James Dorchester is the VP of a top Fortune 100 company, stands at about 5 feet 6 inches tall and has an “interesting” attractiveness that includes a receding hairline camouflaged by strategically spiking longer back hairs with gel and fingering them towards the front. But what he lacks in stature and follicular fertility, he more than makes up with his Joe Millionaire lifestyle. Having lived in Manhattan for the last twenty years, James acquired the auspicious reputation as the quintessential bachelor. In a new New York where V.I.P. status is a bottle service table commodity, James is more than willing to dole out the bucks. He is part of the post Giuliani noveau riche where owning a townhouse on the Bowery is actually desired real estate- what was once “no go” is now BoHo. James represents everything I dislike about the new New York. He’s a pretentious alpha male, egocentric bore- and he was my best friend.

I grew up in a middle class family in Detroit with one and a half siblings (my eldest brother had a different father), a mother who was a part-time secretary, and a father who worked on an assembly line for one of the Big Three car companies. We lived on the Westside of Detroit in a small red brick split level house that had a back yard that my father kept green three quarters of the year and a front yard that my mother claimed every spring for her Geraniums’ flowerbeds. We were not allowed to play in either of the two yards, so we ended up playing in the streets. This was where the neighborhood kids would meet and develop friendships they would keep throughout their teen years- not the case for us. At the age of 13, my mother decided it would be more “beneficial” for us to move, enroll in an all boys college preparatory school and find new friends.

On the first day at the academy I met James Dorchester. My last name is Dalton, so he sat right behind me in every class. Just like the kids that lived on my old block who became friends mainly because of proximity, James became my best friend mostly due to the alphabet.

James came from an upper class family; but it wasn’t because his parents had great jobs, or came from a well-to-do lineage. They had won the state lottery and smartly decided that part of the winnings should go to James’ education- a hefty chunk of the rest went to a canary yellow Ferrari Testarossa. This was James’ first association with “success”.

Under normal circumstances, James and I would have never been friends. He lived in the suburbs and played lacrosse at the Grosse Point Yacht Club. I spent my inner city time rethinking the meaning of songs from The Smiths and digging through musty bins in second hand stores. But it was these differences that brought us together. I looked up to James because he seemed so together. His loafers were always shined with a perfect copper penny set flush inside each slit. He wore knit ties with candy pinstriped shirts and chino pants rolled tight at the ankles. And he had that Flock Of Seagulls tuft of hair that fell over his left eye giving him just that right amount of unkemptness that kept him popular with the Mercy Academy girls.

I was the “creative” one. I wore black patent leather winkle pickers with silver hammerhead studs. When I wasn’t doing the vintage thing, you could find me at the mall checking out the sale racks at Chess King or Merry Go Round. My Saturday nights were spent at a Downtown club called LederNacht where all the goths hung out.

For the next few years, straight through high school graduation, James and I were active members the mutual admiration club. Everything we did, we did big and together. So it seemed logical that after the cap and gown pomp and circumstance was over, we decided to move to New York City. James had been accepted to NYU and I got into Traphagen- a small fashion design school that was right across the street from James’ dorm.

The first couple of years our club remained velvet rope exclusive. But eventually I got more into the Downtown scene and James found his place well above 14th St. I spent my nights being a club kid persona- making new outfits every night and being seen with other quasi personalities at nightclubs like The World and The Tunnel. James disappeared altogether. He had a real day job and only went out on the weekends. I heard he was a regular at the China Club.

At the turn of the millennium, I left New York and headed for Berlin to be part of the new wave of artists turned denizens that were migrating across the Atlantic. There I joined the revolution that championed every cause from squatters’ rights to G8 abolishment in the name of world peace.

Recently, I moved back to the new New York. The streets are now full of Europeans taking advantage of the weakened dollar, every corner has a bank on it or one in the process of being built, the real free-thinking New Yorkers from a decade ago are now dinosaurs that roam amongst The Jetsons, and I found myself working in a high end menswear boutique selling fashion to Maxim guys.

Last weekend I was doing my shop assistant sales spiel with a customer, “The girls will love you in this tropical wool gabardine suit.” The guy gave me a befuddled look, took another glance in the mirror at his face and hair and decided he’d take it. While I was ringing him up, I hear: “Paisley! Hey Paisley!! Is that you?” It was James.

Decked out in an egg shell colored Alexander McQueen trench coat with white polka dots, a Burberry neoprene laptop case clutched under his armpit, and what appeared to be a shrunken Thom Browne suit, James was back and bigger than ever. “Hey James! You look great!” I said incredulously. “What’s new?” Without a moments hesitation he uploaded me on his new status job, his marriage to an ex-model turned reality TV show producer, and his new pad on the Lower East Side- the same block as The New Museum of Contemporary art which was “really convenient” when he needed stuff to fill his walls. It was at this point I realized that my friend, and the New York I had once been BFFs with, were gone forever.

As James turned to leave, I noticed the stitch thread that holds the back vent of his hipster maxi closed was still intact. I wanted to tell him that he’s suppose to open it before wearing it, but then I thought, ‘this is the new New York.’ I guess that’s how they dress here now.

Paisley Dalton is the editor of zeitgeistworld.com and New York Editor for Wound magazine.