Skylines, Subways and Press Releases

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November 21, 2010

Rooftops, Resurrection and Poorly Budgeted Cable Telenovelas

(New York, NY)—It’s orchestrated harmony the way the city silents itself when it suddenly rains, only to resurrect itself into the disrespecting alarm of noises it’s known for the second the clouds recede.  I’m sitting on a terrace eleven floors above ground watching chaos ensue as trenchcoat-wearing divas feverishly open their umbrellas to save hairstyles and leather Prada bags from being destroyed by the rain. You can always forecast a miserable torrential downpour when you look down from a rooftop and see a consistent string of submarine yellow cabs and people fighting to the death to get inside one.

It’s 60 degrees right now; the semi-piercing chill of the wind is combing through my hair as if it were a teasing comb carved out of ice.  The wind continues to interweave itself throughout the terrace: harvesting smells of jasmine and cigarettes and nestling these aromas right under my nose. I will say though, that the random drops of horizontal rain finding its way into my guacamole is not appreciated.

It has been pouring all day. It’s the perfect day to not submerge myself in water- but instead, my enormous white-goose down comforter. To immerse myself under its oversized fluff and get lost in its dramatic creases. I figure this will be my reward once I finish writing.

As the city continues to get drenched in rain (being cleansed of its sinister amount of dirt and debris), I sit under a white cabana on my terrace surrounded by a multitude of cough syrups, prescribed medication, a couple boxes of Kleenex and a medicinal inhaler. 

It has been a week since I’ve gotten over pneumonia: boiling with a 103.4 fever for a consecutive 12 days, barely breathing with a slightly collapsed right lung and heaving through a damaged left lung enveloped in bacteria had all contributed to me being bed ridden for two-and-half weeks. I started out with bronchitis and symptoms of the flu but it had quickly escalated, within three days, into pneumonia. I usually take pride in my ability to translate my situations and feelings into literary passages but I can honestly say this time that I am at a loss for words- words accurate enough to describe the pain pneumonia can bring.  There are numerous illnesses out there in the world that I am sure are more painful, exhausting and physically demanding; however, for me this sickness was the most excruciating and debilitating thing I had ever been through. The fever had overtaken my body in such a way that I felt as though hell itself was seeping through my veins. My eyes felt as if they were little balls of fire, igniting a flame in my cornea every time I managed to open them. When I would try to get out of bed or move my body, I would quickly be stiffened and disabled by the string of intense heat running down my spine. I endured this for about 5 days thinking it was just a severe case of the flu. I took my prescribed medication but I might as well should have been taking tic-tacs and gummy bears because it didn’t work.

At that point I didn’t have the willpower to speak to anyone; my vocal chords were wearing thin and the ability to breathe and hold a conversation became painful. Getting up to go to the bathroom seemed like an Olympic triathlon that I for sure did not want to be a part of.  I gathered the strength to talk to my mom and with her stellar background in medicine she was utterly convinced that I had pneumonia. She urged me to fly home the next morning, despite my severe physical complications, so that I could admit myself into her hospital and get treated before it gets more critical. That night I didn’t know how I was going to make it to the airport. Whenever I moved my spine would burn, my bones would stiffen and just walking ten feet would exhaust me and leave me breathless. In the morning I walked downstairs to hail a cab; lugging my carry-on bag, tearing up in pain every step of the way.

  I never knew that airport security wouldn’t let someone board a flight if he/she had a fever- until that morning. My dad said that because of the recycled air on planes, passengers are not allowed to fly with a fever, respiratory infections, and more importantly- pneumonia. I went into the airport bathroom and slathered MAC makeup all over my face in an effort to look human and get through security. Despite MAC claiming its makeup is sweat proof, it was rapidly streaming down my face from the gallons of sweat I was perspiring because my fever was so high. I slithered through the metal detector hunching my back in pain looking like the hunchback of Notre Diva. They stopped me at security and asked me to take off my sunglasses once I began to cough demons and gargoyles out of my mouth. I knew if I took a thermometer test that my fever would be at least 103 since it had been that way for 5 days. I was convinced they weren’t going to let me fly so when they asked me if I was sick I made up the most uncomfortable story a male security guard could hear. I pleaded that I was fine and that I was just on my period with a heavy flow…that my ovaries were twisting…that I was getting hot flashes at a young age…Apparently I failed to be convincing and the guard went to get someone to evaluate me. Luckily there was a lady officer checking bags in security and overheard everything that happened. She empathized and said I could pass on through and that she would tell the guards she tested my fever and that I was fine. 

I eventually land back home in Austin, Texas and that’s when everything started. The hospitals, the Xrays, the medicine, the shots, the needles, the ivy bags, the respiratory and vocal therapy was all super dramatic and out of control. I kept thinking…DRAG QUEENS and trannies don’t go through this…everything was not all glitter and gold. I did tell my mom however to put hot pink tape on my ivy strip. Oh, and I also made it mandatory that my loungewear was my pink rhinestone-embellished Victoria’s Secret PJs and that my socks were the rainbow-striped ones I wear to PRIDE Parades (since the national “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” debate was going on, I figured I would make a political statement as well) . I was very sick, that is true, but I wasn’t about to be a bland, boring diva with plain white long johns and old-lady loafers. UH, NO. I’m not Huckleberry Finn, thank you.  After a sufficient amount of medication and inhalers, for three-and-a-half weeks, I got better. For you to understand the severity of my damaged lungs, the doctors prescribed me Levaquin- the highly concentrated medicine approved by the FDA for patients that have inhaled ANTHRAX. Yes- dead serious. When anthrax was a national sensation doctors gave Levaquin to patients in order to heal damaged lungs from severely debilitating respiratory diseases…like, for example, a creepy little powder named anthrax.

# BREAKING NEWS: Erika Cespedes to star in a cheap telenovela based on her hilarious failures, her desperate search to cure absentmindedness and her awkward inability to speak to straight men.

After fighting pneumonia I felt that I had resurrected. When I flew back to NYC I felt that I had died and bounced back in a trannylicious fur coat and black-sequin cocktail dress. This is what I thought; however, recent experiences have challenged my resiliency yet again. My life has become equivalent to that of a FAIL blog. My life is a cheap soap opera on PBS, or the weird dormant and inactive channels like CH 13, CH 9 and CH 11. The ones you scroll through at 3 A.M. on accident only to be annoyed by an entire program dedicated to sticking the elderly in miniature spaceships called Hoverrounds or by a sweet old lady named Ruth teaching senior citizens how to do rigorous exercises while sitting on a chair. It’s a soap opera where the scrolling credits are in the form of Word graphics and the audio feed doesn’t match up to the action footage. Let me recap, this mess of a soap opera, in numerical form.

1. A week after recovering from pneumonia, my computer slightly touches water that spilled on my table…it completely dies…Apple “Geniuses” tell me its going to be about $800 to fix (on top of the $1300 I must pay off from rebuying it four months before due to it being stolen).
2. On our WAY to the Apple store, my friend and I are walking as I grasp my wallet with my arms (in between my ribcage and my elbow).  I all of a sudden realize my wallet is gone. We didn’t even walk the ENTIRE street. We literally stepped outside our apartment building and walked for four whole minutes before I realized it was gone. Someone had already picked it up and taken it.
3. I cancel all cards: debit card, credit cards and my New York ID. I have to wait one-week-and-a-half before I get a debit card, one week for my credit cards, and almost three-and-half weeks for an ID. Now I have to pay with a check since I don’t have a debit card.
4. BIGGEST FAIL: walking to a deli at 2 AM that same night (to emotionally eat) in the freezing rain with no umbrella, only to pull out my wet checkbook and be told that I can’t pay for a $2.55 Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia pint with a check.  HUMILIATION.

# Onto the Next Episode:

We are all aware of my inability to find a heterosexual male that can handle me, deal with my diva-ness and understand my inappropriate obsession of all things sequin and all things pink. The resplendent outfits I wear, my inability to stop daydreaming about Louboutins and eyelashes, the enthusiastic nature of my teased hair and my wild yet comical nature are a direct result from living under a rainbow for several years. Having a fortress of fierce and fun little gays around me all the time has apparently amplified my innate outrageous nature. With that as a preface, at times, my personality can be deemed as superfluous and too much. Straight guys don’t understand me and I don’t understand them. I am in no way complaining of my lifestyle; I find it to be one of the most blessed, liberating and most hilarious ways to live. When my girlfriends force me to straight bars, I look around and automatically think…WHY ARE YOU WEARING TENNIS SHOES WITH JEANS? Why are your highlights only at the tip and in further discussion-why are they frosted? Why are you a beer-guzzling-20-something-year-old wearing awkwardly fitting jeans with an Abercrombie shirt and a corduroy jacket straight from the TV Land channel?  MOST IMPORTANTLY, why are you NOT freaking out about my hair and makeup or my patent-nude five-inch pumps.

I’ll look around the bar, or “pub” as men tend to call it, to give it a chance, then another road block pops into my mind. WHY ARE THERE POOL TABLES AND WHY IS NO ONE DANCING to GaGa as strobe lights casually grace the walls? All past occurrences and “straight-bar” assumptions were shattered one night when my world flipped upside down. Remember, when I said that my life is a cheap telenovela? Just keep that in mind.

So after my Macbook water damage and before Operation: Lose Wallet, my roommate and I went to a GORGEOUS straight bar named Le Bain at the The Standard Hotel in NYC. I wouldn’t even call it a straight bar because there were a handful of adorable gays and tailored-metrosexual guys.  My roommate and I knew it was a list-only club but we went anyway just for fun, just to see if we could get in. We walk up laughing and I automatically talk to the bouncers and tell them I’m from Texas and that I’m really fun. They smile and laugh and let us in. My roommate constantly gushes about this beautiful latin guy at the club. I, of course, think this man is gay because he is so beautiful, tan, tailored, and very sophisticated-glam. I start talking to the guy trying to get him to talk to my roommate and then I find out HE IS NOT GAY. He’s a 28-year-old Brazilian soccer player and he’s in NYC on business because he consults several businesses on financing and acquisitions. I told him how shocked I was because I had never been asked on a date and that he was one of the few straight guys I had ever talked to longer than 30 minutes and had not been repulsed by.  Then this conversation happened:

Brazilian David Beckham: “I’m not from here and when I travel, go out by myself to see the cities. What clubs or restaurants do you recommend I go to?”

Me: “Ohhh, I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask. My friends are mostly gay so I mostly go to gay bars or clubs. Umm…ahh, I don’t know…sorry! I can ask my girlfriends or something, they go to straight bars.”

Brazilian David Beckham: “Oh okay, well that’s fine. If your friends are gay people and you go to gay places I don’t mind going with you and your friends to gay places in order to be with you.”

Uhhh, a beautifully metro-latin guy straight from the pages of Esquire hanging out with me at a gay club with all my frieeeends?! DONE DONE DONE. Should I wear a veil or no veil at the wedding? So now we’re sitting talking about family and music when I suddenly mentioned how I wanted to go buy another drink. He urged me to go and that I could take his debit card and charge it on his card. I say no that I could pay for my drink on my own but I that I just didn’t want to get up and fight through the clutter of people to get to the bar. He then hails the cocktail waitress on over and buys bottle service. (SEE: Page 826:  New York City Club Bottle Service- One bottle of Grey Goose, One bottle of orange juice, one bottle of cranberry juice, one silver canister of ice with tongs. Amount for one round of NYC bottle service: $500. Not including a $200 tip or the $250 to keep your table. ALSO SEE: “OMG, WTF” on Page 35).  Now remember when I said how my life is such a consistent string of WTF moments? Well, that entire night he gushed about how he wanted to hang out and see each other. Towards the end of the night my roommate and I are having a good time and then after several drinks (and by several I mean a million) we end up going home. Everything happened so fast and we don’t remember much. We end up just going home. I came home and forgot to get his number, to say goodbye, EVERYTHING. So that is how the story ends. Awkward latin girl finally got a break with a beautiful Brazilian and epically bombed. The margin of error here is pretty ridiculous. Thank you Grey Goose and Erika Cespedes’ insanely low tolerance for ruining lives.  Not ok. #divaFAIL #BrazilianAmberALERT

# Scrolling Credits: End of Season 1 Episode 63

The job search is still utterly annoying. With being sick for a month and having no computer for a couple weeks my job search has been nonexistent. Now that I have a working computer again I can begin to knock out some emails and update my resume a million more times. I’m going to break a major rule in writing by breaking the personal wall and stepping out of narration. I wanted to honestly mention to you that a huge reason why I tend to not write frequently is because I feel that I will become monotonous and mundane. I’m always saying the job search is bad and that things are hard. I feel like I am just repeating myself over and over again and letting down the people that read this. The fact of the matter is, it’s actually embarrassing to keep writing about how I still have yet to find a great PR job or journalism job in New York City. I get that it’s NYC. I get that it’s supposed to be brutal and test a person’s limits to the very brink, but I just want a little break that way as a writer I can excite you more. Anyway, it is what it is. I’m being as raw and as veracious as I can possibly be: documenting my failures and hopefully the ecstatic successes that follow.  I figure this year has been like a rainstorm. Some weeks I feel like I’m drowning in an utter downpour of mini-van sized raindrops, other weeks it drizzles, other weeks its cloudy and although the isolated instances of rainbows and sunshine are few and far between in Manhattan- they still sporadically show up to provide inklings of hope.

(PS:PH2H): One of my first entries in this blog was about loving people: being loved too little and loving too much. Upon moving to New York, a couple friendships have disintegrated into a pile of hate and distrust while others seem to have developed and flourished as a direct result of the deteriorated ones. Throughout this blog I mentioned every month the tumultuous nature of one of my close friendships and its rapid, yet abrupt, demise. He is one of a handful of people that I had become dangerously close to. He is the only person in my life that has literally shattered me to the very core. I had supported and loved him to such a degree that it had isolated me from others. The point is, we have all invested in someone to the point where they have more power over our emotions than we have over ourselves. You get to the point of security where you couldn’t imagine knowing anyone else the way you know this person; you can’t transition or move without them being alongside you. It’s scary to think of it that way but it’s true. Whether it is/was your best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend or family member, we have all or will all be subject to this situation. It’s human nature to treasure a connection that we think is intimate and valuable. The trick is to stick to your demands, your ambitions, your character and your value. We get lost in the pace of things thinking we are just helping others and living our lives. One day you stop and notice that certain good-willed decisions become erroneous without you even realizing. I LIVE for helping friends and giving them everything I have if it is mutually deserved. Having gone through certain situations has made me realize that we need to make ourselves imperative and that it’s ok to invest and help others, just don’t enable someone so much that you disable yourself in the process.

Our life is much like survival of the fittest, the remaining friends that are crowded around your deathbed are the ones that have stopped at nothing to help and fight for you every second of everyday. No matter how depressing, acrimonious or bewildering relationships and friendships can get, you realize that the friends left standing will eclipse all the broken friendships you’ve endured along the way. It’s when I think of this, that make the loss of my ex best friend seem obsolete. He had his issues and yes we were inseparable, but he didn’t handle our friendship when things got tough. The friends that still encompass me, have.

Now, whether I sound like a cheap-cable Channel 8 version of Oprah or the much better HDTV Satellite version, I’m just saying that you and I shouldn’t stress over people and their feelings because many times it’s out of our control. Burdening yourself with a miasma of guilt due to someone else’s issues is unnecessary; your positive presence in life is worth more. Don’t let your emotions, fallen friends and failed situations defeat you: rise.

Still Trying to Find HDTV Satellite in NYC,

-erika

<3

listening to: T.Rex- 20^th Century Boy

missing: oreos and chocolate milk

feeling: Is my belly literally hanging over my jeans right now? uhhm. okay?!!?