Bay Ridge is this suburban-esque neighbourhood in Brooklyn that is rarely mentioned in the

news, but when something does happen, it’s really fucking twisted. The highlights over the

past five years have been the rape of a cop, a tornado, and an apartment that was raided

across the street from my high-school that contained skulls, heroin and homemade bombs.
 

There’s also a lot of terrorism – the neighbourhood has been described as a terrorist

launching pad and the NYPD refers to it as “Beirut”; word on the street (when people still

cared) is that the Islamic society next to the local cinema was key in planning 9/11. By far

most interesting, though, is that it’s also where Naomi Campbell’s ill-fated maid lives.

Other than that, it’s mainly just Greek bakeries, tanning salons (there are more than ten of

them in a 30-block radius), the world’s greatest pizza, Owl’s Head Skate Park, and as my

hometown, it is the site of my first tryst.Back when my friend Lorraine and I were at the

end of our ghetto phases, which meant endless on-sale Guess and cornrows that had no

business on my head, we spent 99 percent of our time on stoops and the rest of it hanging

out at a skate park and shop called Balance. We had nothing better to do, and plus the guy

who owned it was Jason Lee’s doppelganger. He was gorgeous and had a really bitchy wife from

South Africa who would always make him go home early. His name was Jay, which reinforced the

fact that he might’ve actually been Jason Lee.
We felt bad for Jay because the shop was always inundated by kids but no one ever bought

anything. He would let everyone work for him in exchange for free shit, which was not a good

business model. Balance closed about a year or two after it opened. It also housed some

total freaks, like this guy Tommy who was super old, and used the expression “I couldn’t get

laid if I humped a whore house” way too frequently. He would also go on tirades about not

comprehending simple concepts like how people who speak in a different language understand

each other.

Lorraine was a seasoned slut by this point but I figured it was about time that I got in on

the action. Nolan Lee hung out around here because Billy Rohan did. Everyone talked about

him like a legend and called him “crazy Billy”. They were both from Gainesville, Florida,

which seemed exotic at the time.

It was a really hot afternoon, and Lorraine and I took morphine right before Nolan showed

up. I sat on his board and drank his beer. It was really thrilling because he was scarily

equipped to woo a teenager. He looked like Leonardo DiCaprio circa Romeo in Juliet and told

me he was 18, although it is quite possible he was actually older. He carried me home

because I was tiny and not able to hold my pills and alcohol. When we got to my house he

kissed me, and though I had lied about this up to this point, it was my first kiss, I was

15. Needless to say, it didn’t work out between us.

I would run into Nolan every now and again skating Union Square, and would hear bits through

the grapevine. He always seemed to start the most fights. Years later I met his then-

girlfriend, and we ran into this girl that he was sleeping with (not his gf). He texted both

of them at the same time. Woops. I got really drunk and hooked up with the home-wrecker girl

at some point at the end of the night, and thought about how things come full circle.



EMILIE BRANCH

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