You Gotta Guy?
“you gotta guy?” he asked.
“what”
You gotta have a guy, you gotta guy?
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“Well, if you wanna buy weed in New York City, you gotta have a guy. I gotta guy. I’ll give you his number.”
It’s 2007 and moving to NYC fits me like a glove. What people say, wear and do is what I say, wear and do. I feel a sense of glorious belonging.
An Aussie friend told me about her move a decade earlier. While she worried about visas and jobs a born and bred new Yorker told her, “don’t worry about it, just come. New York will either spit you out or pull you in.”
Cities either fit or they don’t. I have a life-long mutually hostile relationship with Montreal, Paris, Moscow and Las Vegas. (nothing against the French really, I like Chamonix and Briancon just fine) just as I have a life-long love affair with Amsterdam, Ljubliana, Budapest, Boulder and New York City.
“Listen, don’t say nothing about nothing. Just that you’re my friend and how many CDs you wanna buy. You gotta say CDs. Got it?”
“Sure, got it.”
As a BC girl, I’m more used to a friend dropping by for dinner (vegetarian, home cooked, mostly from the garden of course) and bringing an ounce of weed as a little gift- sorry it’s just floor sweepings from trimming (all organic, home grown). It’s simply never an issue to find high quality, organic, abundant marijuana. However, I’ve moved to a different reality with different rules.
The guy with a guy is an actor. He has fame in my books because he appeared in the movie “The Beast” about Russian forces in Afghanistan in the 1970s. This is, hands down, a fantastic movie. At an opening night party much later, he and I were drinking until the very wee hours of the night and he promised to leave me his beast movie memorabilia in his will. I hope he remembers this. I don’t know if the movie ever achieved commercial success, but for both my father and I his participation in it is equivalent to being one of the Beatles. We have curious notions of fame.
I remember working for Norah Jones some years ago and seeing that both Prince and Garrison Keeler were on the guest list. I swooned. For the NPR host, not for the rock star. Literal star shock. But I digress.
This actor was making his directorial debut at Theatre Row on 42nd and 9th and I was doing my first lighting design in NYC after moving from Vancouver to……., well to see what would happen.
We had a fantastic time- I was honored to hold this first time director’s hand gracefully (I think) through the process of directing a production, which is seriously fraught with a potent combination of leadership, vision, insecurity, risk, exposure, faith, constant possibility of failure, of success, of mediocrity. My god, what we open ourselves to in the name of art, ego, it hardly matters. If you put your hand up, you put your hand up and hats off to you. The very act deserves respect.
I met this actor cum director in a posh (in my memory) high rise apartment in the upper 50s east side. I was there because a childhood friend has found his calling interpreting Chaucer as rap/hip hop. I should at this point go to his website to find a provide a sanctioned definition of what his calling is- this is my interpretation only- but he has had successful productions of various rap Canterbury Tales and onwards. He also had a New York dream and has since found a creative/academic/intellectual long island wife and has created two children and a career that hangs by a thread at times, but is fully in service of his vision and creative calling.
(As an aside, I used to babysit him and his brother and sister. As a pack they were unholy terrors. It was probably only one time. My most clear memory is of forcing his brother to eat some plant material that he has earlier shoved down his sister’s shirt, generating tears and trouble. I may have locked him in a closet for some time. The details are foggy.)
This Chaucerian rap artist was staying with me in New York while he was…. I’m not sure actually…… investigating and planting seeds for his future life I suppose. I remember he left me with a car. This is not a gift in New York City. This is a parking problem that I cursed him for on numerous occasions and returned the favor by allowing many parking tickets to accrue whenever I missed the Orwellian deadlines about alternate side parking. I figured they couldn’t pursue Canadian license plates.
One night he called out from his room,“hey Sjouk, do you want to cuddle?”
I remember I scoffed and said no. To this day I wonder why I scoffed. I had a built-in default reaction to resist the advances of men. I did not see them as anything but adversaries or co-workers and buddies. I had grown up in a man’s world and was expert at navigating that. Expert at being a great colleague, a fun girl, a hard worker, a woman the men respected at work. But apply one cubic centimeter of romantic or sexual attraction kryptonite and the entire thing exploded. I had no idea how to navigate male desire or interest except to interpret it as a deep-seated betrayal. I responded by crushing it, pretending (very successfully) to not notice it, which would lead to confusion and giving up on the man’s part.
The one or two times I reciprocated did not end particularly well.
But I wonder from time to time about the alternate time line in which I said yes.
Again with the digressions. The Chaucerian rapper had been invited to a party for a similarly minded fellow who was writing modern day Shakespearean style verse. He had finished a new play, and it was going to be produced. My childhood friend brought me to the party and my internal networking mechanism kicked in, prompting me to say those magical words that have allowed me access to so many different worlds.
“Are you looking for a lighting designer?”
The producer took a card, and eventually it turned into me designing lights for the modern-day Shakespeare’s new play, directed by the rockstar actor from “the Beast” who throughout the production process I discerned smoked weed. At the opening night party (which, as I remember, was a very curious affair with publicity agents for the author giving awkward speeches and a late-night trip to Rudy’s on 9th avenue where I asked to see a wine list and watched as the bartender scrawled “white” and “red” on a napkin and handed it to me with that fantastic New York combination of disdain and openness: “Your move.” I belly laughed and ordered the red- a respectable return volley and heartburn was a small price to pay for the exchange.) he invited me outside to smoke a joint.
(I had invited a friend from outside the production to come to opening night- there’s a very curious thing that happened in live performance where it’s impossible to tell if the production is good or bad until opening night. As a designer (and I expect actor or director) you are simply invested. Connected. Attuned. The good and bad assessment comes later- terrible and incredible remain possibilities until the final moment. This one was terrible. A truth I reconciled with quickly on hearing my sound designer friend’s careful question, “So what about this production did you feel needed witnessing?”)
But the director- on opening night smoking a joint together under a dark awning, I asked him where I could get some weed and found out he had a guy.
I texted his guy saying I was a friend of the actors and that I’d like to buy 3 CDs from him. He replied that it would be $60 (which gave me some sense of scale, not being fluent in the CD to weed quantity language) and to meet him outside such and such deli in Hell’s Kitchen. He told me to buy a card, fill it out with birthday congratulations to his name and put the money in the card, sealed envelope with his name on it (wise?)
I arrived at the deli and a square jawed, square chested new Yorker of Italian or Irish extraction came running up to me saying,
“I haven’t seen you in so long, how are you!! Great to see you!!” Coming in for a hug and two kisses on the cheek
Smooth as silk he whispered in my ear, “open your purse and I’ll put it in, then give me the card”
I opened my purse, and he slipped in an envelope. We parted and I said, “Hey Happy Birthday! I have something for you”
And gave him the card
“you are so sweet- listen I look forward to seeing you again. You know my number”
And that’s how I found weed in NYC.
