The Tale of Indigo Wren: The Last Hipster Standing

In additional to cooking and bitching about my life, I also like to write short stories and comics… this one I’m very proud of… hits close to home.

*** DISCLAIMER*** THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY BASED ON NO ONE AND/OR NO INCIDENTS IN PARTICULAR, AND IT IS ESPECIALLY NOT BASED ON MY OWN LIFE… BUT I KIND OF WISH IT WAS…

 

THE TALE OF INDIGO WREN:  THE LAST HIPSTER STANDING

Indigo Wren was one of the first settlers to move to Williamsburg in the late 90’s, when all there was, was a corner-store bodega that sold 40s through bullet-proof glass, and you risked getting knifed if you were out after 7 p.m..  These were the days of milk and honey – long before Apple and Whole foods moved onto Bedford Ave., and before multi-million dollar high-rises took over the waterfront.  Indigo staked his claim as the original hipster, and moved into an illegal apartment – a loft in an old warehouse – the only one still standing in the year 2019.

Now, at the seasoned age of 52, Indigo looks back fondly on the days of yore – a.k.a. any time pre-2004.  Ah yes!  The days when rent was only $500 a month, there were no bridge & tunnel kids, no European tourists, no condos, and no fucking yuppies… life was good then.  Back then, you could go to a real warehouse party – the kind where you weren’t charged $75 just to enter, there were certainly no models and bottles, and where you had to crawl through a literal hole in a wall to enter.  And, the drugs, oh the drugs!  Back then drugs were still legit.  You would blow your load if someone blew on your skin… they just don’t make parties or drugs like that now.

Alas, Indigo now finds himself at a cross-roads.  When his rent increased to $1,000 in 2005, Indigo’s parents consented to help him out and pay half.  However, Indigo’s parents have recently entered a retirement home, he still only works part-time as a performance artiste and a hair artiste, and now his landlord is being bought-out by a new development that plans to build condos priced for Wall Street bros and Russian hos.  Life is no bueno…

Now, what’s a boy like Indigo going to do?! Indigo racks his brain for ideas: he tries to sell his plasma, but is turned away because he doesn’t meet the minimum weight requirement.  He tries to sell his sperm, but is also turned away by the sperm bank after testing positive for narcotics, and because no one wants sperm from a 52 year old man with a liberal arts degree from a community college.  He tries to donate blood, but is also turned away after he says he occasionally engages in homosexual intercourse in the bathrooms of the Knitting Factory, after becoming inebriated… of course (Sssshhh… don’t tell his boyfriend!).

Hair cutting isn’t gonna pay the bills; and neither is his performance art, which involves getting naked on stage and rubbing cloves of garlic over his scrotum, while chanting “OOooommm Shanti” (can you say ‘tres avant garde’?!). In a moment of poser-weakness and desperation, he asks a friend working at a monastery in the Catskills if he can come live, study and work for free as the Gong Boy.  Sadly, his friend says the position for Gong Guru has been filled by a 26 year old girl with a tight ass and trust fund.

Down to the wire now, with only 30 days before he needs to have vacated his loft, Indigo is at a loss for ideas.  He has too many neck tattoos to work a corporate job.  Besides, you can’t get one of those unless you graduated Ivy League, or mommy and daddy know someone.  He can’t work as a waiter, because his anorexia prevents him from dealing with food, other than his weekly intake of one taco-cart quesadilla.  Alone in his apartment, he diligently scours Craigslist applying to job after job, using his neighbor’s WiFi, and doing occasional bumps of coke to boost moral.

Listen, we all have our vices, and I’m pretty sure it’s OK to spend $100 a week on blow when you only spend $8 a week on a taco-cart quesadilla…. anyhow. Indigo relentlessly applies to job after job – he stays up for 56 hours straight because he’s so stressed, and also because he has done so much coke, before he finally crashes in a state of complete exhaustion.  He has applied to so many jobs at this point, he can’t even remember where or what he has applied for.

The next day, Indigo wakes up with a mouth as parched as the desert, a half-eaten hamburger on his nightstand, hungover as fuck, and in the midst of a major coke comedown.  After downing 2 liters of tap water, he checks his AOL email account and sees that a recruiter from the MTA wants him to come in for an interview.  Whatever, he has no pride or options left now.  He decides to go for it, and sets up an interview for 1 p.m. the next day.

Indigo spends three hours planning the PERFECT interview outfit.  He decides on a pair of teenage girl’s black, super-skinny jeans, suspenders, a white button-down, which he will wear buttoned-down to his navel, a coke-spoon necklace (sterling silver, dahling), and a plaid fedora from Goran Brothers.  Oh, and Jeffrey Campbell platforms.  He arrives to his interview 20 minutes late, and fucking kills it!  He gets an offer on the spot, and agrees to start tomorrow (hey… MTA has to meet a diversity quota too).

Indigo arrives to work the next day, 1 hour late, extremely hungover from celebrating his new job the day before, and dressed totally inappropriately.  He decided to wear a neon-yellow pair of coveralls from his days as a 24-year old raver, a train conductor’s hat (very Burning Man/Steampunk chic), a rosary (don’t ask…),, and some platform sneakers (for comfort).  Everyone laughs at him when he shows up.  He gets a write-up for taking a smoke break on the L train platform only 20 minutes into the job, and no one wants to sit with him at lunch.  It’s basically like he’s in 6th grade all over again.

Indigo decides to leave work an hour early so he can go out for happy hour margaritas with his boo (they’ve been on-again-off-again for the last 8 years or so).  He goes to his boyfriend’s apartment and puts on his sexiest underwear to surprise him when he gets home from his job.  Indigo goes looking for some sparklers they keep in the kitchen cupboard (he wants to play bottle waitress), when 3 condoms fall out of a trinket box he was looking through.  His throat gets tight and he feels himself begin to burn from the inside out with rage, disgust, and a sadness so profoundly deep he hopes you never have to feel it.  His heart begins to race and his palms become moist with perspiration.

Indigo decides he is going to maintain control over his emotions and play it cool until his boyfriend gets home.  He decides to wait to confront him… after all, this must be some kind of mistake.  They’ve been exclusive for 8 years! He lays the condoms out on the coffee table and proceeds to drink two bottles of champagne to his face while he waits – to settle his nerves, as one is wont to do.

He waits another 30 minutes and as soon as his boyfriend walks through the door he explodes, throwing the condoms and a glass of champagne into his face.  Naturally, his boyfriend attempts to gaslight him with some bullshit excuse, but this is the last straw for Indigo, the straw that broke this lil’ camel’s back!

Indigo storms out wearing only a thong, 7″ platforms, and a silk kimono.  He calls his side-piece, a 25 year old burner named Cricket Avolon, and they go to happy hour to score some $5 margs.  One thing leads to another, and they order 3 grams of coke, some special K, and a few ecstasy pills for the road.  They end up at Cipriani, where they both blow the same hedge fund bro in return for a meal and some champagne, before making their way to The Box to see some girls piss in martini glasses and drink their own piss on stage.  Finally, they end up at the crack-den that is Members Only circa 2016.

Indigo forgets what day it is, he forgets he has a new job and bills to pay and rent payment to make, and he forgets that he is broke.  He stays out until 1 pm the next day, and then crashes at his dealer’s house somewhere… who knows where really.  When he wakes up at 9 pm the next night, he has 20 missed phone calls and 6 voicemails from his job and his parents.  He pops a couple of xanex before heading back to his apartment, to ease the comedown of it all.  He decides he will fix things with work tomorrow.

Indigo is still coming down from his near OD the day before, and emotionally deranged from his personal problems at home.  Nevertheless, he persisted.  He pulls himself up by the nipple rings, puts on some guy-liner and scented body glitter, pops a couple of addies, and marches off to work as though nothing ever happened.  HR calls him in immediately and terminates him on the spot.  He doesn’t even argue, he just leaves with a new plan brewing… this ain’t his first rodeo and it won’t be his last… he is used to these things happening to him by now.

He’s given up working dead-end jobs, and he hates this awful, fucking city where everyone is fake as fuck, consumed with greed, living on someone else’s hard earned dime and therefore has the luxury to pursue artistic adventures for little to no pay, or just an anorexic escort.  He calls up Cricket Avolon and he invites Indigo to go to Tulum with him.  Out of other options, and thinking he can probably score a sugar daddy (or mommy) and some quality blow, Indigo agrees.  He packs light – a sombrero, some adderall, and a few thongs.  His landlord can go fuck himself and charge some other naive loser way too much money to live in the shitty fucking dungeon of a loft that he has called home for the past 23 years.

After arriving in Tulum, Indigo convinces all of his trust fund friends to bring him to an elite party, where he proceeds to get mega, fucking TRASHED.  He runs into his ex-boyfriend in the ladies room… powdering their noses.  He ends up making a total scene and breaking a Dom Perignon bottle over the sink before threatening his ex with the broken end.  He accidentally cuts himself in the process, and decides now is the right time to pull a Johnny Depp, and writes a message in blood on the mirror: “You let Billy Bob f*ck You!”.  He is quickly escorted out by security, while shouting to everyone who can hear him “I’ll show you what a REAL fucking party is!!!”

Indigo wakes up penniless, naked and alone on the beach.  He thinks he may have been sexually assaulted, but he doesn’t know for sure.  He spends all afternoon building a raft out of the palm fronds and drift wood that litter the beach. The last anyone ever sees of Indigo Wren, he is floating out to sea on his raft with a corona, singing “Lilac Wine,” by Jeff Buckley…

 

And that, my friends, is the story of Indigo Wren, the last hipster standing.