Telenovela

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenovela#

My grandfather practiced his Spanish by watching Univision (our Spanish-language channel here in New York) telenovelas, with his drugstore black-rimmed glasses and a small Spanish-to-English dictionary in hand for quick translations, sitting way too close to the t.v. with the sound blasting. It was great fun for us to see him watching his daily shows, too, because he could be such a tough Mick from the city at times, tempered as it was by his consideration for others and his innate sweetness. He wasn't just learning for the heck of it, either, though with his cool old-time vaudeville impersonations and great accents, his flair for language and communication was proof enough that he'd kissed "The Blarney Stone" probably more than once.

No, he did it because his older brother, my Uncle Jack, married a Colombian woman after his divorce, my Aunt Yolanda; a tall woman with a naturally majestic presence indicative of a native high-born to a good family from the mountains outside of Bogota. And it didn't stop there. My grandparents took a few trips to see them after they relocated to Colombia, once my uncle retired from his successful business that found him financially independent. They had two beautiful little boys I remember holding and changing at our house, as a little girl: Juan y Francis, with their classic mestizo coloring of olive skin, light eyes, and lush brown curls. Irish paired well with Colombian!

It was important to my grandfather that his brother's family feel comfortable in his home, and it was important to me, too. As guests, they could curse telling stories and smoke in my mother's house (my dad had to go outside or in the garage to smoke), while I refilled their glasses and emptied out the big glass ashtray we used for parties and holidays. Francis had fallen asleep, so me and my aunt took him into my parent's bedroom for a nap, using their pillows to make a barrier on either side of him so he wouldn't roll off the bed. I was so nervous about the baby that I kept going in to check on him, with their laughter following me down the hallway. "Is he still there?"

He was, and they were charmed by my youthful inexperience with newborns. "Oh, he'll sleep for hours not moving, Marie. He's fine!" Uh, you don't know that! My own parents weren't exactly careful with kids, and my uncle drank a lot more than I was used to with my more even-keeled grandfather. Still, they were raucous and fun, and we loved having a South American branch to our family tree that we'd describe as one big carnival tent for times when were we feeling less generous. Before they arrived at my parent's house, we went over simple phrases and basic sayings so we could greet them from the top of the stairs as they came through the front door. 

"I want to be able to greet my brother's family properly when I see them", my grandfather nervously explained to me again while we practiced. My grandparents always felt insecure about their lack of a formal education, because they had to leave school to earn money for their families as children. I could relate. I wanted to make a good impression, too, because in our households, family always came first. You did great, grandpa. You really did. It was just perfect.

para mi tía Yolanda

Proud to be a N*gga

My cousin Kenny is proud to be a n*gga, because he's told me that more than once, even singing it to me like this: "...bee-cause I'm proud to be a niggggaaaah!" His cellphone used to have a recording of him singsonging "Kennndaahhhl!" every friggin' time it went to voicemail, which drove my ex-boyfriend crazy, because John would need help at the yard and "Ken Doll" couldn't be bothered; exactly what we'd come to expect from a fat, bald, 6'1, Celtic-Jewish-Indian like him.

He never wanted to fit in with the 9-5 crowd, and for years, he struggled to find work that was inoffensive to his cocktail party persona, before he finally settled on joining a pipe-and-drum band near the beach. He's good at it, too! He and his then-girlfriend (now wife) played together at the biggest parades 'round the way, turning their alcoholism into a somewhat respectable McOpportunity. It wasn't what I'd want for him, but he's made a life from the broken shards of his rough Brooklyn upbringing that's left most of his family dead, and he's not even 50, yet.

I just hope someday he'll realize he doesn't have to jettison parts of his identity that he feels he needs to hide in order to fit in with typical American society, because I personally know of a clan that would dearly love to have a musician with the heart of an Irishman, the beat of an Indian, with the soul of the faithful play at their tartan-clad family gatherings on a certain New Scotland beach. We pay with real money, too. My father always used to tell us as kids that we should be proud of who we are, because it's not like we had a say in the matter, and he's right. We don't. It's already happened.

Remember, my Americans: the freedoms you take for granted have not been equally extended. Some of us can't even walk on ancestral lands and feel proud about it, without someone else looking to take it away to sell it back for a fee. Think about that while you bitch about the line at the polls, or your simple black-and-white racism, or any of the other issues that you think take precedence over basic human rights like dignity and equality. We're not there, yet with this country, but some of us would really like it to be. They're colored, too, just not like you.

Caravan

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson about transporting potentially dangerous goods across country borders and state lines back in my Montreal-bound college days, but I hadn't. It was in this same spirit of adventure that me and my ex from Colorado decided to move back east with an almost fully grown werewolf sitting next to me in the passenger seat of my car, connected to my boyfriend driving alone in his big red truck through walkie-talkie. Uh, yeah.

Ted did not wear a seat-belt, nor conform to quaint human customs like not moving around a speeding car while driving on a busy highway, which included his attempts to get into my lap as I drove us cross-country, because he "werewolf-remembered" sitting that way with me as a puppy while Kent drove us around Denver. Clever. The first two days were fine, with our biggest concern being the motel owner not noticing a rather large wolf-like object accompanying us into our hotel room for the night, though I had tried to prepare for our overnight stops with a list of animal-friendly places along the way printed off the computer, like any other idealistic new mom.

On the third day of our road trip, Ted totally lost his shit. He'd been wonderful until then, but two days of long boring car rides had offended him beyond belief, conditioned as he was to better stimulation from his parents. And it wasn't a light rebellion, either. He fucking blew his stack in the middle of a rainstorm high in the Pennsylvanian mountains while I was passing two large trucks on both sides that completely doused my car in vision-impairing sheets of water while Ted tried to climb into my lap with more force than I'd felt until then, before banging his head against the window and crying at the top of his lungs.

I scrambled shakily for the walkie-talkie with an emergency "Mayday" call to Kent, who was pissed off about stopping while we made good time, but there was nothing else I could do. A Giant M'Loot Malamute with exceptional bloodlines has been bred to know when enough is enough, and we'd both had more than enough. We stopped at a misty field in the mountains, waiting for Ted to regroup while he walked around scenting the air.

He reluctantly got back in the car, but the warning to me was clear: no more, Mom. Any East Coaster knows that every big road trip ends with the massive length of Pennsylvania's mountains of forest to confront for hours and hours of radio silence before finally making it back home, like a lesson in patience and homesickness. Lesson learned. While Kent deconstructed himself to implode within a mere ten days in the city (nice, New York; what is that, a record?), I walked through beautiful Prospect Park with Ted, as I promised myself I would never let anyone get between me and my home again, and I haven't. That's the strength and power of a mother's word.

See you next week.

Hurricane!

Just like the same news hype that returns every year, so, too, does the change of seasons pose serious intellectual problems for psychologically-impaired people. Every year, my mom and her wacky sisters get vicarious thrills from the earth's rotation around the sun that causes dry conditions out west and big rainstorms in the east, in the exact same way that a UFO fan gets off on strange ideas about alien abductions and well-wished-for anal probes. <Gasp!> Did you see the news today?!

First, it was really hot outside (TOO WARM!) and now it's freezing cold (TOO COLD!), because the "in-between" seasons like spring and fall often have weather patterns like that, which isn't fun unless you pretend you're watching a really scary movie with them, and they don't like horror movies. Uh, okay...sure. Let's go with that. Or, alternately, you could just look out the window, or feel the windowpane to gauge the temperature, or (and this is even weirder) you could actually go outside. Tons of options here.

WHAT?!! GO OUTSIDE?!! "What are you, nuts? I have severe hay-fever allergies! Do you want me to die?!" Or, they never had allergies to begin with and you're a bad person for making that up. Besides, why would you remember something so odd like that anyway? "So strange to me..." Unlike, say, paranoid schizophrenia, I actually enjoy each season for what it offers us. It's necessary to all life on this planet, and it's also a welcome change. Humans like adaptation and growth. "BOO!" Hobbits don't. So, like most of my life, my immediate family briefly passes by me while I live the best life ever, pretending that my challenges are the same "up-and-downs" as their manic-depression. It isn't, but they don't have anything else to compare it to, do they?

Just like their "parties" are some of the most dreadful affairs on G-d's green earth, so, too, did they easily confuse anti-social lurking in corners at large family reunions with "fun", the way alcoholism is nothing like having a great time at a kick-ass party. Drinking = instant asshole. Right? Of course, they know better, but my family likes to pretend that it doesn't hurt as much if they keep a vigilant boot on the heel of my good time. It's a lie, but they've already downgraded their sins against me to a cutesy widdle "white lie" (like the kind that naughty children do), while I sin real bad!

It was the same deliberate untruths they told each other about my body, my sexuality, my fertility, my health, my looks, my partying; anything that could be put down in the "Clan of the Cave Troll" to control the reversal of their intentionally misspoken words that would delay the inevitable good fortune that is my destiny. "Get your shots in while you can", my dad used to say, "because you won't be able to beat her forever." It was as tacit a reason to abuse me as they abused everyone and everything around them in their delusional sickness. How to hurt and get my help at the same time?

Like a crook who wastes $2,000 worth of time planning a $23 rip-off from a $43 bar tab, the pettiness of it was astounding in its depths, like the hapless Moriarty plays to a Sherlock Holmes, without the homosexuality and opium addiction. I don't have those facets. But, you do. I get it. And so, much like anything else that was epic in my life, my family couldn't participate. They could watch from a dark corner of the room, but they couldn't "boogie down" like me and my crew. I told them about our 70s parties with as much detail as they would let me, but when they finally opened the door to one of Bobby's rockin' shindigs, it was "Animal House: The Real" for a group of people who needed a much safer distance from the action.

They looked so uncomfortable. Bobby was swinging in a big Afro wig from a light fixture that gave way inch-by-inch as it was slowly pulled from the ceiling in a dramatic CRASH! to the floor. Just like the movies! Everyone was dancing in 70s-era costumes to "Play That Funky Music", and from the dropped jaws of my brother, his girlfriend (now wife), and his best friend, I could tell they were in shock that such things actually existed out in the world. They stood frozen in the foyer before the huge living room to the big old house we all rent(ed), with intact period details at a fraction of their costs, making the best party they ever attended into a spectator sport. I felt bad for them as I took their coats and got them beers. It'll be okay! I laughed to help them relax a little bit more.

Just like the weather that so frightened them into complacency, I also took my ability to have a good time in stride, too. I knew I was having the best time ever and so did my friends, but to actually see the astonishment on their faces brought it back home for me. Oh. You don't do that. I do. Like every good parent, I wanted them to join in the fun, even if it was just a little while before their drinking habits became alcoholism, and their study sessions with Vivarin became serious prescription pill-popping addictions. My life pulled me away from them, and I could see it on their faces that they knew it, too. We might never meet at this point again.

Eventually, my family stopped asking me if they could come by, by inviting themselves into my life to see if it was real. It was, and it still is. No tricks up my sleeves. Therefore, it seemed fitting to me that one of the last Oneonta parties I went to was held in the great outdoors, in the autumn season of September, still warm in the day and freezing at night, in classic upstate New York style. We raised our now-iconic plastic red cups to a seasonal storm named after a woman by male newscasters, in a cruel joke about our supposed tempermental moods brought on by our hormone-ravaged bodies. We toasted every fierce gust of wind that shook treetops so large, we made them more famous by putting them up in New York City as our Christmas trees.

Big fat raindrops started to fall on us at the same time the wooden makeshift stage Rock Ptarmigan played on started giving way, as all of their friends danced and sang with them onstage. Tony laughed as it tilted first towards the left where they gathered around the empty mic, then slowly gave way as he lightly hopped off the stage before the final lurch that saw it fall completely to the ground. We laughed, too. Show's over! We gave one last cheer to the heavens before the skies opened up, to pour down the rain that we knew would come but cheered for anyway, safely nestled as we were in our loving little city of the hills. It was the best party, yet. Wish you were there.

Ms. Haiti

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_pageant# 

Magdala was nerve-wracking for me to be around, a feeling that was soon shared by the entire small family business that hired her. She's tall, smart, pretty, and cultured; in short, she is exactly like every other gainfully-employed woman working in Manhattan and its environs, which caused her an enormous amount of distress. In Queens, she was just another Haitian-American, but something happened to her during her long subway commute into the city. She began to have dreams and visions of her self that she could market and sell to us as her co-workers, which was the exact job description she had, as so many of the marketing/acquisitions/sales staff who function as our support personnel and in-house cheerleaders. She is, to be succinct, a fan of mine, without being a friend or even particularly friendly.

At the time of her hire, she was "engaged" (or "enfianced" in Magdala's irritating patois that was designed to be "exotic") to a short, bland, and rather unattractive French man who's also a single father, which was absurd. She was better-looking than him, and as pretentious as she could be, that tall black girl ain't never gonna be no damn Parisian white girl, knowwhatimsayin'? Too many big white teeth in that large head of hers. She's "bougie" as fuck, fellas, but to so many Euros who drank the waters deeply from our American import t.v. show that now reads like a prolonged tampon commercial about boring yentas living (and sexing) in the city, she was just the ticket he needed to take to New York and our lifestyle here, like a pretty tour guide on his payroll.

His daughter was disastrous for her, too. She was blond, petite, and Euro-pretty, which means she missed her French "maman" the way I miss really good baguettes and appropriately-named croissants livin' in the 'burbs. Oh, well. Ain't nuthin' but a thang, right? Whereas the little Chinese girl of our house bookkeeper spoke broken baby "Engwish" to me and wiggled onto my lap in a record-breaking couple of seconds the first time she ever met me, this carefully-dressed girl of eight or nine spoke haltingly and bristly to a very nervous, buck-toothed, skinny older girl of about 28-34, also over-dressed for her role as part of our sales staff.

She was obsessed with her looks, too, making sure she rushed into my office to tell me "the good news" about her lunchtime experience with a former model's outdoor staff working the line around the block for her t.v. talk show in the nearby studio, asking her to stand in line for hours to try-out for the star's main show about amateur "would-be" models. Again, I was nonplussed as a native New York girl. Well, yeah, sure. You're tall and skinny enough. I mean, that's where it starts nowadays, before attractiveness and beauty. Fit the tiny clothes, first. Them little rich kids in Hollywood diet all the time. Also, how good do you look in pictures? She went into a fretful paranoia right after her initial bout of giddiness, which is not a good sign for any industry, particularly the extra competitive ones. My queries to her were brief and direct, because any really good art director knows I just don't have time for it while I'm on the clock.

She was less sure about her photogenic qualities ("Well, take some pictures. You have a camera, right?"), and her "prominent mole" (honestly, I hadn't noticed) that she felt sure would make her fodder for the people on the show. Well, that and her age. "Oh, they'd just choose me to 'make fun' of me." Yeah, well, if that's your attitude, then modeling isn't for you, because if this little brush-up freaks you out (where it's all about how you look and what doesn't look right), then the actual business of modeling is out because of your sensitivity to perceived criticisms, so I guess publishing was a better choice for you. End of story. I mean, really, where could you go with it? Rehabs are filled with insecure girls waiting for their next big break. Be a scholar!

But, of course, she was massively problematic in our equally competitive book program, questioning her every decision with an infamous defensiveness that was even more offensive when spoken in her hackneyed "Franche" accent that she put on for show. She was a generic drama queen, which is the absolute kiss of death in a town filled with the real deals "trodding the boards" never-so-lightly each and every night. An egotistical diva who doesn't make art...what the fcuk is that? I had no idea what to do with her in our company, and soon my co-workers filed complaint after complaint about her attitude, too. She was snippy and disrespectful, even "on paper" in our in-house emails, and keeping track of the written word is what we do best. Poor thing. She was on a short clock with us.

Within fairly quick succession, she broke up with her "Fiancee" (we weren't impressed enough by her overt "bling", I guess), had a bad affair with an actual good-looking Frenchman with his own media company who soon got his other French (and white) girlfriend pregnant right before Magdala quit our outfit to go work for him in Paris, but she didn't care. She was going to be "a star", baby! With his over-priced "Breakfast at Tiffany" books that were Euro-friendly and arty enough for his snobby coffee-table audience? Yeah, right. 

But, things had been going downhill for awhile. She began showing symptoms of our temperamental publisher's typical firing arc: too many sick days taken without advance notice, eating quickly through his 50/50 health insurance for her bad teeth and multiple gum surgeries brought on by anorexia and bulimia (that raises some red flags, even in New York, as a notorious food town), and then her too-gossipy friendship with our ferociously evil Jewish secretary sealed her fate at the business, forever, all of which I had warned her about during her first few months of employment.

At a company and a town as fucked up as Manhattan, not even a wanna-be media type like the kind who hides months without lunches, punctuated by the occasional fast food binge that's stuffed hurriedly into her mouth for publicity's sake in the company's kitchen (on recommend as a political tactic by the daft-idiot white-blond yenta aggressively manning the front desk) can sneak past us. Yeah, bitch. We know. It didn't work out the way you thought it would. Fantasies can be like that, though: brutal and cruel and quick, kind of the way I imagine most beauty pageants and their contestants are. In real life, I mean. Not theirs. Ours. The real thing. Living a real life is the only true thing we have on this earth, girl. Get some before it's gone.


For Mr. and Mrs. Jay, of "ANTM" fame: yeah, girl,  I saw you scoping me on the down-low while you was underground during my daily subway commute, wit ya reared-back head and "dah-yummmm, 'cuse me!" look on yo' face and your seven foot frame dressed in all black pretending to clutch at invisible pearls. I do know I look that good. And Mr. Jay, ain't nobody incognito at 6'5 with silver-blond hair gelled into spikes walking around Chelsea. That was an "off" day for me visually, BTW. I was on break from the office getting a lunchtime walk after too many years eating at my desk. Feel me? Yeah, you do. I know fellas too scared to approach a lady, even plush "shorties" like me :) Bahaha! Booyah!

Incredible

Comic books were a big part of my brothers lives growing up, and by extension, mine, too. Because we were so often put into situations we couldn't control as children, we naturally turned to any medium that offered us a respite from the abuse around us. Nowhere was safe, not even the tree house we built in the backyard, because my parents had long ago established that they could get to us, no matter where we were. They considered us their property, and they would stop at nothing to remove any barriers that blocked their access to us, including the cheap thin doors with easy locks you could undo with a thumbnail or a knife from the kitchen, which was part of my mother's hysterical scenes. I briefly had a diary for a day, before my brothers found it and read it aloud at the kitchen table with my mother's approval. "You shouldn't keep secrets, Marie." She did.

There was one set of rules for my parents, and another set of randomly changing rules that suited either their mania or their depression, depending on how they felt, though they would never articulate it as such. We were always to blame, for any household infraction big or small. They acted like desperate street thugs afraid of getting busted by the police, which, in essence, they were to us: criminal in the extreme. Heroes were very hard for us to find, because other than me—or occasionally my brothers and grandparents—we didn't know any. I mean, none, and we come from a huge Catholic family. Since the bulk of my parents power came from their status as bigger adults to much smaller children, they used their physicality as their number one weapon against children who did nothing wrong besides exist.

I had all the proof of that that I needed, what with our good grades and frequent church attendance, though in later years, everyone in my family would use a bogus faith as a smokescreen to hide their real infractions, but not me. I thought it was hypocritical bullshit, because my parents lied all the time to my face, which as blown off easily by "don't do as I do, do as I say", which meant I was always better than them, and I knew it. They knew it, too. I didn't have the arrogant smart-ass mouth of my oldest brother, or the stone-cold demeanor of my deadened middle brother, because I was truly alive in their sea of sickness. Of course, with time, their tactics became more brutal and concerted as I grew older, which signaled clearly to me that my brain power was terrifying to them and so was my beauty, so much did they try to hurt me when I was stuck in the home, also by their contrivance.

The only solace I ever found—amid their suddenly stormy attacks that could sink into sullen silences lasting months or years—was among the books that were written by much better people than the ones I was surrounded with daily. I knew someday I would join their ranks, because I understood their writings much better than my family's virulent mental diseases. And so, when a t.v. show came on about a comic book superhero we admired, psyched didn't even begin to cover it for us as kids. Bernard, in his fear about being beaten up, was drawn to the "The Hulk" character who would turn into a strong beast whenever he became really angry. It mirrored my brother's ongoing struggles with a violent psychosis stemming from his emotional problems, manifesting itself into bursts of uncontrollable anger that both scared him and protected him, too, just like the comic read. 

When we found out that the actor portraying the Hulk in the t.v. show was an Italian-American from the city (just like us!), we were ecstatic. We couldn't read enough about him in our fanzines, hoping to catch a glimpse of him at our comic book conventions at Madison Square Garden, not that I would take a typical fan photo with anyone: too shy. We'd tell each other fun facts about his life, like the muscle movie he made with Arnold Schwarzenegger that was a huge hit, with both actor/athletes going on to star in movies and shows about mythical comic book action heroes. It was an epic time to be a kid. And when we found out that he was successful despite his deafness, we hero-worshipped him like no other star from our childhood.

Our grandmother was deaf, and so was our aunt, with my father and I also joining the genetic ranks of profound hearing impairment that is the inherited deafness running in my paternal line. We'd cite lines from his interviews like "Did you know that Lou Ferrigno has a 'deaf voice' he tries to hide, so he went for a t.v. role without any speaking parts?" Fascinating! He'd been born deaf! We loved his triumph over adversity in real life that meant he wasn't some typical show business phony from Hollywood who'd sing anything for a buck, like a cheap sell-out. He was for real, yo! We read with avid interest about the special earpiece he wore in his ear for stage directions from the sidelines that made us cheer even louder for him whenever he appeared on screen. "Change! Change! Change!" We'd root for the "monster" in each and every episode, over the lamer Bill Bixby character. What a wimp!

Of course, as savvy New York City kids, we knew that a lot of bodybuilders took steroids to get big, but we reasoned that Mr. Ferrigno had probably been forced into it, as part of his Hollywood success, because he had a serious handicap he needed to compensate for, we reasoned out loud to each other. Unlike the other seriously delusional people we knew, we weren't looking for god-like perfection in our 'hood heroes. To us, he was great just the way he was: a city kid who'd made good, coming out of the mean city streets. That was enough for us. And it's more than enough now, though by his photos on social media, I'm proud to report that he looks as amazingly healthy as ever, and I know he doesn't need any drugs to do it. He has a really hard work ethic, just like us. Sometimes heroes are real!

http://louferrigno.com/ 

Vanilla

The rather typical Jewish family I worked for years ago liked to embellish themselves with decorations, to make up for their obvious embodiment of average New York stereotypes: they were short, annoying, bland, and "artsy", without having any real drive or talent. They wanted to appear "interesting", except they weren't, at least not for the commonly-held ideas they sold around town to a gang comprised mostly of outsiders. I liked their native roots the best; he, as an athletic man who studied ballet with some of the greats back in the day, and she, as a Brooklynite growing up in a strong Eastern European neighborhood by the beach that remains so to this day.

They met in college. She was already a risqué "gay divorcee" who had to be talked into marriage by him, a pathologically shy orphan raised by his grandparents who learned to approach strangers by sitting on park benches to force interactions with pretty girls. They were odd eccentrics with typically neurotic mental problems, and that was more engaging to me than their "New Yorker" brand of popular intellectualism, sans the real intellect needed to sustain new ideas, or even slightly visionary ones sometimes. But, they were pretentious about literature and they had lots of money, which are both my bags.

Like many people who aspire to creativity, they decorated their office with kitschy types, the same way they hired an expensive gardener to create a balcony none of us regularly used, because it was in direct sunlight at lunchtime and done almost completely for show. You couldn't sit out there at comfortably in the bright noonday sun that high off the ground, and I was often way too busy to do so, working at my desk while eating lunch. If I did venture outside of my studio space during the workday, it caused a stir that rippled throughout the office for the rest of the day, so dull were they in comparison to me. It was a reflection of their poor character, made by flashing money around where it wasn't needed (like your average bourgeoisie), preferring to spend thousands of dollars on their bullshit "outdoor garden", in lieu of creating an investment plan for their employees to retire on. They were almost completely full of shit.

Same thing with their kids. They had a grand piano lugged up to the publishing offices, hiring another expensive gadget-maker to tune the thing every week, even though none of us had the time or inclination to play, because we aren't musicians-for-hire. Both of them bragged about drawing income from the company without really giving a full effort into making the company profitable. The son liked to say he was a musician (as a hobbyist not earning from his music), hiring a company to make CD's he could pass around the office, without being good enough to ever earn a recording contract with a major music company.

The daughter was even worse. The son could do some IT/computer work they needed as a smaller cheaper company (being dumped when we leveled-up to the majors), but the daughter was a total disaster. She wasted millions of dollars, freely spending Euros overseas in London, so she could pretend to be a "playwright" over there because she wasn't good enough to breakthrough into our native Broadway theater scene. She even bragged to me about it one time, while trying to force me to make color copies about some article done over her expensively decorated flat there, while we still didn't have a decent 401K plan.

In short, they were total cunts best ignored by the entire staff, which we flagrantly did, often with wild abandon, so arrogant and condescending were they to us, as the actual hard-working talent that the back of their family business stood on. They were desperately striving and achingly insecure, which was great fun to watch, because they had to continually escalate their "quirky factor" almost in direct proportion to our greater gifts earned through hard work. I designed the cover for a hot new best-seller? Okay...let's force our bad housewife photographer friend on her as a test, so she has to look at her book without insulting her (or us by extension), as the company benefactors. Done!

I learned a long time ago about lifting money out of the wallet of a rich buffoon without actually stealing from him, making our trade the most honest kind of business they'd ever done. They were actually paying me market value for my talent, a rarity then as it still is now. Did the other Art Director receive some sort of kudos publicly in a meeting, as the lesser of two designers working in-house? Hmm...let's call in that total bitch of a rich housewife we know (the one who did weird shit to the walls in her husband's spare time and called it "interior design") and make the real designers talk to her....and so it went. They'd hire one of their rich cronies' bored housewives to be a company admin, or put one of their nephews on the payroll to gossip, spy on us, and do boring database shit we didn't have time for.

Almost every week, they played a "one-upmanship" game only they knew about, so busy were we with the real business that made money, next to their arty side ventures that went nowhere and did nothing, like the old man's wife and her bad poetry. It only won obscure awards no one heard of because she had the time, money, and manpower to use the office and its staff to submit work for her, done in the 60s when she was at home with her kids. That must have been fun. I could practically see the old man pulling out his hair at the office, back when he worked for S&S, eager to push a distraction on her that fed her voracious ego. They were monstrous to behold during their worst fits, almost pure evil down to their rotten cores, such was the level of their incomprehensive unawareness and sheer ignorant naivety.

Most of their staff reflected their poor decisions, rampant egomania, and various mental illnesses, in one way or another, except for moi. I expected to be revealed soon, as is my level of exposure in society, and so I was prepared for it. They sicced sick person after deranged weirdo after secretive lesbian after me, and none of them penetrated me in the slightest degree, because I fed them whatever I wanted them to know, so I could set events into motion, like "The Maestro" I am famous for. After a certain point in one's career, playing office games with mental patients becomes a bloodsport. Sometimes I felt bad for them (okay, every single day), and I'd tell them the unvarnished truth about themselves and their respective conditions, which they pretended to be offended by, as I passed by their desks on my way back to the studio that made the books we sold for a healthy profit. 

I did it because it was my job, not because I wanted to shock the plain-looking Jewish girl from Long Island sitting at the front desk, with her "scandals" about sex she didn't understand or know how to have properly, within clear earshot of respectable business-types with keener minds than she'd ever met before. The slutty office girl sleeps around? Huh...well, I'll be a "monkey's uncle"! And then the joke wouldn't be understood, as I stood there with a copy of a book about evolutionary theory in my right hand, held up jauntily for anyone to see. Nice book, right? Am I right?! Nothing but the sound of crickets. 

She almost broke her back trying to shock me and the other older designer working in the studio who'd been cast off by the majors for a lack of ability, plus her plush expense account (typical middle management shite), by inventing one stupid story after another, like the married Nuyorican kid she commuted with on the L.I.R.R. Oh, what should I do? We'd sit there in our swiveled desk chairs, breathing at her in false sympathy, nary a spoken word shared between the two of us, because about her a soon as she left our work area, we turned right back to our work. Uh, who the fuck is she compared to the astronomy in our books, yo? Muthafuckin' nothin', y'all.

And on and on it went, one dull fetish after another. Oh, she liked being choked, because we took martial arts classes and she thought she could fold that in somehow. Uh huh, neat, sister. Get the fuck away from me. Usually it was sex-centered, like a teenager with ADHD going through puberty while on (or off) their Ritalin, except that one of us was likely to be designing chapter heads or openers for Lady Chatterley's Lover*, with a nude women on the cover proposed as the design that set our company (and the retailer), and, by extension, the entire industry, on fire with the real scandal of an exposed woman gracing the cover of every hardcover classics version we printed for their stores, to be distributed throughout the country and then the entire world. Kinda hard to beat, eh?

And that was finally the problem with them, and all of their dull characters: no matter how hard they tried to "top" someone at a typical Manhattan office engaged in making books, nothing could compare to the writers' lives and loves that we had our noses deeply buried in. Nothing. It made them finally realize, at the end (I think or, at least, I hope) how much it takes to become famous worldwide. You can't buy it, or strap it on, or paste it onto yourself for some necessary color; you have to be actually be it, that thing that makes you print-worthy all around the world. And here we are today, my dear readers. Better than some plain ole vanilla** flavor of ice cream, isn't it? I got all the flava I ever needed, and you ain't gone none, “hon”.


*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover
**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_sex

Show Tunes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showtune_%28musical%29

My parents have some of the worst tastes in gay Broadway musicals that I've ever encountered outside of heterosexuality, which sometimes makes me question them on the daily. I grew up with all of their overly-dramatic albums and accompanying soundtracks for crappy hits like "Hair" ("Haaaiiirrrrr...the sunshine...the....sunnnn...shines...iiinnnn!"), "Jesus Christ Superstar" ("What's the fuss? Tell me what's a-happening...what's the fuss....tell me what's a-happening..."), and the really bad suburban off-Broadway dinner theater on Friday night that's annoyingly repetitive. 

I can recite and/or sing almost all of their bad art, in an overdone "American Idol" type of up-and-down warbling that goes ONNNohhhhoohhhhohannnddddOHHNNNN!!! It's actually really bad singing, because it's lacks the technique and authenticity of much better singers who can break their voices mid-song to improvise with the riffing back-up band, unlike those terrible show-ponies trained to bust vocal chords while on tour, over and over again. Who cares, right? You're only in town for the weekend.

In addition to this questionably suspect and obviously gay facet of their musical lives, my mom occasionally thinks it's fun to torture me with her paper hoarding by pretending to me during clean-ups (after yet another bad bone break) that her old unsigned "Playbills" might be worth something on eBay, because my parents like to mess with me during their down-cycles. She also shoved a plastic baggie at me filled with those badly done ceramic animals that you get when you buy the big-ass package of tea bags, because she HAS TO have tea at the same time every day. After that false pretense (I had to make a show of pretending to care, by looking up her poorly-made animals online), she went back to sticking the weird little animals into her potted plants, where they rightfully belong.

It's not that I care overmuch about their sexuality or poor choices in art, it's just that New York kids are slammed with enough "out-of-towner" shit made for tourists. We don't need it at home, too! Some of their music is really great (like their Beatles albums and "Le Jazz Hot"), and some of it is just simply blah-blah-blah mental-patient "sing-alongs" any crazy nitwit can do, if only we would willingly injure ourselves by singing it for them compulsively, fifty times in a row, for the exact same badly-dressed matinee attendees (cheaper with their AARP discount) , and I am not willing to be their soothing fodder. Ya dig? 

Ravenous public, your homework today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversinging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_fold_nodule 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_cord_paresis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spasmodic_dysphonia
BUSTED!

Getaway Car

Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan

My ex Dave was known by a few choice nicknames at Oneonta, notorious as he was for his good-looking "bad boy" ways, at a school famous for being the hardest partying school in the entire S.U.N.Y. school system back then. We called him "Dangerous" (because he was, to himself and others, but more for him than me), and "Mad Dog", because he raged at the machine like he was alien to it, which he was. His parents were high school sweethearts who thought much higher of themselves than two hard-partying, working class kids from upstate New York should have, and that was Dave's biggest problem.

They coddled him for being sick and beautiful, just like they did his older sister. Their kids had certain rock star components that they couldn't back up intellectually, which always left them frustrated, angry, confused, and feeling alone, attacking anyone around them during certain phases of the moon, like the half-deranged mixed Indians they are. It was maddening, because they can plateau for a few good years of productive work before bottoming out during their up-and-down cycles that characterizes the average manic-depressive. I hated it for them, but that was the best I could do without some hardcore medical back-up, which his parents refused to acknowledge, because it meant drying out for all of them (at the same time), as a lifestyle change too significant for arrogant Baby Boomers who refused to grow-up, stuck in their down cycles like the mental children they are.

They can shop and they can consume, and at their heights, they can party with the best of us, but during their dark times, they become rabid beasts unwilling to take a simple anti-depressant pill that's been around for ages, because their character flaws (like their arrogance) won't allow them to admit that they need medical help, minor as the cure sometimes is. It saddened me as I watched them make asses out of themselves in public from the sidelines of their disorders, powerless as you are when they are in the grip of their madness and addictions, knowing that one good doctors' visit is all they really need. Have you ever known someone like that?

I bet you have. Heart-breaking, isn't it? They were gorgeous on the outside only and deeply flawed from within, like a lunatic lion with his lioness, suffering from the same thorn in their paw that you can only pull out for them so many times. Get a grip, man, and get help, will you?! At the end of it (with certain types of Indo-Europeans), that's really the best you can do for them, by backing away to give them the space they need to disappear into the bottom of a bottle, and hope that they can finally learn to see through the haze of booze and their own distorted visions. It's actually born of a cowardice that can seem shockingly needy and co-dependent to healthy people, which is part of why they don't last that long around us.

You can either a) take care of them (for their families), or b) watch them they cling to someone else, like a barnacle stuck on the side of a rapidly wrecking ship that's taking on massive amounts of water. If you aren't a fucked-up "enabler" (and I most definitely not that), there's nothing in it for us to watch someone fall down drunk and then stagger slowly to their feet once again. It's sheer torture to watch sick people do that to themselves without reaching for help that's often inches away. So, I simply didn't do it after awhile, because getting ego-gratification from propping up a sick person is often ten times more sick than being the alcoholic him/herself. Know what I mean? What kind of sick fuck does that weird shit with loved ones, over and over again in a broken-down cycle? Not me!

Still, I loved Dave for loving me for so long behind my back (I admired his loyalty with its requisite hidden agendas attached) and he was incredibly physically beautiful, which warped his poor mind into further social distortion, because he couldn't handle his own looks. Some folks think it's "fun" to be almost inhumanly gorgeous but it's actually really scary, and it never goes away. People act so fucking weird and abusive to you, it's insane, and it's their kind of weirdness, not yours. People have these strange ideas that it's like wearing a pricey fur coat, or buying really expensive shiny jewelery that you can take on-and-off whenever you feel like it, but it sure as fuck isn't that. It's bone deep and it stays with you, despite weight loss (or weight gain), seasons of the year, age, hair color, skin tone, hair, or any other kind of superficial shit that average people get wrong all the time.

They thought (because their parents taught it to them) that they could barter off their beauty like their were prostitutes, which they sometimes verged on becoming, trading off their looks for petty shit like money, jobs, purses, and cars, as objects that are easily given and just as easily taken away. I thought they were dumb college kids saddled with their parents false expectations about creating scholars out of thin air without any effort, which is total bullshit. Ask any teacher. And that was it, too: we knew they were doomed to fail, because it remains the established pattern backing their disorders.

As working class New Yorkers, me and my best friend Karen were way beyond sympathetic to their pain. We lived with it at home with our own families, and because we'd already seen so many people go down as teenagers, you take the chance to help a brother out, man, when you can. You don't easily pass that up. They were more than our friends. They were family, and you don't disrespect soulful people in pain, you know? We were in it together. I didn't want to just help, I wanted to help them heal along with me, as we returned home to our families armed with knowledge and information, as they still struggled in pain. As soon as we learned lessons in college, we almost immediately tried applying it with vigorous strength to the family living in our homes, whether it worked or not, though we desperately hoped it would. What do you think motivates two teenage girls from roughly abusive families, besides minimum wage and part-time work?

We put our very heart and souls into the fight for our lives and the lives of the people around us who were drowning in drugs and alcohol, thanking our lucky stars everyday for the better health we felt so fortunate to have, hard as we worked for it. We knew they weren't made of the same stuff as us, but oh, did we want to help a brother out. It became the stuff our lives were made of, too, our life's mission and raison d'etre for being in it with them, for as long as we could manage it. It meant (and still means) that much to us. And so, when they fell down, we picked them up time after time (actually physically picking them up and supporting their often greater weights, athletes that we all are), and carrying them back home to the safety of our humble houses that we held together with our love, blood, sweat, and tears, but it wasn't something we could do on our salaries for very long, without facing down the fear of bankruptcy, which I finally did.

It went far beyond kicking someone when they were down, because we'd seen it up close for far too long, even though I'd escaped some of the worst facets of addictive disorders from my parents abilities to maintain drug- and alcohol-free existences for periods of time, weird as their disorders expressed themselves in other areas of their lives. Without healing madness at the root of it, it simply went into different odder directions, sublimated into an ever-stranger series of "fetishes" (self-described to me), like obsessive counting games, or folding laundry long into the night. We'd seen it's weirdness up close-and-personal in the people closest to us, as the very people who gave birth to us, and we hated their diseases with a passion that fueled our work at an almost inhuman pace, as we frantically tried to outpace their madness, sometimes falling down hard in the face of it by becoming overwhelmed, awash and swamped by the sheer number of illnesses we had to bear up under and support on a woman's salary.

We carried them as long as we could, and then we had to cut the chord to save ourselves, an enormously humble and selfless act that is not for juniors or beginners. Don't do it like we did, unless you have our gifts and genius, okay? Don't try this at home, folks, and don't "go it" alone. Gird yourself with as many strong healthy warriors as you can, and fire at it with everything you have in your arsenal, because that's exactly what I'm doing with you who are along for the ride today with me, out there in my audience, thinking that you're alone. You are not.

For all of David's supposed bravado in the face of life's challenges (as well as the normal day-to-day stuff he shied away from, too), at home he was just another scared New York kid too afraid to drive a car from my aunts' Brooklyn apartment to our parent's houses upstate. Despite his exaggerated tales of car chases and bank robberies gone wrong, you should know, my dear friends, that it was always just me driving him in-and-out of the city in the early morning light to avoid traffic, tourists, and fast-moving cabs that could cut you off at any moment, because he simply didn't have it in him to navigate an urban jungle as deadly as my native New York City. I did. You should know that.

Goth Kid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek-a-Boo_%28song%29

When we were in high school, we knew who the gay kids were, because we'd known most of them all of our young lives thus far. It isn't very difficult to suss out the shy Irish boy who speaks with a light lisp and hangs out with the same group of tight-knit Irish-American boys we took First Communion with at the older, smaller St. Francis of Assisi parish back in the day. Our classmates were simply part of our lives, not some over-dramatic assimilation into another alternate universe. They remain they same down-to-earth New York kids I grew up with.

Their teenage years were a bit rougher, though, as the drama queens dug deeply into Glee Club, A/V classes, and art studios with an intensity that spoke more of a desperate soul seeking kinship or validation during those fragile, ego-forming years than the truer scholarship behind those disciplines. Imagine incorporating an undesired sexuality into your adolescence with a traditional working class background? Yeah..it was like that. We could talk to each other about what was going on in our lives, and that was about it.

That funny kid with a flair for the naughty limericks we passed back-and-forth in religion class at Albertus Magnus after public school became "Brion" in high school, with an ascot and attitude to match it, followed quickly by his acting debut on television with a widely aired commercial for a popular board game that he announced in art class with an alarming frequency. And it didn't stop there.

Pete was unknown to me until junior year, when he became our resident "Goth Kid" in a big way. His rebellion was epic, and totally 80s. He wore heavy black eyeliner (like the singer of his favorite band "Siouxsie and The Banshees"), an Egyptian ankh symbol (like she did), tons of black turtlenecks, Doc Martins, and occasionally a flannel tied around his waist, like any true-to-life Goth* would. It didn't hurt (or help) his look that he was six feet tall, which is a lot of black clothing to wear around so many pastel-colored Yuppies in Izod shirts with the collars popped up in the back, or the bright primary-colored Guidos and the Guidettes who loved them, with their shiny hot rods bought by daddy in the school parking lot, wearing gold crosses on thick chains. It got easier and easier to stand out from the herd.

It was made even weirder by his obvious Nuyorican background, because his full name was Peter Costales, and I write "was" because (like Mikey from the Life cereal commercials), it was rumored that he died from an overdose, though I am happy to say that isn't true. Instead, he became really serious about painting dramatic portraits in oils like Sargent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent), and that's what I remember most about him, besides his large dark frame stretched out across a studio desk to recover from an experiment with clove cigarettes that went awry, in a furious bout with nausea that took him all class to recover from. His work was beautiful and very sophisticated for a teenager.

Unlike posers, he had the real thing, though in the political game that is high school, he lost a rigged contest for "Best Artist" to the Vice Principal's son Paul Bierker, which turned him off from school for good, as it should be. He was definitely better than him, and so was my boyfriend Raphael, who also painted in oils to great effect. Whereas Ralph dropped out of school to party (and blame it on me), Pete took his act to the S.U.N.Y. school system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_University_of_New_York_at_New_Paltz), like two other friends of mine from that senior year art class. We had no idea how to make a portfolio for submission, because there were no teachers to help us with it, or mentors to teach it, so we applied to a bunch of state schools to see which ones we got into and could afford.

The last time I thought about that group of dedicated artists from high school was when I saw Keith from our senior year art class, as we waited for an Adirondack Trailways bus upstate in the Nanuet strip mall off Rte. 59, where there used to be a Dunkin' Donuts. I asked him about John and Pete, and they didn't see each other as much anymore, what with classes and life taking over. Made sense to me. My best friend and I were destined to part ways as she became a student history teacher, and I went on to earn a B.F.A. from R.I.S.D. after my Liberal Arts classes at S.U.N.Y. Oneonta. They had a much shorter bus ride than I did! It almost made me wish I went there instead, because it was the first stop we made before the long difficult mountain bus ride in snow and ice laying ahead of me, but I knew that.

I was going to take a much harder road than they were, and I knew that meant something to them, too. Pete fucking hated high school for being oppressive and juvenile as much as we did, with an art teacher so burnt out, he announced on the first day of class that he would give an "A" to anyone who showed up for his class, and that was it. There was no talent required, or intellectual thought, or rigorous training involved: just a bunch of brilliant, ethnic, New York kids riding out a senior year we didn't really need, because we all had Regents credits for college already, with one tall, gay, Goth kid wearing pronounced eye makeup included. Thanks for staying strong, Pete. You big weirdo!

Kiss Them for Me

Siouxsie and the Banshees

It glittered and it gleamed
For the arriving beauty queen
A ring and a car
Now you're the prettiest by far

No party she'd not attend
No invitation she wouldn't send
Transfixed by the inner sound
Of your promise to be found, oh

Nothing or no-one will ever
Make me let you down

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me, if I am delayed

It's Divoon, oh it's Serene
In the fountains pink champagne
Someone carving their devotion
In the heart shaped pool of fame, oh

Nothing or no-one will ever
Make me let you down

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me, I may find myself delayed

On the road to New Orleans
A spray of stars hit the screen
As the 10th impact shimmered
The forbidden candles beamed

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them… Full lyrics on Google Play

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture

Leprechauns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun:_Origins

Sometimes the line between reality and legend can become a bit blurry, especially if you live in a Celtic kind of town that can seem exactly like the Irish villages overseas from whence we came. Nua Nua*, indeed! Much like family anywhere, we share a lot of the same personality traits, too, which is fun and confusing. Did I meet you already? I'm sure of it. You look so familiar....do you have a "doppelgänger**"? Homelands are fun, as we reconnect through the ages, making new links and strengthening those old tribal bonds that cannot be broken, no matter how thick the mists off the moor, or the fog bank rolling in from the Hudson may be. It's where the heart is.

My family often talks over one another or finishes each other's sentences, to either comic or irritating effect, depending on the context. The new version of the old game show "Family Feud" tells a similar tale told in real time, as first one sibling and then the next answers questions during the lightning round at the end of the show, hence the repeat answers that are acknowledged with more time given for the second round. It's funny and nerve-wracking to watch.

The same is true with my friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances here in town. We live oddly connected lives, whether it's through shared blood or associations of other kinds. I've made lots of new friends here, who always seem to be joined to me genetically, too, and it makes me feel the comforts of home all over again, so I thank you for that. As we enjoy re-connecting with one another here in real ways that feel right, we also share a symmetry that's aligned through the commonality of our thinking styles, habits, and tastes.

My neighbor is like that. He's Italian and Irish-American like my mom's side of the family, a link that can be easily seen and felt with the ease of our conversation, especially about food and family values, meaning he likes to eat a lot, and so do I. We've talked about diet, healthcare, fitness, nutrition, weight loss (or gain), and his part-time work as a coin collector for vending machines. He's got two jobs actually (the second is at the high school), because he has a college-age son to provide for, and another boy in the Navy. G-d Bless! We crossed paths at the local laundromat early in my new tenancy, owned by his friend who looks like he stepped right off a boat anchored in the harbor to come ashore in this century, lured by the promise of streets that are rumored to be paved with gold, which means he and Mikey are leprechauns.

Seriously. When my brothers were little, they loved the clinking of coins, the way babies like the tinkling of keys. They're the first toys kids play with, because most fathers carry one or the other in their pockets. They had those coin-collecting booklets from the post office, and all of us had piggy banks for our spare change, because in our households every penny counts, and you never know when just one penny will make a difference someday. It's good to be thrifty! Besides home economy, we learned to identity different types of coins by looking at their states and creation dates updated at the U.S. Mint.

My brothers went on to other serious nerd passions like stamps, comic books, baseball cards, and movie memorabilia, which my oldest brother presumed to be the very first fortune he would cash in, as the money he needed for his Ivy League school. Even though we didn't like his arrogance about his IQ level, he wasn't wrong. He really did go to a highly desired Ivy League school for his prestigious MBA. Way to represent New York! I was so proud at his graduation, staying in the old stone, ivy-covered dorms that give our best schools their nickname.

But, my oldest brother was depending on something else besides chance by investing in his skills (which naturally pays off for him), and bad luck was what got his precious collection. Faulty wiring or a rogue squirrel ignited a boiler fire near his basement room at my mother's house in New City, which then traveled upstairs to my middle brother's room, guaranteeing that their collectibles would definitely be lost to either smoke damage or the burning fire. They used to share a room when they were small, before the oldest got a room built downstairs for his teenage years that used to be part of our split ranch's two-car garage, so their joint collections were in both rooms that were hit. Luckily, no one was home at the time.

And that's what my new friends here in town remind me of: sweet hometown boys who still like the cheerful sound of change clinking in machines that indicate there's a profit to be had by their labors. I find it charming, adorable, and sweet that they've made a successful business out of a laundromat and the machines that serve us, and that they get along really well, too, just like family, because real families always look out for one another. Always, my dears. Always.

http://lucky-charms.wikia.com/wiki/Cereals

*   https://www.bible.com/versions/884-oc1970-cuinn-tiomna-nua-1970 
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger