FINITE: DOOR PROTOCOL
More than a hundred heads are hovering around me. “Lola, hey Lola, Lola.” My gaze can’t follow the source of the emanating sounds. I keep squinting and biting my lip. It’s the only way I can perceptually modify the aggression of the spectacle that’s going on around me. I step in as the main bitch during business hours, also known as eleven pm to five am.
What I see is as primitive as it is fascinating. A flock of overdressed girls who wouldn’t have glanced at me in middle school are now gathered around with eyes of envy and despair. They are willingly perched on ten-inch heels in the blazing cold, being mishandled by assholes, popping out of their fake Hervé Léger dresses.
“Yo, Lola you know me, I’m Vince’s friend.”
“Hey, Lola, you remember me. We met at that party in the Hamptons.”
“Lola baby, how you doing. Haven’t seen you forever.”
It’s Saturday night, so the floodgates are open from Upstate to New Jersey. The entire east coast is trying to get into the club. After a week of indoctrination in their suburban lives of gas pumping and corporate ball sucking, it’s time to totally let loose. It’s the mass migration of the working world to the city. Everyone wants to burn some steam on the weekend.
I watch entire groups confidently step out of their tinted black SUV’s. They approach the door giggling hysterically together. I get to look them up and down while I listen to a douche bag spill the latest spiel. I’m focusing all my energy on keeping a straight face. Of course he’s booked a table under the name of his friend who happens to be abroad right now. He was here last week and spent a ton of cash. He knows Vince but his phone was stolen so he can’t text him right now. He pulls out his credit card threateningly.
“Ok I’ll pay whatever please just let me in.”
My rules are simple: if you want to party you’re going to have to show me some dough. If you are not on my list I will not look at you. You can whine and beg as much as you want. I’m absolutely inflexible. Sometimes I surprise myself. I used to be a pretty nice and compassionate person. Now, I’m guarding the gates of hell and riding high on it every night. I love watching some of the most successful young businessmen in the world covet my red velvet rope.
My friends and I are all dreamers and wankers. The thought of nine to five makes us want to drink to oblivion, to snort till saturation, to shoot needles up our veins. We live in a perpetual exhaustion so that we don’t have to take a real look at the broken world that’s been handed down to us. We live by one rule: always seek pleasure in the city that never sleeps. People here are making exorbitant amounts of money and we know how to get our share without compromising our freedom. It’s a dangerous game but it is incredibly exhilarating.
Once your infected there’s no going back. It’s not about one substance, one exertion, or one stress. It’s about striving in the everyday, keeping the pleasure of staying in the grind. Many slip, slack off, just altogether fail, and those you’ll never see again. But for those who manage to stay afloat, to stay addicted to the struggle itself… those are living the dream. Planting our footsteps from the LES to Tribeca.
We call it the playground. Why? Cause we are all just a bunch of overgrown kids. The danger with kids is that we have a lot of fun but we are totally oblivious to the damage we can cause. It is never intentional it’s just pure negligence and carelessness. You don’t care cause you don’t have the time to care. You won’t stop cause you know if you do it’s all over. That’s the harsh reality. So you let yourself be ruled by that outrageous invisibility. That strength you can read in the eyes of all real New Yorkers. In other words: the feeling of infinity.
