Burnout Dust is Diamonds

By Hoyt Dwyer

An emotionally bankrupt group of friends heads from New York City to a quaint Connecticut beach town in search of an epic party to end Summer with a bang. 

 

"With sparse prose and impressionistic flare, Burnout Dust is Diamonds gives an authentic glimpse into the never-ending party that was NYC during the not-so-distant 2010s." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hoyt Dwyer
• Release date: Apr 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201724870

Hoyt Dwyer

Originally from Atlanta, Hoyt has lived & worked all over the globe, and currently resides in Los Angeles after spending 7 years in New York.  His work has been recognized by Cannes Lions, Communication Arts, Clios, and AICP, among others. 

Book preview

BURNOUT DUST IS DIAMONDS

New York City

Summer

2013

I

1

Nothing is better than living in New York City when you are young and single and have cash in your pocket. This is the thought that throttles through your veins as you spurt up out of the F train subway station. You swim through the stream of exposed human flesh to find yourself at the intersection of Houston and Allen.

The Lower East Side.

Women are everywhere. They prowl both sides of the street like lionesses of the concrete who eat you with their eyes. There is a tree lined promenade running down the middle of Allen. You jay walk through dented cars to get under the leaves as you head south.

Shade.

The city is a microwave. Rays of heat reverberate off the rows of six-story tall brick buildings smashed into one another. Each one has a fire escape dangling on the front. The fire escapes are painted green or black and made of metal bars that make them look like monstrous lobster traps that have been severed in half and strung up and down the facades of the buildings. Ladders slant vertically to attach the different stories. There is a young man and young woman holding hands and drinking beer and people watching on one of them to the left. The next building down from them has an old latin woman smoking a cigarette at her open window. She whispers the clouds of smoke out from behind a jungle of potted plants from inside her apartment.

Summer.

Your boat shoes march straight beneath the birch trees with flaky bark that look like they have been randomly splattered with white paint. The high branches pop their greenery up to the sky. The cement you walk on is blotched with black imperfect circles of spat out bubblegum that polka dot the sidewalk like a grey dalmatians back. The buildings are deformed with age. The consistent garbage everywhere and the exorbitant prices displayed in stores give the neighborhood a feeling of not so much shabby chic but something more like litter posh.

You pass a pod of orange benches. Two old men wearing socks and holding canes sit beside each other and do not speak as they look straight ahead from behind sun glasses. The taller one pulls on a cigar with his lips. Young men and women are plopped in the other three benches. They laugh. They shout. They wear tank tops and beanie hats and expose their tattoos to the sun.

You hustle up to catch the blinking orange hand that tells you it is somewhat safe to cross Delancey St. A pause in the traffic. Cars honk their horns at themselves as exhaust billows out of the filth covered machines. The hand stops blinking. Buses and taxis lurch at you. You jog. There is now foot slime inside your shoes from your sweaty feet that the balls of your human hooves slide around on.

You make the curb as a yellow Ford Escape taxi swerves to not hit you. There are full trashbags lining the corner. A rat jumps out of one and slithers into the sewer grate under the lip of the curb. You look up. The restaurant says GREY LADY.

You make an entrance.

2

What up yall. I said.

Heyo. The table of friends replied.

How’s it goin. I continued. Yall ordered yet?

Nope. Just sat down.

There was Vala Dosta and Camilla and Vala Dosta’s boyfriend Scott Sodora.

I gave Vala Dosta a one armed hug first. Her hair was long and went from brunette at the roots to blond at the tips and formed curls that reached down to the middle of her back. She was wearing a tie dyed tank top with armholes that hung down to her fit ribcage and exposed the intricate lace of her pink bra. Her narrow face was very pretty with long eyelashes and a good triangle nose over her wide mouth that was painted with blaring red lipstick that made her teeth shiny white as she smiled. Her eyes were green. The eyelids drooped halfway over her green gem eyeballs like she was half asleep the way all sleepy southerner eyes do.

Like blinds half closed to the light.

Yo.

Yo.

Next up was Camilla.

Where’s Milton? Is he back from El Caribe.

Yeah he’s back. But he’s working a bit today.

That’ll happen.

She was wearing one of those sleeveless linen shirts with two pockets on the front. It was see-through and you could see her bra too. Her bra was like a white lacey one. Her blonde hair was shoulder length and matched her moon-pie face nicely. Her smile was wide and genuine and painted vibrant red with lipstick as well.

Scott looked up from his Apple smartphone like he had just noticed that I’d arrived.

How’s it goin Scott.

Colquit, good, it’s good.

I see you’ve shaved off your ironic moustache.

Vala Dosta kicked my leg under the table as I scooted up the chair.

I wasn’t doing it to be ironic. Scott said. It was a classic look. But now everybody’s doing it.

Scott Sodora.

When I first met Scott a while back he had just arrived from Oxford. As in the one in Mississippi. He had been in a decent fraternity with an old friend of mine at Ole Miss. This friend had asked me to show Scott around the city when he moved up as he was looking for a job in Advertising. Scott had shown up to the bar that first day wearing Clark’s Wallabee shoes and regular old blue jeans and a green Patagonia fleece pullover on top of a white polo shirt that covered his college pudge. His hair was longish and parted down the side with his brown bangs swooping across his forehead. In short he was your prototypical Ole Miss alumnus.

He had altered his appearance a great deal since then. When I showed up to Grey Lady I think his tenure in the city had been a little over a year. Now his head was shaved on both sides down to the skin. But the hair on top was long and slicked back with grease and hairspray.

Seven other fellas at Grey Lady had the exact same haircut.

His shoes were now those suede bucks that they must give out when you get that haircut. His white ankles poked out over the top. They were white because I don’t think he had seen a day of sun since moving up. And you could see his ankles because his pants were rolled up at the bottom. I don’t know why. It was not raining. And I have no idea how he even got those pants on. They were skin-tight black denim that he must have wet down to shimmy into. His shirt was made of thin black chambray denim and was ornamented with white polka dots. It was buttoned all the way up to his chin and the sleeves were buttoned too. Despite the immense heat. In all his skin-tight clothing you could see that he had dropped a great deal of weight. His movements were now fragile and slow.

The one thing that had not changed was his set of intelligent black eyes. They seemed to move about the room independently of one another as they collected information and data to help him calculate his next movements. And of course he wore spectacles now. Those black framed ones with large lenses. His black eyes and his slow bony appendages and his immediate ability to warp his appearance gave you the inhuman feeling of being in the presence of a chameleon. And just like the conformist reptile his talents endowed him with an uncanny knack for visual hunting and climbing.

His first job had come when I had introduced him to a good friend of mine at a great ad agency. This friend helped him land an interview in which Scott showed samples of his journalism at Oxford. It was one of those agencies that wants people without a background in advertising but expect you to work for free as an intern. I guess Scott came from a wealthy enough family to support him without a paycheck in the most expensive city in the US. So he took the profitless job. He immediately produced a few campaigns that I thought were actually kinda decent. This got him hired on full time. What came next was his magnum opus. He wrote a pouty anti-bullying campaign that was paid for by unknowing taxpayers and made nobody any money whatsoever except for Scott when the campaign swept the award shows in the Spring. By vilifying jocks and popular children in high-schools Scott was swiftly awarded many trophies and became very popular in the professional advertising industry. His trophies were now strewn across the mantle in his apartment and industry-wide publications were quick to anoint Scott a genius. He took a gargantuan promotion at a different agency that was far beyond his level of experience and talent. He had only been there for a little while now but rumor had it that he had a great deal of trouble managing the veteran creatives under him and had resorted to referencing his coveted trophies as well as his everybody-deserves-a-trophy moral highground to establish an air of authority necessary to bully his more talented subordinates into submission.

What have you been working on lately? He asked me.

Ya know. Same old shit. This place is cool.

Yeah. Vala Dosta said. I love this place.

I’ve walked by it a thousand times but have never been in. I said.

We were seated around a rickety wooden table next to the exposed brick wall. There was a bar with tall stools lining the back of the place. It was fully stocked with liquor. A large chalkboard was painted on the wall beside it. Scribbled all over the blackboard was their oyster menu. A girl with a guitar sang into a microphone next to the large floor-to-ceiling windowpanes that were open to the street on hinges like garage doors. Potted plants drooping around here and there made it feel nice and fresh even though it was full of sweating humans.

Are you going to eat or are you just drinking? A short freckly girl snapped as she walked up.

Um. I think we’re going to do both. Vala Dosta said.

Okay well the kitchen is closing right now so you need to hurry up and order something. Our waitress informed us as she stood over us. Everyone picked up the menus.

The kitchen is closing? I asked. At five on a sunday?

Yes. You need to tell me what you want or else you won’t get anything.

Okay, that’s intense.

Camilla had her back to the short red head and started making funny faces. I laughed.

Well let’s at least start with two dozen of the Rhode Island oysters. I ordered.

Which ones from Rhode Island? The waitress barked.

There’s only one choice on the menu up there from Rhode Island. I said as I double checked to make sure I was not the idiot. The Point Judith oysters. And let’s get two plates of the bacon wrapped scallops as well.

What’s good here? Camilla asked the waitress.

Any of the chicken.

Ha. Okay. Um. I’ll do the cheeseburger. Camilla said with a smile.

Make that two. Said Vala Dosta.

Make that three. I said.

I’m going to have the beet salad. Scott Sodora ordered as he looked up from his apple smartphone that he was typing on.

What to drink? Vomitted the waitress.

I’ll do a whisky ginger. Camilla said with a smile.

Make that two.

Make that three.

I’ll have a vodka and seltzer. Scott ordered.

The waitress stomped off.

Omg. Camilla said.

What was her problem? Vala Dosta joined in.

Scott shaved his moustache. I said. If Scott hadn’t shaved his ironic moustache, we’d be hip enough to eat here.

Camilla giggled. Vala Dosta kicked me under the table.

There it is. Scott said pointing to the TV. It’s my new ad.

I looked up. It was a commercial shot in black and white with a very famous rapper dressed in expensive clothes that were made to look like poor people garments.

Oh my gosh, it is! Said Vala Dosta.

That’s pretty cool. Said Camilla.

My big famous ad man. Said Vala Dosta as she went to hold Scott’s hand.

The waitress slammed down the short heavy glasses filled with whisky gingers and the one glass of vodka seltzer. Scott lifted his phone and took a picture of his drink and posted it to the internet. Then Scott dove way into the ad and how awesome the rapper was. He pulled up a photo on his smartphone of him and the rapper that he had posted to the internet and showed it to us. He then showed us where the rapper had mentioned Scott himself in one of the rapper’s very own internet posts. The girls were interested. I tasted the whiskey ginger. It was damn good.

The ginger syrup wasn’t too sweet. The whisky was quality. There was an orange slice floating in the top bubbly layer of icy fizz. The sip danced around on my tongue and left my mouth alive when it was finished. I put it down pretty fast while Scott boasted. I needed a drink. Working the weekend blows. It was time to make up for lost time. I ordered another when the oysters came.

"So I’ve got