Caste Party

A few weeks ago I found a set of keys on Madison Avenue.  Actually, it was a Louis Vuitton key ring with several sets of keys attached-- way too big for anyone's pocket, and it was 11:30 PM.  I looked around-- there was an upscale restaurant 2 doors away; maybe someone was getting into a taxi and they fell out; you'd think they might notice-- there were enough keys to open every door in an average apartment complex.  So I went into the restaurant.  Of course, I was wearing my usual neighborhood going-to-the-gym attire-- old sweats and a hoodie.   The bartender and hostess gave me the frozen smile; a very curt 'no, no one lost their keys.'  The bum's rush.  Maybe, I suggested, you want to make a discrete table-to-table announcement.  Most of the remaining diners looked a little loosened and relaxed.  Maybe you should keep them here, in case someone should call in, looking.  But nothing doing.

So I stalled a bit-- paced up and down the block, looking for dog walkers, anyone who seemed searching for lost objects.  And nothing happened.  I went into a nearby building, spoke to the super and doorman who seemed disinterested, left my phone number.  Next day, fully 24 hours later, I got a call from the super who said there were posted signs along the block asking about a set of keys.  I went back to the scene,  took down the number, went back home (I still don't carry a cell) and left a voicemail.  Next morning I get a call from a woman who happens to be a household-name real-estate superstar-- we see her on television all the time, literally… and she is in Palm Springs, showing some property, but she must have dropped her keys while she was getting into her chauffeur-driven car… on the way to her chartered flight-- and she just KNEW someone would have picked them up because isn't it such a fantastic neighborhood I live in?  And please drop them at HER restaurant-- where the employees two nights ago had let me know with their eloquent body language that even 60 seconds was wearing out my welcome in their establishment.  Her driver will pick them up.  End of conversation.  No thank you… no 'what is your name'?  Nada.

Before I make my drop, I look on her website at the several exclusive listings she, Mme. Chairman, is showing personally… a 5th Ave. penthouse, 2 triple sized mansions near the Metropolitan Museum, and 3 or 4 neighborhood brownstones.  Yes, the numbers are labeled on each set of keys.  Here I am, with access to the richest homes in upper Manhattan-- a free pass-- information that could make any of these owners cringe or withdraw their multi-million dollar properties from this superstar with the slippery fingers who was undoubtedly too busy with her iPhone and her champagne glass-to-go to notice that she'd left a thief's winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk.

I am careful not to overdress for my return trip to drop the keys with the hostess who is equally smile-less when I approach her.  I drop the first name of her boss, tell her the driver will retrieve them.  Does she apologize or offer me a Bellini, a slice of their famous tiramisu, a glass of wine?  She does not.  Do I rat out her snotty attitude to her boss?  I did not.  She is, after all, despite her dress and perfect hair, working class like me, and who knows what favors she's had to perform to get this job which puts her in direct line-of-sight of the eligible playboys of Madison Avenue, married and single?

And that is the end of my little upper-east-side good-samaritan fractured fairy-tale of the month.  And of course, this woman wouldn't stop to think that I haven't had a restaurant meal in literally years, that I had to stretch when my son was a teenager to satisfy his appetite for pizza but mostly I scrimped and economized and my weekly food budget was equal to maybe an average appetizer in her restaurant.  My Dad wouldn't stop to think, when I gave him a gift and he tossed it, that I'd had to forego something that month-- not just a luxury, because there are no luxuries-- but something like a metro card, which means walking everywhere for a couple of weeks--- not so bad, but time-consuming.

In 1976 I found a wallet in a late-night taxi.  As the driver dropped me off, I told him I'd call the owner; there was a driver's license and we had paper phonebooks in those days.  I spoke to someone; gave my address… a man picked up the wallet next day, and left an envelope.  I opened it.  The wallet had belonged to the great Paul Simon.  The note said thank you, with 3 crisp $50's.  That was a week's pay back then.

Have times changed?  Have we forgotten about people actually walking and talking and courtesy and compassion and humanitarian kindness, appreciation, gratitude?  Not that we do things to be thanked, or for 'credit' or reward.  It is just a simple acknowledgment.  A tiny debt to repay-- so easily-- with just a smile or some words.  Would the current version of Paul Simon have his assistant text me or leave me a ticket for a performance?

The dirty little secret about New York City now is that there is an existing caste system.  There are instant start-up millionaires and lottery winners, but for the most part, it's a sort of a boys' club or hedge fund.   For the underdogs it's incredibly difficult to manage to buy even a tiny apartment anywhere.  For the honest working class, there is a lot of hard work and not so many rewards.  Illness or a catastrophe wipes us out, costs us a home, dignity.  For those on welfare, it's a different story.  People with benefit cards take life a little more for granted, and if they feel like using a high-interest  credit card to buy an engagement ring they can't afford, so be it.

I took my boyfriend to a special birthday dinner one year; he was dying to eat at Cafe des Artistes before it closed.  I worked extra days, hours… made the reservation… we dressed to the nines.  I memorized the menu, dreamed about what I'd eat… and when we both put in our orders, our tired waiter informed us there was no lamb or fish left… in fact, there was really only the chicken and the pasta.  I literally wanted to cry.  I could scarcely eat, and had a terrible night.  We quarreled.  I felt defeated and pathetic and cranky.  Unfinished.

Corporations have blocks of season tickets for sports.  Box seats.  For me, when my son was small, it was an enormous sacrifice to get us birthday Knicks tickets.  The seats often sucked and once there was a drunk heckler next to us who spilled beer and ruined the night.  Sometimes there was a column blocking the court so we'd have to keep our heads going side to side and missed half the action.  If you're a celebrity you get an unobscured view.  Sometimes you don't even show up.  Somewhere in the stadium is a kid in an upper deck who will never again see a game, live.  He will remember this game for the rest of his life, even though he can scarcely make out the players because his Mom doesn't have binoculars.

On 9/12/2001, the day after 'the' 9/11, we were called in to play music in Times Square… mostly for the exhausted firemen and policemen who came uptown for breaks.  They were whacked and messed up and ate listlessly in their heavy gear while they listened to our blues.   There were a few tourist families stranded in New York City on aborted vacations-- one especially who befriended me.  They'd come from Kingston, Jamaica, using their life savings to take their 3 young children to see the Lion King.  The kids knew every lyric to every song.  Of course there was no performance-- there was no return flight.  They were stuck in a hotel they might not be able to pay for, for an extra week… they'd run out of money and were living on hot dogs.  I got them what I could from the kitchen… the kids drank cokes.  They never sat down-- they couldn't afford to order-- but the music was free.  And they danced-- night after night-- the parents with each other, like a couple, face to face, or with the kids, as they could, with soul and love.   The children enjoyed the music; they called it 'the party'.  Finally, after about a week,  flights resumed and they left.  I think of them every 9/11,  along with the first responders and the victims… the sadness… I see them in the lasers at night, dancing.   The children are grown now… a tiny minor financial tragedy after-ripple of the 9/11 disaster… Really non-remarkable, but in their lives assuredly the experience they will remember and relate to their grandchildren.

My son used to ask me if poor people are happier than rich people.  I think they are, subtracting the bitterness. In cultures without this urban 'caste' system-- without the Tiffanys and the $1,000 football tickets-- it's easier.  But I will never forget the tiny girl from Kingston, with her colored barrettes and dreadlocks, and her little plastic Lion King charm bracelet, leaning against my knees, plucking my bass on the break, rocking her head back and forth, singing to me softly 'It's enough to make Kings and Magga-bonds (sic) believe the very best'.

Temporary Beauty

Satur-days I am in Chelsea.  Way west, toward Chelsea Piers, the gentrification is extreme.  Commercial square footage is among the priciest in the city now, and the extravagance of the mandatory volume requirements (i.e., vast empty space) in these galleries and occasional fashion boutiques flaunts money.  But for me, it's a proverbial walk in the park-- especially at 11 AM, before the crowds.

Most of the art these days is predictable or pretentious.  The best of it is studenty and overpriced.  Something must pay these rents.  That means you, Mr. 21st century trendy collector with the decorator and the art advisor with the birkins and Balenciaga and absolutely no sense of 'context' or taste.  There used to be a benchmark.  Go to any estate sale at an auction house these days--- there are the 'A' level works of art-- the eccentric furniture and porcelain objects, like an inanimate 'menagerie'-- lush carpets, jewelry… some hideosities and mistakes--but the sense of a personality--- the sense of passion and a point of view.  Of things cherished and used-- of a life.  Not so these days:  apartments look cold and excessively under-decorated.  Furnishing priorities are design, status and then comfort. The paintings are awkward and uncomfortable in their environment--- like they are waiting to be resold.   Like the exhibitions, these works of art have the permanent vibe of the Temporary.

Whatever.  Among the 'shoppers' and tourists in Chelsea there are also the rich young dwellers of these overpriced apartments and loft-like condos which are selling like caviar hotcakes in a city where one million dollars no longer 'cuts it'.  They are buyers or renters of this transient art which has become the biggest status symbol of all.  On Saturday mornings the young handsome fathers are out with their kids--- with the scooters and the bikes and the painted skateboards and the designer hoodies and hats.  They look slightly hung over and exhausted--- yesterday's club kids having to get up on the nanny's day off and 'feel' fatherly.  Many of them have dogs-- these distract and lighten their load with the kids who are often annoying and cranky.  This is their 'day'.  All week they have to follow pre-school rules and vie for their nanny's approval.  But all bets are off today.  They are going to milk their exhausted Dad for everything.  Of course there is always shopping-- a new toy or a $9 cupcake pacifies for long minutes… but nothing compares to a meltdown or a tantrum outside of Comme des Garcons.

Yesterday one of these Dads was lighting up against a 22nd St. wall.  He was boyish and handsome, his shirttails out… his hair uncombed, his face unshaven in that charming way.  His 5-year old daughter was poised perfectly on her Razor, designer helmet on, blond hair cascading down, shiny and smooth… but his 3-year old… was laid out on the sidewalk--- screaming, pounding.  Ohhh yeah, I am thinking, as the father actually pleads with me-- Help.  What do I do now?  I note the absence of a wedding ring.  This, I don't say, is what you get for cheating on your wife.  She has stuck it to you now.  No more weekends… your youth is going to be eaten up with tantrums and toilet training and teachers whining about your lack of participation and manipulative teenage drama.  And not only that.  He is thinking---we had this baby--- this perfect little angel, here.  Magazine-ready.  Looks great in clothes-- sings like a young Beyonce.  So… we go for another.  This is the Manhattan baby competition.  And the second one--- colicky, cries all the time, has sensitive skin, constant diaper issues-- up all night… all the ingredients of a potential high-school nerd.  You go for cocktails after work… you flirt with your co-workers, come home.  Weekends you feel guilty that you 'love' one child more than the other.  And you-- you're the Dad… the girls go shopping, you're stuck with the baby boy.  He doesn't like you either.  He prefers the nanny.  So do you.  Your wife's best friend hints about it… and now you've got 2 pricey apartments, and no more free Saturdays.  You're even losing your urge because it's no longer a quickie and a cheat, it's another potential baby craver.

Yeah, I had one of those husbands.  I mean--- I could smell it on him-- the okay, now I have everything I ever wanted---the wife I craved, the baby…and now… for my next….  And the thing is--- I felt this too.  I felt the 'what now' claustrophobia and restless malaise.  So I left.  I let the guy off the hook.  And I took the child with me.  I didn't want my baby boy to have tired cranky Saturdays with a father who craved a bottle in the same way his son needed one.

The Chelsea father joined me on my art jaunt.  I carried the 3-year old.  He just needed a little bit of love.  A cookie.  His mother.  His Grandma.  I could do this…I was going home, going to a gig… no kids, no nagging wife, no parental angst-- not these days.  Sure--I have plenty of guilt.  I'm sure my son could tell tales about his deprived youth, although that is unlike him…and I did not actually have the second, less magical child.  I did have a pregnancy-- a daughter-- with a young lover who wanted me but not really the child.  We didn't plan it, but this is a consequence of love and passion, as every teenager knows.  And once you have an actual child, the act of terminating becomes more weighted.  Besides, I wanted a daughter so much… maybe in a selfish way-- the sister I never related to,  my alter ego-- my companion in female crime, my kitchen helper, my fashion consultant, my back-up singer… There I was, Ms. cool single Mom with the sexy young boyfriend, 4 months pregnant still wearing my tight yellow and black checked vintage pants and jumping around with my bass onstage… and it went on and on--- my young lover didn't want to share me, but he couldn't leave… the pregnancy goes on… miraculously-- has its own life---you are radiant and curvy and ripe, and those biological conversations you have with your unborn child-- like no intimacy you will ever experience with any man or person…

Months passed… and after a strange accident on the subway, and a few days of worry, everything seemed fine--- until an early labor pang… and I found I had to give birth to a perfect little girl who was too perfect for my world.  It is an unbearable loss.  I never had a funeral, or a service, and standing there with this father on Saturday, holding this strange miserable little boy-- I relived my dilemma.  Maybe I felt I didn't deserve closure.  How could I celebrate my grief, when I failed this baby in the way that this father was failing his son… somehow--- I was so cavalier and took things for granted--- my adorable son.. and now he would have this perfect sister-- little Edie was her name-- she would have braids and a rag doll… I could see her in the sonogram, sucking her little elegant fourth finger, just the way I did… she was graceful and talented… and now she was a loss, a failure--- an angel, a provider of perfect little organs for other newborns, a giver… and I was the loser, the mourner, the lady in black.

The father asked me for my number.  I gave him a look… he needed a mother, too.  A friend.  I don't have a phone, I said.  I'm not letting him off the hook, even though I'd like to… even though I let my husband off the hook because I couldn't bear having him look at his son with this utter disappointment which wrecks kids.  And my little Edie…  who never disappointed me;  it was I who disappointed her.  Still, after all these years, I pray every day that her little rag doll spirit has been born into some island culture where children aren't competitive possessions and eating disorders and plastic surgery and Coachella is not on the agenda.  As for me--- I have a newborn-shaped hole in my heart which is quite permanent, at least in the temporary context of my so-called life.

Say Graceland

Tonight I phoned one of my old downtown rocker friends.  He’d been having his share of small personal tragedies, and trouble finding work.  We’d spoken about putting our old band back together.  So it turns out, he’s actually in LA—renting a place in North Hollywood with a pool and a Jacuzzi for $600 a month, which for the uninitiated buys maybe an unfurnished week in an average cramped dumpy light-deprived roach and roodent-infested NYC apartment.  ‘There are people here,’ he tells me.  ‘There are Marshall stacks and a Goth scene.  You don’t have to take a 45 minute train ride to Canarsie to hear a goddamn band.  Manhattan is dead.’ 

Of course I am a born-and-bred New Yorker who has sacrificed everything to own my tiny piece of real estate.  I always maintained that anyone who disses my city is a sour-grapes loser.  But tomorrow is the annual coop meeting where I will have to sit with the outcasts and over-80 tenants  and vote in a bloc against the hedge-fund assholes and bankers who’d love to turn this classic pre-war into a resort.  Gut the whole damn thing--- out with the old.  I am getting to the age where the Starbucks baristas aren’t so cheery about pouring my free venti refill, the grocery boys don’t jump to open the door; they sit and watch while I struggle with my personal economics.

The corporatization of New York is an old story; the face-lift-- -the weed-like overgrowth of  21^st-century context-less buildings which have really altered the logic of the old plan.  It’s a little bit Hong-Kong-y--- maybe trending toward Dubai?  Whatever… maybe this city is becoming a hideousity--- like an architectural Donatella Versace.  I mean—20 years ago, I was incensed by Starbucks—now that’s the least of my worries. 

I’m not quite ready to jump my old ship—but that phone call tonight was sort of the first indication that maybe, just maybe, my dream has become my albatross… that whatever we are struggling for here in this center of the cultural universe--- maybe it has already left, or been chased away.  It’s true, there is no rock and roll in Manhattan.  There are only versions of original bands, and then the tribute shows.  Nothing is real. 

I always hated LA.  I tried to move there way back with my rockstar husband.  I had no drivers license and I couldn’t find a bookshop I liked.  I couldn’t understand why people wanted a star on Hollywood boulevard when everyone knows there are trillions more stars in the universe than people.  Everyone looked like a character in some play; I couldn’t find the Kerouac version and I couldn’t find any grit.  I spent a few nights at the Rainbow…just didn’t fit in.  I missed CBGB’s and the Mudd Club.  Now I’m in New York, ensconced—rooted—and I still miss them.  Maybe while we were all buried in our phones and facebook pages---everyone left… including the music scene. 

He also told me he was hanging out with one of my former bandmates, who left to marry some producer out there.  Apparently her happy posts on facebook said nothing about her domestic misery and failed affair.  Apparently in my little narcissistic world of  writing and desperately trying to ‘keep it real’ musically, I am missing the point of everything.  Maybe I have deceived myself.

I’m listening to Bloomberg now.. these new companies… they are all like a major convoluted explanation for someone to get paid… the concept is a variation on something else… an excuse for making money.. an excuse to get venture capital, hire people, move around like they’re doing something… sell stock, etc…  medical ideas are unaffordable… $140,000 for a pill…takeovers in the ‘medical device’ industry.  Something is wrong.  No one should be taking over.  They should be giving away.  Giving.

I’ve joked that Manhattan is now for the billionaires and those that serve them:  the sycophantic celebrity-sucking nouveau middle class.  So yes, the irony of stars being a dime a dozen---or less—but it seemed, 50 years ago, that people were distinct--  that they looked like who they were--- they were unique.  Even in fashion--- voiceless models were unique: there was Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton—Penelope Tree.   Now all these blonde vegan froth actresses maybe started out looking like something, but they get their noses shaved down, their skin scraped, their lips plumped, their hair processed.  Black people have straight blonde hair.  At least 10 actresses look exactly like Jennifer Lopez.  Or maybe I have cultural cataracts.  Whatever.  I didn’t mix people up back then.  Now I have to look at captions. 

This couple moved into my building.  They were not very good looking:  pudgy and awkward.  The wife had brown frizzy hair and squinty eyes.  Now they have grown thinner and thinner; the husband wears Gucci loafers and combs his hair straight back and has learned that Wall Street slow-strut.  The wife looks like a Pilates instructor.  All the lumps and bumps have disappeared.  Especially the ones on her nose.  Her skin is smooth and her eyes are wide open.  Her daughter’s nose is straight, too—like they had to destroy all genetic evidence of any flaws.  They have matching Balenciaga bags.  Yesterday she was blonde.  Beyonce-blonde.

This woman I know posted on facebook that she’s now homeless.  She came to see me last year with her daughter and granddaughter. People in my building—the staff-- -they questioned me about them.  They asked who they were.  They’re PEOPLE, I said.  People.  My doormen said they looked like trailer trash.  The doorman.  ‘They’re people from the Midwest who have had lives.’  How do I know them?  The real story? I bought something on ebay.  It came broken.  I wrote to the seller and she began writing to me.  She listens to my songs and reads my poems.  She comments.  She’s interested.  So she rented a car and drove here.  ‘They have bedbugs, these kind of people,’ my super said.  Fuck you, I didn’t say.  I own this place.  They would like it if I didn’t own, but we’re stuck.  The thing is--she looks like someone, this person.  She looks unique…the way I did, the way everyone did before they realized everything could be fixed.  What if someone decided to flatten the world?  To shave down the mountains and fill in the ditches and oceans…so it would be easier to ‘mow’?  Well that’s what’s happening here…people look generic.  Hair is generic.  You can change everything--- your face, your body, your age, your hair texture…you can put on 8-nch heels and look tall even if you’re stout and pudgy with short legs… so suddenly a piglet is a gazelle.  It’s messed up.  Like those toys where you put the dog head on the gorilla body.  We can do this now.  We can get an Alec Baldwin face on a popsicle body.  You can be 4 ‘2” and have Charlize Theron’s face… or at least her make-up.  I see about 50 people a day who look exactly like Tyra Banks.  Beyonce.  Who the f- is she? Show your ID.  Shake it.  Double shake it like you do.  That’s Beyonce Knowles.  Another fake name. 

Maybe Manhattan is just the fat-Elvis version of what used to be New York.  People like the fat Elvis.  Just not this person.  

My neighborhood poet today was wearing a down coat and sunglasses.  It was overcast and 80 degrees.  She was pre-occupied and shuffling.  Please, I wanted to say--- don’t leave me.  I look down--- my shoes are so out of style they could possibly be cool in LA.  My clothes are shabby and I’m a version of myself that might be my own fat Elvis.  

Another friend who moved to Nashville just called and asked me to overnight him  a pastrami sandwich.  Since the old Second Avenue deli has gone,  I looked on the internet to find out where to get the best pastrami, just in case he was serious.  Turns out it’s in Nashville.  Nothing is real.  Say Graceland.  

Oh Well....

For those of us with insufficient air conditioning in Manhattan, the first summer heat wave comes with an extra sense of suffocation.  Atmospheric claustrophobia.  People who live in smallish apartments tend to share dreams of opening a closet into a barn-like studio space, or an unexpected ocean view revealing itself through a secret window---or the ceiling suddenly rising...  we've been here before.  95 degrees and above is like an inversion of this.  You close your eyes and feel the collapse.

I've been reading a Murakami novel in which the protagonist, having listened to a terrifying tale of a soldier trapped for weeks in a deep narrow well, has taken to lowering himself for prolonged periods into just such a neighborhood well, where all sorts of fears and revelations take him into a new strange dimension of existence.

I do personally wander into such holes-- some emotional, some philosophical-- for whatever dark reason, and have become recently fascinated by the concept of minimal existence.  Economically speaking, this is a way of life; but physically--- well, vampires shut themselves into coffins... and some New Yorkers, according to a certain interior design blog, reside and flourish in an actual closet space.  I suppose this is the ipod-nano version of real estate-- appealing, as is minimalism in general, but I wonder, like the million songs trapped inside a tiny plastic rectangle, whether our intellects are as compressed as the tiny nano digital music files...   life in a cheap download, zip-filed virtual space.  What is going to happen when those virtual 'goggles' become as common as iPods, and we are all able to exist in a palatial environment, in our own tiny closet-beds?  Will Manhattan property values decrease?  Will my neighbors leave me alone and credit me for starting the trend of downsizing well ahead of my time?  Will the spatially obese see the spatially anorexic with new eyes?

We may be legislated into giving up our super sized drink cups.  Does this mayor not realize some of us economically challenged parents  buy these to distribute among 4 or 5 kids?  Is this yet another indignity to distract the already-punished from peering into the monster garages and liquor cabinets of the J.P. Morgan boys who have lost more money in a week than some African countries have seen in the entire 20th century?  Why not limit the size of allowable personal bank accounts, instead of hiking subway fares for us poor schmucks?  Trim the mountains of economic fat the bankers have not just scarfed up but hoarded.  10-gallon-sized cups of liquid gold that is poisoning their hearts.  Let them all eat precious-metal cake at $1,600 an ounce because they have health insurance.  The expensive kind.

I took a walk down Fifth Avenue Sunday and the crowds of eager shoppers were like nothing I've seen before in Manhattan.  Lines to get into Abercrombie which rival the Christmas Santa lines at Macy's.  For what?  The privilege to stand on line to buy mall-quality merchandise in the most expensive real estate in the world?  I don't get it.

Then again, I still don't have a cellphone.  "How can you live?" a young man asked me the other day.  How can you live without stacks of books and art and Beethoven and Leonard Cohen records and an old leather jacket, I wanted to ask him in return, but I shrugged.

My son called last night with new romance issues.  My niece, too, was waiting for a text from a boy she likes.  Personally, I can live without immediate answers.  The guy in the well took his watch with him, but couldn't actually see the time without light.  I like this.  So..."Does he like me?" my niece wants to know, while she is texting another person and reading an incoming message.  The nano-affair in the nano-phone screen... 3 texts and it's sex... 3 texts and it's over.

I don't know if I would want to know about love anymore.  I don't really always want to answer the phone in my house... I don't want bad test results and I don't want to know if there is really salvation at the end and whether it will hurt when I die or how much money I have in my bank account.  At least I want to filter when the answer comes.  I want to open the letter slowly, by candlelight, or let it sit on the windowsill for a few days.  I want to admire the stamp and feel how fat the letter is-- -whether my lover has taken time to explain things, to confess.  I want to feel the space of time because there is little time in the space I occupy here, and the long summer days are feeling just so short and precious.  I don't want to know how hot it is or what time the sun will rise, or how many scorching days I must endure in my darkened apartment with old things in it which have seen many, many lifetimes and are patient.  'Well...'..I said ominously to both my son and my niece who have no idea I am reading Murakami in this heat with the Mogwai soundtrack in my head and cavernous dreams without walls waiting for me in my existential bed.