Last night I learned a valuable lesson: you don’t talk about circumcision or herpes at parties. At the next party I went to, in Bushwick, I met a bunch of different characters.
Chris, a handsome melancholy German stood outside on a stoop and lamented the divide between architecture’s aesthetics and context. He was the son of U.N. parents and had lived around the world. What he misses about Europe is that the buildings were made from better materials, and have been re-done countless times because the original foundation was so strong; whereas in the U.S., and New York especially, buildings are only made to last eighty years to then be demolished. But given the chance to buy one of these cheap six-family apartments would he turn it over for a profit? Yes.
Lorrie works at the Theater of the Oppressed in her spare time. She’s not LGBT or a minority, unless you count being female, Irish and red-headed a minority. She sometimes feels guilty that she doesn’t have more struggles to overcome in comparison to the people she works with — the theater’s not about putting on the best show or getting the best actors: it’s about conveying ideas. Even though she’s not a minority, she wants people to understand how everyone experiences some form of oppression, whether you have big ears or you’re a ginger.
Sam studied biomedical engineering, which you’d think would pretty much guarantee her a job in this market. But she’s lived at home for the past three moths. Poor girl, I had to reassure her a number of times that living at home is prudent and that she’ll find work soon. As long as she stays busy, reading a book or something. And she does. I guess she doesn’t so much like Down and Out in Paris And London because she can weirdly relate to Orwell’s indigence, at least spiritually. Or maybe because she was expecting a more 1984-type of classic literature and got something closer to a memoir…
Daniel the Writer 