The Asyulm

Saturday, 19 July 2003

New York City is dirty and crowded. I realised that yesterday, as I walked from Grand Central to Kristen's apartment on 82nd Street. The gritty compactness is something I like, and that is lacking in Los Angeles. Everything in LA is clean and sterile and sealed off. Cars whiz by, windows up and AC blasting. Many buildings are mod 60s-style architecture with no mouldings or trim and plain pastel paint jobs. There is no downtown, no central hub of humanity as there is in Manhatttan. There are only towns crowded atop one another with impersonal, overbroad boulevards connecting them. West Hollywood, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, downtown... whether seperately incorporated or not, they are all individual towns with their own main streets and residential areas. Los Angeles is, as many have said before, a big group of suburbs.

I love New York; I fill this diary with glowing admiration for the city every time I come home. I love the visceral reality of it, I love the gruff, no-bullshit attitude, I love the neighbourhoods, I love walking around and absorbing it all osmotically. Last night was a lovely walking night, after the thunderstorm. I went out with Kristen and we met up with Piyush & Co. I was drunk and dancing like a silly little harlot and then I made out with this British guy, although I'm not sure that any of my party saw me. I didn't think about Piyush once the entire night, even though he was there. The fact that I so thoroughly didn't give a whit about what he was doing is the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. In Hippo's Guide to Life, "if you're over him when drunk, you're officially over him."

Last night, hopped up on diet pills and drinks, I told Kristen that she is my best friend. I guess it's a bit like saying "I love you" to a boyfriend, in a way, since it's a big admission of the strength of your feelings for someone and you hope to God they feel the same way about you. Kristen, like me, is very uncomfortable with such displays of feeling, so it was good we were both drunk. Everything I told her was the truth, though; she is my best friend, she knows me better than anyone else, she's stood by me even when I've been a complete asshole. She shares my triumphs and my tragedies and I love her.

The night ended, as usual, at dawn. It is extremely not cool to be coming home in the daylight, wasted, as fruit stands and knock-off purse peddlers are setting up on the street corners. Anu, typically, wanted to continue the party. I've partied with her several times now and she is the most annoying end-of-the-night drunk. She just wants to keep partying and tries to drag everyone else with her, despite that the dawn and the rest of the party are telling her to stop. Yet, despite this, no one gets mad at her. Those boys all hug her and love her and soothe her and are so nice and patient. They love her so unconditionally that her annoying behaviour doesn't have any affect. Does anyone love me that much? I can't imagine that if I acted like that (or rather, when I did act like that, for I was more annoying still in my Bizarro Hippo days) that I would have any friends at all. I just feel that any negative thing, no matter how small, is a dealbreaker; hence, I get really freaked when I do anything I perceive as remotely negative, even if it's only negative in my head. Hence, I'm constantly afraid friends are going to dump me. Hence, I'm a slave for you.

Speaking of slaving, today, back in the glorious summer sunshine of a sparkling Saturday, I'm helping set up for a garden party. Like an Egyptian overseer of old, I'm cracking the whip at the team of caterers under my command. Ha ha, just kidding; I'm being very friendly to them. Twenty-four relatives are coming over to celebrate my grandparents' 60th anniversary. All these relatives are on my father's side of the family, which I consider to be the weak and embarrassing side of my pedigree. They are working class, uncultured, uncurious, only basically educated and entirely uninteresting conversation. They mostly live in New Jersey and Long Island, leading lives much different from that of my family. My father is definitely the most financially successful of anyone in his family, which can be a bit embarrassing when the blue-collar mice come visit the white-collar mice. In fact, they have never been here to visit before--I've never even met some of them. Some girls my age are coming and I'm sure I'm going to be expected to entertain them. Fabulous. We will have so much in common we just won't be able to stop talking, will we? Yippee skippy.

I should also mention that my father's side of the family is where I can direct my gratitude for my thick Hungarian legs and my mental health problems. Most of them are portly, to put it nicely, and almost everyone has something loose upstairs. Severe depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and suicidal tendencies have all shown up in Martin brains with disturbing frequency. Great: a garden party at the asyulm. I'll let you know how it turns out.