The Man Fast takes Manhattan

A funny little thing about blogs - if you write them, people will come.  If you stop, you get raging hate mail from anonymous men demanding an explanation.  Your friends in far off cities start to wonder if you are alive or if you have perhaps joined the cult of robe-wearing,  kool-aid-drinking, recovering hipsters who dominate the Brooklyn purview.  All in all, that daily outlet that once provided fodder for others and a release for oneself ceases to exist and damn, if it isn't hard to start back up again.

My best-friend Erica has not always understood my life choices but she has always been supportive of my writing.  Her support ranks in the top three most influential opinions of my life (maybe top two, sorry mom). So when she gave me shit about not writing I decided it might be a good idea to pick it up again.

I also really liked my friend Trish's suggestion that I relaunch The Man Fast under the new moniker, "The Man Fast takes Manhattan."  Catchy or what?

I am not exactly sure how quickly I will be able to get caught up because it might be necessary to back-track a little and fill in the gaps from the last year.  I won't bother with the messy details of the move, like the violent stomach flu that took out 35 family members, myself included, right at Christmas time, as my mom and I prepared to drive a 24-foot U-Haul through a snow storm from the safety and comfort of the mid-west to the overwhelming newness of New York or the moment I took out a car just as I turned onto my narrow Brooklyn street.  

I won't divulge the boring details of my early days in Brooklyn, when life was dominated by reading endless art criticism I really didn't understand or hiding in my apartment for weeks at a time because a) I had no money b) I had no friends and c) the city was covered under feet of snow which prevented me from functionally taking part in any sort of life, even if I had one.

There was, eventually, reason to go out.  I made friends with a girl I picked up in the bathroom at a bar on St. Patrick's Day and a second cousin found me on Facebook and challenged me to what felt like a months long drink-off which I lost every time.  I started to find friends in my program, friends who introduced me to their friends, with the death of a drug-dealing potential suitor being the only snag in that situation.  (Apparently, trying to outrun the cops in an RV full of weed while transporting the merchandise from New York to Oregon through a tiny dirt town, ended up with the driver being posthumously charged with the town's most recent grizzly murders.) 

That foray into dating, aside, there have been some other notable flops.  Who new calling a guy "the Asian Justin Beiber" all night was not a good idea when looking for another date?

Eventually, life in New York started to become just that, a life.  Initial reservations about the city being filled with elitist neophytes clamoring to take their place in the hegemonic system that is the New York art scene, proved to be only partially true and my neighbor Lexi's invitation to her birthday party filled with interesting Brooklyn folks (not all clad in skinny jeans and Tom's) signaled the beginning of a series of new connections, new relationships with people who are characters rather than caricatures of the big bad city.

It seemed I was finding my stride and with it came the possibility of new relationships - the kind that offered rug burn and a physical release to the mental stress that was and is grad school.  But like all things in my life, nothing new comes simply and it has been an interesting ride, one that in the last month has brought more ups and downs than the San Franscisco marathon.  Details I will fill in here, details that have motivated me into a new chapter of the Man Fast, one that doesn't forgo dating - that would be silly in a city with so much to do - but to my mother's deep appreciation one that forgos something else, something spelled S.E.X.