PlatKat.com

If you want to be one of the finer things in life, you can’t always enjoy the finer things in life. Here’s to my third day of sobriety and eating more sensibly. Yes everyone, it was getting that bad.

I got a lot done last night. I saw a friend, washed my car, did some laundry, made a healthy dinner for myself, removed a virus from my computer, and somehow managed to catch two episodes of “Law & Order” amidst it all. I also cleaned the banana peel gunk off my pantry door using a 409, a knife, and a scouring pad. I am the McGyver of housewives.

Most notably, I completed the obnoxiously extraneous steps for putting songs into my iPod Shuffle. I downloaded the barest version of iTunes I could manage. Even though you can install the software onto your computer and let it totally jack up your music collection, I installed it so I could put songs into my library for the purposes of iPod-loading. It took longer than I thought. I had to copy each song into the library using control commands because Apples don’t use a right-clicking mouse. Also, I had to circumvent a zillion silly features just to figure out how to get the library onto the actual device. Bah! What also sucks is that it doesn’t “re-shuffle” each time you turn it on. And the “120 songs” boast on the front of the box is a total lie. And since it’s white and I’m a slob, it looked dirty from the second I removed it from the box. But it suits my current need for running music.

iPod Status: Locked and Loaded. I still hate it though.

I’m not sure which is more gross, someone eating a banana at my house and leaving the peel in an inconspicuous place in my pantry, or the fact that it took me several weeks and a swarm of fruit flies to find it.

I have an irrational fear of iTunes. It doesn’t matter anyway… my computer has a virus so I need to get rid of that before I do anything earth-shattering like download a tool that’s going to totally screw up the organization my entire music collection.

iPod Status: Opened and Empty.

Making poop jokes when you actually have to poop really isn’t so funny.

Apartment hunting in New York is a pain in the ass, especially when it’s raining. But I guess I had a better day than this little guy.*

More to come…

*I found this bird in the middle of a busy intersection in Grammercy Park. Even when the auto traffic cleared out, there were still tons of people walking by. When they saw that I was taking pictures of a dead bird, they were all really nice about it and stepped around the bird so they wouldn’t ruin my shot. Also, no one looked at me strangely or asked, “What the hell are you doing?” like they do everywhere else. I think I’m really going to like New York.

Today was supposed to be my first apartment-hunting day, but actually calling it that would be misleading. I saw exactly 1 apartment, rode 5 trains, walked 800,000 blocks, and visited 4 cafes… laptop in tow. The plan was to go to a cafe in one of the neighborhoods we’d like to live, look at listings, call some people, and see some apartments. It was a bad plan.

I started my journey by walking down the wrong street and going to a subway station I hadn’t been to before. I rode it to a larger station where I could transfer to the 6 train, which goes to all the places I need. Of course, the 6 train from this station is going downtown and I need to go uptown, so I have to ride downtown to the Brooklyn Bridge to transfer to the train going uptown. Sure, that makes sense.

When I got to that station, I had to exit and re-enter on Bleecker Street. That would have been just fine with me, but I had no idea where the hell Bleecker Street was until I walked around for 100 years.

Finally found it, caught my train to Union Square Park where I was trying to go and then busted my ass some more trying to find a Starbucks because they have free wireless.

Wait, no they don’t. And guess what I don’t have. Money! Yay!

I searched through my laptop case for a good 15 minutes and couldn’t find my wallet. Did I forget to pack it? Was it stolen? Who the hell knows? I’ll find out when I get home tonight.*

So after about 3 hours of walking around and riding trains, I finally get to settle down somewhere, and I find myself broke and internetless. The only sustenance I had for the rest of the day was a pack of cigarettes and a Nutrigrain bar.

I called Gus and rode the train to Bloomberg. He came to the lobby and brought me a bottle of water, a banana, and $100. The banana was really nice, I thought as I ate it while waiting for the train back to Union Square Park. The last time I could remember eating a piece of fruit, it was from the bottom of a glass of sangria.

After hoofing around the neighborhood for another good hour and some change, I found a cafe with free wireless and started responding to apartment ads. All this shit is going to take longer than I ever imagined. Getting started at 4:30 when everyone goes home at 5 sucks too.

One guy tried to show me an apartment very close to the cafe where I was chilling and couldn’t get the super to come down. Awesome. He was trying to be helpful, but I’m a little frazzled from getting lost 20 times and having no money.

As an aside, I also walked by two separate men in two separate neighborhoods, representing two separate age groups and nationalities, who both said, “Sexy” when I passed as matter-of-factly as you would tell someone his shoe was untied. I don’t know what’s sexy about rushing around with a 200-pound laptop looking confused but ready to kill someone, but it shocked me much more than a traditional cat-call. I didn’t show it, of course. (Right?)

Now I’m sitting at Pete’s Tavern, which seemed familiar because I’ve actually been here before, listening people talk about cooler parties than I’d throw, bigger money-making schemes than I could come up with, and more dynamic happenings than I can even begin to understand. New York is schoolin’ my ass.

Being in New York City is like getting beat up by your dad. You love each other through the inexplicable laws of nature, but a lot of ridiculously inhumane things need to happen before you’re living in harmony. A few glasses of Chardonnay should help me prepare for Round 2.

*Wallet was not stolen. Cool.

A few weeks ago, I got thinking about tattoos and how I’ve traditionally responded to the question, “Any tattoos?” with an emphatic, “No! Definitely not!”

I decided a long time ago that I could never get a tattoo. Tattoos are forever. That Chinese symbol that looks so cool now may feel pretty retarded a few years down the road. You may have thought you would always love the cartoon drawing of Winnie the Pooh’s head stuck in a honey jar, but you have to get sick of it at some point. I can’t even justify the staying power of the almighty tramp stamp. Sure, it would be nice to have a cute little picture for my man to look at while he’s boning me, but what’s in it for me?

Beyond the aforementioned factors that most people would consider when deciding on a tattoo (counter-culture trends, personal staying power, and critical audience), I have a fourth one to think about: resulting self-mutilation. I look pretty normal to most people, but I’m actually a neurotic perfectionist. When I decide something isn’t exactly the way I want it, I’m going to mess with it until I make it right or get tired trying. That’s why I pop zits, pick scabs, hand-wash my car, and repaint my toenails almost daily. I’m not anal about everything, but I guess it would be safe to say I’m really anal about how things look. Especially my things.

So, if I woke up one day and decided I didn’t want my tattoo anymore, there’s not much stopping me from trying to slice it off with a knife, or maybe file my skin down to a bloody mess. Sure, it would leave a scar, but I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to think about how nothing possibly could be better than getting this horrible abomination off my skin right now, this minute.

But let’s say I don’t have an affinity for wounding myself and let’s also pretend that I’m seriously considering a new tattoo. What would I get? I would need to get something that really defines me. Something that has always been and won’t change. Although it would be a kind gesture to write “Gustavo” in cursive on the sparse real estate above my right nipple, that doesn’t fit my parameters. Same goes for writing “Austin” in old-English letters across my stomach.

No, the only thing that has been truly constant in my life is writing. From the moment I learned how to do it and up until the very seconds that words are appearing on this page, I’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months, years writing random crap for personal enjoyment. Most of my jobs have involved writing in some form or another, and when they didn’t, I’d take a break and write anyway.

Even though I hate pigeon-holing myself and labeling myself as one thing, I’ve mustered up the courage to finally admit to myself after 25 years that I am a writer and that’s probably not going to change. I may change jobs, fields, cultures, or even dimensions. But when they lock me in that rotting asylum, they better toss in some pens and paper before they throw away the key.

Bear in mind, I don’t claim to be a particularly good writer. The only way I can really tell is by what my intended audience thinks. I guess some “writers” would think of that as whoring so-called talent or selling out, but even more than writing, I enjoy having basic human luxuries like food to eat and a roof to sleep under. The money people pay for me to write gets me those things, so I’m not ashamed to admit that I care what they think.

So that deserves a tattoo, right? What kind of picture would scream, “Writing”? I thought about a quill, some ink, and a blank page. Blank, because I won’t always be able to commit to what I write or how I’ll do it. When you write something that seemed poignant and thoughtful at the time, but turns out to be meaningless drivel, you can throw it away or at least bury it for a long time. Although the blank page feels somewhat meaningful, it’s also pretty boring. And I could see how someone looking at it would think, “So… a blank page? Um… interesting.” I would probably start to get bored looking at it too and then we’re back to the self-mutilation thing again, even though I said I wasn’t going to do that.

I could write a short meaningful quote, like “Know thyself.” (Emerson) But that’s too pompous, even for me. Look at me, I read some shit by some dead guy who also liked to write but was actually good at it and now his words are on my arm. Lame.

So yeah, this idea is a work in progress. I don’t think I’ll get ink done for awhile, or maybe at all. By the time I can think of something that really suits me, I’ll probably be too old for it to matter, and wherever I put it won’t be any part of me that the general public wants to see anyway.