My New York Love Story

New York is famous for it’s love stories, it’s over the top grand gestures which inspire songs and movies. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the story of mine.

Let me give you a little background to the story. There is a girl from work (I won’t name her, too many people seem to read these now!) who I have hooked up with many times and, I am a little ashamed to say, I have not treated her particularly well. You see unbeknownst to me this girl had a thing for me (this is where my Mother chimes in and says ‘who wouldn’t’). I was blissfully unaware of this fact and behaved in a manner as such. I would talk about other girls in front of her, try and hook up with other girls in front of her and generally behave like a guy who thought he had stumbled across a nice girl who enjoyed a drunk hook up. Let’s just say I kinda upset this girl.

This went on for 3 months until one day the tables started to turn and lo and behold I started to have a thing for her. Of course as is the way in these things she no longer had a thing for me. Unlike her I decided to do something about it and told her how I felt, she declined my advances and said she no longer had feelings for me (you can all pick your jaws up off the floor). It wasn’t long before I realized why, I had never done anything nice for this girl ever. So I concocted a plan, I was going to give her the greatest Valentines Day gift ever.

Project Valentine:

Phase 1.

At work there are more and more TV’s by the day cropping up on the walls. You can’t blink for some high def’d sports presenter beaming down from a screen telling you his pick of the week. As with all American TV’s there are a plethora of adverts, every five fucking minutes we have to watch ANOTHER advert. One day one of these caught my eye, an advert for a flower company. I took a note of their details.

At the end of my shift I checked to see when my girl was working during the coming week and formulated my plan.

I trotted off home and ordered 12 red roses to be delivered to work on Feb 15th with the following note; “Sorry theses are a day late, happy Valentines Day, ?”

On Monday at work I sat quietly in the back before my shift as every girl fawned over this mystery note and red roses trying to figure out who the admirer was, only one girl asked if it was me, I of course denied it before sneaking off to the toilet to have a giggle and congratulate myself. Then the actor in me struck, I swanned up to the host stand to talk to the girl and gave her about 5 options as to who could have sent her the flowers. She bought it. Later that night as she took the note home with her everything was perfectly set up for phase 2.

Phase 2.

This phase was all about upping the mystery and in order to do that I had to have a note delivered by hand to work. So after my lunch shift I ran to the print shop and printed out a note that said “I hope you liked your flowers, but they were just the start. This week I will be taking you for a drink, call this number at 2:00 tomorrow.” At the bottom of the note was my new roommate (who no one from work has met in order to maintain his anonymity) Dan’s number.

I needed a random member of the public to bring this note to work and then leave, however finding someone to deliver the note was harder than I thought. I first approached a group of kids, but as I started talking and said ‘excuse me, can you do me a favor?’ I realized I looked like a pedophile and aborted that attempt pretty quickly. I must have asked about 10 people with everyone just passing me by, I tell you something from now on I will stop when Green Peace ask me for a minute of my time.

Eventually I managed to convince a nervous teenager to deliver the note. In order to cover myself I spoke to her in an American accent, gave her the note and left.

We all went drinking that night and once again I sat for about twenty minutes coming up with possible answers as to who the admirer could be. She didn’t suspect me at all.

Phase 3.

At 2:00 on the dot she called. Dan answered gave her a time and a place to meet and hung up. Now in order to fully get an idea of what was going on I needed a mole on the inside. Luckily unbeknownst to everyone my friend Nicole was playing for Team Rob. Ten minutes later I received a call from Nicole saying that my girl was completely flummoxed and thought this was the most romantic thing ever. In true Gilbert fashion I clapped my hands together and gave them a rub.

Phase 4.

An important thing to know for this phase is that this girl often calls me Dimples.

Everything was set, all I had to do was call this cool little bar at 3pm on Thursday to make a reservation so my girl could meet there and explode from the shock. So I waited and waited and called, engaged.... I called again.... engaged... and again... engaged. This went on for a good half hour until someone picked up the phone and told me they were full for the night. Oh Shit. The whole plan was starting to fall apart, without the bar there was no reveal, fuuuuuuuucccckkkkkk. I needed options and fast. I called Dylan, obviously, who gave me some suggestions and I went with one (apparently in my mind Dylan is some New York love guru). However my girl was going to be turning up to the wrong place at 10:45 later that evening. I needed Dan.

Dan finally came home and I leapt on him, stole his phone and texted my girl the change of address and told her the doorman at the new place had a note for her. Now I couldn’t make a reservation at the new bar so I’d have to get their early to guarantee myself a nice little booth.

I arrived at the bar at 9, she was coming at 10:45. I spoke to the doorman about my plan and he, being French, loved it. Giddy with the smell of romance he sent me downstairs to put my name down for a table but I would then have to come up and wait in line to get into the bar. I then gave the doorman a note that looked like this.

Dear Girl,

I’m going to reveal who I am.

Many theories have been thrown about but it’s time for me to

Put my money where my mouth is.

Let’s make it easy for you and find out the answer to the question

Everyone wants to know.

Spell out the first letter from each line to reveal the name the reservation is under.

(it spells out Dimples for the idiots among you)

He was under instructions to give this to her as she walked up to the door.

I went downstairs and waited for my booth whilst slowly sipping on an insanely strong cocktail, at this point I was shitting myself with nerves. Thankfully the nice hostess seated me a little earlier than expected, she was a sucker for a love story I guess! So I sat in the booth for an hour and waited and waited and waited.

Finally at 10:45 after a week of crazy games and elaborate plans my girl walked in.......

You can plan most things in life, but you can’t plan what other people are going to do. Unfortunately the love story stops here and reality kicks in. She sat down with a smile on her face, I explained that this was her Valentines Day present and I had wanted to give her a great story that she could always tell people and hopefully make her forgive me for all the crappy things I had done to her. She thanked me and told me how sweet it was, the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for her actually. However here’s the thing, it seemed she had wanted her secret admirer to be someone else. Who I don’t know, but as she sat there trying to hide the disappointment it became kind of obvious. I don’t blame her for it, I mean who wouldn’t let their imagination run wild? We had a nice chat but really I didn’t want to keep her and make her have a bad time.

After one drink I decided to throw in the towel, I thanked her for playing along, made sure she got safely in a cab and then I left.

I don’t regret the last week, you have to do these things. For one thing I don’t think people at work have me down as lazy anymore! As anyone who knows me will tell you I am a big analyzer, well this time I didn’t analyze I acted and you know what, on Thursday night after it had all gone down I slept like a baby (thanks Nicole) because truly there was nothing else I could have done.

Vodka and Coat

Friday night was just one of those nights. One of those nights where the God's of the strange all come together and send you on a crazy trip.

I hadn't seen Dylan for a month, this is far to long so we decided to go for a burger at our regular date place 'Rare Burger' (I felt guilty for cheating on Blue 9). Our friend Dan came along as well and after some delectable burgers we decided to grab a drink.

We found a nice little bar called The Dove and as we walked in we noticed a nice amount of cute girls. Before we knew it an incredibly hot tattooed woman was walking up to us. Holy shit, had we found the only bar in the city where women hit on men!? We straightened up, smiled, and prepared to be chatted up. Of course this woman wasn't here for some English men, she was a bartender and asked us if we wanted a drink..... damn. We placed our order and before we knew it another cute girl was walking towards us. Now this girl was my type to a tee, girl next door with a little edge, big brown eyes, I've gone weak just thinking about her! She was coming up to me... to me! She sidled over and simply said 'Can I check your coats guys?' Fooled once again we sat down in a booth and began to drink. Five minutes later a woman defining the word sexy walked up and sat down in our booth.... Thank you God! However once again our hearts were broken as she informed us we could only sit there until the party who had reserved it arrived. Eventually some girls did come over with the intention of talking to us.... alas they weren't exactly the most stunning creatures of the night, in-fact they probably should have just stuck to talking to people at night.

We soon moved and were immediately accosted by the most annoying girl in the world. Let me start by saying that this girl was wearing a hat in a bar, always a bad sign. If a girl wears a hat she is either a moody bitch, loaded with baggage or a loud and annoying shrill human being, the girl who was talking to us was the latter. She refused to believe we were English and so in order to prove a point she spoke to us in a terrible English accent for the entire night. I wanted to kill her. This would result in me going to prison so I thought I'd fuck with her instead. Luckily Dylan was on the same wavelength. He introduced himself as Rob whilst I introduced myself as Dylan. I then proceeded to talk to her in an American accent and convince her I faked the whole English thing. She made all the hilarious jokes you would expect a moron to make to an Englishman; Harry Potter jokes..... that's about it. She was without doubt the least funny person I have ever met.

Finally relief arrived in the form of Dylan's latest squeeze, I will let him tell you about her. She brought a friend, unfortunately the friend was a guy, fortunately he was a cool guy. Dylan was feeling ill so decided to leave early, meanwhile this new guy, Chris, was heading to a club.... Fuck it I thought, I'm on this like cream cheese on a bagel. We found cute coat check girl and waited for our coats. Now fellow readers it's been a rough month and I needed to get back on the proverbial horse so in a moment of madness, egged on by Dylan of course, I decided to ask coat check girl for her number. I stumbled through, appeared to be losing her interest so brought out the big guns, the dimples. Success! Number in phone.... more on that later.

Chris and I proceeded to the next club, Lit Lounge. A gloriously gross place which plays an eclectic mix of music but i populated by horny 19 year old girls..... joy. Chris and I took some shots (because that's the sensible thing to do) and started to become acquainted with the local talent. Chris then found some of Dylan's girls friends by the bar and we hung out with them for the evening.

We went downstairs to the dance-floor and the fun began. One of the girls we were with (I have no idea what her name was) was absolutely shitfaced... and I mean shitfaced. However she wanted another drink from the bar, I happened to need my thirst quenched too so accompanied her. As we hit the bar she pressed herself right up against me. Hmmmm interesting. She then started dancing with me all up in ma grill, and i mean all. up. in. ma. grill. This felt wrong however, she was really drunk and I was just drunk. It wouldn't be fair. She then leant in slowly but wasn't going for my lips... she was heading for my ear. She whispered into it "We can dance and it's fine because you're gay aren't you?" Woah. Woah. Woah. I spat my drink out and objected before adding the obligatory 'not that there's anything wrong with that.' She wasn't convinced, she asked me to prove to her wasn't gay..... At this point I laughed and thought of Adam Pike and Jack Prevezer's saying that sometimes a theoretical pull is better than the trouble a real one can get you in... this was one of those times.

Drunk girl led me back to her friend Bethany who was immediately the love of my life. Cute, edgy, Jewish, smaller than me. Hot Damn. Next thing I know she has started dancing with me.... well hello. She's into it, this is fantastic, this is amazing this is... about to be interrupted by her friend who tells me that I will have to wait in line. Sure enough I look over to my right and there is literally a line of guys all watching this girl dance with me as they wait their turn. This was getting weird. The whole night descended into anarchy. I met a random guy, got some random numbers, was told I was gay and then had to wait in line for the girl of my dreams. I was stupendously hungover the next day.

Ahhhh yes, Coat Check Girl. I have done some stupid things in my life, however on Saturday morning I sent THE worst first text I have ever sent. Still blurry from the night before I grabbed my phone to check her number wasn't all a glorious dream, it wasn't! I then sent her the following text.

'Hey, it's Rob the English guy from last night. How was work? Did you get out late? Did all the coats get returned to their desired destination?' She is yet to reply.

Korea Town

Hardcore regular readers will remember the Ugly Christmas Sweater update from last year. Well the driving force behind it, the group of friends known as BSC were at it again last night. Inspired by our newest members Hana and Jen a Korean night had been arranged.

This had been organized months ago, our group of friends would have a typical Korean adventure, whilst I was a little upset the Korean's didn't share the Thai peoples love of prostitutes I was still game. Then the emails started. It's fair to say that in the build up to last night I must have received an email a day with different instructions/guest-lists/ideas/menu choices. Perhaps the most worrying one came in the middle of last week. we were all emailed a list of Korean traditions when eating dinner and getting drunk on Soja. Basically all the traditions can be honed down to one sentence; The most junior member at the table has the least privileges and has to be everyone else's bitch. Unfortunately for me I am the baby of the group by a good couple of years so it looked like I would spend the evening respecting my elders.

Disaster. Catastrophe. A flu epidemic appears to have struck New York. People left, right and centre started pulling out of our Korean extravaganza. It was suggested that the baby of the group send round an impassioned email begging people to come, but as a stickler for tradition, coupled with the fact I am lazy, I refused. We set off to a Korean Restaurant to begin the evening. The restaurant had been reviewed by the New York Times, a fact it was very proud of. It displayed the review everywhere, on the walls, on the place settings, everywhere. The issue with this was that the review gave it one star..... hmmmm. Also my place setting didn't have a review, it just had pictures of puppies for sale.

I thought the evening was about to take an interesting turn when a new member of the group sat opposite me. This cute new girl suddenly had me shaking off my hangover (oh yeah, I got shitfaced on saturday night). Cute girl looked younger than me too. After some prying I was left disappointed, she was 26 and was in the midst of some major relationship drama. Luckily for her right now my mind game playing is top notch so we had an Oprah moment and I gave her some golden advice.

Finally the food started arriving but not before I had poured everyone their drink whilst not making eye contact! There appeared to be now rules regarding the amount of food the Junior can eat so I stuffed my face.

At this point in the update let's all take a moment to applaud Miss Hana Jung on her food selection. Bravo.

As dinner finished we were off to the second half of the evening. Karaoke. Chinese for empty orchestra.... kinda haunting if you think about it. I had been practicing my repertoire of songs and had made the decision that unless I saw a drunk Asian businessman singing Lady In Red the night was a flop.

We scoured the streets for a decent bar in which to sing and my word did we find one.

We ascended three flights of stairs and pushed open a rickety door to find a Korean couple with some microphones. They ushered us into a room with really really small chairs. It was at this moment we realized we were sitting in a daycare centre. Yes we had managed to find the only place in New York city which is daycare by day and karaoke by night. I personally felt like I was in a crazy strip club. Bright flashing lights, private rooms, a strange looking Asian man on the door. It was odd. They made us place what can only be described as fuzzy condoms on top the microphones so as not to spread germs and we were ready to sing. Unsurprisingly Victoria went first. The music blared out of a huge speaker in our tiny private room and the lights went epileptic. Then the sound of The Spice Girls filled the air. We all chose songs and drank... we needed to, as one bad rendition after another was blared out in this daycare/Karaoke/strip club mash up. The best part of every song was afterwards they would give you a score out of 100. What this was based on we will never know. It was impossible to score below 85 and above 99.If anyone ever breaks the 3 digit barrier in that place drinks are on me. The songs kept coming (my suggestion of 'All By Myself' wasn't taken kindly by the cute girl) and eventually our hour was up (kind of like a strip club).

Eardrums bleeding, pupils dilated we stumbled out into the cool night air perhaps just a tad more cultured than we had been earlier that evening.