Fashion (**makes me**) Week

February 10, 2007

– Saturday night -- before I knew it was 1230am -- I had left a friend’s birthday party where there was delicious sangria and killer fair-trade brownies, and suddenly I was in some karaoke bar in Korean Town with my two Russian comrades. They had wanted to leave the party and all its fair-trade goodness to meet up with this Jewish chick that had rented out a private karaoke booth for herself, her very fashionable, very chic, British-Asian model-friends in town for fashion week and their equally fabulous gay groupies.

There seemed to be some sort of theme to the karaoke room – dress up as a dead singer or something… All I knew was that there was tons of toilet paper being thrown around, a girl with very pointed features and facial hair glued on in a bid to channel The King; a gay guy in nothing more then cow boy boots, a jungle print thong, and a curly blond wig slamming his junk around to the beat of, what else, Holiday; and a tall, waif-like, pale-skinned girl in stilettos waving her her black satin bra over her head. Of course, all the Asian models were super-thin, were clustered together in a corner chain-smoking cigarettes, and had on over-sized glasses to hide their coked out pupils.

There was enough Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silvers littering the room to get an entire cheer leading squad naked and muff-hungry, and enough cocaine sprawled out to make even Kate Moss blush, so even just while singing the evening’s price-tag was elevating exponentially! Clearly this wouldn't be a problem if I myself was a famous fashionista, but, unfortunately I was just along for the ride on a friend's invite, as my lowly salary lacks the six plus digits necessary to support such fortune-fueled karaoke hi-jinks. Clearly something had to be done that would allow me to escape the tab of this escalating coke-a-oke -- I noticed the Asian girls ogling at me from across the room. One was enticing me to sing a song, so I glanced briefly through the songbook before grabbing a mic.

Afterwards, we ended up in some over-priced, over-hyped LES bar that was over-crowded with people feeling overly fabulous, and I was way over the coke I had done earlier in the evening, that I overtly insisted that myself and the Russians quickly bolt down the street to embrace a Halal restaurant, where I think I single handily wolfed down a 16-inch mixed kebab platter in about 5 minutes, salad, rice and all!

Ahh, the joys of Mideast meat!

That, my friends, was my Saturday night in Manhattan. And all that fun, including cab-ride home, only ended up setting me back $45 when all was said and done. Why the sudden Rachel Ray priced tag? Let's just say that I would be Big Trouble in Little China if all Asian women continued to shove twenty dollar bills in my underwear band every time I sang a few verses from an Usher song.

guilty pleasure....

I had been coming off of a messy breakup – you know the type where it's just so bad but the sex is oh so good, and the person in question is so f'ing hot – that letting go, although the best thing for you, remains the last possible solution you're willing to pursue because it entails the end of the kind of super hot celebrity sex/paparazzi lifestyle that most people (except for celebrities) rarely get to experience in their lifetime. Despite the lies, the escalating drug use, and the unpaid gas bills (big problem in Chicago during the winter), you try to focus on the quality fragments of the relationship (the sex, the parties, the free drugs, the warm body beside you at night) until you realize that the 'best parts' of the relationship are just the mirror image of the worst, and your perception (tolerance?) of the person all depends on whether or not you're looking in the mirror at a given moment or at the person directly.

In any case, like any early 20-something, drama=love, and I didn't know any better, and I was hurting, and driving in my car for no particular reason other than to clear my head, and then a friend of mine called – I picked up the cell phone -- blew right through a red light -- because the friend was calling to inform me of a party that night which would contain, amongst things like Xboxes 360s and Turbo (Flippee) Cups, my Ex, fashionably fresh and flourishing once again in my hometown.

I pulled down a side street, parked my car, and sparked a bowl. The obvious question being: was I going to go to this party – and if I did, was it going to result in something destructive, again? More importantly, wasn't I over all this Jr. High nonsense? Hadn't I already rubbed enough salt into my wounds?

Lately I had been driving without the radio because the noise it emitted would only augment my lovesick headache, but right now I needed some auditory distraction.

And that's when my guilty pleasure found me! Since my Paris Hilton wannabe cousin had changed all my radio presets to dance stations when she borrowed my car the previous week, Chicago's Killer Bee hijacked my speakers when I turned the radio on, right at the start of a yearning Janet Jackson from the early 90s singing, 'Again.'

And everything about the song -- from images of a youthful Janet, to the gentle melody and sing-song nature of the words, to the apropos scenario of the song-- washed over my exhausted body and adulterated mind like a saccharine tsunami. The next thing I realized -- probably ten minutes had passed and Janet had given way to Avril --and I was bawling like a seven-year old school girl who had skinned her knee on the playground.

I wiped my eyes as best as I could and immediately drove home and downloaded all versions of the song from Rhapsody. I had the speakers on full blast, just lying on my bed, thinking in my head You tell' em, Janet! You know better – don't fall for that poison again, indulging in pure, emotional cathartic release, when my roommate who most people would think was gay unless they knew him, entered my room, professed his affection for this song as well, then informed me of a little film called Poetic Justice, and we must have watched the film at least twice that night while drinking whiskey and hitting bongs. Even though I must have cried myself through a box of Kleenex, I avoided my ex, and the party.

In spite of my best intentions, because of that phone call, ‘the memories came back to me in my mind’ full force, so thankfully my wounded heart and jaded soul managed to find recluse in the amniotic comfort of booze, drugs, the arms of my roommate, and a Jackson.

Although I fell asleep listening to that song on repeat that night on the couch, the next morning I woke up feeling refreshed. To avoid checking my cell phone for missed calls from my ex, I focused on cleaning my room, at which point I found my Beck: Sea Change, album, and despite its pinkish decor, I popped it into my CD player and finally parted ways with Miss Janet and Mr. Beam in favor of the manly break-up album I should have been listening to weeks ago.

My Phone, My Camera, My Pimp

Like my new tits? Exclaimed a text message, accompanied by a digital image of said tits, as I checked the inbox of my Motorola camera phone. Many friends have mocked me because of my 4 year+ allegiance to the camera phone format, but they aren't banning these things from public locker rooms for no reason.

When the hell are you ever going to need a camera on your phone? Who cares if you spot a celebrity, the image is so grainy anyways? Justified objections, to be sure, but the grainy images sent and received by my phone only added a requisite seediness to its pimping pastime.

Anyways, this serendipitous, titty-text message from an ex made its appearance during a friend's graduation party. I quickly excused myself from the party hubbub in order to lock myself inside a bathroom to send an equally titillating response. Let me just say that these cameras' wide angle lenses make it quite simple to produce images which have large amounts of one's body in them even though they were shot at relatively close distances. A few additional seedier picture messages are exchanged before I receive the money shot – one greasy gash rearing to go. I zipped myself up, exited the bathroom, and subsequently left the party.

Through further text messaging, we agreed to meet up at a parking lot near an expressway. She was in town from Indiana on business and had recently purchased a Nissan Murano. I hadn't been fucked recently, lest alone in a Murano, so I figured what the hell.

Under a starry night, we met in the parking lot and I quickly hopped aboard her Murano. A few pleasantries were exchanged – she recently became an RN, was actually on-call for her hospital, was considering going to med school, had just bought a new condo – I briefly discussed the party I had just left. Then came the obvious awkward silence before I finally told her I could just go (more polite than just whipping my wang out).

No! No! Stay! Stay! She insisted. After all, I hadn't seen her new assets yet. So we drove a few blocks to a dimly lit side street and got done what we came for. Afterwards, she dropped me back by my car and I told her I'd call her and of course I didn't. We were a fairly text book example of two people just slightly hot enough to never really connect much above the belt.

Which got me thinking – I could now use my cell phone to blatantly entice ex-lovers with my erect member without ever having to build up any false pretenses; they'd take the bait or they wouldn't. My camera phone even cut-out the seemingly pathetic and random, I was just thinking of you (subtext let's fuck) phone call that I'd have to resort to just a mere 4 years ago. And hot people would much rather fuck than talk anyways, so my camera phone now paved a silent, yet direct pathway to pent up pussy!

Seven out of ten times, a salacious picture message sent out to my circle of fuck buddies has produced fun, slippery, (sometimes even slimey) results, causing me to think about my phone in quite a different light. My pocket-sized pimp has infused sexuality and technology in a creepy, albeit effective and affordable fashion, that could potentially retard my relationship skills more than I ever thought possible.