Irene

Despite the weather, the odds and the massive shut down of New York City I am going to California. I don’t care. This has been the summer of travel hell but it’s going to work damn it. It has to. I’ve planned it out. I have the time off and food purchased, the outfits decided on and the tent and water arranged. It’s all packed and ready to go. The only thing standing in between me and California is this bitch named Irene, they call her a hurricane but I know what’s what. If we need to have a show down so be it. In the end she will be downgraded to a tropical storm, one point for me, and then she will still jack all my travel plans, so point for her. I will outsmart her, cancel tickets, buy new ones, fly out of Philly instead of JFK, and make it to the Golden State just a few hours off my expected schedule. 24 hours later I’ll be wearing ruffled hot pants and pasties, standing in the center of a circle of beautiful dancing men, and being asked if I’d like a birthday kiss from any one of several volunteers. It will be the perfect way to turn 27. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is the story of a half crazed girl during the biggest hoopla over nothing NYC has seen in recent years.

Let’s go back to late August. There has been rumbling for a few days about a storm coming up the east coast. I don’t watch the news so I’m not clued in but I start to see the chatter on Facebook. It’s lovely in New York, no clouds, nada, and I’m thinking how bad can this be? They name her Hurricane Irene and I start to pay attention, although it’s still just swirls on a screen that don’t seem to correspond with the lovely day happening outside my window. My parent’s start to request updates via text and I’m laughing, but they are watching the news in California are and starting to freak out. I tell them I’ll be fine. Then I see the latest news- the city of New York announces they will be shutting down the subways and the bridges starting at 12pm the following day. Shut down the subways and you shut down the city, those major arteries that bring the people that cook and serve the food and the people who eat it. Shut down the bridges and no one is getting home at the end of the night, so no one is going out in the first place. So, this might be kind of serious after all.

In my workaholic brain all I can think of is how on earth am I going to get everything done before 12pm tomorrow at one job, and then how will I get to the hotel for my shift? Never mind that I’m moving into a new apartment that day, signing a lease, getting cashiers checks in between errands for my job- never mind that my new place has leaks or that my stuff is in storage and that I have not yet arranged where to sleep that night since my new place has no power and I have nothing to sleep on. Never mind that I’ve been house hopping, skipping showers and haven’t had a meal I made myself in over a month. Never mind that I’m meant to be flying out to the Nevada desert in 2 days where I’ll be sleeping in a tent and facing extreme weather and wind storms and have done little to nothing to prepare for that besides buy some goggles on Ebay.com. What’s on my mind is getting curtains installed at my day job and then making sure I’m on the Q before noon the next morning. I don’t even realize that calling out is an option. It’s a sickness. I am sick.

The storm is set to hit on Saturday night. The trains will shut down that afternoon. On Friday the bar calls and asks me to come in before the trains stop running the next day. The idea is that I’ll work the mid shift and then stay at the hotel and open in the morning. I say yes, of course. Then one co-worker calls, “Hey, are they trying to get you to work? because everyone else called out but I’ll do it if you do it, I just don’t want to get stuck there alone.” He says with a sigh. We are somehow bonded, him and I. He’s my security blanket at work and as it seems, I am his. If it is really just him and me I’ll be working mid shift to closing- a 12 hour shift- and then sleeping a little and getting up and opening again. I’ll have 12 hours after work at the bar to finish up stuff for the other job, pack my bags for California and get some rest before my flight.

Of course this night before the storm is meant to hit, this night of all nights, my dearest, oldest friends are visiting from out of town with no warning. They talk me into coming over after work. I love my friends. I show up after my shift on Friday, wasted tired and a little anxious about everything. They make fun of me, they make fun of each other, we drink beer, I beg for back rubs and we snuggle on the couch. We catch up on the entertaining details of all our lives, they are doing fun and funny things, they are all in love with beautiful people. I want to take 1000 pictures. They beg me to cancel on work the next day and go up with them to the roof to yell at the storm like Lieutenant Dan. They are brilliant and make me laugh harder than anyone else ever has. My sides get sore. We pass out. I wake up in a puppy pile of warm bodies I’ve known for over a decade. Faces I would know in a pitch black cave. It is so hard to leave that, knowing what I’m heading to.

I have to catch the train to work before New York shuts down. I force myself out of bed and to the subway. When I get to Manhattan, the city is empty. It is eerie. I walk to work on Canal and barely see a soul. Most times I’m tripping over tourists from Texas, but today men are boarding up storefronts and piling up sandbags in anticipation of the worst storm in 100 years. I get a bottle of water and a bagel at the corner deli and watch the line form as people buying provisions as they prepare to bunker down for a few days. I show up at work with my suitcase. “What’s that for?” my manager asks, “I’m leaving for Burning Man after this.” I reply. Without looking at me my manager says, “Well we will have plenty of glow sticks left over for you to take with you.” He says it like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I look at him. This is not the man I would assume would know about Burning Man, or glow sticks. He smiles at me. “I wasn’t always like this you know.” He says referring to his clean cut, well dressed, fatherly and composed appearance. I laugh and I know that this guy is great, that this will be a fun night, that people have so many layers to them.

Whatever your critiques on the city’s handling of Irene, at least now we know what the hotels will do in a crisis: stay open and hire a DJ. We have to stay open as we are a hotel bar. I keep joking that I’m bartending the apocalypse. It’s all hands on deck. The one manager is waiting tables and making jokes that although he hasn’t done it in ages but he’s still got the knack. “How you doing?” he asks, “This is insane!” I shout over the music, handing him 2 beers and a martini. “Oh you’re fine, anyways in 48 hours you’ll be running around the desert half naked and tripping balls.” We look at eachother again, I see his eyes light up with a sly smile. How does he know of these things of which he speaks? “My friends go every year, I hear stories,” he says as way of explanation. Sure. Friends.

I was not psychologically prepared for how we got hit. Before my shift I couldn’t get it into my head that we would be busy, I whined that it would be dead, that all my co-workers called out. At preshift we were warned that we are at 70% capacity and will be busy. I didn’t take the storm so seriously, but I take the shutting down of mass transit to mean that I’ll be working hard, as we are running bare bones. No bar back, no bussers, just two bartenders. Our manager got stuck washing glassware in the back. While outside the night was silent awaiting the storm I was working the bar like I haven’t done in ages. All seats were taken and mostly diners to boot. As it turns out they are right about being busy, the kitchen is meant to close at 9 and doesn’t close until 11. Everyone looks like they’ve had a good ass kicking and is wearing thin. The sous chef is running plates and sweating, slamming dishes on the bar with barely a look to me before heading back down for more. I run out of plates, and forks, then knives and napkins. The night concierge makes me roll ups. Outside it is still dry, the storm isn’t due for another 4 hours.

The rain starts to fall and the music is bumping, almost too loud at times for what seems like the eve of a potential disaster. My co-worker is hitting his wall, I think I hit mine a while back and then just powered through until I hit the next one. The hotel bought us dinner, a rare delicacy. I am handed a room key to the 19th floor. Advisories are telling people not to go above the 12th floor or so, but I’m just grateful to know that there is a bed for me, somewhere, even if I might blow away in my sleep as the news seems to swear I will. The night dies down finally and I sneak off to bed. I stare out the window of the 19th floor and watch the rain pound the streets. I fall asleep in luxury sheets. I don’t blow away with the night.

In the morning it’s packed for breakfast. I do my shift and the next guy comes on at 4pm. I race out of work to my other job, the taxis are charging by zone, not distance, because the subway is still down. At this point it is just the cost of doing business. I get the last touch of the curtains installed. It’s at that moment that I realize my flight to California has been canceled, so I spend 2 hours on the phone with 2 different airlines figuring out how to fix this. I cancel my flight out of JFK, I book a new flight out of Philly and get a bus ticket to there in the morning. I crash at my best friend’s house. Pack my bags with the necessary bustiers and booty shorts and sleep for 4 hours before heading for the bus. I feel like I’m on drugs but it’s just the lack of sleep, the odd hours and the eerie-ness of New York in the aftermath of a storm that didn’t really cause the damage everyone was expecting. In other areas it was bad, but for me in Brooklyn and Soho, we were just fine. Thankfully.

In the end I make it to Burning Man in time for my birthday. It took a bus ride, 2 plane flights and an 8 hour drive but we did it. We dance till dawn that night and for the next 4 days in a temporary city on an ancient lakebed in the middle of the desert. It’s perfect, and, yes, those glow sticks really came in handy.