Honesty Policy

I sit tonight waiting for the second major snow of the winter, even as soot-crusted remnants remain of the last one--a storm I place now, chronologically, in the mental file folder of "right after," meaning right after a man on a bicycle did his best to relieve me of the burden of my handbag. I also refer to that event as Christmas Eve, which when combined with the attempted larceny gives both events a certain gravitas, as if the parting gift of a broken clavicle was not enough.

In the telling, it never fails to deepen the despair for humanity and where we are all headed, when a woman can't go out and do some last-minute getting without ending up at St. Luke's talking to detectives instead of making her 7:30 dinner rez at Bar Baloud. And, in fact, there is some sense of naive surprise that there is not, actually, a cease-thieving called at noon on December 24th. It would seem it's actually its busy season, with my mugger and I both waiting until the last minute to do our shopping, giving us something else in common besides  coveting my Prada bag.

Since it happened, I find my already well- entrenched insouciance has magnified. It may be the pain killers, or may just be a normal response to being slammed to the ground, but I find detachment from human nonsense easier than ever these days. The bald act of robbery has, perversely, a kind of honesty at its center--if not morally, certainly in its purpose. The man who tried to grab my handbag was not pretending to do otherwise. In that way, my responding by not letting go was a direct and unambiguous exchange between us. It had an almost Zen-like clarity. While I do not wish to repeat it, it served to heighten my insistence that all attempts at passive-aggressive behavior directed toward me in the new year be immediately met with aggressive-aggressive behavior. Unless I don't care enough, which will then turn quickly in to passive-passive, and may involve a very dry martini.

See. I feel better already.

Another Saturday Night and I Ain't Got no Buddy

Last night, after barely escaping from a play with my intellectual life, I was filled with a longing usually reserved for Italian bakeries, Johnny Depp and napping, in exactly that order. Why, I thought, am I not the most influential critic of an influential newspaper? This was not my ego run amok, which has certainly happened before, though not usually without a makeup artist present and very soft track lighting. No, this was actually a rare sighting of an altruistic impulse. How might I save another woman from leaving her apartment in arctic winds and ruining with her wool beret the one time her hair come out exactly the way her hairstylist swore under oath that it would? How could I save her using the over-priced eye pencil, her internal ten-minute debate over footwear, the depleted metro card? How ever could I stop yet another New York City Saturday night entertainment ambush?

Now, the morning after, I want to track down the rave review I read and force said reviewer--at pen point, if necessary--to read the complete works of Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker and Fran Lebowitz before ever writing the word "wit" again without a permit. "Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans with High Class Issues" is the worst writing I've heard read out loud since freshman poetry. I would have gone back further in my educational career, but the writing was better.

How, in a post-Lindsay-Lohan world, any sentence including the word "pubes" can shock people enough that they guffaw like middle-school boys remains an unsolved mystery in the cold light of day. Clearly, I was an outlier in the audience, being that I can actually listen and think simultaneously. I would have found the play depressing if it weren't for the fact that I have never met women like those depicted, nor have had any occasion to let a man talk me into taking off my top because of a contract, marital or otherwise.

It was with no surprise that I discovered this puddle-deep exploration of women's sexual psyches was written by a man. That explained the Animal House nudity, if not how he got obviously talented female actors to mouth his drivel. I can only guess that Italian bakeries were involved.

Whatever shall they wear?

It has been called to my attention, through the ever-rapacious intellects at the New York Times, that New York City cab drivers have a dress policy. Surely, I thought, reading on, the New York Times had uncovered the Di Vinci code of cabbies. What else could explain the article's place on the front page? Perhaps it was one of those sub-cultural conventions we would never have known about if not for daring journalists following in the footsteps of Mario Puzo, bringing us the fashion equivalent of the mafia code of always sending a little something to the widow of a hit--a tacit acknowledgement of her loss of graft income, if not an enviable conversationalist.

But, no. It turns out that many cabbies reading the Times this morning will find out, along with me, that there is a dress code at all--one that has not been enforced very strongly, as any patron of the modern livery could have told you. Apparently all agree we have tumbled exceedingly far from the early 1900's when cab drivers actually wore uniforms modeled after West Point cadets. I, for one, am pleased not to be driven by a man in epaulets, having always found them too close for sartorial comfort to my own 80's shoulder-pad fashion coma, all images of which have either been burned or exchanged for good money under the cover of darkness at the base of the Verrazano bridge--and then burned.

But, the article was worth reading, for two reasons. It allowed me to momentarily fantasize that a news day this slow must mean all was well in the world, and the banks had paid back the money I gave them. And it gave me a good laugh, quoting a history professor who recalled a happier time, one when cab drivers wore slogan t-shirts, and "expressed their opinions." I can only deduce that this teacher is hailing taxies in an alternate universe, his doppelganger never once made privy to his driver's thoughts on the mayor, or the dark conspiracy concerning New Jersey drivers and their plot to slow down New York commerce by trying to back up out of the EZ-pass lane at the tunnel.

But I will keep my eyes open nonetheless for the sudden appearance of Armani behind the wheel. I just hope, whoever he is, that he still has an opinion.

Play to pay

It's not every day that one's world view shifts. One minute, there I am, trying to decide between Raisin Bran and leftover Pad Thai. And the next, this thought walks in the back door of my brain and I am so struck that I completely stop wondering what I did in my sleep to make my hair look like the top of the Chrysler building.

It started with remembering a dream where Derek Jeter and I are bowling. Well, truth is, Derek was bowling, and he was damn good at it. I was watching. That he was managing to bowl down a full alley in my 600 square foot apartment was pure dream-physics, along with the fact that he was, in the other room, also in a playoff baseball game. I knew this was a message dream, as Derek had clothes on, unlike others where he and I have co-starred with absolutely no artistic differences.

As my brain reviewed the tape, I realized that Jeter was not, technically, working. He was playing. And he had figured out how to get someone to give him money--a lot of it, actually--to do just that. Or maybe he hadn't figured it out as much as believed he could. And that's the thought that stopped me somewhere between the cereal and the milk. Especially as I have been struggling with just this concept ever since Bobby Cangelosi turned me in to the nuns for coloring hair onto the baby Jesus statue. I thought I'd done a brilliant job, especially with the bangs. Apparently not.

I wonder what would happen if we took play as seriously as Derek does--if we believed in the right to play with anything approaching our belief in the demands of work. So, I've decided to believe in playing, and report back. I'm starting small but have a feeling this whole thing is just going to snowball. Especially when I get a hold of some crayons.

Only two lives to give for my country

The front-page top-fold story in the Sunday NY Times today alerted Americans that its government--get ready for it--has been saying one thing and doing another. I know, I know--will this loss of collective innocence never stop? Apparently, this time, it's about cheese.

I have met only one person in my entire life that did not like cheese: a young child who had clearly confused those cellophane-wrapped orange-dyed paste squares with that glorious substance that is often the most interesting encounter at a cocktail party. I do not simply like cheese. A creamy herbed chevre, wheat crackers, and a buttery Chardonnay deliver what I believe people meditate in ashrams and enter sweat lodges to discover: that Socratic balance of inner and outer as one; the still point; the Om. That I do not eat this every night is only a testament to my frugality: I cannot afford to replace my Theory slacks to accommodate new thighs. Not in this economy.

It seems the US Government, through the Department of Agriculture, has been actively discouraging over-consumption of the food that the guy in the Dairy Management office down the hall--also part of the USDA--is spending money like a drunken starlet to promote. Those readers who've had anything more than a casual brush with corporate America can't help but do that snort/chuckle thing that substitutes for all the times at work we wanted to return to our pre-K behaviors and throw things--especially now that our pitching arm is so much better. The idea of one part of an organization working at complete cross-purposes to the goals of another department--both citing the exact same mission statement as their mandate--is not a foreign concept. In fact, it is the entire reason Dilbert cartoons and happy hour exist.

So, if you feel schizophrenic don't get paranoid. Yes, Virginia, we are bad girls and good girls--sometimes at the same time. With our very government funding both sides of the argument my advice to you is to go for a good long run, then order the Stracciatella. It would be un-American to do anything else.

Finding Religion

I have a new religion. And with the fervor of any other convert, I am preaching it--most recently, to a woman on the NYC subway, which distinguishes me from the guy wearing a homemade sign around his neck that says "Let Him Save You" only by my lack of pamphlets. All I have to offer is my story when a stranger comments on my state of grace as I, without looking, retrieve my metro card from my bag, swipe, and replace--a triple gainer out of the pool of fumbling humanity at the subway gate. I explain, with lowered gaze and all possible humility, of the salvation found in the most sacred of our spaces: the female handbag.

Like any other addict, I don't only buy; I use. Carrying the same handbag every day would be like wearing the same underwear--the benefits of a change-up are too obvious to question. A new bag shifts the consciousness. I find that moving from a Jas M.B. hobo to a Prada pouchette is all the help a woman needs to find her inner Audrey, complete with perfect posture and an urge for a French cigarette.

All's fair in my handbag armoire, where a 50's thrift store find leans up to a Furla, not suffering any language barrier. But this peripatetic life leads to a paradise lost, or at least a favorite lipstick. It's always a new schematic of compartments that may or may not hold an iPod, cell phone, or the sunglasses you swore you would always keep in their case. Which leads to lots of digging and groping, which culminated, before I was born again, in dumping out the contents of my bag onto the concrete. Nothing clears a crowd like a woman saying the f-word and turning her handbag upside down, it turns out. I finally found my gum, but found I no longer wanted it.

Those misdeeds are behind me now. As the proud owner of an "organizational insert system" of my own invention I simply transfer my bag-within-a-bag from one purse to the other. It's not perfect. I have to actually put things exactly back where I got them. And it has done nothing to get rid of my bills or my under-eye circles. But it has made me feel in control, even if for just for a few moments a day. And, to me, these days, that's heaven.

Seeing things

Yesterday, as I was hurrying up 58th street after dropping off yet another pair of shoes whose heel-tips had been eaten by the escalator in the Time Warner building, I saw a man who was standing still as those running upstream split around him. He was clearly not on speaking terms with social reality, which made me not only like him right off, but also gave his face a look that was both centered and petrified all at once. He was grounded, but his feet were on a planet entirely his own.

It is not uncommon in New York City to come across humans acting strangely, being as this is a city full of oddity, perhaps most especially among the rich. If you ever need to do a paper for your psych class, just bribe the doorman of any building on Sutton Place, sit in the lobby and watch the OCD parade. It's not pretty, but believe me, you will have material. No, this man's strangeness had a kind of perfection to it, untainted by any outside force like too much money and not enough talent. He was pure, gaunt, and, if properly cleaned, could pass for any used-to-be-aristocracy European.

After nearly knocking him down, I backed up and away, taking him in. He looked me in the eye and gestured--his right hand to his heart and bringing his left hand, open-palmed, down to the street--as if to say, don't you even see me? I lingered in his loneliness one moment too long. My throat swelled; I looked away and walked on to the subway.

On the train, a woman announced she was homeless, had MS, and a 13-year old daughter. She said she would take anything: food, something to drink, anything. I started to do what I always do: pretend I am important; I have to check my phone. And then I remembered that I wasn't, and reached for my wallet, not caring what she did with it, or even if it was true. When I gave it to her, she didn't look at me. She just mumbled, habitually, God bless, not seeing me, and walked on.