Crippled

Well ladles and jellyspoons, you may be hearing a lot more from me over the next two days, as I have suddenly found myself house ridden. In a bizarre splits-related accident last night, I have re-torn my hamstring...

'But how?!' I hear them cry, 'How does one achieve this feat without being in New York yet a week?'

Well my friends, it happens a little something like this.

I attended the first night of my Feature Writing class last night, which is the last of the 3 classes that I am taking with Gotham City Writers. I'm also taking a general fiction writing class, and a poetry class, both of which the end of the lesson was met with hushed voices and silent elevator rides (I refuse to call them lifts. Nor will I abolish the 'u' from words like colour, or change my 's' to a 'z' in words like realising). However. Last night was a little different!

I'm not sure if it's that I seem to attract Danish people now like moths to light or knives to toasters, but I sure do seem to keep on running into them! I got chatting in our break to a lovely, well travelled great Dane (seriously, that joke's been made a billion and four times now). Her name is Therese, and like most Scandinavians when paired with myself, we didn't shut up! She's a little like what we imagine that I'll be like in 5 years time... Except Danish...

Anywho, we walk out of class, and she invites me to come for drinks at a bar that her boyfriend works at in the Meat Packing district (very trendy, high brow-ish area at the moment apparently). But we were in the Eastern end of Soho, and it took as a good 2 hours to make our way their by foot. We were gladly interrupted by caffeination, and a pizza slice stop as neither of us had eaten much that day.

Aside, I met a guy in the coffee shop - well, I split my coffee over him first before I MET him - who recognised my accent as Australian. Turns out that he's an Aussie too. From Melbourne. FROM ST KILDA. FROM DUKE STREET!! Go figure, right? So you might hear more about this one later on down the track if we catch up...

We turned up at this raw, uncemented brick wall, wooden, iron and steel style bar at about midnight. 3 pots, 2 glasses of red and the leftover champagne when they close the bar and kicked everyone else ensued. At one point, all three beverages were being played like a chess board at the same time. I spent the night talking to a bunch of Puerto Rican guys, which sounds so exotic to an Australian, but is like what Kiwis are to us. So I found them fascinating, and they found me fascinating because I was so fascinated in them! Weird, huh?

Anyway, we got onto the subject of traditional dance, then modern dance, and that led into me mentioning that I could do the splits.

Bad. Idea. Not only did I amass a small crowd (we were sitting outside the bar at 2.30am on a Tuesday as the owner was closing up) but I also hadn't stretched. I got my applause, and even got asked to do a repeat performance, but of course I was a little numbed from the alcohol so I didn't feel sore at the time.

I lied through my teeth to get into a party at a club next door (2 points Georgia), but only really stayed to use their bathroom before heading off towards the subway with Therese and her boyfriend (henceforth referred to as Geoffery). I caught the wrong subway. Twice. To a station that I hadn't got out at before on the other side of Houston... But I made it home, feeling very safe the entire way, as much to your surprise as my own, I assure you!

I had enough sober sense by the time I got home to decide to stretch a little before I went to bad, as not to be sore in the morning.

And the next thing I heard... RRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPP and the next thing I heard after that was FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUyou get the point...

Have any of your ever torn your hammy? It's the second time that I've done this, the first being a second degree tear that I got from doing, wait for it, YOGA. And the second time I'm stretching after doing the splits (other leg though). To give you an idea of what it sounds like (yes, it makes a sickening sounds), imagine ripping a large strip of velcro off your inner thigh. And that's probably what it feels like too, if that velcro was dripping with hot wax.

And so NOW I can hardly walk! I'm quite a sight hobbling around... I use the walls to move around the house. I've got a few creams and such, but what I REALLY need is a physio and some ultrasound therapy like last time. But hey, with the state of the American political and economic system at the moment, I doubt I'm gonna get it.

That said, they're technically socialists now... Does that mean my health care is free? ;)