Once a week, Daily Intel looks behind doors left slightly ajar. This week, the Recently Laid-off, Broken-Up Gallerina Crashing With a Friend; 24, female, squatting with a friend on the Upper West Side because of recent breakup, laid-off gallery worker, straight.
DAY ONE
9:20 a.m.: Wake up hungover and hate life. Thoughts alternate between the Ex (we broke up a month ago after four years together) and St. Nick. We met over Christmas and had drunk stupid awesome sex last month, necessitating the breakup with the Ex and causing me to leave our apartment. Did I mention St. Nick is the complete antithesis of my “type” and lives in New Jersey? Hate life some more.
11:30 a.m.: Trying to fall back asleep, but I’m hot and bothered. My friend who I’m squatting with is working, and I’m stealing someone’s Internet. Check out Redtube and pleasure myself to the preview thumbnails because that’s all this renegade net can handle.
4:30 p.m.: Head to High Line to meet up with my straight guy friend who works in fashion. Tell him all about my drama. St. Nick last told me he thought I was a cool girl, but felt really awful about breaking up my relationship and “ruining my life.” So I didn’t try to talk to him again, because I was obviously still tangled with the Ex and really couldn’t handle anything new, and just mentally agonized over it.
9:30 p.m.: While watching Sex and the City on the couch, my friend and I see a mouse scurry behind the TV stand. Immediately set up mousetraps. An air mattress on the floor is just not going to cut it tonight. Will share bed with friend.
DAY TWO
9 a.m.: Wake up exhausted. It’s hard for me to sleep in bed with anyone, except the Ex. With him I got used to it.
10:03 a.m.: Emerge from bedroom. This mouse is a rogue and still hasn’t surfaced in our traps.
12:35 p.m.: Meet my friend at MoMA. Usually there are hot guys in museums. Today there are no hot guys. We discuss St. Nick predicament at length, and her wise words leave me pretty much hopeless.
2:30 p.m.: We start drinking. We talk about our old professor whose absolute animal magnetism proves he must be “hung like a horse.” (Her words, not mine.)
6:15 p.m.: Four beers later, I’m back home. The Ex stops by to helpfully bring me copies of my résumé for my job interview tomorrow.
8:12 p.m.: After being extremely sweet, almost kissing me on the mouth, and telling me he will always be in love with me, the Ex leaves my apartment meaner than he has ever been in the course of our relationship. I am left sobbing on the couch. This is extremely fucked-up and unhealthy.
10:46 p.m.: I look at pictures of St. Nick online, wanting to die because I’m so pathetic. Facebook was invented solely to ruin lives.
11:15 p.m.: Shower and remember his long, long legs.
1:07 a.m.: Fall asleep watching Reality Bites. Ethan Hawke’s fucked-up teeth turn me on.
DAY THREE
9 a.m.: Alarm rings, reminding me that I have a job interview today. I feel sick in my stomach as usual.
12:09 p.m.: After the interview. I play “Who Would You Do” on the train. No one.
12:10 p.m.: Wolf down king-size Snickers.
3:51 p.m.: After applying for jobs for the past three hours, I finish Reality Bites. My vadge literally tightens up when Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder suck face and have sex. Now I’m depressed.
10:54 p.m.: E-mail in my in-box from one of my best guy friends from college. He just got back from Bonnaroo. I imagine him blasted, half-naked, and covered in dirt. He has the most beautiful eyes, and I’d die to fuck him. Under the right circumstances and with enough booze, I probably could. So I ask him to go to a concert.
2:01 a.m.: I am weirdly turned on by Keith Gessen. Maybe it’s his tired eyes? Or big mouth? Why do I have to be repulsed by someone at first to really desire them?
DAY FOUR
10:15 a.m.: Alarm goes off. Another shit day of job searching.
1:21 p.m.: All I want to do is eat chocolate and have sex. So I log on to Gmail and bother a mutual friend of St. Nick’s, and promise it will be the last time I ask. Apparently he still feels “uncomfortable” about the situation and won’t talk about it. This makes me really upset and angry because I am NOT the kind of girl who cheats on her boyfriend, and I thought there was something there between us.
1:49 p.m.: I am incredulous about this! “Uncomfortable” is not an excuse. The fucking already happened. I’m starting to hate him (yes!) because he clearly lacks balls.
3:55 p.m.: Completely demoralized from job searching, so I masturbate but can’t focus on a fantasy. Matt Dillon circa The Outsiders finally does the trick.
4:58 p.m.: High-school friend that I sort of keep in touch with calls me and tells me he has always loved me. I extricate myself from the conversation.
5:08 p.m.: Roommate and I discuss the probability of running into our two favorite New York bachelors. She’s got her sights set on Ed Westwick: pretty low chance of that happening. I adore a certain tall, skinny, homeless-looking lead singer of a downtown band. We see him out all the time, but she thinks he’s STD Central.
6:09 p.m.: I write a poem about how I need men to treat me as violently as I desire them. Do I need counseling?
2:12 a.m.: Thoughts of St. Nick. I can’t swear him off no matter how lame he becomes. I only wish the memory of the sex didn’t clash so hard with his crybaby excuses.
DAY FIVE
11:35 a.m.: I wake up late to about 56 e-mails about my extra Little Joy ticket. I decide to give it to the guy with the coolest name, whose birthday is the same day as the concert.
12:20 p.m.: Google this guy; he seems hot. Will look extra cute tonight when he picks up the ticket.
2:27 p.m.: My mom’s friend calls to help me with my résumé, but starts the conversation off by saying that from middle school to college he was either in love with my mom or her sister, and sometimes those fantasies mixed together, but he’s not going to get into that with me. Uh, you already did?
3:53 p.m.: Young Lords come on the iPod. Have a pretty quick orgasm. Here’s to Funemployment!
7:38 p.m.: The boy who bought the ticket: super cute but only turning 20.
10 p.m.: My roommate and I just watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel, get in me.
10:33 p.m.: Gchatting with the Ex. I miss him a lot. I hate this so much. The truth is, I don’t think I left the Ex for St. Nick. I think that St. Nick presented an opportunity for me to get out of a relationship that wasn’t working. Of course, the easy answer would have been to just start fucking St. Nick, but that’s not what happened.
3:43 a.m.: I can’t stop thinking about St. Nick. I hate my life.
DAY SIX
11:52 a.m.: I couldn’t sleep all night because I was thinking about St. Nick. I used to fall asleep really quickly if I thought about sex. Now I just get anxiety.
1:39 p.m.: “Lawn Boy” by Phish comes on my iPod while I’m job searching. I want to cry; this was one of the Ex’s favorite songs.
2:20 p.m.: Joylessly masturbate.
3:39 a.m.: Get home from the bar. I met some guys there. One was hot, but I was cock-blocked because I was with my guy friend, so nothing happened.
DAY SEVEN
10:54 a.m.: Wake up still drunk! Today’s gonna make this diary happen, baby.
12:06 p.m.: Lunch with the Ex. We’re trying to be friends. Or something.
3:15 p.m.: We are lying in bed crying about our lives. We kiss once, close-mouthed on the lips, and talk about the last time we had sex: I gave him a killer BJ and then he went down on me, and then we fucked, definitely too loud for the paper-thin walls of the apartment. Sigh.
4 p.m.: We decide to give each other some space to figure it out and not talk for a little while, and try to reassess things at the end of the summer. I think we both still love each other but we need space to figure it out. And he needs to sleep with someone else to get even with me.
9 p.m.: Go out with roommate. Drink. A lot.
TOTALS: Zero acts of intercourse; one closed-mouth kiss with the Ex; four acts of masturbation; zero acts of communication with St. Nick; one act of scrawling out an anguished relationship poem.
