Just F-ING READ THIS #2: How To Ruin Your Ex's Wedding Day AND Opinion of You Without Leaving Your Laptop

Is anyone else entertained by the bleeding entrails of another human being's emotional dignity? 


I am.

Well. I mean, my own bleeding entrails aren't funny. To me. But they should be to, like, other people.  Otherwise what would the point be? When I make a stiletto-ed, snot-dripping gazelle run down 7th Avenue at 3am, wailing like a menstrual raptor during hormone therapy while being chased by a lover driven to such madness by my estrogenic meltdown he can't figure out whether to offer consolation or knock me unconscious/jam me in a cab/pay the driver to drop my body somewhere in the Palisades, it isn't funny to me. At least at that moment. But I draw comfort once the dust settles that someone who bore witness to my public breakdown might have been able to turn to their drunk friend with a chuckle and say, "Did you just see that shit?"

ASIDE: I believe that no one does visual representations of "bleeding entrails of another human being's emotional dignity" better than Kiki Smith. Just look at how belligerent her art is.

I mean OH MY GOD buy a journal already.

Seriously. Kiki Smith. Google her. ANYWAY.

Point is, Politics Daily "Legal Analyst" Andrew Cohen may have allowed his own break-up pathos to become one of the most entertaining pieces of Loss of Emotional Dignity Pornography the interwebs have had in...well, say days, with a piece that went up a few days ago.

BACKSTORY: On the eve of his former love's nuptials to another man, Cohen "gifted" his ex with the traditional wedding present of a Batshit Backhanded Compliment Meltdown Column, appropriately published in a political web magazine. (Also, someone paid him to do this. Which means my diary must be worth at least $0.50 a word, or around $7000 dollars.) 

Here's Cohen's original post:

The great love of my life marries today and I am not the groom. I had my chance, a few years ago, but did not realize until too late how fleeting my moment with her was meant to be. Whether it was my fault or hers, and, let's face it, it was probably mine, I will wonder always about the life I might have had with the most loving and loveable woman I have ever known. Sometimes, I finally now understand, love, even crazy love, is not enough. Sometimes, as the romance novelists know, timing is everything.

But today is not a day for remorse. It is not a day for lost causes. Today is a day for celebration. The woman I once promised to keep happy  is happy. She tells me she is marrying a wonderful man, with a good heart, whom she believes I would have liked had we met in different circumstances. She lives where she wants to live. She has selected her life's path. All that is left for me to do is to wish her well and to hope that she has made the right choice; that she continues to find in him what she did not find in me. And I am sure he considers himself today the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

The present I humbly send her today is this column; this public note, this irrevocable display of affection and support and gratitude; this worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to me and the time she said yes to him. No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage. I showered her with as much love as I could muster when we were together. I still love her and always will. So I am only too happy to offer my toast to her now, one more time, before she takes her vows.

I want to thank her, mostly, for rescuing me from hopelessness. When we met, back in the spring of 2005, I was nearly 40 and had been dating off and on for two years following an unexpected divorce. I had lost faith in relationships. I had given up on love. She arrived, unexpectedly, and showed me what was possible. She raised me up from the emotional dead. She drew out of me the  poison of divorce and betrayal. Eleven years younger but already more mature than me, she was dazzling, brilliant, funny, and sweet; she both gave and taught me patience and devotion and sacrifice. No woman before or since ever made me feel as desired, needed, beloved, appreciated as she did. No one has yet made me want her more. Some men live their whole lives without this kind of love. At least I had it for one brief, shining moment.

I want to thank her for being so delightful with my son, who talks about her still, and to my parents, who couldn't believe their son's good fortune to have landed such a sweetheart. Until almost literally his dying day, my dad would ask me about her. Near the end, almost exactly two years ago, I did not have the heart to tell him that we had broken up. It gives me peace figuring that he died thinking she'd be in my life when he was gone. And in a way I suppose she is. Rarely a day goes by when something in my life -- the law, journalism, horses, celebrity gossip -- doesn't make me think of her or what she'd think.

I want to thank her for-- it's now such a cliché that I'm almost embarrassed to write it -- making me want to be a better man. She really did. It happens. She made me less judgmental and more open to new ideas. She gave me a confidence I had never felt before. She gave me incentive to reach out professionally into areas I had not yet gone. I became more productive and back involved in the world. And, most important, I learned how to respond with love when so much love was offered to me. I learned how to trust but also show it. And in some way, virtually every friend, family member and romance in my life since has benefited from the gifts of grace she gave so willingly to me.

I want to thank her for making me laugh, at her and myself, and for making me swoon whenever she walked into a room. I want to thank her for the advice she gave me, and for the soothing tone of her voice during times of trouble. I want to thank her for completely changing my outlook on life. Before I met her, as a single father, I never would have considered having another child. Although it took more time than it should have, I came to realize through her love and devotion that there would be nothing more I would rather do in the world than have a child with her. How many poor souls go their whole lives without the heart-string pull of such emotions?

I want to thank her for giving my life's dream contours and a calculus. I want to live on a farm one day, a farm filled with horses and wireless connections where I can write. And now, thanks to her, I know exactly what I want and need in a partner who might just want to get there, too. That's just another gift she gave me; the gift of knowing what is possible in a relationship; of refusing to settle for mediocrity where it counts, and of taking the chance when something inside tells you it could be love. I sound like a sap. I know. But it's no less true. No matter what my romantic future holds, I know there will be no retreat from the standards she has set. Like the song says, surely someone will one day dare to stand where she stood. I can't wait.

On her wedding day, I want to thank her for all those times she stuck up for me -- with her friends, with her family, with her work colleagues. It could not have been easy, explaining to all those cooler heads, why she was so devoted to an "old guy" who lived so far away. Yet she did it, even after she had decided that she would not throw down her lot with me. That's the sort of character I'd like to instill in my son. It's the sort that we think is all around us but actually is rare. It is courage and self-confidence and the ability to see right from wrong. She displayed it every day, right down to the end. Ours was a romance without rancor; a love affair that ended in peace, not war.

I want to thank her for being such an inspiration. She did not give in or sell out or become one of those poor women of a certain age in  New York who have put their careers ahead of their lives. When we met, she was living in New York but was not of New York; transplanted from the West Coast, she had not allowed herself to be seduced entirely by the City's charms. She took from Manhattan, like so many other beautiful women do, but she never gave to it her heart and soul. She was always rooted even among the rootless of her age and time. She knew she would one day leave the City, and she did, on her own terms. I admire her for that. I respect her for that. And I love her for it.

It wasn't too long after we met that I began imagining what our wedding day would be like. My second, her first, I nonetheless pictured her not taking it too seriously, laughing off the little crises that always pop up. I pictured her stunning in her dress and with that smile that would melt me. I pictured her having a vodka and soda to ease her nerves. I pictured us laughing a lot. I pictured myself at the end of the aisle. It was not to be. I've known that for years. But that doesn't make the love any less real.

So at last my wedding toast today is sincere: I wish the deepest and most profound love of my life a  happy life, a good life, one in which she gives to and gets from the loved ones in her world the hope and the passion and the comfort and the support she always and so magically gave to me.

Wow. Good work Andy. This is pure poetry. I mean it. Like a Nicholas Sparks letter. If that letter had been covered in razor blades and the envelope filled with Anthrax. 


But even more enjoyable than Cohen's original column are the pieces it's inspiring in response, which you should also read. Enjoy. Highlights:


* Amanda Hess's breakdown of the letter and its babbling interior monologue at The Sexist, which you can find here: THE GIFT OF CREEPINESS, ON YOUR WEDDING DAY


* As well as Lizzie Shurnick's  How Not to Congratulate Your Ex on Her Wedding Day




Epic. Anyway. I'm off to go stalk Facebook status updates to make sure none of my exes have done something to send me off the deep end, then disable both my ovaries and Internet to insure nothing like this ever has my byline on it. 

She's BA-ACK: The Creature From the Hack Lagoon

Alright. So, I’m back. I know, I know, this changes everything--the BP(issed) Oil Spill, the spewing of ash from an unspellable volcano, that pathetically low number in your bank balance. After a two month hiatus, I’m finally back to set everything right.

But first I have to blog. The other stuff can wait. Right? 

I think we left off somewhere around here, with my hack-y, verbose recounting of a lost battle against public crying somewhere in the vicinity of Astor Place, served with vague allusions to bad decisions and garnished with epic writer’s block (imported from Italy right to your table). 


Dessert was two months of silence, a wordless emergency flare which signaled my descent into those dark, twisty pieces of transitional purgatory not easily expressed when you're being stripping naked and dumped out the side door of a metaphorical van by life. 


Now that the road rash has scabbed over, I’m feeling far more talkative.

Not that anyone will find it riveting, but a lot has gone down during the silent void that followed that mid-spring cryptic post, some of them happenings vital to know about for the context of future posts. So I’ll do a whirlwind inventory of events recently gone by, and if any lone, insomniac reader should find themselves curious as to any specific incident, I’ll be happy to elaborate. Otherwise, note them and file it away as my derailed train climbs back on its tracks and chugs onward to Blogtopia:

1. I jumped from mid to late 20s, landing officially at age 27.
2. I accidentally completed Hitch List item #21 via an unexpected 100% lesbian date, courtesy of the jalapeno tequila at Flatiron Lounge, three beer executives discovered somewhere in the Financial District, and an enigma of a human we shall heretofore call The Duchess. 
3. I got in a fist fight with a drunk Mexican on an ancient Brooklyn-bound R train, hereby completing List item #23.
4. I had a mini-nervous breakdown which made every good friend save a few want to gouge my eyes out with one of those fancy slotted sugar spoons normal people use to serve Absinthe. 
5. I rekindled an old romance with a former fling: brown liquor.
6. I failed to successfully complete Emotional Detox, and so, like Shifty from Celebrity Rehab, may need to readmit myself for a fresh round of treatment.

And. Um...

Fuck, I’m forgetting something important...why do the little details always seem to evade...?

...oooh, right. I moved out of Hoodwick Brooklyn and into a three bedroom on the Lower East Side with wingman Red and new roomie The Duchess who may or may not be my polyamorous ex-lover. We have a cat. 

Did I mention the apartment is six blocks from where Alex, as in this blog’s Alex, previously isolated in New Jersey, moved in after his own quarter-life crisis? With the beloved deaf pit bull we have joint custody over? And Philly BadMath (he's from Philly and sucks at math. we work really hard on these nicknames), one of my best male friends who I may or may not have once smashed out with once in college, which leads to no small number wildly inappropriate jokes at increasingly inappropriate moments in public places? 

I didn’t?  Okay...um, so that happened.

Point is, nothing much to see here folks. Just another Lower East Side Hot Mess with a blog, a bizarre list, a desire to write, and what looks to be a very average summer in front of her. 

Nice to see you all again.

EPIC (DETOX) FAIL: Purple Haze

My dumbass, red-purple "edgy girl bob" dyed the freaking sheets violet. Both pillowcases, plus the portion of the sheets under the pillows that makes contact with my head when I start rolling like an alligator in a death-spin after the insomnia frustration sets in.

Remember that part where I was going to slip out like a ghost in the night, leaving no trace behind? 

I'm as stealthy and untraceable as a ninja....you know, if ninjas wore suits made from bubble wrap and cowbells and carried Chinese sparklers as weapons. 


(Also, that would be SO cool.)

Fuck my life. Wild Oxiclean session commencing immediately. 

And for the record: This is not Manic Panic--this is a very professionally executed and (embarrassingly) expensive red-purple-black dye job. So I feel the least the salon could have mentioned was, "Hey don't squat at any dudes' places, your bougie hair could potentially leave a berry-colored trail pointing directly to how retarded you are if you sleep on white sheets."

NUMBERLESS HITCH LIST ITEM: Emotional Detox, or, Semi-Illegally Squatting in an Ex's Apartment (with a non-stalker purpose)

I'm squatting in an ex-lover's apartment.


Okay, well, not entirely. According to the unquestionably reliable pillar of knowledge that is Wikipedia, "squatting" is classically defined as "occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use."


The whatever-he-was knows I have his keys, because he gave them to me. And, before our tenuous pseudo-romance pseudo-ended with all the flaccid fanfare of a cigarette sizzling out in a rain storm, he asked me if I'd mind picking up his mail while he was away on a trip I was not invited along on. (An exclusion that led to the conversation which finally revealed, to me at least, the Munchian portrait of how much he was "just not that into me." Hence the weird psuedo-ending.) So he knows I'm around his unoccupied residential space that I do not own, rent, but otherwise have semi-permission to use. 


What he does not know, entirely, is that I brought a suitcase, three different pairs of black suede boots of varying styles and heel size, a blow-dryer, a flat-iron and my laptop, and have set up for an all out affection-detox scheduled to last from this very moment until the day before he returns, whereupon I will slink back to Brooklyn with, ideally, some sort of immunity to him--a resistance to the pieces of him that have, somehow, taken root in the usually un-farmable topsoil that is my emotional commitment to anyone. I figure that if I cannot exorcise the demon of feelings after several days of living among the items of a life he has, almost expertly, built to exclude anyone like me, then the matter is out of my hands and I can go cry to old Joy Division albums without shame. 


I'm fully aware that this sounds insane.


Walk with me a moment, will you?


First, lets make this clear: this is not an obsessive camp-out. He is a good man, a post-Alex rebound I knew better than to catch feelings for. I was a rebound he had no intention of ever feeling anything for. And so I am not wandering his halls swathed in a burka constructed from used bed sheets while tearily keening to Vic Chesnutt records. I have no delusions that he will suddenly burst through the door, drop his suitcase on to the floor with a careless clatter and scoop my pixyish form into his arms, pressing my tiny head to his chest while confessing the time apart has made him realize all we could be. His journal, left in plain sight, remains and WILL remain untouched. I've even started to return things he's given me over the length of our purgatorial courtship--the skully I borrowed during an icy, mid-December meet-up; the vintage men's nightshirt he gave me because it made me feel like I was on Mad Men; the palm-sized copy of a book of microfiction passed along with a "you have to read this"--to their original homes. In his actual home. 


The thing is, when it comes to the end of affairs, I have chosen the "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" method of healing hurt (with a little sprinting from my emotions tossed in for good measure) for about...oh, 26 years. OSOM is easy, familiar, methodic: box up all photos, ticket stubs, items left behind, gifts given, etc., and discard or hide them. Pull all bands/songs shared as a pair from the iTunes playlist. Carefully remove "we, he, us" and their formal name from the daily vocabulary. And then, as stoically as possible, move forward (punctuating the journey with occasional emotional meltdowns, complete with  Nancy Kerrigan-style wails of "WHYYY," that are usually triggered by the door closing on a now tomb-like bedroom). 


But this tactic obviously doesn't work for me. Seven years after the first major split of my life, I still can't listen past the first chord of Des'Ree's "Kissing You" without exploding into snot and tears like a cheap tissue. I obsess. I dissect. I blame myself for everything while running as far in the opposite direction of my own bloodstains as possible. And, once the over-analysis and self-flagellating passes, I find myself thinking about the death-blow and executioner constantly, like some ghost haunting her own tomb, seeing only the specter of the fantasy "us" and not the reality of the situation. Burying my head in the sand burns the imprint of loss inside my skull. 


So, a new tactic; an experiment of emotional kinetics. Staying still, rather than running. And attempting those fledging steps of detachment while surrounding myself with things I've become attached to.   


Toilet paper. Shampoo. His coffee. That couch. I'm injecting these little pieces of infection into my body purposely, until my emotional defenses are armed effectively enough to exorcise them. Call it practical applications of vaccination theology.


I cannot run from feelings anymore. So I'm just going to sit here with them until they run from him...until the fever breaks and I go numb.


Also, his place is 3 subway stops from my office, one block from Whole Foods, has heat and there's a motherfucking blizzard outside. If faced with the same option, I hope he'd make the same decision.


I am a mad, mad, mad, mad scientist. With keys. 

Confession: Hiding in Plain Sight

One of my best friends and most objective critics--Ariel, clearly--looked at me last night and asked where my blog was.


I told her I've been busy. With, you know, like, work, which slowly drains my words away over the course of a 10-hour stretch in a fluorescent-lit cube. And those oh-so-busy bustling holidays. And, um, my pro-antidisestablishmentarianism activism work in that commune in Johannesburg. Or somesuch. Ahem.


She called shenanigans on all excuses. (For the record, the draining death-cube part is true, but it's never stopped me from writing before, so...yeah. Erroneous.)


"You're afraid to tell the truth." Bitch. Acting like she knows me... 


...she does know me. I can't not write the truth. But I don't want to write it, because then it's documented, so it's real. So it must be dealt with. Dammit.


The partial truth is I get home at night, at whatever time, drained or undrained, and lift the screen. I put my spritely little hands on the keys, stare at an empty page--and immediately begin to panic.


Not because I've got nothing to write. I've go so much to write my life is bingeing and purging Post-It notes. I could sleep under them, like a bag lady under newspaper. I found one stuck to the back of my cell phone the other day. All it said was: "awkward hyena laugh." There could have been an interesting post in that phrase, but I've forgotten what I meant when I wrote it. There's also the two different totable notebooks filled with scrawl, handwriting spilling into the margins, frantic little arrows pointing to connecting thoughts disjointed by separate pages. "LOOK! More! There's more!" Plus two new moleskines received as gifts recently, already front-heavy with notes and dog-eared pages and----I know, I'm sorry----poetry. Lots of it. Point is, I've got stuff to write.


The partial truth is I've morphed into an anxiety-ridden, talentless bullshit artist being dry-humped to death by her own pathetic existential funk. Excuse me, Mr. Sartre? Could you get off please, I'm starting to chaff...


...and it's all rooted right back where this blog started.


The whole truth is that around the time of The 2nd First Date, Alex and I not-so-secretly went on a 2nd Second Date. And then a 2nd Third Date. And then a fourth, and so on, until we were not-so-secretly seconding right back into an intimate, albeit unlabeled, something that was obvious to everyone but us. And it was wonderful. I slept in his nook again. He looked at me with eyes that know every single thing about me. We walked our dog, together. We even not-so-secretly celebrated our six-year anniversary, as if we'd never split in the first place (even though the term "boyfriend/girlfriend" was blacked out of the syllabus entirely), and dropped the "m" word (m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e) again.


And then, lightning-fast, the brakes. Me, slamming on them. Again. Alex getting whiplash. Again. Me resting my head on the dashboard in shame and frustration. All the people who'd been predicting our inevitable marriage since we were 20 and wringing their hands gleefully over our romantic re-coupling watching the hubcaps rolls down the street.


The prediction most people made when I posted on this blog about he and I testing a reunion was that we'd get back together and the same problems  would still be there. What actually happened was that the old problems were essentially gone, but an entirely new garden of ragweed was springing up in its place, with one gigantic, choking vine in the middle, namely that--through listing, through life, through god-knows-what--I've become someone very different than the girl who grew up with her hand in his. He is still very much the same wonderful man. I do not know if he and this foreigner fit together.


It's been a revelation shocking to no one but me.


I'm trying to think of something to liken it to. This is one of the only things in my limited range of experience that fits:


When I was 17, the punk band I'd been playing in for two years blew up. A meandering impersonation of something we all aspired to be hit a streak of luck and local acclaim, climbed to modest (pre-iTunes/pre-MySpace) and centralized esteem, and set out on a half-cocked tour of the East Coast. Five guys, one girl, a U-Haul of equipment and a van. Eight exhilarating, sweaty, wild, debauched days in, we were cruising down the interstate at the Florida border at about 90 miles-per-hour, all six of us stomping out our own (assuredly heinous) double-bass beat to a Poison the Well cassette jammed in the tapedeck. It was glorious. And at THAT exact, blind, blissful moment, the hood of the van popped up, caught in the wind and slammed against the windshield, starring out the glass in a spiderweb of cracks and blocking the road entirely from view, causing the entire band to let out a sustained unison scream than would have shamed Macaulay Culkin. We swerved off the road and into a small ditch.


Sitting in the side of a drainage shoulder in Florida, broken down and broke and drenched in sweat, our bass player calling his mom for help on a brick-sized cell-phone, reality burned itself into our skin: we were not rock stars. We were kids. And we had no idea what we were doing.


That's what this is like--the sort of utterly unexpected, blink of an eye disaster that stops everything in its tracks...and was, in many ways, totally foreseeable to any of the more mature people around you.


Until very recently I felt like there was a direction. Forward. To Alex? To something. If not to the happy ending, then to a major footnote with illustrations and a bookmark. Now, no direction. I'm an awkward, domesticated house-cat, released back into the wild...again...and confused as fuck about where the Fancy Feast is.


The first time I left, and Hitch Listed, and settled all smug down in Brooklyn to write my gimmicky blog about rediscovering independence, I did it with one hand still holding on to some piece of my old life across the Hudson River. It was being held back in return. I checked items off the list and started to mutate into whatever I am now with the confidence that comes from knowing that, even if you fail miserably, someone loves you and will take you back if you show up on their doorstep and say, "I'm a mess. Please love me anyway." I confess the one hand is still partially there---however, the fingers are being severed. Have been? Are being. There's still an index finger and a thumb wrapped around the doorknob.


Now, I'm settled, not-at-all smug, in Brooklyn, wondering if my gimmicky blog is even read and what the point of it is if I can't write it with some modicum of knowing authority, some end-point in sight. I know the blogs I like best are honest, well-written and exciting because there is no end-point...everyone's along for the ride. But I always need to like the narrator.  And I know that I, personally, don't really like the floundering, confused, frightened me---or at least not her rambling monologue relentlessly being broadcast inside my skull.


So I've been hiding.


There's one question I keep getting from friends and family about slamming on the brakes again. "Why?" Okay, fine:


I want too much. He doesn't seem to want enough. And there we both somehow went.


That's the whole truth.

EPIC FAIL: The Wingman Chronicles Part IIII, or, EMMY AWARD Winning Loss of Dignity

Occasionally, even the best wingman missions go awry. Generally, this leads to public embarrassment and, sometimes, blue balls.


Or, it you're wingmanning with Ariel and I, it can turn into a belligerent shit show that ends with a slightly immature scavenger hunt through an Emmy Award winning actor's apartment.

A few Mondays ago, Ariel and I hit wingman turbulence. Short version: Ariel got blacked-out drunk in a midtown bar, told me she was going to the bathroom and disappeared. For an hour. Midway through her evaporation, I abandoned my drink and went tearing through the craphole, three-level bar we'd landed in to find her, accidentally stumbling upon an authentic freak show (no, seriously...bearded lady, burlesque dancers, the works) getting ready for their 1am performance in the process. Taking the bearded lady as a bad omen, I called Ariel's roommate--who calmly informed me that Ariel was already HOME, slurring drunk, and wearing MY coat. In QUEENS. Ariel did not find anything odd about this.


Soon I was standing on the streets of Times Square, around 1:30am, drunk and without outerwear. Naturally, because life is a sitcom, it began to rain. I did not have enough money for a cab to Brooklyn, and my Metrocard was in the pocket of the jacket Ariel was curled fetally upon, like a tiny, drunk, Irish puppy in a whelping box. A whelping box in Queens. Then, my phone hummed a text:

Mr. EMMY: Up to anything this rainy night?

Mr. EMMY is an older, unreasonably friendly, single and exceptionally talented actor we've affectionately nicknamed for the honor bestowed up him during one of those televised awards shows. We all met through mutual friends, resulting in his randomly joining Ariel and I for a platonic concert and meal one night. Whenever we catch him on TV, or whenever he's not off being successful and is bored, we occasionally like to verbally spar via text-message, because I am a smart-ass and he went to Harvard and bizarrely finds gauche smart-assedness amusing.

POLLY: I am wet, cold, stranded. May whore myself for cab money to the Lil' Wayne wanna-be giving me the eye.

Mr. EMMY: Only worth it if he's ACTUALLY Lil' Wayne. Do you need to crash here?

Which is how I woke up in Mr. EMMY's freaking beautiful apartment because Ariel went all fucking kamikaze on me. NO, there was no illicit behavior between Mr. EMMY and I. (This isn't US Magazine.) We kept conversation to the basics (Him: "I just finished shooting with Salma Hayek." Me: "I farted next to Howard Stern once. Everyone thought it was him.") until I eventually sobered up enough to sprawl on his couch. (It's a really nice couch.)


The following is a true-life transcript of the string of texts that were exchanged between Ariel and I after I woke up, alone, in said apartment. Mr. EMMY had left at some earlier time to do whatever it is successful actors do after 9AM, leaving me his spare keys to let myself out whenever I was not quite so pathetic again:


**ARIEL'S PRELUDE: "I think this text log is funnier when you include YOUR belligerent texting of me before you made it to Mr. EMMY's, you Hot Mess." 


She's right, so I'm including it.

Also, on THE VERY OFF CHANCE "Mr. Emmy" ever read this himself, I hope he'd understand we love and adore his hospitality, and him, and hold his privacy in high regard (and have hence changed many details in this post to protect his identity)--but when broke and 26 just don't have the maturity NOT to be fascinated by things like Emmy Awards and really nice apartments in mainland Manhattan**

POLLY (12:45am): Where are you??? We are looking.
POLLY(1:30am): I blame you.
POLLY(4:55am): Goddamn you Ariel. Let's play Polly Ended Up ___________________.
POLLY(4:57am): And do you really have my jacket, or is that lost forever in some scum hole in Midtown? 

DAY BREAKS.
(Polly wakes, hungover. Polly DID NOT have sex with the owner of said apartment, but is in his pajamas anyway. Her phone lights up.)

ARIEL: Based on these drunken musings......Shit! You're at MR. EMMY's, aren't you?
ARIEL: And I really do have your jacket.
ARIEL: You're totally spooning next to THE EMMY right now....... Amaaaaaahhhhhhzing. 


(Polly finally acknowledges phone. Is thrown into blind, stubborn, but bemused rage by Ariel's texts, which are coming from Ariel's desk in corporate America.)

POLLY: Oh, fuck you. You don't know me! 
ARIEL: He took you in his big drama major arms........Bwahahahahahahahahaha.
POLLY: I. Hate.You. I do. I. Hate. you.
ARIEL: Sooooooooo not true.
ARIEL: But points for punctuation on what must be a rough-like-mcduff morning.
POLLY: Also, big, beautiful picture of Mr. EMMY and [show he's famed for] in the foyer....

ARIEL: He has a foyer..... I hate him. 
POLLY: You were sooooooo not supposed to take my jacket, withOUT me in it, back to Astoria. Wtf am I doing in Flatiron??
ARIEL: Making out with an EMMY.... duh.


POLLY: WEDIDNOTSHUTUP. 

(Polly sees she's alone in the apt. Begins exploring apartment while holding phone.)

POLLY: Oh my God. He left me a towel, a wash cloth, and a spare set of keys stacked in the bathroom.

 

ARIEL: KEYS! Danger Will Robinson. Tread lightly. But make a latte first. He so has an espresso machine.
 
POLLY: OMG, HE DOES HAVE AN ESPRESSO MACHINE.  
 
ARIEL: He has amazing skin products too, doesn't he? FML. 

(Polly looks in bathroom.)
 
POLLY: Holy shit. Full Origin's men's care line. Like, every product. Are you hiding in this apartment with me?? 


(Polly pauses, peeks back at the pile of towells and the keys. She begins to text her hungover idiot wingman again.) 


POLLY: Keys? Fuck. Keys.............................................Fuck. [Note: Keys are scary, because they must be returned. Which means you'll have to face the person you drunkenly appeared on the doorstep of. And admit to being a Hot Mess. In their home. And then apologize. Fun, right?] 
 
ARIEL: It's going to be okay......
 
POLLY: I brought this tragicness upon myself.
 
ARIEL: Oh, it's so hard being 26 and pretty with a brain and sharp wit. 


(Ariel gauges exactly how fucking hungover she is in the middle of corporate America and remembers she and Polly have to see a violent indie-film starring Willem Dafoe and Willem Dafoe's penis later that very same night.) 


ARIEL: Also? Tell me we are rescheduling Willem Dafoe's screening? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease??
 
POLLY: Oh we are so not even a little bit going to that fucking film.
 

ARIEL: Holla......... 

(Polly passes by the bedroom. Looks around, then flops onto empty bed.)


POLLY: Oh, these pillows of his though. Thread count is HIGH. So wonderful...so...*buries face in pillow*
 
ARIEL: **slams head on desk** 


(Peels herself out of bed. Continues exploration.)


POLLY: Hmm. Dipolma from HARVARD, huh?
 
ARIEL: Oh cool. He's crazy smart too...I feel smaller and more unimportant by the second.
 
POLLY: Floor to ceiling vinyl. Complete Bob Dylan next to Gorillaz Demon Days next to Fleet Foxes. ALL VINYL.
 
ARIEL: Omg. I want to make out with him...
 
POLLY: Do...do I...do I look for The EMMY?
 
ARIEL: FIND IT AND TAKE A PICTURE! Then text it to me immediately. 

(Looks around at walls, shelves and desks. No luck.)
 
POLLY: WHERE IS THE EMMY?!?!? 


(After a few more moments of wandering, amazed, through eclectic, Not-A-Rich-Douche apartment, Polly notices framed item on the wall. It's a picture, with a note hand written on it. She takes picture, sends it to Ariel.)


POLLY: No EMMY. But this. The signature: "With awe, love always, STEVE." As in SPIELBERG.
 
ARIEL: "With Awe"....Right, me too. 

POLLY: DELETE THAT NOW.

ARIEL: Already done. Duh. 
POLLY: So many humidifiers here. And dehumidifiers. And other nifty---oh, look, a Fender guitar.
 
ARIEL: I love that people let us stay alone in their homes...Fools.
 
POLLY: Fuck. What am I going to wear to work?
 
ARIEL: Right......no ideas. Buy something?
ARIEL: Cool shirt of his? 

 
POLLY: Dammit. All he has is man hats. I cannot make yesterday's outfit, sans coat, sans make-up, work with an Indiana Jones hat...
 
ARIEL: Own it.
 
POLLY: I'm stealing his Harvard hoodie...............I mean borrowing.........

POLLY: What? I need a coat.
 
ARIEL: Sorry about your coat. I have no idea what the thought process was on that. But there was one...somewhere.
 
POLLY: Ur cute.
 
(Hot Mess Walk of Shame Polly leaves note for Mr. Emmy apologizing, explaining about the hoodie and confessing she went through his record collection. She begs forgiveness. She then emerges from apartment wearing last night's heels, jeans, a Harvard hoodie and smeared, black eye liner.)
 
POLLY (texting Bromeo, she and Ariel's gay, male wingman): Just stumbled into midtown morning in last night's clothes and MR. EMMY's Harvard hoodie. Um......right.
 
BROMEO: Bwhahahahaahahhaahahahahha.
 
POLLY: I blame Ariel.