You can tell a lot about a man by the way he smokes. Which is perhaps the only reason it’s such a shame most men don’t anymore. Not true smoking at least, not according to my mother. I think it’s makes Europeans so attractive— them and the Californians and Texans. Something something about wearing hearts on their lighters, caught between two fingers in an alleyway. So when you see one, one of the rare true-smoking breed, you know: heartbreaker, heartbroken, dangerous.

On the way to elementary school, I look up. I ask my mother why there are castles on the top of the apartment buildings across Sixth Avenue. She tells me, they aren’t castles, but water towers. I acknowledge this but refuse to dismiss the possibility of dragons and princesses until elementary school is well behind me. If you could see them this would make more sense. All you have to do is go to New York, plane is preferable as you can land in the city without the hassle of parking, but car is acceptable if you’re in a bind.

The Jane Ballroom in the Jane Hotel on Jane Street, commonly referred to as the Jane never fails to provide the boring with stories and the interesting with cocaine, though I’d recommend partaking in neither. The lines inside the Jane are nearly as long as the line outside, which wraps neatly around the corner of the block, leaving latecomers to down the vodka water bottles with only the west side highway in view.

We arrive at the reading an hour and forty minutes into the two-hour set. Fashionably late. Outside the venue stands an ironic smoker and two halfway tipsy women debating left door or right. We dust the pavement off of our shoes and enter with an air of pretentiousness that lets the room know that, yes, we’ve been to a reading before.

Imagine— if you will— settling in on a Saturday night. Pizza has been ordered and engulfed (enthusiastically). Wine bottles sit empty on the kitchen counter. Your roommate is sitting beside you, denting the cushions and lighting a blunt to share. With all the constant excitement of the world, the simple pleasure of a Saturday night cannot be overstated, and the need to guard this treasured— nay— sacred time is of the utmost importance.