Well, it’s a lovely Wednesday morning in which I am writing – from my lovely Ford Contour, somewhere in downtown Manhattan. Apparently there was some confusion about who was to do what today and I am waiting for my squad leader, who left to bring a coworker to the airport, to come back to his apartment. I am feeling very much like a stalker. Good times.
So. I’ve managed to miss yet another month in which I should have written more and wasted less time. Unfortunately, I don’t even have the excuse that I was out of the country. I spent most of my time at work, investigating my criminal caseload. There’s nothing quite like invading the homes of those less fortunate and more cockroach-ridden than you, and telling them that they’ve committed a federal crime and they better fess up so you can throw them in jail. I mean really, the fun times never end.
This guy, Doug, with whom I’ve been working a lot lately, even saved me from getting a cockroach in my hair on a recent case. I was leaning against the wall, the cockroach was busy walking down the wall, and inches before the two of us meeting, Doug sends out the warning. I am eternally grateful. In fact, Doug even went one step further and got on his hands and knees in the kitchen to go through the trash in search of evidence for my case. All in a days work, baby, yeah.
In the life o’ Ryan outside of work, Vince and I have been keeping busy. On June 14, Vince formally graduated from Drexel University with a Masters Degree in Software Engineering. Of course, we didn’t attend the ceremony, but we reminisced about it on June 15th when we attended his cousin Bruno’s graduation party – he just finished up at the naval academy. Vince’s favorite part? The jealousy that comes from wishing you too could be paid for flying planes for a living. My favorite part? The MUMMERS!!!! They came, umbrellas and all, from our old stomping ground of South Philadelphia. For those of you who wonder – what the hell is a Mummer?! – I have the following for you: http://mummers.com/. They have links for all the Mummers clubs.
Well, we spent that Sunday afternoon with Vince’s Mom, Joe, Grandmom, Grandpop, and we even saw his sister Nicole and her husband Christian for a few seconds (before they quickly departed to “go take care of their new puppy”).
Oh shoot, I just figured out that I got the dates all wrong…not that you care, but Vince did officially graduate on June 14, but Bruno’s graduation was the Sunday before, on the 8th. Now don’t you all feel better knowing the right dates – but even more so that Ryan is losing her mind at such an early age?
The day before Bruno’s party, we were scheduled to attend Field Day Fest here in NY – an all day music festival held at Giants Stadium. The headliner was Radiohead, but also scheduled were Beth Orton, Beastie Boys, Elliott Smith, Blur, Underworld, Liz Phair and Beck. Originally it was supposed to be a two-day camping event in a huge field in Calverton, NY, but there were problems with permits at the last minute and they changed the venue to Giants Stadium and reduced to festival to one day.
To make matters worse, god cried all over us all day. In other words, it poured. So Vincent and I decided to attend the show later in the day, in an effort to stay out of the weather but still see the bands we wanted to see. I saw about ten minutes of Elliott Smith, who really did not impress me at the time, and then we went to our seats in the stadium to wait for Beck to come on.
Oh yes, I waited and I waited. Vince went out to buy me a hot dog. And then I waited again. After about a half hour of thinking the stage crew was setting up for Beck, the girl next to me says, “You know Beck isn’t playing right? He went to the hospital.” And it was true. Beck was accidentally hit by a stage crew member who was carrying something while watching Blur play and suffered from some minor rib damage – although nothing was broken. Eventually the Beastie Boys came on – now, I’ve seen the Beastie Boys play before and I know they are absolutely brilliant when it comes to producing their records. They make sounds and harmonies nobody else would even consider that end up sounding fabulous. All that aside, they suck. More than Hoover, they suck. They cannot sing. They do not dance. I am not entertained.
After about twenty minutes of deliberating, Vince and I went home, missing our chance to see Radiohead. We just could not wait the two hours until they came on stage.
So now I am actually ready to talk about Vince’s graduation weekend. We went to the Shore and staid at his father’s house in Margate. We rode bikes and shopped for the apartment on the Bay in Ventor – Vince’s father had some work done on the apartment and threw everything out so we had to buy a new couch, table, chairs, mattress and spring box, and bed frame. Vince and I even had the pleasure of digging through all the “wonderful” piles of god-knows-what that were still in the apartment. We were supposed to pick out things to throw away, but it turned into a case of us picking out things to keep. There was almost nothing we needed. Sometimes I laugh at how similar Vincent and his father are: they both like to collect things and then, even though they don’t even remember they have it, they don’t want to throw anything away. Personally, I think that your belongings mean more to you the fewer you have. It’s like that law in economics of diminishing returns. The more you have of something, the less you appreciate it. Know what I mean, jellybean?
Now I say all this because when we got back to the apartment a few weeks later, the Senator hadn’t allowed Ruth to throw away half as much as we wanted to. I was amused.
So that was my weekend.
The following weekend, or the last weekend in June, Vince and I spent our first weekend on the town. Saturday found us at Café Gitame for brunch, a quaint little French shop down in the West Village. We walked around window shopping for a short while before attending our first Broadway show: Baz Luhrman’s La Boheme, adapted from the opera and set in the 1950s. Vince adored it, as he adores the opera of the same title, but I loathed it. It was incredibly difficult for me to stay in my seat and not walk out on it like Starr and I did when we went to the ballet. If it weren’t for the fact that Vincent was so enthralled, I would have run, not walked, to the nearest exit (which just so happened to be directly to my left – not that I was looking for one, mind you).
So then we window-shopped some more and ended up meeting my friend Andrew for dinner. Down from Massachusetts for the weekend, Andrew was visiting with his old high school buddies who now live in NYC. We even brought him back to my apartment for a drink before he returned to his gallivanting with the boys. Andrew says, and I quote, “You have a very nice apartment, I must say. One of the best that I've seen out of all my friends, and certainly the one with the most posters/photos of breasts on the wall.” Now if that isn’t an advertisement that will pull all the customers in, I don’t know what is!
That Sunday we devoted to museums. Lucky for us, we made it to only one. The Museum of Sex. It certainly was an adventure just getting there. Apparently, the Museum of Sex is on the Gay Pride parade route. Vince and I had to cut off some transvestites and boys in drag to run across the street without being run down by a float! It was a scream! We only took a few photos, but there we were: in the midst of gay boy heaven.
The museum was incredibly interesting. And that means a lot coming from someone who really hates museums. I can go through something like the Met, or the Louvre for that matter, in about 30 minutes. I am too bored to do anything but yawn and run through the exhibits. But there, at MoSex, I read every last article on the wall and watched every last porn (and yes, there was porn – all the classics, I’ll have you know!). It was very educational. (Did I mention that was the first time I’d ever seen porn in public? I just can’t get over it!!!)
We must have finished with MoSex sometime around 6PM, and we spent another half hour or so with the tarot card reader sitting in the lobby, right by the packets of “Dicklets” and the Betty Paige cut-out dolls. Much like La Boheme, Vince was enthralled and I was skeptical. Every time the tarot lady tried to figure me out, I gave her a blank look. Vince, on the other hand, kept nodding and grinning. Her readings were quite good, if not somewhat general, but her numerology was WAY off. And she even calculated the wrong number for Vince, and then told us about it. It was like, blah blah blah for ten minutes and then, “Oh, that’s the wrong number, but you’re still… and the same still holds true.” Excuse me?
So Vince and I hit a boutique somewhere on Fifth Avenue, near to the Museum, and then it was off to an Irish Pub, across the street from the Empire State Building. And so we ended our weekend.
Finally, the 4th of July. Starr, Vince and I were off to the Shore – this time to the apartment in Ventnor. Lucky for us, they were just finishing up painting and we could move in. A quick stop to Bed, Bath and Beyond for the much needed bedding and we were in like Flynn. Starr and I spent the entirety of the 3rd cleaning the house. Remember how I said the Senator refused to throw everything out? Well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Then we celebrated with a little party of steamed clams and corn on the cob, on the deck by the bay. Beer, wine and everything fine…
Vince and Starr’s friend, Kara, joined us from Philly on the 4th. She brought her boyfriend Angel, and two friends: Rob and Eddie. They called themselves “New York Ricans” and added all the spice we needed to our little party of seven. Most of the day was spent on the beach, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice and vodka (Starr’s tip of the day: As long as it is fresh-squeezed, you can’t taste the alcohol – and it’s true!). Then we joined the huge 4th of July BBQ, held by the Ruth and Mitchell, the Senator’s head staff members who have a condo in the same building as Vince’s apartment.
After tasting the food and swilling some beer, we seven packed up an Igloo of Rolling Rock and headed out on “Friends,” one of the Senator’s boats. We headed for the ocean to see the fireworks…and that, my friends, is that.
So the rest of the time at the Shore was more sun, bike riding every morning, more fresh-squeezed and vodka on the beach, and a ticket for Vincent for having a headlight out on his car (ha ha!).
And so, you can now consider yourselves basically caught up on my life and history. We are spending another weekend in the wonderful world of Inwood, where we intend to catch up, clean up, and ride our bikes. Good times, my friends, good times…
