Hollow

Monday morning my television was left on, after a fantastic 5-hour World Series game… I was half listening to some evangelist rambling on about holy water and salvation which sounded absurd enough for me to take a look.  Here was one of those fake ministers whom I could swear had been indicted and mortified in another decade--- back on-screen with his bad hair-weave and dye job, a surgically enhanced blonde wife reading letters and testimonies with the emotional presence of a talking doll.  He was throwing away crutches, walking wheelchair patients around a huge room, choosing person after person to come to the front, cast off their pain and praise the power of the monthly sum they commit to this shyster for the promise of some God-backed pay-off.  How is this legal, and how are there numbers of people-- not actors, I assume, willing to participate in this scam?

It is Halloween.  The day dawned with a chill wind… children awaking with energy-- dreaming about their costumes.  Classes will not be so bad; teachers will forego homework… townhouses in my neighborhood are decorated with ghoulish puppets and spiderwebs-- a haunted real-estate fantasy.   Most everyone has their carved pumpkins and candles out, and piles of candy ready at the door.  Then we had a mid-afternoon incident… the city takes a bullet.   For the victims, who began this day innocently-- maybe even taking a personal day since we all get involved in trick-or-treating festivities, the parade-- this was a catastrophic synchronicity of geography.

I can't help wondering who these people are who execute heinous killings-- whether they are heartless ethical mutants passing as human beings, or maybe lost, confused children wearing a costume of evil someone has loaned them or given them like a kind of armor with which to manage the world.  Indoctrination-- brain-washing, initiation… creates monstrous murderous machines which have only physical human resemblance.  Like the tales of science fiction, they walk among us, drive cars, buy groceries… and then, the switch is thrown and their image is on all our screens and devices.

Our president, of course, as he does, used personal tragedy to promote his own bizarre agenda.  The man couldn't protect us from a mosquito, let alone the threat of terrorist-driven violence; this particular murderer is not even from one of the restricted countries on the Trump list, although he would have us believe this.  He has not a clue about psychology, about deep-seated resentments and human suffering, about children who grow up without proper protection, without dreams, exposed to horrific acts of war and often without any kind of stable home or haven.  He is a tiny man in a larger man's costume.

On the airport bus in Sweden last month, I sat behind a calm young couple on their way to some honeymoon or vacation junket.  She was wearing a powder-blue coat-- haven't seen or heard that color described since the 1960's…  he in a button-down and tie.   They were chattering and whispering-- like coloring-book illustrations of perfect good Swedes talking about the weather-- friends, new clothes-- innocent and so clean… the crease of his shirt, her pristine coat-- giggling and acting like grown-ups-- the epitome of normal-- the golden-rule standard.  Struggling myself with a tape-reinforced old carry-on bag, worrying about getting through customs with my home-made sandwich-- flying on the cheap-cheap-- no luggage, no meal, no water…  an old black-haired odd freak in my thrift-shop denim… I felt like a blot on the milk-white paper of homogenized Stockholm.

I imagined my perfect Swedes in my city taking the Circle Line tour, going to see Kinky Boots and staying at some Times Square Hotel. They'd visit Brooklyn, eat soul food at Sylvia's in Harlem, walk the High Line… and suddenly, pulling out my dog-eared James Baldwin and my notebook-- I started to pity them.  They are just people-- like most of us-- with jobs and little houses and furnishings and a coffee maker and maybe a dog… wearing the costume of normalcy.  All dressed up and nowhere really to go, because it occurs to me now, in this culture of Trump and Instagram and Twitter--- that we are all followers and post-its-- the subjects of our own blogs and photo-albums, but very few of us really know who we are.   So busy are we looking at  Facebook and dumping out on the galaxy-sized digital garbage pile, very few have taken the solitary and tough independent time to dissect and analyze ourselves old-school.

How did my generation evolve-- listening to the words of men like Martin Luther King who urged us to drive out hatred with love, to shun violence and to feel the oppression of others and stand up for their dignity when they could not?  Believing his words-- that we are all one, we must not be silent, we must think and care and do right, we must protect those who cannot protect themselves.  But he also encouraged us via action to become better people.   This is religion for me-- love and truth and compassion… not praying for a shiny new luxury car, or executing an act of human violence in the name of some distorted version of God.

On the sidewalks at dusk, throngs of children went on with their ritual--- ghouls and monsters, super-heroes and princesses, witches and wizards… terrorism did not stop our Halloween.  I wonder how many of these kids become their costume-- try on their character, melt their own little soul into the persona that is already formed and clear.  Tomorrow they will just be children again, although many of their parents will continue to wear the costume of hair-weaves and plastic surgery, having learned nothing of the lessons of my generation-- of the inside shining through the outside…of beauty of heart beating out the skin-deep kind.  We are judged these days by our instagram image, by our facade… the quick profile… and so many of us have lost our own judgment.  Witness the president we 'chose'.

My person-of-the-night award goes to the little Mexican girl dressed as a Pilgrim; with her orange plastic pumpkin-basket, she explained to me how Thanksgiving is about celebrating the immigrants, how she is learning to read even though her parents cannot, and how she will grow up to be an important American woman.  Her mother's shy ambivalent smile said it all.  I wanted to hug this girl, and to cry for her future among the Trumps and Harvey Weinsteins, among the privileged UES botoxed ladies and the corrupt hierarchy of American economics.  Be true to yourself, be kind to your sisters, I wanted to say, and you may still be a victim; you may be deported and disrespected and very poor.  In my permanent costume of poverty and human sympathy,  I went back upstairs to watch baseball.

Skin Deep

When I was young, I had perfect skin.  It meant nothing to me-- in fact, it had absolutely no currency in my life, was sort of an albatross that made it nearly impossible for me to become a punk-rocker outcast-type.  My older sister had acne.  She also had a slew of boyfriends and hiked her skirt way up when we left the house for school.  I wanted her skin.   She hated me for mine, and I would have traded in a second.  Acne would make me look older-- as would braces on my teeth, I thought.  People commented on my skin-- aunts and cousins--- the doctor.  When I went to buy make-up, even as a woman, the cosmetics salespeople would remark-- why do you need make-up?  You have perfect skin.  Lloyd Cole had a song about this.  I did nothing to deserve it-- ate plenty of chocolate and fries and smoked cigarettes-- but it remained, as it was.  Beauty's only skin deep, my mother used to say, and despite my flawless facial surface, I still believed my sister was way more attractive.

In the office of my Primary Care physician, a woman sits at the front desk and does intake.  The right half of her face is horribly deformed, as though it was burned or blown off in an explosion.  She is in her late 30's and it's tough to look at her.  She has no functioning eye or mouth; the left side is marked with some kind of warty growths, but somewhat normal.  Her voice is steady and courageous and sweet; if I were blind I might imagine her as beautiful.  I commend my doctor for hiring her because she is unsettling, physically.  As for her dignity-- I cannot say enough.  She is well dressed and stylish from the neck down.  Her hair is neat and pretty; her hands are lovely and efficient.

When my son was born, he was adorable and perfect.  I couldn't stop admiring him, especially since I felt I didn't deserve to have this baby; I hadn't planned this, and my lifestyle for the first 3 months of pregnancy was a little crooked and a-maternal.  His infant skin was so tender he couldn't tolerate any animal products-- wool, fur-- anything besides soft natural cottons.  It was as though his surface was a metaphor for my heart; here I was-- a new mother-- a protector-- and suddenly I felt stripped and raw and on the verge of not just tears but utter emotional collapse at the slightest hint of tragedy or sadness.  Maybe this is what they call postpartum depression.  I was a single mother and utterly enchanted with my baby; there was absolutely no room for self-inspection or analysis.  I was too busy trying to remember all the little infant things I had never learned and too absorbed in managing his care while I worked and kept my life on the level.  But in caring for another being, I learned the depth of compassion.

As a young woman I fell in love with a black man.  Our attraction had nothing to do with color, and his strangeness had more to do with cultural rather than racial differences.  Sometimes at night, I awoke and admired the beautiful contrast of his dark, strong arm draped across my body.  His skin had a different feel and smell and taste.  In those days, some people in some locales didn't appreciate our marriage and our presence as a couple.  The differences fascinated me; in the end we separated, but we both learned things about appearance and acceptance.

My skin is no longer perfect; few things about me are pretty; we enter the autumn and winter of our lives and our human foliage begins to fall away.  Many of my women friends fight this process with injections and treatments; their medically-enhanced beauty is truly skin-deep and temporary, but it suits them, and it doesn't bother me.  Nor does the economic ability to do such things.  Money, I have discovered, is a little skin-deep as well.  It is temporary and may create a sense of security, but people still get ill and have accidents and mishaps, and while they may be comfortable and well cared-for, their lives don't seem to be more valuable.  They do give more to charity-- as do people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc… but this kind of billionaire philanthropy seems a bit skin-deep and cavalier-- it is acknowledged and rewarded, but do they suffer or sacrifice to do this?  They all seem to drive expensive cars, live in enormous houses, collect things and wear rolexes.  They do little more than balance their tax burden, while being applauded for stunning generosity.

As for my friend who is ravaged by cancer, she grows thinner every week.  Her skin is translucent and stretched over the contours of her face in a way that is startling. She resembles an anorexic; her once long, graceful limbs are spindly and twiggy;  the bones of her knees are knobby and prominent beneath her loose pants.  I feel I can see through her skin into her soul; her veins are greenish and sickly.  She is skeletal and taut-- both old and young, like an underdeveloped fetus.  She walks with bitter resignation, daring anyone to comment.  I told her she looked pretty the other day; she had on a purple knit cap and her features were feverish and her skin was flushed from the cold.  She was furious and screamed at me… this is not a word that applies to her physical or mental state, she warned me.  Do not use this language in my presence.   I wept-- I am not tough-- I am permeable and fragile.  I wear my heart everywhere; without tattoos, my skin betrays me, my tears are ready and I am unarmed.  I will not tell her again that she has acquired this sort of porcelain-doll facade-- and while her eyes have lost their spark and are glazed and empty from pain and the drugs, there is a kind of quiet holy dignity in her long-suffering expression-- and after all the treatments, the side-effects and the rashes, ironically-- she has perfect skin.

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.  

Pass

Finally committing to 2013 here, and going to bypass my seething angst and obsidian heart for the latest  football drama.  Since my son is here, not by choice, taking a forced 'gap-year' between college and independence, I've been seeing the Ravens as a sports version of Bad Brains and getting into the play-offs.  So this little made-for-2013 story about Manti Te'o piqued my interest especially. The operative phrase seems to be 'perpetrated against'.  I mean, my son is certainly the victim of a hoax perpetrated by an ex-girlfriend/drama queen who torments him on facebook with sexy little quips about her activities when they're hundreds of miles apart, and posts photos of herself looking considerably more playboy-friendly than when she sits around on my sofa.  Men do set themselves up for these things.  They are bewitched and e-enticed by all kinds of minx-ness.  Every day I get friended by some Russian pin-up photo who has exclusively male (dumb) names in her friend-list.  Six months ago I read 83 million facebook pages are dupes.  Seem like a valid way to find your spouse, especially when you are a Heisman Trophy candidate and set to earn 8 figures for maybe the rest of your life?

But maybe the operative phrase here is 'perpetrated by'.  I mean, how dumb can guys be (rhetorical!) re: women?  Despite all the TV pseudo-reality shows and Lifetime movies, people seem to fail to proceed with emotional caution when pheromones and egos are involved.  Something definitely smells bad here... the pity factor, the pageant-worthy bs, the whole story.  No one loves a tragedy more than sports fans.  No one loves a stellar performance on the field right after a family loss or illness.  We are sensationalists and voyeurs; the more icing on the cake, the more takers.  We tweet and gossip and indulge in our broken-hero stories.  What I want to know is which came first-- -the hoax or the death?  Was he trying to cover up his mortifying gullibility with a story he thought no one would question?  And the big question here:  does his online-dating IQ, his lack of judgment, his possibly perjurious action affect his performance on the field?

The whole world is a hoax.  Airbrushed photos, fake Facebook posts, botox and plastic surgery faces, altered bodies, clothes that don't fit, bodies that have been trained into shapes that were never genetically intended, athletes breaking natural records with drug-enhanced ability, spell-check, corn flakes, pitch-correction, ridiculous dog-breeds and talking monkeys, perfume and deodorant, ultra-white  teeth and spray tan.  So of course we wag our pointed fingers even more furiously because we hold these athletes to higher standards?  Like politicians?  I mean, the guy wasn't advertising his genitals on youtube.  He wasn't even breeding vicious dogs.  So he's a fame-mongering creep.  We've got Ron World Peace Artest.  We've got Lance(d) Armstrong (was his name even real?).  We've got deflated homerun champions and Allstars who beat their wives.  He's got to perform in front of millions and millions.  Perform.  What's the deal?  The deal is: can he play or can't he?  Michael Vicks, what's your take on this?  I'll let you pass judgment for me.

On the lighter side, I need to get some gym-issues off my chest.  We all work out, but there should be a rule against tiny shorts for people over 35.  Especially men.  The girls who can pull it off-- -well, they don't.  But I cannot fathom what possesses these middle-aged women to wear a sports bra and bicycle pants--- or a midriff-baring outfit... I mean, we all have flesh, but no one wants to look at the true confessions of a 50-year old.  I work out at odd hours; the trendy crowd has better things on their agenda, so you get the genuine weirdos and smelly eccentrics.  The old lefty 60-something psychologist women who have finished their evening appointments and need to vent (fun) and the left-over undateables who whine and complain and watch Law and Order reruns. The anorexics and bulimics who watch the food channel, and some bona-fide artists who have lost all sense of time and schedule.  I am sometimes among them, days when I am reclusive and writing and solitary and I go to insert some semblance of routine and human contact into my dark life.  The lights alone are an assault.   I can watch    
Anderson Cooper getting old or Joan Rivers nailing the fashion bs or the Kardashians.

So maybe Manti Te'o wanted to be something he isn't-- maybe he doesn't see his pathetic image-manipulating is as ridiculous as that woman in my Latin Dance class with her wheels of fishy flesh hanging over the spandex shorts, in the front row, flubbing all the steps with attitude like she's Shakira's dance instructor.  He wanted to be Tom Brady, or even Reggie Bush or some five-minute hero.  He wanted not just the football trophy but the Mr. Congeniality Award, the Most Obstacles Overcome, the guy that gets the ovation, with the teary crowds.  He could taste it.  Or maybe he's just a kid who fell for a face and wanted that face to represent not just passionate romance but values, and it was just a face.  You don't get to the NFL by making a facebook page with fake statistics; the guy obviously worked for some years, and with all the sports-doping, pederasty, bank crookery, Federal reserve swindling and plagiarism going on these days, realize we are all hoaxed by the hoax, and people are being massacred in Syria--- maybe incredibly talented football players who will never get to hold a ball in front of any crowd or their loved-ones who have all been brutally murdered--- and no one is crying.  So this guy is just a guy.  Let him go to confession on Sunday and leave it at the door.  Draft him for his skills not his fairy-tale potential because the real joke is on us for watching and listening and binging on all the excessive media fluff and stuff.  Let the game begin.