I used to joke about it. But that was when I was in West Virginia where you have to work very hard to rise above being in a lame venue. Oh, you say, there is the Vandalia Lounge in Charleston and it is trendy and hip and has couches and the governor goes there sometimes and it is Awesome. No pal, it ain't.
Not compared to New York City, which is the place I am flying away from now, drinking a Diet Coke, and the attendant is coming down the aisle with a garbage bag because I didn't drink it friggin' fast enough. It's like you have to shotgun the damn thing. Sorry, lady, I like to crunch on the ice. Restrain me.
I never would actually say anything like that out loud, and never would have in the past anyway, although the likelihood that I would have was higher, which is an incredibly stupid thing to say. It's like saying I would have divided ten by zero, but I'd only divide five by zero now.
That's how I felt about New York this weekend. My brother, my dad and I went to celebrate the end of my brother's residency and the beginning of my engagement. It's gonna be Awesome, we said, and by any stretch of the imagination it was not. I'm not slamming it, you see. I had a wonderful time, and so did dad and John. We went to a Yankees game (two, actually). We had Cuban food. We drank cocktails in the bar in the lobby of the Ace Hotel. We ate breakfast in a diner across from Madison Square Garden. We vowed to do it again because us three Markovich guys really just had such a marvelous time.
No, it was not Awesome because we did not get dragon tattoos or smoke crack with hookers or hold up a Walgreen's on the Lower East Side. Awesome, story-wise, is not my brother the doctor helping a little girl who was hit in the head by a foul ball. No, Awesome is being hauled down to the 3rd Precinct for taking a piss on a police horse.
I would like to think I have mellowed from the Awesome Guy I was in the first place, which must have happened, right? I tried to reminisce for clues, and while it seems like I was Awesome back then, in reality, I was just busier and younger and unsure of myself and merely doing different things, not better nor worse. Things weren't Awesome then. Things sucked.
Actually, that's what Former Awesome really is-- shittiness packed up into short stories of desperation and the sheer stupidity of youthful inexperience. Oh, the stupid thing I did for her! For a beer! For pizza! It's all a yearning for something that isn't there and wasn't there because through it all I still ate regularly and put gas in my car and paid my bills and did all of the other numbing minutiae that really gets you through life. We'd like to think we're going to be Awesome CEO's one day, but really we're never going to get away from running the day-to-day operation.
Which brings me back to New York, which I enjoyed. I really did. I loved being there just among the people and feeling their energy, which is a different kind than the kind that I'm used to. Yeah, I know we were in bed by 11:30 every night, while right outside my window, Awesome People were doing Awesome Things in an Awesome City. All of that may be true, but they've got bills to pay too.
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NOTE: I wrote this on Sunday night, on the plane back from New York City. Duh.
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