jolie laide: February 2006

The Answers to Important Questions

I go to pick up my laundry. It's a grungy little hole in the wall, matriarched by a dental-plan-challenged, 60-ish, chunky woman who, along with a couple of her cronies, I've seen sass customers unrelievedly, taking particular delight in confounding polite new gentries.

Crony: picking up?
Me: yes, please.
Crony: which bag's yours?
Me: the white one, there.
Crony: naw, that one's mine.
Me: ummm, yes, the white one, there.
Crony: naw. s'mine.

Oh! I get it! I give her a faux hard look, push out my chin, squint one eye, and say:

Now, I don't know why you would, but I am SURE you don't want my underwear!

She laughs and says, naw, I'm getting too old for that style!

She hands over my laundry, and now I know two things. One: they like me. Two: oh, yeah, your laundry people? They are so checking out your panties.

Today's Commute

I swipe my Metrocard and push through the clatter-rattle turnstile. The rumble of a train just leaving the station, but I can hear something else. An acoustic guitar and a lovely tenor are looping through the low arches, something quietly beautiful, not competing with the harsh surfaces, the cold air, but wrapping them, complimentary. I follow his music down the platform and he is playing a lullaby for the morning rush, a paean, a balm to the briefcase warriors and desk jockeys heading into Manhattan. The train pulls in and I slip a stream of coins into his open case. He smiles at me and says “Don’t let them get you.”

In response to a question

The first thing I remember is pain, a hard knot in my stomach. I am perhaps three years old and it is bedtime and my parents are putting me into the upper bunk bed to sleep with my sister. Her warmth is supposed to comfort me but it is a poor palliative and soon I am standing in the doorway of their bedroom and instead of words to tell them I am ill there is vomit.

And they dash me down the hall to the bathroom and I see the floor swirl by and I can’t be a good girl I can’t hold back and my body is betraying me by heaving, hurting, my parents yelping and irritated by the mess of me.

Pillow Fight Highlights

Waiting for the start signal, I am sitting on the steps. The girl next me is talking to her friend, but I am feeling gregarious and cut in.
Her: There’s a tent over there for trading confessions.
Me: How does that work? You just walk in there and start trading confessions with a total stranger?
Her: No, that would be a date.

At the whistle-blow, wading in to the fray, and hearing all of the laughter.

The strange combination of loopy fun and aggression. The pure dissonance of doing something you have only done at home, as a child and doing it outdoors, as an adult, with strangers, in a city where you are usually highly on guard. Knowing that not only are you not hurting anyone, you have their permission to hit them—a hole in the crowd happens, you look at each other, smile, and whale on each other.

Some guy and I are busting on each other when I feel some part of my arm make contact, it’s hard to tell where and how hard. But he says, “oh, that was below the belt, uh, I need to take a minute”. And I apologize, somewhat mortified. Then he yells “sucker!” and shanghais me. Excellent fake out, what a bastard!

I burst out of the fight circle onto the margins for a rest, and there’s a guy standing there. We look at each other and just go at it ferociously, hollering at each other
Him: “I’ll fuck you up!”
Me: “I’ll fuck you up with a fish stick!”
Him: “Hey, you have fish sticks in your pocket?”
Me: “No, I’m just happy to see you!”

Later his friend comes up and says her whacking action is being impeded by her tote and hand bags. I tell her I’ll hold them if she wants to go back in unencumbered. She looks at me and says, “OK, Complete Stranger!” being sorta sarcastic, like how retarded am I to think that she would let a total stranger in NY hold her purse. But know what? She did it. How cool is that?

Laughter. Tons of laughter. Could power Monsteropolis for decades.

Originally uploaded by penpusher.

I used to run summer programs for urban kids. 400 of em, taken daily to Brooklyn’s only national parkland to study environmental science: botany; ecology; biology. It was logistical insanity and I spent most of my time pushing paper. Except for the last day of the season. On that day, before an audience of parents and siblings, each group presented its final project. It could be a comparative analysis of ecosystems; a rap about recycling; a step dance done to a hollered table of elements.

I am milling about the barely controlled chaos when I see two eight-year-old boys run up to each other and embrace (notable enough for most of these kids come from rough neighborhoods; Brownsville, East New York, Bushwick).

“I got the part!”
“All right!”

Clearly his group is doing a play. I am charmed by their interaction, and I lean in to ask,

“What part did you get?”
“I’m a shrub!”

Oh, this is funny! He is so innocently proud of this part, and really, what is he going to do? Hold a bunch of sticks and stand in the back? Could this possibly even be a speaking part? I am snarfling up my own jaded sleeve as I push it a bit further, and with an oleaginous smile ask,

“And what does a shrub do?”
“A shrub is a natural barrier against wind and water erosion!”

In one amazing aikido move, this kid bends my cynicism against me and totally kicks my ass. And leaves me with a huge, real grin.

The summer after completing 7th grade I decide to spend time in a local theater program. The final production of the session will be “The Wizard of Oz” and when I get picked for the Cowardly Lion, I am pretty happy.

So for months I pedal my bike a couple of miles every day to rehearsal, through the increasingly parched landscape of an Oklahoma summer. Tiny two lane roads, 55 mile per hour speed limit, but the prospect of the final performance keeps me on those narrow shoulders.

The day comes when the costumes are handed out. I wait in line, expectantly, practically hopping from foot to foot. Uhhhh, what's this? It's an enormous orange fake fur dog suit, and instructions to take it home and sew a mane on it.

Well, OK, I’m game. Anything for the theater, right? Try to stuff it in my bike basket. It spills out like a shower of orange vomit. Try to cram it into my backpack. I can only get a third of its bulk under control four legs tentacling every which way. Fold it up, try to sit on it, and my feet don’t even reach the pedals.

One thing left to do.

Oh yes and you know I did. Put it on. And ride through the heat shimmers and rolling hills of the rural hinterlands, one huge orange dog on a bicycle.

Handwriting is getting so rare anymore. I like to pick up pieces of paper with handwriting on them, scraps that I find blowing about, stuck somewhere and forgotten. I have been doing this for years.

So I am at the swank opening of the Edvard Munch exhibition at MOMA. And I see a scrap of paper on the floor of the first gallery. I reach down and pick it up, a name and phone number in bold blue felt tip. I carry it around with me as I let myself be carried through the exhibition with its dreams and swirls and echoes, entrancing and horrifying. I realize it is still in my hand when I am in the last gallery, and I think I should put it back down to meet its fate. To be picked up by someone else like me, to be stuck to someone’s shoe and carried out into midtown Manhattan, to be swept up at the end of the night by a weary custodian. So I bend over and leave it tenderly on the floor, and loop back into the gallery for another go-round.

When I circle back to that spot, there are three men in dark suits with tell-tale curly ear wires. Security. They are standing around the piece of paper, a good two feet away, cordoning it off with their bodies. “I don’t know, she just put it there.” “Put it there? Or did she drop it?” “No, she put it there on purpose.”

Do I enlighten them? or let them think it’s some plot to steal another Munch? or a conspiracy to plant a dirty bomb?

Secret Garden

My mother lets out a shriek from the living room. I could be busted for any number of reasons, say, putting the gerbils in the elaborate pram I have long since outgrown, dressing the dashchund in my sister's underwear. But not this time.

This time it is for a long-term secret science project. Materials: shoe box lined with wax paper, filled with dirt, and lightly watered. Put under the couch, way to the back, where the vacuum cleaner and dachshund cannot find it.

After the first week, there is not much growth, but enough to be encouraging. At the second week, a satisfyingly fuzzy blush, and my mold garden is officially off the blocks.

I add things, tend my garden. A bottle cap with a crust of beer on the inside, a penny, a piece of broken glass, and watch the furry colored vectors spread, sometimes touching. The best is a popsicle stick, my most fruitful multiplier, its contact with my mouth setting off hairy tentacled growths more spectacular than any other object I plant.

I think my secret garden is quite beautiful. It gives me a strange comfort to know it is there, incubating in the dark.

My mother feels distinctly less so. Garden interuptus. Sigh.

Today's Commute

It’s a crowded rush-hour train, a thicket of upraised arms grasping for a purchase. Past the field of dark winter coats and smudgy newspapers our eyes meet, dispassionate, watching, hers a perfect green round.

And we stay that way, curious, looking, as the train lurches and rocks, until finally, still locked to me, she leans into her boyfriend, gently presses her temple to his cheekbone, and turns out her light.

Out of the subway and thinking about her eyelid slowly lowering, the sweetness of her touch to her lover, I get lost on familiar streets.

This is my Junior Associate, Kate. She is happy because this box contains her first big project, a hot meal program for impoverished seniors. Her childhood summer camp took her to the zoo often, where the walrus was her special friend and they had long conversations together.

100 Words on Beauty

The fields of my childhood brought the fierce wild grace of primroses and thistles, protecting their tenderness with a ring of thorns. Mulberries and honeysuckle that burst purple sweet in your mouth. Shooting stars with silky recumbent petals, arched and hanging as if caught plummeting to earth.

Stand at the top of the hill and watch the whole field turn green to silver as the wind bends all the leaves one way. Or the shadow from one singular cloud racing over the ground to swallow you up one second, then release you back to nothing but a high blue sky.

Subway Franz Kline Rip Off

I don’t feel much like writing anything new, so I will ream my recent archives…

My heart is crumbling, but you can’t see it. Here I am at the just-right-amount of hip neighborhood bar/resto. I don’t look desperate, I am waiting for a friend, writing and amusing myself. The music is loud, so you can’t hear the fissures start, ruptures, cracking. I like this song, bob my head in time, and you can’t see how it pains me to be unclaimed. Just don’t look too closely, please don’t look too closely. I need my dignity, it is all I have right now.

You see: the couple across the aisle from us, sitting together and reading companionably as the train sways them home at the end of the day.

I see: the man hunched forward, elbows on knees, using the bulk of his body, his shoulders padded larger by his overcoat, to block even a peripheral view of her. When he wants something different to read, he holds his hand out, arm stiff, wordless, and wordless she complies. I see: her apply lip gloss vigorously, with jerky hostile movements, staring straight ahead. Untangle the cords of her ipod with sharp elbows jostling just this side of impeachably passive-aggressive.

I like your version better.

Appropo Pre-Valentine's Day

Sixth grade "Hygiene" class. Even though they no longer segregated the class by gender before they dimmed the lights for that dreaded educational film, we did it ourselves. Noone wanted to be sitting next to a boy when they talked about...IT.

And when they described the menstrual cycle, with the uterus shedding its "rich lining" all I could think of was the nature shows where the deer shed the fur from their antlers in long peels of velvet.

Damn, was I ever surprised!

100 Words on Love: Brooklyn

Walking uptown tonight next to some fashion jackal fussing with her cell phone. She is attempting to camouflage 40 and hard living with processed hair, cheek implants, inflated lips. She gives me an appraising glare, I don’t know why she bothers. We are not even the same species.

On the subway platform Princess is fuming with the indignity of taking the train to the airport. She huffs her enormous overnighter on the bench beside me and perches atop it in the gold medal position of superiority while I languish below, merely bronze.

Hurry C train and take me to Brooklyn.

100 Words on Love: Loss

The final few weeks, the illness had taken away nearly everything that made her. The form was still there, but the light had dimmed to near nothing. I stroked her head, her face, feeling the bones through thinned skin. Her final breath skittered ragged across my hand.

She is but ashes now, still in the box they handed back to me. I don’t know what to do with them.

100 words on Love: Romance

I told him I would meet him for a kiss. His choice, an overgrown churchyard ringed by an elaborate wrought iron fence. It was a sticky city summer and the small passing rainstorm was a relief, and kept us pinned below the canopy of a huge old tree. He had eaten strawberries and his kiss was warm, fragrant and lit up with the sweetness. It made me want to press in tighter, grip the rough peeling bars of the fence and pull him into, through me. And then he slipped away. I have never seen him again.

Bunkhouse, Kansas

100 Words on Love: Tomatoes

The first summer I grew tomatoes in my garden in Brooklyn was a major triumph. Wrestling through 9 inches of concrete slab, marauding tomato-picking rats, those really ugly freakshow green horned worms. I picked the first little bucket of cherry tomatoes and brought them to the office to share. Carefully holding the bucket so as not get any smushed I am stunned by their beauty, robust gleam of their skin, arched stems. I set back on my heels in a cowboy squat, pulled out a pen, and drew their portraits hunched in the steel dust and shrieks of the subway.

jolie laide

I met one of my best friends for coffee yesterday before work. We were walking to the subway together, talking about plays we would like to see. He mentioned one, and I said, “I don’t like musicals. I have a problem with the basic premise. I mean, when do people break into song in the middle of the street?”

And we were jaywalking across the middle of the street at that moment. We stopped, looked at each other with the same gleam…I sang “Dancing Cheek to Cheek” and we did a slow foxtrot in the middle of Willoughby Avenue in downtown Brooklyn at rush hour.

Friday 2/10/06

jolie laide

oh god, oh yes. sweet potato pie and cheap beer, behind the fly-spotted door with the sign that says "Cha-wa-wa puppies for sale" windows steamed from frying hamburgers and their buns as big as dinner plates.

Thursday Commute

It’s an old style train with bench seating. Hip Hop Girl, in matching leathers—hat, boots, jacket, gloves—gets the empty slot. There is a sliver left over and Little Miss Entitled in kitten heels and chic bag wedges a portion of her sizable ass into it. Little Miss knows her claim on this valuable real estate is rude and audacious, so she angles her body away from Hip Hop, and feigns oblivion by using her parsimonious little lips to sip from her designer go-mug.

I prepare myself for a Brooklyn style throw down, jangling nerves vs. irritated sensibilities, long-time hard core vs. fluffy clueless gentry. But Hip Hop’s mouth turns up just a little in private amusement and she fiddles with her pink iPod. When she looks up, our eyes meet and we grin at each other, our smiles a silent word balloon.

Some kind of Manhattan Stonehenge: the alignment of the earth; today’s sunrise; the placement of buildings; the movement of truck traffic, have all conspired to throw a column of pure daylight down the subway stairs.

As she descends, the updraft from an approaching train lifts her hair, the light catches it, and she is haloed, a brilliant star falling into the underground.

(fekkin cell-phone camera not working or this would not be a narrative. monkey poop.)

Today's Commute

The little squirrely white guy runs up to the big scruffy black guy with a cane and a beat up plastic bag from the borough library. It is a chance meeting, and they hug, exclaim, clap each other on the shoulder. They are so happy, showing huge smiles of gleaming teeth, eyes sparking in the dim light of the platform. Then the train pulls away, with one of them waving joyfully from the window and I wonder where their spheres intersect.

In my car is a young man so painfully beautiful and so unaware I can watch him without feeling awkward. Examine each part of his face, each part is so different that they seem to have been donated as spares from other families. But here they all come together so delicate, no, mysterious, no, understated powerful. I wonder if he hates his complex face, or if he has found someone to run their fingers over it's contours and show him how lovely.