2009 BC

So the other day I waited on Chloe Sevigny. She was incredibly nice and a very generous tipper. I've waited on celebrities of Tampa infamy before but this was a totally different experience. I work in a little nothing restaurant that mostly attracts European tourists who are looking for "authentic NY Italian food" that happen to decide to stop while traversing the East Village. It is not a place where the elite go to dine. So I was surprised. It mostly reminded me that there are so many celebrities living here that you'll kind of just run into them. By the way, I hate my job. Which is to be expected, I guess, considering how ready to move on to worlds beyond hospitality that I feel in my gut. My co-worker tonight turned to me, randomly, and said "you are way too smart to be working here." That struck a chord.

It has not yet sunk in that I actually live here because I've yet to have that quintessential NY moment whereupon you realize, once and for all, that you are now a New Yorker. I'm waiting for that moment where the city suddenly looks to me the way it does on film. That moment of recognition where the city of my dreams is suddenly a reality. Maybe it's because I have yet to find my niche. I guess time will tell the story that I cannot.

At work this evening a boy at my table struck me. We started a conversation about religion and music that parlayed into him asking for my phone number and inviting me out for an after work drink. I spent my first night hanging out with a non-Florida friend in the city and thoroughly enjoyed myself. You must be guarded when it comes to dating or making friends anywhere because people are so often not what they wish to portray themselves as, but you must be even more careful here. In a construction of superficiality everyone is presenting themselves to be what they wish they were and not who they actually are. Genuine, in this place, is a rare commodity. So I guard myself with a tenacity that I did not think my hopeful and desperately romantic at heart nature was capable of.