Musings and Memories... - real thoughts from a faux claud - Adoption Journal, Story, Experience, Blog

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Journalist: EggyMother24	Status: Public
Entries: 15 (Private: 0)	Comments: 0
Start Date: 03-19-2005	Last Updated: 03-12-2006
Views: 5345
Description: real thoughts from a faux claud

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# 1

so it begins....

Date Posted: 03-19-2005 at 10:23 PM

It started innocently enough, or so I thought. Looking back, what did I really know. Not that I think it was some big plot on his end and certainly not to the extent of the final outcome, but I did not have a clue that a belated Christmas “Here, I’ll take you out to lunch.” would somehow manage to permeate and effect my life for years to come.
I’d like to think that he had the best of intentions. He really was just trying to be a nice boss and show some appreciation. And of course, I was just so fabulous and interesting that he could not but help to become beguiled and bewitched. But that would imply that I truly was just oh-so fabulous and interesting that I somehow could manage a true beguiling and bewitching. It would be a monstrous feat for while I pretended that I was indeed all that, in reality, I know it was all an act that I sometimes believed myself while wondering why no one else bought into it for too long. Perhaps it was the complexity of the grandiose acts combined with the sympathy generated by the effects of my long dysfunctional life that intrigued him? I still do not know and I probably never will, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt; it all really started with a lunch.
I was nervous. I couldn’t imagine having to make real conversation with him for over an hour during a lunch. I was use to him blasting into the office, booming voice and heavy stepped, always in a rush, grabbing the messages from the little plastic box on my desk. His was the first name listed on the plastic dividers for his was the first name listed on the solid office door. I was the first desk one saw on the inside of the door. Just the receptionist and only by default. I only had the **** job as a charitable move made by my aunt. Sondra was his executive legal secretary and her mother the office manager. I don’t know why a law firm in Manhattan would have trouble finding a receptionist, but they claimed they did, so they put up with my complete lack of experience and weird hair. I worked it around my school schedule and active night life. It probably was a bad case of nepotism that they both would regret, but I would not know that until years later. I can say that I did do a mean job on the copy machine and my natural talents for organization made me somewhat as an asset. I couldn’t type for squat, but I became proficient at ordering lunch and making coffee. Plus, I was always pleasant and willing to do the grunt work. Maybe it was the fact that I was so inexperienced and eager that enticed the invitation from him. Perhaps he saw the malleability of youth and the evident, though still unnamed by subsequent therapy, desire to please people. Perhaps it was the penchant for the dramatic black clothing, nasty boots and overindulgence of eyeliner that made him feel dirty inside. Or perhaps he just realized that day as he passed by my desk in a flurry of schedules that he forgot to acknowledge me for Christmas and haphazardly invited me to lunch on the morrow. I have no idea what went on through my little brain, but I said yes and so it began.
We went to a cute little French restaurant in Midtown. It was cold being January, but, I think, we still walked. He walked quickly and I hustled to keep up and get out of the wind. The restaurant had a theme of crayons or colors were somewhere in the name. He, of course knew French, and had explained it to me, but being years later, I can’t recall. I just remember the large red, blue and yellow crayon decals on the windows and a sampling of the Crayola box in a glass container on the table. You could color and doodle while you waited to be served and, at that time, I found it unique. I didn’t understand the menu, but I got veal something because I liked veal. I still remember the taste. I don’t know if it was just my first experience in a really good French restaurant, or whether my senses were just heighten through the whole experience, but I wish I could have some more today. Creamy and tender in a bowl over rice and the sauce…..oh, the sauce. It just melted in my mouth. I know it must have been just a blend of butter, cream and wine, but I was so taken aback by the pure indulgence of this lunch. And he ordered wine.
Now, at this point in my life, I did not drink wine. I did not drink beer. I drank sweet fruity alcoholic mixes that were made to be fun when ordering at the bar and to get girls drunk. My friends and I learned to mix up batches of Fuzzy Navels and Sloe Gin Fizzies because it was cheaper to drink up at someone’s apartment or dorm room and get going on a buzz before you went out for the night. They also had the tendency to turn on you if you drank just one too many and plenty of nights were ended in a nasty NY bar restroom stall, but I still preferred my syrupy sweet concoctions to wine.
Wine was what my family drank at my grandmother’s house on Sundays. I grew up on Sunday pasta with bread and wine and deserts picked up after church from the Italian bakery in town. My grandmother would have ginger ale for me and my grandfather would always pour in a bit of wine. If it was red, then the color was more attractive, but I wasn’t crazy about the taste even after having had it my whole life. Of course, at home the wine was Bolla and probably a Chianti. I still don’t like many Chiantis to this day, so maybe I was simply prejudice about wine. If I had grown up with family that liked Merlot or a nice Shiraz, then maybe I would have been more comfortable due to my natural preference for those grapes, but I still wanted to impress him. So I drank the wine.
I am sure this was a really good bottle of French wine. I don’t think I ever saw him order a bottle that was less than a hundred dollars apiece, so I’ll assume that this was too. I don’t know and I never saw that bill. Despite my preferences later for a mellow red, I would love to know what this wine was just so I could have it again and re-examine the experience. Maybe it was just your average white wine and I had really only been previously exposed to bitter crap, but I cannot explain how seduced I was by the flavor of the wine. Maybe it just blew me away that I liked it at all and didn‘t have t fake it for him. Maybe I just willed myself to like it, but I really liked that wine. It was sublime wine.
And, you know, the funny thing was, that even before the wine took to my tongue, before I was overwhelmed by the sensation of the food, before I realized how good it felt to sit there as if I could belong in that world, I found myself comfortable with him and we had no difficulty making conversation. In fact, it was easy. And the more I thought of how easy it felt the easier it became until it was actually fun. He was, of course, fascinating just by his very being. I mean, the wealth of his knowledge and experience and who he was held me captivated. To begin with, he was from California and even my friend Anna was automatically more exciting and much cooler than any of us locals in our group by virtue of being from the other side of the country. Combine that with, well, with his age. He was a real grown up. He was beyond a grown up. He was a successful grown up. He wasn’t hoping to get his own place; he was importing Italian furniture for it. He wasn’t lusting after some new boots in Trash and Vaudeville; he got custom made loafers whenever he was in London. He didn’t wear clothes off the floor; he picked up his shirts from the Chinese laundry and sent someone out for his dry cleaning. He was living the New York City life that I had spent years dreaming of. He traveled for business and leisure. He ate out often and not at the falafel place on ninety-nine cent Tuesdays. He didn’t take the subway ever; he took taxis as a form of transportation daily and hired a car service to drive him on trips. He had season tickets to the opera. He was bilingual. He was a lawyer. He had money. He had looks. He had killer blue eyes. He was everything that every girl who ever read Cosmo ever hoped to find. And he wasn’t married. Can you see where this might be going? Can you understand that I didn’t have a chance? Who can really blame me?
I really thought that he would be bored or we just would have those horrid awkward silences. I had no idea what we would find in common, but oddly enough I worried for naught. There was no hesitation in the conversation..it just flowed as smoothly as the wine. What we talked about, now, I cannot remember, but we talked and we talked. It wasn’t boring lawyer talk and it wasn’t the shallow or overtly dramatic conversations that I shared with my friends. We did share an interest in art and I think that was a topic, plus he did have a wealth of knowledge to share. But it wasn’t just about him. He listened to me and not in the way that a relative or former teacher asks about what you are doing and your plans and then they just nod their head, but their eyes become glazed over. It wasn‘t condescending or patronizing as if he thought I was “cute“ for my naïve little ideas or feelings. He genuinely seemed interested in what I had to say. Like I was an equal and an adult despite being over 25 years younger and not at all equal. He didn’t seem disapproving of my youthful high jinks, nor overtly pitting when I discussed my situation on the home front. I made him laugh. He acted intrigued. He seemed to truly enjoy the rapport. And when he said it was fun, I believed him. It seemed natural that it would be fun to do again.
Yes, I now this seems terribly cliché. I know that any girl worth her weight in salt should have seen right through it, but what can I tell you? Looking back, I can see how completely susceptible I was to him. There was no way I was going to be able to control the situation. The previous events of my life had made me primed for the assault and, in fact, I desperately needed to believe that someone found me worth something of value and interest. I was right there ready for the taking whether or not that was his intention in the beginning.
Maybe, it wouldn’t have all happened if it hadn’t been for that lunch. Maybe, if there was no real attraction, then we would have just stumbled through the ordeal and gone on our merry ways. Maybe it was all the wine and I was totally set up. Maybe, I should have known better; that once was excusable for a belated Christmas appreciation, but anymore was treading dangerous waters. Maybe it was all suppose to happen. I just don’t know. It was a really fine lunch, so when he said that we should do it again, I agreed.
And so it began with just one, little, excusable lunch.

I don’t think I told anyone about that lunch or at least not to the full depth of the experience. Of course it had little magnitude at that point, so maybe I did. Did it come up later that week during drinking decision time with my girls and I mentioned the wondrous wine? Or did I boast of the fine dining experiences? Though I do wonder about that since my love of veal was looked down upon by my vegetarian friends. Might I have made sure to mention the interest, even if then seemingly innocent, to my male acquaintances to stir up some jealously or prove some innate attractiveness that they choose to oversee? I know that I savored the memories in my mind during the hour long train ride home to suburban Long Island that night.
I know I had no reason to mention it to my mother when she picked me up at the train station that night. We were at a very difficult point in our relationship where she still heart fully disapproved of any enjoyment that I might get out of life, but was too beat down by the ongoing divorce with my father, juggling unpaid bills, and making life somewhat normal for my then 6 year old brother to really show much interest in my day to day life. That I got up every morning and went to work seemed to qualify my existence to her. She didn’t seem too concerned by the fact that I was no longer attending college nor did she bother complaining anymore if I stayed in the city overnight. In fact, now, I really wonder what the hell she was thinking during that year. I was going to a therapist during this time, mostly to spend the hour discussing my mother and our interrelationship so maybe she just thought that Jerry had the job of overseeing me and she was off the hook. I really think she just did not have it in her anymore.
That year was defiantly the lowest point in her life so far and my needs, ever second, fell to a dead last. Maybe she just assumed I was 18 and adult and I would do what I wanted, after all I had spent the last three years fighting her on that front. It felt then, like I had won the war and I did flaunt my independence from her, but I can still feel the hurt from the obvious lack of concern. I wanted her to care and I also wanted her not to care. No, I wanted her to care and approve. My mother wasn’t much on approval. It took me a few more years to figure out the right equation to make her satisfied with me. Actually it took me 21 years, and plenty of therapy to demand from her what I should have been born into: unconditional love and approval. And I don’t know if I ever really got that though I did spend too many years searching for it and that undeniably caused most of the troubles.
Anyway, I didn’t see a lot of this then even though I spent an hour a week talking to a shrink. Poor Jerry. I was a horrible patient. He was a friend of the family. Married to my mother’s sister’s college roommate and best friend. I think he took me on as a favor probably at the insistence of my Aunt Linda who always seemed to think that a good therapist can solve anything. I wouldn’t be able to remember on my own what the initial cause of my sessions. Did I start going to him when I was still living in the city or was it after the whole apartment fiasco? I don’t think it was due to the incident with my father when I threw the knife because that was much earlier in the year; that was March or April. Was it the self destructive acts of hating very same school that I had fought so hard to go to?
The reason for the initiation would be lost in time except for the existence of my little date book. I had a habit of filling the days with quick notes of what I did that day for good blocks of time. Talking to friends, crashing at F.I.T., what bar, what guy, etc. The “going to doctors” starts showing up every Wednesday right before Thanksgiving of that year. So I am clear that it was the loss of the Manhattan apartment and the trauma of that ordeal that actually signified the low level of my existence and forced the adults to “do something“ with me. At least there was that attempt at help. I do know my mom couldn’t afford to pay for him and it was agreed that he would be compensated for his time, later. I don’t think the man ever got paid a dime. Maybe since I was such an absolute failure of a case, he did not feel that he had the right, but it really wasn’t his fault. He was a nice man and he did help with many things, I just never told him everything. I don’t think I like to tell anyone person everything. I think I like to have my secrets. Michael still gets mad at me sometimes and says that I’m secretive. It’s just the way I am, I guess. I was sent there to talk about my childhood and my parents. And so, I talked about my childhood and my parents. Of my current life, I pretended that all was well because I desperately need to believe that it was. Even when it was clear that it wasn’t.

There was a second lunch. It rode on the innocent coat tails of the first.
You know: ”That was nice. Let’s do it again”
I am a sucker for great food. Growing up, my Uncle Mike would think nothing of spending eighty or ninety dollars at the specialty Italian deli on imported proscutto and buffalo mozzarella that we would dine on with fresh semolina bread. It’s a family tradition to anticipate the arrival of the Christmas Harrington Ham that he still sends every year. To send me this ham, Fed Exed from Vermont, wipes him out approximately one hundred and fifty dollars and it’s one of my most treasured gifts. So maybe it was the thought of the great wine and succulent veal that tempted me again. I can admit that I probably just as greatly anticipated the attention and conversation with him, but I could not have seen that then.

This time the restaurant was ethnically Spanish in flavor which made sense knowing his love and business attachments to Spain and the South Americas. I believe, it is considered one of the best of it’s kind in New York. Whether it is Portuguese or South American I can’t recall. but I had been there before he took me that day. I actually couldn’t remember the details of this lunch until I started writing this…and then it hit me, much like the way I hadn’t remembered being in that restaurant until I walked in with him.
I had gone there before with my parents. I want to say to celebrate a promotion of my father’s in the police force. It could have been when he made Sergeant, though I was three at the time and I think I would not have had such a recollection, so I will guess that it was when he had made Lieutenant. I must have been about eleven or twelve?
You would think I would remember such an important event in my parent’s lives. It must have been the highest point of my father’s career in the NYPD, and though never a cheerleader type, my mother would have applauded the rise and monetary benefits, yet I am completely in the dark. What is it about childhood that makes it all so warped?
I was not ever an oblivious kid. I took great pride at knowing everything. I knew where all things were kept in the house. I knew all my Christmas presents every year. I knew where my father stashed his porn. I knew what the arguments were about. I eavesdropped. I spied. I listened to the adults talk over Sunday dinner and the whispers from my parents bedroom late at night. To this day, I am not the one to ask questions, but I strain for answers and one of the worst things someone can do to me is withhold information. And yet, I find myself left with big black holes in my youth where I yearn for the truth and I have no one left to ask. Maybe it is a matter of perspective, but my adult mind struggles for the adult versions now and all that I have is the view from my childhood eyes and mind.
I find it so frustrating. The place was extremely unique in décor and that is what triggered the memory, yet I didn’t know then what I had been there for. I think my grandparents were there too? Oh, who knows! You had to go upstairs to the main dining room and the stair case was all mosaic tiles and obviously quite unforgettable. I have never been good with names, so I am not going to attempt to pull that from my brain. I know both times I ate paella. The first time I ever had paella was there and then Sondra and Marina made it one Christmas Eve and then I ate it there again. Hard to believe I have such a good memory for the food, but as I said, I am a sucker for good food. Luckily, I have also learned to be a good cook and I can make my own paella now and I do a darn good job if I don’t say so myself.
I can’t, however, begin to reconstruct the conversation and, again, looking back, I am hard pressed to even imagine how I could have pulled it off. I guess this is where my acting abilities come into play for I must have been somewhat entertaining. I know that I was an extremely shy and fearful child, but I forcibly shed that skin when I donned my teenage black persona years earlier. I had one therapist who called it a “grandiose mask” as if it was something negative, but if my true self was so very shy and fearful..well I would not want to be my real self again as it makes it very hard to function in real life. I know I can still control my outward self and come across with great confidence and self assurance. What is that saying? “Fake it till you make it” I must have faked it then for there is no way I could have let on to him what was really in my heart.
The date book again provides the painful truth of what my daily life was like. It reads like a social whirlwind and I believe that was my intentions. Constantly on the go: parties and concerts, talking to names that I cannot phantom a face to now, roving from one bar to the next, shopping and spending, into the city and back to the island, staying at one friends, crashing at another’s, hooking up with this guy, seeing that one for drinks, and pining over a third. It doesn’t seem that I ever slept in my own bed in whatever place I called home. I had a ring of places in the city to stay at: Anna’s, Laura’s, Ian’s, Bethany’s, Christopher’s, Ashmi’s, Guy’s, Pammy’s. Always sore from sleeping on a hard floor and needing a good shower.
I feel so disassociated from that life now. Like it something that I saw once in a movie or read in a novel. It is hard to remember that it is me and I did live it. It is very hard to remember the true feelings that I had then. It all hurts. It looks and sound’s exciting, but the essence is sadness. I get the sense I was running, running away from my life and trying desperately to find some other life to live. My writings at the time, aside from being horribly adolescent, are overwhelmingly bleak. Constantly questioning why was I not good enough for anyone. I go from great excitement when facing anything new, an abundance of hope and exuberance at the thought of a chance and then quickly and repeatedly betrayed, the despair at that being an reoccurring theme. I am obviously depressed and frequently suicidal. The words are written in haste and running from tears. I am saddened to recognize it in myself, yet angered when I remember that no one else seemed to notice and I was left alone to war with myself.
Perhaps I was too good of an actress. As I said, I lied to my poor therapist for a year and they are suppose to see through these kinds of things. At lunch, I must have put on the good, amusing front for him. Spun the stories in an exciting web while leaving out the tears of shame and scars of self mutilation. I could speak of the wonderful concerts I attended and my fabulous friends in cutting edge bands. We went to movies and to museums, I dined and danced. My sarcasm and wit could make the uncomfortable humorous and I could edit the rest. Yes, I can imagine doing just that. And perhaps the sorrow behind the anecdotes made me all the more mysterious.
Somehow, I managed to pull off innocent lunch number two. The line in the proverbial sand was not yet crossed and had I just thanked him for the fine food and went back to my dejecting life then I would have little story to tell. But once again, it was so lovely to feel good about something. It was so nice to have someone, and such an accomplished someone, to think fine thoughts about me. Maybe it was as plan as day and anyone observing us would have seen where we were headed. But I left the restaurant that day feeling upbeat and happy, feeling special and thankful and all the more vulnerable for the next invitation.

The memories begin to become much sharper here. I know the date. It was January 16th. It was my brother’s 6th birthday and it was a Friday. The Long Island Railroad was threatening a strike that night at midnight and that would have been a concern in my world. I took the train from the Massapequa Park station every morning for the hour long ride into the city. Always tired and constantly late, my mother would rush me to the 7:55 in town. I hated the times in the car with her as that was a time when I was trapped in her presence. She could bombard me with her strident voice, whether complaining about my life or my father’s antics or some new insult or annoyance from my grandfather. It was not a good way to start one’s mornings.
Of the day itself, there was nothing of note. I worked my position as receptionist. By now I was pretty much there full time having the scheduling confines of art school removed by my distasteful withdrawal from school. I did enjoy the work, which I have always had the tendency to do. I enjoyed the weekly paycheck which seemed to make me rich when compared to my friends. Everyone else was in school of some kind and few had jobs as well. I think Laura lived for her two years at F.I.T on forty dollars a week spending money. I till don’t know how she managed, but I guess my generosity was helpful. I know I would buy us all drinks when we were out and often sprung for the taxi when it was time to stumble home. I would buy food and hair dye and shopping flings including the treasure black and pink mohair sweater and the rubber skirt. I would not stand for the excuse of having no money if I was up for an adventure. And we have already established that I did not sit still for long.
I think I was wearing my black suite that day. I’d like to think so as it was an attractive outfit that my mother had purchased fro me for my high school graduation that spring. Black, of course, it had a longish tight skirt and a fitted jacket. I think I might have been trying to pull off a professional look that day and wore my hair in a French twist. If this is so, then I most likely had on black pumps and black stockings though I sometimes would be daringly punk rock and wear my fishnets to the office. It could have been the fishnets that did it, for I would later notice a correlation between the fishnets and his attentions and use them often to entice a rendezvous, but I’m not sure of that day.
I know it was about four in the afternoon and the office was quiet when he approached me alone and asked if I’d like to go out for drinks after work. I think he had precipitated the question with enquiring as to how late I was staying to work. I had planned on working to sixish (since most days I ended up arrived closer to ten rather than the traditional nine) and told him so. Did he respond , “Great! Wait for me to finish up and then we’ll go”? It feels probable.
I knew that this time it was different. That this time there could be no pretending of innocence. I was completely aware of the consequences of this outing, but only felt disbelief and excitement. Disbelief that it was really true and excitement that it was really going to happen.
I know that I knew it to be at least questionably wrong due to the nature of our relationship as boss and employee and due to the huge difference in age, but felt that I must go through with the adventure. I had to see it through and see where it would take me. Long a reader of trashy Cosmopolitan, I felt I owed it to myself to do what ever good Cosmo girl would do. And years of Cosmo, had conditioned me to see and glorify this moment as a moment of triumph. I had the city job, I worked on my city look, I pretended to have the exciting life, of course, I would go out with the boss. I had this innate desire know all to live all. I use to say that I would rather have lived through something, whether good or bad, and really knew what it was about rather than read about it in a book or see it in a movie and frightenly enough, I believed it.
I wrote in that time, “Life is weird. I want to experience everything and when I’m done and I’m bored then I want to die”
Unfortunately, this did little for heeded one’s sixth sense or survival mechanisms, or listening to the little voice in one’s head saying “Are you sure this is a good idea?” The little voice still sounded too much like my mother and I still had too much distain for her to hear any wisdom in anything she might have uttered. In fact, my tendency was probably to do exactly what I knew I shouldn’t. That it was my brother’s birthday and I would miss his cake was of little consequence. That I had to be on a train by midnight or risk getting stuck in the city only added excitement to the mix. He didn’t have to tell me not to tell anyone for I knew it to be an unspoken secret. I knew it to be forbidden and that only made me more excited to say yes. Of course, I went

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# 2

part 2

Date Posted: 03-19-2005 at 10:28 PM

We left the office separately. There was no need to tell me that I was not to announce our upcoming escapade to anyone. When he was ready, he said good night like always and I quickly followed him down to the lobby. He was waiting for me out on the street where we hailed a cab away from any probing eyes. Once in the cab, he directed the driver to take us to the then Hemsley Palace. It was before the fall of Imeda and her shoes and the word “palace” made me feel like Cinderella off to the ball.
“Had you ever been there before?” he asked.
As if I was frequenting the highest motels of Manhattan’s golden Midtown. As if it was a common Friday night after dinner hang out for me and my freaky pals.
“No.”
“Oh, I think you’ll like it.”
Was this an intended seduction? All designed to impress and awe? Oh, yes. I see it clearly now and I think I knew it then, but the cab was on it’s way. We were pulling up to a building covered in gold. I had doors being opened by uniform clad door man calling me miss. I was ushered by a god into a room filled with the elite of New York. The ceilings rose over two stories into a space rivaling a cathedral. The room had the quiet vibrations from a deep woolen carpet, the hushed voices of culture, the gentle tones of fine china stroking crystal and linens.
It was the “Harp Room” and if I’m wrong and no one knows what room I am talking about, then it was the “Music Room’ or something to that effect. I know for sure that there was a woman on a balcony playing the harp so maybe my mind has twisted the memory. I know we sat at a small table, tight for two, knees knocking in an intimate way. I know that I drank White Russians, no wine this time, it was cocktail hour in NY and I suppose I needed the added influence of hard alcohol. I know I had four of them and I felt it becoming ever more buoyant and animated throughout the ordeal.
It was, like before, not an ordeal. No matter what was spoken, the underlying vibe was prominent, and I believe there was laughing and obvious flirting. What I recall most clearly: when it was Time to Go. We left together and got into a cab. I thought, last vestiges of innocence that he would ask me where I needed to go, and I would reply Penn Station and make my way home. Believe it or not, I was surprised when he rattled off an address to the cab driver, but assumed it was a restaurant as we had not yet eaten. The gig, as they say, was up. The address was for his Upper East Side apartment and I, still ever so obedient, willing got out of the cab and entered his building, went up the elevator and changed the very core foundation of my life.

Now I was nervous, no faking it. It was staring me right in the face and my teenage boyfriends and youthful hookups gave me no basis to which course to take. Drunken attractions at bars and clubs, late night fumblings with friends provided no answers. Maybe it was a good thing I was pretty drunk myself, again, maybe that was the plan, maybe I knew and let myself get that way.
Even for growing up in the 80’s, I was still kind of a “good” girl. I had stayed a virgin until 16 waiting until true puppy love and hormones took their effect. Willingly gave up “my gift” on my own bed, after school, to Darrin and then loved him for the next two years. Granted that was one year after he dumped me, so the second year was closer to stalking and desperate attempts to rekindle or control something. Youth had given me no respect for dignity, so any frequent successes at luring him back into my body and my bed were followed with renewed heartbreak, and anger at myself and him. One time I shaved my head and then used the story of a brain tumor to get his attention. That worked for a few weeks. Then there was his constant need for a hair cut that I would so willingly provide and allow to become an intimate situation. It is amazing how much body contact you can get out of a mere hair cut. Even when I knew that new life would not be breathe into our relationship, I got great pleasure knowing that I was getting him to cheat on his current girlfriend.
So here it was, barely two and half years later, maybe a bit more and I could still count my lovers on my fingers and remember their names. I probably would have been just as happy to walk right out the door if he had started laughing at my foolishness for being there. Needless to say that didn’t happen. Closing my eyes, I can remember entering his apartment. It was dark and even after switching on a few mood lights stayed relatively dim.
It was an older building, one that spoke of quiet money and an unpretentious dignity. Comfort was more than a mere luxury and was purchased carefully. Like himself, it was decorated in a no nonsense way. The kitchen was original to the building, old cabinetry and high ceilings, but filled with modern tools. The sofa was leather and the artwork originals. It was warm inside. Did he take my coat? Hang it up in the closet? I recall being turned around maybe he whisperer “Come here”
I obeyed.
I was in his arms and followed where his kissing lead.
Did I feel the passion or just taste the fear still? I don’t recall. I know my mind swam in a million different directions. Knowing I should not be there. Knowing I should get home. I was missing my brother’s birthday. The trains might go on strike. I would be stuck in the city. I had no where planned to stay that night nor clothes for the next day. He was my boss. He was so much older than me.
What was I doing, but how could I not.
I can remember other times that I knew what I was doing was bound to lead me to nothing but trouble. Staying out late at night, pretending that I was having a blast without a care in the world, but having my mind scream about how much trouble I would be when I did finally get home. Thinking of the excuses and rationalizations for obviously flaunting any rational authority and logic in my actions. Planning my escape from the consequences instead of just doing what I knew I should be doing. Go home. Be on time. Meet the curfew. Don’t make mom freak out. What makes us so rebellious and defiant and uncaring? How does this irresponsibility make us feel so grown up? When really all it did was give me a stomach ache. Stupid.
So I’m sure I had that familiar stomach ache instead of lust running though my veins. Yet, unable to call it off. Oh, if I had only known where it would all go. Would I have run out screaming into the night or rationalized how much cooler and romantic it all would be with the tragedy and poetic license of youth. I stayed . For whatever reason, I stayed.
I know I gave in to situations in the past where I would just rather not of. Now, they call it date rape if you don’t proclaim “yes!”, but then, when AIDS was still just a plague among the gay population and sex was still a clean pastime, giving your body to a man was easier to endure than the conflicts of driving him off. Ah, so you let him do what he wished and soon enough it was over and you could go home and shower. Wake up in the morning and pretend it wasn’t all that terrible, maybe he was just a bit too drunk, maybe you shouldn’t have smoked so much pot and stayed out so late. Shouldn’t have let him buy you all those drinks. Oh well, what do you expect?
Did it matter if I wanted to be there or not that night? Making out on his fancy leather couch. Doing my best to be all sexy and sophisticated. Make him want you, maybe then he’ll love you. We did not have sex that night, but the die was set. Kissing and removal of clothing defiantly redefines almost any relationship.
He asked me if I wanted to stay over.
I replied that I should get home as the trains might be on strike, “****, it was after midnight!” What if the strike was on and I was stuck. Real fear.
“No, I have to go”
“Here, I’ll get you a cab. If the trains are out, take the cab home” He holds out a hundred dollar bill.
Clothes get rearranged. Coats get retrieved from closet. Down the elevator. Ignore looks from doorman. Walk to corner in the still of the late NY night. Hails the cab and kisses me goodnight.
The trains were still running. Last minute stall, negotiations and such that would only last a week or so, but I got home.
I kept the hundred dollars.

Now I had a great secret in my life. It was beyond exciting. Ah, yes.. I had him. The real games began. The pattern of our affair began to emerge
By day, I was the ever eager little worker bee. Now even more desperate to please my mighty employer. Working late took on new meaning. I would manage to know his schedule and I had reason to be around the office when he returned from his late afternoon squash games when I knew he had not plans for the evening. The second invitation came and then the third. I was not nearly as surprised anymore, but now wanting to be reassured of his desires. I did not dared to think of where it all would lead as it could go no where, but I was bound and determined to enjoy it all for what it was worth.
I can’t remember the timeline now, but it always ended in a cab on the way back to his apartment, rushing to be alone. Sex, yes, but the first time is a blur. Course, I always still tend to hate the first fully sexual experience with a new lover. It is always so awkward and uncomfortable. Too much worrying and hesitation to really enjoy it. I still liken it to a roadblock that one must get by, a speed bump of caution before the open road of freewheeling desire and passion. It happen sometime in the early days of the true affair and then continued to be the thread that inspired it all.
Sex with him was more of a marathon. I swear that man could go on all night. I use to have to beg to be able to sleep. It amazed me. At 18, I was used to selfish boy lovers who loved you once and then wanted to watch music videos whether or not you we satisfied. Or, the goal was to get you to come so they could have their way. Seeing for fact, that a man of 45, sooo much older in my book, could put any of them to shame was incredible. And this was way before the invention of ******!! Maybe he was truly perverted or a sex addict because I can’t think it was all my influence or mere presence in his bed. It still makes me shake my head in dismay. Clearly his motivation was to get me into to bed and then never let me out until I was so broken and raw that all the next day I was aware of him with every step I took. I enjoyed it, but it was often just too much. Hold me afterwards until I fall asleep quietly speaking romantic thoughts or, now, let me roll over since I am really exhausted, but I really have no need to do it again..and again..and again.
But I did it. I preformed like a trouper. Met with his never ending desire until I really could not do anything more but pass out from lack of strength. Because he had me you see. The act of seduction was so key. The foreplay was so enticing. I wanted what was in it before the cab ride home. It was for the beautiful New York City life dream that I became a whore.

He took me out to an audience interactive play on the lower East side where the theater patrons stood in the center of the room and “played” the crowd. Never did anything like that before or since. As a child, we did not frequent Broadway, but the yearly trip to Ringling and Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. I saw a Rodeo, I saw a Basketball game, we went to the Bronx Zoo, but real theater was of a dream. Being part of the crowd who interacted with the true arts was intoxicating.
Dinner afterwards at another fine restaurant. How I loved to be dressed to my nines. My attempts to look the part of money and sophistication but so obviously raw. Imagining the other diners looking at me and wondering who I was, as if they couldn’t see the obvious, but then again, I did like to shock. Always in black, have I mentioned my addiction to tons of black eyeliner when Punk was still shocking? Still dewy, young and very much with the powerful man, I must have had a great many women look at me with open hate and distain, but I didn’t care. Were the other men envious? Did they wonder what he saw in me or did they inheritantly know what he was after? I was immune to it all.
We would frequent a place called “ The Ballroom”. They served tappas when tappas were unheard of. It was right by F.I.T. which gave me great joy. I would go to Laura’s dorm room after work and change. Then, I could just run around the corner and be sitting at the bar, drinking the red wine that I had discovered the taste for, when he arrived. I wanted people I knew to see me going in there. I wanted to be fabulous and exotic. I think it was all in my mind, but it was too much fun.
I ate octopus and sweetbreads there. I can still remember the consistency of that meal. The looked like brains should look and felt like brains should feel, but they tasted so good and I so wanted to be experienced.
One time, I had ordered pheasant without really knowing how darn small the bird really is. I could not eat that thing with a fork and knife. I couldn’t cut off the meat, the knife kept on slipping and banging on the plate. It was a terrible embarrassing racket. So I gave up and sat there graciously pulling the flesh off with my fingers and joyfully popping it into my mouth thinking I could pull it off.
Another time, it was a fabulous French place with an open terrence at street level right by Scrap Bar where all us crazy kids hung out. I don’t know if I was happier to eat these amazing mussels in a red wine vinegar with shallots or to see a bunch of my Goth pals from the bar pass by and recognize me eating them. Years later, I don’t recall who the friends were, but I finally had mussels prepared like them again and I did experience the same renewed joy at their consumption.
It was the Opera on a crazy raining night and I couldn’t get a cab. My hair was freshly dyed Poppy Red with Manic Panic. The black silk scarf did nothing to shield it form the rain drops and by time I got to the Met, pink rivulets ran down my face. I had to take the subway and run to beat the opening curtain, but I was late anyway and had to sit and watch from the side until intermission. He found me with a glass of wine and laughed at my story and state of disarray.
It was a life, an experience, that was of a dream. I told my friends and they were jealous. It was magic and no one cautioned me away. Grab it, take it, do what you must. No future..who cares..live for now! . I can still look back on that part of it fondly. I had that life once. The one of movies and the rich. The one of the social pages of the Daily News. The one that we dream about having when the miracles of adulthood fall upon us. It is seeing that I basically prostituted myself for that life that doesn’t feel too good now and if I had dared to see it, I would, maybe, not have liked it then.
But the romance. Ah. I could have loved him. I almost did. I knew I dared not to. I knew I was not allowed to. I knew he would not love me. It was sex and that’s all and I had to accept it to reap what I wanted.
He would sneak over to where I worked in the office, an open public area, and whisper to me where to met and what time. Sometimes, he called me into his office and locked the door behind me and took me in his arms. Stolen looks by the coffee machine spoke of trysts to come. Walking to the bathroom at the same time in the deserted hallway resulting in fast kisses and the need to fix one’s makeup. He beckoned and I followed. I learned some measure of how to control him. If I wore my black fishnet stockings, it seemed he could not resist and the call would come soon after, but basically I was his toy.
Alone together, he would ask me if I loved him. And I would answer that I did, but I never would return the question nor him the favor. I also knew that I could not for I was bound to be either disappointed or lied to. He would tease me about “all my other boyfriends” to which there was none. I think he like to know that he was the only one for me, but I do not think that I was the only one for him. Maybe he didn’t believe me. I know that by the end he was convinced otherwise and maybe it was a real concern of his. Maybe he did really think that I was just a slut. I didn’t give him any real reason to suspect one way or another. I behaved like one, but only for him. It confuses me now, it confused me then, but I don‘t think I thought much about it or if I did I didn‘t share these thoughts with a soul. Fabulous enough replays to interest my friends, but hide all the doubts and unpleasentries at all costs. It is called denial and was soon to be my constant companion.
Can you understand it? Is it possible to see how I could have fallen so easily in such a situation? Because that is necessary, so necessary, to begin to understand the rest. It is not a simple story of a torrid little affair, but gets much more far reaching than that. You see, this one little complication occurred early on in the relationship. Remember, it started on January 16th and just a little more than one month later, on February 22, in his apartment, we conceived a child.

# 3

a bit more....

Date Posted: 03-23-2005 at 08:02 PM

Do you recall the episode of “Steinfeld” where Elaine goes crazy because the Sponge was being taken off the market as a contraceptive? There is a reason that handy little thing was removed from public usage. It didn’t work or at least not very well. Figures that the form of birth control favored by me was greatly flawed by not doing the very thing it was designed to do: prevent pregnancy. Again, these were the days before the condom became the protection of choice. Condoms were still considered gross and nasty, not that the sponge was anything lovely to remove post use, but still, a higher form than the lowly condom. So I was being a smart cookie by readily having available protection for myself. Wisely, I employed use of the sponge when in his embrace even though he never mentioned any concern about such matters. It’s actually pretty interesting that he just seemed to assumed that I had such things covered for never was the topic approached. Perhaps he was just use to mature woman who took matters in their own hands, or perhaps he just assumed that every sexual chick in the 80’s had her fertility under control or maybe he just didn’t give a darn, in any case it was a talk that never transpired. Not that it really should have mattered because to my knowledge, I had it covered.
Back to why they were taken off the market. Apparently, even if you thought you had it covered, with the Sponge, you really weren’t covered and like many things like this, you don’t know that until it is too late. My luck, I fell into that percentage where they didn’t do the job that they should have. And that means that I at the ripe old age of 18 became pregnant with my 45 year old bosses child. Not exactly the kind of complication one would like to insert into the boundaries of the wondrous secret affair. It just doesn’t fit.
To be completely truthful, I did not feel all that concerned at first. In my world then, babies were not options and if you happen to find yourself pregnant then you carefully arranged for an abortion. I had gone through it the year before myself.

Right before high school graduation, I came up late. That pregnancy was the result of one of Darrin’s and mine continuation of puppy love turned into a dead dog, but no one dared to take the darn puppy out back and put it out of it’s misery. Now days, one would say it was a booty call. I suppose that is an accurate description of what we sort of were by that time thought there was a continuation of friendship and loyalty to each other that did mask as possible love for many years. In any case, I think he was still going out with the Cow as we called her. Her name really was Pam and what she lacked in my eyes as pretty, she made up to him by being old enough to accompany him to the local cool clubs. At least that was my understanding.
Darrin was my first love and my first lover. I met him when I was 14 and going out with one of the first “cool guys” in my school, Kenny D. They were in a band together and two the maybe eight kids in my suburban Long Island school who dare to be different. Once Kenny and I broke up, it only made sense to like the only other cool single guy and that was Darrin. I did pursue him terribly with notes left in shared classes and giggles in the hall, but it did all work out and somehow love did bloom. I still affectionately call Darrin the Corruptor as I was drug free and virgin when we met, but that changed soon enough. Sex was wanted and the natural progression that happens when one is sixteen and “in love”. My resistance to smoking pot as drugs “were bad” went south when my constant nagging turned to philosophy I could not resists. I had been bugging him to cease and Darrin turned it around with the “can’t knock it till you try it” line. I guess that would be peer pressure and it worked. It was all bound to happen sooner or later and I am glad that it all happened with him.
As these things do, though, our age difference became an issue. He was two years older and when, at eighteen and out of the protective land of high school, I was left behind. Unable to get into Spize to drink and smoke to all hours, unable to drive, unable to be free still of the parental units, he wandered off to Pam who could do the things I could not. It did break my poor little heart and I was frequently desperate. Desperate enough to do all kinds of stupid things thinking any sign of interest was a sign that he would come back to me and make me whole again. So, naturally, when he called me late one night and explained how he was working close by and needed some company, I found a way to sneak out of my house.
He was the night security guard in some office building. He guarded it enough to leave, come pick me up, smoke a joint, have sex, and bring me home. He must have forgotten that I was not Pam and not on the pill. I didn’t forget, but in desperation I did not care. So, in some office building in the next suburban town over, right next door to a Burger King, I became pregnant for the first time.
I knew it the second it happened. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. When my period did not come two weeks later, I was horrified but not surprised. I had one of those early home pregnancy tests. Let me tell you, technology on those things has really improved. I had to pee in one cup and only first morning urine would do. Then take three drops of pee and place it in a glass vial, then carefully swish it about and let it sit for something like 20 minutes. Then you have to check for a red donut of indicator dye that was suspended at the bottom of the vial. I had a red donut.
I told my friends. Laura, of course, Diane, and some others. It was viewed as a catastrophe. The one thing I remember so clearly was telling our friend Liz.
Liz was really cool. She was the same age as me, but her parents were not like everyone else’s’ “normal” parents. Liz and her sister, Angel, did not have to wage war at home to dye heir hair or pierce their ears. They could stay out late and have parties. In any case, I remember so clearly passing Liz in the hallway at school and hissing to her of my condition. Her was response was joyous, “How cool! A baby!” I didn’t understand her natural reaction to such a horror. I look back now and understand her so much more than I ever could then. She was truly the rebel in all things and even dared to think differently than what society programmed us all to think.
The biggest issue with being pregnant was funding an abortion. I made the calls from the yellow pages from the pay phone outside of the school auditorium. The first place was ruled out as too far and they didn’t speak English. The next place was close enough and it all sounded pretty simple. Make the appointment, come on in, you get it done there, leave in a few hours and rest. The cost $250.00. I made about $45.00 dollars a week working part time in a Chinese restaurant. I had nothing saved as I spent my cash on clothes, concerts, pot, and other junk. Going to my mother since Dad was recently gone again was not an option, so we had to put our collective heads together to get me un-pregnant.
It was decided by Laura and I, after a phone call to Darrin deemed him as not a good location for funding, that I would talk to my cousin who was five years older than me. Michael was the son of my Uncle Mike, my mother’s older brother and he lived at my grandfather’s house. His parents had a nasty divorce when he was 16 and when his mom shacked up with her boyfriend, he came to Grandpa’s where my uncle stayed on weekends. To Michael, I was able to tell the truth about my predicament, but he was not either able to help with money though he did offer to beat up Darrin for me. He was, however, surprisingly very kind an supportive. He and I had our ups and downs and this was to be the last time I would experience his kindness. What he did say to me proved to be very profound as I took it to heart.,
“ Do it once and it’s a mistake, do it twice and you’re an *******.”
This might not be considered the height of kindness, but it was preempted by a good hug and cry and other loving verbiage. It was also what stayed with me.

Eventually, I went to Grandpa with some cockamamie tale of how I broke a Hummel figurine that belonged to my friend Christine’s mother and had to replace it. Grandpa forked over the $250.00 and I went to the clinic and did what I had to do.
On Long Island, in the 80’s if you were pregnant and in need of an abortion you went to the clinic on Hempstead Turnpike. It was basically a millhouse for abortions. Clean, fast and simple, they didn’t mess about and they got the job done all too easily.
You go in and wait a bit, fill out some forms, pay the fee, take a test and remove your clothes. Wait some more and then on to the room where you say hello to a doctor who asks you mindless questions about your day until you fall asleep from the medication. You wake up in a room with about 6 other girls, the nurses sit you up and you get a lollypop. You wait until you are no longer dizzy. The you got to the bathroom and redress. Try not to be horrified by the amount of blood on the insides of your thighs and wash it off with a paper towel. They give you the run though of what signs of infection to look out for and then you are released. Your friends drive you home and you stop for a Big Mac because you are hungry. Make up some lie about how the movie was to your mom and take a nap. Problem solved, no more pregnancy and you bleed. Done.

I figured that would be the case again, but without the issue of money. This time I was with a man who had oodles of it and I could easily tell him and do it again. Or so I thought.
Maybe it was the words of my cousin ****ing me to admit to being an *******. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to let go of all the glorious fun with him. Maybe I was sure that he would think I was a stupid little idiot for getting knocked up. Maybe I just could not do it again. If I told him, he would write me out a check. He might even make the appointment to a nicer, more fancy clinic in NYC. He might even have taken me there to ensure that it was done. What it would have done was burst the bubble. It would have been very clear that I was not some great passionate love to him. He would not have been happy and pleased and asked me to marry him after professing undying love and devotion. This I was convinced of. Though I knew that I had to do it. I had to tell him. I just kept pushing it off.
I knew I was pregnant early on. I went to Florida and Disney World the first time that March for Spring Break. Laura and I decided at the last minute. Our friend Ashme was going with her sister, Alicia. Alicia’s boyfriend and his friends had a hotel room down there. All we had to do was drive down and then we had vacation for free if we slept on the floor. I think the idea came up on a Thursday, I bought a bathing suit at Macy’s on Friday and we left on Saturday morning. Knowing me, I decided to put off until we returned. I’ll just have this fun time and then I will tell him.
The joy of a last minute road trip allowed me to squelch any concerns I might have regarding my condition. Always living in the minute, there were more important things to consider like what to pack, would we have enough money, could we find a cool club to go to in Florida, and what music to bring for the ride. Laura and I were to be mere passengers on this ride as for some weird reason neither one of us had bothered getting our driver’s licenses yet. We were taking Ashmi’s new car, some fancy black spots thing that made us feel very reckless and cool.
What was most significant about the trip down was my latent discovery of Led Zeppelin as a band worth listening to. Don’t ask me why, probably because I was and always will be a musical snob abet with a huge amount of stupidly, but I had, during high school, lumped, ahem, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Ozzy, Black Sabbath, and the Grateful Dead all in the same category. This was based not on actually knowing the music, but due to the fact that the “Dirtbags” in my school wore all those names on the back of their denim jackets and on their T-shirts.
Like any high school, mine was broken up into the requisite cliques. There was the jocks and the cheerleaders, the Preppies, the nerds, the Discos, and the Dirtbags. If it was now there would be the Freaks, broken up into Punks, Goths, and Death Metal; but in those days we were just out of category and no one really knew what to do with us besides throw green beans across the lunch room and be somewhat captivated. First generation Freaks did not embrace the name. The Dirtbags were really just a local name for the Metal heads and stoners. As a freak, one could cross the social lines, so I had true friends in all sub categories. In fact, I was closest to many a Dirtbag as we shared the procurement and smoking of the marijuana, but I had never bothered to figure out the differences in the music. So in my head it was just all yucky metal.
The stereotype of my brain was tested as Alicia was in a Deadhead phase. As her other three traveling companion, we ruled as a majority and outlawed the Grateful Dead for the 25 hour trip, she held out for Zeppelin. I am glad she won that battle. I wonder how many more years it would have taken me to discover how darn tooting good they were. By the time we reached the Georgia border, Both Laura and I were amazed at their new found, to us, coolness, and Alicia was begging us not to listen to IV again.
In case you haven’t noticed a lot of what was important in my life was the quest for “coolness”. Things were either cool or they weren’t. We strove, above all things, to be eternally cool. Cool was wearing black, and having dyed hair. Cool was many earrings and silver jewelry. Cool was being super pale with lots of makeup. Cool meant you listened to cool music, did cool things with cool people, and always looked very cool. The longer you were cool the cooler you were, so we tried to achieve “old cool” which meant that you needed to have clothes that looked new a long time ago and were representative of things that were newly cool years ago. So while a Cure concert T-shirt for a tour last year might be kinda cool, having a holey, faded shirt from the second American tour was infinitely more cooler. Knowing that The Cult was a good cool band was important, but being able to speak of their early incarnation as Southern Death Cult gathered many more points. Get it?
Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale in March of “87 was not the Spring Break that we see now on “Girlz Gone Wild” videos. Like so many things, there was still such an innocence at that time. MTV had yet to capitalize on the masses of marketing groups converging for shenanigans. It was just a bunch of kids at the beach and crowed into hotel rooms drinking and smoking weed and trying to get lucky. It was not, in our world, something that was deemed “cool”, but we did it anyway. The beach, in the daytime, was not where we expected to hook up with a huge group of night loving Goths. Needless to say, Laura, sporting her cotton candy pink hair and myself, with the still fresh Pillar Box Red, stood out like fishes out of water and dying in the hot sun.
It was fun, but other people were mean to us. They threw things and called us names. There was an incident where Laura got a lollypop stuck in her hair and Ashmi later threw her soda at him full in the face. We had to run screaming into the hotel with them chasing us until we got into the safety of our elevator. We got rained out of the big water park, but I did begin my lifelong love affair with Disney World. Apparently I had words with Tigger as he didn’t want to get his picture taken with us because we were freaks. In Laura’s retelling now, I call him and ******* and make him do it anyway. I’m glad, it’s a great photo. We took a one day cruise to the Bahamas where I got sun poisoning. I was too sick to go out to the cool club we found in Miami, but Laura and Ash didn’t get in anyway. I took cool baths in baking soda tubs and smoke tons of pot for the pain and nausea. Thank goodness all of Alicia’s boyfriends friends were generous with both the pot and the hotel accommodations. They let us stay there for free all week, annoying freeloaders on the floor, and not one of us were expected to put out in loo off rent.
We returned out of cash and without much of a tan. Sun poisoning does not come automatically with color attached. Ash’s ATM card didn’t work out of state being that this was when ATM’s were still new too. Imagine that! We got home on my American Express card having to eat in many a Red Lobster as they took AmEx. The card’s bill came in my mother’s name so I knew that would be an issue, but thank goodness we did have it. Gas was a necessity and we had to save what little cash was left for tolls.
New York was there when we returned. Laura went back to school at FIT, Ash back to her gig whatever that was, I went back to him and my life. He was waiting as was the bigger unknown issue of the pregnancy, but procrastination proved to be a hard habit to break.

I cannot explain really why I never said anything to anyone about being pregnant this time. I guess I was embarrassed to be pregnant again and thought I could take care of it on my own. The year before I had been much more secure in my group of friends and social standing. It was the last year of high school, I knew everyone, I felt I knew who I was and where I was going. I was the great Artist. I was going to School of Visual Arts in NYC and following my dreams. Nothing was going to stop me..not my dad pulling out all my college money, not getting pregnant by Darrin, not having a broken heart and soul, not having my portfolio filled with four years of artwork stolen at the zero hour, nothing. Less than a year later, I was floundering.

Living in the city had proven to be a terrible ordeal. This is another case of what the hell was my mother thinking when she let me do it. The plan always was during high school that I would go to Art school in the city. I was always the Artist. Drawing was my most favorite past time form my most earliest memory. Despite being forced into honors course during junior high and being labeled “gifted and talented” with a 131 IQ, I systematically dropped all courses deemed “unnecessary” to concentrate on my art. I took almost every art class offered by the two teachers that made up our sad art department and some I took twice. My goal was either Cooper Union on a full scholarship, Parsons or SVA, or Pratt. Cooper didn’t happen and I had a tough time deciding between SVA and Parsons, but SVA won. Pratt was deemed not cool as it was in Brooklyn and I did not even entertain Chicago Art even though they were dying to get me. New York city had to be part of the deal.
I was actually quite driven filling out my portfolio with pieces made to get me through the interview processes. I had gone to SVA for their scholarship tests in early December or ‘85 and knowing that I would return in January for the regular interviews, I thought it wise to leave my portfolio at FIT at my friend Barri’s dorm room during the winter break. The darn thing weighed a ton and was so unwieldy during the train ride. As luck would have it, Barri went to Europe during the break and her apartment was broken into. Gone was my portfolio and all four years worth of work with my interviews just weeks away.
I went into a frenzy. After the initial hysterics brought on by a very apologic phone call of Barri, I became a drawing machine. I got permission from most other classes to skip and just live in the art studio in school. I filled up two full sketch books in a matter of weeks and stayed up till the wee hours recreating my masterpieces. Driven I was to escape mundane suburbia and my house of control and head trips and I succeeded. The interviews went well and I was on my way. So busy was I on concentrating on how to get in, I never concerned myself on how it was all to be paid for. Like most self absorbed teens, I just assumed that the parental units, despite all their faults, would pony up the means to pay for it all. After all, I had been speaking of my plans and dreams for four years. I was unaware that parents also had the ability to be just as selfish and self absorbed.

# 4

hmmm..want some more?

Date Posted: 09-15-2005 at 07:52 PM

My parents probably should never have married. I think that they were not well matched at all. Married at 23, I think my mom did it to escape her own parents house. She never did get very far, always living within a few miles of her own parents house, but she at least, had her own home to rule. This is one of those areas where I have now, as an adult, so many real questions to ask but no one to ask them in order to begin to understand the real dynamics of the family I grew up in. From what I gather, my mother felt like the forgotten child in the middle . Her older brother, my Uncle Mike, was the prized son and her younger sister, my Aunt Lynda, the preverbal brat. I think my mother procured her martyr status in life early on.
It sounded like she married my father in a bit of a rush though I was not born until a socially acceptable year later so what that rush was I am not sure. I have found old pictures whose dates on the back, if to believed, make the acquaintance and courtship between them much longer than she seemed to recall. I do remember her speaking about not being allowed to go away with my father and met his family and for that she felt sheltered and denied knowledge that might have helped her make a better life decision. I know she worked a full time job and lived with her parents until she married and then my parents bought a house. She spoke once of wanting to leave the marriage and then found herself to be pregnant with me. So she stayed and at the age of 2 months and two days they bought the house that I grew up in, five blocks from my grandparents.
By the time they married my father was on the police force. Early pictures of him show a very handsome man in uniform with a sparkle in his eye. I know my mother never felt comfortable with her appearance so maybe she felt lucky to get as fine a man as my dad. I know I was always happy to have inherited his nose rather than her big Italian honker, but I often see her reflection in my face now and it works for me. The genetics on them meshed quite well as both my brother and I are a good blend. We have a great abundance of common sense and will inherited from Mom with intelligence and great testing ability from dear old dad. Maybe that was the whole purpose of their union as it certainly didn’t seem to bring much peace or happiness on any other front. It was not a happy marriage especially towards the end.
When my father left my mom the final time he had a lot of practice. They had separated once when I was beginning ninth grade for about 6 months. Then yearly, he would attempt to leave again. It was always January and he always left a note which I, home from school first, would end up finding with a feeling of “Oh, here we go again”. By the time I was a senior, I guess even my mom had had enough and away he went. The war that ensued lasted the next five years until they finally were able to legally divorced. Everything was a grudge match and the fighting was dirty. If there had been any love there it was now pure hate. The hate from my father was not just projected to my mom, but I received quite a portion of the residuals.
The thing that effected me most was that my father took all my college money. What ever they had saved for me, he had craftily cleaned out of their joint accounts before informing her of his intent. He then stopped all child support and kept all his paychecks for himself. My mom thought he was paying the mortgage on the house and then found out by fluke that he wasn’t right before it went into foreclosure. She ended up having to go from working part time around my brother’s school schedule to working full time to met the bills. Needless to say that nothing was left for me.
After not seeing him for months, my father came over to visit “the children”. I remember hearing my mother tell him,
“I’m not going to tell her that. You tell her”
It was May. I was about to graduate high school. I was accepted into my choice of schools. My time in suburban purgatory was almost at it’s end and suddenly her was Dad about to tell me the great news.
“ Well you see, there isn’t any college money for you”
“ Why. Where did it go. You knew I was planning on this”
“ I needed things. I had to buy furniture and rent an apartment.”
“ You bought a motorcycle”
“ That doesn’t matter”
“ What an I suppose to do? This is my life we’re talking about. Most parents are thrilled when their children want to go to college”
“ You can go to the local community college”
“ And how am I suppose to get there. I don’t have a car.”
“ You can take the bus”
“ I’m not doing that!! They have a ****ty art department. I got into Parson’s and SVA!!. What do you want me to do?? Should I become a prostitute or surrogate mother in order to pay for school??”
“ You do what you have to do”
And then he walked out of my room. He went down the stairs and sat on the couch and attempted to read the paper and that complete disregard was just too much. At that moment, seeing how little it effected him, the dam broke and I just lost it. I ran after him and threw myself into the paper, throwing it across the room. I attacked him with nails and screams. I know that I was trying to show him, prove to him how very deeply he hurt me. He did not care and pushed me off. He did not pay any heed to my cries of despair. And then he walked outside to speak to my baby brother.
I stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to regain composure, yet knowing that he had just destroyed all that I had hoped for, all that I had dreamed, my escape. I heard him talking to Matt and grabbing a knife I went outside. It was pure insanity. I held the knife high, not knowing what I intended and screamed at him:
“ You get away from MY brother!”
I threw the knife at him. It missed, but it scared him badly. He ran out muttering about how we were all nuts. He was never big on visitation after that.

Maybe, come to think of it, my ability to freak out unnerved my mother after that. Honestly, with hindsight, if I was her, I would have just made me deal with the unfortunate reality of our situation. There was no longer money for school and the great Manhattan life I dreamed. Maybe, she just did want to give to me what I so craved or maybe she just wanted to get me out of her hair. In any case, instead of making me understand that I would just have to commute to the city for a year or two until things got better, she actually helped me find an apartment.
The plan was that I would get a place in NY with friends from home. Terri, Ashmi, and someone else I forget now were suppose to be my roommates. When it came time to put down the money for the apartment, everyone had changed their plans and I was the only one moving. Did this stop me? Nope. I had about $3,000.00 dollars and the apartment was eight hundred a month with one months security. I figured I would move in anyway and find other roommates from the vast quantities of kids I knew in the NYC club scene. They would pay me back and I would have enough money to pay for my first semesters tuition which was another $3,500.00. It was a bad plan.
First there was a couple of basically runways from Jersey. They had no money, but were going to see some stuff to get it to me. It took about a month to find out that that wasn’t going to happen. So they referred, using that word very loosely, me to another couple from Jersey. Somehow, other friends of theirs, two girls also came to live with us. Money was exchanged somehow and I did manage to pay tuition in the zero hour. I was not eligible for any financial aid because, on the books, my father had money.
The apartment was a fourth floor walk up in the upper East side between York and East end. It was a one bedroom railroad flat with a bathtub in the kitchen. Usually there was anywhere between 4 to 7 people there. It got to be the norm that if you had any food or money, it was the place to crash. I don’t know how many people stayed there. It was insane. All kids, no grown ups and no money. Everything I had in the world was there and it was nothing but a huge party with no one to clean up the mess. If we had any cash, we grouped it together and bought cigarettes. A dollar and change could get you a pack or a loaf of bread so we could eat. We smoked instead. We got crutches from the garbage and took turns going panhandling for change. We dumpster dived in the back of drug stores and either sold or took whatever we found. We hunted though the trash for what we could find and tried to sell that. Friends that still lived at home would steal food from the family fridge. We stole toilet paper for restaurants. We lived on noodles with mayonnaise and garlic salt. It was horrible.
The landlord was horrible. The apartment was an illegal sublet which meant that he was suppose to be living there . That meant that the bills were all in his name and all his furniture and crap was still there. He was suppose to get it out but never did. He was suppose to show me the phone bills but never did. He was suppose to call first, but never did. He was a “photographer” . Along with his lousy nasty furniture, in the apartment he also left a nasty array of porn. Pictures of naked women and magazines that were beyond dirty. The man was, quite obviously, a pig. My mother had met him. My mother saw the apartment. My mother made the deal with him for me, her only daughter, just 18, to live there in NYC and be able to support myself and go to school full time with no real source of income and no screening of any potential room mates. What the hell was she thinking??
So much went on in that time frame, it hardly seems that it was only a few months. School started in September, so I was in the apartment the last week of August. I had packed up my room at home of all my earthly possessions and clothes. Mom had her puesdo boyfriend, Tom, help me move in with his van. I was given a few old pots and some mismatched silverware that my father had left in the attic from his first apartment when they separated years before. Laura and a bunch of friends came over to spend the first night and somehow we managed to invite the whole world to a huge party. I guess we knew in advance that I was moving in and had planned it. I know lots of people were there. Darrin came, and kids from High School. City friends and club pals, the whole crew was in mass. It was the start of my exciting new life.

# 5

Bill and Pizza

Date Posted: 10-01-2005 at 08:22 PM

Well, at least it was a good beginning..or at least a really good party. Laura still has the photos taken from that night. I was in my hey day, finally the queen of my world. To me, it was an ultimate success because the ever so coveted Bill came over. Bill was the perfect Goth boy that I imagined myself to be in love with.

Long Island was an incestuous little world especially if you were part of the freakish sub culture. Clubs deemed cool enough and that played “our” music were limited, every school only had the token number of punks and Goths, so we all knew who each other was. There was the innate competition to be coolest, and the best accessory was a super cool boyfriend. Bill was the long distance best friend of Christopher. Christopher was the local heartthrob who I could never ethically date, as he had broken Laura’s 15 year old heart. While we did share some common boyfriends due to lack of availability, a true best friend did not smarf on a broken heart.

I met Bill for the first time when he and Dave Patti stopped over my house one night in 11th grade. It was late at night and I was already in my PJ’s, but for whatever reason ( again..Mom..what were you thinking?) I hung outside on my front porch talking to them for a few hours. Bill was with a girl that night and I thought nothing of him in regards to a possible prospect as I have never been that kind of chick. Unless the guy in question was mine first, I had great respect for previous established relationships. In any case, I was just Bill. I had finally gotten to met the guy behind the name. I had heard about him for quite some time as Christopher’s friend, but since he lived an hour away in Port Jeff, he was still unknown to me.

In the weird way that life works, the next weekend I ran away from home. I know that there was some huge family fight preceding my decision to evacuate the premises, but the exact circumstances are in a memory void. I do know that I very calmly made up my mind, packed my bags and snuck them on the bus for school. Once in school, I hid my bags in the auditorium, went to homeroom so I was not marked as absent and prevent the call home to alert the parents to my absence, then called a taxi cab from the payphone, went to the train station and took a train to NYC. Once in NY, I walked over to FIT and announced my uninvited presence to Barri and Steven in the Dorms. I don’t think they were all too happy to have to deal with me, but I gave them little choice. Besides, it was Friday and I could do no apartment hunting or job seeking until Monday. What to do, but include me in their plans and that meant going to the beloved Danceteria.

During high school, Danceteria was the be all and end all of all clubs in NY. Within walking distance of Penn Station and FIT, it was 5 floors and, until it closed under controversary, a wonderful rooftop club. The scene in Desperately Seeking Susan, with Madonna dancing around a non existent jukebox, was filmed on the third floor. The third floor was the “coolest” floor and where we all wanted to be. My parents heavily stymied my ability to project ultimate coolness by not allowing me to go to Danceteria. I had to construct elaborate plan to “sleep” over Diane’s house in order to go. It was rather a pain since I also had to manage to get picked up in the am at a friends house when I had been out all night. It was seen as a great injustice, though now, I know there is no way would have let my daughter go either. But no one was going to tell me what I could or could not do.

I was as pleased as punch to be going there. Newly freed, independent. And to add to my satisfaction, who walks in but Chris and Bill. Instantly adding to my coolness, I have been seen by those who could report. It turned out to be an teenage runaways magical night. After having to remind Bill who I was, “ Do I know you?”
“Well, you were on my front steps last weekend”
We spent hours sitting on the freezer in the “kitchen” talking until my tickets back to FIT all went home, Bill missed the last train out and the club actually closed. Coupled by this time, we tried to get into FIT, rude as it was. Yes, not only did I arrive unannounced by now I wanted to wake hem up at 5 am with a boy in tow. No one answered our buzzing and so we end up spending the wee hours left attempting to sleep 8 feet up on the “Eye of Fashion” statue in front of the dorms. In October. It was cold.

Come morning, we did freeload ourselves again on my poor friends. I have pictures of that day still. Bill with his greenish eyes, and bleached blond hair covering his face, Russian fisherman’s cap and the coolest big riding boots that made sparks on the street; I just extremely thrilled to be in NY, free, and found a boy to boot! I think we went out again that night? Eventually he left NY to go home to his fancy prep school due to the coming Monday morning. I didn’t know where I would be next, but I was assured I would see him again. So I didn’t care all too much when the security guard at FIT started asking questions, Bari’s roommates started getting wiggy about harboring a runaway and Uncle Mike and Sandy came to pick me up.

I went to their apartment in NY and essentially held myself hostage. Apparently my mother was quite distraught over my disappearance, though my father was nonplussed. It didn’t take them too long to figure out that I was at FIT. I held out, refusing to come hoe until they met my list of demand: I was to be able to dye my hair, pierce my ears and shave my head without repercussions, was to have my own phone line in my room, and I was allowed to go to Danceteria. I think I must have adding something in there about Bill. Needless to say, they conceded and I went home. Sometimes, I think I was an incorrigible child, but really it was very sad that I had to go to such extremes to get myself accepted. I think if they had not, at that time, together, fought so hard against me, I would to have pushed back so very much. I can look back and see that the last common bond that they had in their marriage was the persecution of me.

So the next few months were blissful. I had a boyfriend and could do whatever I wanted. I was 17, extremely cool, and in love. And then he dumped me and I became very depressed again.

Looking back, Bill was defiantly a player by today’s standards. He also had a tendency for being enamored with what he perceived as somewhat exotic. At least that’s what he was impressed by and looked for in female companionship. He had an ex of whom he fondly remembered the cat’s paws tattoo over her shoulder. I believe she was older and her name was Jared. I went with him to his Prep School’s Winter formal wearing a dress made out of a black vinyl raincoat and my hair sticking up 9 inches straight up. He was fond of Asian women and had a long time girlfriend whom he cheated on, unbeknowningly, with me named Lily Lin. She and I eventually became friends in the V.I.P. room of the Ritz after he was gone, mostly, from both our lives.

I was forgettable as a girl in her pajamas in the night air of Long island, but fascinating as a teen runaway vixen hiding out in a club. When we were dating I was more of a troubled ultra needy girl stuck in the mix of a marriage’s turbulent death. My thrill was gone and soon was Bill. I guess I was able to redeem myself by pulling off the amazing super party in my new NY apartment, for Bill stayed the night of my party and I felt that, for a brief time, the world was perfectly alighted.

______________________

I have a lot of trouble remembering what happened in the next few months in NY. The is no time line, no beginning thread, no end; just fleating images, snapshots of my life.

I must have had the job right away as I never recall looking for a job. I worked part time as the receptionist and I went to school at SVA. I was 18 and loose on NY.

I remember ariveing in the apartment one day after classes and being so releived that there was no one home. By this time there was anywhere between 3 to 6 people living there, so I was shocke d to have the apertment empty. I immedistaly went to take advantage of the situation and have a bath. Remember the bathtub is under the kitchen counter. The door to the apartment is in the kitchen The door faces the tub.
I am in the tub. Naked, of course, and in walks not only however many official roomates I had, but a bunch of friends too. With pizza.
The only thing I could do was ask for a slice.

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