Ficciones

My father was a great dancer.  He had athletic grace and the kind of poise and balance that made him a good tennis player.  The legend was that before the war, he'd worked upstate at the upscale resorts-- rolling out courts, teaching tennis... while at night he'd be paid tips to dance with the widows and spinsters.  Growing up, he and my Mom shone at weddings, events, and holidays... whenever there was live music they'd be demonstrating all the traditional 1940's and 50's ensemble routines. Graced with that extra marital intimacy vibe, stepping and spinning like young professionals, they looked to us like movie stars, not parents.

When my mother had dementia late in life and the television became her companion, she loved Dancing with the Stars, although the anticipation was way more engaging than the actual show.  I think she liked the music, and repeating the show title. She had always had a predilection for songs about stars-- When You Wish Upon a Star, Catch a Falling Star and Put it in Your Pocket, Starlight... she'd play and sing with the sheet music in her funny little voice.  She used to read to us at night-- a book where there was a girl named Star and that was her favorite.

My first experience with altered realities was following my BFF's instructions on holding deep breaths until we fainted. It was like inhaling glue; we put on a Hendrix album and passed out... the record was on the last track when we came to, in a sort of musical backward swirl.  It was a dangerous little experiment but I literally saw stars.  I guess I was about 13/14.  It stayed with me. It also scared me.

This week I was trying to distract myself from the depressing political news, and turned on the TV.  In my mother's honor I tried Dancing with the Stars.  It was shockingly lame.  Just a stageful of B and C level celebrities, most of whom I barely recognized, trying desperately to invent themselves as some sort of ballroom contestant. Literally unwatchable.  Also embarrassing, graceless, mortifying, pathetic.  I mean-- I felt sorry for them all, for different reasons.  Flipping around network television, the game shows, the convoluted reality shows-- it was like the downfall of culture, right there onscreen.  Sad excuses for plots and contests--- who is watching this stuff?  Back to my Indie films and documentary channels.  Break for the republican candidate debate which was equally or more ridiculous.  

I've been re-reading Borges-- always a treat.  The story-telling, the humor- the plots and gaucho/macho heroes-- the sheer Arabian-Nights-variety of characters is entertainment.  And then we have Borges himself.  His autobiographical assessment is candid and humble.  His accomplishments are dazzling, especially considering the genetic blindness that did not eclipse his trajectory; the poise and philosophical grace with which he adjusted... well, it's inspirational. 

What struck me this round is his brutal assessment of his own early work. As opposed to our culture where everyone is shouting out on instagram, he had the taste and intelligence to self-criticize.  He grew, and made sure that his work opened accordingly.  He edited, translated, understood.  The breadth of his literacy is overwhelming. He even cleverly uses Mark Twain to give his opinion of Jane Austen, and pokes fun at his own poetry.  Hungering for the stars-- I remembered that line, from an early poem.  Anyway, I was entertained... only disheartened by the sheer limit of his output, and my failure to grasp much besides English these days. 

I tried to see the really terrible television fare as Borgesian characters... but it was impossible.  Everyone seems to be tarted up, costumed and squeezed into some invented version of themselves. Where are the editors, where is honesty? People who aspire to become president of my country are petty and visionless.  I doubt anyone was listening, and there wasn't much to listen to.  There's this new standard of arguing and word-batting.  Childishness and lack of poise.  I think of my parents dancing as a couple, without the jerking and twerking and graceless posing.  For that matter, any garden-variety strip club has better dancing.  Why is America encouraging these shows?  

It's kind of an irony that we call celebrities 'stars'... in fact it's rather absurd. When we were little we had Winky Dink, an animated little star who spoke to us.  We drew with him on our television screens. My mother loved him, too... or her or them.  I know little of star-gender.

Today would have been Marc Bolan's birthday. Another awesome talent gone too soon. Over and over in my head today 'you got a hubcap diamond star halo.'  A lyric worthy of Hendrix.. . something that transported me, when I was a teenager-- it felt sexy and original.  Dead at 29.  These people took what they had and created things.  Surely he's out there tonight, pushing celestial envelopes and stepping over astral swirls, while my parents perform a quiet tango of forgiveness and we here labor on, praying for some extra-planetary relief.  

The Waitress Said 'Come See Me'

My friends spend altogether too much time reminiscing.  It seemed okay during the pandemic, when we'd call one another and just float time like a newspaper boat in a pond; but now it seems to waste precious moments we could be putting to use-- to age us.

Occasionally my son likes to see old photos of the Manhattan he recalls.  He's still young, so it's not as depressing when we share memories. He thinks he recalls subway tokens-- and I go on about the price of things on old menus and window-displays.  I remember when bus fare was increased to 35 cents.  You needed to come up with that extra dime to throw in the till.  

My first real post-college job was a gallery on 69th Street off Madison.  Every morning I'd buy a coffee and a buttered roll for exactly 35 cents.  I began to walk... to use my bus fare for breakfast. Inside at work we'd all sit and gab about the night before-- the 70's were exciting times in the city-- music, new restaurants... everyone seemed to know where everyone was.  The art shows that changed monthly-- we could cover most of them in a week on our lunch hour-- Castelli, Schoelkopf, Wildenstein, Knoedler, Martha Jackson.

I came back to New York post-college, to pursue a career in art restoration.  I'd worked hard to qualify for an exclusive dual-doctorate program affiliated with the Metropolitan Museum.  Just acceptance here was like an award.  I managed to score a house-sitting gig on the upper east side that first fall... I'd walk across 79th Street mornings and I'd pass this diner-- the kind you saw everywhere in those days, that no longer exist.  I'd look in and see the waitress in her pink dress and her white apron going from table to table with the glass coffeepot, refilling the cups of mostly businessmen with open newspapers and an egg-plate pushed to the side. I'd stare in at this waitress with her hair in a French knot, her efficient white shoes and her white-stockinged legs, like a nurse.  

Meanwhile my brain was memorizing images from 17th-century paintings, and Cathedral details from the Medieval Architecture course.  I was deciphering formulae for the sciences of pigment analysis, X-ray spectroscopy and varnish-removal-- examining textiles and canvas weaves-- identifying geographic provenance from materials... distinguishing forgeries and re-paints from the authentic object.  This fascinated me.  

But more and more I thought about the waitress.  I'd stop behind a telephone pole and watch her through the glass-- her every move and her signature gestures.  I began to envy her, as though my then-boyfriend was her admirer.  Her life-- it was so simple.  I was so broke-- picking up extra jobs, baby-sitting at night, living on cheap supermarket past-sell-date items... walking, borrowing books.  But the waitress--- her apron pocket full of change, she could break-- fix herself an egg-salad sandwich on rye toast (whisky down), smoke a few cigarettes with her coffee, read one of the tabloids a customer had left.  And then she could go home where I imagined she had a neat little studio, maybe a cat-- a plant, curtains.  She could do her nails and watch TV all night-- or meet someone for a drink.  

The academic soup of my life began to sour.  All that work-- four more years after eight intensive undergraduate semesters where I grew and learned and produced.  I couldn't quite imagine myself at the end of the road, applying for a museum position-- spending a decade on a single Rembrandt painting-- analyzing, cleaning, in-painting, repairing.  Who was I, I wondered, with this calling, to examine paintings, to fix things as though I were a doctor-- things that were dead, things that maybe were better off left alone, as they were?  

On the other hand, the waitress served people-- lonely men with bored wives who no longer fixed their breakfast-- single bachelors whose newspaper time before work was the best part of the day-- where for less than a dollar they'd be served exactly what they ordered-- eggs over easy or sunnyside-up, with buttered toast and that wonderful bottomless cup of coffee that washed it down. A quarter for the waitress who provided exactly what they needed.  

My boyfriend at the time was a guitar player.  He worked clubs late hours; I tried to be there, but my class schedule was demanding and a sleep-deprived mind was noticeably inefficient.  On weekends I'd hang out late; after gigs we'd go eat at a diner.  The waitresses flirted with the musicians... at 4 AM it was mostly bands, bartenders... a few drunk party-goers... but the waitresses were like 'home' to these guys. They welcomed them, brought them food, ashtrays, coffee refills.  One in particular was so beautiful... she slipped my boyfriend a note with her phone number.  I found it in his pocket.  She made silver jewelry in her spare time. She looked like Dylan's Susan... the perfect Greenwich Village silhouette.  Downtown girls could wear jeans with their white shirts... they looked good. They were mostly kind to me, except one who had actually slept with my boyfriend.  I tried not to be jealous.

It wasn't exactly the person, it was the simple symmetry of their life. They served, they laughed and talked, they smoked during breaks, they went home with full pockets.  They shared shifts and gossip. They slept all day and woke up to work, like the musicians.  How many songwriters have written odes to them, how many poets-- me included? 

Waitressing doesn't seem to have the romance it did in those days-- when it was like a template for something.  My morning trips past the diner haunted me beyond what was rational; I took a leave from graduate school, and never really regretted.  When I started playing bass in bands, I referred to my gallery job as my 'waitress' gig.  It enabled me to do what I needed to do at night where my life seemed to make sense.

Years later, as a young mother, I spent early mornings with the baby in a local diner, lingering over the breakfast special and looking wistfully at the passing cars. There was a career-waitress there who sat with me during breaks-- she had the deep voice of a chain-smoker and the hard 'r's of a New York accent. Cawfee, she said, and entered soprano-range when she cooed over my son.  I loved her; I trusted her even though she had terrible boyfriends who stole from her and abused her.  She didn't even make it to middle age; she got a brain tumor and suffered.  All those people she served and cared for, smiled at and nicknamed... they disappeared like a pack of cigarettes.  Her drug-addict boyfriend kept her rent-controlled studio for a time.  I saw him pan-handling one afternoon and choked back the urge to smack him.

There should be, among the city statues and landmarks, a waitress figure-- a woman with her hair in a ponytail, or a net-- an apron, a pad and pencil... a menu.  The real symbol of diner-lore, of the city... the person we've sung about and chatted up, the one who changed my life even though I never even spoke to her... who showed me maybe not the path to what I was to become, but the reality of what I was not.