The sun’s setting over the Pacific. It’s shades of pink mixed with some yellow and a blue but not too blue sky.

So peaceful; so satisfying. Hard to believe that just yesterday morning I was debating going home so that I could be part of the streets of New York.

If it weren’t for my friends (who are my family) I wouldn’t ever go back again. Oh yes I forgot for a second, I have responsibilities at home. I even own a coop and somehow think that the coop board won’t let me sublet it just because I want to try living somewhere else.

When I was a kid we lived in a true coop where we paid $200 to move in and got the $200 when we moved out. We had the first coop credit union in the country, (my dad started it) and lived in a total wonderful CinemaScope image called the 1950’s, and pre-1963 when we moved and the world changed. I thought my life in the garden apartments was perfect; but I was just eleven and secure in my family’s love, and the love and friendship of our neighbors. Now those post-war flimsily constructed (it’s nice outside, get out) apartments sell for $250,000 and more.

My six hundred square foot coop on Riverside Drive in the 70’s is worth a small fortune. Our coop is more an exercise in Fascism than cooperative living and we have rules for everything.

Oh well, I’ll think about it when I get home on the day before 9/11–I’m not scared of flying on that day; I just like to be in New York then. It’s a city solidarity day.

Since I’m rambling–my coop board rejects people for the flimsiest of reasons. They only let me in because I had cash, good credit, good manners, was funny and articulate. I had been on vacation with a then soap star and his family. He had originally been rejected from his coop because he was an actor; then he was its president.

He’d shoot me every conceivable question, and I’d come up with an answer. Then we’d spend hours dissecting the answer. (He’s used to that; his wife is even more obsessive/compulsive than I am if that’s possible.)

The night before the board meeting my goddaughter had she ever been baptized was visiting a friend in the building on West End across from the building that I hoped to move into. I looked out the window and saw the apartment that had to be mine. When we left the apartment, Little Luce walked around my new building and touched it for luck. Little Luce is my lucky star.

The coop interview was the fastest ten minutes of my life. My apartment’s worth at least two and half to four times what I paid for it in 1997. But I’m always aware that should another terrorist attack occur it could be worthless. Honestly I don’t understand why people want to spend so much money on apartments when they could be incinerated tomorrow. But I seem to be unique in my thinking.

I do love New York. It just might be the love of my life.

Stumble it!

I was just thinking about how my sister is the only person to appreciate my singing when she called. Told her that and she said, “but you’re so unique, and you’re a great dancer also.” Only as sister can say that as I’m tone deaf and dance well–actually I can but not to any known steps.

She called to say that her daughter, almost ten, was talking to a friend and asked if her parents had any thoughts about what she would look like when she was born.
“I’m adopted.’
“Oh, do you know who your original parents are?”

Niece Jacqueline knows that original parents aren’t real parents, because I’m adopted and my real parents are her grandparents. I never heard the expression original parents before. I like it.

Niece Sam doesn’t want me to move to SoCal but her mom is getting with the program. “We can visit her.”
“No, I want her in New York. She belongs with us.”
“We don’t live with her. She lives in the city and you don’t want to go there.”
“I can change my mind.”

I love my niece much and this made me feel great but hasn’t helped my continuing debate on moving or not. By this time next year I will have made up my mind. For sure; if I haven’t died in a terrorist attack or been hit by a car or any one of ten million other things.

Life is funny in its uncertainty. I think that keeps me going. Know it keeps me young.

Stumble it!

http://www.steveearle.com/blog.html

When I’m anxious, bored, trying to stay awake or just curious I scroll through lists. Weird hobby I know.

In one of my previous posts I talked about a man I used to live with and how if he could have just conquered his demons (yeah, easy I know) he might have lived to become similar to Steve Earle. While scrolling recently published blogs I came across Steve Earle’s. My old boyfriend’s music reminds me of his. Even his speaking voice was like Steve Earle’s. It feels kind of weird and kind of nice.

I don’t know what that means, or if it means anything at all. One of the people he dedicated his new CD to was Warren Zevon, my whole life seems to be dedicated to Warren Zevon.

When I was being tested for every conceivable cancer this past year because I had many strange symptoms and blood test results I would listen to Warren and feel hope. He changed my attitude and outlook at life.

I find it strange that at this horrible time in history I’m my personally most positive. I want to live to bear witness.

Maybe I’m meant to live somewhere that’s not New York. Somewhere where the sun shines and the ocean air makes me feel more alive. Maybe in order to get some order and perspective I need to be away from my birthplace. I don’t know.

I just know that a lot of people I respect have been dedicating things to Warren Zevon, and somehow that fills me with joy.

It’s a cliche but I savor each minute now.

Stumble it!

Yesterday or the day before, I posted a seemingly contradictory post. Said that Ground Zero is just a construction site, and said that it is sacred ground filled with ashes. Meant both.

It took me two years exactly to get to Ground Zero, and when I saw it I felt nothing. Nothing at all. It’s been harder to look down West End Avenue at what isn’t in the distance than it was to see this hole in the ground with tourists running around trying to put in posters their children made.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that’s nice, if you’re into that sort of thing. I don’t even go to the cemetery to see my parents’ graves. They’re in my heart and soul where it counts. I know I have their approval for they did the same thing.

The Trade Center played a big part in my youth. It was where I got off the subway to go to work at the job I met so many people who are important to me still. I drank too much at the restaurants, and had romantic dinners at Windows on the World.

It was a living place and that’s how I’ll remember it. And I’ll never forget the frigging wind that made the two block walk to work feel like an eternity. Don’t miss the wind; do miss the morning break devotional services (smoked pot) my friends had outside Saint Paul’s. It was our sanctuary; now it’s the worlds. We always were ahead of the curve.

Stumble it!

I wish I were in New York but I’m glad that I’m here. Finally settled down enough to enjoy myself. Maybe I can pretend that New York’s just another city.

Not really. I watched CNN for awhile with the sound turned off last night with the sound off (my favorite way to watch CNN) and saw the expression (date?) 9/11. How dare they invoke my city’s tragedy.

Enough. I’m just another woman visiting another city and so I go about the pressing business of getting ready to go to the beach.

Stumble it!

Today I will actually act as if I’m on vacation. Today I won’t try to understand why people think Bush is good. Today I will not listen to news reports that talk about Bush as if he were legally elected and has been a great war time president.

Yesterday I began to understand that the further you get from New York the more abstract 9/11 is too many people. They claim ownership of it but never felt the true immediate impact. They talk about Ground Zero as if it’s holy land.

It’s a hole in the ground that once held buildings where people worked, laughed, ate, and complained about the wind. It was very windy. It’s sacred for the ashes intermingled in the hole and the construction. it’s just a construction site now.

I can’t stand Ground Zero being used as a rationale for war, and for no disrespect of the present administration allowed. I saw a program on CNN about Bush yesterday–I felt like it was a paid political ad. Grossed me out.

I’m a New Yorker on vacation and today I will begin to pretend that my vacation’s just another real vacation not planned to be out of town this week. Today I will honor Ground Zero by not thinking about it or New York or lives cut short almost three years ago.

Today I will be just another New Yorker in Southern California. I’m in a city that’s three to one Democrat. I will pretend that this is just another year and that a person’s politics doesn’t define him. I once voted for a Republican for president in a sick move and my friends still loved me though teased me for years. Now they have forgotten. I had to remind Big Luce. She laughed.

We’ve lived long enough to have gone through a cycle. When we were very young in the ’70’s, politics, hair, inhaling and age defined a person. Then, just a bit later, people were liked or disliked for their personalities and whatever else makes a person likable or not. My friends and I laughed at the New Age people as much as we laughed at compassionate conservatives. We accepted each group for the good they had to teach us. What we didn’t like we edited from our brains.

Now once again a person is defined by politics. That saddens me. All I ask if for New York not to be used by anyone for his own gains. New York’s not a symbol but a real place. I was born there. I used to think I would die there. Maybe I will; maybe I’ll move to a place like Santa Monica where the weather is better and the living (if you have money) easier.

Leaving New York has been a goal of mine forever. I keep on finding myself making new friends, getting more involved in the community, and most importantly being in certain children’s day-to-day life.

I understand New Yorker’s and they (usually) understand me. We share the same humor that doesn’t translate well on paper–ask a waiter if I can have a food to go. “No, you can only eat our food here.” Not funny on paper, truly funny in person. Stupid things like that.

Now I’ll begin my SoCal day. They don’t rush like I do. Hard to get used to.

Stumble it!

New York’s in my blood. It’s all I can think about but I fled. I tell myself it’s too see if I can live in another city as far from New York as I can be during a major super exciting event. Maybe that’s the truth; I don’t know.

I walked for five hours today; when I wasn’t walking I was changing the settings on the first cell I have owned and actually believed that I knew how to program.

I only brought my laptop for word processing. I’ve already checked my e-mail and now I will go into Spring Girl’s fotolog to see what the city looks like.

Maybe tommorow I will be relaxed enough to think that New York is a city on another coast that I know well. Maybe then I can buy food and actually eat it. Maybe I can walk on the beach until I’m so spaced all I can think about is the ocean and the sound of the waves and things that don’t have to do with protests, terrorism and the RNC. Maybe.

Stumble it!

This is the scariest and most boring summer of my life. Boring because each time that I can actually go somewhere it rains or threatens to. I love sultry sun and sultry humidity, not in the 70’s mold enticing dribble we have learned to live with. (Not.) I know I could live in Florida, and then I’d know what real bad weather is.

On the other hand people who don’t live in Manhattan would come visit me. Most of my Manhattan friends (with the exception of Springs Girl–thank you) pretend not to be scared. But if unexpected fireworks go off they panic.

When I was watching the opening Olympics last night I realized how much most of the world confuses the people with our so-called government. Then they confuse New Yorkers with people in the rest of the country.

We’re not like them. We might want to be considered American but they never let us forget how they went to war for us. It was a war few New Yorkers wanted or understood. Why am I speaking in the past tense? It is a war few of us want or understand.

New York doesn’t even seem like a real place anymore but a symbol of something I don’t quite understand. It’s difficult to actually live in a symbol.

We came out enmasse in 2000 to vote for Gore and Moveon.org sends me e-mails telling me that I live in a low voting registration district. Moveon’s supposed to represent me and my interests. They should know that the Upper West Side has a proud tradition of voting–even when percentage it doesn’t mean a damn if I do (electoral college bull.)

Moveon and every other organization should stop asking me for money. My apartment’s worth a small fortune today but as noted in New York Magazine, it might be worthless tomorrow. Then again I might be incinerated, and not care.

I’m beginning to sound like the paranoid leftist conspiracy theorists I always made fun of. When President Kennedy was assassinated I was old enough to watch TV almost all the time. My parents made me go bowling and I missed Lee Harvey Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby—though I saw the endless replays, I always guilted my parents for making me miss the actual event.

I was too young to get the conspiracy thing. Actually I got it but didn’t want to believe it because I was just a kid and wanted to live a safe life, with some excitement when I became old enough to have adventures. I did have adventures, so I should be happy, but….

I wanted an exciting life. I didn’t want it to become exciting because I live in a place that is constantly being threatened. My government makes sure I know that it is, but somehow we find out wrong facts, or no facts. We’re just left with a mindless fear, and that’s what the government wants.

It’s not exciting to live with the threat of implosion, anthrax or numerous other things that I can’t even imagine but might have to soon.

New York is always giving. We have traditionally given the most generous welfare benefits. We accept all children into our schools because that’s the right thing to do. We don’t care if people aren’t documented; most of us have good friends who once were (and are now very successful.)

We stopped thinking about skin color three years ago. Most of us weren’t racist to begin with, and racism’s so petty. When I meet a person I’m pretty sure is Muslim I tend to go out of my way to be friendly. I give extra big tip’s to Pakistani cab drivers. Maybe that’s overdoing it; maybe I’m financing my own death. But as long as I live I will not hate people because they hate me. I had too much experience with that in Junior High.

I just want to turn the clock back to a perfect Sunday three years ago when I was standing on a former friend’s roof deck. I looked at the Rampago Mountains; I looked for my apartment building; I looked for friend’s buildings. I don’t remember looking for the World Trade Center. It was something that had been there most of my life and I assumed would always be there.

Two days later when my friends met (without consulting each other–downed phone line’s) at my favorite New York Kid’s middle school, we had stopped assuming anything. One of my friends was supposed to have been in training at the towers. It had been postponed. She was too shocked to realize how close she could have come to death. Most people who worked for that company survived. After ‘93 they had taken nothing for granted, and had many survival exercises.

My sister and I had laughed (fondly) at the image of our broker, an Italian stud, carrying an old woman down 87 floors. Now we just prayed for his survival. But it was his company that had taken bomb threats seriously and had the least number of casualties.

I knew many people who worked in the Trade Center but it was my friend Patty’s brother-in-law Pete I couldn’t stop thinking about. He’s a k-9 cop, and was assigned to The Trade Center. Fortunately his shift was later and as he was driving his wife to work he saw a ball of fire. He dropped her off, and raced there. He survived. Everyone I knew survived.

Almost two years ago I was at my second cousin’s son’s wedding. The Chuppah (wedding canopy) was an American flag. We thought that it was strange until we read the program. It was the flag her great-grandparents had raised every morning until her grandfather came home from World War Two. Sarah had escaped from the North Tower and her parents had immediately hung the flag. It made me cry.

Why is it that other countries can proudly exhibit their flags but Americans can not? Why are Americans held accountable for every problem on earth? If America is responsible, why can’t people separate the government from the people?

We in New York didn’t vote for the present government. Our Republicans tend to be mavericks who think outside the box. I’ve never understood Pataki’s appeal or non-appeal. He’s the man I never recognize. He looks so regular with no distinguishing (or undistinguishing) characteristics that I think of him as the man I can’t recognize.

I love my country. I love my city even more. But one way or another I will be out of here next year. Of course the only place in the whole country I would consider relocating to is just outside of LA and in LA county. It’s blue, filled with New York expats, and on the Pacific. It will probably be the next place to go, but it’s the only other place I can picture myself living.

I want my family and friends to come along. But if they won’t….I’m still going.

I don’t want to wake up every cloudy dismal morning trying not to wonder if today’s the day.

Stumble it!

At my first college, the fun one, I was officially anointed Hippie Princess one night. My vintage black velvet gown was from Bogie’s in the East Village where if I let Bogie kiss me I’d get two dresses for ten dollars. Bogie was a gross wet kisser, and even in 1968 it wasn’t worth five dollars to me. I don’t know where my tiara came from. I probably owned it. I was into clothes and accessories as a way of expressing my various persona’s. Now I wear clothes from Talbot’s. It’s weird even to me. I think that it means I’m finally secure in my own skin.

The idea of me being a princess anything was alien to me then. Though through the years I’ve been called every variation of princess: princess perfect; princess of the night; ice princess–you get the picture. Generally I didn’t consider it to be a compliment.

I liked the idea of being a hippie princess. In high school the closest I had come to a cheerleader was sitting next to one in class. I was the school hippie; my friend Karen was the school belated-beatnik. Karen was respected because of her extraordinary intellect. I almost fit in.

In my first college, I couldn’t understand why I was so popular. My friends were prettier. I thought that it had to be my hair. My hair was wild; so wild it took on a persona of its own. I think people mistook me for my hair.

I came from the in between world. Women who came just before me knew that they were going to get married just before or after graduation, teach for a few years and then stay home with the kids. Women who came just after me knew that they weren’t going to get married until after law school.

But I knew none of these things. It was easy that first year at school. I had a boyfriend. We broke up and I hung out with his friends. (He didn’t go to school that year.) We made up; we broke up. Gradually we developed a rhythm and became rather good at it.

I think I thought that I loved him very much. Like all the men who were to be in my life his hair was long but controlled. (More than I could say for mine.) He wore nice neat corduroy pants, tees and flannel shirts.

My nineteenth birthday was the weekend of the moonwalk. We were going to see Romeo and Juliet with Olivia Hussey. I was spending the weekend at my parents’ house. My dad called me down to his red burlap wall papered study:

“I don’t understand you. You used to care so passionately about the world and life. Now all you think about is that hippie boy.”

He screamed until he got it all out and I went up to my blue flower wallpapered bedroom that was covered with the cut-outs from sergeant Pepper, posters of Lou Reed, and The Stones. I was angry at my boyfriend and angry at my father and all people who claimed to be straight men.

When I went back to school, for the first time, it felt like we might not get back together. I was inconsolable the rest of the summer. Didn’t even go to Woodstock though I could have gone by helicopter and posed as a nurse. Actually I didn’t really want to do that so my depression served me well.

I felt embraced by my friends who always brought me chocolate. In my memories my dorm room that summer was a large hand planked wood and glass studio that stood alone in the woods.

I wore out two copies of Tom Rush’s “Circle Game,” because it expressed my feelings as I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t because my boyfriend told me that I was a better writer than he was and I had stopped writing.

Now he’s somewhat well known and about to become more so, and I’m not. I’m happy for him; I wrote only the beginning of our saga, and it was not at all explored. In this case I might vote for an unexamined chapter.

But when I walk into B&N or Borders or somewhere and see his name and a dedication to a woman I like who isn’t me. She’s his second or third wife depending on whether you count the time he told me we were married, my sophomore year, for reasons that helped him. You do have to count our marriage in what would have been my senior year had I remained in school. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

For the record, I bet with the side that said our marriage wasn’t going to last. Yes I bet against my marriage at my own wedding. And not for pennies.

****************************************************************************

This is not the man in the next story.

Stumble it!

When you think that you’re all over it, and the pain has subsided for good, something triggers a memory, and you’re no longer the sane stable person you were five minutes earlier.

You think, bastard, you ruined my life.

Or at least my formative childbearing years. Oh right I ruined his. Always forget that part. We’d play games that were too dangerous to even think about. I kept flying down Dead Man’s Curve faster and faster sometimes forgetting that the edges became ever more jagged and sharp. I would win the races because the pain felt good.
***************************************************************************
I had told him the first night at some club, not the club, but some cleaner looking Village fixture, that I hated pet names and terms of endearment.

He called me Pumpkin and worse, Baby. Other women envied me. He was a Southern Jewish Outlaw singer/songwriter on the fast track to memory lane. Even I was forced to admit that he was cute. We made a good looking couple. Sometimes that’s all life’s about. I’d walk into work each morning pissed as hell at something he had or hadn’t done and everybody would tell me about my perfect life.

Three of my five best girlfriends weren’t in New York. Elle was in Miami; Lucia in Atlanta and Leyla in Geneva. When they’d come to town with their men or on their own they’d just be so bowed over by his attention and obvious devotion. Lizzie and Dawn thought he was my savior.

Dawn was to give a eulogy years later for her longtime boyfriend, Franklin. “I saw stars in my eyes when I first met him, and I’m still seeing stars.” Everyone laughed a bit uncomfortably since we all knew that it was true.

I had done it. I had the worlds most perfect man. Could I tell them about the ever growing Dixie beer collection and the roaches that would be lined up around the 40 butts in the ashtray that would greet me when I came home twelve hours after leaving?

Every day I had an hour subway commute, I worked for ten hours, and came home to the house of horrors. He would be in the same position he had been in when I left with just the beer cans and newly filled ashtray as evidence that he had ever left the bed. (Had to, to get a new Dixie, and I assume pee, I hope it was in the toilet.)

I knew one contest that I could win. I had Fifth Avenue’s largest Dixie beer collection. Probably the only one. I would think that as I emptied the ashtray, washed some dishes and cooked dinner. I washed the glasses especially well, just in case that was were he had peed.

Yes, I, princess of Manhattan take-out, cooked dinner every night. It was difficult to support two people on my salary. Actually my salary was decent. I supervised fifteen people on the largest anti-trust case in American history. Out of 80 supervisors I was in the top percentile pay wise. I liked my job and loved being good at it.

I was a girl (women we called ourselves then) and never paid for a dinner, unless I was trying to make a point by not accepting somebodies now-you-fuck-me dinner. Even in the days of militant feminism which was overrated, I would let men pay for meals, drinks and/or the bottles of Dom Perignon they would send to the table my girlfriends and I were sitting at. Long as I didn’t have to put out anything my than my acerbic tongue.

Before I had been with him (and during the last year) I was out almost every night. The owner of the club, my club, was an old special friend. I seemed to know a lot of club owners, managers, and the like. I even knew Marc the doorman at Studio. I don’t know how I knew so many people. It seemed normal then.

Out of principle I wouldn’t spend any of the money my father had given you. Not when an able bodied man with half a mind slept next to me each night. He’d take the money I had made and use it at a whirlwind tour of New York’s worst bars. Nobody comped him.

He’d sing romantic songs. After awhile they stopped seeming romantic. Just this morning I heard Steve Earl being interviewed on the radio. I couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t ate his gun one day, in another state, would he have now been a big alt/rocker?

I wonder that each time I hear Lucinda. She had provided the introductions at the club. The club that looked tobacco stained even when freshly painted, was dark, dingy, with great people and music. The club that launched a thousand of my nights; not to forget many music stars. He wasn’t one of them.

He was talented; had a unique way with words, and now I begin to remember all the ways he embarrassed me with his words. Yeah he had a unique way with words for somebody who was half illiterate. I believed his story that he had dropped out of high school.

Soon after he confided that he had two years of college. In some ways he was brilliant. His ideas would be big now. If only he could have admitted that he was depressed instead of always blaming his problems on some other thing, some other person. I came along. Miss-no-self-esteem-sure-I’m-responsible-for-all-your-problems-plus-the-state-of-the-world.
**********************************************************************
You should have known the first morning when he wouldn’t let you leave for work and called you (no shit) a prisoner of love. You told him that was gross and you hated cute more than anything in the world.. Now you wish that you had walked out then and never looked back but you moved in together the next night.
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To be continued

Stumble it!