Varet Street

We walked through the streets late at night, early in the morning, noticing the industrial buildings around us. The air was warm and my heels clacked like army boots. Everything I'd been worrying about felt safely far away - my sister with her stomach stitched up, my father with a tube in his head. Music from a neighborhood party echoed off the rooftops. We shared a bottle of water and looked at the factories, where the Boar's Head cold cuts are frozen and distributed, where corrugated boxes are made to order. Bushwick had never felt so safe, all five of us marching like a little band. I wondered if these were my friends, my Brooklyn family. It's lonely here sometimes.

We made our way back to Mark's car and drove the short distance to my apartment, gazing at the late party-goers straggling home. I said I worry sometimes that living here prolongs a sense of adolescence, freezes our growth in time. We're almost thirty and still doing the same old things, still noticing things together. What will happen when that changes? And when should it change? I don't think any of us knows.

I let myself into my apartment and started cleaning. I swept under the couch, in neglected corners, coaxing balls of hair and dust from hiding. It felt like teasing out pockets of shame, the detritus of my life. I listened to the mix I made for my parents' wedding anniversary two years ago, the old love songs I'd put in order for them. How do you know what your own life is, and what your managed idea of your life is? I spend so much of my time thinking of myself as I relate to other people. I don't know where I am if there's no one there to place me. I finished cleaning and I sat on the couch and I listened to the Byrds, and I thought about it.

The first time

The first time we thought my dad was really sick was a summer night two years ago. I had gotten off the Greyhound in DC and found my sister's car waiting outside, slung my bags in her trunk and climbed in the passenger seat when she looked at me, gripping the steering wheel, her eyes like bowls.

We drove straight to the hospital.

It took some time to get back to the room where they had him; they were only letting in two visitors at a time, and there were four of us: me, my mom and my sisters. It became a game, dodging past the orderly when he wasn't looking - slinking through the electronic gated doors.

My dad was scrooge in a nightgown, white-haired and naked under his hospital gown. He was busy plucking off the electrodes stuck all over him, which was sending the heart monitor into an alarmed wail. No no no, we said, pulling them from his hands and pasting them back onto his skin. Even with them in place the heart monitor was skipping all over the place. I'm leaving, he insisted, trying to swing his legs off the bed. Tracey sat like a bulldog at the foot of the mattress and taunted him: How are you gonna do that?

Dehydration, they eventually said. My mom had found him in the backyard with soiled sweatpants and a sweat-drenched sweatshirt in the afternoon sun. She had washed him in the shower and he had gone to the bathroom again, so she washed him off a second time. She thought he'd had a stroke because he couldn't string a sentence together.

That night on the way to the hospital we didn't know if we were driving to say goodbye, and so I started memorizing. My sister's face, the shake in her voice, the night highway.

...

Enough

New York was breaking my heart yesterday. It was one of those days where I was rattled, feeling less than sane, and so everywhere I went I saw castaways. Men lurching past me, reeking. Women who looked normal, were dressed well enough, but upon passing were sputtering gibberish. People cross-legged in doorways with filthy, encrusted feet. Why does that happen? It's like a magnetic force, my crazy drawing all the other crazy into my field. In the city you see plenty of damaged people every day, but it's not usually all you see.

I was done, finally, with my day, descending into the bowels of Port Authority when a bright-eyed Chihuahua wanted to say hello to me. He strained at his leash, ears perked and tiny tail vibrating. His owner was an old man having trouble with the stairs, paused halfway up with a walker, and I went to smile at him, him and his dog. But his eyes were milky and he was muttering. That was it for me, the last straw. I went home home home and quickly to bed.

Quiet

They say evolution comes in spurts, and I believe that’s true. The sudden explosion rather than the gentle uphill slope. I worried so long about what to change and when, but when change came it came of its own accord, without my consent.

You do the work. You plod along and do what you believe should help, and nothing changes. You obsess over one thing over and over, night after night, losing sleep and drinking too much. Friends get tired of listening, poor things, and they’re right. You’re going in circles.

What I know is that the real growth happens without forethought. You’re in the middle of an argument and suddenly you say words you’ve never been able to say. You say, “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry.” Or you say, “Go to hell.” You watch as the light changes around you, revealing a new landscape.

The Bible has a line about God never giving us problems we can’t handle, and I don’t believe that. People shoot themselves and hang themselves and drink themselves to death because they can’t survive. So I don’t believe that’s so. Still, we can be surprised by our sudden ability to take things that for so long were the stuff of nightmares. Things can suddenly become easy and right.

I’m being intentionally opaque, and I’m sorry about that. This is a public space and so I don’t want to be specific. I’m not deluding myself into thinking my prose is poetically elusive rather than just plain hard to get through. You, whoever you are, are probably rolling your eyes. But that’s alright. I can’t believe you’re reading in the first place.

It’s a beautiful day here in New York. Is it sunny where you are? Funny how things devolve to small talk when there’s not much more to say. We might try silence.

Signals

I’ve been thinking about signifiers of wealth and what they afford us. I’m going to a movie premier with celebrities tonight, for example, and so I put on my good jewelry. None of this jewelry belongs to me in the sense that all of it was given to me – my mother’s moonstone ring, my mother’s David Yurman bracelet, the gold chains and earrings Billy gave me as birthday gifts. I put them on and my limbs sparkle. I hold my hands in my lap on the subway and there are glints of gold.

My family has money and I do not, but growing up I shared it with them. I attended a ballroom dance academy, I think they also call it cotillion, where we wore velvet dresses and learned manners: how to move through a receiving line, how to accept a dance, how to dance (of course). We clomped around doing waltzes, foxtrots, cha-chas. Afterwards we spilled out of the building with our wool coats on and bundled into our parents’ cars, driven home through cold winter nights.

It was an outdated tradition even then – we never attended coming out parties and I’ve since seen waltzes only on tacky television dance competitions and a handful of stuffy weddings. No, the biggest lesson we learned at Mrs. Simpson’s Dance Academy was that class is a construct. You are taught to hold yourself with regard and to see the world as a system of exchanges, to learn to navigate those exchanges – nothing about that comes naturally. You are taught to give with the expectation of receiving, to receive with the expectation that things be given.

I straddle the line now. I sit on the deck of an unimaginably expensive yacht and accept a stranger’s fine wine in my glass, saying please and thank you with every interaction. I’ve been served but also done the serving, in high school and college with ketchup stains on my button-down and a sweaty ponytail. I probably made it weird for the server last night with my too-polite smile and my stiff shoulders. Thanks, sorry, thanks, sorry, is what I was really saying. Sorry for what? I can’t decide if guilt is condescension or a healthy reaction to arbitrary demarcations.

Afterwards we relaxed in a grand sitting room, the yacht bobbing up and down on the water and the Jersey skyline looming and disappearing with each swell. The staff introduced themselves and plopped down on the far couch, all together, all on the same couch. Billy and I shared the other couch, and Megan sat in her own chair. We watched Megan’s pilot episode and she hid her face under her wool scarf, laughing at the corniest scenes. Last night I wrote that they were all friends, Megan and the staff, but now that seems naïve. I keep thinking about her silk tunic and their cotton work shirts. It’s not a sign of worth, only an idiot would think that, but it’s a sign of difference.

The problem with being on unequal footing with people is that you can never really know what’s choice and what’s obligation. Servers are adept, after all, at pretending. I’m not saying that Megan’s not likeable or that they’re not fond of her, but I am saying that lines exist.

But people are people are people – children know this. Children are given books with titles like Everybody Poops to help them understand their bodies and their place in the world. I guess that’s the discomfort – we’re the same, we’re the same, we’re the same. Still, most jobs depend on being nice.

Yacht club

Tonight was one of those rare nights when New York unfurls itself and its pieces tumble down around you like confetti. So many pieces you just stand there and gape. Megan invited us to her grandfather's yacht, an epic ship that you have to take your shoes off to enter. We found it resting by itself in the waters outside Battery City, just itself, lolling confidently in the harbor. A staff member lowered a walkway for us and held a basket out for our shoes.

Billy and I gawked. We walked through the ship and gawked. There was a master bedroom with a whirlpool tub, there was marble and beautiful wood and antique globes. The rooms were not rooms but parlors, and when we reached the dining table on the top deck we were offered wine. It was a warm night with a chill sifting in on the wind, and we sat with our jackets zipped up looking at the statue of liberty. Be polite, I thought when the staff member offered me bread. Don't eat too fast, and for god's sake don't gulp your wine.

Megan joked with the woman like they were friends, and the woman joked back. I was being too formal but I couldn't help it.

Steak came out, filet mignon cooked rare with lobster on top, drizzled in rich gravy. Mashed potatoes and salad with prosciutto and brie and squash. We ate it all. Dessert came out, my wine glass was filled, maple ice cream with apple rhubarb pie and fresh blueberries. We posed for a picture afterwards in the mist of the hot tub and acted like we were accustomed to such finery.

Afterward we sat on couches with the ship's crew and watched Megan's pilot, the one that didn't get picked up. It was decent for its genre, a feel-good inspirational and aspirational CW drama, and everyone complimented her. The crew knew Megan and were surprisingly relaxed with her, and it struck me how comfortable she was with their unequal positions and how that comfort allowed them to be friends. They were all meeting her for drinks later.

I thought about Megan with her bright eyes and funny laugh, which is almost a bray, and I thought about her absolute confounding exuberance. She is someone who does not stay down. She is beautiful and rich and everything everyone who wants what she has loves to knock, but they miss the point that she also works harder than them. She tells the story of running into an old acquaintance, an aspiring actor, who said, "Your hair looks terrible." He said, "I heard your pilot didn't get picked up."

We went to Mercury Lounge and stood in the bar while a metal band thrashed around on stage. The lead singer wore a leather corset and whipped her long blond locks, roaring at the audience. She looked like someone who might love to eat burgers and milkshakes at 5am after a hard night partying, but maybe she was a sweet gentle soul who loves to help people. Who knows. The two aren't mutually exclusive, obviously. We met another actor friend of Megan's who wore a fedora and chewed on a toothpick, telling self-deprecating stories about his career. I don't understand actors but I want to believe in their intelligence, their sight which is not like mine, I just don't get it. Yet. Maybe.

We left Megan and walked to the subway, admiring the East Village apartment buildings with their old oval windows. On the way down the L train stairs I passed an old woman in a black cape who stopped me and said, "Please don't go to the end of the platform. The creatures are running around." She gave me a searching look and nodded, and I nodded back as if I understood. It satisfied her, which is all I think I could have given her. The creatures were not there, of course, but I wondered what she saw. Black shapes flitting around and whispering in high harsh tones.

Tomorrow I'll go with Megan to the Sex and the City 2 cast event, where all the cast members will watch the movie and then mingle. I'll put on my cocktail dress and think about how fat I am in comparison to the other women, which is cliche and banal and all sorts of boring things, but true nonetheless. I'll see celebrities and wonder what on earth I'm doing there, how I ended up at a place like that. It'll be an experience. That's the thing - it will be an experience.

Nuts, bolts

Three days back in New York and I feel weepy, the sky is falling. It’s raining steadily and I know the hammock in my backyard must be waterlogged, the plants are stewing.

My world is small and I keep it that way. I pace the narrow rooms in my apartment and glance at the plants outside, see how they’re doing. The Japanese maple has new leaves, the irises are wilting. I talk to the cats. Sometimes this is sweet and sometimes it feels like insanity. What am I really doing?

I should thank Stephen Elliot because every time I read his emails I want to write. I read his emails and I do away with commas.

Oh it’s dark, it’s so dark outside. The printer is jammed and IT complains. Soup for lunch, seven dollars.