I’m so glad I took two showers today, only to launch myself onto the ground alongside one of New York City’s most horrifically filthy underground attributes. Home to water rats and giant cockroaches, I am close enough to its entrance to hear the sewage running like a spring brook several feet below me.
Ugh.I pick myself up, more embarrassed than anything, and try to wipe some of the street dirt off my clothes.
Faced with the decision to continue on my way to the store or to go back home and clean myself up, I decide, in true Brooklynite fashion, to just keep it moving.Nothing to see here, folks!I wipe my chin off on the inside edge of my sleeve so I don’t appear too mangled. Once I am off the corner and almost to the entrance of the grocery store, I decide to check my reflection in my phone just to make sure I’m not actively bleeding down the front of my shirt. I reach my hand into my back pocket, feeling around, palming nothing but my own backside. Panic rises in my throat, and I nervously pat down the front pockets of my jeans. The credit card and keys are right where they should be.
But my phone is gone.
I run—yes,run—back to the corner where I fell. I look around frantically. It’s a black rectangle in a neon pink zebra-striped cover. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.
The sound of the water flushing septic waste beneath Ocean Avenuemocks me.I’ve got your phone, it hums.I took your lifeline to the outside world AND your dignity all in one fell swoop!
I am living inside of a nightmare, I decide.
With little recourse, and now facing the direction of my building, I take one final look around, and when the street reveals nothing to me other than a random Taco Bell wrapper and a pile of old dog shit, I decide it’s in everyone’s best interest if I just go home.
Thank God for my laptop.
After my third shower of the day and the determination that my chin might need stitches but fearing the potential medical bills a trip to urgent care would result in, instead I slap a Band-Aid on it. I sit down at my computer and draft an email to my girls giving them the heads-up that I am temporarily off the grid but will definitely be at Rollicks at six tonight. Then, I open up a new email window and take a deep breath before beginning to type.
TO:Colin Yarmouth ([email protected])
FROM:Grace Landing ([email protected])
SUBJECT:Dead zone
Hi,
Your email from last night was really sweet. I appreciate everything you wrote, and I agree—I’m sorry too, for my part in all this craziness. I can’t believe you were trying to be friends with me in high school, but that’s a debate for another day.
Today, I’m sort of in crisis mode. I was on my way to the store and tripped over the curb and I’m like 99% sure thatmy cell phone ended up in the sewer. So, I’m going to go out to Cell City and try to get a new phone this afternoon. I just wanted you to be aware of this new episode in the dead zone of my life, so that if you need to get in touch with me and I am unreachable, at least you know why.
I hope you are having a better day than I am! I’ll be in touch (hopefully) soon.
Xo,
Gracie
I never knew that getting a new phone could become an all-day affair.
After sending my emails, I grab an expired protein bar from the back of the (basically empty) pantry and check the time on the stove—2:10—before heading back out. The walk to Cell City takes me about twenty minutes, and I am extra careful not to let my mind wander lest I should trip again. My job is to put one foot in front of the other, look out for major cracks or unlevel spots on the sidewalk, and carefully cross each of the side streets.
There are several people waiting to be helped inside the store, and their disgruntled, generally unhappy-looking faces suggest that the customer service representatives on duty today might not be running their A-game. I peruse the new phones, looking for something in the price range of between zero and fifty dollars, and am sorely disappointed to find that the cheapest phone that doesn’t fold in half is listed at a whopping $250.
It’s okay, I remind myself.Hopefully, you’ll be rich soon enough, and then you can pay off all your credit card debt and not have to worry about trivial matters like emergency phone purchases.
Once I’ve decided which phone I want, I am directed to sign myname on a clipboard and wait with the others in rows of red plastic chairs. This feels not unlike a doctor’s office or, maybe more accurately, a trip to the DMV.
I chew my protein bar quietly while I wait, watching the other patrons who are all staring at their cell phone screens. I’m reminded of my first cell phone, a T-Mobile Sidekick with a blinged-out case that my parents bought for me when I left for college.
They’re called “Massholes’”for a reason, my father said, referring to the sweet moniker worn by Massachusetts assholes, of which (he was convinced) there were plenty.You keep this on you at all times.
Similarly, my mother bought me a rape whistle and a can of mace. I’m not sure what they thought was going to happen to me on one of the nicest campuses along the eastern seaboard, but alas, we are Bronx people, and Bronx people know their way around a self-defense plan.
Or so I thought.
On Halloween of our freshman year, Melly, Alisha, Tori, and I decided to dress up as slutty playing cards. (Any costume was fair game as long as it was slutty. In our case, we took tight white T-shirts and decorated them with the four aces in a card deck. I was the Ace of Clubs, largely because Melly insisted on being the Ace of Hearts, Tori wanted to be the Ace of Diamonds, and Alisha had never played cards before.)
Coupled with black spandex pants and boots with heels, we strutted off campus to a party Melly heard about up on South Street. It was on the early side—around 10:30 pm—and we hadn’t been able to pregame because nobody had a fake ID or access to any upperclassmen that early on in the school year. We walked as fast as we could in our heels and were freezing, because you don’t wear ajacketto a college party, especially on Halloween. We all looked extra cute with our hair and makeup way overdone, our padded boobs stretching our hand-drawn Sharpie marker aces out across our chests, and our pre-freshman-fifteen asses stuffed into those leggings.
