Who put the lights out?

Hey everyone! Hope you’re enjoying my birthday week as much as I am. Don’t worry if you haven’t gotten me a present yet, there’s still plenty of time. Size seven shoe (or a Prada 6), size 29 waist, size small shirt, or extra small if you can find it. (Obviously my attempt to bulk up hasn’t been too successful.)

There isn’t much new to report this week, except that something really great happened at work. Sadly I can’t tell you about it because it’s confidential and my coworkers, like you, check my blog every five minutes to see if I’ve written another brilliant entry. But it was really excellent. If you want to know, email me.

Today’s entry won’t be new information to a lot of you, but I hope you’ll continue to read on just the same, if for nothing else then to hear my unique take on an absolutely absurd situation. And trust me when I say, it wouldn’t happen in Chelsea.

On July 11th, New York City issued a “heat wave” warning. For your reference, a heat wave is defined by New York as two or more consecutive days with temperatures of 95 degrees or higher. Or as we called it in Florida, a weekend. Quite honestly, the media makes a much bigger deal of the weather here than is ever required. Six inches of snow and there are five reporters “on the scene” showing you the exact moment when the flakes start coming down.

But of all the climates that run their course through this city, heat waves instill absolute panic. The news stations run up-to-the minute “heat index” reports, which use questionable science to determine the “feels like” temperature. As the heat index climbs, so does the hysteria. Don’t leave the house unless you absolutely have to. Avoid strenuous activities. Hydrate the pets. The one reminder they always fail to issue, however, is the most important; put on your freakin deodorant. Trust me, many many people need that urgent reminder, summer or not.

So as the dire predictions came pouring in (Heat Index of 115), residents of New York responded in the only way they could; they cranked up the air conditioners. Because the city is full of old, crappy buildings, very few people are blessed with central heat or air, meaning most apartments are cooled with window air conditioners which, as you know, are energy cows. No one thought to mention on their emergency reports that it may not be a good idea for everyone in the city to put their air conditioner on high.

Late on July 11th, Con Edison, the “power supplier” for the city, noticed that there was a severe power issue looming in the horizon. The subways, the air conditioners, the lights in Times Square and the fans pumping fresh air through the tunnels were all placing an extraordinary amount of stress on the system, and they had a choice. They could begin reducing voltage across the city, which basically means you get your lights and maybe your air conditioner, or they could completely black out one large neighborhood and divert their power to the rest of the city. Con Edison chose the latter and the lights in Northwest Queens, the place I so begrudgingly call home, went out. Conveniently, they chose not to inform the public of their grand scheme.

I woke up at 4am on the morning of July 12th covered in sweat. “Well, this sucks,” I thought, but I was confident that it was temporary. When the sun rose 3 hours later, and I still had no power, I was frustrated, but understanding. After all, I surely wasn’t the only one suffering. I ripped off my underwear (calm yourselves cheeky monkeys) and plodded into the bathroom to take a nice, refreshing cool shower. I open the curtain, turn the knob and… nothing. “Self,” I thought, “this is not good.” I turn the other knob, because, you know, it might work. And as expected, nothing. Choose the swear word… I probably said it. I stormed into my room and called my super, who informed me that in a completely non-heat related incident, the water main outside our building burst and that the repair people were on the way. So now I had no ac, I was a sweaty mess and I couldn’t shower.

Off to work I went, and trust me I was happy to do so. At least it was air conditioned. I’m sure I was pretty gamy by the time I arrived, and I certainly wasn’t in a good mood, but I settled in and tried to find out what was going on with the power. Con Ed was saying that perhaps 2,000 people were without power. I was a little suspicious about this estimate, because there are probably 2,000 people on my block alone, but I figured they knew what they were talking about. They were also saying that they were confident they would be able to restore power soon. I worked through the day, anxious to go home, shower and bask in my air conditioned glory.

What I saw when I got off the subway that evening scared the living shit out of me. The main street by my house, 30th Avenue, looked like a scene from a Tom Cruise action movie. Smoke was pouring out of manholes. Power lines were melting. People were dazed, walking around shirtless and sweaty. Children were sitting on curbs, desperate for shade and women were uselessly fanning themselves. Traffic lights were out and none of the drivers seemed to know how to deal with a four-way stop. There wasn’t a single police officer to be found. I walked down the street, accepting the harsh reality that I too would have no power. As I passed the grocery store that was shuttered, I heard to the right of me a loud “pffffhhhht” and then a “PHALOOM” just as a manhole cover ten feet away from me flew into the air, slammed into a car and smashed its window. Black, bilious smoke spewed forth from the hole in the ground, and people scattered. I crossed to the other side of the street and walked as fast as I could the rest of the way home. I should also mention that there wasn’t a single Con Ed crew around.

Outside my apartment, however, was a crew of guys working on the broken water main. This proved to be challenging, because the water main was under the sidewalk. They had to jackhammer the sidewalk away, dig a few feet and then fix whatever the problem was. I was going to offer the guys some cold water when I remembered that I had no water to give them, and the stuff in my fridge probably wasn’t very cold anymore. When I walked upstairs, I had a harrowing realization; I had left my windows open so that the apartment would be a little more hospitable when I got home. I’m on the second floor, over looking the sidewalk that was being jack hammered. I walked in my door, and knew right away that I was absolutely screwed. Everything in my living room was covered in a thin veneer of sidewalk dust. Most of my sensitive equipment (which is not a euphemism) is in a cabinet so it was ok, but my books, my furniture, my floor and my walls were completely coated. I walked into the kitchen and turned the faucet, just to see. Nope, no water.

So I had gone from feeling like I was living in a third world country to actually doing so. I walked into my bedroom, threw my stuff on my bed and thought about my options. I clearly couldn’t stay here, but I wasn’t sure where to go. I tried to call the only person I could think of, my ex, but guess what; my cell phone couldn’t get a signal. I packed a bag, and showed up at my old apartment hat in hand and smelling very ripe. He was of course incredibly gracious, and offered me a place to stay. Which wasn’t awkward at all.

On Day 3 of the blackout, Con Edison revised its earlier estimate of 2,000 people without power. What they actually meant to say, they announced, was that 2,000 customers were without power, and a customer was defined as a building. The average building in Astoria holds between 50 and 100 people, so NOW the rest of the city started to take notice; there were possibly 200,000 people without power, if not more. After work on the third day, I went back to my apartment to pick up some more clothes, and to throw away whatever food was in my refrigerator. Many of my fellow Astorians (or suckers as I choose to call them) were way ahead of me on this and had tossed their food into the trash. The only problem was that as the trash pickups take place at night, the city put a stop to them because the streets were not lit and it was therefore not safe.

So now there were piles of three day old putrid, rotting food on the streets. By the time I got to my apartment I was pretty horrified, but nothing could prepare me for the stench that smacked me in the face when I opened my fridge. I had a lot of frozen meat (thanks George Foreman!), some milk and eggs and of course tons of diet coke. Obviously the d.c. was fine, but the rest of it was toast. Like a first try at oral sex, I plugged my nose and dove in. I threw the rotted food away, packed a bag and got the hell out of there.

On Day 6, Con Ed once again revised its estimates and said that there were approximately 10,000 customers without power. You can do the math. What was supposedly an “isolated problem” was quite obviously a much larger, systemic issue. Amazingly, Con Ed told people to remain calm and to be patient. I was lucky; I had a place to stay. Many of the lower income, larger families in this neighborhood were absolutely stuck. The only form of help anyone was receiving was a red cross truck down the street. One truck, filled with a small supply of canned goods and other non-perishables. I say it again because it bears repeating; one truck.

On Day 7, Con Ed announced that they had determined the cause of the blackout. When they chose my neighborhood to “temporarily blackout” they had conveniently chosen the one neighborhood in the city that hadn’t been the lucky beneficiary of any of the funds earmarked for infrastructure improvement. What that meant was that the feeder cables that supply power to this area were over 30 years old. When Con Ed tried to restore the power to our neighborhood after the “temporary blackout”, the incredible voltage coming forth all at once fried the feeder cables, block by block until Con Ed realized what was happening and shut the power back down. Needless to say, this would NOT have happened in Chelsea.

In the middle of all this insanity, the politicians were behaving like absolute children. The ones who represented this neighborhood were screaming their heads off, and the ones who represent other neighborhoods turned a blind eye. Mayor Bloomberg pulled a W and gave Con Ed high marks, even as the civilization crumbled around him due to their actions. Even the most naive, trusting person could see that this was clearly a classist, racist action by Con Ed, yet no one seemed to care. They didn’t choose the rich white neighborhood to steal power from; they chose the poor hispanic neighborhood, and then lied about the consequences.

The blackout lasted for 10 days in some parts, because they had to go manhole to manhole and replace every inch of cable. It’s kind of amazing it only took 10 days. What’s more amazing is that Con Ed issued a credit to every customer for their troubles. $3.

I think that pretty much sums it up, don’t you? Next week, the big itch. Until then, happy birthday to me!

Can you see my roots?

Hi all! Hope you internet junkies are enjoying November so far. It is my birthday month, so how could you not? I can’t believe an entire week has gone by since my last post. All day long I was thinking, “Something is missing in my life. Sex? Sure. Money? Absolutely. But more importantly, I’ve not spread my joy and charm across this great land of ours in some time. That has got to change.” In my defense, I have been ushering a bunch of shifts in the past couple of weeks, so I’ve been pulling fourteen hour days, but that is no excuse. My readers have come to expect a certain frequency of reporting, and I cannot disappoint. So get off my back already.

A quick weekend update. I saw Borat over the weekend. Don’t go. You’ll laugh so hard your stomach will hurt the next morning. Mine still does. As horrifying as it is in points (like when the rodeo guy says America is working on hanging all the gays) it is refreshing to see someone finally portray George Bush’s America with some honesty. Granted he tends to pick the most extreme morons to interview, but those people’s opinions are really out there and it’s about time people started talking about them.

In other news, Time Warner came back and still can’t figure out what’s wrong. Nuff said. On top of that, my cell phone has officially broken, so if you’ve called and I haven’t called you back, don’t be offended. It seems I can’t hear anything anymore. People can hear me, but I get nothing unless I use a goofy headphone or speaker phone. And it’s a Treo which I’ve grown accustomed to using, but my boss won’t spring for another one, so I’m probably going to end up with a blackberry. I’m going to be one of those annoying people who check their email every three seconds. Most importantly though, my new George Foreman arrived! I’m grillin now baby!

So as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, the whole reason I’ve been ushering is to pay off debt. I’ve been making some good headway, but I’m still pretty buried. It’s the most frustrating thing to carry credit card debt, especially since the only thing I can actually remember buying is some really nice shoes. (Curse you Prada!) I guess it all adds up, but it sure takes a long time to pay off. By the time it’s all done with the shoes will be three seasons old and I won’t be able to wear them anyway!

The problem with trying to pay off debt is that while you’re busy picking away at the glacier of cold, hard numbers staring you in the face every morning when you log onto your bank’s website, life keeps happening all around you, and as we all know, life is expensive. I don’t have a car so thankfully I don’t have to worry about the constant drain on my budget that comes with owning a gas guzzler, but the cost of living in New York mitigates any savings I enjoy from not driving. I bought a half gallon of milk today. $3. I decided to get a salad for lunch. $11. I needed to get diet coke on the way home. $7. Spending $21 to do nothing? Priceless. And that’s just food. Entertainment is a whole other story. Cocktails? $8-$10 each depending on where you go, EVEN if you flirt with the bartender, who more often than not is straight anyway and is only working in a gay bar because he knows 30 something gay men are suckers for a tight body and a killer smile. Not that I would know.

But right now, the biggest financial drain in my life is my mouth. Before you say it, yes, I’m a loudmouth, but thankfully I’ve not said anything that actually cost me money. No, the financial drain is all dental. I have the good fortune of having a set of teeth that refuse to chill out. Like the war in Iraq, I am fighting an endless, expensive (not to mention immoral) battle to fix something that is fundamentally screwed up.

It all started in college, when I went to a dentist to get my teeth cleaned. Apparently, that “permanent retainer” wasn’t supposed to be “permanent”, it was supposed to be “temporary.” I should have just left it in. He plied it out, and took four good chunks of my teeth with it. The most damage happened to the two teeth on the bottom right. The very back molar had a hole the size of a lima bean ripped out of it. I went through about five fillings, but ultimately it had to be root canalled and crowned.

Despite many reports to the contrary, I actually have a small mouth. The petite nature of my frame extends even to my jaw, and most dentists can’t get their fingers back there to do the work. (This sounds really gross.) So when my last dentist, Dr. Thaw (I do not jest) did the root canal on the bottom tooth, she decided she had to file away some of the tooth on top in order to make room for her stubby digits. I said then that I thought she went a little too far but she completed the root canal and fashioned a crown out of metal that was anything but a good fit.

About once a year the crown would fall out and I would go back to Dr. Thaw, who would file a little more of the top tooth away to make room for a bigger crown that would inevitably fall out, and cost several hundred dollars. Somehow, they always seemed to fall out at the most inopportune times. Really, nothing says “Your place or mine” like a big hunk of metal falling out of your mouth and onto your plate. (That is a true story by the way.) The last crown she cobbled together lasted about a year and a half, until about April of this year.

I was ushering at The Wedding Singer when someone asked me the running time of the show. I was tempted to say “two and a half hours too long,” but when I opened my mouth I was stopped short by a familiar feeling of… emptiness where a crown used to be. “Oh thit” I said, just as the crown plopped onto my tongue and very nearly down my throat. I hacked it up into my hand, looked at the patron and said “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.” So now I had a big hole where the crown used to be, and fears of another few hundred dollars being whisked away from my checking account. “Enough is enough,” I thought. “This show sucks and I’m never coming back.” Then I thought, “I am going to a different dentist, someone who can fix this permanently.” Enter Dr. Fine. I’m not kidding.

Dr. Fine is a fine doctor, but I wouldn’t say he’s all that good looking. I was expecting someone much more Antonio Saboto Jr. like, and while Dr. Fine is rather tall and dark, it’s more of a Father Guido Sarducci look. As a new patient, I had to go through the whole process of getting my teeth cleaned and examined before he would consider putting on a new crown. $300 for the cleaning and the xrays. With my shiny new teeth, I went back to Dr. Fine’s office, and he asked to see my old crown. I pulled it out of my non-Prada bag and handed it over to him. “What. Is. That?” “That’s my crown,” I said. “That is… not a crown.” Apparently all this time Dr. Thaw had been putting what amounted to a massive filling over my tooth, but never really bothered to fashion a crown that involved an actual post that you put the crown on. The post, as it turns out, is key to keeping the crown where it belongs. Who knew.

When he patted my shoulder and said “We’ll fix you right up,” I was blinded by the diamond encrusted, three pound Rolex strapped to his wrist. “Self,” I thought, “this is going to hurt.” ”How much is a crown” I eeked out. “Oh, $1200.” At this point I had been ushering for about three months and hadn’t even made that much. I now was further away from being out of debt than when I started. Holding back the tears, I muttered something about being broke and he said I could work out a payment plan. I thought that was very nice of him, until I learned that the payment plan required a minimum of $200 a month. No one I know has an extra $200 a month lying around, and I sure don’t, but the receptionist could see this was really upsetting me, and she said she would make it $100 a month until I could afford more. There are some kind souls out there.

Unlike a crown that goes on your head, a crown that goes on your teeth has to be very carefully designed so that it’s a good fit. So they put a temporary crown in to try it out. (As if I hadn’t had enough of those.) After I chewed on a few of those pasty tasting articulation papers, Dr. Fine decided that the tooth above it would have to be filed down a bit to make room for a proper crown. I warned him. I said, “Be careful, because it’s been filed down several times already.” “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’re nowhere near the pulp of the tooth.” I kind of gagged at that word, pulp, and prayed that this would end well.

Because I’m writing about it here, you can guess that it didn’t. That afternoon, as the novacaine wore off, I sat at my desk and realized that something very, very bad was happening inside my mouth. Instead of the normal, non-painful existence we all enjoy, I was going through what can only be described as a feeling similar to someone repeatedly punching me in my face. It was a constant, deafening, blinding hammer of pain every ten seconds or so. I hobbled into my boss’ office and said something like “My mgf hha bbe bpo” to which he replied “Jesus, go home.” I got home and popped three vicodin. I don’t remember anything after that.

The next morning I called Dr. Fine and told him that whatever he had done had caused a massive problem in my mouth and that he was going to have to see me that morning. He had to get his snotty kids off to summer camp he said, and could see me at 12. So at noon I went into his office and he did the “does this hurt” tests. Yes, yes, and fuck yes, that hurts. “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a root canal. This tooth is shot.”

"Shot?” I asked. “It was fine the day before yesterday.” Oh, the wheels were spinning. He could see exactly where I was going with this line of thought, so he got his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate, and they both poked around my mouth for a while until his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate confirmed that yes, the tooth was shot. I pointedly asked how much a root canal would be, and he said the root canal was something like $400-$500, and that the crown would be another $1200.

So in a matter of 48 hours I had amassed $3000 in new debt. This was not the way things were supposed to go. I was supposed to usher for six months and be done and onto bigger and better apartments in a building that didn’t smell like India. Not that I have anything against India, I just don’t want to smell it all day. Now all of that was shot. I was back to square one. Not even. I was back to square –25.

Dr. Fine and his yet-to-realize-he’s-gay associate came back into the room just as I had put together in my head exactly how much debt I had just incurred. I must admit that there was a small part of me that was relieved at finally, once and for all, having this tooth done with, but the amount of money I now owed was staggering. I was shaking and sweaty. But Dr. Fine sat down and said “I’m going to pawn off this here $16,000 watch and pay for your root canal, so don’t you worry.” OK, not really. But he did say that as I had very specifically warned him not to touch the upper tooth, he would assume responsibility for that tooth and cover whatever costs were associated with fixing it.

I didn’t know what to say. Here, at last, was a gentleman. I thanked him. Really, what else can you say in those situations? Somehow “You’re damn right you’re responsible asshole” just didn’t feel appropriate. But, he was responsible and I didn’t want him to forget that. So I left it at a simple thank you. I get my new crown next week. What a pretty prince I’ll make. I’ll be sure and take pictures.

Well, once again I’ve written a novel sized entry, but the throngs of compliments I get from my fans encourages me to write and write. So keep the comments coming! Meanwhile, have a great week, and be sure to floss.