Good afternoon. Matthew here, from ‘Til The Cows Come Home. David sent a frantic S.O.S., asking a few guests to fill in for him during his absence. Despite the fact that David never wants to see me in person anymore (“Oh, I thought that e-mail invitation to drinks was spam, so I deleted it” or “We could get together, but what’s the point if you don’t put out?” or “I’m so busy looking for a house in Baltimore, blah blah blah”), he has done a wonderful job of guest blogging for me in the past. I’m all too happy to return the favor.

David’s imminent move inspired me to write about my relocation to New York City, nearly five years ago to the day. A fresh-faced young actor from Ohio, I had planned on subletting from a college friend for the first few months. I shall call her Ivy. She was the star of our musical theater program during her time at school, and moved to the city two years before me to pursue the life of a star.

Ivy had a basement apartment in Astoria with a spare bedroom. Little did I know at the time that the move to New York traumatized her and she developed umpteen social phobias. Apparently, she rarely left her apartment except to go to work (and by “work” I mean dressing up as a cowgirl, standing in front of a Broadway theater and distributing leaflets for the revival of an Irving Berlin classic, all the while stalking its star) and to church.

On her way to and from work, Ivy would stop at Blockbuster, rent a stack of Harrison Ford or Audrey Hepburn movies, pick up some Doritos, and rush back to her apartment to lock herself in. Once in a while she would treat herself and re-enact Ally McBeal episodes in her bedroom. I only wish I were joking. Unfortunately, being new to the city and very poor, I usually ended up being locked in with her. Newspapers were forbidden in her home, as were television news broadcasts. “The world is full of evil and sad news,” Ivy would say. “I just can’t face it. I pray very hard for peace and joy for everybody.”

One of our other college classmates, whom I shall call Helena Bonham Carter, lived nearby and would often spend time with us (mostly so that I wouldn’t have to be alone with Ivy). One fateful evening, we managed to actually drag Ivy out to the Village to see a cabaret performance at the Duplex. Afterwards, we sat at the bar and had a few drinks while listening to performers sing during the open mike session. The next thing we knew, Ivy was up at the piano, cocktail in one hand and microphone in the other, crooning out “My Heart Will Go On” in a performance that fluctuated between Alanis Morissette and one of those recordings that subliminally coaches you to stop smoking.

Inexplicably, Ivy’s drunken crooning appealed to one of the three and a half straight men in the joint, and he tried to get Ivy to go on a date with him. Somehow Ivy snapped back from her vodka-induced daze, decided that the end of the world was, in fact, upon us, and ran out of the bar. Helena Bonham Carter and I raced after her, where we witnessed Ivy fall to the ground in the middle of Seventh Avenue, sobbing, and crying out “Why, God, why?” And after that night, we didn’t get Ivy to leave her apartment again, and I moved out of her place as quickly as possible.

For a while, Helena Bonham Carter and I tried to be supportive friends and find ways to help Ivy out of her internal prison. We didn’t understand how she had transformed from outgoing and fun-loving undergrad to psycho city girl. After our initial attempts failed, however, we soon lost patience…and interest. We did devise one final plan to get Ivy out of her apartment. Project Armageddon Drill involved setting off cherry bombs and strobe lights outside of Ivy's only window, and using the microphone from the action figure set of He-Man’s Snake Mountain to imitate the voice of God. The goal was to see if Ivy would try to make a run for the door or kneel down and accept her fate. Much to our dismay, Ivy packed up and moved to Idaho before we had a chance to implement the plan.

Word on the streets is that Ivy has moved from the hills of Idaho (does Idaho even have hills?) to Los Angeles, where her fear of being in seen in public and being mistaken for Bette Midler must have let up enough to allow her to live a semi-normal life. Rumor has it that she was involved in a local production of Godspell where she tried to trip the actor playing Jesus so that she could go on in his place. But we may never really know the truth.