Kaetlin Perna
February 23, 2007

"There's a holiday every week, in this town," one of my new companions said to me on the train ride to Park Slope. It's Mardi Gras, we are going to Union Hall, and I have to work in less than eight hours. My social cycle and my sleep cycle rally are usually running in the same circles together... six hours of socializing, four hours of sleep, eight hours of work, twelve hours of sleep, eight hours of work, eight hours of socializing, two hours of sleep... rinse, repeat, rinse again, and finito! It's that city of perpetual motion, the city that never sleeps and the greatest place on earth for a twenty two year old, coffeeshop working, corona drinking, wannabe writer, aspiring artist, and one ridiculously tired person.

Brooklyn. I'm in Brooklyn. Again (and the last time I was disgustingly wasted, dancing with girls in hipster glasses who were gyrating to Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" DJed by a friend of mine and her husband). It reminds me of Rochester. Kellie, Melody and I are going to Union Hall to watch burlesque, listen to a band, Stephane Wremble (who's cd I'm listening to right now with my roommate who's dying her hair) and have me teach them how to play Bocce ball at one in the morning. I think I see Heath Ledger dancing to Stephane and band; the profile is the same but as I was in the unisex bathroom downstairs, there was not a hint of Aussie as he spoke to me telling me how unisex bathrooms were "relaxing." I also saw no smelling of a flannel cowboy shirt. Then, I think I said Harold from "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle" but I looked him up on IMDB and this kid was a good six inches shorter than Harold. He looked famous... Sitting on the edge of the bocce courts, I was having fun.

Now, sitting at one-thirty in the morning in an apartment bordering Williamsburg, I am eating the last 1/3 of Ben and Jerry's "Half Baked" with the lesbian couple that just adopted me. Kellie and I work together, she is 27; Melody is her girlfriend, she is 24 and they have been together happily for three years. It hits me, with chocolate stained hands, as I scrape the bottom of the cardboard pint container, these two people are my first absolutely real friends in New York. Don't get me wrong - I have friends, acquaintances, people who pretend to be my friends, friends with benefits, keep your friends close (your enemies closer), and just people I know. It's Mardi Gras and I just spent it with... friends.

For the past year, I've had these ideals of who I'd want to be friends with and what group I'd be apart of, if and when I moved to New York. That ideal for me never really came of anything as I ended up feeling delusional and unhappy a lot of the time. Kellie and I were getting off work, she asked, "You wanna hang out?" and without hesitation but definitely caught off guard, I said "sure." No one really has ever forced themselves on me without me thinking they had some sort of agenda, except my best friend Joanna, who, like Kellie, took me under her wing. Joanna is also responsible for my recent glam makeover from bookish writer to styled icon.

For Lent this year, as I am a Catholic (who likes non-New York Jewy men), I will abstain meat on fridays, cleanse myself of all my sins and give over something to God as a repentance to him for Jesusblahblahblah (it makes me feel silly to talk religion). For Lent this year, I am giving up my ideals, I will give in to reality and I again... live life and not sit behind a computer screen wishing for my life to be a certain way when I know I'll never be happy that way. I will learn to be happy in places where I'm supposed to be and people I'm supposed to be with. Those are the things I'm giving up and giving into. I just hope I didn't start out on the wrong foot by not abstaining or fasting on Wednesday.