EINSTEIN’S SHUTTER
Published by Vincent Yanez at Smashwords
EINSTEIN’S SHUTTER Copyright © 2008 by Vincent Yanez
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Authors Note:
This story is true. Most names I have changed, less out of a need to protect their privacy and more out of a admittance that my memory is sometimes murky at best. However, I have made a dedicated effort to remain true to my recollections and can say that though things may not always be exact, in an effort toward truism, it is safe to call them accurate-ish.
I also realize that my side of the story is exactly that, my side. To remain valiant toward the concept of candor, I offer this as my interpretation of events, my remembrances of situations and my recollection of how things occurred during these years of my life. Any gaps the reader may encounter is not out of the need to remain secretive, but is more out of the attempt to remain respectful toward certain aspects of other peoples’ lives that I feel should remain their stories to tell, if and when they’re ready to tell them.
If my words in this book bring offense to any of those involved with my story, rest assured you’ve completely misunderstood and that person was in no way a representation of you. However, if my words brought you joy in some way, then of course it was about you…and you’re welcome!
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my Grandpas, Norbert and Vincent.
Whose names I carry with pride and memories I cherish with affection.
IN MEMORY OF
BEN (M.L.T.)
1965 – 2002
About love…
Love is not impossible; it just means different things to different people, and that doesn’t always make love possible. – To be determined
PROLOGUE
Einstein’s shutter was dark green, almost black, due to the accumulation of dirt, dust and weathering. It lay near the driveway. One hinge was bent and the other was missing. It had obviously been torn from the side of the window and was now awaiting a trip to the landfill. I wanted this shutter.
It was over three feet long, but I figured the physical effort of schlepping it a few blocks was more than worth the fact that I could soon have this shutter ceremoniously hanging on my living room wall between the two windows that faced the Chrysler Building, a conversation piece for years to come. What an amazing badge of honor, to have the shutter of the greatest mind of our century, in my personal possession and on display for all to see.
I circled the shutter. I was trying to visualize the most efficient way to pick it up and carry it away, appearing nonchalant all the while, as if shutter-carting were a normal, natural, everyday kind of thing. Then I heard a noise. To my left, twenty feet away, the neighbor had come out of his house and was standing on his porch. He was wearing a worn-down peach-colored robe and was holding, what I could only assume, was a lukewarm cup of instant coffee.
He was facing Einstein’s house, facing me, while I faced my wooden bounty. I did a slow orbit around the shutter, like a vulture does over a piece of road kill, making sure no other vehicles would be barreling down the road so he can enjoy his newfound dinner. I was intent on getting this shutter. This was my find, my artifact, my road kill!
The neighbor watched me. I turned to him and nodded, he nodded back. I stood still. He remained where he was. Hanna watched from the sidewalk. The minutes slowly passed by.
Evening slowly arrived. The neighbor sipped from his mug. The wind picked up and I remained too stubborn to leave, too fearful to bend down and grab the shutter, too stupid to think of anything else. Hanna cleared her throat and finally, reluctantly, I admitted defeat and joined her on the sidewalk. She took a picture of the house and we walked away. The neighbor watched us go, sipping his instant coffee, peach-colored robe slightly flapping in the breeze.
It was a Sunday, in August, 2001. I never really thought about the shutter after that day. A month later the towers fell, eight months after that Ben died, ten months after that my relationship came crashing down. I often wonder if that shutter would have made the difference somehow. If obtaining it would have been some sort of catalyst to everything that was to come. If not grabbing that shutter could have been the butterfly flutter that created the tsunami of change that happened in my life over the next few years.
I know it’s an idiot notion that something as ridiculous, something as unimportant as my committing property theft has some sort of profound effect on how the world works. What it did make me realize though, is that day, that afternoon of contemplating taking Einstein’s shutter, signified the last thing I could remember being both upsetting and unimportant. It had made me think that life was somehow unfair, but in a subtle and somehow frivolous way. The next few years showed me what true humility and pain really was.
The shutter was most likely tossed aside without so much as a thought of whose house it once adorned. Einstein’s shutter would eventually make its way to a landfill, slowly disintegrating to become part of the earth again. Perhaps that was best for everyone. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be. Then again, maybe if I had only picked up that shutter and walked down the street with it, ignoring the shouts of the neighbor and the momentary feelings of guilt that would have followed the initial adrenaline rush, who knows? Maybe things would have been different somehow. Maybe.
CAMEL UNDER BONSAI
I left Jersey this morning. I was renting a basement apartment in Jersey City near the old Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre where Frank Sinatra used to sit as a kid and watch Vaudeville. I guess living in a basement apartment in Jersey probably sounds pretty pathetic, at least somewhat like the lowest anyone could really get unless they are living in some war-torn town in some third world country. It wasn’t bad though. Besides its lack of windows, heat and ambiance, it was home for a bit.
I can’t afford to rent a moving truck so I pretty much abandon everything I own, but really, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you start anew? It is a cleansing process, both mentally and possession-wise. My last day I give my bed to a friend and everything else I put in the downstairs storage room with FREE signs all over it.
I’m almost done packing when a lady comes knocking and asks if I am the one that has put all that stuff in the storage room. She keeps asking me if it is really free and I keep telling her it is. I let her in my apartment and show her my dining room table and chairs and my bookcases. I tell her whatever she wants is hers for the taking.
She looks at everything for a minute, and then starts to cry.
She tells me that she has just moved into her apartment that morning. She just left her husband, hasn’t found a job and doesn’t have any furniture of her own. She said she’s been sitting on cardboard boxes until she can figure out what to do. Within half an hour she has a dining room set, five bookcases, two nightstands and a dresser. She is ecstatic. I tell her I have tons of other things I put in the storage room as well, for free, but she says she doesn’t want to be greedy and wants other people to take what they need as well. She starts crying again and gives me a hug and wishes me luck on my journey.
The next morning the super comes to see me off and check out the apartment before taking my keys. I show him the pile of stuff in the storage room I am leaving behind. A hand-held massager, a small television, a 4 foot plastic bank in the shape of a crayon, boxes of books, pots and pans, a few dishes and an old microwave. He takes all the free signs off and moves everything to one corner. When he gets off work he’s taking it all home because it’s going to be Christmas in April at my super’s house tonight.
The van I have rented is packed from floor to ceiling and it takes me a few tries to get the doors to shut. I take a last look at my apartment and then head out onto the New Jersey Turnpike and the long drive west. It is early morning and there is a beautiful haze that has not yet been burned off by the sun. I can just make out the Manhattan Skyline in the distance. It doesn’t feel real that I’m actually leaving this place, my friends, what has been my life for the last few years and the memories flood back haphazardly and in no particular order. My eyes fill with tears as I listen to my tires on the black asphalt that stretches out before me.
I pass the Jersey state line and pull off at the next exit, driving for a bit until I find a nice secluded area near some trees. I take a plastic bag from the passenger side and walk away from the road and prying eyes. Out of the bag I take out the Bonsai tree I’d taken from Ben’s apartment and the camel I had taken from Hanna’s collection. I plant the Bonsai tree in the dirt, and though it is already dead, it still has its shape and is a beautiful golden color. Under the Bonsai I put the camel. I feel like I should cry or break into song or maybe even light the whole damn thing on fire, but in the end, I really just want to get back in the van and start driving. I am on my way to meet Ann in D.C. Then I will head to Graceland to see where Elvis lived. Then further West, to see what life has in store for me, and maybe a place I can call home.
OLDER MOUSTACHES CARRY MORE WEIGHT
When Hanna and I first move to Queens from Oregon, I don’t have a job, but Hanna does and we figure that will get us by until I can find one.
My first interview is with a company looking for marketing people. It is a warm and humid day, but being November, most people would say it isn’t bad at all. However, there are two things about me that must be taken into account. I get hot in the slightest of temperature changes. Any humidity is annoying to me. I can take freezing cold with a smile, I can take dry heat, but humidity is disgusting because all you do is sweat before you have a chance to do anything worth sweating for. The second thing about me worth mentioning is that I sweat when I’m nervous, so as you can imagine, interviewing in humidity is a sight to behold.
My interview is on a Wednesday at one in the afternoon. I leave the house early and arrive in the city with plenty of time. The place I’m headed is located near the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The walk to the subway is hot, the subway platform is hot and the walk here is hot. I’m nervous and it’s humid. I arrive at the building with roughly an hour to waste. I’m wearing a nice coat and tie and I’m soaked with sweat.
There’s a hotel across the street that I make a beeline for. I go to the bathroom in the lobby. I splash water on my face and try to clean myself up, but it’s really of no use, I still look like I’m in the middle of a minor stroke. I head to the lobby and sit down, hoping the air conditioning will calm me down, cool me off and somehow fix my disheveled hair. After about twenty minutes the concierge asks me if I am a patron of the hotel and I tell him that I have an interview across the street and I came in here because I’m trying to calm down and cool off. He smiles a pleasant smile and asks me to please wait somewhere else. I guess I can’t blame him, he is probably afraid I will have the remainder of my heart attack in his lobby and then he’d have to go find the difibulator that’s been missing since their Christmas party last year.
I go outside and wander a bit. I’m nervous. This is the first interview I’ve had in a really long time. I meander for another ten minutes and the water works begin. I’m sweating profusely, I can’t breathe, I’m feeling claustrophobic and clammy and I can tell I probably have an ashen sheen to my face. I go into the library to cool down.
The main hall of the library is sadly no cooler than it is outside. It’s too big for the air to move around. I go to the reference library. It’s better, but not really. I feel like I have to pass out, lie down, throw up and do a bunch of other attractive things. My hair is soaked, my t-shirt is soaked, my underwear is soaked and I think even my socks are soaked. I’m having a panic attack. I find a nice wooden bench off to the side and lie down. The wood is somewhat cooling and I’m feeling better.
I lay here for a bit and then longer still. I know my interview is probably near, here or passed, but I don’t care. I’m not moving from this bench or from this room. I lie here for almost four hours. My tie probably saves me from getting tossed out as a homeless person, or no one wants to mess with the stroke victim. Either way I’m left alone.
A few hours later I peel myself off the bench and head home to take a shower. Still wet, I sit on the bed in front of the window air conditioner and let the cool air dry me to a chill. I don’t like the city today. I wonder what summer is going to be like. It’s fun telling Hanna that the interview went ok if they are looking for somewhat who has panic attacks, sweats profusely and doesn’t show up to things. She says those things probably aren’t on their list of top ten things they are looking for in a new employee.
The next week I have an interview at the Trump building at the southwest corner of Central Park. I’ve applied at a ton of places for the job of concierge. I figure I’m good with people and I can make things happen when I need to, so it’s a perfect job. You need your shoes shined at four in the morning. No problem. You need me to get your shirt dry-cleaned and grab a quart of ice-cream on the way back? It would be my pleasure. You need me to remove the dead hooker from your room. No worries, it happens all the time. I’d be a great concierge.
It’s not as humid and I’m not as nervous, so I actually show up this time and my interview goes well. The woman is from my home state and she tells me I’m a shoe-in. The next day she offers me the job of night auditor. She says that I would be doing the accounting, the laundry and whatever else needed to be done before the next morning. I would be working from six at night until two the next morning. I tell her that doesn’t sound fun at all, but she says that after a couple of years I would be promoted to concierge and then I would get to work the front desk at the place where all the big stars, like Bruce Willis, live. (She actually said, like Bruce Willis).
I don’t want to do it. Of course, I’m a man without a job and everyone knows that leads to:
A: Depression
B. Impotence
C. Feelings of Inadequacy
D. Slow Realization that not working is Actually Fun
I tell Hanna about the job and try to make it sound like a wonderful opportunity. I’d be doing laundry and mathematics for two years, in the middle of the night, and eventually I’ll get to grab ice-cream and dispose of dead hookers for stars like Bruce Willis. Luckily for me she says, “But if you’re working those hours we won’t get to enjoy our first holidays in the city together.”
So in the effort to remain an awesome, romantic, holiday-loving boyfriend, I tell her I’ll decline the offer and continue my search, (sorry Mr. Willis).
My next interview is at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, a hotel of luxury accommodations (their words) on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. The interview is not much of an interview as she asks me what I did at Saks Fifth Avenue and pretty much says if you were good enough for them you’ll be good enough for me. She offers me the concierge job then and there. She tells me that I will have to remember the names of all their regulars so I can greet them when they come in. I say of course, not mentioning that I really don’t have much of a memory as I have already forgotten her name, the name of the hotel, and - who are we kidding - probably my own. She also tells me that I will have to shave off my facial hair.
Let’s discuss my facial hair. I grew a goatee about three years ago, long after goatees were considered hip, assuming I have a jump start the next time they head around in the old facial-hair-trend-a-thon. I wasn’t crazy about it at first and complained to Hanna it made me look a little bit like a molester of sorts, but she said it was fine, it would grow in and that it made me look more, well, manly. I kept it. God knows I could use more manly things in my life. After pushing and prodding Hanna for more information, I found that it actually made me look older, which, being eight years her junior was great for her. So I kept it, groomed it, named it “Maxwell the Goatee” and got used to it. I shaved it off once and I looked amazingly what my twin sister the lesbian would look like, if I had a twin sister who was a lesbian. So I grew it back and it has been a dues paying member of my face ever since.
So I will have to shave it off? Why? She proceeds to tell me that all of their staff must be clean-cut and presentable at all times.
“But,” I retort, “the elevator guy that brought me up here has a moustache.” A HUGE moustache, one of those old fashioned bar saloon handle-bar moustaches from old Disney westerns. If he had a quarter slot in his neck I could have plunked in a coin, grabbed onto that moustache and ridden him up here.
“Well,” she says, “he’s been with us a really long time so he gets to keep his.”
I point out that the patrons don’t know that, and we can just pretend like I’ve been here a long time too and I can keep mine. She says that probably isn’t going to happen. I guess older moustaches carry more weight in some circumstances.
She then moves on to my pay. The pay is decent, but not being a member of the union they will take out a large percentage my first year and then I will pay regular dues after that. I offer to join the union then and there so they won’t take out the large chunk, mainly due to the fact that I like the money I work for to actually come to me. She says that probably isn’t going to happen either.
I tell her I can’t give away that much of my check for a whole year and feel good about it, and I really don’t want to kill Maxwell the Goatee a second time, and thank you for your time. On the way down I tell the elevator man he has a very nice moustache, he tips his hat and winks at me. It really is a nice moustache. I turn down four jobs in two weeks, so things are looking good. At this rate I will find something awesome in no time.
Then they stop calling.
For four months I don’t receive a single call for an interview. Sometimes I wander around the city, sometimes just around my neighborhood in Queens. Mostly I just sit at home and wonder how every place in the city found someone to take care of all those quarts of ice-cream and the dead call girls.
Then, one day, I get a call from a high-end furniture store. They see that I have done customer service for Saks Fifth Avenue and figure I am their guy. My first week at work and I get my self-esteem back, avoid any impotence issues, get happier and start living the life of a person with a job in Manhattan. I stuff myself into overcrowded subway cars, hail taxis in the rain and rush around the city like my underwear is on fire, just like the locals. I’m a real New York working stiff! It’s great!
THAT DAY IN SEPTEMBER
Dad: Hello?
Me: It’s me.
Dad: Are you ok? We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours.
Me: I’m ok.
Dad: Did you get out of the city yet?
Me: Not yet, soon.
Dad: Are you ok?
Me: (pause) yeah, I’m ok.
Dad: What did you see?
Me: (pause) all of it.
(Silence)
Dad: Be careful, ok?
Me: I will. Tell everyone I’m ok, I’ll call you when I can.
Dad: Ok, bye.
Me: Bye.
I am working near downtown and Hanna is near Rockefeller Center. After the second building falls I call Hanna and tell her I’m coming to get her. There is no traffic in the streets so I walk up the middle of Fifth Avenue. I find Hanna and we follow the crowd towards the Queensboro Bridge for the long trek back to Astoria. The subways aren’t running and all the bridges and roads are closed to cars, so it’s hundreds of thousands of people walking on the upper and lower decks of the bridge. The city smolders behinds us.
Across the bridge are volunteers with water donated from all the stores and delis in the area. First aid is provided. Water is dispensed and they offer us places to sit. Humanity right now is too much for me. So far I’ve been able to remain calm, but now I’m starting to cry. I cry as I walk past the police lining the edge of the bridge. I cry as I walk past the volunteers handing out water and as I shuffle around those walkers who suddenly stop, like twisted statues, to look back at the plumes of smoke rising from downtown.
It takes us three hours to get home. There are thousands of us walking. People from Astoria, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Corona, these are our neighbors. We’re following the subway tracks overhead; it’s like a slow, labored marathon. No one is talking, some are crying. Occasionally someone will pass us covered completely in white dust and dry blood. They saw things the rest of us can only imagine. It is silent except for the shuffling of feet.
Our apartment is across the street from a firehouse. The doors are up and the trucks are gone. One man stands outside with a radio to his ear. At his feet lay the firehouse mascot. He is a mutt named Soot.
We watch the news and are amazed at what the world has been watching all day. The entire lower half of Manhattan looks like it is ablaze and collapsing, the grounding of all the flights, the frantic cell phone calls from the towers being played on the TV and radio, what is happening at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania and the obnoxious replaying of the events over and over. We have been lost in our own bit of tragedy today and the only thing we had on our minds was getting out of the city alive. We have a ton of messages on our voicemail when we get home, all of our friends and families telling us to call them to let them know we’re alright. Hanna’s mom calls from her home in the Canary Islands and on our voicemail she pleads, “Please get away from there. The city is on fire.”
SCARS, HOLES AND FUNNY POSES
After Hanna and I move into our apartment in Portland I become restless.
Down the street from us is a Buddhist Monastery. The first time I go in, I tiptoe to the back of the room and listen to the monks chanting. The second time they are bonging the big metal drum and ringing a bell. It is serene. I go almost every day, to sit quietly and breathe slowly. One day the head monk approaches me.
“What are you looking for here?” He is wearing the reddish robes and sandals.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking around. ”I like it here, its nice.”
He nods and motions me to follow him. We head to a larger room off to the side. Across the room is a younger monk. The older monk tells me to wait as he walks ahead toward the younger monk. They talk for a bit, the older man motioning toward me all the while. Eventually the younger monk bows to him and walks over to me.
“I am Lou-ging.” He bows.
“I am Vince.” I bow back.
“The head monk asks that I see if you would like me to help you practice meditation.”
“Um, I guess so.”
He smiles at me and nods. “Good.”
“Can I ask why he wants you to help me?”
“Well,” he looks back at where the older monk was standing but has now left. “He says it’s because of the way you were meditating.” He puts his two hands in front of his chest, palms together, fingers pointing out.
“Is that wrong?”
“Not exactly,” he shrugs a bit, “But it’s actually the way that the high monks pray, who have been doing it for a lifetime.”
It’s the way I’ve always done it just because it’s the most comfortable for me.
“But between you and me,” he leans in and lowers his voice. “He’s actually interested in you because you have big earlobes.”
I touch my earlobes and raise my eyebrows.
“Those are very good traits in Buddhism,” he continues. “You also have long eyes and a big belly.” He pokes my stomach.
“Is that good?”
“Yes.” He nods. “They are all signs of spiritual strength and joy.”
He grabs my arm and leads me over to a bench and we sit.
“When we search for enlightened beings, like the Dalai Lama, we look for physical signs as well.”
He points to my earlobes. “You see statues of Buddha with the long earlobes, that’s a sign of happiness and joy…so is the belly.”
“Does that mean I’m a Buddha?”
He laughs. “No, but it means you are enlightened. There are other signs as well. The third eye, the marks on the leg, webbed fingers.”
I push my hair aside and point to the top of my forehead. “I’ve got a small hole in my head here.”
It’s a tiny hole, the size of a pinhole, nothing more than where a large pimple once resided most likely.
“And I burned my leg on a heater a few weeks ago.” I show him the back of my calf and the weird honeycomb scar the floor heater left when I backed into it.
“But,” I shrug, “I don’t have any webbed fingers to show you.”
He looks at my head, then my leg and shakes his head and smiles. “Oh, he will be very happy to know all these things.” He pats my knee. “He will be very happy.”
WHADAYOULOOKINGAT?
Most (if not all) of society’s pre-conceived notions about New York and New Yorkers are true or pretty true, be it the funny ones, the racist ones or the annoying ones. Though a tenderhearted fellow, I am a rather large person and I apparently have a ‘don’t fuck with me’ look on my face, which I suppose makes life a little easier for me in some of the seedier neighborhoods. I never have a problem in the city and never feel like I am in any danger. If there is a shortcut down an alley to get somewhere I will take it, always figuring the other person probably thinks I’m someone to be careful around to be hanging out in alleys so comfortably.
The subways of New York are wonderful places. Sure, in the summer time they offer not only a cavern that is even more humid than what is up top, but they also tender a disgusting air full of exhaust, body odor, garbage rotting in pools of rusty water and the smells of thousands of rats and probably a couple of alligator carcasses…but aside from that, they’re great.
As the train pulls into the station it pushes a wall of putrid air in front of it, a blast of everything that has been decaying in the tunnels somewhere between the last train and the Nixon administration. Then there’s the blast of freezing cold air when the doors to the cars open and vomit out their passengers. If you’re lucky to have an iPod, you put on your favorite songs while watching the people around you; it’s like being in your own personal music video if you chose your music video to be overcrowded and smelly.
The other fun thing about subways is that everyone is odd. The business man talking to himself, the blind woman trying to get a breath mint out of her purse, the Hasidic Jew in his well worn hat and Peyes (side locks) and the Czech tourist in their sandals and socks slowly figuring out that they aren’t on the right train and they are going nowhere near the Met but are instead headed for Coney Island. It’s all weird, fun, annoying and wonderful.
Inside the subway stinks too, but not horribly, more like when something in your fridge is bad but not too bad since it’s being kept cold. All day it fills with the smell of food, body odor, perfume, urine and a million other smells. If someone dies riding the subway I’m sure no one would notice for hours or even days, the refrigerated cars will keep the body fresh for a good while.
The only thing more amusing than the subway is the tourists wandering around above ground. I like walking up Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center, the ice rink and all around St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There are hundreds of tourists milling about, asking directions or advice. It isn’t that I love giving directions, but I enjoy the chance to give them a tidbit about a nice place to eat that only locals know about or send them to the Carlyle Hotel to see a bar covered with the original artwork of Bemelmans. I like knowing they’ll return to their farms/small-towns/cornfields and tell their family/neighbors/livestock that they met a really nice New Yorker and he showed them the best place to eat a Gyro, and maybe they were wrong about the people in New York.
However, one day, tourists begin to annoy me with all their questions and gawking, with always stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to look up with their mouths open and those damn socks with sandals and their wallets and cameras sitting out in plain view for the world to steal. Now I avoid the touristy places all together.
Then, I slowly start to get annoyed with the locals as well. When I walk into a deli and the person in front of me doesn’t know what he wants immediately, what the hell? I get pissed when I’m hailing a taxi and someone stops fifteen feet in front of me and starts hailing as well. If you’re at a crosswalk and no cars are coming, damn the light, cross already, and what the hell is so hard about having your subway card out before you get to the turnstile? It’s a slow process of growing annoyance, it takes about a year of gestation, but then one day I know I have become a real New Yorker when I am window shopping in Chelsea and a few feet away a man is staring at me. I casually turn to face him, crinkle my brow just a bit and say, Whadayoulookingat?
HANNA
Hanna and I meet in Portland when we are both working for the same idiots. It is a food distributor who makes cheaper versions of popular food. The job is fun, we have food tastings most days of the week and there isn’t much to do but look busy and hope today we aren’t taste testing something nasty like cottage cheese or some diet Jell-O knockoff.
Hanna and I get in the habit of going to lunch together because we are the only two people here who are too young to not remember the signing of the Articles of Confederation, so we have something in common. One day, returning from lunch, we notice some strange whispering in the office. A bit later Hanna is called into the Human Resources Directors office. She comes out a few minutes later. She’s crying.
She pulls me aside to tell me that they decided we are having a lunchtime office affair and they are threatening termination. She says she cried because she knows the HR director is a sucker for women who cry. We had talked about this happening so it’s not like we didn’t know this day was coming.
I am called in next. The HR Director is a little man, both in stature and nobility. He’s retired Air Force, who likes to swagger a lot and make speeches that are most often politically-incorrect and boring. When I’d first got this job I had an earring in my left ear. He called me into his office and said, “I would prefer if you took out the earring, we don’t want people thinking you’re a fa…, um, we don’t want them getting the wrong idea.”
“What idea would that be?” I replied, a slight smile playing across my lips.
He stumbled a bit, “Well, it’s just not professional.”
So I took the earring out and made a mental note that he was homophobic as well.
So here I am, in his office, listening to him tell me that office relationships are prohibited and a cause for termination.
“Who’s having a relationship?”
“You and Hanna.”
“We are?” I had practiced my look of shock and had it down pat. “What makes you think we’re having a relationship?”
“Well,” he clears his throat. “You two go to lunch every day and some people are thinking there may be something going on.”
“Wow!” I feign surprise. “So the fact that Hanna and I are friends and her Grandma just died and she needs someone to talk to means nothing? Or the fact that she’s been here for years and is a wonderful employee doesn’t matter to you?” I pause for effect. “The worst part is that instead of stopping rumors like this you fan the flames by calling us in here in front of everyone. You’re going to lose me and probably her too.”
“What do you mean lose you and her too?”
“Hanna shouldn’t have to be questioned about things like this because of me. I’m just a temp, I can get another job easy enough. The sad part is that you didn’t even ask us and assumed the rumors were true, and knowing Hanna, she’s probably too embarrassed to stay.”
I’ve apparently caught him off guard. “Do you think she’ll quit?”
Why the hell was he asking me? “She probably will, wouldn’t you?”
He thinks about it for a bit and then tells me to go back to my desk, we’ll discuss this later. An hour later Hanna is called into his office, he makes a speech about how rumors in the office will not be tolerated, apologizes to her, gives his sympathies on her grandmothers’ death and tells her what a wonderful employee she is. The next morning my supervisor tells me that I am showing great promise and I’m being given a raise.
That evening Hanna and I go out to dinner. We laugh over gourmet cheeseburgers and by the end of the evening we’re kissing outside of her apartment. Apparently the accusation of an office romance creates an office romance after all. I quit a week later and a month after that Hanna and I move in together.
NEVER BE THE SAME
A few days after the twin towers fall, and while the rescue workers are still shifting through the rubble, the entire country is holding a candle vigil for the victims. Hanna and I decide to go out to eat since we have been locked away in the apartment for days.
As we exit our building we see a huge display of candles and flowers outside the door of the fire department across the street. Our neighbors have been bringing them food and flowers and just stopping by to say hello since it happened. Every time the bell sounds for them to go on another call it causes Hanna and me to cringe a little. I’m sure we’re not the only ones.
Our street is almost completely dark as our neighbors turn down their lights and turn off their television sets. Everyone sits outside in the cool breeze, candles displayed in their windows, on their front steps or around their lawn chairs as they talk in hushed voices to their neighbors and friends. Some kids are playing on the sidewalk and you can hear the occasional radio or television, but there is a subdued quality to it all. We walk down the street to a new Italian eatery that has just opened. When we reach the end of our street, we look back and see hundreds of flickering candles in the darkness. Hanna starts to cry.
The restaurant is packed and you can tell that everyone has come here for the same reason. We’re all tired of watching the news, being scared and not knowing what is going to happen next. The noise of the patrons and the clinking in the kitchen and the occasional outburst of laughter are the most beautiful sounds in the world right now. We immerse ourselves in the beauty of people enjoying life once again. We enjoy a wonderful meal in this warm ambience for as long as possible, but unfortunately, the jocularity comes to a screeching halt when one of the waiters drops a huge platter of plates. The noise is sudden, immense and deafening. The entire place goes silent immediately. The other waiters rush over to help and the maitre de’ loudly apologizes to everyone and tells us to please enjoy our meals and thank you for coming. That’s not it though, and he knows it, everyone in the restaurant knows it.
We have all been in a state of fear and heightened alert for days and now, we have finally let our guard down and are trying to get back to a place of normalcy (even if it is slightly forced), but when that happens we feel ourselves go back to that place of fear. The noise level and conversations never return to what they were before the loud crash and the mood of the evening immediately becomes quiet and restrained. We notice a few tables begin to leave. I ask Hanna if she wants to order dessert and she thinks about it for a moment, looks around the now half-empty dining room, and says, “I think I’d rather go home.”
The maitre de’ is very cordial as we leave and we thank him for a wonderful evening, but he knows what happened here tonight as well as anyone. We have all been forced to admit to ourselves that this is not something that is going to go away easily, and we have a lot to work through and I think we all feel that maybe, just maybe, nothing will ever be the same again.
As we walk home the neighborhood is just like any other night. The sounds of our neighbors televisions can be heard through their open windows. The neighborhood kids are still out on the sidewalk and we wave to the elderly Italian lady, who sits next to her statue of the Virgin Mary, drinking iced tea.
The candles have all been extinguished.
STARS, STARS EVERYWHERE STARS
Today I saw Art Buchwald, twice. He was shuffling along Fifth Avenue, chewing a cigar and wearing a funny hat. I also saw Matthew Modine posing for a picture in front of the Flat Iron building. Last week I ran into Tom Selleck after seeing him the day before in his Broadway play, A Thousand Clowns. Even though I disagree with his Man-Gun-Love beliefs, he’s probably one of the best actors in the world, and that was by far the best play I’ve ever seen.
MANHATTAN BUTT CHEEKS
Hanna and I move to Manhattan a few days after 9/11. We were originally moving from our apartment in Queens on September 12th, but after what happened the day before…you understand why it didn’t work out. I ask the moving company if there may be a problem getting into the city with their big moving truck, since security is so tight, but he tells me that they have been going back and forth the last three days and no one has ever stopped them or inspected their trucks. That doesn’t really make me feel very safe knowing New York’s finest are still doing a half-ass job even after what has happened. I guess you can’t inspect every truck that comes into the city, but it seems like out of their fleet of six trucks, odds would have it that at least one would have been stopped over the last three days. I guess a bunch of Italians in an unmarked moving van doesn’t pose many threats to the city.
Astoria is east of Manhattan, across the river, in Queens. It is old neighborhoods filled with Italians, Greeks and a spattering of Puerto Ricans and Czechs for good measure. We originally move to Astoria because we had read an article that it was The New Chelsea, The New Hoboken and heaven forbid, The New Brooklyn. A year later we start to realize that it isn’t really the new anything. Our apartment is on a street that borders the Italians and the Greeks. They tolerate each other at best. We take pleasure in the abundance of great food and learn to put up with the early morning subway reeking of garlic on the humid summer days.
We live across the street from a Fire Department and around the corner from the subway stop. Life is interesting, and once we learn when the best time to go to the Laundromat is, when the fresh fruit arrives at the corner store and what days the nice Greek lady is on the corner with her chicken skewers covered with lime juice and salt…then things become more enjoyable.
It is a decent life, a decent apartment and a decent neighborhood. Sesame Street is filmed a few subway stops away, so really, how bad of a place can it be? Every Sunday morning our bedroom smells like cigarette smoke. Once we figure out that if our downstairs neighbor gets home late, to stuff a towel into the water heater hole in the floor to keep his chain-smoking from seeping into our bedroom, it becomes a home. Our kitchen is the size of a small bathroom, our bathroom is the size of a small closet, and our closets never really got past the idea stage.
The neighborhood never makes us feel unsafe. There’s the occasional graffiti, maybe a broken car window on summer nights when bored teens roam the streets. At one time there is a string of muggings, but after taking your money they don’t hurt you, they take your shoes, to keep you from running after them. I get in the habit of keeping five dollars in my wallet and crappy shoes on my feet, just in case.
We decide to move to the city after our landlord tells us she is raising our rent five hundred dollars when our year lease is up. Apparently she too has read the same article that says Astoria is going to be the next Chelsea and wants to jump on the bandwagon early. We are paying $1300 a month, which coming from our $800 apartment in Portland, seems like a lot…going up to $1800 is ridiculous…more than double the rent for less than half the space. For that price we can live in the city, so off we go.
Apartment hunting is amusing to say the least. We set our price at $2000 a month, being that most people we knew are paying just above or just below that. We figure we’ll get a decent place on the island, and anywhere is closer than where we are now. You can’t rent an apartment in Manhattan without going through a leasing company. A friend of ours refers us to the company she used to get her place, we’re excited to find out that the place she refers us to is full of jackasses, nice people, but still jackasses. They tell us they will ‘see what they can do’ with our ‘price range’, and then we’re sent to the most amazing apartments for consideration. We tour places that have cracks from floor to ceiling. One place had no windows and a slanted fireplace (for ambience I suppose). We found a nice building on the Upper East Side whose front door had ten locks, and after touring the neighborhood we decided that ten seemed a little sparse.
One place we seriously consider for a bit. It is an old doctor’s office in Midtown. It’s on the twentieth floor and consists of a kitchen and a huge waiting room that will be our living area. I want it because it has a small room with a window when you walk in, where the front office person would greet you. I think of how much fun it will be to sit in this little room and welcome guests to our home. I could be my own coat-check girl.
I’m a little worried about how many types of diseases and Ebola-like mold-pores are wedged into the cracks and corners of this place, having been a former medical facility, but it’s got a large balcony with a good-sized garden and who doesn’t want a garden in the city. We think about it too long and it eventually is not available any longer. Unfortunately, this causes Hanna to become so scared that we will never find a place that she decides she wants to rent the next place we find that’s even slightly decent.
Two days later we’re shown a place on Park Avenue. Doorman, elevators, lots of stone. The apartment is a giant studio covered in black marble with white swirls. One wall is a giant picture window that looks out over the city. The opposite wall is one giant mirror. The bathroom is small, the closets are small, and the kitchen is non-existent. I explain to Hanna that we don’t need a kitchen in this place; it is a single man’s dream apartment. All it needs is a disco ball, some lava lamps and naked people strewn here and there either preparing for or resting from the orgies that would inevitably take place here almost daily. For some reason she isn’t as excited about our new possible home.
We grab the next place that comes up. The apartment is nice, the building is crap and the neighborhood is awesome. We are in Murray Hill, East Side, in Midtown. We have bookstores, theatres, good food stores and a dry cleaner downstairs. The rent is much more than we are planning on spending, $2500 a month, but they are going to allow pets, redo the windows and it has an elevator. Of course, we soon find out that even though we have a combined income of over $100,000, the rental company feels that we are a risk if we aren’t making 100 times OVER the price of a year’s rent. We try to explain that if we are making a quarter of a million, we wouldn’t be moving into THIS apartment, but alas, they have their logic. Eventually we get Hanna’s mother to agree to co-sign, something about her Swiss bank account makes the rental company feel more secure.
At ten minutes after six the lights on the Chrysler Building come on. I know this because our living room windows face that direction and our fifth floor apartment is high enough for me to see over the buildings north of us. The living room is a decent size, the bedroom can only fit a bed and the bathroom was built for hobbits. The kitchen is fun because the refrigerator door and the oven door cannot be opened at the same time without smacking into each other, but since neither of us gets home in time to cook dinner, it works out. Adding to the ambience is a radiator heater, like in the movies, that makes loud knocking and hissing noises all night when the hot water flows through it.
There is no air conditioning so we buy a window unit, take it home in a taxi and stick it in our window, hoping it won’t someday fall on pedestrians below. The elevator only works occasionally and one day a Chinese delivery boy gets stuck in it and has to be taken away in an ambulance. We have roaches whenever the neighbor downstairs decides to fumigate. The guy next door has a rent controlled apartment that he only pays $300 a month for, so the super refuses to fix anything in the hopes he’ll get mad and leave someday. Our super is a proud Puerto Rican man who wears lots of rings and shiny jogging outfits and has a pretty wife who likes to wear skirts that don’t quite cover her butt cheeks when she walks.
We love living in the city.
SIDEWALK TALK
When I walk around my new neighborhood I sometimes stumble upon the work of a sidewalk theorist. No matter when I am out, day or night or the wee hours of the morning, I never once happen upon this sidewalk philosopher. Every few days there is a new message written in chalk. Due to their consistency and uncanny accuracy pertaining to my personal life, I have decided they are something supernatural and treat them as such.
The more these words of acumen relate to the events of my life, the more I start to believe they are put here for a higher purpose. Perhaps I am the only one that can see them. Maybe they are put here solely for my benefit. I am pretty much without a rudder in the city, just surviving day to day, and it is often nice to feel as though the outcomes, boredom or annoyances that seem to happen so haphazardly are somehow pre-destined as part of a bigger picture for me. The first sidewalk message I see a few days after we move to the city. It’s been a week since the towers fell:
NOTHING WILL EVER
BE THE SAME AGAIN
HAPPY DISHWASHERS
I’m excited to be getting meditation instructions from a real life monk in the middle of Portland of all places. I show up to the monastery the next day ready for some action. I find him sweeping the main hall.
“Where do we begin?”
He smiles at me and keeps sweeping. “I want you to go home and wash your dishes.”
“What?”
He continues sweeping. ‘Go home and wash your dishes. If you don’t have any dirty dishes, take some down from the cupboard and rewash them.”
Is he kidding? “Really, dishes?”
“Yes.” He turns his back to me, sweeping all the while. “Come back tomorrow.”
So I head home, wash my dishes and then return the next day. This time I find him straightening out the shoes near the temple doorway.
“I washed my dishes.”
“Good.” He faces me. “Now I want you to go home and wash your dishes again.”
I just look at him, a smile playing across my face. Is this little monk screwing with me?
“But,” he adds. “This time, when you wash them, I want you to smile.”
“You want me to smile?”
“Yes,” he points to his mouth. “But only a half smile, like this.” He smirks, a lazy grin.
I try to imitate what his mouth is doing. “Smile and wash my dishes.”
“Yes.”
“Ok.” I turn to leave.
He shouts behind me. “See you tomorrow.”
This continues for almost two months. Smile and wash your dishes. Smile and wash your dishes. I smile and wash my dishes.
FAT WEENIES
When Hanna and I move to midtown Manhattan we are able to get our two dogs back because this building allows pets. They have been staying with my parents in Arizona for the past year. Mom and Dad crate the little buggers and drop them off at the airport to be shipped to us. We are a little leery about having dogs fly in the belly of an aircraft. We figure if they don’t freeze to death or accidentally get routed to Jamaica, we got off lucky.
When they arrive, Hanna’s friend drives her to the airport to pick them up. The dogs are so excited to see her they take turns whining and peeing all the way home. When we left them off with my parents they were fairly fit, wire-haired dachshunds. What we get back are semi-enormous, wire-haired dachshunds the size of semi-enormous wire-haired duffle bags with legs.
Wolfgang isn’t too bad. He is always fairly active and is only a few pounds over his ideal weight. Gretchen, on the other hand, looks like she has eaten her twin and has not completely digested her yet. Her little legs barely touch the ground, and after walking half a city block, she falls on her side, panting, wondering why she is being tortured this way.
When we ask my parents how he had gotten so fat they are stunned.
“Fat? But they ran around the house every day!”
Apparently Wolfgang had been doing the running, and they look enough alike that my parents must have thought both dogs were doing the circuit around the house. I can only assume Gretchen ran halfway around the house, stopped, ate a pound of bacon she had stashed somewhere and watched as her idiot brother made circles so fast that everyone cheered him on, thinking he was both dogs, chasing each other.
We take her to the vet and the first words out of his mouth are actually, “Oh Dear!”
He puts her on a pretty intensive diet, which she hates. She cries, whines and barks for more food, pretty much doing everything she can to let us know how unhappy she is, which includes peeing in front of us on especially frustrating days. Of course, due to her weight, most of her underside gets wet as she really doesn’t have much clearance between the floor and her enormous belly. It is a lovely few weeks.
I usually walk the dogs down Thirty-Third Street toward the East River. Gretchen likes to walk directly under my feet, literally, hoping I will trip and hit my head, thus allowing her to escape and rampage the city, eating other dogs, garbage and small children. Wolfgang is more adventurous. He enjoys grabbing anything he can off the street and eating it before I can stop him. His favorites are discarded bones, Big Mac wrappers and the poop of other dogs. With Wolfgang it is more out of stupidity than any real effort to disobey the rules of proper pooch etiquette, so I can only scold him half-heartedly, as you would a mentally-slow sibling.
We live on the fifth floor of a five-story building, but we aren’t worried since we have an elevator. Unfortunately, the elevator works fine the first month and then slowly starts to act up. At first it is only quirky things, like getting stuck between floors, the doors not opening or the occasional stopping just six inches short of or past your floor, meaning we sometimes have to jump down or climb up to get out. We try to mention it to our super when we see him, to which he will usually wave his hand, nod his head or say things like, “At least you have an elevator.”
When the Chinese delivery boy gets stuck in the elevator for a few hours in the middle of summer, passes out from heat exhaustion and is eventually rescued and ambulanced away, they shut it down for repairs. Two weeks later the elevator is still shut off which is annoying for us because we have Dachshunds, who because of their long backs, cannot be walking up flights of stairs much less five stories’ worth. The other great thing is that they are standard wire-haired dachshunds, which means they are around 25 pounds each and since Gretchen is so fat, she’s more like 35 pounds. So we carry them down the stairs and back up, every morning and evening. They hate it and we hate it.