Karma in the City

For two years after college I lived in New York City, thinking that everything would work out for me in Gotham, just like some predictable movie starring Katherine Heigl. Of course nothing did, and after two years I was back home in Boston, overjoyed to be rid of New Yorkers, Tasti D-Lites, and Duane Reades for the rest of my days. Those two years were admittedly fun though, and included things like conga lines in bars, hot dogs at 4:30am, maxing out my Bergdorf Goodman card, and feeling like, for the most part, I was a pretty lucky kid. I knew a ton of people living in the city, and one was a guy named Dennis, who, until fairly recently, was my best friend.

Dennis was born and raised in Queens, went to college with me, and is one of those guys who literally everyone thinks is a Herculean jerkoff. This is partially due to the fact he happens to be unreasonably attractive, and knowing it, unabashedly propositions absolutely all females who cross his path. (Although a recent Google search showed he has been modeling for homosexual magazines all over Miami, so what do I know?) Before our friendship-ending, drama-rama filled feud, I spent the majority of my time defending him to every person we met, saying he was in actuality not that big of a snake once you got to know him. Yet his disgusting deceitfulness should have been apparent to even me when almost the moment he committed himself to his then-girlfriend Lilly, an adorable, intelligent girl who was just way too good for him, he started cheating on her. I kept my mouth shut, but every time I watched him steal away with another bimbo her transparent booty shorts taunted me and I felt my stomach lurch with guilt. 

But Dennis was my friend before anything else, so even though I’m sure Lilly knew precisely what sort of monkey business was transpiring, I kept his secret, helped her plan his surprise birthday parties, and acted like everything was hunky dory. After three years of this though, she finally broke up with him (or rather, when she confronted him about his overall indecency, he never bothered to return her phone calls, ending their relationship like a true gentleman). I was ecstatic, glad to be rid of my inner urge to tell her what was going down, and relieved my friend could go about his dirty, dirty ways and I could happily not care one single iota. As long as the communicable diseases he contracted were of the non-airborne variety, I was fine with whatever it was he wanted to do.

As a result of his newfound “freedom,” Dennis decided to invite some girl from California to visit him in New York. She was supposedly a family friend, and brought along an entire entourage of girls, a group who oddly resembled the seven dwarves: one had a leg that was visibly much shorter than the other, one was legally midget sized and smelled like pastrami, two were twins who had literally modeled for Playboy the previous month, one was severely overweight with puckered skin in all the wrong places, one had a perpetually drippy nose and a personality to match, and one was a prominent mouth breather. I said I would join this squadron of weirdos for a night out, as Dennis was set on showing them what hot stuff he was around NYC. When I eventually met up with him and his harem in front of a club downtown, they were all shivering in the middle of the cobblestone streets, dressed like cheap, clueless tourists: they were practically chewing on stalks of hay. I said hi to them all, having pledged earlier to play nice, and followed Dennis to a spot behind a red velvet rope. “Are you sure this is ‘VIP’ treatment?” I grumbled as we stood shaking in the cold. “Oh, sure,” said Dennis, “I know this guy! He’ll hook us up, don’t worry.” He continued to assure me for the next twenty minutes or so that any second now his “guy” would graciously let us in, but just as I was about to give up, out of the club stepped Lilly.

“What?” I mouthed to Dennis as she locked eyes with him. He immediately did an about-face and started talking to the Playboy girls. “Are you serious? How does that even happen? How is she at this place?” I couldn’t understand: there are roughly seven hundred million bars in New York City, so how is it the one we decide to go to, Lilly is already at? “What is going on?” I demanded as she started to make her way towards us. “Well, um, actually, she’s the one who knows the guy,” Dennis mumbled back. Great. Smart move, dude. Let’s totally go to the one place your ex-girlfriend is guaranteed to be! We might as well have set up camp on her parents’ front lawn and thrown a block party.

Of course it got worse. Lilly was now standing right in front of us, on the opposite side of the rope. Dennis was busy talking up the breasty twin tramps and when Lilly said hello he pretended he didn’t even hear her. Meanwhile, I was standing there, practically in tears this had turned into such an unbearably hideous mess. I could barely make eye contact with her, but she still asked, “Why is he such a jerk?” I shrugged, honestly wishing I knew, but only able to whimper something downright unintelligible. She made a few more attempts to speak to Dennis, but he maturely kept his back turned. Finally, she walked away, her friends consoling her, and I did nothing but watch as they clipped off into the night.

Once Lilly was off premises, Dennis dragged us to a few more locations where, after an obvious once over, we were swiftly shooed away like dirty sidewalk pigeons. Eventually we ended up in some basement bar in Times Square that was crawling with baggy-jeaned, scrubby teenagers and inebriated mothers from Middle America with frizzed hair, orthopedic heels, and pleather jackets. While Dennis twirled around a dance floor lit up by a lopsided mirrorball and tangled Christmas lights, and made moves on the girl with the gimpy leg whose dancing skills were, let’s face it, lackluster, I sat at the bar and stared into my drink, wishing I could promptly disappear inside the bouffant of the pock-faced grandma whose rear end was overflowing on the stool next to mine. Instead, an eighteen year old with a bowl cut and a wallet chain offered to buy me a Smirnoff Ice. Apparently the universe knows what’s up.