When You Dance

Years ago I had a sexual dream about Donald O'Connor.  He was wearing that horizontal striped shirt Gene Kelly wore in Anchors Aweigh. I woke up feeling hung over and baffled: not only do I dislike stripes anywhere besides bedsheets,  but my male crush-template at the time was maybe Scott Weiland.  

Over the years I've had a few iconic, memorable actual dreams that feel epic-- cinematic-- long, complicated narratives with specific settings and locations that felt like inventions-- all featuring some Hollywood actor-- Brian Keith, in one-- who had no real association with anything or anyone.  I'd wake up feeling-- well, a little surprised... but connected. In high school I'd occasionally have a random dream about some boy I barely knew and then blush when I passed him in the hallway.  Little did he know, we'd shared some private intimacy which would remain part of my psyche. 

Of course, they say the people in our dreams are substitutes, like when we dream about a neglected dog, it's actually about our self. Regardless of where these come from, there's a literal hangover-- we replay what we recall in real time; we are affected. 'A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep...' sang Cinderella on my Disney album soundtrack. Children have nightmares... the lyric was confusing.

I just finished the superb new James Baldwin biography.  James participated in the famed March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech.  MLK had not just a dream but a vision and a moral and social platform.  On a much more personal scale, my son recently realized his 'hoop-dream' of creating an urban basketball platform.  Of course this took incredibly hard work, planning and stress... fundraising, organizing, building, turning small failures into success narratives, and a coming of age. More than a dream, it's a passion he parlayed into a career ambition.  

My father, the war hero, was a fantastic dancer. Not like Michael Jackson or Gene Kelly, but he had incredible grace.  Watching him with my Mom at family weddings and celebrations, they were like movie stars in their own world... waltzing or samba-ing with harmony and skill.  It was sort of a revelation, seeing my parents this way-- transformed.

The US Open always reminds me of my father who was also a superb tennis player.  In fact, his dancing skills were probably honed because the tennis club where he worked as a boy recruited the young single employees to dance with random single women at their evening entertainments. He had plenty of practice, and experience with women in his pre-military career.  I'm sure that helped win my Mom over.  

'Do you love me, now that I can dance?' asked Dave Clark in one of the first 45's in my little collection.  My first real romantic experience was a slow-dance at a summer-camp mixer. I went to an all-girls Catholic camp that year and they integrated us once per season with a boys' camp from across the lake.  It was well chaperoned and the lights were bright, but the DJ put on 'Surfer Girl' and a tall boy held out his arms to 10-year-old me.  I could feel his heart beating, among other things.  But I realized dancing was sort of a physical metaphor. 

'When you Dance...I can really love' Neil Young sang and reinforced this metaphor.  There's an irony-- besides entertainers like Michael Jackson, rock musicians commonly do not actually dance much. Think Dylan, Tom Petty... Clapton, even Hendrix. They move around and weave a kind of sexual veil with their performance but they don't don't do steps. I've dated a few and offstage they can be a little awkward. 

Over years I've thought long and hard about the Donald O'Connor dream... were the initials significant?  Was this a substitute for my father?  As a young girl my father taught me a few steps; this was surely one of the few 'tender' moments between us. Knowing how to partner-dance was a part of our education. I was also sent to ballet-- to tap and jazz and modern dance because it turned out I loved learning steps and the choreographic role-playing.  Not to mention the music.  But dances-- parties-- this seemed to be a much more prevalent courtship ritual in 60's and 70's culture than it is now.  A slow dance with a new crush was a devastatingly sexy experience. I'm dating myself.  My college boyfriend and I loved dancing; it's what brought us together the very first night.  I miss this.

While I can't remember my father ever watching any of my dance recitals (and he certainly boycotted band gigs, lol)... he was very attentive at those of my son's school basketball tournaments he managed.  Although he doesn't really dance, my son shares a kind of athletic grace with his grandfather.  While I never shared my literal dreams with parents, I imagine my father might have been amused by the Donald O'Connor appearance.  I know how they relished watching those musicals...  and besides the Fred Astaire kind, he loved seeing James Brown, Sammy Davis Junior, and later, Michael Jackson. 

All these years later, I recall that old dream like an actual memory. Maybe it was a reference to my father I couldn't understand at the time. I'm trying, years after his passing, to smooth out the rough patches-- not to dance on his grave but to process the legacy with a little remedial choreography and the softer echo of old dreams.

March Sadness

I've binged on basketball this weekend to the point of exhaustion.  My alma mater has slipped into Cinderella-hood with an unexpected victory and I cried out and fist-pumped in front of the screen my son forced me to install way back when he was still competing.  It's fantastic, I must admit.  I am fully committed to the madness, the passion-- the heartbreaking disappointments and the wins-- deserved or not. And it's free.

It was March when I began this blog-- exactly sixteen years ago, with the faint hope that leaving a trail of written crumbs might entice someone to discover a persona I was not quite sure I was. At that moment my son's hoop dreams were real and like a full moon on his teenage horizon.  I was a NYC basketball mother-- no car, but I faithfully subway'ed it to every gym in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan-- to church basements and city parks-- for tournaments, games, competitions.  I yelled my head off and jumped around and embarrassed the hell out of him while he mostly ignored me or referred to me as his grandmother at Riverside Church. Uptown many of the parents were 15/16 years older than their kids... some still had hoop dreams of their own.  

These days he's more of a bettor and an analyst.  He's aged out of playing competitively and he's mature enough to realize his contribution is maybe managerial.  The business of sports has changed, too, since he was in high school.  The stakes are higher, the field is not quite so level. It's complicated, as they say.

March always had a sense of mystery for me-- our Mom read to us at night, and one of her favorites was Little Women.  It didn't occur to me that the March sisters simply had a common last name; it was more of a designation, like the March hare I knew well from repeated Alice in Wonderland narrations.  Beware the Ides of March, I recalled from some rhyme my Irish nanny recited.  We had the piano sheet music for The Funeral March of a Marionette which gave me creeps-- how can you know when a puppet is dead, I asked my sister many times?  

It seemed fitting that I was feeling under the weather this past week. Like a commemoration of the 2020 covid scourge which took my Alan but left me here forever changed.  It was exactly three years since that Ides of March when he'd had symptoms, and mine arrived on St. Patrick's day, like a virus snake.  

Tuesday is the randomly designated beginning of spring.  Today's chill reminded us not to take things for granted.  It occurred to me that my son's father was born in March-- maybe this very day.  Surely there was a time when I baked a cake and celebrated.  The first time I fell in love was March.  But I can't seem to draw it out of the funereal doldrums that ring from its very name.  There will always be an Alan-shaped hole, and terrible pandemic remembrances that sparked a chain of events I could not intercept.  

Like most of these posts, I begin with an idea and stray far enough that I cannot recall my original intent.  Basketball.  Madness.  It's a young sport.  The basket.  It's simple.  Last week in the cold rain there were boys playing in relative darkness on one of the uptown courts.  They were inspired by the tournament, maybe.  They were soaked and the wet ball on puddled pavement was hard to manage.  I stood in the streetlamp shadow and watched them like an old crow. The documentary Hoop Dreams was on some cable channel at 3 AM... I stayed awake until dawn watching.  It was depressing, yes... but also the time-- before cellphones, before the internet-- felt innocent and more real.  The uniforms were funny. The mothers-- the relentless routine of raising children-- the vicarious, deep disappointments... where are they now?

The banks are ailing, the world is in turmoil, but the games go on... Sport, before television, was the true narcotic entertainment of the people.  We go from season to season, from World Series to World Cup to Super Bowl to March Madness.  Admittedly I dread the coming of spring.  I dislike daylight savings time-- I hoard long dark mornings and early sunset... reading by candlelight and the pointy scent of winter starlight.  It occurred to me today, had I stayed in England, today would be Mother's Day.  For the Brits, it maybe sweetens a dark month.  

In the park this evening, a fat red robin stared me down.  He was bold and a little early, I thought.  His breast was the color of blood. If April is the cruelest month, I asked him silently, what can we name March?  If the year was a deck of cards, we'd surely be a black suit. Tonight I watched Gonzaga beat out a heroic TCU.  It was heartbreaking-- they played so hard, the underdogs.  We're all underdogs... there's a rare victory out there if we can find it... and there's tragedy; there's April, with its cruelty, and for another ten days, the richly unpredictable madness of March. 

Nine (nein)

For me there has always been something about the number '9' that brings a kind of recognition.  Yes, it is my birthday 'number', but that always felt more like a synchronicity than a reason for numeral kinship.  I liked the way it looked, the way it mimicked the six, the way it embraced the perfect three threes...  To turn nine years old on the ninth was childhood-sacred (I remember when my little boy turned seven on the seventh).  I was a winter baby and my parties, in those rougher weather-years, were often cancelled because of snow, or flu or chickenpox epidemics.  My Mom made a funny tradition of celebrating my 'half-birthday' on August 9ths.  She'd give me a half-cupcake, half of a card, one bookend-- things like that.

On this day in 1962 I turned 9 1/2... it was a poignant time: the Beatles were getting ready to change pop music.... Kennedy our president.  I was away at summer camp-- a time for reflection, nostalgia, some suppressed homesickness-- and a realization that I 'needed' the city.  I was urban-anemic.   Marilyn Monroe had just suicided which touched me;  Arthur Miller was my great uncle on a side neither of us cared to own, but it made the drama 'real'.   I was already touched with pre-teen 'noir' and heard melodies in my head: Soldier Boy... Johnny Angel... She Cried.  At home, my Mom was listening to Moon River and realizing her housewife dreams were going to have to be supplemented with other things.

At camp we put on an elaborate production of the Wizard of Oz.  I had won the part of Dorothy... we spent long weeks rehearsing and my parents were allowed to visit for the performances.  They filmed everything, although the soundtrack somehow is missing.  The video footage that remains is shocking for me-- I remember being inside that person, but to look that innocent-- with the braids and the little sailor dress-- seems unlikely.  There is a shot of my sister in the front row-- weeping, as I sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  It is the last incident I can recall of my sister showing any heartfelt emotion.  For years I tried to process this as evidence of love, or at least a kind of soul.... but it sits there, like an old tin can in a puddle.

I thought about my half-birthday today--- the way time is telescoping and tumbling forward.   Despite the marks we make, like bent pages in a book, it doesn't much change things.  August was a sad month as a child-- it was full of moons and drifting rainclouds-- drawn-out sunsets and lonely nights at a lake or a beach where I didn't really belong.  I craved library bookshelves and museum walls and subway noise... I missed phantom and real boyfriends... my turntable, solitude.  My Mother died two Augusts ago with little understanding of the world, toward the end.  It is a loss I will never overcome.

The events of this week have tainted August forever for so many families.  On a day when even global warming seems to have taken a breath to let us fathom sorrow... I find it harder to process the relentless juggernaut of violent hatred that seems to breed from the selfish nature of this political climate.  It is as though every senseless act of cruelty and killing has numbed some of us rather than incited reaction.  As a human here-- an aging human-- I feel small and unimportant.  All around me, daily-- and certainly on our screens, in conjunction with these shootings-- there are acts of heroism-- human instincts that are pure and good-- and yet the screenshot remains...

There was yet another story this morning of an 'unknown' songwriter suing a rockstar for copyright infringement.  Three notes, it is, this time... as though the clichés and dumbing down of pop music is not enough,  there is competition to own this lack of originality.  I've written songs and had several of them 'pirated'.... but what is the point, really?  There will be lawyers-- money, youtube comparisons and mash-ups.  And which one is better?  Both of them seem equally derivative and weak... just one is well produced, with all the bells and whistles, the make-up and fashion and the machine of publicity and social media.  So some poor unsuccessful singer wants a small piece.  Let him eat cake, I say-- a piece of the half-cake I used to get on this day when I was small.

During the brief moments I made it outdoors today, the Somewhere Over the Rainbow melody came to me, walking along the park after a quick storm-- my August souvenir.  Like it or not, it was a song-- written for a story which I knew well from bedtime readings... but with a silhouette-- an identity.  Things had some identity then-- a core-- a reason, a unique 'shape'.  There was no cutting and pasting-- you had to stand up and sing-- live.  You had to type letters and schoolwork and page through books and run and jump rope and learn how to save people in the water.

My son's basketball team won the championship.  Yes-- in the park in Brooklyn, on the asphalt, with hoops and balls and their brave sportsmanship... they fought and won.  Aside from the on-court soundtrack of Hip Hop, and the sneakers, it could have been anytime, USA.  What I felt was their breathtaking heart, their body and soul and drive all at once, jumping and leaping and catching and passing and dunking... the '9' of them, I call it... no tricks, no twitter-- just sweat and flesh and talent-- real talent that will ultimately dissolve into the tough universe of athletic anonymity.  I see men every day-- tall men sitting out in their collapsible chairs along Lenox Ave... with their canes and their injuries.   They, too, once ruled the courts, briefly... never reaped enough to get them out of the projects... and I sense the shadow of the power of '9' in them, too-- maybe for them a 5 or an 8... but they had it.

The half year until my next number will pass as quickly as a galactic second.  What I will manage to do with this is a mystery.  I can almost guarantee I will witness violence, will lose someone dear-- something dear.  I can only promise I will try to stand on my 'core', I will try to create my own templates and support the good of others.  I will be the 'ninest' I can be; it seems so simple-- if only it were... if only we could find some common starting line-- some core, some championship...  to take our individual pulse at the half... and make the rest count.

Up in Smoke

I'm writing this to the accompaniment of the Spectrum hold-music from the earpiece of my heavy old landline phone-- the only one I own-- waiting once again to try and negotiate a reprieve from excessive charges for inconsistent service and the potential privilege of watching mediocre television on 4000 irrelevant channels I will never explore.  I am reminded of ordering multiple Happy Meals just to get the nineteen-cent toy for the kids which seemed to be exclusive in those innocent pre-internet days; and how can we be horrified by the habits of these TLC-channel reality-show hoarders when our lives are chocked with exponentially massive digital tonnage?  Mall-scaled stacks of unopened TV dinners defrosting in the global-warmed polluted air?  Does this give anyone even a fractional glimpse into the hourly generation of froth-data and marketing congestion? All you binge-texters and iPhone junkies-- no, you are not 800-pound obese and homebound but somehow morbidly bloated with nutritionally unsound brain-feeds.  Is anyone out there?  Back to my yellow lined pad and cheap ballpoint pen.  Does anyone remember Koko the Clown?  Back to the inkwell....?

Friday night I had a midnight show.  We arrived at the bar and I was corralled by an attractive  youngish woman who in blunt verbal and body-cues let me know she wanted to hook up.  Yes, she was drunk... and if she'd been a man, I would have freely given her the fuck-off response... so I began to wonder, with the #MeToo history we older women have navigated, why I would give my own sex a free pass.  I do not find the aggressive come-on appealing-- even when it's a rockstar or celebrity; it's just not flattering to be flash-craved like a cupcake by a food addict.

Similarly, I met a man recently who seemed intelligent and interesting enough; we bonded over the book I was reading.   He is literate and musical; we had a coffee-- benign.   On the phone, later, he made a few lewd outside comments and references to his sexual superiority.  Jesus.. I am a senior citizen now?  Certainly he is.  Dealbreaker.  Are there people out there who respond to this?  Who like it? Apparently.

Of course, we rock and rollers are used to an entirely different behavioral code at the workplace.  Audience (and band members) scream, curse, strip down, fight-- throw bottles and themselves onto the stage, bleed-- we've seen it all.  Some bands instigate extreme behavior-- it's part of the experience.  Alcohol and drugs stir the pot to a quicker boil... and the music itself is both exciting and inciting.  We love it.  But I gave up going to hardcore and punk shows.  When ambulances park outside of a club waiting for customers-- well, I'm done with it now.  Does that make me a prissy-assed prude?

In the midst of teenage hell, a school psychologist told me I had not given my son clear boundaries.  Yes, at his worst gangsta-phase, he referred to me (and his teachers, apparently) as 'Niggah'.  We had worse battles and issues... but even he, who has emerged from the delinquency and acting-out a remarkable and beloved 'mensch',  told me I had failed to maintain disciplinary lines.  I am not the military type.  What does one do.. beat them?  I was a single Mom ex-hippy playing seedy rock-clubs in bands with less-than-stellar role models.  Admittedly, I failed the teenage parenting non-exam.

At this life-juncture, where way more is behind me than before me, I have much more clarity than I once did.  Musically-- it's a yay or nay.  I avoid things I once tolerated.  Personally-- it's fairly black and white; there is little time for people who annoy me.  We live in an over-populated city where there is limited width for individuality and attention, let alone a seat on public transportation.  I have grown more selfish about my personal latitude; I spend much more solitary time -- sometimes in crowds, but as an observer, not a companion or subscriber.  I have drawn those lines more graphically around me-- whether it is the nightmarish approaching white-chalk of my own imagined fatality, a sort of protective prison, or an adult time-out.  I have finally acquired a sense of boundaries.

Our clown president (back to the inkwell for him, if only...) is obsessed with the US/Mexican border... but has absolutely no awareness of his utter failure as a human to perceive or respect the concept of personal boundaries, and has crossed and violated every imaginable line of justice, decency, courtesy, ethics, acceptability, humanity-- we can go on forever.  He offends women daily, is bigoted, ignorant, intolerant--  embodies the antithesis of everything I believed as a child was 'presidential'.   How can I expect drunk women in bars to respect my personal space?

Last week I went up to Dyckman Park to watch my son's spectacular basketball team play a league game.  I was frisked by the police-women on the way in, and handed one of those blow-up plastic thunder sticks to taunt the opposite team.  The stands were filled with mostly twenty to thrity-ish spectators and fans, some kids.  There is loud music blasted through the speakers-- a DJ-styled announcer runs around the court during play.  It seemed everyone was lighting up cigar-sized spliffs.  They were passing them around-- even to me, by the guy in front of me who asked me if I noticed I was the only white person there... and was I nervous?  No, I am not... but the smoke was so thick... it was like eating a heavy meal; I honestly don't see how the players maintained their skills.

On the train downtown, afterward-- I kept smelling marijuana.  At the grocery store the cashier looked at me like I had facepaint on.  At last I ran into a friend who did a double-take and said.. woman-- what have you been smoking?  I went home and took a shower.  Next morning-- even my sneakers in the hallway smelled like a fresh-lit joint.  There I had been, watching a great game... minding my business-- an observer-- and the smoke permeated... I breathed it,  I wore it... even though my days of getting high are many decades away.

There is little we can do about some boundaries.  Smoke-- the dark-- the weather-- people in ridiculous states of dress in our visual field-- sirens-- overheard conversations.  Men and women in my gym... at all ages-- choose to display their naked flesh in varying states of youthful beauty or decay... we cannot change their choices.  Maybe the fashion police are out there, or the actual dress-code enforcers.  Our own friends will say things or do things that bother us... I care about people, but I care less and less what strangers think of me.

When I was ten years old, I smoked cigarettes but I didn't always inhale.  It made me feel like a teenager and I liked the way it looked in my fingers, the way the smoke curled up around me.  They became prohibitively expensive, and really bad for you; smoking is banned in public places in most countries because it's too hard to draw a non-permeable line.  Other seriously offensive, unhealthy things are duked out on sidewalks, argued in court,  debated in international forums, protested in human marches and on picket-lines.  These things are important... and time is too precious to get our feet stepped on and watch others helplessly violated by schoolroom or presidential bullies.  As far as intimate personal boundaries, I can still imagine the cigarette, sympathize with the smoker, refuse to inhale and walk away.

Exchange

I live on the edge of two neighborhoods… on the cusp, on the border.  It suits me.  I am close to the park and short blocks from grand homes and institutions.  I am also two blocks from the projects.   Across the street from me, my neighbors have an East Harlem zip-code, although I'll wager all of them have a better income than I do. Personally I spend most neighborhood-time going north and east-- past the projects-- exploring bodegas, playgrounds, small bakeries and shops, listening to languages besides English, browsing among vegetables and fruits used in Mexican recipes,  reading labels in Spanish.   Even the Christmas decorations have a different flavor.

At this point in life, I am spending more and more time alone.  I walk; I think; I soliloquize and invent… I may even talk to myself.  I wander-- down strange and familiar streets, into places; when I am alone my ear is sharper-- I hear things outside and inside my own head.  It''s as though I dare myself to become lost in my own city--- to lose myself, to become someone else, in a way-- like a character in my own story… a kind of odd controlled schizophrenia; I leave my house and turn left and suddenly I am anonymous and unknown.  I blend in and I am simply a woman.  No one greets me or looks at me… I am free, in a way-- unencumbered and clear.  It rests me… it provides my blank canvas.

I think I've always craved some kind of solitude-- even the kind you have in a group.  I like people but am reluctant to commit myself to any society that excludes me from other choices. Maybe it was my dysfunctional family (we all have them) and their failure at honesty-- but I never feel that I completely belong anywhere.  Even marriage felt odd to me-- it required my husband convincing me this would be a good thing… and besides, I'd be making someone incredibly happy and giving up nothing.  It seemed to make sense.. and I got to cross another border-- to belong to two countries, as I chose-- and that suited me… but the boundaries of marriage never felt right to me.  Maybe I was a terrible wife, but other women encroached on the walls of my own marriage-- my husband failed to protect me, and I left.  Motherhood was quite another issue-- but I was still someone's daughter, someone's lover, someone's sister… I could still live between identities, go from neighborhood to neighborhood-- play in bands and enjoy my son's basketball games with pride.

It's possible that solitude gives us clarity… in my case, the acceptance of my own penchant for straddling borders--- for being two people, in a way-- the one who walks and the one who observes--  the speaker and the listener.   At my age, I notice I am more blunt, more honest.  I say things directly; occasionally I offend people.  I see my own peers walking around clearly burdened with their pasts.  We have all experienced so much; for some, they are stooped with the weight of it, fearful that little will happen in coming years to balance or complement their life.

My son's friend asked me to help him return a ring he bought his fiancée a few years back.  It's such a beautiful thing-- it's vintage-y and unique.   He lost his Mom recently, and maybe that somehow altered him; he also knows I've returned rings and changed my own mind many times.  It doesn't bother me and I've never really regretted much in my life; it all seems to have brought me to where I am, which is not a bad place.  There's a book of poems I remember reading: Loving a Woman in Two Worlds.  I've always loved that title… as though this is the way I've lived.  Returning the ring-- dealing with the receipt and the agreement and the salespeople… it all seemed so absurd that this intimate, personal decision we make gets so 'handled' by so many people-- the processes-- the invitations, and name changes-- the paperwork and vows and all the guests and witnesses-- the home-buying and the furniture choices… and suddenly it was as though I was so close to my own relationship thresholds-- maybe in the very same store where my fiancé  had bought the lovely ring that had felt to me like a 25-pound weight.

It took my son's friend 5 years: maybe 2 to really believe he'd made the wrong choice, and 3 more to actually find this ultimate closure.  Finality.  He has a new girlfriend now.  When we get older, some loves we realize were addicting, or consuming, or manipulative-- or they looked like someone else, or they reminded you of something, or your best friend talked you into it… or whatever.  And then some affairs look absurd and like some kind of period of insanity.  And after it all, after a lifetime-- there are those moments that shine-- through time, from the half-light of this moment, back to that one… there is still this beauty-- something right and true… and we feel lucky, even though we never held on, that we felt this way.

We have so little present-- all of us.  Just this nanosecond of awareness-- the rest is just a movie-- an invention.  So few of us take the time to appreciate these tiny things we are holding at this moment only-- unless we are on the verge of loss.   We mourn at funerals, we bathe in morning light when we are aware our days are numbered-- we love those we can no longer see, and we miss what we no longer have.  Handing over the ring, I was aware someone else's moments were in my hand briefly--- even the feel of the box-- I could imagine how much it must have meant at the time, and he'd spent many multiples over what was appropriate ('in over his head', as he put it)… but there it was, becoming an item in a shop window for someone else to give their loved one, to become part of someone else's story.  I felt empathetically unburdened.  These symbols never had much credence in my lifetime, as I've said… and the truly spiritual instances of the meaning of marriage are more like star points in the dark liquid sky of my own history.  But then again, I am someone who likes to cross borders, to travel between worlds and rooms and to inhale winter evenings and mix them with older constellations and lyrics I have surely misread or mispronounced… and I emerged, on my way back toward Harlem, to the song of the melting snow, me stepping every block from past to present to future, between worlds.

Seasonal Adjustments

Last week at my gig a man propositioned me. I mean-- we're musicians… and even though we're old and these things don't happen as often, this is fairly routine.  Of course, we dismiss them like email hoaxes or refundable trial subscriptions.   But here… circumstances were a little pre-ordained-- he seemed familiar-- he was-- as the fairy tale goes-- just right-- in so many ways.  He was passionate and convincing--  he was athletic-- in fact he was some kind of professional competitor --he was pleading a little, he was so sure-- looking for this his whole life.  We've all had this kind of thing-- it's the prologue to how many one-night stands?  But he even smelled right-- he reminded me of something.. he laid out various scenarios and options-- I felt a little flush… a little more alive… tempted in a way… even though I have little faith in the alcohol-fueled passion of a man from the UK on his last night in New York during an already intoxicating summeresque late-winter weather hocus-pocus… But I had projects waiting-- I used my refusal-reflex, I turned him down.

Next morning-- yes, he emailed a couple of times… he friended me-- yes, he has a wife-- all of that he might have even confessed… to make his proposition more honest, more convincing.  I didn't sleep much-- I admit-- but do I have regrets?  No, I don't.  The fact is, I've weaned myself of these consuming passions and interludes which have taken me on so many tangents.  I feel 'ruddered' these days-- committed to writing and playing-- and like an athlete in training, I do find my work much more 'infused' when I'm not sidetracked.

Children are super emotional.  They cry when they drop a lollipop, when they're tired, when they're hungry.  They answer questions incorrectly because their hearts beat out their brains-- they have little impulse control and no matter how many lectures we give, most of them will walk off with any stranger who offers them ice cream or a puppy.  This is who we are-- creatures rooted in emotional, maybe bad choices;  some of them have terrible consequences-- some just give us scars that don't show.  But in the end, we take risks-- we grow, we develop a sense of how much we can push the speed limit, we trade a little safety for thrill.  And love… well, all bets are off.  Probably the larger percentage of babies are conceived from something that began as a one-night stand.

For years I lived with a much-younger man.  Years.  In some cultures I could have been his mother.  We were aware of maybe 3 or 4 parallel couples in our hood with similar profiles-- a 40-something woman with a 20-something man.  It's sexy, it's hot-- it's a compelling configuration.  One couple was also a younger musician and a much older woman-- she was some kind of designer-- a former model-- lithe and great style-- you could sense their connection.  But recently-- I saw her with a cane-- she seemed to have some kind of neuromuscular issue.  She was quite alone-- vaguely recognized me--- but what startled me was this set-in sort of aging pain I could read in her face.  She'd been ruined… she'd been left-- the fear most older women have when they embark on one of these risky ventures.

As we grow older and become more and more familiar with loss-- this is embedded in our life.  Friends have begun to die-- some of them prematurely, from tragic accidents or illness-- some of them from self-inflicted things-- cumulative effects of drugs and alcohol-- depression, suicide… and some of them leave after a reasonable amount of life.  We're beginning to wind down here.  So I need to ask myself-- how much time I can afford to spend in emotional purgatory after a risk-taking venture… and the answer is-- not much. A day? A week?  Even that seems maybe not a fair deal.  I have an agenda, a schedule, a compelling and ever-growing scroll of projects that seem overwhelmed by whatever sandy substance is filling the bottom part of my cosmic hourglass.

I let myself have a long walk in the March 'summer' evening this week… saw plenty of young bodies prematurely shedding clothes-- even in Harlem, the shirtless buff basketball players coming off the court-- in their prime-- their swagger, the girls giggling and yelling-- smoking-- pairing off… it's a sexy thing.  You think about things-- things that happened-- when the temptation is unbearable, or the situation is just right-- maybe even 20 years ago on a night like this… and you think… this is perfect-- this is a peak passionate, nameless, identity-less thing-- I mean, at certain moments of life, there is no one with whom we are more physically honest than a stranger.  But then there is the afterward.  Maybe they start calling you--- maybe you want them to call you.  Maybe it will become a relationship -- an affair--- something.  Maybe it will be impossible-- or difficult.  Difficult is the worst.  It eats you, it encroaches… it wrecks you.  And then you abandon it and you miss it.  You miss it so badly you replay it over and over, like a home movie.  You distort it.  You dream it.  You crave it and it keeps you awake and feverish at night.

Once I had one of these crazy episodes with someone-- and he made a tape-- it was way back.. not a video-- no one had these… but an audio tape.  I ran into him years later and he had it in his car.  It was appalling and hideous of him… maybe a little flattering, after I got over the horror, the sense of violation?  I had to shrug it off, to pretend I couldn't care less-- he might have used it for some damage-- and there was no image attached--no one was going to have enough interest to let it play for hours and listen to the space and the noise because it had been overplayed-- more disturbing.  But in a way I realized we all do this in some way-- we record these moments-- we play them back endlessly-- we use them to escape our boredom and the monotony of relationships which are maybe healthy and practical and long.  And some of us, like the man from the UK,  are not satisfied with memory or imagination, and still feel a need to create these moments.

Maybe I am just too old, or too wise, or too committed to work, the way I'd always wanted to be… I feel I am finally arriving at some platform where I am a little happy with my own playing, a little less critical of my own poetry.  I wake up in the night with ideas, and even more than my black coffee, I am fueled with some kind of personal ambition.   It is private and compelling and has nothing to do with financial or outer success… it is like a calling.  And I am certain of my direction.  I know exactly where I need to go, in this last leg of my little journey.  Does this obliterate my susceptibility to romantic interludes?  It definitely presides.  But my little confession is-- if I had felt just a little more desire for the man from the UK… maybe a few centimeters more--- I would have gone with him-- personal lumps and bumps aside….yes, I would have said yes.  No regrets… I would have loved it, and he would have  been happy enough to maybe never try this again.  Or maybe he would have felt an unbearable loss… I can't answer this… and if I'd had a more compelling connection, I might have known this.  But I didn't.  I don't have any sense of his real heart.  And I turned him down.

I have so many young girlfriends.  I love my girlfriends-- young and old.  So many of them look for these opportunities-- they say yes, they take the bait… and so many of them are disappointed or hurt.  The center of our universe is not the center of someone else's.  People have their agenda, they have more choice than ever, because of this online dating phenomenon-- the sheer number of potential and actual encounters and the thinning layers of casual relationships.  Yes, I have my inappropriate little passions and flirtations… and I don't venture out onto tightropes anymore, or risk a derailing heartwreck.  I can no longer afford the time.. and the truth is, I am a little content with my past memories, my current version of love, my heartbreaks and scars and even my age.  I do way less 'entertaining' in my emotional home, these days… too many good friends to console and embrace… too much music, too many gigs--- too many songs to record and poems to create.  Not that I don't occasionally open a window--especially in this early spring, on a night where we philosophically push our clocks ahead, to let in a little mischievous wind--  and sigh….

Pigeon-sure

There’s an article in this week’s New Yorker about confidence and its relevance to the Bear Stearns collapse vis-a-vis that bastard Cayne. Hard for me to assess those people because, pacifist that I am, I’d like to bring back corporal punishment for anyone who profited from the defective House of Cards engineered by Wall Streeters who hold an all-ace deck while honest American investing schmucks came up with jokers on their monthly statement. And have to kiss their tax-dollars as they go into the pockets of these ‘confidence’ men.

I gave my son a copy of that film ‘Confidence’. Not quite new, but entertaining. He is a confidence expert. In fact I will go further and say he is a pretty consistent liar. According to the article, the confidence game pays. So what makes these people tick? The size of their dicks as the New Yorker seemed to suggest with the article title, ‘Cocksure’? I know among teenage boys this gives them cause to swagger. Among women…well, size unfortunately does matter. At least it gives you reason to relax. And if the guy happens to be a non-swaggerer, well, you’ve got one less thing to miss when things go sour.

Size matters re: bank accounts, real estate square footage, height. The Tall Man usually wins? Not too many powerful politicians who are short. First ladies are generally tall…fashion models…even art has become larger and larger—billboard size, actually.
See me, it has to say.

Still, some big things are small. Low numbers in New York real estate addresses connote proximity to the park…status. Small number dress sizes are sought after. Portions which sell for huge sums in New York restaurants get smaller and smaller. Rich people with large balances eat small portions and weigh in at lower numbers. They want their license plate to read ‘CSW 1’. I’ll bet some of them pay for a 3-digit social security number.

Personally I think the national metabolism has slowed down. People are fat not just because of supersized meals and brainwashing food marketing, but because we are all lazier and slower. We are no longer the gas guzzlers we used to be. We scarcely move. Our bodies adapt to workouts. People don’t run for the phone, don’t move to the desk to get paper and pen, use their arms to write, lick and seal an envelope and walk down to the corner to post things. We stay in one place. My son is not just a liar but a lier. He’s lazy. He lies about lying, too.

Emails are becoming shorter. Trillions are passed around, but no one bothers to write much. Relationships are shorter. People text each other to death and are sick of the whole thing in days. Fuck eharmony. How many of these people are retreads?

There’s a pigeon on the air conditioner across my courtyard. It’s shat its own weight and more since spring. It comes back there every day, no GPS. It had an affair, oversaw its mate laying an egg and sitting it out on the shitwalled nest, jumped around its young until the little guy flew away. Through the 9 inches of June rain. In fact, it’s still there-- solo-- even though its mate seems to have flown the coop. Ditto the brat. It may be a terrible housekeeper but it sets an example for relationships my son could use. Unlike his mother.

I look out and admire the pigeon, and then feel a little edgy about my own sub-par housekeeping. The thing is, a low maintenance poverty-line lifestyle actually takes an enormous amount of high-maintenance energy. Cheap cleaning supplies are a bus and train ride away as is reasonably priced mayonnaise and gallons of milk. Not necessarily the same bus and train, either, when you are really doing a $4-a-day financial diet. Nothing is a cab-ride away because I don’t take cabs, and there’s the extra lugging and the tedious penny-pinching and coin-counting and coupon-clipping and card punching. Emptying and recycling vacuum-cleaner bags--- a dirty little secret of the truly prideful poor. Then there is clinic-waiting and the endless referrals and medical insurance paperwork and price comparison and pre-qualification. And fighting with Welfare for NOT taking benefits for which I qualify. Poverty is a full-time job.

Then there are the true low-lifes who just pulled a $48 million Medicaid swindle. When my latest routine biopsy had to be endured without anesthesia because the copay was more than my monthly food budget.

I watched my son play basketball tonight… the league is a non-profit but I calculated it costs $18 a game to watch him lose. Maybe, I suggested, if you didn’t lie about lying so much and you had to pay me $1 for every shot you missed, you’d practice. Of course I didn’t actually say it out loud. I don’t want to mess with his confidence.

Christmas Cheer

This year I got smart. I used the internet to search good deals on fresh trees in Manhattan. Only every single entry suggested somewhere in Queens or Staten Island. Tough for those of us with a UK driver’s license and no car.

Then there’s Home Depot….$30 for the tree, $75 for the delivery. Unless you’re buying a new dishwasher. Then it’s half price. A typical NYC bargain. So I enlisted someone to drive me out there. Not a single tree left. Some needles and a sign in the parking lot where they HAD BEEN.  It looked like December 27th.

In my hood they’ve got one of those stalls on Lexington… the wreaths and ribbons, the stand, the huge LED sign across the fence reminding us---canned corny Christmas music blaring from mounted speakers….trees divided by the little heated house—one side the Douglas firs and the cheapies…the other side the balsams…$100 and up. Around the corner a few rejects chained to a wooden post like old horses, waiting it out. The yellow-tags. A tall one in there… no branches in the mid-section, losing its needles—my kind of tree. I offer to take it off their hands. 'Seventy bucks,' the man with the graying ponytail informs me. He can see from my coat that I’m not bidding on a balsam, but he resents everyone in Manhattan. After all he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit and selling Christmas trees on a street corner. Inside the house the guys have ordered take-out. Sushi. I guess tips are good.

I turn and wait it out.

December 21. Actually December 22nd…2 AM. The reject pile is growing. It’s the coldest night of the year. Wind…freezing rain. The night shift is asleep in the pickup. My son suggested he could pick them off and no one would notice. I give him the look. They’re fucking TREES, he snaps. And somewhere he’s right. These are offerings of nature. Someone cut them down in their prime, and is now asking to be paid for such an offense. He should be punished.

But I’m still a buyer. And the guy knows I’m a beggar. I can’t use the ‘I’ll take it off your hands’ approach. I can’t imply it’s for a poor family who can’t afford it, because that’s the truth, and it’s for us.

I knock lightly on the cab window. The guy opens his eyes, rolls the window down about an inch. 'I told you yesterday,' his look says…'I can get $75 for that tree.' He is not getting out of a warm truck for the likes of me.

The overnight crosstown bus passes me…driver stops and calls out. Many nights he and I are alone on this bus when I come from work. He greets me… 'Would you be willing to let me on this bus with a tree?' 'Mama—for you? Anything!' he assures me. Merry Christmas.

I move on. The Second Avenue Subway-construction mess has pretty much wrecked business for the vendors there….but from a funky old bar, the smell of Christmas as a few college-aged kids spill out onto the street. They are heading uptown. I approach them…'Anybody know where I can buy a reasonable tree in this neighborhood?' 'Sure,' they say. 'Up around 104th. We’ll walk you.' So off we go uptown. They are from New Hampshire…good kids… at 101st they turn off and I’m on my own. The streets are deserted except a couple of homeless guys collecting cardboard and cans.

The blocks are long… across the street is the Projects…colored lights everywhere. I wonder if Benefit Cards buy trees. Lights. Anyway, at 103rd, I catch sight of a row of evergreen… tall, great trees… both sides of the sidewalk. A white guy with a southern accent in a grungy old parka comes out…a beard…my age…grey. Tall. I ask him about prices…$55, he tells me… $45 over here. Literally one fourth of the ones at Lexington. I pick out a 9-footer—- thin, but great bone structure. How about $40? 'Done,' he says. Merry Christmas. Saws off the end, wraps it up, and shows me how to balance it across my arms. If I can make it to the crosstown, I’m home free.

But this is tough work. Suddenly…across the street, I hear a rhythmic tapping sound in the silent night. There on the projects playground, a boy… 2:30 AM…in the freezing mist, the slippery pavement.. in sweats and a hoodie…his parka hooked onto the fence-links, shooting…dribbling… dodging… back and forth.. rebounding, hooking, weaving..around his invisible defender ..jumping… his breath in bursts of mist... Suddenly I had a jolt…—like the thrill might be gone everywhere… but here it is on this deserted,freezing icy 2 AM court. A kid, feeling the Kobe Bryant rush…..not a soul watching…...maybe he won’t make it but he is dreaming about it…... that feeling... 11 days off from school and it's the first night... and Christmas coming and you might get something.. Knicks tickets…Jordans. I could have stood there all night... but I had to carry my tree home.

And suddenly I had the strength of an old Atlas. With the scent of pine in my frozen nostrils, I walked back and all the way up the crosstown hill. Busdriver honked as he passed. I was home free, just like those dumb Walton old-style holiday films. Me and the tree. The kid and his basketball. Oh spirit of Santa, I think, as I drape my old strands of colored lights on my still freezing symbol of holiday and Vermont nature…bring that kid something good. Bring him a future-- a winning shot,--the never-ending dream of Christmas. Amen.