My Penance for Warm Winters

This is just a little present I found attached to my dad's mailbox. I certainly will "keep this flyer for future reference." Now I know exactly whom to not contact if I need pressure washing or cosmetics. I wonder if Avon allows the inclusion of religious tracts in their reps' advertising.
This whole thing has sooo much wrong with it I don't even know where to start. Okay, here's a good place. This tract is equating AIDS with sin. Sure, it says we are all sinners because we are all born that way, but who really reads these things carefully?

And is advertising for your business really the best way to proselytize? It's one thing to put the "Smile God Loves You" on your flyer, but including a tract?

I suppose the "Smile God Loves You" is meant to brighten your day. The believers can look at it and be reminded (if they feel that way) to be happy in their lives because even though their marriage is breaking up, their kids are in trouble, they've lost their job, and their mother has some painful, terminal illness, at least God loves them. Even if no one else does. Even if He sends them these trials while the neighbors don't go to church and seem to be enjoying prosperity and laughing a lot.

The unbelievers can feel a stab in the eyeball and have a nervous tic the rest of the day ... or perhaps they scan the document, redact any personal info, and post it on a blog thinking they are making it look ridiculous. That would only work, I suppose, if anyone actually read the blog.

It seems long ago and far away that things religious did not annoy me. I laughed at alleged "Buddhists" in Massachusetts who hailed me on the street and tried to tell me that if I chanted "Ohmanipadmahummm" over and over that I would get what I desired. The thought of using religion to get material goods was repugnant to me, but one nut on the street did not make me want to not say "Happy Dhamma Day!" and spin a wheel for Buddhist friends (okay, friend singular). I put up a Christmas tree, wished people "Happy Christmas!" (Where appropriate), and got all teary over the story of the Passion. It's a good story.

Then I moved back to the south and things changed. My elderly mother was harassed by other old ladies who told her she would burn in hell. Everywhere I go, gatherings are begun with Christian prayers. For years I bowed politely out of respect, but now it's starting to get on my nerves. I've started asking for the "Eid" stamps at the post office to put on my greeting cards. I put Hanukkah stamps on the "Season's Greetings" cards I send to Jewish friends and still get "Why are you sending me a Christmas card when you know perfectly well I'm Jewish?" messages back. I'm beginning to understand that. (Not totally, Alex - since there was no reference to Christmas, Christ, or even Santa on that card!) I feel like a minority here and each reminder of it raises my hackles.

I think everyone should live for a while as a minority. We should send southerners to California, maybe, and make them listen to that New Age piffle for a year or so and then debrief them. "So, Mrs. Knotwattle, how did that make you feel? Are you any more inclined to use crystals and prayer wheels in your life?"
Extreme beliefs beget opposite extreme beliefs.

And I haven't even gotten started on that tract. It never ceases to amaze me how Christians can side-step what Jesus actually said and go back to the Old Testament and pull verses out of context. Love the Lord with all your heart ... and give away all your riches, that's the baseline. Don't go mining another religion's ancient texts for juicy bits and making up arcane rigmarole to keep the sheep in line or scare up more converts.

This tract is intentionally inflammatory. Comparing sin to AIDS is not clever. It obliquely demonizes homosexuals (the group most often associated with AIDS). It endorses intolerance and breeds hatred. A stupid person reads this and thinks, It's okay to hate queers (black people, muslims, insert long-suffering minority of your choice), sin is in their blood. And don't try to tell me that people are not that stupid. No one (not even yours truly) reads something to change their minds. They pick out only the parts they want to see and use them to bolster their (my) own cherished opinions.

Sin is everything that is wrong ... with someone else. Even though this tract directs you to look inside yourself, people so rarely do this. Vast herds of Stupid People are convinced that AIDS is God's punishment visited on sinners. This is, by the way, the same God who loves you so much that you should be smiling! Never mind those hemophiliacs that became HIV positive through transfusions before they were able to screen the blood and the donors for that. They, no doubt, were just being "tested." There's no need to look to God for punishment when we so effectively bring it upon ourselves. We start wars. By "we" I mean people, not just the United States, although we seem to start more than our fair share. We pollute our environment and poison our own bodies. There is plenty that is not our fault as well, but as it rains, my father says, "on the yust and the un-yust yust the same," let's not blame God for any of it. Bad things happen to all kinds of people for no particular reason as well as happen through their own doing. It's not our job to assign blame, we need to deal with the aftermath.

I'd like to see tracts that say "Love thy neighbor" or "Whatsoever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do to me." Go do some good things for someone else, regardless of who they are. Visit them if they are ill. Feed them if they are hungry. Find jobs for them if they are willing to work. Show others a good way to live instead of shaking your fingers at them. In sooth, though, 'twill never happen. Religion seems to be about us versus them. We're right and you're wrong, so you: are going to hell/don't deserve help/need a whole new government.
How did we get it so wrong?

"I realize there are people out there who don't love their fellow man," Tom Lehrer said, "and I hate people like that."

Pitty Poo

Marlene pointed out today that a mutual friend from the Bad Old Days (some of which I am no longer allowed to mention in her presence) has published a book. She discovered this in the process of googling her name, as one does. Her name turned up in the acknowledgments section (I don't dare call it "page" because of the length). "He mentioned just about everybody from back then!" she claimed. Sure enough, he mentioned his old girlfriend and his roommate that snaked his old girlfriend, and more people that I recall from those days. Marlene is astonished that she was mentioned. She was more mildly surprised to find that I wasn't. Nope, I checked that long list pretty thoroughly and I wasn't there.
Not that I need to be.
I only lived in that house for a half a year.
I was only there when all the poo hit the propeller.
And I've been acknowledged before. See for yourself in John Jakes' best seller North and South. And again in Steve Naifeh and Greg White's Pulitzer Prize winning biography Jackson Pollock: an American Saga.
So, I don't need the mention. I mean, I actually did some work on those books. Steve jokingly referred to me as the foremost expert on Lee Krasner at the time of her death because of all the transcription work I had done.
That isn't what hurts.
It takes me back to a very painful time, a time of rejection, manipulation, and hostility and brings it all back to me. So today I have held my own little pitty party. I boo-hoo'd a bit. Then I got angry all over again at old stuff.
I am so thankful to have found Bob. Bob is a wonderful man. He tried to cheer me up by claiming that the way our state is, anyone who didn't like Obama wouldn't like Hillary either and it wouldn't hurt Obama if people voted for other people down the list, like John Edwards. Nice try!
If not, maybe we'll both mope around this evening over a bowl of ice cream.

A Rant I Thought of After Passing a New Bank

Last year a yobbo (a lout or a yokel - I just looked it up) wrote a letter to the editor of what passes for a newspaper in this town of a sole equine quadruped complaining that some of the new buildings (the bank I glanced at on my way home from a pleasurable Indian meal, for instance) being put up in the selfsame town had taken on the appearance of mosques. The letter-writer was complaining about this, as if it were a terrible thing.
Now, this complaint of his has two things wrong with it. First of all, he is an idiot. Okay, it has three things wrong with it. I'd have to get out a thesaurus to do justice to his idiocy, stupidity, ignorance, and headuphisassedness, not to mention out-and-out bigotry. And I mention "bigotry" as if it were a bad thing. Hmm, maybe that makes four.
A mosque is a building used for public worship by Muslims. Muslims worship the same God as the Jews and Christians - they call this divine being Allah, which means "The God." We are not at war with Muslims. Muslims are not bad people. Anyone who thinks only Muslims are terrorists have either very short memories or very, very narrow vision (or else they are stupid, ignorant idiots with their heads up their nethers). Does Northern Ireland ring a bell? Remember all the trouble those "heathens" got up to? How about the insane people who bomb women's clinics and threaten the employees? The guy who shot up the mosque? What were they? Let me think - they start with "C" and "J." Hmmmmmm.

Here are two examples of mosques (although I realize they can come in all shapes):



Now, by way of comparison, here are the local buildings in question:


Ahhh, I see. They all have domes! And here in the good old U. S. of A. We don't use domes in our architecture! Thomas Jefferson would never use one of those heathen domes for anything! Our Great Nation's Capitol would not sully their grounds with buildings with any domes on them!
Whatta moron! Okay, so he's Architecturally Ignorant. And he's a bigot.

So, let's recap:
This man is (choose four) an idiot, a very stupid person, an ignoramus, a fatuous ass, a lout, an inbred hayseed, a witless yokel, a moronic bumpkin, a ... ummm, I'm running out of steam here ... Get your own thesaurus.
This stupidity has led to incorrect deductions which make him bigoted, narrow-minded, intolerant, and prejudiced.
These buildings no more resemble mosques than they resemble Monticello or the many Catholic (which, contrary to stupid people down here, is a form of Christianity) cathedrals in Europe.
Even if they did resemble mosques, if, for instance, they had minarets and nice courtyards in the front, there would still be nothing wrong with that, except that one of them is a bank and that would be blasphemous. If that were so, Muslims everywhere should take offense, not the other way around!
And I don't want to hear another thing about it! (/me walks away muttering "Idiots! Morons!")

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.

The Story I Will Never Write

It being excruciatingly close to my birthday, I got to thinking recently.
There is a story in my life that I will never write. I have had all sorts of bizarre experiences, but the most bizarre will never issue from this keyboard, any other keyboard, or any of the myriad forms of writing that exist. And the story that I will not be able to tell is of the one where I give birth.
I can tell the one story about the time where I might have been pregnant. I have a blind terror of pregnancy, because it is something I have never experienced and so I fear it. It is a life changing experience and I don't take change well. The scariest part is that once I have passed through that experience event horizon, I think, Oh, that was nothing! I can do that a thousand more times! And the last thing I or anyone else on earth needs is a thousand of my babies. But that's what happens. Once I have an experience under my belt, I turn into a ditto machine and I do it over and over.
To prevent this, I have never been pregnant. I have never carried a child to term. And I have never given birth. You can say all you want about what a wonderful experience this is, I can read all about it, I can watch Jennifer Anniston on "Friends" fake it to much canned laughter, but it has not happened nor will it ever happen to me.
Therefore, there will be no amusing, traumatic, poignant (a word that a Tidewater English teacher I had pronounced "pwahg-nent"*), hilarious, or otherwise interesting story about me breaking water, having contractions, having false contractions, panicking my husband, exciting my mother, alarming the neighbors, getting stopped by state troopers, having flat tires, giving birth in the back seat of a taxi, demanding painkillers in an Exorcist voice, screaming invectives at my bewildered husband when he tries to coach me in the LaMaze breathing while inflicting cold irony on my obstetrician, sharing wisecracks with the nursing staff, loping like an orangutan to a bathroom dragging my IV on a wheeled stand, finding my emotional balance when confronted by a terminal cancer patient, threatening friends who arrive with videocameras, suddenly going back into labor to give birth to an unexpected twin-triplet-quadruplet-etc., being forgiven for the stream of invectives by a frazzled but proud father, blogging the whole thing on MySpace, and passing out from happy exhaustion after a job well done or crying inconsolably over sixteen hours of pain in vain. I will have no funny stories about the nursing bra, incompetent baby-changing (I hope - I could still get stuck with that for someone else's kid, I suppose), and a thatch of outrageously colored hair that is quickly superceded by four years of bald baby girl with a pink bow taped to her head (as was done for me).
No, the only stories I will be able to relate (or even relate to) are about me. I was born, but I don't remember it. I wasn't born blogging, nor were my parents. My sister is no longer around to describe the series of failed pregnancies that preceded me nor to pointedly not tell about how she wandered off when she was supposed to be in a neighbor's care and stepped into a yellow jackets' nest and wound up in the hospital at the same time as our mother.
And then there's that one time (referenced above) that I thought I might be pregnant because I had skipped a period and was nauseus each evening. Yes, I know it's supposed to be morning sickness, but I have a tendency to get things backwards and at the time I was going through a phase where I ate dinner things for breakfast and finished off the day with a bowl of cereal. It seemed logical that I might have evening sickness in that case instead. I don't recall if I'd been having sex at a time prior that would have put me in the early stages of pregnancy - probably not. My friend Cindy was also skipping, but she felt she at least had an excuse. We considered moving to Charleston and she could have the baby there and we would each tell people it was the other person's baby, thereby covering the embarrasment. In the end, our periods returned naturally and the need to leave town (it was the 1970s and there was still a stigma to unwed motherhood. In fact, according to my state supplied health insurance, pregnancy was not covered if I was not married) evaporated. Yes, years later when I was married I had a skipped period, but by then it could just as easily have been menopause as a pregnancy.
So, I've never been pregnant. And the only reason I'd ever want to be is because there's this smug superiority to deal with from the women who have been through it, the same smug superiority that I wield when I have had an experience someone else has not. It's as if I am not a real woman if I haven't been through this. No one ever actually says this out loud, but their actions and their looks at the rest of us hiss it in a nasty, nasty whisper. What is it, some sort of exclusive club? Faugh! In fact, they are probably just jealous that we can still stay out late, need no babysitters, buy toys for ourselves, never deal with teenagers, not have to pay for some ingrate's college, don't have some out-of-work adult child move back in just when we thought we were free and clear, and never, never, never have to set a good example.
So that is the story that will never be told. You will never have to read my amusing tales of motherhood. I will never show you photos of children or grandchildren or bore you with details of their unexceptional lives.
Remember, you never read it here.

*Okay, this could be "poin-yant," or "pwahn-yant" or the fully frenchified "pwahn-yong," but it just can't be "pwahGG-nent" and I was aware of this even as early as high school.

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.

The Sedaris's Are Not Dysfunctional

I was in LibraryThing this morning reading posts on librarians who librarything and blog when I followed some links to a review of a book by one of my favorite authors. The reviewer referred to the Sedaris family as dysfunctional and that while the reviewer laughed at the stories, they also made the reviewer sad. I started to submit a comment, but it wasn't working and the site didn't accept it. Fortunately for you, hahaha!, I saved the comment and I add it here:

You know, I get a completely different reaction to Sedaris's family, but then I have read just about all his books (there might be one I missed). His family was deeply involved in each other and his parents apparently supported him in all his crazy incarnations (until it became obvious that he was gay and his father threw him out, but apparently his father has gotten past that). If anything, they were too much in each other's lives.
Despite all the cigarettes and alcohol (which look normal by 1960s standards) of the parents and the apparent drug use of the children, they are functioning pretty well. The Sedaris kids were "encouraged" to do volunteer work in the summers and to take music lessons (which they were allowed to discontinue when they showed a lack of interest or aptitude). Despite their upper middle class status, they did not consider "menial" jobs beneath them. They rally around each other when things go wrong.
My reaction is often one of delighted relief, mostly that his family, while entertaining, was not mine. Yet at the same time, I am envious of their spirit and lack of reserve. My family is northern euro and despite the eerie parallels (IBM, drinking-which goes with the IBM, moving south, an overly-thrift-conscious dad, live-in granny of foreign birth, my move to Manhattan to pursue acting of all things), they come off as, well, boring. This leads me to the tentative conclusion that Sedaris may be, how you say, exaggerating the seemingly dysfunctional bits just a wee bit. And I seem to note that they come off as being very, very ... happy.

That was all I had intended to put in there, as it was just a comment on the review, which shouldn't be longer than the review itself, right? And I left out the bit about how much I just plain love David Sedaris. I stood in line for over an hour (it might have been two, I'll have to ask my husband) for his autograph on his cd, "Live at Carnegie Hall," but that is nothing compared to the amount of time he sat there autographing. Yes, he's making money (ca-ching! ca-ching!), but he stayed until the absolutely last person got their autograph. He spoke with people as if he really liked them (perhaps he's just hunting for new material). He presented new material at his reading, rather than capitalizing on his old stuff. And then there are those eerie parallels.

I was an IBM child. Even after my dad left IBM, we were still tied up in the IBM satellite system of friends and vendors. My parents were drinkers. They had been smokers, but gave it up fairly early. All of my dad's friends were grateful because Dad was a terrible mooch. In the end I think they only gave it up because it was an expense. My mother did some occasional smoking and tells a story about how after one of her Kaffeklatsches we, and I was only three or four, shared out a Turkish cigarette whose colored paper matched the theme colors for the party. As a family we would eat the wine gelatin that was leftover from such frolics, right down to the family beagle. Tommy (named after the IBM president, the dog's full name was Thomas J. Watson Shopmyer Jr. the Second in a comic parody of the habit of naming a child after said prez in order to get the $50 bonus) would whimper and whimper until he got the gelatin, which he ate gingerly and spit out the grapes.
My parents and their friends used to get drunk and then pull out the IBM songbook for a good old, drunken sing-along. Now, my sister claimed that our parents' parties were just short of orgies. And she actually went so far to say to our mother when she was married and had children, "Mother, we have nice parties." [Mom's retort to that was that she had "fun parties."] Speaking as someone who sat in my sister's laundry room and translated the subtitles on the x-rated movies for one of her and her husband's legally blind friends, Blind Fred (he could not see well enough to follow the video and read the subtitles), I can't recall my parents' parties being quite as "nice" as that. Yeah, the adults jumped up and kissed each other at midnight on New Year's Eve, but I don't recall any couples under the table or in a spare bedroom. Of course, I was nine years younger than my sister.
I'm beginning to suspect that my sister could have written some Sedaris-type stories about our family that I just can't. I am loath to exaggerate. I scruple to misrepresent. It's one thing to write wild tales of fiction, but I can't do it about me or my family. Consequently, these Tales of the Blonde Shikseh wind up being almost funny. My experiences are not quite adventures. For this, I apologise, but at least you know that, barring my infamous poor memory, everything that I have written here is factual.
The cartoons, though, might have a teeny bit of exaggeration.

Doin' the Dishes

I have learned that older people don't see well. Or hear. This is doing the dishes without my sister, while I was living as an adult (in my 40s) with my parents between jobs.

Doin' the Dishes: The Beginning

These things always start somewhere. My mother recounted to me how her mother and her mother-in-law behaved when they were both visiting at the same time and offered to do the dishes. No, really. Would I lie to you?

Son of Doin' the Dishes (Part the Third)

All true; all factual. Relationships with our siblings just don't get any worse than this ... without the actual shedding of blood. Inside some of us, the younger siblings, there is a well of anger and frustration just waiting to get out. Unfortunately, some of us don't get to release that and we wind up punching refrigerators because our mothers informed us that our older siblings, as large as they might be, have little feelings that are easily hurt. We have to "make nice." This will serve us well (?) in our future where we will run into this same type of relationship again and again and again. To be fair, it is because I look for these people. It's a relationship I am comfortable in. Phew! How sick is that!?

Doin' the Dishes Part 2

I can't tell you how many times this was enacted. The only over-the-top part is where my sister grabs me by the throat. She never did that. Otherwise ...

Doin' the Dishes, Part the First

This hearkens back to the days when our parents would leave us alone and my sister (who was nine years older) and I would have this wrangle over who would do the dishes. There's a double issue here: dishes and my relationship with an older sister who adored me ... but.

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.

Best Wishes in the New Year

Been thinkin' about anger today. I've been blowing up over little things, but it's the big things that you have no control over that are the most painful - and they just fester away until someone does something stupid and Kaboom! So what am I so angry about?

Well, I suppose I'm still mad at my sister for dying. Of course, that means that I need to feel guilty about being mad at her for something she had no control over. She gave those cancer treatments her best shot. So I will instead have to be mad at her for all the little things she did to me over the years, although I doubted she could have helped herself there either. She could have completely ignored me all her life. She was nine years older and by default an only child.

Instead, she played with me. She played "camping" with me ... by setting a fire under my crib. She played "Ed Sullivan Show" by using me as one of those large balls acrobats spun and tossed with their feet. She played poker with me ... before I was able to read, so I had to run into the kitchen to ask my mother what my hand was. Yes, all the games seemed to have me on the losing side, but she was actually playing with me. Rare were the times that she tried to keep me out of her hair by, say, tying me to a rocking chair with my own summer camp lanyard braiding. I was very, very lucky.

My sister had a lot of power over me that I was unable to combat. If I refused to play along with one of her schemes and ran and locked myself in my room, she would stand outside and alternate between threatening me and acting pitiful ("Mom and Dad like you better ...") until I gave in.

Decades into our relationship, we met at our parents' house and I made some remark to the effect, "You're not as tall as I remember." She was always sensitive about her height, which she claimed to be no more than five foot twelve inches. "That's funny," she retorted immediately, "You're every bit as short as I remember."

I worried about our relationship when our mother (I almost wrote "my mother," and usually caught hell for that when I said it in front of her, but we were figuratively raised by different mothers) was gone. We had both gone down to help our parents make their final move and were clearing out the attic, finding boxes that hadn't been opened since the previous move. My sister found something she wanted for herself. I was living in an shared apartment, so I wasn't even thinking of keeping anything I ran across. Mother was always after us to to find things we wanted and tag them for the future. She put my name in an antique clock that I expressed an interest in. It would stay with her and our Father as long as they lived, but we could claim it afterwards if it had our name in or on it. So my sister asked me if she could have this item. I have absolutely no recollection of what it was, but she claimed it would mean a lot to her. I had no interest in it. "You can have the next thing," she said, seemingly sweetening the pot. I have no interest in it. She could have it. Minutes later she found an extremely ugly hand-painted (by some unknown relative, no doubt) plate. "You can have this!" she said. "I don't think so," I retorted. "I get to choose what it is and it's not that ugly thing!"

After that, I really worried about what would happen when it came to divvying up the junk my, I mean, our mother collected over the years. As usual, and as Mother always said, I was worrying about the wrong thing. Now all I have to worry about is whether my nieces will want any of that junk! But at the time I worried that it would be just one incident like that after another. There would be bartering going on of byzantine convolutions. We'd probably have to get someone to come in and value every last teacup.

Later, in the year before she was diagnosed with cancer, we were playing cards at her house during the Christmas holiday. I hardly ever play cards anymore, mostly because no one I know plays. She was losing. I had won about three games in a row and I could see the consternation growing on her face. I was quite giddy. I never win games when I play them with her. In fact, I thought for years that I was rubbish at games because she always beat me. I reluctantly joined into a Monopoly game when I was in college because I was so bad at playing, but I walked all over those people. They started glaring at me (I'd gotten the utility monopoly) as they paid out, grumbling, "You sure you don't play well?"

So there I was, winning! This was my time to get up and do the end-zone dance. I didn't though. First of all, I had to check her face to make sure she wasn't letting me win, just to pounce later. Instead, she looked so unhappy that I kept playing so that I could intentionally lose (without being detected, which was a big worry) and she would cheer up. Not being quite as competitive as she was, winning wasn't such a big deal. (When you lose all the time you don't develop a competitive spirit. In fact, you can become quite opposed to competition and stressed out by it.) I didn't need to display my hubris by crowing over her losses. I held them tightly and secretly to my chest and hugged them, feeling I was an adult at last (at what, age forty?) having finally beaten a life-long adversary.

Within a year she was having radiation treatments for cervical cancer and then I wondered about my winning streak. She had been hemorrhaging so badly that she was passing out when she finally called the doctor. She may have been ill for ages and not known it. I may not have been so clever after all.

Her legacy in me is that streak of anti-competitiveness, which doesn't necessarily translate into teamwork, but I will try to undermine competition with the suggestion of all-working-together. In graduate school I was horrified when someone I very much liked in the first week, suddenly went all competitive on me when the opportunity arose. We didn't get along again until the end, and now he's one of the few friends I have left from that phase of my life. He was called Pete, and I referred to him as "ComPete" in disgust. After we noticed that people were hoarding books from the library on quarter-loan, I suggested we pick ones we would all need, check them out for the quarter, and keep them in our graduate-assistants' office (a pokey hole on the modern language floor). I even added one of my personal books to the collection.

During the written exams, they put all the foreign languages in one room and left us otherwise unproctored. They figured the presence of other departments would keep us honest. Fortunately, the competition broke down enough so that we were able to help each other when we were at a loss for a word. The only one who complained was the one German Masters Candidate, but we said we'd do our best to help her if she needed it. If someone got lost, everyone stopped what they were doing until a solution was found.

I never got my master's degree, but I did get farther in my education than my sister. It came to my attention when I was in graduate school that as soon as she moved out of the house, my grades in school got better. I'm not sure what was affecting them, the continual assertion that I was stupid (or uncoordinated, or knock-kneed), or taking up my time playing with me. But she did play with me. I have always looked for friends who were like her, not in the superior way she had, but in having lots of ideas of things to get into. I don't have many such ideas, moi.

My sister made several attempts at college, but never managed to pass Freshman English, which only became more difficult each time. Mother said she got her Mrs. degree, which is what counted. I think after that Mom decided her job was over and she could relax. My sister's marriage lasted until her premature death, which is more than many can say, and she raised two children who have their own families. I can give her no better accolade than she would have used herself: Not Half Bad!

Oh, here's another

I hope this one can be read. This is the transcription of an actual event. I was appearing the "The Mousetrap" with a group of experienced repertory people. My character was stuck in a scene where I had nothing to do or say for what seemed like twenty minutes. At that point I had a one-word line to justify my presence on stage. I spent most of that time going over that one word to make sure I didn't screw it up, which I have been known to do, only to hear that one word delivered by someone else (who was supposed to say something along the line of "But that's crazy!"). What to do?! What to do?!
Years later one of the other performers was doing a crossword puzzle and came across a clue for a six-letter word for "nonsense" that had a "p" and an "f" in it. Up until then, she thought I'd made the word up.
Hey, I'm not that good!

Cartoon

Click on the cartoon to see it larger.

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.