Boohoo! My husband didn’t love me! Daddy issues! Woe is me!
Back to our regular scheduled programming.
So, in February, I decided that I was going to New York City for reading week. I was planning to have my earlobes reconstructed and make a little vacation out of it. So with very little forethought, I bought flights, and arranged with a super awesome friend to crash at his place in Brooklyn.
During my stay in NYC, I did a lot of aimless wandering, and riding around on the Metro. One night, I was in Williamsburg, Official Home of the Hipster, and was making an absolute spectacle of myself trying to get out of the subway station through the in door, and a perfect hip specimen came to my rescue, like Prince Charming of Brooklyn, and I was the hopeless herione in some really fucked up fairy tale. He assisted me in getting through the gates, and successfully scored my phone number in the process.
Over the next few hours, we had texted back and forth and decided to meet for drinks. Let me preface the rest of the story with an important fact: ROAMING IS A THING!
So, I meet this guy at this weird bar in the Brooklyn ghetto. I drank way too much PBR. I’m sending picture texts to my BFF. Remember roaming? Not me. So, playing wingman from 3000 kilometers away, my bestie tells me that it is, in fact, acceptable to go home with this hip stranger. These are amongst some of my first really irresponsible life decisions.
I’m going to leave the next 8 or so hours out of the story, and fast forward to morning.
I wake up with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my head stuck to this poor guy’s pillowcase because the previous day, I had my earlobes cut and stitched back together and was sporting total frankenlobes. That was the first of embarrassing events. I’m ready to leave. Being that I was married for a number of years, I haven’t really mastered a graceful walk of shame. So I poke this dude in the shoulder and I’m like “Uh, so I’m gonna take off. it was nice meeting you”. I let myself out, and take the stairs and get outside.
This is when I realize, I am not on the sidewalk. I’m in a parking area. It’s enclosed by a 12 foot security fence that’s topped with barbed wire. So I turn around, and go to let myself back into the building and find that the door is locked. No problem, I’ll just text the guy and get him to let me back in. I swipe my screen and am horrified to discover my phone is dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD.
Think, Vicki. You’re stuck in a parking lot and you have to MacGuyver a way out. You’re a smart chick, you can figure it out. My solution? I climbed the fucking fence. A 12 foot, barbed wire fence. Right next to an above-ground subway station. in the middle of Brooklyn. In broad daylight.
Pure class. Whatever. What I lack in class, I make up in sass.
Now, as much as I wanted to leave that experience behind, imagine my chagrin when three weeks later, my mobile bill comes in the mail and my husband (whom I was already separated from but still cohabitating with) calls me to flip out over my… $550 phone bill.
Remember roaming? Yeah, now you will. Forever and ever.
NB: Without a roaming package, roaming texts on my plan were $1 a piece, with more for data roaming and allllll those picture texts. SMRT.
ERRATA: Rebound would like to make the fact be known that the Very Angry Phonecall occurred while I was getting busy. I’m unsure of the relevancy of this information, but he seemed insistent that it was the funniest part of the story, so I’m editing that in.
Also, I really have to think of a more clever pseudonym for him.
Sorry I Ruined Your Sheets, And Other Stories 