Monday, February 22, 2010

The Ritz Carlton: Brooklyn Edition

I am in love...with my apartment. It's the groundfloor of a brownstone and has a patio and an office and a sub-zero fridge and wood floors and is littered with antiques because my parents are letting me borrow them. Swirled wood, speckled marble, granite tops and soft lighting. Crisp starched linens and plush oriental rugs. Even the bathroom is fun to be in. If it weren't so weird, I might hang out in there. Blog in there. Write in there. Sleep in the tub.

And I have a fireplace (that works!). I would use it if it wouldn't melt the flat-screen mounted above, so I've got something fake in there with a warm glow that throws off heat and crackles. It's so fun being here, sometimes I forget to leave. All day Sunday was spent in the house after my incredibly exhausting weekend that I brought upon myself: cooking a boef daube for a dinner party, then scrubbing my house from top to bottom, then trying on a hundred outfits, then proceeding to down 6 bottles of wine with my workmates who I am still semi-nervous around because they are all serious music writers and I am a serious writer but not a serious music writer per se and they are a bunch of boys who might be called hipsters (not to their faces)...and at one point I had to ward off the advances of one of them by burying my face in a bag of salt and vinegar chips in an effort to disgust him out of advancing towards me (try it! sometimes it works!). It was a potluck, it was all boys and me, and of course it was my suggestion to throw it for some "family bonding."

Sometimes you never see these things coming. We are closer, and now it's awkward. Oh well.

They had a good time, I awoke with a horrible cough, and all the wonderful smells of the night before clung to the air--the crackling fried chicken and silken fennel sauce, the wine-braised beef stew, the salty cauliflower with raisins, the gooey mustard carrots, warm apple-raspberry pie and plum wine. It was an absolute disaster to see this in the morning, something that was so pure the night before, before we all started eating it. In the cold harsh light of morning, it was all made worse by the fact that my boyfriend was lying on the floor, sleeping in his underwear (he wasn't even part of the party, he arrived afterwards to help me "clean"--yeah right!). No glasses were broken and no one punched eachother, I think this finally qualifies as an actual adult party.

I would say that someone should have vomited to make it a good time, but my boyfriend actually did. Again, he did not come to the party. He vomited smelling the food after it'd been served and sitting in crusty pots for a half hour. I didn't take offense. I was already facedown on the bed in not my underwear, but my entire outfit, including my shoes.

This is not how you treat the Ritz-Carlton. We did anyway.

2 comments:

Moll said...

I am jealous of your BK apartment! I too live in a BK brownstone but of the slanted floor, water-damaged variety.

Maeko @ thereafterish. said...

Dear H, I love you.

Thanks.

Mae.

PS. we almost decided to move to Brooklyn (or a cute apartment in St. George, SI) after N got a job offer early this month. We turned it down. We're staying in snowy, gritty Detroit until next year, then we move to the golden shores of Oahu. It's an alright trade-off.