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Part One can be found here.
Still several days after Princess Diana’s wedding

The detectives followed Marly into the large rounded shades of yellow living/dining/kitchen with eleven mostly giant leaded glass bay windows that overlooked the Hudson River. Before she and Jesse began the renovation they found it unlikely that they would find an architect who understood their vision. Really Marly’s, Jesse would be happy in living in a hotel room. So would Marley if it was a large suite she could decorate herself on the hotel’s dime

The second summer I spent three weeks in Guanajuato, on a teen tour, where we “taught” English to young kids and then traveled to Mexico City, Oaxaca, Acapulco, Merida in the Yucatan and Isla de Mujeres. If you want to know more about my life in Mexico, read my memoir because Mexico is where the story of me really began.

“AFTER YOU CHECK IN, ALL YOUR TROUBLES WILL DISAPEAR. AS OUR PAMPERED GUEST YOU WILL BE SO HAPPY. LET US RELAX YOU. NO OTHER HOTEL WILL TREAT YOU SO WELL. IN OUR INCLUSIVE RESORT YOU WILL FIND JOY. WE WILL MAKE ALL YOUR WISHES COME TRUE. NO OTHER RESORT HAS OUR QUALITY OF SERVICE, YOU WILL EAT IN ONE OF OUR MANY WONDERFUL RESTAURANTS AND THE FOOD AND SERVICE WILL BE BEYOND YOUR MOST EXPECTATIONS.

WE WORK HARD TO MAKE YOU BE HAPPY

RELAX IN OUR MANY BARS. LET US BRING FABULOUS DRINKS TO YOUR DIVINE LOUNGE CHAIRS. YOU WILL BE ASSURED TO RELAX IN OUR HAMMOCKS. OUR BEACH IS UNSURPASSED. OUR POOLS ARE INCREDIBLE. NO OTHER RESORT HAS SO GOOD WONDERFUL ACTIVITIES. LET US SHOW AMAZING ENTERTAINMENT.

YOUR STAY WILL BE THE BEST IN YOUR LIFE. YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO LEAVE AND ALWAYS HAVE A SMILE ON YOUR FACE. WHEN YOUR REMEMBER YOUR VACATION, YOU WILL MAKE NEW RESERVATIONS TO COME BACK TO THE MOST LOVELY VACATION YOU HAD.”

I give myself the first ever I love Frank Rich for his mind and want his mind award. Being a Times Select customer I feel it important to share his mind.
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If you’re new to Courting we were a cover story last spring. A good blogging friend says that it does a great job of explaining me. Do I really need to explain myself? Rather, does it take a newspaper article?

Time: Three days after Princess Diana’s wedding to what’s his name.
Place: Upper West Side
Marly Looked at her walls that were still decorated with ghastly wedding decorations because her friend Victoria had borrowed her perfect for a party apartment, called every single person in her phone book and invited them all to a wedding party.

Marly owned several Betamaxs so the entire wedding could be replayed in different areas of the apartment. That was only one of the many reasons Victoria wanted to use her apartment.

Victoria had neglected to tall her that she had received 92 acceptances until the day of the party when Marly had to ask The Silver Palate to triple the take out order. The Silver Palate made all their own foods. Their salad dressings and other foods were sold along other brands in supermarkets.

Some of their mutual boy friends brought more food and added to the Dom Perignon stash. There was plenty of smoke and the boys brought the coke. Their friend Dinah was into making organic cakes with fruit instead of sugar. She had made a carrot wedding cake with yogurt frosting. It actually was excellent. Though she might have liked it so much because of all the Colombian Red she had smoked.

Marly’s apartment was a classic six : two bedrooms, maids room, living room, dining room, eat in kitchen, two full baths, two half baths and one WC , (toilet in a tiny room off the kitchen) all off a long wide foyer that was filled with her black and white photos. Marly had taken the walls down between the kitchen, dining and living rooms to make one large loft type room.

Marly had the apartment cleaned but insisted that Victoria take down the decorations. Secretly she liked them despite the tack. She figured everybody had a Victoria in their lives. Somebody who lived in 200 very filthy square feet though she could afford much better, showed up at meal times, and invited 92 of her closest friends to a party Marly would pay for. Including a woman who couldn’t have been mucher older than them and had absolutely no teeth or dentures. Marly was scared that she would stare at her all night. She had managed to avoid the woman after one ghastly second of accidentally watching her eat.

Victoria was clever. She had won Jeopardy for four straight days. That was always the best thing Marly could think to say about her. Her friends played “The Victoria Game.” If you could think of a good quality, you won two points, a bad quality you lost one point. Winning was damn hard. It might have been cruel but it was fun, and Victoria had “borrowed” rent money often from all of them. Nobody knew how Victoria spent her money. It wasn’t on rent, food, clothes, drugs or drink. Victoria looked like some sort of city farm girl hippie

The doorbell rang though the doorman hadn’t called. She assumed that it was Victoria and opened the door to two overweight balding men who flashed what she would learn were detective’s shields at her.

“Can we come in?”
“Why?”
We have to talk to you about the Allied robbery”
“You’re kidding? This is a joke right?”
The thinner fat detective smiled. This wasn’t like anything she had seen on TV, in the movies or read. The detectives were so ordinary looking. She had never thought about it before but realized that she thought all detectives were like the ones in the media.
“Andrea Lois is a friend of yours?”
“I haven’t seen her much since she moved to San Francisco, and not at all in the past eighteen months. Yes, she’s a friend.”

Was this the part where she said she needed to call her lawyer? Or did she let them in because if they were insinuating that Andrea was an armed robber who killed people, they were wrong? Or do you never really know your best friends?

Marly’s fiancee, Jesse, insisted that you never knew a person until you lived with them. They had been living together for four years and Marly still wasn’t sure that she knew Jesse, a news cameraman who traveled often. He was still in England photographing the Royal world. Damn she should have gone with him, as everybody from Jesse to her parents to his parents to their friends, except for Victoria, wanted. She just wasn’t into all the pomp and marching bands.

Okay, be decisive, Marly, tell the police to go away and comeback with a warrant.

She let them in, and watched them take the apartment in. The policemen surprised her when they walked down the foyer. They stopped and looked at the photographs. The fatter one said that he had been to a show of her work, and had bought a few prints. The thinner fat one excitedly pointed them out.

Now Marly was completely confused. Detectives who knew her work were at her apartment to question her about Andrea? Shouldn’t they act as if they hated her or thought she was guilty of being friends with a former fugitive?

She had heard about Andrea’s arrest. It was big news. This morning she had met Dinah in a coffee shop. They had been afraid to talk so had scribbled notes on napkins using a pen Dinah had brought.

i can feel guilty over the most stupid things. Just read Fodor’s five places for singles to cruise—something like that, but that sounds…anyway, all these places were exotic, different, interesting, and I would be making my parents proud. Instead, I chose Cancun.

Please visit Shayna and wish her in-utero baby great thoughts and prayers.

I put some pictures in my photo blog. If I ever learn to batch edit them I will put in tons.

Here’s a link to The New York Times article on the hottest January day.

Here’s a link to Al’s blog. Al has great maps, insights, and isn’t jaded like me. He lives in real downtown, which I have specifically defined and will save for another time as except for the very neighborhood Al lives in, there isn’t a real downtown anymore.
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When I was young everyplace below and including 14th Street was called downtown. Now it’s 23rd Street. Every person who grew up and remained in The Bronx calls all of Manhattan downtown. Drives me crazy as we who are from the other boroughs and suburbs would call Manhattan “the city.”

Here’s a link to one of the reasons I think of leaving. Yes I would love to afford to pay millions for a penthouse, but I can’t. And most people who have penthouses also have other homes. Many of my neighbors have summer homes that they haven’t closed yet and are there now.

Here’s a link to The Times article on the hottest January day on record.
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It’s so weird to walk the streets in a summer coat. At least I think that’s what you call a houndstooth lined cotton coat I could put a sweater under and a leather jacket on top with a skirt and leggings under, and think, didn’t I wear similar things in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s?

However today I just wore a tee and jeans. Most people looked bewildered as they headed for the park. Most people looked overdressed. They were wearing sweaters instead of unbuttoned summer coats.

A man, obviously a tourist was on his cell:
“I’m in New York and it’s 83 degrees.”

You idiot, I thought with the native New Yorker’s superiority. You’re standing across from West 83rd Street. If it were 83 degrees, all people would shed coats and sweaters and run for water. Or run out of New York.

And admit it, when people come to your towns and say something obviously wrong loudly on their cells, you have that second of superiority.

It’s not that we feel superior as people. We feel superior in our knowledge of our city and our hoods within the city.

Just like you do about your hometowns.

Gray’s Papaya, a store that I can’t physically go into because of the hot dog smell, used to have signs “we are polite New Yorkers.” We are. In a brusque but friendly manner.

If we seem brusque to you remember that we have never had a major race riot, and have undergone much

This summer will be the 30th anniversary of the summer of 77. It was the summer that would form a marker in my life as it did to so many other people. Hot hot weather, a serial killer who targeted young brunette girls, racial tension, a black out, and New York was still going through tough economic times. Very tough. The only city service that I used regularly and directly were the subways. They never came on time. The stations were stanky. I never personally felt in danger as I had developed a great street face in my late teens.

It’s a summer books, movies and myths are made of because it had every element needed. And I was there. Yes I was and remember every moment of it until I went to Switzerland to stay with an old friend and her boyfriend. They lived in Geneva, and I traveled to Paris, Bern and Venice. It was a lengthy stay

Hey, I didn’t know that David Berkowitz would look just like an old friend or that Elvis would die which, sorry Bone, wasn’t very important to me then. I hadn’t yet discovered the Sun Sessions. He was just an old bloated man who wore a truly gross white suit. And I use the word “old” on purpose because he looked it. Found out about the death and capture when I arrived in the train station in Bern. It was the most modern and functional station I had ever seen. Italy had more working ATM’s than we did. The summer of 77 was really the first time I became aware of backwards America was becoming.

People don’t usually know when living through cultural history that they are. I didn’t know how important that summer would be to history and my own life. I didn’t know that when I came back from Geneva at the end of September that I would get a temp job that would turn into a career.

Most of my adult friendships were formed at Summit Inc or through it, and I should probably thank the guy who told me about a six week temp job every day of my life. He was convinced that most workers were anti-Semitic. Not.

There were 240 of us, all around the same age and educational background. I was used to richer people but was looking for friends with great values. I found them there. There were so many of us, the 240 went down by half after a layoff, then up to 1200+ that I didn’t get to know Lucia well for a year. It was like a repeat of college and my earlier 20′s. So many people to meet.

Only we were paid a living wage to basically socialize. Lucia and I have had much more prestigious jobs, careers that we love, but we always talk about Summit with awe. I was promoted twice then went to a company formed by people from Summit.

Though I wasn’t promoted as quickly as most people thought that I should have been. There was a reason, and it’s a great story that I might have told somewhere here or might not have. It had everything to do with sex and alcohol. I did just say no, and was penalized for that. Actually it was the way I said it and the physical locale.

We partied most nights after work. Most people were really artists, actors, and writers, and we formed a community. That’s always what New York’s been about to me: People from disparate backgrounds having common interests and finding one another. When I think about Summit I know that I was privileged to know New York during a truly golden era.

Over half the employees were single straight males, there were many Gay men, and us girls know that girls didn’t usually get this much attention after college and during working hours. We took it for granted because that’s what people do. It’s only later….Any sit coms, comedic dramas, films or plays about work in a large temp document coding company in the 70′s to late 80′s were my idea.

I like writing stories about that time in both personal essays and fiction because it was so wondrous. We weren’t yet called YUPPIES for one thing, and there was a transition from a hippie lifestyle to something else. All of New York was our play ground. It wasn’t as manicured as it is now, but it had soul. Babyboomer wasn’t yet a dirty word, except to our parents.

I DVR’d The 40 year old virgin. It was as funny as people said, but I related a bit too much. Not to the virgin part but to the shutting off emotionally. Something I did and didn’t do when I was young. Andy, the virgins boss was a woman in her 50′s. I took stock of her subconsciously: well maintained, attractive, not pretty, a bit hard.

Then the credits came on. Julie Budd. Damn, it’s been a long time, but that sure was her. She was going to be the next Barbra.

When I was a teenager I had a very distorted sense of self. I saw myself as reflected through my boyfriend and other boys eyes. My boyfriend and I broke up constantly, I didn’t exactly go to classes freshman year of college and had much time to establish both sexual and platonic relationships. I wouldn’t sleep with the boys I wanted to remain friends with or the ones I just wasn’t into.

Honestly, I couldn’t understand what people saw in me. I thought that even my face was unformed. It was a collection of good features, even I could see that, but they didn’t gel.

Though I have never thought of myself as having many girlfriends that year, I was the girl the WASP girls would bring to tea at The Plaza when they were meeting their mothers. “Look mother, I have a Jewish friend, and she has good manners, and wears expensive hippie clothes.”

I’m not sure why I spent the night at Jill’s parents house in Flatbush. I remember being awed by how large and beautiful the house was. Jill’s sister, Julie, was a singer and an emancipated minor who lived with their grandmother, but came home often.

Before she said hello to me, she said:
“You’re not wearing any makeup.”
“Well lip gloss.”

I was too well mannered and too shy to ask her why she had asked that question, but we found ourselves talking and I finally asked. She looked at me as if I were crazy:
“Because you don’t need make-up to look pretty. That’s so unfair.”

I wish I could say that a light bulb went off. The next Streisand had just said that I was pretty. I kind of knew that.

I used my looks as a shield to get me places that my personality wouldn’t let me go, but I never felt normal pretty. I felt like an object that people could look at and make into anybody they wanted me to be. I so so badly wanted a personality, and didn’t realize how strong mine was

I was too young and way too immature to understand how much looks are a function of personality, and the opposite

I did wear a lot of makeup in the 70′s. Beyonce, as Deena, in Dreamgirls gets it so right. All that damn lavender. I then went into a long brown and beige eye make stage. I was in my late 20′s and was kind of almost sure that I had something special.

This wasn’t easy to write. I feel as if I have tipped the confessional. I would call it fiction, but it’s not.

I wish that I could go back in time and say “thank you, Julie,” and have forever after understood.