Famous People #74: No shoes nation
Kaitlyn: Why is there so much extra space around my brain, allowing it to rattle in my skull? I ask not because I searched for the information and couldn’t find it, but because it occurred to me while riding the Cyclone during an excessive heat warning and I never bothered to look it up.
I’m flinging the door open, feel free to walk through and suggest that there may be more empty real estate inside my head than there is inside others. I won’t fight you, as—personally—it has been a summer of becoming dumber than a box of rocks. I pay hundreds of dollars a month for central air that barely works; the heat on the 5th floor is dehydrating my 25-pound barn cat to the point of screaming, and he takes his frustration out on me by pooping in my laundry. We’re still rewatching Vanderpump Rules—what is this, the fifth time for me?—and I just rewatched a season of Real Housewives of Potomac that I only originally watched like six months ago. On Wednesday night I ran barefoot down Fulton Street in the pouring rain. When we flopped into a booth at The Fly, a chicken restaurant so inviting and romantic it makes me paranoid, I had trouble assuring everyone that this was fine, nothing like earlier in the summer when I’d run more like eight or nine barefoot blocks down Flatbush Avenue, which was also fine. As you know, I love Kenny Chesney. He calls his fans the “No Shoes Nation!”
I saw on Instagram that the Drunken Canal is hosting a party at Russian Samovar tonight, but I won’t be going because I’m not popular and I’m on a flight to Houston. I didn’t know Russian Samovar was cool—I thought it was where I went on a very bad Tinder date in 2019. It was later that I learned that Dorinda Medley had a birthday party there—I’ve seen that episode three times since the pandemic began. And then even later I learned that Caroline Calloway had a party there too. Why does this hurt my feelings? I like to be the one to show people things in New York, which is idiotic because everyone I know has lived here longer than I have.
You may already know: As soon as we started celebrating the return of parties and the return of Famous People, the Delta variant made us scratch our heads. Maybe we were wrong; maybe we weren’t back. The party invites stopped coming, or they came with caveats—this might get cancelled, even though we’re all vaccinated. On Wednesday, we weren’t exactly partying, but we were making our way to Doris for the first time since the long ago days before I had seen any Real Housewives franchises at all. This counts as an occasion now! It was to celebrate Sam’s engagement and to see me before I left on my work trip, during which some thought I was likely to get COVID.
It was hot, hot, hot. Also, this is a bar with a signature scent of “burnt wood” and a mixed-bag aesthetic incorporating both decorative cactuses and windows shaped like portholes, so the climate apocalypse never feels far away, even if it does seem confused. Ashley and I took the Q train and once again had words about whether she would seriously consider moving to Queens—after demanding that we all find apartments off of the Q train?? We accidentally wore the same outfit. When we arrived, there were four first dates already in full swing, which looked normal but also seemed surreal. Nathan—who, of course, I met in this bar on March 1, 2020, for a date during which we discussed the plastic bag ban but not a looming pandemic—rode his bike and got stuck outside the bar for several minutes, typing the incorrect vaccination dates into his phone over and over. It was long enough for me to text him: “Have you been raptured?” Eventually, we all had a lot of tequila. Sam arrived late, and he and I paused to have a glass of rosé that was specifically in celebration of his 27th birthday, which I missed in June because of work. Then we went back to drinking for the previous reasons.
Ashley was supposed to be getting on a plane to Milwaukee the next morning but the flight got canceled while we were sitting around. This meant a lot of time on the phone for her boyfriend Bran, but for us it meant that we could stay out until 11 instead of merely 10. (We are young?) So, we agreed we could eat. It was pouring rain, as I mentioned, so our main option was The Fly, about 230 feet away, and we ran. (Not Ashley, she had an umbrella.) Ashley’s friend Abbey is leaving New York, which is horrible, but at that moment it liberated us—she used to forbid anyone she spoke to from patronizing that restaurant because she lived directly above it and resented the noise. Now that she’s thrown in the towel, even those of us who admire her no longer have to hold her grudges.
And how great! We had chicken, bread, green beans, potatoes, fried corn with shishito peppers, and a bottle of chilled red. It was $40 each including tip, which is the exact amount of money I’m comfortable spending totally by accident. I don’t remember a single thing we discussed except whether there are any neighborhoods in Brooklyn we can ethically invade to get away from our peers. We were thinking like, Bay Ridge? Maybe that’s wrong. I said something along the lines of, “I’m fine displacing an Italian-American who owns a car dealership,” but probably if I tweeted it, it would be no dice. My grandmother is Italian, not that you care or it’s relevant.
The next day, Nathan wanted to ride the Cyclone. This was supposed to be a whole summer event but there was no line and a rollercoaster lasts about two minutes. So, we also had time to walk to Brighton, drenched in sweat. We promised not to drink for a month, and then we had chicken shish kebab and Greek salad on the boardwalk, with white wine. I loved the big groups of middle-aged friends eating seafood towers and smoking cigarettes. I knew why our waiter wasn’t being nice to us. The ocean got dark, and I said I would never sleep on a boat. I would rather die than sleep on a boat!
Of course, we took the Q train home but it was immediately clear that my apartment was much too hot to sleep in. We turned right around and got into an Uber to Bushwick, where Nathan has 12-foot ceilings for hardly anything a month. (What are we supposed to do? Move to Bay Ridge right now?) The car was $30, a little less than I’m comfortable spending by accident, but of course quite a bit more than I want to pay just to go to bed. In the car I said “god fucking damn it” because I’d activated the child lock on the seatbelt and I waste so much money on air conditioning that doesn’t work. I had a tantrum, saying we would have to get out, we would have to leave, the climate apocalypse was no longer coming, but here, now, and we were dying. “I’m going to run out of money!” I wailed. Well, duh.
In the morning, I woke up frozen half to death by the window unit. Walking to the L in my pajamas, I laughed at myself. I was headed to the airport and I would be saying goodbye to the place for more than a week. That ought to do it, I thought—no feeling in the world is better than the feeling of coming back to New York.
Except: bare feet. Obviously!