Traveling By Bus

by September 27th, 2012

By my own crude estimates, I’ve spent nearly 140 hours riding back and forth on busses between New York and Boston for the past four years. That’s almost six days, for those of you keeping score at home. Any way you cut it, I’ve spent some serious time glancing out of windows at blighted cities in Connecticut and at never-ending stretches of snow-covered Harlem boulevards.

I’ve seen a lot during my time on these “motorcoaches,” which the more professional, less “leave-me-the-fuck-alone” drivers call their noble steeds. I’ve been offered drugs and alcohol by seatmates (I accepted the whiskey, not the painkillers), been shown naked pictures of girlfriends (not-so-surprisingly by the same guy who offered me the pills and booze), and witnessed complete strangers strike up a conversation with one another and spend the latter half of the trip cuddling and making out.

I’ve also spent a miserable 4.5 hours acting as a human pillow for a girl I knew from school who was more into me than I was into her, and was unfortunately traveling to Boston the same day I was. On other trips, I’ve pissed all over my shorts in the gyrating rollercoaster bathroom (if you can pee straight in there, you deserve a gold medal), broken out in hives from eating fennel the day before, and drooled all over my cashmere sweater attempting to sleep.

I Was An Extra in a Jennifer Garner Movie

by August 30th, 2012

It was my friend Jeff who talked me into signing up for a casting company’s newsletter. During our senior year of high school, in his typical brand of unbridled, doe-eyed enthusiasm, Jeff convinced me to become a movie extra with him. Maybe, just maybe, he said, we’d get discovered.

Meeting the Neighbors

by August 17th, 2012

I moved into my first apartment in New York City almost a year-and-a-half ago. After a hellish process that saw my roommates and I back out of a unit in the middle of a lease signing, we finally agreed upon an apartment in the East Village that suited our needs (within a 15-minute walk to Washington Square Park, fairly affordable, and containing three full bedrooms, which meant no temporary wall building, or bookshelf buying).

Tales from the ‘Lost Generation’: Newly Unemployed

by July 31st, 2012

Two days ago, I removed my pastrami sandwich from the office fridge, found two pieces of gum stashed underneath my computer monitor, and walked out of my poorly-paid internship in the middle of the work day without telling my editors. I quietly quit.

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