I'm Going to Hell
Does anybody need anything?
I moved from Alaska to New York City when I was twenty years old. And like most twenty-year-olds, I had no money and no clue what I was doing, but at least I was hot and ambitious, a combination that will get you far in life. New York had been luring me to move there my entire life. Finally, on August 23, 2004, I quit my job as a news reporter for the ABC affiliate in Anchorage and flew on a one-way ticket to Manhattan.
My first apartment was on twenty-third street next to The Chelsea Hotel. I had a Canadian roommate named Tricia who is still one of my good friends nearly two decades later, even though we hated each other by the end of our one year lease. Ethan Hawke lived in the Chelsea Hotel at the time and would greet me when we passed each other on the streets. I’d never lived near a celebrity before, the closest thing I ever got was when Jared from Subway came to Fairbanks and the reporters I worked with fought over who got to interview him.
Then I lived in Hells Kitchen for two years above an Ethiopian restaurant and a deli. Tenth avenue was a different world back then. Every morning the Mole People would come up from an abandoned subway line to look for food. And at night the sex workers would emerge to start their evening shifts.
I was trying to find which neighborhood felt like home. It wasn’t Chelsea or Hells Kitchen. No, I belonged in the West Village, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the entire city. I was twenty-eight by the time I could finally afford my own place there. Not having roommates is every young and old New Yorker’s dream.
I hired a broker to help me find an apartment, which is stupid but necessary in NYC. The first place he showed me was perfect. I walked in and said, “I’ll take it.” And then I handed over an ungodly amount of money that still hurts me to this day. I paid first, last, two months security, a broker fee, and an insurance fee of two months since I didn’t have a guarantor, another unnecessary New York evil. My down payment to rent a studio apartment added up to seventeen thousand five hundred dollars. Youch.
My new apartment was on the second floor of a doorman building in the West Village across from a little park called Abingdon Square. I didn’t know when I signed my two-year lease, but my building was famous because it’s where the actress Adrienne Shelly was murdered by a maintenance worker, who then staged her apartment to make it look like a suicide. I followed the story in the news a few years earlier. It was so horrific and tragic and senseless. I also thought brokers were supposed to tell you if someone was murdered in the place you’re moving into. I guess that’s only a myth.
Living in the West Village comes with many assumptions; people will think you are rich beyond imagination or have a high-paying job in the arts, like a Supermodel. Or they’ll assume you have no job and live off Mommy and Daddy or a trust fund. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t any of these things. I was simply a hustler. I knew what it felt like to be broke, and I knew what it felt like to make a lot of money. I preferred money. In New York, the quality of life is at its best when you can actually afford to leave your apartment.
I didn’t have a “real” job at the time, I did a little bit of everything. I was a TV host, an actress, a model, a fashion editor, an improviser, a blogger, and a comedy writer. I signed with a boutique modeling agency in my mid-twenties and worked steadily as a fit model for designers like Tori Burch, Ellie Tahari, and DKNY, to name drop a few.
The minimum hourly wage for a fit model started at one hundred fifty dollars, but most of my jobs were closer to four hundred an hour after my agent took her twenty percent. A fit model is different than a fitness model; I assure you that no one would ever pay me to do push-ups. A fit model is someone with precise measurements; and I was a perfect size six. Basically, I was a talking mannequin, but not the cool kind that came to life after the department store closed.
I worked with a team of designers and seamstresses who built their collections around me. I’d provide feedback by letting them know how the clothes fit as they were pinned to my body. A mannequin can’t tell you if a jacket is too tight in the shoulders or a skirt is too loose in the hips. By the end of every session, I’d have several hundred pins holding together the new outfit. It was tedious and not the most glamorous modeling job, but the longer I stood, the quicker I could pay rent. It took me a few years to realize this, but living in Manhattan is about figuring out how to make the most money using the least amount of time. Fit modeling paid my bills so I could focus on my real passion, improv comedy.
My place in the West Village was across the street from Jennifer Aniston and her then-husband Justin Theroux’s place. I met Justin at Jimmy Fallon’s apartment during a party one night. I think I blacked out because I said a lot of jumbled words, and my mouth went dry, and my face went red. He told me I looked familiar, and I said that was impossible and slowly walked away. But then I remembered we lived on the same block and had probably passed each other dozens of times in the streets.
The Paparazzi would camp out on the sidewalk whenever Aniston sneezed or ran into Brad Pitt at an awards show. I had to walk past them whenever I went for a run down the West Side Highway. I wore my finest running clothes in case I wound up in the background of Aniston’s photos.
I always wanted to be two things in New York; the first was to be labeled a mystery woman in the tabloids, like, “Leonardo DiCaprio spotted leaving Corner Bistro at 4 am with a mystery woman.” Or, more accurately, “Leonardo DiCaprio walks straight past mystery woman and doesn’t acknowledge her existence.” I also wanted to make it into US Weekly or People magazine in the ‘Stars; they’re just like us’ section, where I’d be in a photo standing next to a celebrity without noticing them, like waiting for a table outside Cafe Cluny at the same time as Olivia Wilde or leaving David Barton Gym behind Andy Cohen.
Early morning Manhattan was my favorite time of the day. The city buzzes with electricity every morning between six and nine a.m. There has to be a way to bottle that up and sell it. I’d drink coffee on the stoop and watch people speed-walk to the subway in expensive outfits, on the way to their important jobs; others would grab a taxi home from whatever and whoever they did the night before, and the air was always filled with the sweet echos of catcalls coming from nearby construction workers.
I’d try to get a run in every morning, even though running in Manhattan is incredibly hard since there’s a block every block. I didn’t even like running, but I forced myself to do it because I needed to maintain my perfect size six measurements or risk losing my fit modeling jobs. It was dangerous for me to run later in the afternoon because I’d have to pass Tortilla Flats and try not to get sucked into its magnetic field where one second I’m trying to go workout, and the next, I’m sitting at an outdoor table with a pitcher of margaritas and a half-eaten chimichanga on my plate. Sidenote, their queso was legit the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, and I’ve put a lot of amazing things in there.
I didn’t take much with me when I ran, just my phone and keys. My shoulders were lopsided from carrying my bag everywhere. It was so freeing to venture out without a purse loaded with my laptop, iPad, chargers, walking shoes, high-heels, and makeup bag. Real New Yorkers don’t have cars, so we carry our lives over our shoulders.
My running route took me down the West Side Highway, and I’d turn around once I hit the Freedom Tower. So crazy that I watched 9/11 on TV in Alaska, and now it became part of my workout routine.
I’d usually walk or jog back to my apartment by cutting through the cobblestone streets of Tribeca. I always wondered how different my life would be if I were rich and famous and lived in a Tribeca loft, like Taylor Swift or the Oleson Twins. I want to meet that version of myself; I’m sure she exists, and she’s thriving. I’m happy for her.
I was walking up Hudson Street after a run one day, it was springtime, and everything felt vibrant and energetic; outdoor dining returned, people were smiling, the birds were chirping, and the rats were crawling out of the sewers. People were finally venturing outside again after a long and bleak winter. I took a detour down Perry Street on my way home because it’s one of my favorite little blocks in the neighborhood. Certain streets filled me with good vibes, and Perry was one of them.
Right before I turned down Bleecker Street, something truly incredible happened to me, and this is how I knew God was real; I found a five-dollar bill on the sidewalk. I loved finding cash on the ground, and it happened to me a lot. A few months earlier, I was in line at the Starbucks across from Lincoln Center when I found forty-three dollars on the floor. I watched person after person step over it like it was a pile of dog shit. I picked it up, used it to pay for my flat white, and left a few bucks as a tip.
I knew exactly what I was going to buy with this five-dollar bill; it was spent the second I picked it up. I was going to march my ass down to the deli and get a bag of goldfish for lunch and a packet of gummy bears for dinner. I loved that combination, and goddammit, I deserved it after my grueling jog to Ground Zero.
When I rounded the corner onto Bleecker Street, I paused in my tracks. A homeless man was sleeping only a few feet away. He was using a cardboard box as a mattress and a boot for a pillow. I stood there, knowing the right thing to do would be to put the money underneath a rock next to the sleeping man’s head. But the devil whispered in my ear that I was the one who found it, so I should be the one to keep it. This money could provide this man with food or beer, though. But he’s sleeping; he won’t even know what he missed out on. Goldfish. Gummy bears.
After a few minutes of back and forth, I finally made a decision. I would keep the five dollars and buy my gummy bears and goldfish. Then I’d pay it forward at some other point in the future, yet to be determined. I continue towards the deli before stopping again with another debilitating thought. What if this was a new prank show called “Are You An Asshole?” where they put money on the ground near an actor playing a sleeping homeless man and see what you do with it as a test. Why hadn’t I thought of this? It was too late to turn around. I was already on camera. I was the asshole.
I bought the snacks and went up to my small and expensive apartment. I made eye contact with myself in the hallway mirror and told her, “You suck.” To which I replied while nodding my head, “I know.”