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This is for 3WW
New York 1987
She was tired. Her whole body hurt. Really she should leave the mosh pit to younger girls but she had been caught up in the moment at the Iggy Pop concert. It had almost felt like flying, being thrown from guy to guy.
OK it had felt great. As if she were weightless and highly desirable though she had no idea what being thrown from person to person had to do with being desirable.
But this morning she felt as if her whole body had been trampled on. She had stayed too late at the VIP room and the after hours club downtown where everybody but the bartender and her were sniffing coke. She stuck to plain soda and pot. At least she didn’t have a hangover. Though it sure felt like one.
After the half hour shower she drank Bustello that she had filled to the brim. It gave her a jolt but not the jolt she needed. She decided she needed a brain and body transfusion as she tried to remember what she had to do at work today. Some meetings she could talk her way through in her sleep. Nothing important.
Shit. She had been staring at the red ribbon without remembering its significance. Tonight there was another memorial service–the fourth she had gone to in the past seven weeks. After the memorial service there was going to be a rally, and tomorrow she was committed to bringing meals all day to boys apartments. Young boys, beautiful boys, successful boys. Boys cut down in their prime. Boys who maybe wouldn’t have had to die if the government hadn’t considered this a “Gay/Haitian” disease until too late.
She called in sick to work. Something that was really anathema to her but….She needed to prepare her eulogy. She really should have stayed home last night writing it but Will would have wanted her to be carried over a mosh pit.
The coffee kicked in as she thought she really did have the zeal of a convert when it came to AIDS though she had never needed to be converted.
••••••••••
There was a time when AIDS was thought to only hit Gays and Haitians. I wasn’t consciously thinking about Haiti when I wrote this but…
The Red Cross makes it real easy to donate to Haiti. They accept Amazon one click. For most of the day today I thought about running away from my life and going to Haiti. For some reason of all the fast moving tragedies of the last decade, this–well it’s one too many.
I heard it’s really hard to get through to the Red Cross and the other orgs collecting money. You can donate directly through Amazon.
This is for 3WW.
As she walked to the kitchen cabinet with two lazy Susan’s, enough antioxidants, supplements and vitamins so that she could go on different regimes every week for two months, she thought that in thirteen days she could clean out her Keogh if she desired. She didn’t desire to and was somewhat impressed with how not-depressed the thought made her.
Six months from 60 is young. She could reinvent herself up to three times more if she so desired….”Desired” she was hung up with being desired. She didn’t want to be younger. She wanted to be the girl who had inspired boys and men to irrational, oft times erratic behavior. Right it was the irrational, erratic she didn’t miss. OK she was guilty of the same.
She had been a drama queen who starred in an epic the Weinstein brothers would be proud to produce.
Was it worth living a temptuous love life when she saw so many couples so at ease with each other? She wouldn’t have known how to begin. Men had always been a drain on her. So why was there a nibble in her ear telling her actually try?
No she wouldn’t. She liked the ease of the boy toy. The nibble on the ear that led to a night of debauchery. Shit she was so immature. Wasn’t there much more to a life of committed sex?
Rick texted. She agreed to meet him at ten in the town’s hotel bar. He was 33. 33 and less than seventeen percent body fat. Young boys, they loved to give body fat stats and really how much else did they have to talk about? Casey Johnson’s death?
She had a nibble of yogurt as her mother would have said, walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the master bath and began getting ready.
I am the oldest of four girls. We were known in and around Stone Harbor and Manhattan as the “four gorgeous giddy Grove girls.” “Giddy” because we were.
I’m Anabel. Anissa and Alana are twins; two years three months and three days younger than I am. Alexa is but seventeen months younger than the twins. I’m the accident. I’ve never felt bad about that. Most families have one. Our parents called me the “dynasty maker.” Really they were.
Our mother dressed us all the same. We wore velvet dresses for winter events; organza, lace or polished cotton for summer.
Until I was about twelve I loved being seen with my family. Unlike many of the other mothers, our mother was naturally blond. When our parents married, she converted to Judiasm. Many people including our grandmother thought she wasn’t a real Jew. Our parents didn’t care. And really everybody loved to look at us
Our mother was from the South and her voice was the sweetest most calming sound I had ever heard. When I need to relax today I put on Southern movies for background noise.
When I was twelve our mother told me I could choose my own clothes with her approval of course. When the other girls turned eleven they copied me. I became a hippie. They became hippies.
Our father cringed at our clothes but smiled at our loyalty to one another and the entire Family Grove. Being loyal to the Family Grove meant everything to our father.
Our long thick wavy but never frizzy varying shades of gold and honey hair was called “rich girl hair,” by girls who coveted our lives.
The summer I turned 20, my former fiancee Hunter married our cousin Sabrina. Being her only cousins we were all bridesmaids. I remember walking up the aisle, looking at my sisters and wondering why they were smiling a bit too brightly, not that anybody would notice. I don’t think anybody noticed Anissa seemingly gently touching the bride’s dress. Sabrina tripped as she reached the pulpit.
I choked on my laughter. I remember looking at my sisters and thinking how almost obscene it was that we cared so much about each other. Despite Hunter, despite the other girl’s first love failures, we were happy.
¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶
I will be away for eight days making mirth with friends who are family and family of friends. Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! The one holiday we all almost celebrate. Always my favorite.
I walk onto the balcony though really it’s too cold. He’s an argumentative drunk filled with self-love and loathing for almost all people. He’s to leave, not me. I own the shabby chic condo in a part of town that once was up and coming; striving to be Ocean Isle City’s Tribeca when it couldn’t even be Greenpoint, Brooklyn at the top of the bubble.
I know my weaknesses. I like liquor, men, make up and clothes, probably in that order. No men should be last but unfortunately needed.
Jerry thinks he’s still in charge. He thinks it’s life like it was at the turn of the Millenium when he had a wife and he had me. He had money and a career also. I liked him then. Once a month he would fly down for a long weekend. My job consumed just enough of my attention to let me go to Hatter’s,most nights.
Hatter’s a bar you would be laughed at if you asked for a tini drink. Martini’s at Hatters were always no name vodka straight up. The food was edible and sometimes wonderful.
I liked my life in Ocean Isle City on the coast of Florida. I had been a cougar since I was 28 and loved a 20 year old boy. Younger men made me feel alive. They would always obey me.
He’s younger. But what’s 45 when you’re 55? Jerry wants me to wither; to marry him so I cant be compelled to testify against him. He needs me to testify for him as his ex is planning on telling all.
I won’t help a man who out Madoffed Madoff. I let him drink and rage all he wants. For I know before midnight the FBI will be here to take him to jail.
Yeah he’s to leave not me. My karma will let me live the life I like. Bye bye Jerry
Thommy G does the words for 3WW. He’s one of my favorite bloggers as everything from his “outdoor column” for his city’s newspaper to his flash fiction is worth reading. I did 3WW for the first time in a long time but don’t know if I will link to it as I don’t know if I will be able to comment. Frankly it’s beautiful out and who knows when we’ll see warm weather again? Then that write a book in 30 days thing is happening. I’m not participating as I’ll be in New York for eight days but am trying to write 50,000 words in the next two weeks minus the a week plus the first two weeks in December. My own personal whatever….And really October would have made the perfect month. No major holidays until the last day. Nobody travels to visit the relatives on Halloween. Unless they throw one incredible party.
Thanksgiving is the only holiday that almost all people in the USA celebrate because really we’re all grateful to live in this country. I began a new life this past year. I’m very very thankful.
This is 3WW. Try it!
I meant to link to Etan Patz I know even his family believes him dead and are 99% percent sure who did it. Strangely the irrational romantic in me harbors hope. Manhattan is like a small town in many ways and I worked with several people who knew the Patz family. There were so many stories, rumors and yes horrible stories about the parents people later regretted telling.
New York, late May 1979
The missing signs seemed to be everywhere. At first they shocked her. She had never seen so many, and they had always been for some teenager who probably ran away or an older person who lost his way, perhaps intentionally.
But these were for a seven year old boy, Etan Patz. His mother let him walk part way to the bus stop alone for the first time and never saw him again.
The summer of Sam had happened two years earlier. Now it was the late spring of Etan. She, like Etan and his family lived in Soho. In school a few years earlier somebody did a study of residential patterns in Soho. Almost no children lived in Soho then. Now every other block had at least two children.
Her boyfriend wanted children. They lived in a huge loft that until recently had housed a mens tie company. She didn’t think this was a good neighborhood for children. There were still many factories and some showrooms. She felt too young and too enamored with this new New York that hadn’t existed ten years earlier and was rapidly morphing into a new and exciting city. She wanted to embrace everything,
You couldn’t be timid if you lived in a warehouse district. They didn’t live in Soho proper but further west in Tribeca. Nobody had heard of Tribeca. People thought the buildings dreary but you could see the river from their loft,
Every morning she would walk 55 blocks uptown and three avenues east to her job at a publishing company. Unlike most of the other girls she didn’t have a degree in English but in Urban Studies–both undergrad and grad. The publishing company she worked for was doing a series of books on New York, both its history and today. The publisher believed in the city. So did she.
But that Saturday night/Sunday morning when she and her boyfriend walked home from an early breakfast at the Kiev after a night of dancing they were sobered by the posters and couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible had happened to New York.
Etan Patz was the first child on a milk carton. He went missing 30 years ago May 25th New York was to regain its fiscal standing but something big changed that week. You first noticed it in the missing posters and all the talk about his family. It was only later you realized that kids didn’t run as freely.
I wanted this to be more suspenseful (in the vein of last week) but I, I mean my house is having severe plumbing problems caused by a plumber. I haven’t been able to be out during the week or on Memorial Day Weekend and if I weren’t so certain the new plumbers could fix the problems I would be losing it as the flood is going under my new floors. I can’t imagine what my water bill will be next week. Yesterday I actually updated my house renovation blog today I disputed half the charges on my American Express bill. I’m running out of mindless things to do.
My plumbing problems have been solved. They didn’t have to break into the bamboo. Hate to admit it but there are times I’m so happy to see people from the land of big hair, big nails and everybody is connected–or so they think here about Jersey. I got the owner of the company’s accent down to almost the exact town. He was here Sunday. The master plumber on the job today was from the land of cheese steaks, American Bandstand, and some of the greatest 50’s music.
Tomorrow I’m having the AC inspected and then hopefully….renovation phase one through five will be finished. My vegetable plants are so happy now that water has been restored to the outside.
Here’s 3WW I didn’t mean to write what I did. It just came out.
“Don’t give me that shit,” she said. He stared at her. She seemed so calm as she questioned his authority. She had always did what he asked of her. He was efficient. He knew what was best.
She fiercely cut the tomatoes. He was mesmerized as he watched. Chop. Chop. She seemed to optimize each chop. Chop. Put bowl in sink. Rinse. After she put the bowl in the dishwasher she took a cucumber out of the fridge. He watched her chop it quickly and deftly.
He had never seen a person cut with such precision. Each piece was tiny and perfect. Better than the results from a food processor or mandolin. Not that he had ever seen a person use one. He watched a lot of late night TV ads.
She mixed the tomatoes and cucumbers with a bit of olive oil and vinegar. “Here,’ she said smiling, “Israeli salad made just for you.”
What was she really saying? Was the Mossad coming for him? He wished he hadn’t smoked so much pot. She was better at that than him. Not that he would admit it. She never became paranoid. She never smoked before breakfast, or during the day now that he thought about it.
He looked at her. She had the same mousey hair, pinched face and bad posture that she had since he began keeping her in the cage only letting her out to cook meals for him. He thought she had become more compliant. He would have never let her use the knives if he thought….No, that was his fantasy. She just looked like she belonged in a cage. He had many fantasies all involving her and places she couldn’t emerge whole from.
He watched in amazement as the treacherous bitch stuck one of the knives through his heart and calmly walked out of the room.
As he lay dying he heard her say to somebody: “he’s so gone he probably thinks I stuck a knife in him. Thanks for the LSD. Let’s get out of here.”
“Don’t you want to call the cops?”
“No, I just want my life back. Somewhere far far away.”
I was angry. My first plumbing emergency that I actually had to pay for. Or it might not have been, anyway that was yesterday….
Mothers are usually wonderful people. At least to their families. My mother was perfect, not, but I loved her anyway and think of her many days.
My mother was five foot tall, barely, at her wedding and then again in the last few years weighed 80 pounds.
She was adult. She was mature. In my family you always knew who the mommy was. Though from an early age (mine) she treated me with the respect due a much older person. It’s the way I treat kids I know are hankering to be adult–and they love me even during difficult years, even when older I think in part because of that.
The last five or six years of my mother’s life were difficult. She was frail but her mind was sharp. Sometimes I wished that her mind was a little less….just so she would be less demanding though I knew she would probably be more demanding.
It’s funny to say that in “those days you didn’t talk about aging mothers,” when those days were from 96 to 01. I finished grad school in 96–geriatric social work and really people liked to talk more about dementia, or advanced directives, or basically anything than how to keep a mother independent and at home when she was for intensive purposes blind and frail.
She began only eating in front of my sister and I as table manners were paramount to her. It hurt so much to see an incredibly social person still want to be social but….
The thing was as long as my mother was in this world I knew somebody loved me unconditionally. I knew somebody thought me perfect. I was still the child, though a very adult one, and she was still the mother.
For Mother’s Day we used to give her White Shoulders cologne until she begged us to stop. Then one year she asked for it again. It wasn’t as easy to find. Then there was the Mother’s Day she told us to forget it. My father got real into that and she spoke to none of us for oh maybe eight hours.
My father’s last Mother’s Day he insisted we go to the Catskills to a resort none of us had seen in 20 years. It was fun. My father was healthy or so we and he thought. He just had a feeling and when we have feelings we act on them.
I hate Mother’s Day. People should honor their mothers all year round. We don’t need a Hallmark Holiday basically designed to make all women without children feel horrible.
This was the first time I liked the recession as there were fewer ads in the paper–I DVR everything I watch on TV so…..
But still there are many mother’s I personally like so Happy Mother’s Day.
Just remember I have a birthday in July and don’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day or anniversaries or….God this sounds like a fatal illness.
And I hate all the blogs that celebrate the wonders of mothers with free gifts etc. You can make an impact on a kid without being their mother. I’m not saying that mother’s aren’t the most important people as I think they’re priceless if they don’t impart all their issues onto their kids. Just that Mother’s Day is one day I prefer sleeping through. Neither having a kid nor a mother
I guess I should tell you I bought an apartment in New York in 97 for about the amount I would have spent when we looked in 88. The difference was the building was classier, the apartment more beautiful and more renovated than any we saw but oh so small. Though in my imagination now…
I sold it this past October. I know you thought people lost IQ points for every mile they moved out of the NY/suburb area and had an elaborate formula for the IQ loss, but I could sell my apartment for more money than you would have believed and I saw last year that this past spring summer and fall would probably be the last of the good times.
Though maybe they’re going to come back in a slightly different format. Like a bad TV show remade for a bigger audience.
So much has happened. I wouldn’t know where to start. That’s probably my book.
So let me just say I bought a house. Yes a free standing house–but not being a fool I hired people to do everything. It’s much cheaper here. I moved to South Carolina.
I know you don’t think they let Jews in South Carolina but it was actually the first state to guarantee Jews religious freedom. Yes I know that was a long time ago.
It’s a nice place. I truly like it. My house is perfect for one person who likes both solitude and company. It will be perfect later if I need a roommate or help (and have the money for that–the times they are different than any you imagined in my lifetime.)
I’m one person and while I want schools and things to be great, be real, daddy. Schools in Manhattan were only becoming good in the past fifteen years because of helicopter parents–a mode of parenting you invented. Libraries–we might have the best research libraries anywhere but lending ones…not so good.
I actually like the lending library here. Not that I have joined yet. It’s near my house and I will join after I move two weeks from last Friday. And I want the schools to be good. But I love the low taxes–yes I’m a Dem but…
Our new President talks about redistributing wealth. When I personalize I hate the thought. Everybody we know is educated and to some extent a have. Shouldn’t more people be? I don’t buy the notion that many or most people are meant just to be clerks at Wal Mart. This subject is too complex for me right now daddy and I hear you arguing with me in the background…But I know that you believed people should have opportunities and I do believe President Obama means the same.
I’m burnt daddy. Being audited. I know you taught me never to fear the IRS and I don’t but the paperwork’s a bitch. And my frigging lawyer from the apartment sale in New York still hasn’t sent me the paperwork and I need it if I’m going to do my taxes on time, and you betcha I’m going to have them into the accountant before I move. Though getting my taxes to him a year ago plus a week might have caused this problem.They were very complicated and that week was the first leg of my move. The Bear went under that weekend; I didn’t know if I could sell my apartment.
I honestly didn’t think that if a brokerage house folded into another brokerage house the first brokerage house still has to send you a 1099. And four fifths of the things they asked for they have–under the names listed on my 1099’s. So I’m freaked but not overly. It’s just I wanted this time to be stress free. Or just a bit because life without stress isn’t supposed to be good.
Uh brokerage houses. I hate to tell you what happened to most of your favorite ones. You wouldn’t believe it. As I said Bear Stearns well didn’t really fold but is a shell of itself. When my apartment was in contract Lehman Brothers did fold. There’s so much you wouldn’t believe. Frank Rich who used to be the theater critic explains how much we have all changed. It’s an incredible article and sort of sums a lot up. From theater to OpEd. Life is one big stage, and Frank Rich’s the one man I would hunt down and marry if he weren’t already.
You had your stroke on 3/26 which happened to be your 52nd wedding anniversary. Poor mommy had to live with the best of days and the almost worst of days being one and the same for a decade. You died on 3/31–eighteen years ago. You and mommy were bookends as she died a decade later.
My 90’s the decade of my discontent for many reasons–including many that had nothing to do with you or mommy began on 3/31/91 and ended on 10/14/01.
Maybe next time I will explain blogging to you and how in various ways it remade my life.
My house renovation blog. I was surveying my property; (my tenth or so of a very irregular acre) looked at something and began squealing. “I’m officially a Redneck. Yahoo–Mountain Dew.” Actually I didn’t put that last part in. My coming out as a Redneck made Eldin One and Bone both very happy. They’re Southern so….
I can’t remember the last time I did 3WW I should be moving, into my house, in a week or three and hope to have the mental energy and physical time to truly participate occasionally in blogging things.
Alana practiced smiling in the mirror. She wanted her smile to appear genuine but not as glowing as her normal smile. A slightly tipsy though highly functional Mona Lisa was the effect she desired. After half hour her mouth hurt but she thought she had it down. Burt’s Bees Wax applied liberally to her teeth and gums kept her lips from drying out and more importantly her mouth moist enough for her to talk normally. She didn’t want to have dry mouth this morning. No that would be almost as bad as no smile or her 100 watt one.
Fortunately nobody was in the elevator. She smiled and waved at the doormen as if she were too busy to speak to them for she was. Idly she wondered when her building would become a one doorman one, instead of two most hours. Union rules precluded a reduction in hours. About one tenth of the building residents weren’t paying their monthly charges; another 20% were becoming chronically late and none of the luxe two to five million dollar apartments for sale were moving.
It only took her 22 minutes to walk the 33 blocks south and four avenues east. Being oblivious to people she bumped into helped. Alana ran into the ladies room that didn’t look as if it belonged in the gorgeous art deco office complex. Her face wasn’t too red, but she put some more rosacea cream on. It wasn’t as if Alana had rosacea; her best friend did. Alana’s motto had always been: “you could never have too much make up or skin care products.”
Oh life, why was she going to have to change a lifetime of habits? Could she? Fortunately she still looked great in red lipstick. She had bought many Chanel reds over the years and kept them fresh in her dressing room tiny fridge. Yes she liked this affect. Pale skin, red lips, dark eyebrows and lashes. Alana knew she looked very 40’s retro.
She wondered what would happen in the auditorium the meeting was going to be held in. Would there be a ramble? No, unfortunately, the others, like her were too civilized to duke it out.
Do you call a large room with seats and a stage in an old classy complex an auditorium? The meeting notice had called it a conference room but it sat 500. The meeting was supposed to begin at ten AM. Alana arrived at 9:45, smiling her Mona Lisa type smile. The room was packed. Her sister and cousins were sitting in one of the front rows. Her cousin Tony waved frenetically at her and pointed to an empty seat next to him. Oh Tony, was he going to be a drama queen to the end?
The murmur going through the room was becoming louder and louder. Promptly at ten, her own lawyer, walked onto the stage. Hal looked so dignified with his slightly too long hair, custom made suit, Italian loafers. She remembered from the days she knew him more intimately his penchant for silk socks or no socks. Oh half the women in the room had slept with Hal and another quarter wanted to. In the end, he had been too easy for Alana. Still she was proud of him as he began to speak:
Ladies and gentlemen. The wheels of justice have been moving too slowly for you. I can’t tell you what to do or what not to do but I can present Bernie Madoff.”
As one, the formerly dignified people in the audience moved to the stage. “Yes,” Alana thought triumphantly, “we’re going to avenge the loss of our fortunes.”
I don’t live in NY anymore but am a New Yorker through and through. Bernie Madoff perpetuated the largest fraud ever, the Ponzi of Ponzi schemes. To be Madoffed is to be swindled out of your money. Some of us wish we had that excuse but nobody wants to lose their money that way. I and many people I know are overly fascinated with him. He’s so sick among his many many victims were Eli Weisel and his foundation. Not that anybody deserved… I’m so thankful for what I have left–I’m being audited and am preparing my taxes for this year. It’s very sad. Humor is the only weapon
This is the NY everybody dreams of and that sort of existed for me until the 90’s. Coincidentally I lived three blocks and two avenues from The Apthorp; it’s my favorite building and I’m a too well known customer at the Apthorp Pharmacy. Hooks you because it takes insurance and then you buy $60 candles, home perfome, body lotion. OK. Not you. Me. I couldn’t afford my five and ten dollar prescriptions anymore.
Bone wants it known that it’s a great article and the older O’Neal owns my boat basin. Yes I have a personal boat basin in Riverside Park cum cafe that we no longer eat at often as there’s a place at the 70th Street that makes great hamburgers and has sometimes incredible concerts.
Recession blogs are big.
Ms. Maya Hunt was sitting at her computer watching her rapidly dwindling portfolio. She thought she had $600 every day this year in unrealized (not sold) losses. One 07 statement she had to give her accountant showed 200K in (sold, stock or money market fund never to be seen by her again) realized losses. When times get tough…She poured a triple Absolut and thought she should really invest in liquor companies.
Just as she finished pouring the phone rang. Her cousin Madison didn’t even say hello but began screaming about AIG and Warren Buffet. Madison was walking down West End Avenue and couldn’t care less who heard. She hung up and realized Maya hadn’t said a word. Not even “how are you?” Ill mannered her mother had always called that branch of her family.
Madison saw her pot dealer Frankie who kissed her and began talking about how his brother was walking away from a 300K condo loft deposit. When Frankie and Madison parted ways at 97th Street, Frankie saw his clfriend (client friend) Henry. Damn if Henry wasn’t screaming to himself. Nah, he had a bluetooth on.
Henry, an intellectual property lawyer, was on the phone with his clfriend, Neil, who had just had the last of his margin called. He didn’t know how he was going to tell his wife. Henry tried to sound encouraging as he tried even harder to get off the phone so he could buy some weed from Frankie.
Neil bought a bunch of tulips from a Korean grocery and almost fell on the slushy icing up snow, and walked up the 12 flights of stairs. By the time he arrived in the apartment he thought of something to tell his wife but Maya was sprawled on the couch face down, a drink knocked over and an unlit joint in her hand.
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