On Crashing a Sex Pistols Party & The Crush to End All Crushes

Decisions were made.

In honor of me reading at my third (!) reading series — tonight in Brooklyn — I present to you a version of the story that I read at my very first ever reading back in June. I was initially going to paywall this because it’s definitely my hero piece, but I’m feeling wild. Enjoy. xoxo

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As a gold medal 11th hourer/procrastinator, by the time I decided to pursue the path to alternative teacher certification I had about 24 hours to meet the application deadlines. To my half-assed research knowledge there were only two such programs: Teach for America, which looked a little We Drug Your Water So You Forget How Hellish This Is and the NYC Teaching Fellows, which seemed like it offered the same brainwashing but was for sure a little ratchet. I applied for both, was rejected from TFA after the interview round, and accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows, leading to the only possible conclusion: I am a little ratchet.

Which was how I found myself under fluorescent lights at Brooklyn College with a motley crew of recent college graduates and change-of-career idealists who all had some delusion they were going to change the world. This basically meant blowing our own minds by including Hip Hop in our poetry units and pointedly talking about Indigenous People’s Day and NOT Columbus Day you Old. Clearly, the revolution had begun.

Always holding court right in the center of our disheveled little band of dreamers, as we all bonded over code-switching and cheap drinks at too long happy hours, was The Hipster. Gregarious, loudly altruistic, unquestionably charismatic, and tall with jet black hair and gorgeously walnut skin. He wore skinny jeans before it was the cool thing for men to do. And, man, did he ever wear them. For many of us, men and women alike, The Hipster quickly became The Guy. The Guy that you wanted to sit next to, whose attention you wanted focused on you. The Guy who we all talked about on the walk to the subway wondering: Just what is his deal, anyway?

The first time he ever spoke directly to me, we were waiting for one of our classes to begin, both crammed into those horrible desk-connected-to-chair contraptions. As I sat there having absolutely no game and pretending to read, he turned to me and asked, “Do you happen to have any lotion?” I did not. While I cursed myself for not being a better girl, he shrugged and followed up with a second question, “Do white people get ashy?” Blushing a thousand shades of Irish, I told him I thought we did, but maybe it wasn’t the same? And then I just stared at him and said nothing else. I died inside at being so awkward, but he simply laughed, hearty and contagious, and offered a handshake, introducing himself. 

It took maybe two and a half days for me to be an absolute goner.

That Feeling: The flutter in your gut that feels like magic and potential and terror and nausea — the lusciously tangible feeling that Something could happen between the two of you. It’s getting dressed in the morning with the anticipation of seeing him and sitting together on the train so you can spend the ride sharing stories. Yours: halting and self-conscious. His: bewitching and implausible. It’s unexpectedly running into him in the hall and sharing a hurried, whispered moment; the exhilaration of hearing his laugh — deep, throaty, and unrestrained — at something you’ve said, ringing in your ears for hours afterward. And all of that building and building, picking up electric momentum into this agonizing blur of maybe MAYBE tonight could actually be The Night.

In the parched flatlands of mid-Brooklyn, we quickly fell into the stultifying routine of grad school and student teaching, our unfailing commitment to happy hour being the only lush oasis in the oppressive New York City summer. That summer was a haze of Jack Daniels, lesson plans, and The Hipster. Once I got over my initial stuttering, blushing shyness, we became fast friends. Our getting to know each other of the giddy, unabashed, bare your soul to me variety. We ran around New York City like absolute maniacs, not caring what day or hour it was, talking about music and books and New York City. It was our very own, bourbon-fueled, converse-wearing, sucking the marrow out of life Hungover Poet’s Society. We stayed out way too late, did far too little homework, and instead of mastering backward design and Vygotsky, we became fluent in the Lower East Side.

Now, it is important to remember, that while I had The Crush to end all crushes on The Hipster, all that summer, he and I remained Just Friends. I attributed this to a number of things: me not being cool enough, him being a little older and way too cool, me not being cool enough, him not wanting to jeopardize our friendship and make it weird in our classes, me not being cool enough, ad nauseum. What I did not know to attribute our lack of becoming the New York City Teaching Fellows’ It Couple to was the fact that the person he exclusively called his roommate — my roommate’s really annoying me today, my roommate is out of town, I can’t hang out because my roommate needs some quality time — was, in actuality, his live-in girlfriend of many years. 

To be 22 and in love is to make excuses for many things. 

And, in my pheromone-addled mind, this revelation did nothing to change my feelings. Sure, romantically, he was off-limits. But we could still be fun flirty friends, and it was all totally halal because we never physically acted on our feelings, right? Right…

At the end of August, The Hipster and I went to a job fair at some generic hotel in downtown Brooklyn to try to get jobs. The summer was hurtling toward a close, and while the Fellows program had set us up with our degrees and licensing, it was entirely up to us to find our own teaching placements. 

Sitting next to him in some dull as rocks orientation about how to, like, talk to potential employers or something earth-shattering like that, I was aware only of how close his arm was to mine. A few minutes into the spiel he leaned over to me and whisper-asked, “What are doing tonight?” While I thought: Uh it’s cool, not too much, just pledging my undying love and devotion to you, my mouth managed to tell him, “Oh, um, I was planning to go to that happy hour Vanessa organized.” He looked me right in the eyes, piercing my 22-year old soul, and said, “Happy hour is for kids. You’re going out with me tonight.”

Fucking swoon. Just let me die happy right now. 

Trying to play it super cool and aloof, I risked the stares of people who actually gave a crap about their futures and whispered back, “So, like, what are we, uh going to do?” When his response was, “Crashing a Sex Pistols party,” admittedly, my first thought was, “Those guys have to be dead by now.” My second thought was that, really who cared, because he could have replied with, “Oh yeah they’re real dead, but we’re having a seance over Sid Vicious’s grave,” and I would have picked up a scrying mirror on my way to meet up with him.

When I told him I was In, he smiled and said, “I knew you were a rock ‘n’ roll chick.”

So that night, after deigning to have one drink in Brooklyn, I found myself abandoning our other friends, at their, yawn pedestrian happy hour because I had Better Plans with rock and roll. With adventure. With Him. 

Of course, with him you never truly got the full story. So, ok, we were going to this party, but how exactly were we getting in? Of course, The Hipster was also the guy who Knew a Guy. Standing there alone, in front of the Hotel Chelsea, while he went to see about his buddy who was supposed to be working the door, I began to feel a little less rock and roll and a little more like I was wearing a black tank top and Converse and that we were probably way out of our league.

Then, as impossibly cool Industry People filed past me, I caught a glimpse of pearls getting out of a cab and about died. The Hipster had neglected to tell me he’d also invited our friend Alex. More his friend at that point, I knew she could start a barroom brawl faster than anyone I knew, but I also knew that she dressed like a Stepford Wife. Any hope I had of getting in on punk rock merit alone, was stamped out on seeing her popped pink collar and Banana Republic skirt. I was convinced CONVINCED that if there was any reason we weren’t going to pull this off, it would not be because The Hipster actually had no buddy, or no In. No, it would be because of that floral print midi skirt.

But, lucky for Alex and her pearls, The Hipster always had a way of making things happen. I don’t know who he paid off, or how much he gave them, but about ten minutes later we were drinking whiskey and doing our best not to openly gape at Johnny Rotten, sitting across the bar, bored, in a VIP banquet. 

The baseline thrum of unease that had haunted me since choosing the consolation prize life of teaching, since choosing to be realistic and not pursue the life of album releases and backstage passes that I had really wanted — for a few hours all of that was forgotten. This THIS was the suck the marrow out of life Life that I craved and the man standing next to me sipping his Jack rocks splash of coke, this man with his cigarette burn scars and absolutely insatiable hunger for anything and everything burning in his eyes — he was its mascot.

We spent the next few hours talking to the odd Pistol, sound tech, roadie — with each  conversation, each drink working our way onto the Right Side of the Velvet Rope. To be in the room was enough. To feel that we had crossed some threshold of Cool was pure magic. As the night wore on and the crowd dwindled, it became clear this was becoming a more intimate gathering. It also became clear we didn’t really belong there. The security started to corral us, but we weren’t leaving until we’d had our audience with Johnny. 

The Hipster, not afraid of spectacle, took care of this. As we were being told to leave, being herded towards the stairs, The Hipster raised his glass, bellowing “Johnny!” across the bar. Standing on the steps below him, we looked up and followed his gaze to the man ensconced in his own VIP VIP area. Johnny Rotten looked back at us, bored.

“Cheers, Johnny!” The Hipster yelled again. The bouncers moved a little closer. I raised my glass. And there where Sid had maybe killed Nancy, a punk legend deigned to toast us. He raised his glass, nodded, and went back to his conversation. Unplanned, but synchronized, we threw our glasses onto the floor. As the glass shattered we were officially escorted out of the Hotel Chelsea. Hurtling onto 23rd street, we yelled, we marveled, our blood on fire with the buzz of mayhem and whiskey.

If there had been any chance that I was going to wise up and let my infatuation for The Hipster fizzle, that night reduced the probability from Slim-to-None to Get-the-Fuck-Out-of-Here. 

As we parted ways, and said goodbye, he leaned in close to kiss me on the cheek. He grabbed me by the waistband of my jeans, his thumb looped right underneath the button, just barely grazing my navel. I looked at him, inches from my face, and breathed, “You’re going to be trouble.” 

He just smiled and said, “You have no idea.”

A week later, he and his roommate broke up.

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