No need to leave New York now that mating season has started!
The first warm day after a long cold winter signals the beginning of mating season in New York. Women rush home after work to throw on their tank tops and sundresses, eager to show the world that they actually have figures under their cocoon shape winter coats and chunky scarves. Wall Street guys sprint from the financial district to midtown where all the cute girls work and wander through the streets ogling women and looking like they might actually throw you over their shoulder and carry you kicking and screaming back to their caves, or newly renovated loft apartments as the case may be.
BR, mating season, i.e., spring thaw, is our fav time of the year. Guys are looking for action and the energy in the city is palpable. Take for example the first day of spring 2008, I could not wait to get out of the office. I refused to be seen on the scene in a suit, but couldn’t possibly commit to going back downtown to change. Laney saved the day by sending an intern over with outfits from the closet at the magazine where she worked. Clad in Thakoon, I was ready to hit the town. As soon as my boss left the office, I called “Tim”, a trader that I was considering dating.
“Heyyyyy, what are you doing? I said.
Tim: “Waiting for you to call.”
“Awhhh, so sweet. You want to do what we do best?”
“Get sh**ty at happy hour and laugh our asses off?” Tim asked rhetorically.
“Exactamundo! Can you meet me at Opia in 20?”
“Does a one legged duck swim in a circle?” That was Tim’s special way of saying yes.
Opia is a popular after work happy hour spot for lawyers and financiers, and subsequently the women who have their sights set on marrying them. Groups of women are already congregating around the bar waiting to be asked to join a table by one of the guys that would hopefully give them that 401k-arat rock.
Waitress: ”Are you ready to order?”
Me and Tim, simultaneously: ”YES!”
The waitress trotted off and our crew rolled in. Laney sashayed in with her fashion crew in tow. Fashion girl number 1 immediately informed the table that they just had dinner at Casa Mono and “oh my god, I had the patatas bravas AND the fried duck egg. That’s like so bad right? I shouldn’t have eaten that.” For as rare as they actually eat, Laney’s fashion friends are always asking questions like that and I never know how to respond. Frankly, I just didn’t feel comfortable commenting on a total stranger’s caloric intake.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to respond because the entire table is suddenly overcome by the smell of pot. Opia is a relatively classy and upscale bar that you go to with co-workers. Pot seemed out of place. Laney went to investigate. A group of Syrian guys were celebrating one their birthdays with a few hits.
“Hey care to share?” Laney asked hopefully.
“Yeah honey, take a seat.”
“Thanks” she said batting her eyes.
“It’s his birthday and we’re out of chairs so you have to sit on his lap.” Done. He was the birthday guy and also the cutest of the crew. The joint hadn’t made its first round before another guy blew up the cute guy’s spot.
“You know he’s married”
Laney was aghast, “How would I know that? It’s your birthday, why isn’t your wife here?”
Laughter, high fives and one jumping 180 chest bump. “She’s not old enough to drink!”
“What? How old are you?” Cute guys says he’s 38. “How old is your wife?”
“20”
“WHAT! Are you a newlywed?”
“No we got married right when she turned 18.” Laney got a final puff in and then rushed back to the table to gossip about the child bride.
A lot of drinking went down in Laney’s absence. She returned to the table to find me and Tim and another girl engaged in a triple kiss. There’s nothing actually sensual about the triple kiss – just the mashing together of too many tongues. Still, it somehow totally completed the first day of spring. The bar was packed. Respectable business people in suits were triple kissing in front of co-workers they would have to see the next day. The Syrians were smoking pot in public. God, life was great when the rules it didn’t apply to you.
I pulled back from the triple kiss. “I am waaaaaaasted, there is noooooo way I’m making it to work tomorrow. No way, Jose!”
Tim: “Seriously, can you take off work tomorrow?”
“Why not? I’ve only taken two days since I started working.”
As many times as this story’s been told, no one can figure out exactly what was said next, but the result was Tim on the phone with his junior associate. He had just gotten a junior associate and was really excited to show him off.
Tim: “Hey, Mikey, it’s Tim, listen, I need a helicopter. What do you mean you’re not in front of your computer? Why do we pay for you to have a blackberry? I need a helicopter tonight to take me and my girl to Atlantic City. That’s right. Get on it. Ok. Call me back.”
Mikey called back. He tried his best but it turns out you cannot book a helicopter on a half hour’s notice.
“Now what are we going to do?” I implored.
The obvious answer of just calling a limousine service to drive us there instead somehow eluded the both of us.
Tim: “You know what? I don’t even like A.C. I don’t know why we wanted to go there in the first place. Planes leave from JFK for Miami like every hour on the hour, let’s just go to Miami for the weekend.”
Tim was on top of it. He stepped outside to book tickets and returned dejected.
Tim: “I can’t find a flight.”
“I am positive flights leave every hour on the hour for Miami, I bet you can’t buy a flight online this close to take off. We should just go to JFK and get on the next flight.”
Tim: “When you’re right, you’re right.”
With that we dipped out without giving a second to thought to the $1,000 tab we were leaving behind that our friends were going to have to pick up for us. We all but skipped out of Opia hand in hand. We loved being us, young, exciting, impulsive people living in the moment. Who didn’t want to be us?
“JFK and step on it!” Tim commanded.
“Yo cabbie, can we get some V back here, crank the tunes!” “Shake, shake, a-shake shake a-shakin!!!!!!!!” We crooned along with the radio. Tim finally found a use for those leather hand grips affixed to the back panel of all yellow cabs. I was seated atop of Tim swishing my hair from side to side performing a pseudo-lap dance in the backseat of cab speeding down the Long Island Expressway. (Warning: this is a move I have perfected over many years of practice, not appropriate for DABITs)
We pulled up to JFK,“Hi, put us on the next flight to Miami.” Tim instructed while I sang Will Smith’s “Welcome to Miami, bien venido a Miami” to myself in the background.
The flight attendant’s lips said, “There aren’t any more flights to Miami tonight,” but her eyes said “and even if there were, we would not let you drunken idiots on it.”
What sort of bootleg airport was this? God, I have to make it big or marry well very soon, not owning a G5 was seriously cramping my style I thought to myself. Just at that moment my derriere started vibrating.
Laney’s smiling face was flashing across my phone screen, “What’s shakin’ homegirl! Get back into the city, I am at the world’s best loft party, there is, I kid you not, a trampoline!” Like only a seriously stoned Laney can do, she had found an amazing loft party seemingly out of nowhere.
“Yo we are confirmed for the 8am flight tomorrow morning,” Tim interrupted.
“K, lane, text me the addy, we are en route back.” “Tim, Don’t fret lover, we’ll be back in time for our flight, why hang here when we can get our drink on for a couple hours, grab a little shut-eye in the cabs, and pick up the bikini that makes my boobs look way bigger than they actually are up on the way back?”
THE END (although hopefully not the last)
