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.

New (Banana) Republic

Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been totally left behind? Like you’re on this train and none of the stops sound familiar because the city’s had a facelift and a name-change and a makeover and all of your cool landmarks have been replaced with a mall? I rarely have those innocent New York dreams where you open one of your inadequate closets and there is a room… another apartment… a loft with a view… light…not a dream-sized room but a room-sized dream. I now have this recurrent nightmare like a vintage Twilight Zone episode where all the streetsigns are no longer anything you might recognize. And you get off and instead of Louis Sullivan, you get Frank Gehry or some hologram of architectural space. I need parallels, perpendiculars. I need 90 degree angles. Tic-tac-toe. Avenues and streets. Not roads that turn into snakes and rivers and bridges. I need blacktop and sidewalks, double white-lines. Parking meters. Tenements and skyscrapers lined up like books on library shelves. Urban order. Otherwise I get nervous.

Maybe it’s true that older people just resist change. And when did I get old? Resistant and unreasonable? Like some old coot demanding white-bread-with-crust at Whole Foods. The truth is I haven’t shopped in years. I can’t stomach the perpetual overlit Christmas-vibe of department stores and I can’t abide the ever-watchful eyes of judgmental salespeople in small shops. Even the helpful ones. When they approach me I feel like a librarian at a surfboard convention. And they are all well-dressed. Stay calm, I tell myself. These people get paid to fold and hang up clothing. I am a customer and they are my handmaids. But they look at me like I am scum or worse, and doubt that I have the money to afford anything from the looks of my vintage wool man’s overcoat. Plus they cannot actually help, or I would be at a therapist’s office, and when they recite this offer, it comes out like platitude, not a question.

I ventured into the Banana Republic to spend a giftcard some kind friend sent me for Christmas. I had no clue what I wanted or what the selection could even be like. The pants on sale seemed harmless…but were sized according to a name-coded system of low, lower, lowest and hipless. I seemed to need a size zero Ryan style, according to the salesgirl. Anyway, she offered me something reasonable in black velvet which looked like a bad version of pajamas once I put them on. Banana Republic. I can normally afford nothing… the cash… and now the gift card thing… but besides the sale items which seem to be unwearables, $100 buys me a T-shirt or 4 pairs of boxer shorts. A pair of Victorian wrist cufflets with which to dress up a sweater. I hated it all. The fitting room girl gave me a little tilted head as I returned all garments after a respectable interval staring at my newest wrinkles in the fitting room mirror, wondering whatever happened to real hooks…to those velvet benches they used to have when I was a kid, to those three-part mirrors so you could observe your rear end without emerging and asking a salesgirl to give her educated point-of-view.

I left feeling pissed off and humiliated, felt my face flush when the security guard on the way out stopped me. Have a nice day, he said, when I started to open my purse like a suspected shoplifter. On the street I wanted to place my Banana Republic giftcard into the cup of a blind panhandler but didn’t want to come off smug and ironic or subject him to store humiliation. And what’s up with the name? I thought a Banana Republic was a small tropical country being taken for fools by some pretentious exploitive generalissimo. I want no part of it. Like Urban Outfitters. Years ago you could find vintage cargo pants in this place— camouflage, workclothes…remaindered grunge stuff. Now it’s overpriced T-shirts and college-room lamps made out of Barbie dolls. Hand-dyed undershirts selling for designer prices. Crap. Expensive crap. Stuff you will see in your thrift shop in less than 2 weeks because it is so trendy it looks stupid by the time you get it home.

I do sound like an old coot. Oh well, I’ll save it for the kids for a birthday. Use it as a bribe. At least I can spend my Starbucks card to buy a coffee for the ride home. They can’t mess up a large black too badly. At least there are no fitting rooms, no dress code.

But outside the corner store is a homeless guy I recognize. He is standing in front of the Starbucks window like an urban mannequin, voguing conspicuously. He is tall and wild, intimidating and menacing. He sometimes likes me. He carries a boombox and makes noise when he is pissed off. Men in my hood give him money. Plenty of it. They fear him and he knows it. He can humiliate them when he feels like it, when he is unmedicated which is most of the time. Anyway, here he is, voguing outside the window, with his middle finger extended to the sky. It is Ash Wednesday and he is now doing Jesus, with a white ash cross-sign on his forehead, arms outstretched, giving the double massive straight-up finger, entertaining the Starbucks customers, no charge.

I change direction and decide to make my own brew at home. No wonder they say retailers make an extra 30 percent on giftcards no one cashes. The homeless guy-- I swear to God-- still in Jesus pose, is now singing in full voice, as though I'd personally scripted this little Ash Wednesday musical, an old-time song I used to hear on cartoon soundtracks, but never understood until now. Yes, we have no bananas, he sings.

Some of the worst dressed people still have pride. A sense of irony. Style. Bananas.