Thanks Bone for the words.
This is a continuation of the Dinah storie
It was early on one of the longest evenings of the year. Early summer is still fraught with possibilities. The heat hasn’t lingered too long nor has the humidity made its way down to the concrete then back up again. Actually she loved that about summer. Concentrated humidity never failed to amaze and delight her. Unlike most she shone, and not just skin, in hotter than hot temperatures.
She loved getting off planes in the middle of New York winters in some tropical island, the humidity with whatever smells enveloping and folding into each crevice of her body.
But it was New York she craved and not the New York of today. Not a sentimental old fool but a pragmatist she knew the New York she had loved couldn’t be replicated in a city so pricey people were constantly in bad moods. Of course Brooklyn counted but to get to a less pricey section one had to traverse past any die hard New Yorker’s comfort zones.
And then. back in the 80’s, never back in the day, it was different, though felt mundane, the experience one felt walking down Prince or some similar street while catching the attention of some Versace clad, long styled hair tied in a pony tail artist who had made it and his differently clad best friend who would make it exactly four years two months and three days later but of course had no way of knowing that then.
Her name was Dinah. She was to make it in two years two months two weeks and two hours from that early June day so hot businesses with failing AC were closing early. Dinah wasn’t prescient but she kind of knew that success was to be hers if she continued taking photographs, deconstructing them, adding paint and little stories. Though she knew that wasn’t what she going to be famous for but short stories that talked about life in this city.
Now she was older and divorced from both the Versace clad artist and his best friend.
“If I have no attention span”, she asked her therapist one day, “how am I too remain interested in any man?”
Though Dinah was known for her iconic use of irony the question wasn’t ironic but one she asked everybody. As a young girl she had jumped from project to project, interest to interest. Unlike many she never had to worry about money and for that she was grateful.
In the 80’s there were the obscenely rich as exemplified by Gayfryd and Saul Steinberg, and the merely wealthy who never flaunted their money but took full advantage of it by traveling far and wide and recovering from such jaunts at The Breakers in Palm Beach rather than Miami.
Dinah had been a rock star’s wife in the 70’s. Dinah had loved the life, the constant touring suited her temperament and ADHD if they were different. She never minded the groupies, and found each rumor about her husband to be sexually stimulating. She hadn’t left after their second marriage because she was bored, out of love, or for any of the usual reasons. She had left because she craved something uniquely hers. Quite possibly that was the usual reason and the cliche of the 70’s.
“Shake, rattle and roll,” Dinah loved old rock & roll. Her interviews with pioneers of rock had become a staple in Rolling Stone She wasn’t content with the interviews They were too easy. She could listen to the music, listen to both the lyrics and the music and feel it in her bones. The questions just came flowing out, and the spontaneous answers worthy of recording.
Her coffee table book, Shake it! was unexpected in 78 and probably the first time Dinah really made it but it was too simple.
Only now in her 50’s when Dinah came to New York to see friends or on business did she appreciate simple
This is Gay Pride weekend in New York and many places. If I don’t write about–many of my best friends died before becoming 35. I prefer to think of them before the monster that ruined so many lives. In a way I live in a fantasy world where everybody lived to be old
Sex is wonderful. Keep it safe. That goes for everybody.
I had a page about non verbal learning disorder. Oh sweet irony of life, it didn’t work. This is an old post about what life’s like with it.
This is another
The thing is when you have a neurobiological disorder it truly angers you when people say that everything can be solved by living in the moment and by other self help methods.
My life has been easier than many as I have loving friends. family and some resources. But I had to figure out what was wrong. I deprived myself of so much and still am not a bitter person. That’s a miracle and I do feel blessed.
I’m just beginning to get back into form. This is a pure exercise and a continuation of the Dinah stories. God knows why but I’m in love with names like Dinah and Delilah. The title is really for a longer story. I haven’t written that part yet but have it in my head. I’m also in love with the character Dinah as there’s so many places I can go with her.
Alway lovely once and tiwce and I imiagine three times.
It is not strange then that you ended up on South Carolina,loving names like Dinah and Delilah.
Alway lovely once and twice and I imagine three times.
It is not strange then that you ended up on South Carolina,loving names like Dinah and Delilah.
Exceptional writing here. Descriptive and lively. And as always, the opposite of cliched.
It ended and I wanted it to keep going.
Sadly nostalgic, yet realistic. Real life comes out.
I had read this before but I still love the feeling of longing nostalgia.
Please don’t stop writing…I love this blog.
b
Oh by the way. I think that ADHD=brilliant in many cases!!! So Dinah just rocks in my world!