Hello again and welcome to my bullshit, enjoy.
My second semester of college starts tomorrow and I would be lying if I said I was fully prepared to be a normal person again. For those of you that don't know much about me besides these words, I work in a bagel store back on the island. And let me tell you, buttering bagels for a month and listening to crackheads argue over bacon-egg-and-cheeses really is the quickest way to lose brain cells. Its like one of those diet juice cleanses that are in now, but for your mind.
Day in and day out I would either sit in that store watching the clock, or I would sit in my bedroom doing... I don't even know what I was doing because I was completely unproductive yet somehow too busy to clean my room. My parents were thrilled.
So after this year ends I will be 1/4 of the way through college, which means I am 3/4s away from being an adult. Now think about the paragraphs you just read, and yes, you should be scared. For my sake, as well as yours.
Being back in Brooklyn makes my soul feel simultaneously at home and in deep turmoil. While I love the city, its quite easy to erase the things that absolutely suck about it in your memory. I've gotten verbally assaulted by so many homeless people this week I've lost count. I forgot that its possible to be entitled even if you don't have a home. I've been trapped by the MTA for hours on end, wondering why it sometimes takes me longer to get to the city now than it did from Ronkonkoma. I think maybe the most refreshing thing is the creepy eye contact men insist on making with me while I walk down the street. For a city full of assholes who don't give a fuck about you, the male population surely makes it seem like they do if you've got a vagina.
I was running some errands today and wearing what is by no means couture and it was hilarious because men walking opposite me would look me in the eyes, look me up and down, then look me in the eyes again to make sure they actually were checking out a woman. Its the most comfortable I've felt walking down Flatbush Avenue in ages. Did I feel good? No, I feel like shit and haven't truly slept in days. But its strange that the clothes that make me feel so confident in the mirror are the ones that make me feel so jittery and nervous on the street. Ass backwards logic but thats what you've got to use when it comes to piggish men. Plus I suppose it helps that I get hand-me-downs from sixth grade boys. Yes its true and one could argue its sad, but you're paying full price for women's coats and I'm living in the lap of luxury once my little cousins hit a growth spurt.
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that all men suck, unless they're middle schoolers giving you free shit.
I've been trying to save money lately, so free shit is more than welcome. I'm trying to gather funds to backpack across Europe for a while. Yes I know its so original of me, an artist, living in Brooklyn, to want to do such a thing! You can imagine the shock my parents felt. If I smoked cigarettes I'd be right out of a low budget indie film.
But yes, I'm trying not to be frivolous with my money which is immensely hard for me since my backup career is being a personal shopper. In cutting back, I've noticed how many ridiculous things I have spent my money on. People always say "Yes of course I do the same thing" but they don’t. A few months ago I went to the Target down the road to do some light shopping, found a pair of giant googley eyes, and purchased them. Among other miscellaneous purchases, I have Korean peel off lipstick, a small snail pot containing a fake succulent, and a build your own ukulele kit that still hasn't arrived from Mexico.
My point? Not really sure. Maybe its just that I'm stupid. Or that you should never go shopping with me, because I will endorse that sort of behavior. I could say something about capitalism or materialism and make this an insightful story. Talk about how growing up in a consumerist culture has made me this way and its the fault of As Seen On TV ads, or those machines that give you little plastic toys you never need for a quarter. Which, it probably is, but c'est la vie.
Living here is all in all fantastic, its where I want to be once the other 3/4s of college are finished. So its a good head start I suppose and I enjoy that being alone is more of a regularity here. If I went back home to Long Island and ate a meal alone in a restaurant I think it'd be the start of Armageddon. But here, it doesn't matter, which is great because I don't have very many people to sit in restaurants and eat with. Although sitting and eating in restaurants is one of the spending habits I've got to cut back on if I want to spend thousands of dollars to fly to Paris and do what you may ask?
Sit alone and eat in a restaurant. What a life we lead, right?
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