New Rules NYC (#Wattys2015 Winner)

The Unwritten Rules of Tinder

Chapter 14: Mason

That jarring feeling when you miss judge the weather because you haven’t left the house all day. The blue sky looked deceptively warm but now the air pushes straight through my light jacket, freezing but grounding. It’s unsettling to think that all of the air in my house has already been squeezed through our crappy little AC, what good was it to my lungs after its already had it’s soul crushed. It used to be out here, free to roam.

I was the kind of hungry you get after sleeping in late, eating a sandwich to cover breakfast and lunch, then drinking on an empty stomach. I walked down Metropolitan past a group of girls in dresses piling into a black Uber SUV, heels and preened hair. They were overdressed for this side, but once over the bridge, anywhere from down to uptown, no one would cast them as out of place.

Jay was running late, I grabbed an IPA, sat at the bar and took in the people floating about. Commodore was a dive bar I suppose, dark, low key, retro arcade games and old school booths. A hipster hangout but a no bullshit kind of place. The food and people set it apart, one often follows the other. The best fried chicken plates in Williamsburg, good and cheap, exactly what I was picturing when I suggested it tonight. Biscuits, honey butter and organic fried chicken that crumbled in your hands – simple yet precise, making a satisfied mess of every table.

The hops in the beer gave it a sharp tang, a lot more flavor than the Mexican Tecate I’d been drinking with the students that lived in the loft next door. They were good sorts, their midweek parties would drive my roommate Ben crazy, but he was hardly ever home. He worked on movie projects and was away for weeks, sometimes months at a time – the ideal flat mate and an amazing pad. I ended up back there after a gig one night, and it turned out he had a room coming up, I moved in two weeks later.

Yes. The automatic response to the question of another beer. She tensed her upper arm as she poured us another, black tattoos, touches of red, they looked good against her white tee. A dude slipped in beside me, grabbed another beer himself and returned to a table. I really didn’t mind sitting at a bar alone. Sitting at a table however, it’s just a different feel. Instantly he buried himself in his phone and proceeded to check it over and over again, looking up and around, tapping his foot, painful to watch. Put someone on a stool at the bar, they are a lot more chilled. The social acceptance of drinking alone at the bar is a beautiful thing.

Jay arrives, we grab two more beers and whiskey shots. As is tradition, he bitches about his job for at least twenty minutes, halfway through he starts to pay a lot of attention to the bartender while still keeping the rhythm of his rant. Two plates of fried chicken and a kale salad arrive in front of us, after two bites I have to slow myself down. That hungry.

“I saw your last video.” He said, “The remix of the Odeza track. It’s tight.”

“Thanks dude, pity I got no rights to sell it.”

The bartender continues to serve up and down the bar, but you can tell she is listening to Jay. He speaks at a level most would be uncomfortable with, like someone eight beers deep in the line at the bank, Its still a little weird, but  you sort of get used to it. She bent over to grab something from the fridge, we both look but Jay’s eyes linger awkwardly as she comes back up, like he wants her to catch him.

“20k for six seconds.” Jay said, “This 19 year old ‘vine star’ we are working with. It’s crazy man. The game has totally changed. Last year we are working with De Niro, now this.”

We had developed a pattern of avoiding the reciprocal question about my work, didn’t blame him, an agency job, surrounded by interesting people, good food and a regular income was starting to sound good compared to my home studio surrounded by deli coffee and cheap takeout.