Happy Halloween

.

I'm Here to Make Your Head Spin. You're Welcome.

What's with this man with his pitted face and stomping heel and black cowboy hat? His dirty light-blue jeans and jangly chain that hooks his wallet to his silver-link belt? He stands open-faced to the train car, inviting everyone to, please, look at him. Don't you hear the stomping of his boot?

~

"Like a cat in the dark, your whisker touched something the wrong way and you backed out. Except sometimes it was a trap baited with something so enticing, you pushed your face in anyway."

— Mary Gaitskill, "Veronica"

A Series of People Coming Together

Part I

From a story in the New York Times' Style section today by David Colman, on Hamish Bowles, Vogue editor. Bowles moved to New York in 1992. Here is a fascinating tale from it, along with a fantastic kicker:

"While [Bowles] was hunting for an apartment, he bought a very flattering charcoal drawing of Truman Capote by the midcentury illustrator René Robert Bouché at a Sotheby’s auction. When he finally found an apartment in a brownstone on a leafy Greenwich Village street, he moved in with a bed, two chairs and the drawing.

“ 'I didn’t have a hammer or a nail,' Mr. Bowles said. 'So I hung it on one of the two nails that were already there next to the fireplace.' ”

"A few days later, when his landlady dropped in to say hello, she stopped short and stared at the wall. 'She almost leapt out of her skin,' Mr. Bowles said. When he asked what was the matter, she said, 'Well, you know this was Jack Dunphy’s apartment' — Mr. Dunphy was Capote’s longtime boyfriend — 'and that was Jack’s picture, and that was where that picture was always hung.'

"Mr. Bowles may have an encyclopedic mind for beau monde details, but this he did not know. 'It was the most breathtaking coincidence,' he said. 'It really seemed to confirm that I was meant to be in this environment. He was like a guardian angel for my new life.

'It was very much that idea of having your fantasy and realizing it.'

"But while Mr. Bowles, who now lives Uptown, loves the idea of the charmed and swell-elegant life the drawing suggests (it adorned the first-edition book jacket of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), the kiss it bestowed on him was not just one of luck or longing. His heroes may have been society swells, but they were also people, like Capote or Cecil Beaton or even Holly Golightly, who came from modest circumstances and made something fantastic of themselves. Beaton, he said, always exaggerated his humble beginnings.

“ 'He had the drive that people who he admired didn’t, because they didn’t need it,' Mr. Bowles said. 'He made it happen.'

"It is a good thing to remember about the world of grown-up magic. It’s not something you have; it’s something you make."

~

Part II

We sped through Lower Manhattan to get to Brooklyn. It was post an evening of burlesque, so therefore in the cab we were happily soaked with images of naked women and a large man dressed in a blue bunny costume. A phone rang. And kept ringing. We checked with the driver: "Mate, is that your phone?" my companion might have said. It was not. We found it wedged in the back seat by the door. I opened it and saw the caller was "Home." Someone was attempting to locate her phone.

"Hello?" I said.

"Oh, god," a young woman said. "I've been trying to find my phone all night!"

"Well, it's right here," I told her, "in the back seat of a cab. We're heading toward Brooklyn. Where are you?"

She named the neighborhood to which we were heading to have a final drink at my local bar.

"I live two blocks from that bar," she told me.

"Fifteen minutes," I told her.

We pulled up in the downpour and a woman in a green jacket enthusiastically tried to hand me a $20 bill as I returned her telephone. Needless to say, the karma of handing her the phone was more than enough reward that night. The coincidence of it all felt just about right. My bourbon tasted fantastic after that.

("It is a good thing to remember about the world of grown-up magic. It’s not something you have; it’s something you make.")

~

Part III

Do you know what it feels like to share a kiss in the Medieval Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Do you know that it can feel the way it looks in movies when a camera swirls around the couple in a way that is dizzying but makes you understand that the world is ever-expanding and sometimes incredibly beautiful?

("It is a good thing to remember about the world of grown-up magic. It’s not something you have; it’s something you make.")

"Only Connect"

A friend of ours died after college. He died after an extended stay in a mental hospital, ravaged by schizophrenia.

S. was a stunning man with black eyes. He was wound tightly, like a laser point of light, so much wanted to burst from him, but mostly, he held it in a buried, tiny place. He would speak passionately, would invite me to his basement dorm room to share a short story he'd written. He would tell me how lucky I was to date his best friend, for this friend was a beautiful person. He came apart over the years, though, and when he died in the hospital, we all thought his overdose was a terrible, horrific tragedy.

It turned out he died from a severe reaction to his medication. A rare, but not unheard of reaction. I learned this news when an old friend forwarded me two stories written by a reporter at a local paper where S. grew up. They were remarkable stories that not only gave clarity to what had happened at the end of his life, but also made him alive for me again in a way I hadn't seen him in years.

I wrote to the reporter to thank her for her work. Today I heard back from her, and from S.'s mother, to whom the reporter had sent my letter. I responded with a letter recounting my impressions of S., how he'd been so much in such a short life, even if just in the energy in his eyes. I wanted to tell her anything, something more than she'd known before about her son. I can only try to imagine what it must be like to have him live by her side in death, with no further ability to transform. When a stranger can write out of the ether and tell you another tiny impression of him, I hope it helps to add to…to what, I'm not sure how to say.

Some who die seem to become larger presences than so many who live. It is a strange thing.

It Was A Good Day

People huddled in scarves and let their hands freeze, holding a plastic glass of wine with their numb fingertips. In the corner of the rooftop, with a backdrop of buildings from a Berenice Abbott photograph, stood my sister and now my brother-in-law and a woman with a name of someone born in the 1960s conducting the ceremony. We'd all been milling about on the roof on this crisp day when suddenly the wedding seemed to have begun, although no one had said anything. But here it went, and wonderful it was.

We smiled and laughed as the bride and groom told stories about each other in honest and unique-to-them ways. At the corner of a roof in Greenwich Village, we all lived in a moment distinguished by love, and some of us realized that this is the best of what life is, two people deeply happy, choosing to tell everyone in their presence how they hope to remain together forever.

I Hope You Like Jammin’ Too

Black man, gray beard, brown shirt. Duct-taped guitar. A few chords begin promisingly when the train sits silent in the Canal Street station. Then:

“We jammin’…”

It comes forth as a quiet croak, as if the man is a young boy with a choked windpipe. I feel joy at the mellow sound but repulsion at the entire performance. Perversion evokes complex feelings.

~

Last night I went to the finale for “Project Runway” at a swank hotel. Watched the last episode with the finalists and hung out with them beforehand. (Commence massive jealousy, my massively jealous friends.) Austin Scarlett had an odd habit of staring at me then smiling until I smiled back and laughed a little. It was incredibly odd, and happened about three times during the night. He seems to wear less makeup in person than on the show, although I have to say his polka-dotted scarf does nothing for him.

Michael had an entourage.

Jeffrey's neck is less wide in person.

Alison, will you be my new BFF?

[Quick shout out to the kids in Brighton. Holla back, yo. Um, yeah.]

Ha Ha Ha, Jesus Christ

I took a nap today. During said nap, I dreamed I played with an elephant. An elephant in a waiting room. An elephant in a waiting room in my therapist's office.

I'm not shitting you.

It was a small elephant, about the size of a large dog. And as I bent down to wrestle with it, this gray, Dumboesque baby rolled on its back and grabbed hold of my arm with its arms. Then my neck with its trunk. Then I realized that this was no joke. The baby elephant was definitely not letting go, and it was starting to hurt. There was strength in those limbs. I knew it just wanted me to stay and play, the same way I know my dog wants me to scratch her stomach when she sticks out her paw at me when I try to stop. But this was kind of a heavy-handed sign. It occurred to me then that this elephant could actually kill me by accident. Oh, shit, I thought, please don't let this elephant kill me while I wait for my therapy appointment.

A few wrestled, rearranged poses later, I managed to free myself from the elephant, bruised and shaken.

"He's cute, right?" my therapist said, when she finally appeared.

I never did get his name.

I May Need Sunscreen Anyway

A shroud of pain lies over my left eyeball. It's a smoky shroud, impressed with suffering, like a pain-Shroud of Turin. Sunday was 20 hours of a migraine, the kind that makes you throw up it hurts so bad. I writhed around my bed, literally, head tossing to and fro, lying still and then moving from side to side, looking for a way to stop feeling stabbed in the face, wondering if you can die from pain. I believe the answer is yes to that. At one point I closed my eyes as my medication began to take effect (I knew it was working when I felt my chest and throat constrict, an occasional side effect) and felt myself drifting into a silent calm, like nothing I'd ever felt--it was not like falling asleep as i know it, it felt more like everything I understood about consciousness was being erased--and I was pretty sure that is what dying can be like. At least, dying post-adrenalized, I'd imagine.

Today is Tuesday, but I still have a sense-memory of pain. Amazing.

I will know tomorrow if one of my two hot-climate jobs is in order. I'm not sure how New England has morphed into beachy possibilities, but so it goes, and go it does. Think kind thoughts for my prospects and my eye socket, please. Thank you and goodnight.

From 1999

The night before last, June had had a dream: Eight-hundred quarters were thrown into the air like rice at a wedding, except when they hit the sky they spread and became stars. A glittering sky of star-quarters. On the ground beneath the sparkling sky, she wondered what would happen when they came down. With ease, June woke. Smiling, she wanted to tell Will her dream but saw his sleep-ridden face twitching in a nasal monologue and remained silent. She watched as his mouth occasionally bit down as if on a hunk of wood. She imagined that he was gnawing on a piece of tree, hoping to eat termites.

But when they come down? Will's nose gave a massive twitch. His eyes opened in a one-moment-sleeping-the-next-moment-awake snap that so many sleepers do and that startles so many of those next to them.

"Hi."
"Hi. Were you dreaming?"
"I don't know. What time is it?"

A star-quarter fell.

"I don't know."

Will smiled and mentioned coffee. They got up to the sound of clinking.

* * * *

Will had the appearance of a man who was tall and quite handsome. Close up, he was ragged: His nose tore unnaturally from his face and his eyes shouted their whites. (Glasses calmed them nicely.) His lips were a full pink that approximated the outturned petal of a peony at their loveliest, and a newly born earthworm at their ugliest. With these petal-worms Will spoke occasionally with conviction; more often than not they were the soldered exit point for words he would never speak. These frustrated words collected in swells inside him. At times, a storm forced its way out, eating through the air and anything in its way, giving Will a fearful corrosive quality.

Writing It Down Means Holding Onto It

I just yanked out an old notebook to grab a piece of blank paper. I opened to a page…I hadn't realized this was the notebook I'd had with me on 9/11. But it was.

I'd written down the name of the short Latina woman in red who collapsed next to me on a bench that day. As we stared at the horrific sight, she told me that her sister and her client were in the buildings. We tried on my phone to call them over and over. We never reached them. Today, all these years later, I finally checked the list of victims for that last name. There is someone of that name who died that day, but I don't think he is related to this woman. Somehow, I am glad to know this.

On a lighter note, in that same notebook I found a series of notes I'd scribbled for a story I'd done on punk-rock karaoke. Here's a great quote one of the performers said to me:

"You could pretty much take all the musical talent I have…I could crush it up into a little ball, stick it in your eye and you'd still be able to see pretty well."

Our Fathers, and Their Fathers Before Them

I just spent a half an hour talking to my father. We discussed the possible far-flung job I may have (I'll know this weekend). We talked about the strange array of people I date. We discussed how my life has no real set pattern he can discern. My father has worked every day of his life in the same company since 1966 or thereabouts. He arrived home every night of my childhood in a gray suit and carrying a nut-brown leather briefcase, fought with my mother and went to sleep. Then he did it again the next day. I thought that when I reached 20 years old I, too, would wear a suit and carry a briefcase, perhaps an early sign of social gender dysphoria, or a very, very oblivious but insightful mental commentary on my future inability to do what he did.

From today:

Father: "I have no idea what goes on in your crazy life."

Daughter: "What's so crazy? I don’t go to an office every day I'm not married and don't have kids."

Father: "Maybe you should!"

Daughter: "Maybe I shouldn't! Why should I do that? So I can be miserable like all those people?"

Father: "Misery loves company, haven't you heard that?"

Oblivious but insightful?

Planes, Buildings and the Men Who Make Them

Beyond the obvious freakishness of having a plane crash into a building in New York again, I will leave you with this bizarro coincidence:

William Zeckendorf Jr. developed the building that was hit today. His father, William Zeckendorf, conceived of the trade center in 1955, although in a different form and not in that name.

Miniskirts Aid the Entire Process

Two news items of interest off the wires this evening:

1. A new study shows that physical cleanliness is linked to feeling morally clean. Researchers also found that people who felt physically dirty seemed to feel morally dirty as well.

[No wonder you all smell so bad.]

2. Says Reuters: "Women dress to impress when they are at their most fertile, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study they say shows that signs of human ovulation may not be as mysterious as some scientists believe.

[Not as mysterious? Really, Willis?]

"A study of young college women showed they frequently wore more fashionable or flashier clothing and jewelry when they were ovulating, as assessed by a panel of men and women looking at their photographs.

" 'They tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably,' said Martie Haselton, a communication studies and psychology expert at the University of California Los Angeles who led the study.

"Writing in the journal Hormones and Behavior, Haselton and colleagues said their findings disproved the conventional wisdom that women are unique among animals in concealing, even from themselves, when they are most fertile.

"Some animals release powerful scents when ready to mate, while others display skin color changes, but human ovulation is notoriously difficult to detect. This is attested to by the frequency of unintended pregnancy, as well as test kits marketed to women wishing to become pregnant but unaware of the likeliest time to conceive."

[Speak for yourself, journal Hormones and Behavior. Some of us can sniff it on each other like ambrosia.]

(Wibble)

Just to keep up with the swooping in of past lives, I ran into a college friend among the shiny, shiny lights of 34th Street last night (as I was doing my usual hooking. Um, no I wasn't). But after not seeing him for many, many years, over the summer I made a friend who knows him, so we've been back in touch in recent months. It makes me wonder whether I have walked past him and so many other old friends on these dirty New York streets and never noticed them...

In mind, in sight.

While the world may wobble on its ever-grinding axis, I find that I occasionally have been enjoying the wobble, weebles. I think I can say I'm actually surfing the wobble. In that crazy way where your body leans one way to balance out the woozy wave, while the wiggety water works its darndest to carry you the other. (Not that I've ever literally surfed, although I have windsurfed. When I was maybe 10. It was hard. My arms were spaghetti strings.) (It doesn't matter anyway, since we're all going to hell in a North Korean-induced bunker any minute now.) (Not that it doesn't matter that my arms were spaghetti strings, or that I've never surfed--although, come to think of it, I really should try surfing soon.) (I could do this forever. I'm beginning to understand the irritating joy of postmodernist, wank-offy footnoting. It's like a drug. You have to force yourself) (to) (stop.)

Did I tell you I heard geese the other night at 3 a.m.? Native Brooklyn geese. (Yes, I could tell by the accent. No, I'm not positive they weren't from Staten Island. What? You're some kind of expert?)

(In my head, I'm still talking to you in parens.)
(Queens, you say?)

Out of the Silvery Blue

I once lived in England. It was a year when I was 20, and I have never remembered it happily. It was all chill and insecurity, childhood oddities catching up to me in a foreign country. I was not yet an adult and would not be for some years. There were days there, though, among the cows on the green, green hills, that I now see were formative and momentous.

I remember bartending (technically, I was a student; practically, I was a bartender) alongside playful and moody people—I remained friends with a Greek woman named for a cloud for many years after, and still consider her a global good friend, someone I will always find again. (As she did when she wrote to me after Sept. 11, as so many friends across the world did. Thank you all, still.)

Then I remember well one bloke, who has since settled somewhere in my heart, which I hadn't even realized until now. He carried the metallic weight of someone who has been through some kind of unspecified pain, but it hardly showed on his red-cheeked face. It showed in the way he interacted with people—honestly and sweetly. Some people double in on themselves when hurt, others open outward. I remember once serving him shot after shot because he had pulled up a seat at the bar and smiled and seemed, well, not drunk. I think. I was wrong. I think he had alcohol poisoning that night.

When I left the country, we really hardly knew each other.

Some six years ago we regained touch, and stayed in contact for a good couple of years.

The other night I sat at my desk and listened to the wonderful tearing sound of wind that comes in fall. One ear distracted, I wandered through an old e-mail account and found some letters this friend and I had exchanged. I was moved then, in the middle of the night, to track him down on the Internet. It proved not hard at all. Then and there, I wrote an e-mail.

The next morning, from across the cold pond, his letter began this way:

"Wow – how surreal – I was thinking about you out of the blue yesterday as I was considering a trip to New York at some point!"

It leaves me thrilled to have a response, and wondering how this happens. It does seem to happen. These days, I question often how much I believe in things I can't see, how we all connect. My late-night conversations with friends trail through a dense wood where I stop to weigh their thoughts on how silvery are the threads that connect us. I ask them if they have any idea how we can shimmy across these delicate ropes, how we can try to see inside each other. (Trying to see inside ourselves usually seems contortionist enough.) Fortunately, though, more and more, I feel like it isn't necessary to twist around so precariously. Proximity can be satisfying in itself. In the right company, the world will vibrate synchronously.

~

This afternoon brings this text message exchange with a friend:
Her: "I am performing the chain smoke."

Me: "How does the German judge score you?"

Her: "Juicy!"

Juicy?

Temperatum Est

It was dark, after 9 p.m. I was walking up a hill from my subway stop when I found myself listing forward, struggling with my heavy bag and upper-back pain that had been bothering me all day. I looked over at the street to my right. Oddly, with a melting in my gut, I saw that the sloping slant I was trudging up was unusually tilted—or I was unusually tilted. I tried standing completely upright as I walked, and I began to feel like I might tip over. I realized immediately that something strange was happening, because I was not just struggling with the physical reality of walking up a hill. An acute anxiety wavered through me: what would happen if this was the only gradient on which I would ever walk, only, ever again? The sidewalk began to seem utterly too hard to navigate, the skewed life ahead seemed too difficult to endure.

It was then that I realized I had dropped off into a strange spiral of madness. And I saw quickly that if I did not force my brain to slap all these weird thoughts right out of it, I might actually lose my sense of reality…forever. So I did.

~

Anybody have any thoughts on Miami? There is a job for me there, and I've never been.