Prayer For New York

An essay about a GirlBoss hypocrite who had a good time in New York

Prayer I wrote on the Tarmac:

Dear God,

Please keep me safe on my flight today

You have already blessed me with no seat mate

You have already blessed me with no delays

You have already blessed me with being the second hottest girl on the plane

Now bless me with safety,

I’m doing my part which is bearing the correct amount of anxiety

Any more would be unmanageable 

Any less would be arrogant

Sorry, but if you’re not even a little bit anxious when you fly through the fucking sky, you might want to re-evaluate your own entitlement to the blessing of life 

Bonus points for blessing me with prosperity on this trip 

You can leave the fun up to me

I know how to have fun wherever I go

~ By your grace, ofc ~

But like, if you have time or feel so inclined, it would honestly be dope if you could bless me with some prosperity

Nooooo pressure though, seriously! But if you could make this trip change my life for the better that would be soooo awesome

I know it’s unreasonable and even delusional to go to New York for five days with a secret wish of Making It Big but I’m literally praying rn which is already schizo behaviour so forgive me if my schizophrenia is served with a side of delusion

And like, if something good doesn’t happen… again, it’s nobody’s fault, and again, NO pressure… but I am going to try to get back together with my ex 

I’m sorry I phrased that like a threat, but since I have absolutely nothing to leverage against you, O’ literal God in Heaven, I feel like threatening you in a prayer is actually kinda jokes? 😂 😂 😂

In the name of the father

Son

Holy Spirit

AMEN💋

…

I hate that people don’t clap when the plane lands anymore. As if flying and then landing a plane isn’t worth a simple ten seconds of applause? Just 100 years of the miracle and privilege of commercial flight and already we are jaded and entitled about the whole experience? I don’t want to be the douchebag who claps alone, looking around like a kindergarten teacher, patronizingly trying to remind others about kindness, respect, and appreciation. Clapping alone when the plane lands is like coughing loudly as you pass by a group of smokers to signify that you’re better than them. You’re doing nothing but patting yourself on the back in front of people who think you’re an annoying nerd. You’re doing nothing but humiliating yourself. To be in the minority group and still acting righteous is doing nothing at all. 

So I don’t clap, I become irate over the fact that my US SIM card isn’t working and act jaded and entitled about the miracle and privilege of telecommunication instead. 

Since my phone won’t function, I have to find Monica’s AirBnb based on improv and suggestions from the audience, which turns an hour commute into one that takes more than twice that time. But, hey, what counts are the friends I made along the way: a 20 year old Bangledeshi student who couldn’t help me navigate but insisted on a long conversation anyway in order to practice her English; a stylish Hispanic teen who sneezed on me and pointed me in the wrong direction; and a French couple who got mad when I tried to touch their iPhone (flustered by their ire and not being able to look at the map right side up, I then walked 30 minutes in the wrong direction, again).

Luckily, the best thing to do in New York is wander, anyway. So I chalked up the long commute to just another directionless New York jaunt that I overpacked for. As I trudged through hordes of people with my Oversized Personal Item, Carry On suitcase, and $600 trench coat slung over my shoulder, I indulged in more of my embarrassing fetishization of New York City. I thought about Carrie Bradshaw and Hannah Horvath and Jerry Seinfeld. I busied myself with questions about my fictional friends, like if I was more of a Carrie or a Hannah. Carrie, I decided, all too optimistically. The kind of optimism you can only exhibit Day One in New York. Next I wondered what petty reason Jerry would break up with me over if I was one of his girlfriends on the show. Blowing my nose too much, I decided, as I retrieved a used Kleenex from my trench. I blew my nose and reconsidered my first answer, mentally scribbling out Carrie and begrudgingly replacing it with Hannah. I walked past one of those boutique cupcake shops and admired them through the window, but kept walking. Point Carrie. Then I tripped; point Horvath.

When I finally did make it to Monica’s, the first thing I did was FaceTime my dad and, as always, demand that he fix my problems for me. What followed was a frustrating hour of doing the same three steps over and over again via the instruction of a person far less digitally-literate than myself. I finally became frustrated enough to apply my own critical thinking skills (a last resort) and the knowledge I had acquired ten minutes into the problem solving process (or lack thereof) that the SIM card we were using had simply expired. I bought a new $10 dollar SIM card which worked instantly, said “thanks for nothing” to my dad, and ended the call. 

This is my instinct, it always has been: to get others to solve my problems for me. You navigate, you organize the meeting place and time, you tell me what to do. I have always found comfort in being taken care of. Yet I constantly find myself choosing men whom my own competency supersedes. The older I get, the more that I tire of this pattern and just long to be taken care of, but also - the higher my expectation for that care becomes, as it’s measured against my own actively increasing capacity for self-care. 

Have you ever witnessed a man execute a chore in a less efficient way than you personally would? It’s the most frustrating thing on earth. It can be such a turn off to watch a man do something slowly or poorly, and especially both. More than once I’ve watched a boyfriend take 45 minutes to wash the dishes and afterward they weren’t even clean. I honestly find it sort of amazing, like a magic trick or performance art or something. 

Not to be a girl who longs for the past, a girl who claims she was ~born in the wrong era~ because I don’t feel that way - I love my phone and my independence - but I’m just saying: fifty years ago that wouldn’t have even been a problem, because I and only I would be doing the dishes. I understand that it’s oxymoronic to miss something you didn’t actually experience, but I bet it was sort of nice when the workforce was gatekept from women and domesticity from men. I bet it created a mysticism of each others’ worlds that helped foster an appreciation and a dependence and a respect for one another and when you think about it like that… the patriarchy is sort of hot, innit? Jk. Sort of.

Unfortunately, feminism reigns and the cat is out of the bag: women actually are capable of working. I know I know how to make money, sort of. I know how to clean my house, sort of. I know how to water my plants, sort of. (Basically I neglect them for a month, and then I waterboard them all in the sink at the same time and whisper to them that intermittent fasting is actually very healthy. All in a day’s work of an abusive mother who passes on her eating disorder to her daughters! As I pluck the remaining dead leaves from the already bare branches of my “daughters”, I tell them they look skinny as hell and that the diet is working!) 

Sometimes I miss being a destitute, helpless little girl, impressed by any man who can reboot my internet modem but unfortunately I am an almost 30 year old Girlboss Legend. I want to be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl every man seeks to take care of, but after your twenties, you are no longer a Girl, you are no longer anyone’s Dream; you are simply Manic, point-blank. 

…

Since all of this is clearly top of mind, I have found myself saying so onstage: “I just need a man to take care of me,” I said during a particularly brutal performance on my last night in New York. 

Maybe it was the abject nature of the poorly lit venue or maybe it was the last-night-in-New-York-and-still-no-Green-Card miasma radiating off me that manufactured the image of an incompetent, desperate, helpless little girl. Maybe. More likely it was the fact that I had already flirted with and lied about my age to the finance guy at the bar who approached me after my set to promise that he could and would take care of me.

Then, he bought me a drink and proposed that we go do cocaine.

Not wanting him to think I was a gold-digger, *I* bought *him* cocaine. At first he denied my offer but then I insisted. I insisted! 

I don’t even do cocaine!

I just bought this guy with fifty times my income (in American dollars, no less) cocaine, and then watched him do cocaine in his furniture-less apartment while I drank warm tequila and admired the stained glass windows, drunkenly and half-heartedly considering the prospect of marrying him. His apartment was within a gorgeous converted church, and maybe I should’ve been alarmed by the lack of furniture, but I reveled in the comfort of God's implied protection. Like, since when has anything bad ever happened in a church? 

Maybe the real reason I wasn’t scared was because the presence of cocaine in his system meant the more significant threat at hand was the potential of being annoyed to death. After about 45 minutes of failing to understand (or failing to try to understand) what stocks and bonds are, I was like, alright American Psycho, just roll out the tarp and kill me already. 

He didn’t kill me, my friends tell me it’s frankly amazing that I haven’t been murdered yet, and I’m not ignorant to that fact. But I really don’t think he wanted to harm me, I genuinely think he meant it when he said he wanted to take care of me. He was very nice and yet, here I am writing this. He offered to buy me cocaine and I wouldn’t even let him do that. It would’ve been the polite thing to do to thank him graciously and then to enjoy some fine New York City Cocaine with my New Husband, but no, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even let him buy it for himself. I guess - to quote a hack and dated meme - there are two wolves inside of me: one desperately wants to be taken care of, and the other wouldn’t let anyone dare. Not even by Patrick Bateman himself.

…

I walked through Central Park the next day, giddy from the experience, laughing with Hannah and Monica and thanking God for the blessing of my persevering life, thanking God for giving me what I want, on every level. On the surface: a man who would be willing to take care of me, and on a more honest level, what I actually needed: a new story for my Substack.

Sigh. Point Horvath.