Mad Marchness

On my first day at Princeton, I was asked to sign a copy of the university honor code.  This is an agreement, made with complete solemnity, that (a) as a student I will not cheat or violate the school's ethical educational protocol, and (b) that I will report anyone who does.  So I submitted my document, crossed out the second part, and signed it.  Of course I was called in and questioned, and I explained my thinking-- that if everyone 'oathed' to be honest, how could there be anything to report?

The point being-- there is a sort of assumption that the code will inevitably be broken, but to acknowledge this seemed a denial of the version of academic innocence that presumably qualified us for entrance in the first place.  The Deans-that-were thought I was being rebellious and argumentative; on the contrary, I was being honest and clear.  In the end they allowed me to sign off on the first clause, and delete the second-- an exception, in good faith, because they could see I was clearly committed to an education process.  In retrospect, they had to allow me my innocent belief that the academic world was built on a solid ethical contract and that we were there to learn.  Why would I think otherwise?

Granted, my first week of class I was terrified that my fellow students would realize I was under qualified.  Sure, I was a good student-- mostly because I loved to read-- but I'd come from a public school; my parents had never attended college, and my Mom's reading list consisted of Ladies' magazines and local newspaper stories.  She was certainly not stupid, but she used to read the spines of my library books as though they were in another language.  My roommates were from Boarding Schools... they'd had sophisticated specialized classes and some had had tutors.  I was naive and thought this some British system of advanced one-on-one teaching.

I survived... actually graduated with highest honors and won some awards and scholarships.  Yes, my Mom put the Ivy League stickers on her car and 'wore' my alma mater with some pride.  Both parents never forgave my foregoing the Harvard Law scholarship and depriving them of bragging rights.  But my life was my own;  the career choices that horrified them suited me.  Most of all I am uber-grateful to Princeton not for the guaranteed access to a certain society, but for the opportunity of learning.  I am intellectually rich and gained a sense of context... this is the world, this was the world... I know how to ask questions and where to go for answers.  I have an appetite for information, for art-- to understand, to look, to listen, to have an opinion.  I paid very little, other than work-study assignments.  Is this not education?

For many years, maybe as a kind of payback, I've interviewed prospective freshmen for Princeton.  It is volunteer work and my students are nearly all from the outer boroughs, so I do not overlap with neighbors and acquaintances.  I've watched the boroughs become more and more gentrified over the past decades.  My students in the 90's had rarely been to Manhattan; now some of them are world travelers-- but most are low and middle class people, and many are recent immigrants.  Their parents have not been to college, and they all need financial aid.  Some of them work-- even full time, at places like Wendy's, after school and weekends.  One of them this year cared for a blind father.   They are eager and timid but all of them seem to have this faith in themselves-- this belief.  They are satisfied with their performance-- even proud.  It touches me-- their young ambition, their dreams.

Once in a while I am assigned a privileged student-- from a city private school who has been prepped for the interview-- who is well traveled and has an iPhone.  They often come in winter without a coat--- they are driven to the meeting and have a bit of swagger.  They reel off their accomplishments and social service hours with professionalism, their global sophistication and their intentions.  Often they are legacy children; many generations have attended before them and they are nearly certain they will be accepted. They have had lessons and gone to specialty camps.  One of them last year had his own sailboat and competed in some junior version of the America's cup.

I have grappled many times with the admissions committee-- how can you compare these prepped and college-ready kids to the boy I interviewed in January from Kashmir-- who had sat in a public library in Queens day after day trying to absorb the new language, looking at Chemistry texts with familiar formulae?  Or the homeless girl who apologized for not having a shower... who slept in an abandoned basement, borrowed pens from her teachers, wrote in discarded notebooks and was reading Murakami?  They assure me these children will get every equal opportunity, and our assessments are being studied so they can properly 'read' the potential of unusual students and 'weight' achievement accordingly.  I believe them.  I believe when they tell me they can spot a professionally written essay in the first sentence.  They are good at what they do.

My own son has a great brain-- the city prep schools fought over him... but as a teenager, he lost interest in school.  I tried-- and let him fail, while we watched much less gifted kids achieve comparable scores and competitive grades with many thousands of tutoring hours.  I will admit he made some decent pocket money writing papers for his classmates in middle school.  It was a kind of job and at least he was doing someone's homework, if not his own.  I never ratted-- but along these lines, I've noticed wealthy families feel they are delinquent if they do not spend large sums on outside SAT tutoring and college advising services.  None of these are indicated on the applications.  Is this fair?  Not really.  My son has complained to me recently that many of his most successful friends have start-ups funded by their affluent families.  I can only agree.  Is this fair?  Maybe.  This is life.  Really beautiful girls are more readily acknowledged...  tall men are generally better equipped for basketball teams.

We live in a world fueled by money.  Our presidents have cheated.  Our star athletes have cheated.  Art dealers and museum curators cheat and lie.  Singers lip-synch; recording artists use machines and auto-tune.  They put their names on music written by others-- they steal and adapt things written by lesser known artists.  Not so many are punished; success seems often to whitewash the spotlight.  I suppose what bothers us most about the recent college entrance scandals is the villainous parent scenario.  It scars the institution of the American family, not that it hasn't been exposed as an often dysfunctional body with a perfect face.  It shows both a level of personal sacrifice, and a complete disconnect with the 10 Commandments of parenting.

Am I surprised?  Maybe at the particular scheme, but not at the modus operandi or the intention.  In fact it goes far deeper than this, which seemed almost innocent compared to the scandalous manipulations of our political and religious leaders.   And we have known for years about NCAA schemes.  I used to be warned never to buy even a coffee for one of my interviewees in the event he or she is an athlete and this could be construed as bribery.  So this, I thought, is where they get the money they use to pay off.  On the brink of the basketball tournament, the amount of media attention paid to these two actresses is a little suspect.  Especially one who stood for a kind of American innocence.  If these were just non-celebrity wealthy people would the news give them this much time?  Another instance of inequitable receipts.

In the end, the parents seem less guilty to me than those who received the money and offered the schemes in the first place-- who prey on the insecurities and vicarious ambition of the monied.   As do the overpaid college advisors who claim to offer access to the front of the line, who enable and pad applications.  Whatever happened to the level playing field?  Failure as a learning tool?  As a reality check?  Every brilliant athlete loses games, fouls out.  In the end we can't stand in for our children or hire stuntmen to take their pain.  Surrogate parents only go so far, and surrogate students do no service whatsoever but for themselves.  We might do better addressing the students, without their family-crutches... without their tutors and coaches and advisors.  In their unadulterated innocence, as it exists today, if we can peel back the digital masks and uncover some human shine.

Sisterhood of the Praying Hands Tattoo

My local homeless man asked me this morning if I'd been to 72nd Street and Broadway recently.  I have, I said… and yes, I'd noticed that a sort of shantytown is beginning to take shape on certain nights… and yes, there is a definite proliferation of the homeless.  They come in all varieties-- the ones who seem absolutely hopeless victims of circumstances-- then the poor planners, the drug addicts and alcoholics who would trade any kind of security for a fix… the beggars, the wounded and afflicted, the vegan dog-lovers who squat on corners and feed their pets boutique food, who ask for practical things like flashlights, batteries, toothbrushes and water packets.  They are safe there--- it's almost a little festive in the balmy summer nights… a kind of reality show of their own-- some of them swearing to me that they wouldn't trade their freedom for the oppressive landlord-tenant system, for a 9-5 existence working in fast food or retail just to put cornflakes in the breakfast bowls of a tableful of kids whining for $200 Nikes and an iPhone 7.

Sister, one calls me as I get off the 2 train at 3 AM… because I am susceptible to that nomenclature, since my own sibling is mean and heartless, wealthy and estranged.  He can almost feel my knees buckle imperceptibly as I reach into near-empty pockets and dole out whatever is left… 42 cents last night… yes, I travel light, when I am carrying my instrument.  Yes, he needs all 42… and I am painfully sympathetic to the less fortunate, despite the fact that a small thing like shoe repair is beyond my budget these days.  No, I cannot imagine not having a dry place to write on rainy nights, clean sheets and a warm bath for my babies, in past days… a door behind which I can lock my guitar and know that it will be there, unstolen, when I return, God willing.

I have thought long and hard lately about this will of God, as I check up on a neighbor who is in final stages of a wasting and wicked cancer-- a woman who just 3 years ago was living the careless and happy life of a bartender/actor with marginal financial success but with a devil-may-care attitude and a spirit of independence witnessed by her wild red hair.  She is now terrified, this new friend of mine-- of the unknown, of the pain, of the power of the disease to outwit any treatment or diet or prediction.  Fear is contagious.  I approach her with steeled nerves-- with love, because I know how callow people shun the sick at times…and with great admiration because she is living with a kind of grace and dignity that I don't think I could muster.  She thanks me for my kindness-- when I have not earned that attribute.  I can scarcely afford to buy her a Gatorade while her electrolytes are haywire and she is unable to manage much of anything by mouth at this point.  She apologizes for the occasional outburst or protest at the medical staff who calmly stick and stab her, wound her and send her home, because she is still, most of the time, categorized as 'ambulatory'.  So she goes upstairs and thanks God for her remote so she can distract herself with television, go online on her ancient computer where she can share side effects and symptoms with other patients, most of whom are desperately seeking affirmation or answers which do not exist.

God?  I ask myself, knowing full well He has never been the sort of miracle worker on a throne with a magic staff.  I imagine He, too, is as baffled by cancer as He is by the internet and robotics and Uber vs. Didi; by an artificially tanned presidential candidate, and by the bitterness of the lower half of the one percent.   No, there have not been many wealthy saints-- no matter how philanthropic this fractional minority with the economic majority may be, they still have way too much.  I, on the other hand, am in the lower half of the 99%… somewhere above the homeless, I suppose, but struggling to pay for intermittent phone service and lousy TV, afflicted with leaky pipes, insufficient heat, mice and various mechanical Catch-22s which make reasonable repairs impossible.

Still, I am alive… I am detached from some of my most cherished lovers, my children are independent but good humans…. my possessions have become things that are deeply poignant and meaningful… as though people have receded and the souvenirs have taken their place.  Try as I do, I cannot impart to my son the importance of this or that book, this pile of old handkerchiefs, these letters-- these hand-painted envelopes and this shirt from 1968… this beat-up guitar case.   To him, they are all things for the future post-mortem bonfire, the enormous thrift-shop pickup which will punctuate my departure.  For me, this seems unbearable now.

I am going out of town for a gig-- I asked my ill friend if I could do anything.  'A postcard,' she said.  'I would like a postcard mailed to me with an exotic stamp.'  And how that touched me--- how I hope I'll find something which will not let her down because that has become my mission.  I wonder if she will notice if I send her something from one of my collections-- because I fear I won't be able to find something worthy in a souvenir shop-- or even in a museum-- in this disappointing digital culture of ours, so I think I am going to cheat and take along something I cherish.

On the uptown C train today, there was a young girl with a 10-month-old baby in a stroller.  He was her 5th, she told me, with her tired eyes and her wifebeater and shorts.  I wonder how many were with her when she got that incredible tattoo of the praying hands on her chest… or the cursive-written ink names on her breasts.  She was shaking her head to music from her iPod as her youngest boy nodded off and his little hand let itself down to his side the way children do in their sleep-- with a slow grace that eludes even the most accomplished ballerinas.
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There is God in this gesture, I thought, although his mother was in the world of Hip hop.  This is how He would bless us, if He did… how He will lower us, we pray, from living to some kind of rest… with a sense of compassion and control… from tears and the hot sweaty crowded subway car of life to some eternal dream of peace... where there are no more bandages or treatments or malignancies or Medicaid, no more bills and hateful sisters… no more homelessness and fearful sleeping in damp ominous doorways under mercury streetlights but the safe breeze of a starry summer night.  Amen.

Dial-ogue

I am not a huge fan of mega-corporations like Apple-- the very name seemed so pirated from my beloved Beatles record labels… but I'm betting on them in this latest little dispute.  Besides,  if McCartney wasn't able to plead his case successfully against Steve Jobs, I'm guessing the FBI will have even less chance.  And with all the tax money being used in the name of national security, if it all comes down to an iPhone, well… fill in the blank.

All this talk about phones and privacy has provoked an internal memory-blog.  For those of us in my generation and older, the cosmetic and utilitarian evolution of a telephone evokes iconic moments of emotion and nostalgia.  The quintessential rotary phone-- so Marilyn Monroe, so noir and cinematic… the ring, the cut-to-a phone shot in a black and white darkened room-- ominous, dangerous--- Hitchcock-ian-- the modern version of an Edgar Allen Poe Telltale Heart… etc… all so much a part of my adolescent landscape.  It seemed everything of emotional significance came through the phone… boys calling to ask us out, to just share an extra-curricular moment, to confess something--- our sisters would sit by us, trying to ascertain the other end of the conversation, making us nervous and self-conscious.  Schools and authority called our parents when we were in trouble… the deadly ring.

Growing up in an old Georgian house, there were unexplored treasures and souvenirs in the attic from families who'd lived there before; going through boxes and crates was a favorite rainy day activity.  We found an old black early-model  table telephone, among the things… and used it to invent a bizarre game of Rent-a-Car which involved dressing up as random characters who all intended to lease some specific kind of vehicle, while one of us manned the phone at the desk and dialed up some fantasy dealership to describe and order these.  The act of dialing was incredibly satisfying--- the smooth 'works' of the mechanism… it made this incredibly rich sound.

There were also occasional prank call weekends-- games or hanging-up on some boy we liked… or calling their mother and pretending to be someone else… just to connect with their house… it felt intimate and great.  My high-school boyfriend would call me at night-- I'd sit on the floor in a corner, in the dark, talking… touching the phone.  Ours was heavy and black… I felt as though he was inside the receiver..  it felt private and secret and safe.  My confidante.  The first summer I lived in Cambridge, on my own, we'd fall asleep on our phones… 500 miles apart…

When I was in labor with my son, I befriended the woman in the next bed who exchanged all kinds of incredible secrets with me and helped distract me from my pain.  She owned a phone sex business and tried to convince me this was a perfect way to make decent money while still being a stay-at-home Mom with  a baby.  All you needed was a nice voice, imagination, a little acting ability--- and you could make a decent day's salary in just 2 hours.  But somehow I had this relationship with my phone-- I couldn't abuse it; it was like a symbol of some kind of intimacy.  There were times we were close to starving and I'd take out her business card and think it over; but I never called.

When push button phones became standard, we all invented songs and silly melodies until that novelty finally wore off.  Dialing time was quick so it was harder to change your mind halfway into a call… somehow this made telephoning 'cheaper'… less significant…  and soon afterward, we all got message machines-- so we could connect with people even when they weren't home.  You didn't have to stay in staring at the telephone when you had a fight with your boyfriend or husband.  Phone traffic seemed to increase… Then caller ID took so much of the mystery away.  And we could screen calls.

Once my son had a cellphone, he could lie about where he was.  I had no clue he was cutting school.  Or he'd tell me he was working on a paper when he was at a concert-- maybe playing basketball at night in Central Park, getting high with kids in a rented hotel room.  Clueless we were.  One semester I paid tuition and he was in Cancun-- calling me, telling me about his classes, etc.  Of course roaming charges eventually busted him… but I hear people all the time on the street telling their mothers or husbands they are somewhere when they aren't… they are on the bus when they are having a drink with a stranger…. etc.

So it's not really a new concept that the phone is sort of an accessory to a crime or a falsehood.  They say something like half of all Facebook accounts are fake people.   All of this technology encourages us to mess with our identity-- it's like the converse of the sex-line.  You are eminently visible-- but why not use someone else's photo?  Or a photo you can not only take but alter and imbed-- all with the same piece of equipment.  You can even change your voice--- add a soundtrack.  And for what?

In this age of watching films, checking heart rates and paying bills with phones--- cameras, video, youtube--- I still don't have a cell phone.  Yes, it drives my friends and family crazy… but it bothers me that people text and don't often speak.  It seems so impersonal and de-privatized.  And then people answer calls in random public places-- at the gym, on a bus, in an elevator-- you hear this loud conversation-- both sides, often-- totally inappropriate information we are forced to witness, and knowing the caller never intended to have this drama acted out with an audience.  Hang up… and everyone is doing 3 things at once… your husband could be lying in bed with his lover while you text him a grocery list and he heart-emojis you back.  I go home and listen to voicemail… people still call me, or they email… slightly better than texting.  Men I know who cheat on their wives always email women-- wives occasionally look through their phone, and this way it's not so incriminating.  The casual habits of texters and phone-addicts makes this kind of secrecy less viable, less safe.  Everywhere I go-- -even while I am playing a gig, more than half the audience is doing something with a phone… doing several things… watching the gig through their phone camera… I don't get it.

Last week  I saw an old rotary phone in a thrift shop-- a black one, with a wall plug-- the way they originally were.  It was heavy… it was a little sculptural… it was incredibly attractive.  I had to touch it… maybe like those 1960's indie films-- or the old Warhol films… or the French nouvelle vague-- they have this nostalgia, this appeal-- like old Beatles photos-- George and Pattie Boyd… James Dean, Marilyn.  These people exchanged secrets,  intimacies on these old phones.  The one in the thrift shop had a kind of sex appeal-- it had a soul.  It had a vibe.  A young couple was taking selfies with their iPhones, posing-- pretending to speak on this old thing.  Irony.  Like an old stray dog, I had the urge to take it home with me… and suddenly I had this clear picture of my young Mom so many years ago… with her cigarette and her perfectly manicured hands… giving me this little mischievous wink and tilt of her head, saying.. 'let's just let it ring…. '

Goodwill Hunting

One of my bad angels has been playing tricks on me.  Beside the trash can on my corner, she's been leaving small piles of books-- old books, from the 40's, 50's and 60's, the way I love them… Mayakovsky, Celine, Rebecca West-- Chomsky, lectures of Nabokov... some days it's Marx, Engels-- Freud, Jung.   I am compelled of course to bend down, sort through them, be observed by my neighbors as a trash-picker.  Sometimes I explain-- plead-- Take these orphaned treasures… someone!  They will be rained on, spat on, trampled, peed on by over-pampered and un-knowing dogs.  I already own nearly every single one; I pride myself on my home library-- this is my family, my furnishings, my confidants and mentors.  So far I've had one 'taker'… a woman from Boston,  wedding-dress shopping with her daughter, who took pity on The Letters of Virginia Woolf after I guaranteed it.

Moments like these, I realize how I am perceived and perhaps scorned by my neighbors--- or not.  I give it little thought, am inclined to keep the lowest possible profile in my old building anyway, where for me the most venerable tenants are the former fashion editor of the New York Times and her photographer husband, who, 60 years ago, were the red-carpet 'it-couple' of Manhattan.   They were surely omitted from the A and B list of last night's annual Costume Institute gala-- even though their knowledge of fashion history, art, photography, culture in general vastly overshadows that of our new celebrity stars.  How many of the red carpet walkers have actually been to the Museum to view the art, to investigate the sources of the classic designers?  I had a glimpse of Beyonce's typically disappearing dress.  Maybe I'm just old and bitter, but is this not the Emperor's New Clothes in all its finery?  She is essentially naked, with a few wisps of blingy fabric clinging to her.  Much like her performances-- sex and strippery-- with a very few references to actual dance and music.  And if you get close, she is 'lined' with a sort of gut-compressing body-stocking--- not even her actual skin.   And really, no matter how many trainers you have,  do we really want to see what her husband maybe doesn't even look at anymore?

A woman visiting from Paris mentioned to me the other day that New York women had lost their style. Guilty, I say, with great gusto.  Most of them, as far as she can see, are walking around in their gym clothes.  Paris women do not do this.  And then these underdressed women overcompensate at events… they over-dress, over-coif,  wear excessive make-up and jewelry.

For me, like the music culture and the myriads of art galleries, it's hard to keep up with fashion.  Quantity has certainly replaced quality as the statistic of choice.   Young designers have achieved status and success that used to be reserved for the very select few.  Old established firms have been re-branded and taken over by another generation of fashionistas; I wonder if their predecessors would approve.  It all seems to be symptomatic of the creeping epidemic of cheap blingy competitive greed culture eradicating the old Manhattan 'facade' of cool casual deco solidity and replacing it with cheap candy-coated money.

When I was in high school, I had a kind of style.  I wore capes and high-laced boots and extremely short leather and suede skirts.  I made clothes out of vintage material, and I re-processed ice skates and work boots.  For events, I had a couple of prototype Betsey Johnson slinky knits.  They were unique and had a presence.  These days,  at late middle age, I've been through many phases and have learned the value of living my life as I choose, and paying the price.  My friends have branded me a financial anorexic.  I buy nothing, live on $4 a day, mostly, and like Bukowski, I don't discard things until they are utterly unusable.  Bukowski had a kind of anti-style.  He hated shopping, as I do.  Stores embarrass me-- I feel sorry for the salespeople, and sorry for the buyers who pile merchandise in baskets with a kind of desperation.  Thrift shops are filled with things that have never been worn-- sad garments that have lost their appeal and never served a purpose.  I pity these things.  I also have an extremely small carbon footprint.  I don't drive; I only use public transportation.   I don't have air conditioning and I don't buy plastic water bottles.  I do buy art.  I starve for this.  Literally, sometimes.  I also starve for the possibility of creating something that might be considered 'art'.  I feel sorry for artists who are brilliant.  I feel less sorry for artists who are bad,  and think there should be some means of clearing the field, of eliminating the handicapped so the gifted can move forward with a little clarity and support.

The day before yesterday, I went to look at an art auction preview; there was really nothing absolutely compelling, and I switched gears and went to browse a Goodwill store.  As usual, there were the book hoarders, the nerds with iPhones price-checking to see if they could turn a profit on an old record or vintage turntable.  Then there were the smelly women shoppers--- the lonely, neglected and bitter husbandless breed who haunt these thrift shops desperate for a conversation, a chance meeting, an argument.   They criticize and malign not just the goods but their fellow shoppers.  One of these pongy women told me, after I declined to rat on someone who was tearing into an unpriced 'pile', that my apathy is exactly what Hitler wanted from me.  I fear these people sometimes; I have much more in common with them than with my rich neighbors who have contempt for the poor and badly dressed.  I fear their smell, and have to confess I find comfort sometimes in my old quilts and over-laundered sheets.  I tolerate the ghosts of lovers and the soft pliable pages of used books with old cracking bindings and inscriptions of people who are long-dead.

I prize soul over style-- can't imagine Otis Redding or Sam Cooke or Robert Johnson on a red carpet-- maybe an old wide-planked wood floor.  Old leather is comforting.  Old friends, old buildings.  I am soft and pliant like my books-- no longer shiny.  I also feel bad about the people that don't get to sit in with my band and wanted to, I feel guilty for the people who come out and buy more drinks than they can afford, I feel terrible that I failed to buy the Mexican kitchen staff their midnight Cinco de Mayo tequila shots last night,  and I am devastated that the Nigerian painter went to the wrong show and was not on the guest-list.  I feel embarrassed that people must buy my music and books, even when they spend the cost of 100 cds on ridiculous shoes that don't fit.   And I am so sorry to the kind man who keeps offering to take me for incredible meals--I no longer have enough spare gratitude for such things and a decent black coffee is really more than I can accept.

Who am I?  I am someone's mother, and used to be someone's daughter.  I am less prized than formerly as someone's lover.  I play other people's music in old clothes and other people's discarded shoes.  I ride home on the early morning subway with poems in my head and songs in my heart, some of which I will never be able to record.  I will never walk any red carpet, unless it is one stained with my own blood.  Last night a fellow musician told me that he'd listened to my album multiple times--- that it was unique and original and I had my own 'style' of writing.  He'll never know how that feels like an award, a trophy.  One listener.  It is enough. 

Ergo-nomics

Last week my son turned 25.  This prompted an uninspired shopping expedition which these days consists of a whirlwind tour in and out of various Soho 'label' stores, me getting a crash course in trendy fashion, the mid-20's consumer culture, a hands-on introduction to several moderate luxury items I've browsed online.  I'm always hopeful that by some miracle of fate and season there will be a single pair of leather boots or J Brand jeans or that Montcler jacket at 95 percent discount-- an irregular, a close-out, a mid-season return.  The reality is we both generally end up hungry, exhausted and humbled-- as though we've been allowed the briefest glimpse of paradise but no entry.

My French god-daughter and I once went on a day-long spree during which she tried on every dress, coat, ensemble, boot--- up and down Madison… twirling and deliberating, strutting like a princess, and ended up happily eating $1 hotdogs in our thrift shop jeans and leather.

My son doesn't have that gene.  He has sophistication mixed with ghetto values that want to own these things.  An iphone 6 on an entry-level salary doesn't phase him.  His college loan debt does not bother him.  His closet of discarded label-clothing is no argument.   Debt is his back-door man.  My lectures and principles are tap-water through the platinum sieve of his fancy.  The better man in him knows these material things are transitory.  But so is life.  My brain is my largest asset; his future wallet is his.  This year he hates John Varvatos.  I view that as progress.

I've had the same gynecologist since I was a college freshman.  We have developed this rapport now--- he has seen me through the important phases of womanhood and sexuality.  I've been a loyal patient.  He generally is non-invasive and non-judgmental-- asks little.  But as he approaches retirement, he has begun this tradition that we go into his little office and we talk-- no longer about sex and childbirth and clinical things--- but about life, the books we've read-- the death of the New York intellectual, why plastic surgery is perceived by a patient's friends as a disappointment-- etc.  He likes me.  I have a brain, he says, with an irony that tells me he doesn't often encounter this in his young patients.  It is irrelevant that I haven't had the kind of economic success he'd predicted for the precocious Princeton girl with the long legs and enormous vocabulary.  I had 'married' my career priority and surprised myself by my own eccentric ability to manage the city on a starving artist's income.  We have this professional intimacy and I trust him; he values me as a patient and I generally see him every year around my son's birthday-- Election Day-- marathon week.  It's a ritual I will miss when he finally throws in his speculum.

As I leave his office, I am vaguely consoled that there is no real emotional hangover from my failure to dazzle my son with a gift.  He deserves to be dazzled-- but is approaching the age when he will indulge himself rather than take the proverbial food from his mother's plate.  Besides, I gave him my iPad.  It was an extravagant gift from a super-rich lawyer to acknowledge the volunteer work I do.  I confess I've never used it.  It's not a brand new one, but he liked it.  It's a pretty good present, with another year of Applecare still on the books.

I walked to and from the doctor's office; the weather was mild and I saved the $5 metro-fare.  Coming through the park, I was thinking over our discussion about the subjectivity of sexuality, and I stepped on a $20.  $20.  In my pathetic world, this is life-changing.  Maybe in some households on the other side of the world-- -even the other side of town, this is also a windfall.  But in the Soho Bloomingdales, this was a useless bill.  I'd browsed $400 shirts, $600 lace-up boots, a really nice jacket for $2,600, and $500 jeans.  Everything seemed just so sad to me…there were a couple of young men in there buying-- some overdressed mothers indulging their sons… and 2 pairs of rap-star posers with every single symbol of fashion status including designer tattoos… commentating and handling the scarves and belts.  It's not about the quality, my son explained, who had generally worn the Century 21 belts and Syms parkas with sportsmanship and style-- it's the fit.   A similar observation had been made in my gynecologist's office, which elicited a subdued chuckle from the wise doctor who had authored, in the 1970's,  a cutting edge book called 'Healthy Sex'.

Outside Bloomingdales, after our fill of Soho labels and the kid-in-the-candy-store thing, 2 of the girls we'd seen inside were trying on handcuffs and being shown into a patrol car.  One size fits all, I remarked.  My son gave me that look-- -after all, I'd bailed him out a few times during teenage years.   The amazing thing was, he'd only stolen things he didn't really want-- like they were for someone else… some kind of warped pride in that.  Besides, he always had those rich girlfriends who shopped for him at the Prada and Armani store.  But even that got tired.

My friend has a high-end art gallery.  Last week she hired an outside consultant for an in-house gallery retreat which was a 4-hour meeting during which the consultant told her the place was dysfunctional and she failed to communicate and acknowledge her employees.  They were too disheartened by her attitude to fight for their opinions.  For this advice she paid $12,000.  I gave her the identical analysis 2 weeks ago on the phone, for nothing.  But without a price tag it was useless.  Consumo ergo sum.

I still refuse to give in.  With my $20 I bought some groceries, 2 great books at a thrift shop, a fantastic vintage ceramic tile as a new-baby present, a lotto ticket, a homeless guy's hotdog and coke, and I tipped my local Starbucks barista $5.  He gives me great coffee every day and charges me for a refill which is free.  $20 would not get my son through half a day.  When I die my greatest asset will go with me.  No, at this moment I can't afford to fix my teeth or have my bass re-fretted; I can't afford my son's shoes or a new iPad.  I still have no cellphone. But I will get what I need, as will my son.  He may even get what he wants, which is not necessarily what he needs, as my gynecologist and I know, and which he will learn when he really needs to know this-- when he finds a Moncler jacket or a diamond Rolex lying in his path and he decides to leave it there for the next guy.

To Text or Not To Text

New York City can be divided into two sociological groups:  people who text, and people who don’t text. 

The concept of telescoping information and response into an incredibly limited format is ancient; the current version unfortunately lacks the impact of a telegram sent, say, in the 1940’s or 50’s, when abbreviated language was more like a huge zipfile of meaning.  It seems now that something is completely missing.  It's cheap, like verbal fast food.  Of course, people are different now—people don’t understand things that I take for granted.

Repetitive, useless motion has certainly damaged our brain and occasionally wrists and hands… but at least I’m moderately aware that the ability to reply 40 times in a minute can dilute the message.   I’ve also begun to believe that I am some evaporating breed of dark brooding guilty emotional wreck that is on its way to extinction.  I'm sure statistically fewer people suffer alone in dark rooms; they now take drugs, and beat their landladies with wooden beams.  They OD on massive amounts of mind-numbing medication or they binge drink and crash vehicles. 

There is a blind man in my neighborhood;  I see him at the library and we speak.  I feel this enormous embarrassment in his presence—me with my free coffee refills and 20-year-old boots—for what I don’t lack.  Is that the inverse of entitlement?  My kids are pissed off that they don’t have a trust-fund-sized allowance.  They despise my refusal to carry a cell phone and my Luddite habits-- my appreciation of old, used things, of kindness.   The fact that I listen to the old neighborhood Polish holocaust survivor for long minutes,  the same incredible stories over and over—how she jumped from a plane, crawled through animal tunnels, hid under feed-bags, starved… and how no one writes her memoir.  I am nearly compelled to volunteer--- and then the conversation inevitably reverts to her complaining about her daughter who had no children, after heroically managing to survive the concentration camps so she could pro-create, now her progeny has no wish to respect this.  I’m sure her daughter texts. 

People who text--- a theoretically silent thing--- tend to be loud.  I notice this at the gym--- older people are quieter; they read the Times, watch MSNBC, ESPN, Law and Order.  Younger people have the screen on—usually the Kardashians, if I took an actual poll--   their ipods going, and they are tapping wildly at their smartphones.  Occasionally they answer calls--- frowned on, by notices posted everywhere—but who reads these? The people who already knew this, of course.  So they speak—loudly--- didn’t their preschool teachers program them to use their ‘inside voice’?  Apparently not.  When their friends come, they converse—so that it’s hard to ignore--- about their problems, about the market, about their weekends, their hangovers, their eating patterns---who they love and hate.  I try to love them.  I forgive them, the way someone in some supermarket is forgiving my own kids for their habitual tasteless narcissistic ‘loudness’. 

I think about the blind man--- how embarrassed I am that he must witness this behavior--- like he’s some superior sensitive being, because he's aware that he annoys people enough by his disability… but I’m still sure he listens and smells things with more perception than I.  And he’s probably irritated by my excessive politeness and guilty kindness.  Maybe he’d like to punch me. 

Looking around on the C train downtown this morning, I could pick out the tourists.  Some of them look less mean.  Some of them are dressed differently or wearing new items they mistake for New York ‘Style’.  Some of them have old-world charm and you can feel their inherited sense of family.  New Yorkers are always darting their furtive eyes around, looking at their phones, checking each other out or making a huge effort to appear too cool to look.  But you can feel their competitive gleeful flaunting of whatever it is they are wearing or reading or texting on. 

I am in such tight financial straits, I can’t imagine even carrying an ipad on a crowded train where someone could steal it.  How do all these people afford their iphone plans?  Their shoes and multiple bags?   My rich friend gave me a gorgeous designer bag and I still carry my $10 one--- the expensive one looks a) comically out of place with my thrift-level clothing choices b) pretentious and c)like maybe I bought it on Craigslist just to carry on the street.  Truth is, it’s heavy.  And I don’t need to be wearing my sins and savings in public simultaneously.   

The other truth is, my resistance to text is annoying to others.  They don’t want a pay-phone call, and they have little sympathy in fact for middle-aged people who are not fashionably dressed.  For aging rock musicians who get on the crosstown bus with a gig-bag like they are trying to act like a kid.   I mean, when you’re young and carefree and hot, you can ‘affect’ the down-sizing style of grunge or vintage mix, and the guys in Starbucks will still compete to take your order, will flirt and ask you about your music, will show up at your gig and look at you with those eyes the romance novels have made a cliché.  Your messy hair falls on your face in that charming way that makes everyone want to brush it back, just to touch you.  I stand patiently and invisibly in line now, and remember that person as a kind of fictional character in a favorite book.

So my new prayer is ‘please God, don’t make me have to apologize’.   I don’t need to be cute and admired, or even served with respect.  I just want to avoid accidents and serious injury and maintain a compassionate demeanor.  I don’t want any false pity or attention.  I want to hold back the tears, politely excuse myself from over-intervention in the lives of the tiny subset who are less fortunate than I am and sense my excessive empathy.  I don’t think I’d ever punch anyone because they’re callously annoying and intrusive, and I don’t want anyone to want to punch me because I’m a nasty old library-user who too often confuses kindness with guilt.  I am going to try not to find myself navigating the streets, uttering ‘sorry’ like a verbal tic to texters and phone yappers who are walk-weaving like drunkards.  I feel like a polite old British grand-dad, and curse myself for this repetitive, useless act that is undoubtedly wearing away at my edge like an arthritic joint.  Please.  Jesus, even that is annoying.