Had a Sunday birthday brunch at Donnybrook (formerly Lotus Lounge) for the proud Pole behind Alchemia Vodka, who lives in Ft. Green, and is not a former investment banker. Weirdly even for today's LES, there were a lot of babies.
Not feeling compelled to catch up with folks (they all knew each other far better than I knew them), I stayed rooted to my spot on the bench, and talked to whoever swung up next to me. One of those swingers was the new husband of the birthday girl's close friend. I would've avoided asking him what he did for a living, but he was from Toronto, and since the last Torontonian I met had a camera installed in his fake eye, I had no choice. Instead of what he did, he responded with what he enjoyed (writing, traveling, meeting people), and it wasn't 'til 20 minutes later that I teased out his actual profession: male model. He wasn't ashamed -- the job had taken him all over Europe and Asia, and only an asshole or tragically abused teenager wouldn't be thankful for that -- but he knew the perception, and didn't much like dealing with it, to the point that even his boys back home didn't know how he earned his keep. He certainly didn't fit the stereotype, and according to him, most mod-men don't: instead of growing up dreaming that everyone would one day find them very, very attractive, they typically fall into the gig; and they tend to be older, because who wants to buy a suit from an anorexic teen?
The next guest on my talk show was the b-day girl's 60-year-old stepfather, who'd lived in the LES back in the 70s, but'd moved out after losing one too many friends to the neighborhood. From the way he told stories -- gritty allusions, little detail -- he could've been either a cop or...something else, and when I asked, he just said he "did business" as forthrightly as that phrase can be delivered. A '69 Camaro cruised up Stanton, and he started talking about his speedboats, of which he had either two or four. As to why anybody would own more than one: "I have a philosophy. 'You might wanna need it.' Think about that." I still am, even as I type the following mark of punctuation(.)
Afterward, I headed up to Zum Schneider for giant Sunday beers, which adults should simply call "Sundays". I was learning to play gin rummy when this gargantuan goofball in a wolf t-shirt stopped to drink-linger near our table, compelling me to ask "Holy fuck, can I take a picture of your wolf?" After fully zipping his half-mast fly, he gladly obliged, with the condition that I didn't shoot his face, because his agent had told him to avoid publicity of any kind. He said he'd been in a restaurant, high as shit from smoking a blunt with his mother ("with your mother?" "yeah! i was like, ma, what the fuck? and she was like, come over here and help me roll a tight one, and just be glad i don't beat you"), when two cable TV execs overheard him ranting in-character. The character being a hybrid Puerto Rican/South Asian/Middle Easterner who basically just throws out all kinds of crazy shit -- so, barely distinguishable from his real life, except he's 100% Puerto Rican. The execs handed him their cards, and now he's apparently working on a deal, which might involve his own show, or maybe just playing a hilarious cabbie on lots of shows.
Of the three men I talked to, he was the most open on the subject of employment, probably because he hadn't secured it yet. Once you do, whether it's something you fell into, or were born into, things can get complicated -- not necessarily terrible, just less a cause for exuberance. And then you have babies.
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