ReMODELing!

As I’m sure you can all see, I’m the process of a make-over. It should be done soon. Hopefully, it will be fab. Some of you may hate it. Others may fall even deeper in love. Feel free to leave your opinions and bear with me today as I transform. Content-wise everything will stay the same. The appearance will just be even sexier (I know, we didn’t think it was possible.)

More later…

Burning Man Camp Boogies in New York

Just when you think you’ve seen all the weirdness NYC has to offer, you stumble across a party like this.

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Newsflash! You Can Star in Your Own Real Life Version of Dirty Dancing!

You can! It’s called hitting up salsa clubs, and I did it last night.

A little background: I love to dance. Ballet, modern, jazz. I got childhood/teen fortune worth of training. Since then my flexibility’s gone to hell, but I thoroughly appreciate any excuse to act like a child. That’s why karaoke, the Wii and pillow fights remain some of my favorite activities. The best part about dance is that in addition to making you feel like a liberated five-year-old, it gets you high on endorphins – and you actually work out your abs! Fuse this exuberance with the Latin tradition of salsa, meringue and bachata, then add in the social factor, and you’re essentially speed dating, going to the gym, and having childish fun all at the same time. Is this not a stellar combination? Not to mention absurdly productive?

OK, it’s not as glamorous as that scene from Dirty Dancing where Baby sees Johnny shaking it for the first time and she’s the loser carrying a watermelon. There are some people you definitely don’t want to dance with, like men that are missing more than three teeth. But the best news is that you don’t have to dance with anyone you don’t want to. You just say, ‘I’m resting for this one,’ and everyone’s very well mannered about it. And once you are on the dance floor with a suitable partner, you feel like a million bucks. Swirling around with other couples, getting sweaty in the dark, you actually DO start feel like you’re in the new Dirty Dancing trailer. Keep it up for several dances and you’ll be sweating through your jeans. Time flies. And did I mention the music makes you insanely horny?

Yes it helps if you’re attracted to your salsa partner, but that’s totally not the point. If you like them, you continue dancing and get closer. If not, you keep respectable dance partner boundaries and are free to switch off at any time. I let myself go and got really into it (Latin dance rule: shake your hips and shoulders with every movement and you won’t totally look like a fish out of water). I imagine I was every predatory Latin man’s wet dream, a clueless blonde creature with ‘teach me how to salsa’ written across my forehead, but I never once felt uncomfortable or taken advantage of and even took a phone number. Just a guy saying ‘bachata,’ let alone dancing it with you, is often enough to make you feel like you want to make out with him.

New boyfriend requirement: must be able to salsa.

You and your significant other would be in the best physical shape of your lives if you hit this up as a recreational activity a few times a week. Can you imagine if you got to add ‘foreplay’ to our already outrageous list of fun yet productive activity?

The Felix Tradition

Many New Yorkers like to nurse their hangover with more liquor, the logic having to do something with ‘keeping you liver working.’ The exact science of this theory I cannot explain, but it’s popular among Manhattan’s expat crew: Italians, Frenchies and Brazilians who all seem to body surf their way into Felix Sunday afternoons to keep daylight just as jovial as last night at the club.

Felix, located in SoHo on West Broadway and Grand, is the thumping heart of a much larger Sunday circle of sin. The rounds include nearby Novecento, Café Noir, Diva and Cipriani’s Downtown. And for the Expat crowd, there’s a zero percent chance of not running into someone you know. It’s an exercise in incest so be prepared to hear a lot of joyous shouts of recognition in a lot of foreign languages.

I’d stopped through Felix on a handful of Sunday afternoons, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I engaged in ‘the Felix tradition,’ a full day’s worth of productivity lost inside this French bistro/bar. Below I’ve documented my experience.

2:15 – I arrive. The place isn’t a mosh pit yet because the hardcore partiers are still sleeping. Every table however, is booked and the wait spills out into the sidewalk. Great.

2:18 – I wiggle toward the bar and see some French friends. They suggest I put my name down for a table ASAP as they were just told it’s a forty-five minute wait. I think to myself ‘that’s absurd’ and decide once my friends arrive to convince them we should go to one of the eighteen other perfectly delicious brunch places in SoHo. I approach the intimidating female maitre’de (she’ll scream at you just for darting a hopeful smile her way) and in the bar crowd almost trip over someone’s small dog.

2:20 – As I avoid nose diving into someone’s drink, I hear the owner of the leash I’m entangled in calling out to the dog I almost killed, ‘Cocoa. Cocoa’

I slowly double-take. I know a dog name Cocoa...

I look up to see the leash leads to the hand of my uncle who’s at the bar next to me enjoying a scotch. WTF?

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Wild Abandon

A reader recently wrote in that she felt my recent posts were lacking my usual ‘wild abandon.’ I thoroughly appreciated her insight and in an attempt to redeem myself, figured I’d divulge a recent experience below.

Since my emotional state of well-being often resembles the sine graph (for those who you who don’t remember what that is or failed high school math, click here for a visual), it’s not uncommon for me to spend one night in, alone, wallowing in misery and the next sporadically strapping on stiletto boots and singing annoying things to my girlfriends like the ‘Party All The Time’ song, which FYI is also a highly amusing video.

On this particular night, I was feeling pretty neutral but forced myself out since I’d promised my friend Femme that I’d help her model / promote these clothes (don’t ask) that a designer friend of hers had wanted us to wear out. We were going to Lollipop (which I just wrote a review of here), but getting together at her apartment first to drink and don our outfits.

I’ve written before about pheromones and how I’m utterly fascinated by them. Technically defined, pheromones are “a chemical secreted by an animal that influences the behavior or development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of the opposite sex.” Well, my pheromone alert button starting wailing at an emergency level the moment I entered Femme’s apartment. This isn’t something that happens often. I had to do a 360 scan to visually locate the apparent object of my desire. I looked right, left, then BOOM – dead center in front of me beyond Femme’s open kitchen, I saw my guy.

Next I was confused because this guy was not my type at all (an article discussing my type available here) but it’s essentially classy, euro casual, long hair, slightly taller than me but not too tall. The man my pheromones directed me too, while goodlooking, was outrageously tall, non-euro, and sporting a shaved head.

Huh?

Pheromones have a way of bringing people together quickly, so it didn’t take long until we were talking and I learned he was from Brasil. Suddenly, this made slightly more sense. I recently caught South America fever and in the past six months have traveled to Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. We therefore had a lot to say to each other. We chatted until I was dragged upstairs to change my outfit. My girlfriends stripped, prodded and changed me, warring over whether I should wear this stylish headband that I felt made me look like a pirate.

This headband was so tight that by the time we got to Lollipop, I felt like it was molesting my brain. I took it off so I could focus fully on chatting with the Brazilian – the only social activity either of us had been engaged in for the past hour. Now however, we’d dangerously entered bottle service land. It was also a Saturday so there was no reason not to consume drinks with bravado. I’d been switching between vodka and champagne all night and stared at the Brazilian aghast when he proceeded to pour a flute of Vueve into my mixed vodka drink. As if I wasn’t already wasted, now I was drinking vodka flavored champagne.

As I emphasized in my review, Lollipop’s shoe box level small so it’s practically impossible not to invade other people’s personal space. So put the equation of pheromones, Saturday night, drinks, and small space together and you get touchy-feely with someone pretty fast. What’s amazing about the Brazilian people is their utter directness in regard to love/sex. It’s not uncommon for someone just to look you square in the eye after knowing you ten minutes and proclaim:

“I like you.”

This often leaves Americans dumbfounded because we feel you should go on a date, hold hands, watch football and attend a barbeque before making blanket statements this bold. It’s hard to take a comment like that seriously because the person barely knows you. The flip side is: In all seriousness, don’t we form a subconscious opinion on someone in about ten seconds flat? We are animals. Our general instincts about somebody are usually right.

So in Brazilian style, after what must have been at least three hours of ‘get to know you’ time, he moved for a kiss, which I darted. I’m always out seeing people I know and truthfully pretty shy about sexual things, so never engage in the public make out move. I find PDA of all forms annoying so remain super hesitant to engage in it myself (unless of course I’m madly in love and accidently flaunting my happiness…that doesn’t happen often either.) I did my best to explain this to him and he smiled at me with warm eyes:

“Don’t worry. I totally understand,” he said. Before I could heave a sigh of relief he added, “I’ll wait for you in the bathroom.”

He then disappeared down the stairs while I double-taked.

I responsibly labeled myself incapable of handling the situation so deferred to my ever faithful roommate Tatas, who naturally let out some sort of squeal when I told what just happened.

“Go down there!” she urged.

I felt pretty uncomfortable because while some may think “it’s not a big deal, it’s just a kiss,” I am one of those people who doesn’t kiss lightly. I don’t recreationally make out. If I go as far as to kiss you, it means I’m all the way in, and would probably be pleased to do many other things together as well. So for me, a kiss is essentially my mental point of no return. Which is why I was quaking in my heels as I crept down the stairs.

His strong arms instantly appeared and swept me into the bathroom. Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, his lips were on mine in a pheromonal frenzy. The best part of this story is that he was wearing / modeling this designer’s clothing as well, and therefore in dress pants and a dress shirt. Since I’m a fan of checking out what you’re dealing with ASAP, I began unbuttoning his shirt (I mean, that just seemed like the correct next move when you’re in a bathroom making out with a Brazilian.) Then I had my second head spin of the evening when underneath the designer linen I revealed tattoos, nipple piercings, the works. I think I physically took a step backward and made a ‘Time Out’ hand signal.

I had no words.

The formal attire was just such a shocking contrast to what I found underneath that I felt helplessly confused.

“Yeah,” he explained, “I used to everything pierced.” He motioned to his ears and face. “These are all that’s left cause no one can see them.”

I remained dumbfounded and uncomfortable, but finally turned to confront our paused reflections in the bathroom mirror. For some reason it hit me that my mother would utterly disapprove this man without his shirt on…and that is perhaps the steamiest, sexiest thought in the universe. So I just grinned glided back toward his mouth, then helping him rebutton before we rejoined our friends upstairs for a long night out.

Beat Me With Bay Leaves, Baby

Why enjoy a traditional massage with aromatherapy candles and elevator music when you can get the shit beaten out of you by a Russian sumo-wrestler in two-hundred degree heat?

I’ll explain.

This past weekend, my friend Jewel took me waaaay downtown on an adventure to a banya, the Russian version of a hamam or Turkish bath. I was full steam onboard with this plan since I’m a steam room junkie. Nothing feels as fabulous as sweating out your toxins before catapulting yourself into freezing water, then slowly getting warm again. Since I have zero circulation and am chronically cold, the steam room’s extreme temperatures actually serve to help me normalize. And let’s not forget my ultimate fantasy is sweaty, slithering sex in Turkish bath, an unfulfilled daydream that I imagine works infinitely better in my imagination than in reality.

So Jewel and I slipped into our bikinis and began exploring the spa like curious children. There was a dining area, a lounge, a billiards table, an area to watch sports, a swimming pool, Jacuzzi and then steam rooms, saunas and baths all of varying temperatures. Essentially an adult playground.

We lounged in the steam and then the sauna gossiping while sprawled out like infants until it was time for our massage, by massage I mean beating.

Jewel is already deeply addicted to this ritual so tried to prep me for what I was about to experience.

“You’re in the hottest sauna of two-hundred degrees and they beat you with hot, wet bunches of leaves.”

Me: “Does it hurt?”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “Why leaves?”

“It increases circulation. It’s also a purification ritual.”

Back in the day, the bath houses were apparently all about religious practice and spiritual cleansing. Don’t ask me for details since I’m clueless, and Wikipedia and I are on a relationship break this week (we had a fight). But I find the whole topic fascinating. We decided Jewel would go first so I could watch the whole process from start to finish before being subjected to it myself.

A very large Russian man in a bathing suit and what looked like a straw elf cap laid Jewel down before beating the crap out of her with two fists of leaves. He was pounding away as if she were a pair of bongo drums. Soon, I was subjected to the same thing and flipped over so he could pound my front side as well. My thought throughout the whole thing:

“It’s really hot; if I don’t pass out and have to have a stretcher take me out of here, I’m a winner.”

Because it is really hot. When your massage (I mean beating) ends, you’re so dizzy your Russian wrestler has to essentially carrying you to the freezing water pool as if you were blind. Getting dumped into a vat of ice cold acqua is subsequently the best feeling on earth. You get out quickly though, because your skin is tingling on a painful level.

My Russian then grabbed me by the back of the neck and forced my head under a cold shower for a few minutes. Then he instructed me to lie in one of the cooler steam rooms for ten minutes.

Those ten minutes may have been the best of my life. You know how in drug movies you see people shoot up heroin and then just pass out in ecstasy. I felt like I finally understood what they were going through. My head pounded with perhaps the largest endorphin release of my life. My body tingled. I could feel my circulatory system actually functioning. I could feel the blood gushing through my veins. Honestly, I could’ve probably laid there looking at that wooden, dripping ceiling till 2010, but my body eventually instructed me to go get water.

So we sprawled out in the lounge area hydrating and munching on delicious watermelon. My glow lasted for days and I left the place revitalized, healthy, and feeling like someone in a Neutrogena commercial.

Cost of the whole Russian bath day, entrance to beating to food…around $75. When you consider one facial in Manhattan is $100, this could be an affordable addiction.