Subtle Differences

Typical Southern Belle

I was born in the northeast and have lived all up and down the eastern seaboard of the US. There are subtle differences between how strangers interact from both areas. A fellow who just moved to SC from NJ and I were sharing examples of the differences. His dealt mainly with work regulations - his background and expertise in OSHA and building codes, etc. versus down here being paid $10 an hour to frame a house. "All my experience is worth squat," he said. Or, at least that was the gist of what he said.

I was leaving work the other day and passed by a volunteer who was signing in and checking in with the Volunteer Coordinator. She smiled at me broadly and asked how I was. I responded with a "Fine! Fine! How are you?" I have no idea who she was. This is typical. Typical of my time in New York City would be ... no one looking you in the eye and utterly ignoring you except for the one guy who sees you're carrying heavy suitcases and offers to help and when you say, "No, thank you! I'm fine!" responds with "Oh, sure, fine! Don't f******g trust anybody! What a f******g city! I f******g give up!" etc.

I'm not sure what it says about me that both strike me as normal.

A happy, contented New Yorker

Mmmm, That's Bass

Here I am in Manhattan, where I lived for 3 years. Okay, can't really prove it. You'll just have to take my word for it. I do my best to tell the truth.

It's a shame I don't have any photos from New York. There is no proof that I lived in Manhattan and no pretty pictures to make this story less wordy. Besides, it starts back in South Carolina with the Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend, or WSEB as he shall hitherto be known. Before I go on with this story, in the interest of fairness I will point out that the WSEB has actually apologised to me, in writing, for the whole shebang. In his defense, he pointed out that he was going through some turmoil at the time. In his defense, I point out that I can be a rather substantially-sized pain in the patootie.

Our main problem had been an inability to break up. I blame him for this. He directed the relationship and if he said we were broken up, then, by Om, we were bloody well broken up. He had, however, made some plans to attend a professional conference and for me to meet him there before breaking up our relationship. It seemed a shame not to have me around. He was planning to do some networking and he was hoping I could help. Probably a large part of our breaking-up problem was that we were so damned civilized about it. "Sure," I said. "Happy to help." Besides, it was in South Carolina and not too terribly far away from where I lived. It wouldn't actually put me out.

I had recently been outlet shopping with my sister and had purchased (on the strength of being a single woman again) a wonderful dress that was strapless and backless and held up solely by the power of molecular attraction. It was mostly white with tiny stripes of color running through it diagonally. The bodice clung and the skirt fanned out alla Donna Reed. I was on an Amalfi binge in those days and had some white heeled sandals with teensy straps. Yeah, okay - not Jimmy Chu or whatever, but I really liked the style Amalfi put out and they were all leather, so they would be good for dancing. (My feet now shudder at the memory of dancing in such things.) I brought this outfit along.

I actually attended at least one session at this conference, which was not in my field, and argued with the WSEB later about it. My main job, though, came up at the wine and cheese (Free booze? I'm there!) reception. My former beau explained that he would be chatting up future interviewers and my job was to line up the next one for him. He gave me a list of people he wanted cornered and the order he wanted them in. We all wore those adhesive, "Hello, My Name Is" labels. This is just the sort of thing I am utterly unable to do for myself. However, doing it for someone else is something radically different and seemed like fun. They were all men, so I would hold his drink for him and point my strapless bodice at the next victim. You'd think that what with all of them being professional psychologists that they would not fall for this. You'd think they'd say to themselves, "Look at that brazen and not-that-attractive hussy thinking she can point her highbeams at me and lure me to her!" No, men seem to be men. They were front and center in less than two minutes and I would charm their professional socks off of them until the WSEB was done with the previous employment candidate. To this day I wonder if they got together later and compared notes. "Did you see how that one guy brought a babe with him to line up interviews? How much you think he paid her? Ya think she was a pro?"

It wasn't a long evening, just one of those six-to-eighters where people drift off when the wine runs out. The WSEB didn't have many people he wanted to chat up and soon I was left holding his plastic cup and plastic hors d'oeurves plate with nothing to do. I noticed that there was another young person who was at loose ends and I leaned forward to check his nametag. It said "David Wechsler Revised." Ahhh, an alias! I recognized the Wechsler Revised as one of the intelligence tests the WSEB had studied. He had studied them by testing his friends, me being one of them at the time. (His conclusion was that I was an "underachiever.") I turned the same machinegun turrets on David Wechsler Revised I used on the others and beamed. "I know enough to know that can't be your name," I said cheekily.

He invited me to some radio station wingding that was going on in another part of the hotel. I had to admit that I was "sort of" with someone, but that it wasn't anything serious. I picked up the WSEB's reaction on my radar. He was disturbed. But David Wechsler Revised and I had a nice chat, exchanged numbers, and it was a long time before we met up again, but we did get together.

The next day, the WSEB apologised for his reaction. He admitted that he had said that our relationship was over and I certainly was free to find someone else and that perhaps he was having trouble letting go. And he had been drunk. And so was I. He had managed to score some interviews and it looked like he would be able to move to an area even closer to where I was living. Shortly after he moved within 100 miles of me, I moved to New York. That relationship was just not getting the chance to die the death.

Now, I told you that whole story, as Bill Cosby says, to tell you this one.

It was in New York that I ran into David Wechsler Revised. He was from Manhattan and had gotten a job as a liaison between a corporation and a group that supplied the less mentally abled into the workforce. His job was to keep tabs on, among other people, the mailroom guy who came to the office where I was holding a temporary job and hung around me, nominally creeping me out.

David Wechsler Revised and I met for drinks one night. Thrifty person that I am (or is that "cheap date"?), it was my intention to order a beer and nurse it for a while. I asked the waitress what they had on tap and stopped her litany at the Bass Ale. "Oooo, I'll have a Bass!" I said, thinking it would be smooth and filling. David Wechsler Revised, who had been bingeing with friends the night before, ordered an Amaretto and soda, hoping it would not reopen any wounds. This meant nothing to me. I had a good friend (also male) who regularly ordered Amaretto Sours because he wasn't much of a drinker and they were tasty. At least, he claims they were. Amaretto is something I use in baking, not drinking. But what other people opt to imbibe is up to them. The waitress, however, said, "Oh, Role Reversal tonight?" I thought that was pretty funny, but David Wechsler Revised took it in the gonads. "Geez!" he said. "Geez!" This went on for quite a while. Another trained psychologist allowing himself to be manipulated by chance comments (or wanton mammaries)! He never got over this and claimed that she was not getting a tip from him. (I actually sympathize. I've been the target of a humorous waitress myself. It was a Girls' Night Out and as the orders went around the table they were all for a "White wine." When it came to me I ordered a pitcher of beer, figuring I'd order once and not have to keep calling her back for another leg like the others were bound to do. Besides, it's more economical in a pitcher. Said the waitress, "You wanna straw with that?" Nope, she wasn't getting a tip from me.)

I was reminded of this story tonight when we met friends for dinner at Orde's of London. Our cat sitter had made a date with a customer at her place of business a couple of weeks ago and had met at this restaurant for a drink where she would then try to talk him out of a first date dinner at Captain D's. To my mind, the suggestion of Captain D's for any meal was a permanent deal breaker, but my friend ... has no man-sense apparently. She ordered herself a Chardonnay and waited. When her date arrived, he asked for a beer and then became incensed at the price Orde's was charging: $4.00. He couldn't let it go and eventually he had to leave to go drink somewhere cheaper. Abandoning her is a deal breaker for my friend, but she likes having a good story to tell. Last week we were at Disney World staying in the Sheraton Mouse Prison (don't get me staaated), The Dolphin, where a beer or glass of wine was $8 and a soda was $5 at the conference reception. I had to text her to tell her to tell her "friend" that the beer was $8 out here.

I'm really no better than her date. I went on and on about the price of a drink and the price of everything else there, totally ruining my own vacation. The killer was the $10 per exit charge for self-parking that, in the end, didn't even turn up on our bill. But each time we left the park my mind went "ka-ching!" and I added the cost to our dinner bill or the run to the drug store or my bead store trips. My only excuse is that I am not a professional psychologist. It should be easy to manipulate me and make me unhappy. Well, not really "easy." And not "should." In fact, I think I'll go work on that. My own shrink says I need to have a good, long talk with that person in the mirror.

Well, if I have time ...

I Was a Female Impersonator

Sorry, no photos. I don't even know if any were taken. Halloween was coming up, and, after the release of "Victor/Victoria" I had the idea of dressing as a female impersonator. I was living with Fred-the-make-up-artist at the time and he asked me what I wanted to do. If I was going to be seen with him, it had better be good. I told him. His expression was blank for a few seconds and then the idea grew on him. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
My job was to find a dress. I was hoping to find something cheap and slutty on E. 86th Street where, Fred claimed, prostitutes hung out. They were utterly invisible to me. What I really needed was a Salvation Army store, but I didn't know of anything like that in the upper east 80s. Apparently, "cheap" was not an E. 86th Street description. I found instead a grey silk dress that had long sleeves (the better to hide arm hair), a scarf, and a sash that one could throw together in interesting ways, if one isn't me. I have no ability there, but I figgered Fred did.
Fred acquired a red wig that would do Danny LaRue proud. He explained what he would be doing to make me look more like a guy trying to look like a woman. "I'll cover your eyebrows and draw in new ones above them," he told me - which explains the perpetually surprised look of some FIs.
For my part, I took my bra and stuffed it, clumsily. I wanted it to look stuffed, so I balled some tissues and put them on top of my breasts and maybe a few to the side.
Fred was initially excited about his own costume idea, which reminded me of those spinning paint things you do at carnivals, but he really got into doing me up: gold over the brows, exaggerated lips, etc. It wasn't his first FI job, but this was a new twist.
Our first stop was a party on the Upper West with some of Fred's friends. One of them was a young guy who had a part-time job as a clown, so he had a ready-made costume for all occasions. I don't recall his name (sorry! waited too long to write my memoirs, didn't I?), so I'll just call him Bubo the Clown. On the Upper West, I was crossing my legs ankle to knee, in keeping with someone less-familiar with transvestitism. Bubo started lecturing me on the proper way for ladies to cross their legs. I listened studiously, agog. Really? How fascinating. Fred eventually stepped in to set him ... straight. "Marf," he explained, "as in Martha. This is my roommate." Bubo actually gasped. "Oh, nooooooo!" he wailed. He was horrified that he'd made some sort of gaff, but I was quite chuffed to have actually fooled someone.
It was then decided we should test the costume on a tougher audience. We were going to go to the Christopher Street Parade, the Gay Halloween Mecca. I already was regretting my heels, spiky and pointy-toed.
At the parade, I had Fred and Bubo as heralds, proclaiming the arrival of this Beautiful Woman. I got whistles and leers. It put me in mind of Pres's experience on Christopher Street when he was walking with me. He'd become frustrated because he wasn't being "cruised." Then he remembered that I was with him. Duh! He had expected that he would still be looked at, eye-contact would be made, but a woman at his side disconnected him from a familiar world. Now I had the reverse on them. The laugh was on them, the men who mistook me for another man ... dressed as a woman. At one point, someone grabbed my ass and then shrieked, "Omigawd! It's a real woman!" The three of us burst out laughing. I waved airily at my admirers. I didn't have many in my drab, everyday existence. It was fun to steal some attention from gay men, to be cruised, whistled at, fondled, and to horrify. After all, it was Halloween.
Halloween is Everyday in Second Life. Anyone can be disguised. People can be fooled. This is something that I avoid doing, probably because it is outside of Halloween or April Fool's Day when license is granted. I don't consider the multitude of avatars I keep "on hangers" in my inventory to be fooling anyone. They still carry the label "Lludmila." I may act slightly differently with each of them on (wearing a male av I resist some of my squealing noises: Ewwww! OoooOOoooo!), but it's still me back there behind the mask behaving in what I hope is a reasonably normal fashion. It's much easier to pad the bra ... or even squish it down with the sliders. I can be fatter, thinner, prettier, younger, older than I am in RL. It might be my lack of imagination, but I can't bring myself to stray too far from my real self.
A strikingly beautiful older woman was in the library today and because we were short-handed, I was at the front desk doing her library card. She had written her birthdate down and I realised ... she was five years younger than I was. Aw, sh111111t! I was thinking 60s! SH1111111T!!!! She's not even 50!!!! How old must I look? Whatever age it is, it's nowhere as good as she looks!I used to have an imagination. What the hell happened to it? Right now I just seem to imagine myself too old. arrrrgh!

Thanks for Reminding Me

Now ...
and then ...

I don't have any photos from this period, more's the pity (probably get some good blackmail out of it). Okay, there's this one, which I scanned recently and comes from the tail end of my stay in New York. My Glamorous cousin Marylynn and I went to Tavern on the Green. This was just prior to her trip to Russia and she is wearing her red Red Square dress, which is entirely and utterly backless. Hope she has a nice wrap in case it was chilly!
This weekend I was reminded of a number of things having to do with theatre (which link directly to NYC, but also elsewhere) and thought I'd better write some of them down before I forgot them - not impossible considering I can barely remember what I did yesterday.
I had gone to NY to audition for shows and do the Theatre Thing. One did this by reading the trade papers, finding audition ads, calling for an appointment/sending in the 8x10 and resume (if not a cattle call) and hustling over to the locations. One was the marvelous Ansonia Hotel, the home-away-from-home for many in the biz. Others were in catch-as-catch-can locations (Let's see how many dashes I can use! They're free!). One in particular was in the auditorium of the New York Times newspaper building.
The ad had been for redheads, which I was at the time, although this photo might not show it very well. Red fades, you know. A company was going to put on a production of "The Taming of the Shrew," a show I love, having seen the BBC version with John Cleese who shocked everyone by doing it abso-tootin-lutely straight (except for one tiny bit where he clucked like a chicken) and a Spanish golden age drama by Calderón de la Barca, "Life Is a Dream." Coincidentally, I had been a Spanish major and had memorized Segismundo's famous soliloquy ... in Spanish. And I swear this was entirely a coincidence.
The audition was at an awkward time for me. I was working as a temp and the audition was right after work, not giving me time to change. I was wearing a grey/lavendar wool suit, a polyester blouse (probably - although I did have one silk one that was white), and some Italian heels that cost what at that time (for me anyway) was an unheard of $84 plus NY tax. Should have bought them in Boston. No tax on clothing in "Taxachusetts." Go figure.
So, that is how I showed up: red hair, tight wool suit, hose, big fake pearls that would make Barbara Bush envious, and expensive leather shoes. We were to meet in the lobby and, you know, it was obvious who was there for the audition. It was redhead central. I thought this was really funny, but then I think everything is really funny.
All us alleged redheads were herded into the auditorium and the woman in charge (let's call her Hilda for want of her real name) sighed and announced that "some" of us apparently had (message) services that had not given us the part of the message that said to "dress for movement." I had actually talked to a live person and knew for certain that no one had mentioned that. I checked later and there had been no follow-up call to add it. Bitch. She meant me.
She then described some of the other shows this group had put on. The latest one, and the one that stuck in my mind, was "The Merchant of Venice." They had created a concept on this poor play wherein the performers were concentration camp inmates who were being forced to put on TMoV. Extra actors entered in German uniforms and holding machine guns, marching the prisoners in, glaring at both actors and audience. OMG.
Does anybody remember that movie, "The Goodbye Girl"? There's a Shakespeare group whose director wants Richard Dreyfuss to play Richard III as a screaming queen? I'm sitting in the auditorium thinking, "This is the group! This is the group Neil Simon was talking about!" They also wanted to do "The Taming of the Shrew" as a sort of Buzby Berkeley thing. Well, I could almost see that. Almost. I wasn't sure what they were going to do with the Calderón piece, but by this time I was pretty sure that I did not want to be part of it.
I love auditions. I enjoy rehearsals. Performances are a pain. Auditions are The Thing. In an audition, you can spend a couple of minutes doing a part you have not the slightest business playing. And if you don't really want the part, if you've just found a long-term temp job that is loaded with perks and gives you a huge office with a view of the ... the ... Empire State Building, then an audition gives you the chance you've always wanted to be a complete and total asshole. I felt my adrenalin surge. This was my moment, my destiny called me! And though it may be just once in a lifetime ... I'm gonna slam-dunk this audition!
But first, I had to go through the hazing process called "The Warm-Up."
"Okay, everyone," said Hilda. "Let's all get up on the stage here and sit in a circle!" On the floor, I might add. So be it! I was younger and more bendy, although my skirt resisted. We were going to play the Memory Game. The guy directly on my left started. He said his name. The next person to the right (that's-a me!) said his name and then her own name. That's easy! Skinny Dude, Marf. The next person added her name to the list. I could see where this was going. Even in my early 30s my memory was mush, especially with names. They were going to come around again and I'd have to do everyone. I studied. Feverishly I worked on learning the names as they went around the circle. I tried to make my face look neutral, but I could feel the sweat running down my spine. Some of the women were faltering, and they were barely halfway around. Sure enough, they made me do the whole list ... they also went a few more people past me to lead me to believe I wasn't being singled out.
One test down, we lay down and made a sound symphony with just tones to warm up our voices. Then, one by one we went up on stage to do our humorous and dramatic monologues. In order to finish my monologues (you are often cut off early), I had developed some eight-line ones, poetry or lyrics, that I could do quickly but that still ran a gamut of feelings. I don't remember what my dramatic one was, but when I led off with it, the group laughed. I say it was dramatic, which doesn't mean it wasn't wry, but when I finished, I announced that as they had laughed at my dramatic monologue, I would have to substitute another. Oh, sure! Actually, I had planned this.
"Since you are planning to do Calderón's "Life Is a Dream," I'll do Segismundo's soliloquy. Unfortunately," I added in my patent off-hand manner, "I only know it in Spanish." With that, I threw myself against the back wall and proceeded to eat scenery like nobody's bidness.
"¡Es verdad!" I shouted. "Pues reprimamos esta fiera condición, esta furia, esta ambición - por si una vez soñamos y si haremos pues estamos en un mundo tan singular, que el vivir solo es soñar ..." I went on like this through the entire soliloquy until I ended it, flat on my face: wool suit, fake pearls, Italian shoes and all. Dead silence. I haven't been that proud since. Well, except for the day that someone called me an "asshole" for reminding him of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" all afternoon. Ahhhhh, that felt soooo gooood!
Oh, and for a treat afterwards, I got to do an improvisation with Skinny Dude and Short Dude. Skinny Dude is the bastard who called me and did not tell me about the clothes for moving. He was gonna pay. Each auditioner was given pretty much the same improv. Short Dude would try to make us laugh. I don't laugh when I don't want to. Full Stop. Now, for those of you who don't "do" theatre, I might have to point out that the whole point behind improvisation is not "to win." It is to create something together (if you are working with someone), to show thinking on your feet and cooperation. But, the situation being what it was, my whole purpose in life that day was to win, to flatten these people like 'possums on I-75.
The next improv? I was to try to kiss Skinny Dude, who would be oblivious to my intentions regardless of what was going on. Short Dude was to try and stop me. Ohhhh, they picked the wrong dude. And the memory of the looks on their faces still has the ability to make me giggle. A shiver of pleasure runs through me as I see the look on Short Dude's face change after I've made a couple of feints, harrumphed in disgust, and then picked him up bodily and set him behind me. I just put my hands in his armpits and lifted him. Carrying people my own size on stage was my specialty. This guy was a flea. And again a surge of delight as I remember the look on Skinny Dude's face. Talk about a deer in the headlights. I grabbed the front of his sweater and he tried to make a break for it. I hung on and, as he reached the end of his yarn, he toppled and I swung him to the floor, straddled his inert frame, and kissed the bastard. Actually, he was quite cute - despite the two inches of roots where the natural hair color was belying the black he'd had for TMoV.
"Is that it?" I asked, glancing up at the audience and Hilda.
"I don't think so!" said Skinny Dude, who pulled me down and kissed me back.
Sometimes life just doesn't get better than that.
Oh, I'd like to say they called me and begged me to do one or both of the shows and that I'd airily turned them down, but I think we know better. Not a sausage.
Instead, let me include a totally imaginary, fictionalized, untrue fantasy of the company's conversation later that evening.
Skinny Dude: I liked her.
Short Dude: Jesus Christ.
Hilda: No, she's immature. She can't follow direction.
Skinny Dude: She's got a prodigious ... memory!
Short Dude: JEsus!
Hilda: No, forget it. She's not what we're looking for.
Skinny Dude: Are you kidding? She's got Katharine written all over her!
Short Dude: I need a drink.
Hilda: I'm telling you, forget it. I'm not working with her!
Skinny Dude: Let me just call her ...
Hilda: I said, No!
Short Dude: You are such a masochist!
Skinny Dude: I'm calling her. She seems like she'd be fun.
Hilda: If it's a date you want...
Short Dude: He doesn't want to date her, trust me.
Skinny Dude: I'm calling.
(Exit, not pursued by bear.)
Hilda: I don't believe it. She's a scenery chewer!
Short Dude: My armpits still hurt.
Hilda: I can't believe anyone thinks they can land a part that way.
(Skinny Dude re-enters.)
Hilda: Well?
Skinny Dude: I got her roommate and he laughed at me. Then he put her on, and she laughed at me and said she wouldn't be caught dead in one of our productions.
Hilda (in meltdown): That bitch!
Skinny Dude: But we're meeting for drinks at Uncle Charlie's Friday.
Ba-boom!
End of Fantasy.

How Does Nora Ephron Get Published?

I picked up this cd of Nora Ephron's book - something with a title about not being happy about her neck. Anyway, I'm listening to this and my first thought is how ever did she get this published? I am 53 (or will be soon), I've got surgery in the neck area coming up, and I can in no way relate to this problem with the neck. What's with the turtlenecks and scarves? Then she goes into her life in New York City. I should be able to relate to that. But she talks about an apt. she paid a $24,000 (yes, that's right) key fee for. She was paying more a month in the 1980s than I earn a month now. Perhaps this is amusing to other people who had eight room apartments in New York.
The next thing I wonder is why on godsgreenearth they allowed this woman to read her own material? Her speaking voice is driving me crazy - and that's saying something after I endured a computer-generated voice reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, a book larded over with t' broad Yorkshire dialect and all. The eerie feeling you were being read a children's book by Stephen Hawking aside, I was sucked right into the story and mostly forgot it was a machine.
This is Ephron's real speaking voice? I just get the impression that she has tried to slow it down, which only makes the s's hissier and her final t's like tiny hammers on metal. I'm sure when she talks normally she picks up the pace ... and in fact, has some pace. This audio book reminds me of a truism I used to have about poets, that they should never be allowed to read their own material. I have since revised this opinion, as there are some poets who read beautifully. There are some authors who make great speakers and do a boffo job of reading their material, even when you think they wouldn't (Kaye Gibbons comes to mind).
Fran Lebowitz is just plain funny. I read Metropolitan Life when I first moved to New York and laughed my arse off. Dodging dog poo is indeed an Olympic Event. I don't know if I'd let her read it to me, though. I'd audition her first. Then I might recommend a nice out-of-work actor to read her stuff and she can just lick her wounds all the way to the bank.
I'm not saying I could read Ephron's material any better. I bet she's drop dead hilarious in person. But talking and telling stories is not reading written material. Ask anyone who's ever corresponded by audio tape.
Maybe I just can't relate to her lifestyle. Sorry, Nora, I'm just not getting it.

Snore?

Mij and Marf "Wedding" Photo

I don't know where this memory came from, but it popped up recently. While living in New York with Fred, we would occasionally take in people who were trying to break into the city. We were a sort of launching pad, if a very small one. We lived in a studio apartment and Fred and I were very much in each other's pockets. So, taking in a third party was a stretch. We tried to confine it to people we knew and liked from back South.
This brings in someone I will, to protect his anonymity, call Mij. Our Dear Friend Mij Mubnergard came to stay with us. Now, Fred and I (and I can admit this now that my mother is dead) shared a sofabed. Mij had to sleep on the floor, when he arrived, on the sofabed cushions. We wanted to give him time to get on his feet, leave the nest, fly on his own - yadda-yaddah. As it happened, he would be getting a little extra time because I was scheduled to go to Cambridge to see Temple at Harvard Law School. I would be gone a week or more. Undoubtedly, I would be sharing Temple's bed as well (sorry, Mom). Before returning, though, I gave Fred a call to see how things were going.
"How's Mij?" I asked.
"Still here," he moaned.
"Oh," and a thought occurred to me. "Should I find another place to stay?"
"No, no," Fred insisted, "come home!"
When I arrived I found that Mij had made himself at home, moving to the sofabed. Fred had done his best to make things uncomfortable for him. He insisted that Mij stand out in the hallway to smoke. At night, though, we were all in the same bed, Mij then Fred, then me. It was ... cramped.
Most of the time we weren't all in the apartment together. Mij and I would be alone waiting for Fred to finish a show for the night. Don't get me wrong, we loved Mij. We enjoyed each other's company, it was just too small a space for three people.
One day Fred made a strangled noise from the kitchen area. He was standing at the clothes closet (in the kitchen) and holding a white shirt at arm's length.
"Look at this!" he squawked and I dutifully moved the six feet required to get from the couch to the kitchen.
It was one of Fred's shirts. The collar of the shirt was almost black with dirt. "He must have worn this for a week! And then hung it back up instead of putting it in the laundry pile!" Fred was very particular about his clothes and his appearance. Mij had not asked to borrow a shirt. He'd worn it until dirt was ground into it.
"He has to go," said Fred.
"Don't do it when I'm here!" I pleaded. I hate confrontations.
Later that week Fred called me at work. "What are you doing this evening?" I didn't have any plans and I said so. "That's fine if you want to go out with your friends," he said, pointedly.
I sucked in my breath. "This is it, isn't it? You're going to tell him to go."
"I thought Mij and I would go out for dinner," he said.
"He's there, isn't he?"
"That's fine. Some other time then." He was going to let Mij have it, firmly, and then he was going to go off to work, leaving me to deal with the shrapnel. I stayed away as long as I could.
When I got home, Mij was standing in the hallway, smoking. He asked me about my day. And I returned the favor, as if I didn't know what had gone on.
"Fred told me I had to go," he said, putting out his cigarette and following me inside. "But, you know, it's just as well. I just can't stand the snoring anymore."
"Snoring?" I began, worrying that I might have been disturbing his sleep.
"Fred's snoring. It's just too much. I can't take it."
"Snoring?" I reiterated, "but Fred d-" and I caught myself. I had never heard Fred snore, and he was usually asleep first. He was intentionally turning to face Mij each night and snoring very loudly. Such genius!
After that, Fred and I agreed on some rules for houseguests, who, like fish, take up way too much room after three days. We had three basic rules for the House:
1. We Share Everything (towels, tableware, food, bevvies, space).
2. Anyone who spends the night has to meet the approval of both residents because
3. See rule number 1.
A couple of years later, I was the one who got the Dinner. Fred was crashing and burning and didn't want me there when it happened. We went out for dinner and after we ordered he said that he had to tell me something. He told me I had to move out and once he'd told me, he felt better and tucked in when the food arrived. My salad turned to ashes in my mouth. Oh, well. What goes around, comes around.
I moved in with two other people and decided it was time to leave New York. One of my new roommates, let's call him Nad, was a backstabbing little trick who lied about the cost of the rent so he could charge us girls more and get a free ride. When I was packing to leave, he switched sweaters on me (we had bought identical sweaters) because he had torn the armpits out of his. Nad was the nightmare roommate I had not experienced until then. He did have his good points, though, I must admit. He had good taste in boyfriends and we enjoyed some Metropolitan Opera perks thanks to him. This just goes to show that it's not always who you know that counts, but with whom who-you-know is sleeping.

Richard Hertz, MD

Once upon a time, there were two people who lived together in a very, very, very small apartment. They both liked movies, but one of them liked movies more than the other. One of them would sit through any movie at all no matter how bad it was. The other would walk out of a movie if it failed in any way to live up to expectations. Oddly enough, the one who really loved movies was the walker, and his name was Fred. The other one, who only sort of liked movies but was willing to sit through nearly any swill rather than embarrass herself by walking out was called, let's say, me. Anyway, I knew of Fred's proclivities and he was aware of my inertia and the spooky brew of our tendencies was about to come to a boil.
Richard Gere had been in another movie that was playing not too far from where we were living on the Upper East. I had never actually seen a Richard Gere movie (although I'd seen clips from "American Gigolo" and hadn't really liked what I'd seen) and it was a rip-off of a French film (and I had to look it up on imdb.com to recall the name, otherwise I'd be making a total arse of myself with possible titles such as: Blowing, This Blows, Barking, etc.) and renamed "Breathless."
Not long into this spleen-jerker, I started wondering how Fred felt about the film and if he was about to walk out. I had never walked out of a film, but I was now ready for a new experience. I didn't say anything and we sat through the whole, long, ghastly turd. Afterwards I mentioned to Fred that I would have walked out of that one if he wanted to and he said that he was staying put because he knew I didn't like to walk out. Then we both started laughing and went in search of a watering hole in which to sluice away the bad taste in our mouths.
We had passed a watering hole called Uncle Charlie's North. This was patently a gay bar, as its brother in the Village was. But we also patronized a gay bar up in our neighborhood called Brandy's, and didn't think anything of it.
The clincher on this deal was that Uncle Charlie was having a happy hour for the next 40 minutes or so, making it a wise financial choice. The counter bar was crowded, so we ambled off to a quiet corner to sip our beers and trash the waste of celluloid we'd just suffered through. The first round went fairly quickly, having also demolished a container of over-salted, over-priced popcorn at said "flick." After the second round, though, Fred claimed he was tired of braving the group at the bar and being ogled (which I never knew he ever had a problem with), and he told me to make the next trip.
Because we'd been sitting by ourselves and absorbed in our mutual grievances, I hadn't really looked around the bar, but standing in a short line at the counter for the last happy hour call, I realized that I was next to the only other woman in the place and all the monitors were showing male strippers (a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned). This may have shown on my face, for a denizen of the barstools leaned back and said, "Don't worry, Honey, we don't bite!" To which I retorted rather quickly, "Oooooo, I wish you would!"
This seemed to entertain my new friend, which he intended to be. He invited me to bring my escort to the bar (where, happy hour closing out, there was now room). Fred reluctantly joined us.
Perhaps I should describe Fred a bit, explain what he was doing in New York and our relationship. When we met in South Carolina, Fred was a hairdresser and we dated. Fred has a lot of gay friends. Fred moved to New York to work on Broadway, and he did; as a hair and make-up man he worked on "Cats" (very tiny perm rods), "Amadeus," and "Doonesbury: the Musical," to name a few. In New York, however, our relationship was different. Wisely, we were just roommates. Fred, however, should have been having no problem in this bar. It took several drinks to loosen him up.
Our new friend and benefactor (he was now buying) was absolutely delighted with the two of us. He pardoned himself at one point to go to the men's room. I had to check with Fred who was going from "I'm not all that happy here" to "Well, okay, if you're having a good time" when the bartender, using the same microphone he'd used to announce the last happy hour call, called out, "Phone call for Doctor Hertz! Paging Doctor Dick Hertz!" and our benefactor, just coming around the corner bleated, "That's meeee!"
To this day I only know this man as Dr. Dick Hertz. If he mentioned his name, I did not retain it.
Dr. Hertz convinced us to go to another bar in the Village and we all (as he had some other friends) piled into a taxi. The next thing I remember, I was on a dance floor dancing with someone I did not know. There were all men around me, mostly bald, bearded, pierced, black leather-clad. Notably, one of them was wearing some sort of studded black leather halter and black leather shorts, and probably a black leather, studded dog collar. This was a new experience for me, and I was grateful for it. However, it was a "school night." Our intention had been to see a movie and perhaps consume a beverage or two.
After the song, I located the bar and found Fred sitting there looking shell-shocked. "Where are we?" I yelled over the music. "We're in the Village," he told me, "at a bar called The Monster." "How did we get here?" "I don't know," he admitted, "but I remember something about a taxi ride and someone named Dr. Dick Hertz."
Right on cue, the good doctor came up to us shouting, "That's meee!" We thanked him and made our way out. Nothing looked familiar. We spent the next couple of hours wandering around the Village, trying to find a subway and our way home. At that hour, the subways were coming right seldom and we had to take three to get back home. After the subways we had to negotiate the eight blocks from Lexington and 86th Street (where Fred claimed to see prostitutes all the time and I never knew what he was talking about) back to our apartment.
I look back and shudder at the escapades I had in New York and am amazed that nothing ever happened to me. I am thankful, though, that I don't have stories to tell about bondage clubs or being mugged or other more lurid fare. I'll leave those tales to others. A couple of decades down the line when I'm appalling my great-niece and -nephews with stories, the contrast between my grey head and wrinkles and the mild excitement of these stories will be enough to make them goggle. Well, at least they will goggle the first few hundred times.

The Eyes of Yoko Are Upon Us

I had not been in New York very long. I had already been ejected from two living spaces (or ejected from one and on the way out from another) in less than two weeks. It was lunacy to have come up here. Perhaps I was under the impression that being born in Poughkeepsie made me a native of some kind; something other than an Upstate Hick. Our family had lived all up and down the eastern U.S. and the last place we had settled was South Carolina. I had left a small town where I knew everyone’s face (names will always escape me), and taken the train to Manhattan.

A friend was waiting for me there, and I spent some time in her hotel for Middle Class Women. Hmmm. They had a funny idea of what constituted “middle class.” I was appalled by the conditions and the rent. Renee told me I could only stay so long and then I would have to find another place. I had no idea how to go about it. Renee even had to tell me how to use public transportation.

“Take these quarters and put them in your glove,” she said. It was February and quite cold. The New Yorker in me rejoiced at the “briskness” of the air. The South Carolinian was freezing. “Put them in the change slot and ask the driver for a transfer.” Renee was talking to me as if I were a kindergartner. “He will tear off a transfer and hand it to you. Keep that with you to give to the driver of the next bus.” Looking back at this now, I am amazed by how naïve I was. Naïve enough to not know how to use a bus. Naïve enough to think I could just take the train to New York City and find a place to stay and work. Naïve enough to try to go to auditions. You would have thought I was eighteen. In fact, I was twenty-eight. I was a late bloomer.

I moved into the YWCA on Lexington Avenue, which I was later convinced to be run by Nazis. I only had so much money on me and the manager wanted me to cough it all up to hold the room for another two weeks. The room was tiny and infested with roaches. They weren’t the giant, glossy palmetto bugs of coastal South Carolina, but tiny German cockroaches that ignored you because they knew they would be around long after humankind died out. They crawled all over the tiny sink in the room.

I have a problem making decisions. Once the decision is made, I can follow it through, but I will walk up and down the street until I am utterly exhausted before I will be able to choose a place to eat. I was there with limited money. I had $8,000 in the bank, had budgeted $2,000 to set myself up in New York in 1982, but was only carrying a few hundred. There was no use telling the manager of the Y that if I gave her the money she wanted, I would have nothing to eat on for the remaining two weeks. That was my lookout. I told her anyway. There were plenty of women clamoring to pay $20 a day to stay in that miserable cockroach spa, she told me. Pay up ahead or leave.

I opted to leave … at the end of the week. Then I went searching for something to eat. Up and down Lexington Avenue I went, marveling at the Citicorp building, looking like a modern mucilage bottle. I looked in the face of everyone in the street because knowing each and every one of them was a stranger was liberating. I had moved from a place where all faces were familiar. It never kept me from doing stupid things, but it was stultifying. All new faces were so refreshing! They were inspiration! Well, they were at first. Then I got hungry. Up and down I walked, looking for something affordable and reasonably nutritious. This let out all cozily standardized fast food outlets. I could get a Whopper for ninety-nine cents, but I’d also get heartburn.

If I tell you that in the end I bought a container of unsalted freshly-ground peanut butter at a health food store and some Stoned Wheat Thins, you would not appreciate the chasm of indecision I inhabited for some hours. Up and down, across and around, “No, not there, or there, or there, but what about, no – no – no.” Back and through, pacing, pacing, then plodding, and then staggering. Up, down, back, plod, stagger, stagger. It reminded me of all the dates I spent with men waiting for me to make up my mind about where we should have dinner. One of them drove around a traffic circle waiting for me to decide. “I’m going to drive around this traffic circle until you decide,” he said. Then he got mad at me when that ploy didn’t help me come to a conclusion. It did not and still really does not matter to me where I eat. If he’s paying for it, he should eat where he would find something he’d enjoy. Round and round and round … and in the end the place I chose gave me food poisoning. Back and forth, counting my cash in my head. What makes the most sense? Down and up, and you get the point, but I’m still not making up my mind. I wondered if I would starve to death first.

And in the end, I should have gotten the salted.

New York City had only started on me. I walked back to the Y one evening, and had begun another unpleasant conversation with the Kommandant when another woman threw herself through the door breathlessly. “I’ve been mugged!” she cried. “When? Where?” we asked her. “Just now, just down the street!” She had been following me when a man stepped out from the shadows and demanded her purse. I had not heard anything. I had not been mugged. I decided not to report this to my parents. I did, however, call my friend Temple in Cambridge, Massachusetts and tell him.

Temple had been very encouraging. He had accidentally ended up at Harvard Law School when a film director apprenticeship had gone sour on him. He had taken some test to get into this program. He had wanted to practice for it, but his parents refused to pay for that. They would, however, pay for him to take the LSATs. He considered that the LSATs would be good practice for the film director test. He returned to Kentucky complaining that people in Hollywood never answered their phones. “They just sit in the Jacuzzi and drink martinis,” he said bitterly. His parents, he said, would pay for him to go to law school. “I think Harvard,” he said. “All the great theatre people have moved from Yale to Harvard. I can keep up with theatre there.” “What makes you think you’ll get into Harvard Law School?” I scoffed. “Oh, when I took the LSATs, I checked the boxes for Harvard and Yale and some others to have the scores sent to,” he said blithely. I still didn’t believe he would go to Harvard. “Ask me what my percentile ranking was on the LSATs,” he continued in the same blasé voice. “What was your percentile ranking?” I sneered. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. Yes, I was sitting down, silly ass. “Ninety-eight point six,” he enunciated. I blanched. “Sounds normal to me,” I sniffed finally.

Okay, it may have been another number, but it was in the high nineties. I’m not very good with numbers. Case in point: Just before I left for New York, I received a letter from Temple. There was a check in it. It was yellow, I remember that much. I was touched almost to tears. I read the letter through the moisture in my eyes. He knew that New York would be expensive and he’d enclosed a little something to help. I glanced at the check, verklempt. I looked at it again. Now, Temple and I have a dispute going on this. He claims it was only for four hundred million dollars. I say it was for six hundred million. Whichever it was, it made me laugh. I showed it to my mother. She shook her head … and then she laughed.

As New York worked its alienation magic on me, I grew closer to despair. I was eating a meal every day that I could barely swallow. I needed milk badly. I needed a real place to stay and a job. I needed a plan.

Instead, I wandered around the area aimlessly. I wandered into Bloomingdale’s. All around me people, mostly women, bustled around. It was worse than the sidewalks outside. Inside Bloomingdale’s you had to dodge the perfume testers as well. I had no idea where I was going. I was stuck in the cosmetic section and I had no interest in cosmetics. Overly made-up women and supercilious men waylaid customers as they tried to pass, hawking expensive and pointless (in my eyes) wares. I had no words for my feelings. Empty? Alone? Ummmmm, nope, no words, no thesaurus. Suddenly I noticed that there was no longer anyone in the aisle where I was. I looked around a bit. There was not a soul in any part of the cosmetic area. What had happened?

Slowly I turned around. Coming up behind me was an enormous man, thick and centered like a wrestler. I almost did not notice the tiny woman slightly ahead of him and to the right. I stared. Her form finally took shape and separated her from the bulk of her companion. I looked straight into the sunglass-clad eyes of John Lennon’s widow of only a little more than a year. Behind Yoko’s shades, I saw the feelings for which I had no words reflected in the dark of her eyes. I turned and fled.

That night (well, maybe it was; that would make this story much tidier), I had arranged with Temple to move into his dormitory room at Harvard. I took the train the next morning.

And thereby hangs another tale.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 2

I made myself a nest and prepared to continue reading for three hours. Fortunately, I had more than one book. The magazine stand seemed to carry commuter comestibles, such as coffee and donuts. It was actually nice and quiet. There was none of the bustle and noise of Penn Station. Okay, it was creepy, but I became absorbed in my reading and time, in consideration of the surroundings, crept by.

When he first came in, I had noticed him. You can’t help but notice when one person is added to a building with only two others in it. This likewise made him aware of me. He was dressed in a grey sweatshirt and pants, with a stocking cap of navy blue to keep off the Boston February chill. He bought a coffee and donut from the magazine stand and chatted with the proprietor. Casting about for a place to sit and enjoy his snack, he picked my bench. I observed his approach from the corner of my eye, trying to look totally involved in my paperback. I wished vainly that he would find somewhere else, but he stopped very close and asked, oh so predictably, “Is this seat taken?”

My memory is not good enough to reproduce the entire conversation. There was a time when I could claim to quote it verbatim, but I am long past that, fortunately for you, my gentle reader. The gist of it was that he was in the Navy and out for his run. He had not behaved well when he was younger, hadn’t paid attention in school, but now he was pulling himself together and planning to go to college on the G.I. Bill. He was handsome and earnest. And he owed it all to Jesus.

I had thought to have escaped that when I left South Carolina. I politely expressed my admiration for his resolve. He thought perhaps that his example might provide inspiration for me. Well, now, that’s curious. I realize that I bumbled my graduate work, and am not the best of students. I was and still am lazy intellectually. Okay, and physically. School was only a lark for me and here was someone who wanted to better himself and was putting himself through the rigors of the military in order to get the wherewithal to go to college. My background, while middle-class, was privileged, probably, compared to his. I was embarrassed. It was with a certain amount of reluctance that I admitted to having been to college and two years of graduate school. I was between jobs at the moment and just traveling to visit friends. I became conscious of the money in the sock on my arm and in my bank account. In our family, talking about money was worse than talking about sex. It was an intensely private thing. Discussing your money was boasting. Out here in the metropolis, it might be dangerous. That’s why I had my money in a sock up my arm.

Somehow I had to convince this young man that I was fine, without letting him know I was sitting on a pile of cash (although there was just a few hundred up my arm, I could call my broker at any time and have him wire me more) and was just waiting to be picked up by a friend without giving away how long I was going to have to wait. Just because he (literally) had Navy written all over him didn’t mean he couldn’t lurk somewhere and bop me on the bean to get whatever it was he wanted. Anyone could get a buzz cut and buy a sweatsuit with “Navy” on it. If he really was in the Navy, maybe he had been on ship for months and wanted ... wanted – aaaaagh! It didn’t bear thinking about!

I was not convincing. Apparently. He couldn’t believe that a.) someone with a college degree would be out of work and surrounded by bags sitting in a railway station; b.) that if I had any money I would be just sitting there; and c.) that an intelligent person would come up with such lame assurances as “I’m okay, I have some crackers and peanut butter with me.” He did eventually get up and leave. I watched him throw away his cup and papers (maybe even the Boston Strangler was tidy – whoa! The Boston Strangler?!) and walk out. I relaxed too soon. He came purposefully back, pulled a dollar out of his pocket and tried to give it to me. He told me I could buy a donut with it. He was so kind and I was such a coward. The realization hit that he actually thought I was homeless. I made a mental note to wash my hair first thing. I refused the dollar as politely as I could. I was not homeless. Were I to give up on New York, I could return to a house on Hilton Head Island, find another job there, or just sponge off my parents.

He finally gave in and left. I was rescued a bit earlier than expected by Temple and Tommy. I told them my story, still a bit shaken, but trying to make it funny. I stayed a bit with Temple at the law school. By the time I was ready to go back to New York, I had a place to stay. In very little time I was working and going to auditions. I didn't have a job all the time, I shared an illegal sublet with Fred who was also in and out of work. In the back of my mind, though, there was the knowledge that I would be able to successfully panhandle. Well, people might give me money, but apparently I had trouble accepting it.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 1

I had been through Pennsylvania Station before when I first arrived in New York. It was bustling and full of places to sit. I had purchased a ticket to Boston to stay with my friend, Temple, when New York finally proved too unwieldy for the likes of me. Although I was leaving, I still planned to go back. A plan, that’s what I needed. My current plan was to stay with Temple at his graduate student dormitory at Harvard University. They had a spare room on his floor for the occasional visitor. I could stay there for a couple of days, but then another visitor was coming and I would have to move out … and into his room.

I had slept in Temple’s room many times before, notably when he won me for a week in the famous “Win A Marf” contest. He had submitted several pages of activities (most of which involved massages) and reasons why he would want me to visit, three letters of recommendation, and an 8x10 inch glossy. At that time he had been fired from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, probably just by being himself. He talked his way back into his apprenticeship long enough to tell off Jon Jory and quit. One of the reasons I should visit had been that as he had been fired, he had lots of spare time on his hands with which to entertain me. Being the sympathetic sort that I am, I had a glass mug engraved with the motto: “I’ve Been Sacked by ATL.” So, I was slightly disappointed to learn that he had been rehired and then quit. Would this lessen the impact of my gift? And “I Quit ATL” would have saved me some money, if I’d known.

All this is just to show that Temple and I were as close as two non-sexually intimate people could be. I had always been torn about Temple. I would easily slip from adoring him to fearing him, a trait I can now put down to immaturity – mine, too. It’s hard to describe the ease with which Temple lept into emotions. I move very slowly from one feeling to another. Temple could be cracking jokes one minute and in someone’s face and threatening them in another. He never threatened me, but his reactions to another driver cutting him off in a parking lot (jumping out of the car and yelling and waving his fists), scared the bejesus out of me. He’d leap back into the car afterwards, start to back up, and then look over at my horrorstruck face and say, “What?” as if he’d all ready forgotten the whole incident.

Temple was a refuge for me at this time. I’d been spooked out by the empty void in the glasses of Yoko Ono and ran to his side. Okay, I called him and he invited me to stay. He had classes all day, though, and wouldn’t be able to pick me up until after 7 pm. In his first year at Harvard Law School, he did not have a car, so he had to rely on his friend, Tommy McKinley, to drive him to the station. Had I been confident in my public transportation, I could have taken the T on my own. Today I would do that. Back then I would wait mouselike in some hole waiting to be picked up.

I had to be out of my room at the YWCA on Lexington Avenue by a certain time, and although there were plenty of trains going to Boston all day, I thought I would wait at Penn Station until the departure of the one that would drop me off in Boston closest to my pick-up time. There was plenty going on in the station: places to eat, to buy magazines and books, people watching to do. I had bought a book and planted myself on a chair in the waiting area with my luggage around me. My money, rather less than the $500 I’d started out with, real life being an expensive arrangement, was in a kneesock that I kept up my sleeve on my forearm. I had priced money-belts and other security devices before venturing to New York (especially on a train where one slept in a chair – I’d read Emil und die Detective!), but had shown myself to be the apple that didn’t fall far from the tight-wad tree. Instead, I took a favorite tan kneesock that had developed holes, and converted it into an armband that could hold money or my lightweight, nylon wallet. I thought myself very clever. It is a family tradition to believe that anyone could pay for something, but the Smart Person does it himself. Our house was full of things my dad had built or repaired in the most Byzantine method imaginable, such as a ceiling storage area in the garage he [operant word:] tried to chin himself on for the benefit of some prospective home buyers as well as rendering the untrained outsider unable to turn on our television or start his car. This has led me to pointless and time-consuming activities such as making my own coconut milk, graham crackers, puff pastry, etc.

I felt secure in my decision and the plan at hand: read until lunchtime, eat, and read some more until my chosen train departure. Temple and I would have dinner (at his expense, of course, because that’s what he was like: generous to a fault with his parents’ money) after I arrived. I had some of the salt-free, barely-edible, formerly fresh-ground peanut butter and crackers if I got hungry in the meantime. It was all under control.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take New York into account. While Amtrak was not currently killing passengers and gangs of thugs were not roving train stations, I still managed to attract the disruptive element. I was in my chair, reading happily, when a figure stopped in front of me. I looked up to see a seemingly nice little old man standing before me. “Your train!” he said. They hadn’t called my train. My train wasn’t for three hours yet. They had just called a Boston train, but not mine. I tried to deflect him. “No, it’s not –,” I started. “You take this train,” he commanded. He wasn’t official, just an thin, old man, dressed nicely with suit, tie, and a hat. Thinking he might know something I didn’t (although I had no idea how he would know I was on my way to Boston), I got up and took the train. I took one last look to see if he’d wanted my seat, but it was still empty and there were plenty more around.

I can wait just as easily at the Boston station as here, I thought. Boston’s another big city, their station is probably comparable. Ahem. That was before the renovation of South Station. When I arrived that day at South Station, I found a derelict station with one magazine stand and some dingy and vacated retail spaces. The seating was just wooden benches that had no one else on them. Not even bums bothered with South Station. I found a payphone and called Tommy to leave the message that I had arrived early. Tommy, whom I had not met, offered to come and get me, but I decided to take my chances with an “empty” building so that Tommy would not feel obliged to entertain me. It should be an indication of my continued naivety that I preferred a decrepit public space to the comforts of an actual apartment with a Harvard student in it.

Preston et le Tour de Manhattan

My late friend Pres visited me in New York when I was on the Upper East Side. He wanted to go on a walking tour of the island, so we set off toward Midtown one morning. Now, Pres had already come from where he was staying on the Upper West Side, so he had already traversed Central Park. Having no proper job (and I probably didn’t either at the time), he had very little money so we lunched on day-old bagels. We visited Leonard Bernstein’s office (where I saw my first Gold Record, as well as my second and a host of others), and walked and talked all the way down to the Village. We walked along Christopher Street and stopped in at a shop called “The Leatherman.” I’m not a leather person myself and I didn’t recall ever seeing Pres in anything not preppy. Pres seemed to be getting quieter. Finally he relaxed a bit. “I just figured out what’s wrong,” he told me. “I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t being cruised. It’s because I’m with you.” Ah, the other men weren’t checking him out and that had been worrying him. We weren’t holding hands or anything. My presence was enough to render him off-limits. I suppose that also explains why he went into the leather shop, to make himself a bit more visible. Then again, a man interested in black leather is not automatically gay.
We continued down to the Battery where Pres considered taking the Staten Island Ferry to look at Miss Liberty, because he was too cheap to actually ride on the one to Liberty Island.
Instead, we started home. We were probably heading straight up First Avenue to go to my apartment, because we made desultory plans to take a bus if it just happened to come by when we were near a stop. That never happened. We walked all the way back. The sun was starting to go down. This may not seem as much of an adventure to you, but look at a map of Manhattan and figure out how far we went. We were gone from ten in the morning until dusk with nothing to eat but lightly stale bagels.
Pres dropped me off at my apartment and then said he would walk back through Central Park to the West Side. “But it’s getting dark!” And I insisted he take a bus. I knew I was worn out. That was probably the beginning of my varicose veins. And Central Park is dangerous in the dark. He insisted he’d be fine. And it took another decade and AIDS to finally get Pres.
Pres had been a good friend. I had met him the summer he debated telling his parents he was gay. (He told me later his dad responded to the news with, "You know, I sort of suspected something, but I didn't want to say anything.") His parents had a place on Hilton Head and Pres had come up from Florida to stay with them a while. We met at an island disco, since that was all the rage at the time. He asked me if I thought he should tell his parents and I'm always for telling the truth. I had met his parents at that point (and worried that they were giving me the eye) and thought they were nice enough folk and could handle it.
He called me one day to tell me the cat was now officially out of the bag. Then he invited me over to their place for cocktails and dinner. It was my turn to feel awkward. I felt as if I had been party to some sort of deceit in being a cover for Pres's homosexuality. No, no, no, he told me, they liked me and would want to see me again. So I went.
Pres introduced me to many of my firsts: first time on a tandem bicycle, first time the handlebars of a bicycle, first time on some sort of cycle holding a glass with bourbon on the rocks and worrying that we would fall, the glass would break, and a large shard would go straight into my heart, first time in a Rolls Royce, first time in a car that may or may not have been Taken Without Consent (Pres was a doorman at the time at a posh downtown Boston hotel).
He told me that he was HIV positive the day he came to visit me after my accident. He said that if he developed AIDS he wanted to go back to Florida where it was warm. As it turned out, his mother cared for him and his partner until they died ... in Maine.

The Man Who Came to Dinner

I met many people at Harvard Law School during my Boston hiatus. One of them was a tall, lean, and muscular Austrian (accent on the lean) named Heinrich Willke. After graduating from Harvard, Heinrich was unwilling to go into the workaday world, so he started another advanced law degree at NYU. This put him in the part of town with the best falafel shop in the world. For 75 cents (in 1980s money) you got a great sandwich. Heinrich looked me up in New York and introduced me to The Best Falafel Sandwich. At that time a ride on the subway was 75 cents and then went up to 90. (Later I was worried that the Falafel sandwich price would go up with it, but it didn’t. )To repay Heinrich for treating me to The Best Falafel Sandwich (quite a stretch for him being a student and always short of cash), I invited him to dinner on a particular date about a week in the future.
Living in New York is exhausting. I used to say that one could not manage more than three errands in one day. Bit by bit I was accumulating all the things needed for dinner with Heinrich. I dragged home to the studio apartment one evening after work the chicken, which was going to be the centerpiece of the dinner. Sodas would be too heavy to carry along with the other groceries and I was leaving them for the last night. It was just too much to walk mixers back from 86th Street and Lexington with the groceries.
Fred was home for a change. He was having one of his simple dinners of popcorn and Coke. I had made the pie for dessert and was still running elaborate plans for the chicken through my head as I relaxed.
The buzzer went off.
Now, those of you who don’t live in New York City probably don’t realize that people do not just drop in on each other. Fred and I looked at each other. Then I got up and pressed the intercom. “Who is it?” I asked, tremulously. “Iph eye ncck.” Fred looked up at me. “Who is it?” “It sounds like … like Heinrich!” I whimpered. The intercoms are notorious for garbling just about anyone’s words, but I’d caught enough of it. “I thought he was coming tomorrow.” “Yeeeessss!” Fred didn’t bother to get up, but he held his next mouthful of popcorn poised in his hand.
This is one of those slo-mo-moments where time drags out, like that Einstein guy said. I hope it didn’t seem like the eternity it was to me to Heinrich. I buzzed him in.
“What are you going to do?” Fred asked.
“Have dinner,” I said.
Fred put his popcorn up and rushed around trying to find things that would go together (all we had for beverages was Fred’s open bottle of Coke, vodka, and a bottle of Château Neuf du Pape, which probably didn’t go with chicken, but would have to do) while I just fired up the oven and threw the chicken in a pan.
Heinrich came in and we served him lukewarm lashings of vodka and Coke, red wine, and plain baked chicken topped off with some sort of fruit pie probably.
To this day, as far as I know, Heinrich has no idea that he was not, in fact, a fashionable hour late, but 23 hours early. He may think that I am a terrible cook and an indifferent or disorganized hostess and he is free to think that rather than think he committed any sort of social gaff.

Tourist Haven

My cousin Marylynn Ginsburg in her Red Square dress (for her trip to Russia) which has no back took me to dinner at Tavern on the Green along with the Drummonds, her friends from Rancho Palos Verdes. Marylynn is the glamorous one in the family. I was apparently poor and in need of a good meal. That dress is just hanging off of me. Today Marylynn calls herself "sexy, single, and seventy." Not bad for a former farm girl!

Celebrity Impression

I have picked out some sunglasses in the Village. I bought two pairs that day from a street vendor.

Washington Square

The Drummonds (friends of my cousin Marylynn) doing the "model walk" with me in Washington Square, 21 April 1985. I am back to being the (dirty) blonde shikseh after having red hair for a couple of years.

Eponymous

For three years I lived in Manhattan. I am originally from New York state (an upstate hick), but my family had been steadily moving southward until we wound up in the southeasternmost corner of South Carolina. After a number of years of being a big fish in a little pond, I decided to go somewhere where nobody knew my name. I moved to New York City.
New York is a city full of stories, they just need someone with some flair to write them. I don't have that, I only have the stories. This is my favorite.
I was living in the worst apartment building on 82nd street on the Upper East Side, a mere block or two from actual luxury at either end. It was a studio apartment with a former boyfriend as the leaseholder. That's another story.
I was out late on a Saturday morning to pick up some things from the grocery store. I had one of those ubiquitous two-wheeled carts and, for a change, I had gone to the smaller grocery east of us instead of the Grand Union with the enormous pear out front on 86th. Living on a shoestring, I was always looking for a bargain somewhere. To get there, I had to pass a large apartment building with a lobby and doormen. I was on my way back, with a full cart when I was stopped by an attractive but snappish young man who was looking for a deli. "Not what they have in there," he indicated jerking his head at the grocery, "a real deli where I can get a sandwich." I knew just such a place. There was a great deli on Second Avenue. I directed him westward and gave him the particulars of the place. He was so grateful, but still snappish, that he asked if I would like to go.
It was still early for lunch, I had to take the groceries back to the apartment, and this was a stranger who accosted me on the street, so of course I said I'd go. We strolled back up 82nd Street to my drab apartment building and he started telling me about how he came to be looking for a deli (so unsuccessfully) at that hour.
"I'm here for my cousin's son's bar mitzvah," he told me. It was his job to give the opening blessing. Andrew (let's call him that because I promise I can never remember names) had taken the early train in from Boston. He was interning at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. That was nice. I had a friend at Harvard Law School. I went up there occasionally to see him. When he got to his cousin's apartment building, he couldn't get upstairs. The intercom system was down and the Nazi doormen were unable to reach his cousin. So there he was, hungry and nowhere to go.
We reached my building and he offered to carry the cart upstairs. I said he could help, but that it wasn't that heavy, but he insisted on carrying. On the way up the stairs he told me it was the first time he'd picked anything up since he'd had the casts removed from his arms. Hmm, I thought, he's starting the Guilt Thing early. "Casts?" I asked. Yeah, he did gymnastics and was working out on the rings when he snapped both his forearms. I looked him over. I'd seen male gymnasts before and none of them were that tall.
I unlocked the door, hoping my roommate, Fred, would be up. He had just gotten up (he worked on Broadway, keeping late hours), but the sofabed was still out and he hadn't dressed. Fred had an impressive physique from the waist up, but no ass. His chest was covered in mounds of hair of three different colors. He had a carefully trimmed beard. He was wearing tiny silken trunks and no makeup. I told him we had company. I explained to Andrew that as Fred and I had once dated, he felt it his duty to vet all my male companions. His excuse was that People Knew that we lived together and if they saw me out with someone else, they'd wonder why I wasn't with him. So, my male companions had to pass inspection. Fred looked him up and down as I put away the groceries and explained that we had met on the street and were going to the Second Avenue Deli for a sandwich. Fred then said Andrew looked "okay."
As we left the apartment building, Andrew decided that he would try his cousin one more time. We walked east to the fancy-shmancy building and when we got inside, the doorman explained that they had been able to reach his cousin by contacting someone else on that floor and he was to go right up. Andrew then explained he was going to leave me in the lobby. My recollection of the lobby was that it was pretty large and modern with lots of white marble. Andrew was leaving me there because if his cousin knew I was there, I'd be invited upstairs. If I went upstairs they would invite me to the bar mitzvah. If I went to the bar mitzvah, for the rest of his life Andrew would hear about the Time He Brought the Blonde Shikseh to his Cousin's Bar Mitzvah.
That was fine with me. The bar mitzvah was that afternoon and I had other plans. It was a shame, because I'd never been to a bar mitzvah and it would probably make a good story. Whatever I was doing was something I couldn't get out of because I remember being disappointed. Andrew left me in the lobby and I pulled off my mittens and undid my coat and scarf to wait. He was gone a very long time. When he finally reappeared, he explained that he was almost unable to get away at all. The only way he escaped was he had to admit that he had someone waiting downstairs for him. Now, of course, they had to meet me. There was no way out. He went all Dennis Leary on me, bent over, gesticulating, and running his hands through his hair.
We got on the elevator while he coached me.
"I'm really sorry, but if they invite you to the bar mitzvah, tell them you have something else to do this afternoon."
"I do have something else to do," I said.
"They're going to insist," he added, all stressed out.
"It's fine. I have some other commitment."
"And if they ask you, your last name is Schwartz!" he groaned.
Tch, such misery! Why all the tsimmis?
In the apartment, I was surrounded by the whole family. The women had their hair coiffed and protected by toilet paper swaths (as my mother used to do), but, like the men, they were in jeans and shirts. I was introduced all around as "Marf," something Andrew considered to be neutral. Their hungry eyes were on me and it occurred to me that, being in his late 20s, Andrew was being pressured to bring home possible marriage material.
They wanted us to stay and eat there, but Andrew squashed that one.
They invited me to the bar mitzvah and I told them truthfully that I would love to go, but I had a prior engagement.
Andrew extricated us as quickly as was politely possible and we walked silently to the elevator. Inside the elevator he sighed and relaxed and I, unable to contain myself any longer, burst out laughing.
"What's so damn funny?" he asked.
"Schwartz," I said.
"It was all I could think of. It's a good thing they didn't ask."
"You don't even know my last name!" I said.
"Well, what is it?"
"Shopmyer."
"Oh hell, " he said, somewhere half-past relief, "that would have passed."