top of her lungs. Anyone who is screaming “I am not that girl” at the top of her lungs is screaming “that” because she obviously is that girl. She may not want to be “that” girl, but she is. I really never had been that girl before. I had turned into someone that I could not recognize and in screaming that, I think my brain was trying to remind the rest of me that once I had not been broken.
With that, I stormed out.
With the mail next day, I received a letter from the management company at Tishman Speyer. It read:
To whom it may concern,
Please be advised that it has come to our attention that Lillian Aschenbrand has passed away. Please be further advised that the lease renewal that was to be offered to Ms. Lillian Aschenbrand is hereby revoked due to her death. If the apartment is not surrendered, the Landlord intends to bring holdover proceedings against the estate.
Should you wish to discuss this matter further, please contact the office.
Very truly yours,
Joseph Michael Lopez, Legal Affairs Unit
I immediately called good old Herbert Lust, attorney at law. He said, “Sounds like it’s time to start looking for new digs.”
I had lived in almost every neighborhood in New York and knew from experience that apartments are like everything else in the city: it was possible to find something amazing, as long as you were willing to hunt. My list of requirements was not as long as it was specific. The apartment had to be a one bedroom; there was no way I was moving into a studio. And it had to be below Fourteenth Street. Ideally in Nolita. Unless you have millions of dollars at your disposal, living in New York City is all about compromise. Like most great things in life, you have to be willing to give something up to get something else. And I was willing to give up a lot if it kept me from moving into a shithole. I proceeded to e-mail every single person I knew.
A few weeks later, after looking at approximately 4,836 apartments and reaching out to every single person I had ever met in my life, a friend of a friend told me to call Bill Yen. I’d heard Bill was a shady Chinese kid but my friend swore that if anyone could find an apartment within my budget, it would be Bill (read: Chinese Mafia). So I called him with my long list of requests. A few weeks later, Bill called me back and was like, “I have the perfect apartment for you. It’s not on the market yet because it’s in the middle of getting renovated, but if you’re interested, you have to come see it today.”
You’d think people were giving away the cure to cancer instead of letting you rent shitty, overpriced apartments. I was totally skeptical that Bill had the “perfect” apartment for me. To begin with, real estate agents are shady. I mean, they’re pretty much one step above used-car salesmen. Real estate agents in New York City were some of the scummiest liars I had ever met. I didn’t have any experience with real estate agents who may or may not have been affiliated with the Chinese Mafia, but I didn’t have high hopes.
Bill met me on the corner of Mott and Broome, right at the border of Nolita, Chinatown, and Little Italy—and right around the corner from where I had lived with Noam. Bill had shaggy black hair and looked way more hipster than Mafia. He talked really slowly, like he was stoned, which he very well may have been. He nodded at me to indicate that I should follow him, which I did, down Mott Street for about a half a block. He stopped in front of a glass storefront with Chinese writing on it and a bunch of people who were alternately baking, screaming, and watching what looked like a Chinese soap opera. He smiled a toothy smile and said, “This is it.”
I was like, “What do you mean, this is it? You want me to live in a bakery?”
You may think this is a joke, but believe me when I tell you that I had seen apartments with the shower stall in the kitchen—literally in the middle of the kitchen—so this was not outside the realm of possibility. Bill said, “No, dude. That’s it.”
He nodded his head toward a nondescript red metal door with graffiti all over it right next to the bakery. And when he opened it, there was a long, decrepit hallway filled with garbage bags and the scent of freshly baked goods mingled with rotting vegetables. The inside of the building was dingy and dark and literally looked straight out of a whorehouse from the 1970s.
I loved it.
And then I saw the stairs. And there was the compromise—the building had no elevator. Many years ago, I lived in a seven-floor walk-up and wanted to kill myself every single day. I was like, “Please don’t tell me it’s on the top floor.”
Bill was like, “It’s on the top floor, dude, but it’s a great spot and it’s gonna be brand-new.”
By the time I reached the fifth floor, I was ready to collapse. “I guess I should be thankful it’s only five flights, huh?”
Bill was like, “Dude, I live on an eighth-floor walk-up, but my rent is only eight hundred dollars a month, so, you know, whatevs. This is a great spot.”
I hate it when people tell me how great things are when they are right in front of me. It’s like I’m seeing the same exact thing you’re seeing. I’ll be the fucking judge of whether it’s great or not, thank you very much. I walked into the apartment and there was soot and construction shit everywhere and like four Chinese men covered in white paint and dust crouched on the floor eating rice.
Bill was right. The apartment was being gutted. I couldn’t believe it, everything was brand spanking new—wooden floor, the kitchen, the stove, the cabinets, the bathroom, the bathtub—everything. You could tell it had been a studio but they had put a wall up, so now it was a one bedroom. It was a small one bedroom, but still for little old me it was huge. It was in the right neighborhood, it was the right price, and I loved the apartment. But the stairs were a serious bitch. Bill said, “You should check out the roof, dude. No one ever goes up there, so it would be all yours and it’s awesome.”
Of course no one ever went up there. There were probably sixteen apartments in the whole building and I was more than certain that most of them were occupied by eighty-year-old Chinese people. I poked my head out the front door and walked up another set of stairs. I couldn’t believe it. The roof was huge. And it had incredible, sweeping views of lower Manhattan. When I came back downstairs Bill was like, “Whaddaya think?”
I looked at Bill and his hipster haircut and his ripped-up denim jacket and his worn-out sneakers and his dumb beanie hat and I said, “I think it’s awesome, dude.”
Bill gave me a big toothy grin a
nd was like, “I told you it was a great spot. And the owner’s pretty cool. The only thing to know is that the Chinese are like yellow Jews, so as long as you pay your rent on time, you’re all good.”
I handed Bill a deposit and made my way back to Grandma’s. I had some serious packing to do.
When I got back to the apartment later that evening, I realized that nine months had passed since my grandmother’s death, since Noam and I had broken up, and since my debacle with Nico had started. It didn’t take a genius to know that this was my chance for a rebirth. I still hadn’t had any real closure with Noam but at least I could say his name without bursting into tears, and I may have still been a little obsessed but I hadn’t spoken to Nico in weeks. He had called me a bunch of times since my meltdown, but I didn’t answer the phone and I deleted the messages without even listening to them. I hadn’t even watched Law and Order for almost two weeks. I was determined to come back to myself.
Hanna came over to help me gather the last odds and ends. The second she walked through the door I could tell something was off. I was like, “What’s wrong?”
Hanna: “I’m panicking. I’m such a loser.”
Me: “Will you stop saying that! You’re not a loser. What happened now?”
Hanna: “It’s Dan.”
Me: “Oh God. Not him again.”
I couldn’t believe she hadn’t gotten rid of this guy yet. The first time she went out with him—the very first time—he told her he had a girlfriend. And then he told her he didn’t have a girlfriend. This enormous red flag was apparently not enough to make her realize that Dan was super sketchy. So she had sex with him and then she panicked that she had sex with him too soon. The sex part didn’t concern me. What concerned me was that she slept at his house.
If you’re having a one-night stand, don’t linger around and snuggle and start getting delusional about the fact that you’re having a one-night stand. If you’re fucking some guy the first night you hang out with him, you damn well better be prepared for the fact that you are, most likely, having a one-night stand. And let’s be very, very clear here. I don’t think that you shouldn’t have sex on the first date. I don’t think there is anything wrong with having sex on the first date. What I do think is that if you’re having sex on the first date, it should be because you want to have sex. Not because you have expectations for something else. Sex is not a promise for anything. It’s not a promise for a phone call the next day; it’s not a promise for breakfast; it’s not even a promise for sex again. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact I think it’s fantastic. But don’t delude yourself into thinking it’s something it’s not.
When people show you who they are, you should believe them. If you don’t, that’s your problem. Dan revealed his deceptive nature almost immediately and Hanna chose to proceed with him anyway. She was upset early on, because she only heard from him once a week. This had been going on for a few months now. And every week she would call me and say, “I’m panicking.”
And every week, I would ask, “Why are you panicking?”
And she would say, “I’m never going to hear from him again. I know I’m never going to hear from him again.”
But of course he always wound up calling her and why wouldn’t he? All he had to do was pick up the phone to get laid, and there she was. And while he did call her, it was hardly as often as she would have liked. And he continued to do things that upset her and yet she continued to hang out with him. For example, after a night of drinking and hanging out and having sex, he told her not to sleep over and she slept over anyway. Then he woke up super early the next morning and basically kicked her out of his apartment. This was about a week ago and she hadn’t heard from him since, so now she was in panic mode. Again.
I was like, “Hanna, listen to me very carefully. I am telling you, from my experience with Nico, which is not identical but similar enough that it makes me want to throw up, that I would strongly advise you to pay close attention to what I am saying right now. This guy is out. O-U-T. Do you know what that means? It means that you are not to answer your phone if he calls you. It means that you should be dating other people, or better yet you shouldn’t be dating at all. You’re allowing this guy to treat you like shit, which is exactly why he is treating you like shit. You have to change your behavior. You can’t change his behavior. You can only change your own. People treat you the way you allow them to.”
As I was getting my last sentence out, Hanna received a text message from him. “Wanna meet up?”
Hanna looked at me. I was like, “Do not write back. You are not, under any circumstances allowed to write back.”
Hanna glared at me. “What? Why not! I’ve been waiting for this text all week!”
I was like, “Honestly, are you fucking retarded? Have you not heard a word I said? It’s a total booty call. If you’re cool with that, then great, but you’re obviously not cool with that. You don’t want to be his booty call. You want to be his girlfriend.”
“No,” she’s going, “he wants to see me. He wouldn’t get in touch with me if he didn’t want to see me. I think you’re wrong.”
I was like, “Hanna, trust me, I’m not wrong. Anyone who sends you a message at eleven o’clock at night after not having called you in a week is obviously under the impression that you’re having casual sex. If you want to be having casual sex with him, then that’s fine. But if what you’re telling me is true, then you don’t want to be having casual sex with him. And so the only thing you are doing is perpetuating his behavior.”
Hanna glared at me. She said, “I think you’re projecting. Are we talking about Nico or Dan?”
I went on, “Hanna, give me a break. This has nothing to do with Nico. Anyone who knows anything about the world knows that there are two reasons people get in touch with you at odd hours of the night: sex and drugs. So unless he’s in the market for an eight ball, the only thing this guy is interested in is sex. If that’s not okay with you, then do not write him back. It took him a week to get in touch with you and now that he has, it’s almost midnight. And did he ask you how your week was? No. Did he ask you to see an art show with him? No. Did he ask you out to dinner next week? No. He wants to hang out with you and when does he want to hang out with you? Right now. It’s the dictionary definition of a booty call.”
Hanna, glaring at me again: “It’s not midnight! It’s eleven o’clock.”
Me: “Jesus fucking Christ. Fine, it’s eleven o’clock, whatever. It’s closer to midnight than it is to any other time. Give me a break.”
Hanna: “I really think he wants to see me.”
Me: “Of course he wants to see you. Why wouldn’t he want to see you? He has to see you in order to fuck you. He wants to fuck you. But that’s all he wants from you. How do you not get that?”
I got up to go to the bathroom.
When I came back, Hanna was fiddling around with her phone. I was like, “What are you doing?”
Hanna: “Nothing.”
Me: “You wrote him back, didn’t you?”
Hanna: “Yes, but I told him I couldn’t hang out tonight.”
Me: “I can’t believe you. I seriously cannot believe you.”
Hanna, ballistic: “I told him I couldn’t hang out! I did what you said! I told him I wasn’t available!!”
I was like, “Hanna! Don’t you understand that it doesn’t matter what you told him. It doesn’t matter that you told him you couldn’t hang out! The fact that you texted him back means you are available. I don’t know why you’re asking me for advice if you’re not going to take it.”
I know that was kind of an unfair thing to say, but it was so fucking infuriating to sit there and watch her be so self-destructive. It was also, obviously, hitting way too close to home.
Hanna: “Why are you being so judgmental?”
Me: “I am not being judgmen
tal. Okay. Maybe I am being a little bit judgmental. Maybe I’m judging myself. Either way, you’re being really defensive!”
Hanna: “Well, I think you’re wrong. I think I need to tell Dan that I want him to get in touch with me more often. How is he supposed to know that I want to talk to him more if I don’t tell him?”
Me: “If someone wants to talk to you, they will call you. If you need to tell someone that you want them to call you, that is not a good sign. Haven’t you read that book He’s Just Not That Into You?”
Hanna, almost foaming at the mouth: “You’re acting like you know what you would do if you were in my situation. You don’t know what you would do if you were in my situation!”
My lapse in judgment with Nico notwithstanding, you can be shit fucking sure that I knew what I would do if I were in her situation. I knew exactly what I would do if I were in her situation. And beyond that, if I hadn’t been emotionally ravaged, I wouldn’t be in her situation. Obviously I had made some piss-poor decisions, but at least I had an excuse.
Hanna eventually left to go meet Dan. She actually did that. I was dumbstruck by her stupidity but I ultimately gave up. She was like, “Are you sure you don’t mind if I go? He said he really wants to see me. And he sent me a smiley face.”
I shook my head in despair. I actually felt sorry for her. At a certain point, there was really nothing else for me to say or do. She was a grown woman, after all. She was a moron, but she was a good kid, just a little bit misguided. She’d figure it out. I hoped.
Plus, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to get my ass in gear to move. As I was tossing out a few lamps and other odds and ends I had hidden from Uncle Bark, the phone rang. It was Roy. I said, “I’m so happy you called! I have big news! I found an apartment! And you’re going to be so proud of me, I haven’t even spoken to Nico in weeks!”
Roy: “Are you sitting down?”
Me, heart pounding: “Yeah, why?”
Roy: “Are you sitting on that disgusting plastic-covered couch?”
On My Knees Page 10