"we're just like roaches, never dying always living"

I had a roach problem. When i first moved stuff into my apartment 4weeks ago, it was after clinic, and i dropped off some stuff, looked around (smelled like paint and lysol, clean (the bathroom) but dirty (the kitchen), and took trains to manhattan, to farshid's house where i had been crashing, to get my stuff. I ended up eating dinner with him and didn't get back to the new apartment til like 11pm, so i had been gone from it for about 5 hours. So I walk in and there are a total of a few dozen roaches visible; not those one-inchers we got in NOLA, mostly less than a centimeter, but they were everywhere. Especially the kitchen, crawling on everything... I said, OK, whatever, I'm gonna crash on this couch that the last tenant left, and deal with this in the morning. So I open my schoolbag, which has no food but stuff like my stethoscope and books in it, and a few roaches crawl out. So I get the hell out of there to my cousin's in Brooklyn, totally too bugged out to sleep.

So, blahblah, after 4 weeks of roach motels, they have slowly decreased from ostentatious visibility, to politely scurrying away when the lights are turned on, to just sticking to the garbage in the kitchen (which i take out daily; i put all food in the fridge if it's even slightly accessible by the critters), to just a few newly hatched babies and the graveyard of adults under the sink... So, I have pretty much reclaimed the kitchen, their main and last bastion, and I'm able to cook again (which really means combining milk with cereal).

slowly slowly I'm more moved in! I'm especially happy about the decline of the roaches because now that I'm on night float, I'm using this weekend to up-end my melatonin derived daily rhythm: I ate benadryl during the day, drank and roamed the pretty streets of pretty manhattan last night, and tonight I'm going to stay up all night, eating food and reading and watching internet movies. The eerieness of this upsidedown wakinglife would only intensify if my only company were those pests. The weekends are wierd since I'm off and have to find things to do. During the week will be simpler since I will just work all night, come home in the morning, eat, crash hopefully all day, then wake up to eat and return to the hospital.

Last night was fresh: went out with a platoon of horny decently-dressed boys, all residents. The two surgeons, pretty handsome, could not remain at any one lowereastside scene for more than 40min, often citing the lack of women, the lack of hot women, the lameness of the women, the abundance of guys, etc. I tried to remain observant, though the girlsboysbarsdrinks all mostly ran together, nothing very distinctive. It was fun/funny, though, like a hunt, hungry meat eating manly men, criticizing every little flock of skinnyskinny girls that we pass on the streets. There'd be cheesy lines for the cheesy girls, asking this one to come this place with us, or this group where the cool scene is at. Some would respond, some not, and always we boys would do some shit-talking, amongst each other or loud enough for them to hear, or directly hollered at them. The girls, in turn, seemed to be fine with this stupid ass set of customs, as they roamed the streets on their own hunt, trying to catch their own prey, talking their own shit and looking for their own unattainable fulfillment. Like I imagine modern 'merican hunters to be, all these people weren't really looking for food, just looking to kill, with unlimited bullets they shot at anything that moved, but didn't care to investigate if they shot an animal at all, or if they mistakenly shot another human. Unlike traditional hunters, who spend much time building their own bows/arrows, where every shot must count, and you hunt to survive... these kids were just fucking around. Basically, it was like going out with whiteboys on bourbon street, but much classier, less drunk, just as empty. The only way to enjoy bourbon street is to detach yourself and contemplate the miasma (*I'm trying to use my thesaurus!)...

But, I was delighted by one scene we stumbled into, after a few places turned us down (bouncers don't like admitting a group of 5 dudes, it seems)... there was just a line to a door in a construction wall outside of this building-being-rebuilt... some dude seemed to ask some people for tickets, but not others, and we just got in line and walked in with others into this completely pitch dark, quiet room, with only a few drunkkids' cellphones to illuminate the unpainted white walls and unfinished concrete floor. Strange, but I figured that if this were a horror movie scene, where we'd all get butchered, I would survive, cause there would never be a character like me in a movie with all these pretty people. They corraled us further down the room until some of the victims discovered a door that seemed to lead to bass-heavy beats, and excited at the prospect of a literally underground dance party, kids started heading down the stairs. The "dudes in charge" got uppity, yelled at people to return to the super dark room, conferring amongst themselves with "I told you this would happen" and "that's what I had said!", encouraged us to go up another set of stairs upwards, with no explanations, no details. And from the 40 some odd party-seekers, no one asked any questions, only sort of rheotorical ones like "what is going on?" and "where is that music?" and "this is ridiculous", everyone excited and confused, maybe even a bit apprehensive, and loving it all the more. So, like sheep, we and the rest went up the stairs, flight after flight, not knowing what the hell was going on, as other kids came down the stairs... eventually we find a rooftop, crowded with partiers, no bar but some girl selling cups of belvedere and cranberry, with a mediocre view and no music and few benches. We go back down, thinking in the dark we can sneak back towards where we heard the music... so we do, and we shuffle through the dark, following the bass, until we push through a few doors to find this unfinished set of rooms at the bottom of the building, and theres dozens of people and loud dope beats and an ultra expensive crowded bar and 100degree100%humidity and dancing and jointsmoke in the air. It was wierd enough to be interesting for sure. I got a drink and got to dancing, near a drum set where some dude was accompanying a dj, looking like a skinny Tricky, while the rest of my little group stood around awkwardly (most white boys don't dance to beats, I guess, unless they really wasted) or went to chat up the women population. Of course, they got bored quick, and we moved on, but I was happy that there are, somewhere here and there, cool cool scenes for me to randomly fall into, when I get lucky.

hmmmm...

A drunk 3am conversaton with my cousin and his gf weeks ago: trying to induce them to declare some truthgems about newyork, hoping they will unknowingly confirm my hopeful belief that there is something crazyunique about the overcrowded anthill of a city we live in, about how no one would put up with this suffocation unless it was quenching some eternal thirst. They mostly answer in terms of how this city has limitless inspiration in the form of other individuals, that you will constantly meet people who are here for their own distinct reasons, searching for some piece of mind while sacrificing peace of mind, who are burning strong on the fuel of their own personal ambition. I get it, but it doesn't answer my question, and I realize I'm not able to properly express my lack of understanding of this city, and so I state that: that I don't understand why I don't understand the city yet, aside from my being here only a few weeks up to that point. So they said, "listen, you've only been here for a few weeks up to this point, people spend a long time here trying to figure themselves out and figure the city out, but the thing about new york is the inexhaustible resource of people, so many different kinds that you will never run out of newness, and you (me) will slowly find more and more people, and groups of people, that speak to you, that vibe with you and delight you and test you, and you feed eachothers inspiration, and then you will understand, bit by bit." And it made me think about NOLA, which is deep in a great wonderous space in my heart of course, but really it's just the place I'm from, where my families are. And the thing about family is that you love them and they love you, and the love is meaningful, but it's out of habit and mutual support, not out of individual searching and desire and purposeful intent. So so so... here I am in this city on purpose. Torn between nostalgia and expectant longing, but the latter is dominant, more and more! The future is bright.