All articles filed in Miss Lily’s

Blacking out wasn’t intentional, finishing the rum punch pitcher was celebratory. Having only seen one functioning relationship in the entirety of my life you’d think I’d be a cynic. Wrong! I’m a sucker for romance and was determined to find my other half. The universe incessantly guided me to find my twin flame, I waited for Genc Jakupi to return. Instead I got word he was dating actress Madalina Ghenea. Flooded with relief that he wasn’t my person, I could finally leave this plantation behind. Minus Serge Becker, the other owners and managers became snide upon the news. See the problem with me, I couldn’t be free if others were oppressed. The disparity in how I was treated versus everyone else made me cringe. I used my power to protect them, which angered my bosses. Sorry not sorry, this was a staff of colored women, almost all of them were products of systemic racism and they were being taken advantage of.
Once at a mandatory meeting we each read aloud from the policy booklet. I kid you not a hostess in her late thirties stumbled over the word “willingness.” Pausing.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I wasn’t sure if I said it right.”
The only two people who could read aloud cohesively were Kelsey, a stout girl with dope, big ass hair, and me (there was a HIGH turnover rate, don’t be offended, you wasn’t there). We had “white” schooling meaning we went to school with predominately white people, meaning we weren’t robbed a proper education, outliers. Foster care and low income neighborhoods limited their access to opportunity. Miss Lily’s in their minds was a step closer to an artistic career. And while I was stoked to be working in a mostly black restaurant where explicit music played, I couldn’t have stood out more. My voice made people forget I was black, or Caribbean, so did some of my experiences. Until Miss Lily’s I honest to God believed everyone who grew up in New York City did coke in tenth grade. Swear. The majority of us were natives.
“You grew up with white people?”
“Yeah,” I also thought diversity thrived.
“Oh that’s why. I never even seen coke. Like cocaine? In real life? Nah I’m good, I’ll stick to weed only. That’s wild. Yo, you’re crazy.” Working here was the most white people they’d been around at once. Causing such psychological segregation some believed in earnest whites were a different species altogether, referencing a YouTube video conspiracy. White people were untrustworthy, demonic, racist, reptilian aliens, dropping into the mountains from spaceships. That’s why they’re so evil. That’s why they’re called caucasian. Deadass not kidding. Growing up multicultural I was the one left to debunk their theories, reminding everyone whites are human too; the people I grew up with are family. Between you and them it’s the latter who’d have my back. Espousing trailer park views from the opposite end of the spectrum is what this was. I was bewildered, my bubble burst, no idea I was in a bubble at all, but aren’t we all until we’re not? Their sentiments were true to their experiences which varied from mine. And yet I was the most woke, due to said chasm in our upbringings. I had knowledge coupled with a sense of entitlement. Yeah, kids left my specialized middle school with drug addictions, they also took buses state to state attending protests and rallies. Activism and community were imprinted in my being. Walking in others shoes only broadens your worldview.

Most of the senior money night girls had slept with the owners, some had both brothers, hoping to marry up. Instead the Jakupi’s would come in the next day with a model, or actress, and make the bedded waitress serve them. How degrading. Those same girls loathed me for receiving perks, down to paid vacation, sans spreading my legs. In Albanian culture women were property, that’s how they’re taught (operative word) to view us.
Detest isn’t a strong enough word, the hatred I accrued for Miss Lily’s was ineffable. Between illegally taking from our tip pool to pay hourly workers, cultural appropriation, the racism, the sexism and unnecessary petty power struggles, waiting for what I believed was true love was why I stayed. Drinking and drugging before, during, and after my shifts was my coping mechanism. I would get shit faced (never made a mistake though impressing everyone, myself included), and that night with his brother was no different.

The last thing I remember is laughing with supermodel Jourdan Dunn. As Lupe the Mexican busboy gave a synopsis of the night, fragments of Friday came to mind.
“You was at the table with Mr. Binn, you and the blonde lady was rubbing on his legs, all over, then you tried to kiss her. She said no I don’t go that way.”
The woman I tried to kiss was Dua Lipa’s mom in front of her dad! I have no recollection of any of it and more than likely I touched his penis. No wonder Binn was acting weird, nice even. I felt bad I led him on, but at the same time there were few people I disliked more. The opposite reaction of everyone else. Turns out Genc was unanimously the meanest owner, everyone was terrified of him. When he showed up the air stiffened, phones went away, spines straightened and silence blanketed those he passed. He was fire you for blinking the wrong way mean, on the spot in front of everyone, permanently banning you from the property. Binn was the nice brother. Except he wasn’t. Duplicitous for sure, his sole purpose was to punish me for making his brother soft. All he wanted was to turn Genc against me. Eventually he succeeded. Part of it was his attraction to me, Genc wouldn’t share like he’s done in the past. With Madalina in the picture he took this drunken forgotten moment as a green light. Furious by the thought of me with his brother Genc breaks up with Madalina, who actually came to lurk me before dating him.
Numerous women came to see who captured his womanizing heart. Madalina Ghenea was breaking her neck from a booth to do so. I caught her, thinking nothing of it since I had no idea who she was, I wondered if she was black or nah, then proceeded to check my phone. As I scrolled through social media and replied to text messages I felt a presence, she was standing next to me.
“Can I help you with something?,” I ask in a perfunctory manner. To be honest she wasn’t in my section, and I was busy making afterwork plans.
“No, just looking,” she stood looking at my phone for five minutes before walking back to her booth. Only when I saw a photo of them together did I remember her.

Enter Jordan Kale Barrett.

Prior to his arrival I’d endeavored for months to get a new job. Weird things kept preventing me from leaving: the open call would start an hour later forcing me to leave for work, it would get cancelled, one time I even ran into Binn and had to about face the interview I was walking into. Bizarre. Try as I might for months the universe wouldn’t allow it. Until Jordan made the brothers angry by hanging out with me for hours, posting me to at least fifteen instagram and snapchat stories. He wanted to have his Chrome Hearts sunglasses launch there. Covetous, Binn came the next day waiting for Jordan’s return. It was under the guise of loyalty to his brother, but it was really for him, prompting a huge blow up between us. My last shift.

“I’ve had ENOUGH!” I screamed. Screamed it, stomping my feet in vexation.
“I’m going to get this place if it’s the last thing I DO!” I bellowed, fucking bellowed pointing my finger towards hell. At that moment I stopped working, ordered food and drank wine, none of it paid for. Ariel who’d clocked out closed the restaurant, as I’d refused. Within 72 hours Miss Lily’s caught a case. I won my lawsuit to their chagrin. I ran that place, I got at leasts six people fired, including the director of operations. My ruling was revered even by the haters, eight people quit in two weeks because of me. They weren’t making as much money, nor did they feel heard. Had Genc not stalked me three years after my termination I legally wouldn’t be allowed to talk about this. But he did until March of this year.

No one believed me until they did. How far did Genc go?

He tapped my phone, broke into my social media and email accounts. He knew where I was, where I was going, who I was talking to.
Which is how he knew I was moving and got one of his old employees from The Box to give me a room. Mallory converted her studio into a room specifically for me. Posting the ad on Craigslist a ton. The apartment was large, two bathrooms, a washer dryer, dishwasher and super cheap. A nutcase, the aspiring singer let it slip when she told me she worked there. She knew Serge Becker too she bragged. “Oh, so you know Genc.” This was a matter of fact. He was one of the owners there, starting out as a doorman, he’s credited for making the place popping. No, she responded quickly without looking me in the eye. Her voice changed an octave. This broad was a bad liar. Made more obvious by the fact that she briefly dated Jono Mason, his close friend and manager there. Weird I thought. Until I overheard her on the phone giving a rundown of my day, everyday. When she moved to California her bff Ace moved in and took over. Just like Binn. In the images below Genc is the Iphone 6s.

Everywhere I worked afterwards Genc sent people: Vashtie, cousins, aunts, employees, to spy on me. Two years after Miss Lily’s I worked at Follia. Nani, my co-worker, invalidates my experience until he starts doing it to her. Despite my urgings (like physically trying to stop her fingers from touching the buttons), she drunkenly rings their doorbell in the middle of the night.
“You shouldn’t have done that. They have an intercom camera,” I warned.
“Who cares? No ones even home,” she claims brimming with arrogance.
“Yeah they are,” dragging her I point to their window where Agron sits on the landline. The very next day it begins. Nani is leaving Le Bain. She orders an Uber. The driver, an Albanian man, starts talking about Miss Lily’s and suggest they go Saturday night to the Soho location. She started getting random friend requests from Albanians. When she’s wrongfully fired from Follia she starts working at Villanelle, a little known restaurant on a side street in Union Square. He sends people there too including Naomi Campbell. Keep this is mind.

We end up meeting a drug dealer who’d dealt for The Box. He revealed himself to be Genc’s enemy, in that moment I decided to have sex with him just to spite Genc. I was furious at all the lies he told. Jordan Barrett, hated me due to whatever fabrications the Jakupi’s told. Taking control of my narrative I made my social media public. Genc had stopped me from getting writing jobs, jobs in general, dates, he was a psycho. If he couldn’t have me no one could.
Once I had lackluster sex with the dealer he got worse. He started paying people not to hire me or Nani. Accommodating her nursing classes she left short staffed Villanelle; guaranteed gigs, places that begged, suddenly shunned her. I’d get callbacks for trainings and never hear from them again. I had to borrow money from my friends when he started interfering in my transition to creative director of events.

Messaging him on instagram I cursed him, elucidating the karma surely coming his way. As an olive branch he sends Naomi Campbell to Villanelle, for Nani to serve her. The next day Naomi Campbell messages me ‘Happy Birthday.’ I’d added my number to her insta rolodex when she added text me to her bio…except…I don’t remember adding my date of birth. More importantly she’d message me throughout the week intimate things. Suspicious I shared my concerns with Mike Brown, my roommate at the time, a correspondent for Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. How did she know my week was terrible? I just messaged my friends that. Genc.

The pandemic was a godsend. I was finally making money after Genc left me in financial despair. Except he then hired someone in the Department Of Labor to re-open a claim from Miss Lily’s from when I sued them. When two claims are open at once they stop paying you. He then made it look like I was committing fraud, getting them to change my answer to yes I rejected a job. The week of Valentines, every year he tortured me on V-Day embittered by his own cowardice. Suddenly I owed nearly three thousand dollars.
Now I’ve called the DOL at that point multiple times and on one call I was sent to a “higher up.” This person never gives there name, never records the conversation and tells me I’m going to be sent something, but not how it’s to be sent, ambiguous and strange. When I call back they fix the issue. Genc didn’t know this, in an attempt to get my banking information he has the hired person send something via text two days after its resolved. Notice the website and phone number discrepancies. The first picture in each is the authentic one.

Mick Jagger, who I was dating at the time, sends someone to speak to him, and finally after five years he leaves me alone. All the crying, mental and emotional distress from someone using their resources to stalk me, a woman who has never dated him, who never spoke to him, who was not his property, finally came to an end. I almost killed myself is how trapped I felt by Genc Jakupi. What kind of life was this to live when someone controlled it? He was a coward and a psycho who felt his behavior was appropriate, because I’m a black woman. A problematic, toxic white male, who used his resources to dehumanize me, I owed him nothing. Still, his brother who started it all by being a malicious liar get’s the most ire.

Naomi Campbell in cahoots with Genc meddles in my relationship with Mick Jagger, causing a rift between us and his children. Pretending to me know she tells people I’m a prostitute who didn’t grow up on the Upper East Side. I’ve met her once in my entire life at Miss Lily’s on a Sunday. Accompanying her was Lenny Kravitz. On Sunday’s we dined royally; devouring stacks of waffles, pancakes, bacon, jerk sausage and fried chicken. Avoiding grease on my face was of the utmost importance. Lenny Kravitz had turned his entire body towards me to watch me do so, peering through his signature shades. Gorgeous, silent and judging me I put my pinky up as I ate. Stoned, this seemed like the proper thing to do.
All the while Naomi struts back and forth erratically. My heart skips entire beats. Am I dreaming? Anyone who knew me KNEW I LIVED for her. I wanted to scream and chase after her, but fan girl-ing was against the rules. Taking my “nonchalant” attitude as an affront Naomi starts low key shading me. Hurt, I almost risk it all, telling her the protocol, after chasing her and tugging at her clothes of course, in a perfect world that was my ideal. Interacting with her at all was a joy. Until she meddled in my love-life to appease Genc. That one interaction showed me her true colors, I firmly believe from experience Naomi Campbell does horrific things. She continued texting me on and off, until I chewed her out for helping white men do dirt. She never messaged me again. The divide she caused between Mick Jagger’s naive children and myself grew. Who I am was in their face had they bothered to look. Living under the safety net of his legacy made them amenable, they aren’t good at judging character, or reading people, despite knowing them for great lengths of time. Their myopic range of experiences kept their bubble intact. However they weren’t the only ones conditioned to write black women off without the benefit of a doubt, not by a long shot. Hollywood runs rampant with racism and revolting behavior from performative activist, black and white alike. If you think your faves give a fuck about adoring fans, let me assure you. They don’t. Let me ask you something, who the fuck are you to invalidate my life with your abysmal stereotypes? Via: Blackbook Mag