Rivington Was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of Our Lives

by Brendan Jay Sullivan

  I caught a glimpse of myself in a window and shook my head. For six weeks I’d prayed for Nikki to call or come over. Careful what you wish for. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “Just let me come over.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Are you with someone?”

  “No.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Don’t.” Don’t come over until you can promise me that you’re over it. Just find me again in six months when we can be together. Leave the dress. It smells like you.

  “If I come ring your doorbell, are you seriously not going to let me in?”

  “Yes.” I took a stand. Like a man.

  “Please don’t. I’m already in a cab.”

  WHEN I WENT INTO THE bathroom before she came over I discovered I had a hickey on my shoulder. That girl from the other night, the one who laughed at my joke, had accidentally played a cruel joke on me. I looked at it in the mirror, square on my left shoulder. From the look on my face you might think I was looking through a window at someone else, someone who had committed some terrible faux pas, someone who had walked into St. J’s and requested techno. What was her name? I can’t remember now. Judging from the pattern of the bite marks, I might be able to identify her from dental records.

  Just then the buzzer rang. Nikki was here.

  I looked up, scrubbing at the spot as if it might diffuse or come off like Magic Marker. All that campaigning. All those blubbery I miss you messages. All down the drain because I decide once to make out with someone like a normal person in his twenties would do in New York City. Also, wasn’t I supposed to be sitting out Nikki’s Saturn return? Unless it came back around like a slingshot. I should have stuck up for myself, kept her stuff and went back to her in five more months. Even by my six-week manuscript-cooling rule I still had eleven more days. And I still had no idea why we broke up.

  When she rang again I decided to just tell her the truth.

  Then I stood there deciding what I knew to be true. I did this. I was responsible. Not some girl. I made this happen. That’s also when I grabbed the three-blade razor off the sink, pressed it against the spot, and ran the blades sideways across it, leaving three stripes across the bruised spot and replacing the hickey with blood.

  I ANSWERED THE DOOR PRESSING a wad of tissue to my shoulder. “Very impressive, Mr. Sullivan,” was all she said when she walked into my apartment. Since our breakup, I had spent a lot of time internalizing reasons she might find me immature. None of them had anything to do with partying and the hours I’d kept since we met. But I figured a girl like her might find my taste in furnishings a bit too post-collegiate. Since she left I had rid my apartment of any furniture found on the street. I also went through and cleared out any shelving or cabinetry constructed with the aid of Swedish emoji.

  My favorite part had been my own design. I built a bed out of two repurposed church pews from a nineteenth-century cathedral in Bensonhurst. At the base of the footboard I had a red leather kneeler.

  As if to make clear what she expected that night, she walked over to the bed, shook it for sturdiness, and smiled. I loved that smile.

  I poured her a Herradura on the rocks and we sat in silence. Tequila for a standoff.

  She looked at me, her eyes like the enchanting nuclei of peacock feathers. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I took my glasses off, hoping that my own myopia might prevent me from falling any harder for her (that’s not a metaphor).

  “I’ll go get your dress. I think there’s some of your stuff downstairs and—”

  “I still want to marry you someday,” she said in a deep, mortal voice that called out from her throat. I couldn’t see with the glasses off but I could definitely hear—hear the desperation in her voice, in her breath. For once in my life I had nothing to say.

  I grabbed hold of Nikki, her body a warm damp ball of misery, crying out of every pore. I held on to Nikki as hard as I could, scrunching us both into a little ball and hiding under the sheets until dawn.

  “HOW DID IT GET TO be noon?” Nikki sprang out of bed. She clutched her phone for answers. Hadn’t she set an alarm? How much did we drink? She punched in the security code. “Why didn’t it go off?” She tossed it on the bed and ran for the bathroom downstairs.

  Why didn’t it go off? I picked up Nikki’s phone. That’s strange. Everything else about her phone seemed in working order. In fact, right here on the screen is a text. From right before she came over. With my name on it. Which is none of my business. Even though it is in regards to me.

  Oh, and then her reply: “I know James and I are perfect for each other, but I miss Brendan.”

  She walked back upstairs. “I slept through an entire meeting at the factory!”

  Who the fuck is James?! “I’m sorry.”

  “How did this happen? I missed the most important part of my entire day! Ugh! I’m so mad. Like, what’s the point in doing anything now? I don’t have any appointments until tomorrow and I’m going to have to undo anything decided at the meetings today. Last time I missed one of these they cut our entire supply of fabric backwards. This is just the worst. The worst.” She gripped her BlackBerry and shook it for answers.

  I knew I had to do the right thing. I had to say good-bye to her, let her collect her things, and that would be it. We had a good run, but knowing the information I now know about . . . about James . . . I can’t, in good faith to myself or to her, let this go on any longer. No reason to toss her out the door. In fact, I should help her collect her things and put her in a cab—make sure she got her toothbrush and spare phone charger. She and I just aren’t m—

  “If you missed your meeting then you have nothing to rush off to.” I took her jacket off her shoulders. “Do you?”

  “Baby.” She said it like a caution. Which made it dangerous. I ran my fingers through her hair, caressing her scalp and wrapping my fingers around the hair at the base of her neck.

  “Baby . . .”

  She pulled her head away for a second, but kept her arms around me, frowning. “What happened to your shoulder?” She looked directly at the fresh blood scab with the three slices.

  “Oh, I must have bumped it.”

  I wondered, if she had a hickey on her shoulder, would I notice?

  Would James?

  Then I decided to find out.

  The bellhop’s tears keep flowing

  “You were supposed to let her see your hickey,” Gaga texted me on my way to DJ at Beauty Bar the next night. Gaga’s idea was that I should make Nikki jealous, show her how I’ve moved on. I couldn’t believe someone would do that to someone they loved—let alone that someone would recommend doing that. “She did it to you with that stupid James text,” she said.

  New York City was just as confused as I was that night, and the trains were delayed all over town as conductors absentmindedly missed their appointed stops.

  I stopped off at this sandwich shop called Bite two doors from where I had my thousandth pre-spin meal. It’s a great place to eat by yourself because you can order and pay and tip at the counter and then they bring the food out to your table and you can bounce when you need to. They had just gotten their license to have beer and wine, which they stored in a lofted area above the kitchen. I never drink before a gig—just during and afterwards—so I declined.

  And when I made my order I noticed a dewdrop in the counter girl’s eye. “Are you . . . okay?”

  “Fine.” She punched something on the computer, frustrated, and then tersely added—as if she hadn’t taken my order every Tuesday for three years—“We’ll bring it out to you.” Her voice faltered at the end and she turned away to wipe her eyes with her sleeve.

  She said she’s fine, Brendan. Let it be. Just walk over to your table and stop projecting yourself on people. You’re not going to save the world just by upsetting people at work. And just because you ordered a sandwich from someone every week for three years doesn’t m—“Did you break up with him or did he break up with
you?”

  She burst into tears, great heaving sobs that interrupted the traffic on Fourteenth Street. “What—like it makes a difference?” She disappeared into the loft upstairs. Over the noise of the kitchen she let out only the tiniest gasp of desperation to prove she was still alive.

  A bell dinged in the kitchen (“Order up!”). She stayed in the loft.

  I walked into the kitchen. “I’ll take that sandwich.”

  HALFWAY THROUGH MY SET I got a text from Leigh, the hickey girl. She had a name! She was downtown! Would I come see her later? I got the same text from Gaga.

  By sheer force of poverty or the desire to space out my night a little, I took myself on a bit of a walk after my set. Because of some imbalance in lower Manhattan, people walked around as frazzled as the train service had been, always stepping in front of each other, walking out of strange doors and finding, to their own surprise, that they were on the street. But I had stomping grounds now and they needed stomping. I cruised down Second Avenue, past Lit, down to Houston. Normally I’d take a right at Katz’s Deli but tonight I decided to say hi over at Arlene’s Grocery and then walk by Pianos on Ludlow, just to see what’s up, keep up with what’s going on. God forbid other people know about a band before I do.

  I took a left on Stanton Street, carrying my heavy iron roadie case of records with me.

  Oh, that James.

  He stood right in front of me on Stanton Street. No witnesses or anything. And here I have nothing but this heavy steel crate of records. The James who Nikki’s friends all thought of as perfect for her. Is James a critic at the New York Times? Is he a restaurateur? Is James an angel investor in the boutique lingerie business? Is James getting ready for his first solo show? A European tour? Here’s all I know about James:

  James is a fucking waiter at the restaurant where Nikki cocktails.

  I gripped the handle to my record case like a pistol.

  Calm down, kid. Remember the other thing you know about him: He has a twin brother. Also a waiter. Also might just be walking out of work. What if you’re staring down the twin? You’d feel like an ass and it would confuse the hell out of everyone. Besides, you like James. This is all just in your—

  “Goodnight, guys.” Nikki stepped out the front door of the restaurant wearing a scarf around her neck. She grabbed his hand, giggling at some comment made inside. As though this were just how she did things. I’d rather she just grabbed his cock. “No. Not tonight. We’re just going to go home,” she called into the closing door. Home. They have a singular home already.

  James turned to me and I couldn’t believe I could still move. I floated helplessly toward them and wished I had thought to wear someone else’s face.

  Nikki stopped and looked at me and shuddered. I gripped the rubber on the metal handle of my 45s case. I want to swing it around, smash it on the ground, and scream my head off. Throw it through the goddamn window of Stanton Social.

  Instead I swung it with my right hand and used it to keep my momentum going. So I could keep walking.

  I nodded my head as I passed. “Awesome.” That was all I said. “Awesome. Good to see you, Nikki. Hi, James.”

  LET’S TAKE THE FIVE SECONDS I did not give myself that night and think about something: I just ran into my ex-girlfriend. She was with a new guy. I am going to go meet the girl who gave me that costly hickey the week before. She is wonderful. And tall. And, as far as I know, still uncomplicated by any of the planets. However, because I’m a moron I decided to walk it alone. Therefore I was alone when I ran into Nikki and James, instead of letting Nikki see me with someone else like Gaga recommended. If I had run into Nikki alone while I was with someone else this would be a different story.

  Let’s also accept the obvious: That did not happen.

  I met up with Leigh at the Hotel on Rivington. Where the drinks cost twice as much and the music is half as good. I found her at the bar. She stood there with her cute friends, swishing expensive drinks and looking like an ad for something by Cartier.

  “How’d your set go?” She smiled. The girl wasn’t an idiot. Something had flagged in my optimism in the time since we last spoke. She, charitably, thought it might have something to do with the crowd’s reception of the records I played, of some mass-opinion shift against the Beatles.

  “Awesome,” I said. “Everything is awesome.”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s get out of here. I need to be further off Ludlow Street right now. Let’s go to St. J’s.”

  She motioned to her friends. “Uhm, I think they want to stay.”

  “I think I want to go.”

  “Okay, should we meet up later?”

  “Awesome.”

  Everything is awesome tonight.

  “VH1!” GUY SLURRED AS HE stood outside of Welcome to the Johnsons, another dive on the block. In the autopilot of my march downtown it never occurred to me that I didn’t want to go out.

  Gaga put me into a barstool at St. J’s.

  “You look like your head is going to explode,” she said.

  I sank a nice shot of Wild Turkey into my skull and Conrad looked over. “You want another?”

  I slammed the glass all the way on the back row. “King me!”

  “What happened?”

  “You know all those crazy things you invent when you break up with someone and they drive you crazy?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well. I just found out that I’m not crazy.”

  “Oh baby.” She gave me a hug.

  I started crying my dog-shit brown eyes out.

  “Shhh . . . you’re just upset,” Gaga said. “There are a million reasons why she might be with someone else. And probably none of them having anything to do with you.”

  “When I met Nikki she had a string of psychotic exes who would cause a scene if they saw us or convince her to meet up for tea just to tell her that I absolutely must be cheating on her. I don’t want to become one of those guys, but this unbelievably irrational part of me comes out when heartbroken. I don’t feel like myself and it is just draining enough that I can’t really give a shit about anything else until the next time.”

  “You need to go home, get some sleep, and get yourself writing again.”

  “I can’t,” I confessed. And saying my confession out loud offered no absolution. “I can’t write anymore.” It had been six weeks since I finished the manuscript, six weeks since my birthday party at the Chelsea Hotel. How do you throw a birthday party for a guy and then set him adrift and screw one of your coworkers? Wondering that had proved more interesting than writing and I hadn’t worked since.

  “You’re going to have to sit out her Saturn return. You know that.”

  “But I can’t.” That word fell out of my mouth as a sob. Can’t. I can’t. “I can’t write a word without thinking of how bad I screwed up. And she won’t take me seriously. Until I finish this.”

  “It has nothing to do with that. Girls like what you do, but they want your attention more than anything. If she misses anything right now she doesn’t miss your writing, she doesn’t miss you at work. She misses you.”

  She said something more but I had to go.

  Happy birthday, Mr. President

  That summer I thought I’d learned to do things on my own. I kept busy and stayed in town while New Yorkers disappeared into cabins and the Hamptons. On weekends I rode out to the end of my train line to Coney Island, with its own noise and kids and lights and the pounding surf. Every night after work I found myself down in the Lower East Side with good friends and the music I loved so much. None of us could afford TVs or big vacations, but we did entertain ourselves with the drama of the scene. Gaga’s new songs were enough to get her booked at the side stage of Lollapalooza and it wasn’t until she’d gone that I realized what a part of life down there she’d become.

  I wanted to tell her about a new party I was putting together and so we me
t up at Beauty Bar when she got back. I could tell from her hollow eyes that something had gone wrong.

  When she walked in she slumped down on a barstool, took a breath, looked me square in the eyes, and said in a low voice, “I got a ticket for wearing ‘hot pants.’”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “A bicycle cop came up to me at Lollapalooza, took my ID, and wrote me a citation for wearing hot pants.”

  “What the fuck are ‘hot pants’?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  I had hoped for her sake that Lollapalooza could become a steppingstone across the US. They did old-school promotion with programs and ads in magazines, things we couldn’t do from here. Her face must have appeared in all the papers out there. “Did people recognize you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “How do people ‘not exactly’ recognize you?”

  She laughed.

  “What?”

  Gaga’s regular chuckle tickled out of her throat, but today it exploded, rumbling like a bubble from a water cooler. She could barely hold it in. “This girl saw me backstage right before I went on and she screamed, ‘Amy! Amy! I love you!’” Gaga whipped her raven-colored mane aside and made this fierce glare come through her dark eye makeup and put on her foggiest East London accent. “And I said, ‘Oi! Feck off!’”

  The only person to even notice Gaga thought she was Amy Winehouse.

  I laughed because Gaga still saw it as a chance to perform. She showed me twice how she made a curtain of her hair and walked off before she could get found out. From the way she squirmed on her barstool I could see she still found a thrill in having a fan.

  She tried to change the subject, to ask more about Nikki and the drama she’d missed in just a few days in Chicago.