**

I’ve been reading a lot recently about our new “post-racial” world, where we have “transcended race,” where a black man is running for president and white people are actually voting for him. I’m wondering, if we have transcended race so successfully, why are we reading so much about it’s impact on the presidential contest? The black man in question, who also happens to be white, hasn’t played the race card.

Judging from my own experience, we have not transcended race, not by a long shot. I am white, my five year old daughter Brookti is black. It’s frowned upon to live vicariously through your child, and rightly so, but when it comes to their skin-color, it’s impossible not to. Pre-Brookti, I felt fairly anonymous walking down the street in New York City. Walking together, I often feel like the proverbial deer in the headlights. People stare at us (or glare), essentially making non-verbal assumptions–or they make verbal assumptions (or more likely, inappropriate comments).

When I first adopted Brookti, being new at the game, I would often lose my temper. Perhaps my outrage was due to the loss of an unconscious Caucasian sense of entitlement, in this case, the right to walk down the street obliviously. Back then I thought, When I get more accustomed to this, I will learn to turn the other cheek. Nearly four years later, the amount of daily scrutiny we receive still causes me to lose it on occasion.

Like Senator Obama, my daughter is not African-American, but African and American. Contrary to popular opinion, unlike Senator Obama, she is not ‘mixed race’(at least not any more ‘mixed race’ than anyone else in the modern DNA-obsessed world). You may be thinking: How would I be aware of popular opinion? I am aware because I am frequently asked “Is she mixed?” by strangers. Sometimes I am not even asked. Instead I am told.

I was told in no uncertain terms about six months ago when we were walking to pre-school. Brookti, who has loved wigs since her first Halloween, was sporting a blond ponytail wig. Suddenly there is a loud furious voice from behind us: “That child should not be wearing a blond wig! She is half-black and you are denying her blackness!”

Instantly blind with disproportionate rage, I retort (illogically): “How do you know she’s half-black?”

The woman repeats, “She is half-black, you are denying her heritage!”

This ludicrous back and forth continues (with intermittent cursing from me, I confess), showing no sign of abating, until I say, “Get away from us!” at which the woman retorts: “What are you going to do about it?”

Visions of former junior high battles dancing in my head, I’m about to regress to an oldie but goodie, “Meet you after school–reserve your spot in the graveyard!” but I refrain. Instead, I pick up Brookti who is absolutely terrified, screaming bloody murder, and turn my back to shield her. Somehow we reach the end of the block and, for whatever reason, the woman takes off. I’m practically in tears myself, holding a sobbing Brookti, when another woman who has witnessed the scene, comes over to console us, assuring us how nasty and unfair the woman has been.

For the “post-racial” record, both women are African American or African and American or, for all I know, they’re mixed. I didn’t ask nor do I care.

Obviously, my own childish behavior, sinking to this low level na-na-na-na-na exchange, instead of just ignoring the woman, cannot be excused. I can only offer these irrational reasons. Number one, the goddamn blond wig had been a gift from a well meaning white friend living in the aforementioned “post-racial,” dare I say, ‘fairy tale’ world, which leads me to number two. Don’t think I hadn’t anticipated this kind of incident occurring, leading to a long bitter battle with Brookti that very morning pleading with her not to wear the wig, a battle wielded against my better moral judgment because why shouldn’t she wear a yellow wig (it could as easily have been pink, purple or red) since she, at five, has no idea of the political implications of blond wigs and even if she were fifteen, why couldn’t she wear a blond wig? Furthermore, the word ’blond’ had not entered her vocabulary since she’d experienced a long speech delay having arrived in the U.S. at the age of two. Number three, after three years, I was so sick of hearing about the condition of Brookti’s hair which was only serving to create hair ‘issues’ when there were none (and I speak–again–from experience as a dark frizzy haired Jew). And most importantly, number four, how dare this woman attack me when she has no idea who I am or who Brookti is or what our relationship is and more egregiously, how dare she terrorize an innocent child?

Six months later Brookti still talks about the “mean woman,” still asks me “why she was so mean” and is still hesitant about walking on that particular block. And I’m still telling the story to anyone who will listen. Most people do not want to listen. They are quick to change the subject, which leads me to the conclusion that it’s not really ‘cool’ to talk about everyday racism here in New York City–not like it’s cool to go to a benefit for Darfur or discourse on AIDS in Africa.

Which leads me to another conclusion: if we’re so comfortable in our new “post-racial” world, why are we still so uncomfortable talking about today’s racially divided America? Action may speak louder than words, but action has to start somewhere. If we can’t even talk honestly about race, if we pretend racism doesn’t exist, how are we going to take action?

Betsy Berne is the author of the novel Bad Timing (2001) and has written for Vogue, The New Yorker
, and The New York Times Magazine.

**

Episode #2:

I expected freaky racial—and class—‘episodes’, which are inevitably intertwined, when Brookti touched down. I knew the most common ones to expect and assumed I’d easily brush them off. What I didn’t expect: how intricate the race/class hiearchys are (I did expect the level of hostility on both sides), how fiercely protective I would be of Brookti (I knew I would be fierce, but not that fierce) or how insanely defensive, or how ridiculously paranoid. Or probably I know all of the above, but when these ‘episodes’ actually happen to you it’s a different feeling altogether.

The first indications of ‘it’s a comically cruel world’ out there in upper middle class parentland became quickly apparent in gymnastics class. As everyone knows, NY parents schedule 2 year old children for an inordinate amount of activities, which I, in pre-parent days scoffed at, thinking, can’t they just let the children entertain themselves? Three weeks after ‘entertaining’ Brookti, primarily at the park, I was entertaining thoughts of homicide (against who I was undecided) , not because I didn’t enjoy Brookti’s company or the company of the lovely man who ran the park, Brookti’s first and best friend, or his 10 year old son, Brookti’s first crush, but because I did not enjoy the company of the (mostly but not all) prissy humourless judgemental parents who at the first sign of a toddler scuffle or theft will dive in and cause fullscale warfare. The more sensible babysitters of course do no such thing; they sit back and wait until necessary, ie when fisticuffs occur. And, as intimated earlier, Brookti initiated many a scuffle and commited many a theft, that is, after her early mute period wore off.

Instead of committing homicide (against who I had finally decided: the next smarmy parent who lectured a wailing two year old on ‘sharing’, specifically my two year old) I enrolled Brookti in a ‘gymnastics’ class called bouncing babies or trouncing toddlers or something like that. I could hardly wait, and arrived at our first class all go-team-go, attempting to buddy-buddy up with my fellow students (ie parents/‘caretakers’ who are mandatory participants in all scheduled toddler activities, shows you how high the desperation factor is), hauling Brookti, who was still tottering but tottering valiantly, along with me. No luck with the buddying-up tactics, which included conspiratorial giggles, eye rolls and generally making an utter fool out of myself— nor with trying to force Brookti’s peers to buddy up with her, which involved more foolishness.

Among the races represented were two asian parent/daughter teams, a black babysitter with one of the dime-a-dozen little blond boys and a ‘caretaker’? parent? /little boy team, both of indeterminate race. The teacher was a determinedly bright and cheerful gal with an ominous steely look in her eye—whose welcome to Brookti was not nearly as effusive as it should have been. However, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt—for Brookti’s sake.

Oh yes, Brookti. Who had arrived pissed off that I’d rushed her out of the house too quickly after her nap, and who refused to take off her shoes as instructed (she has had a severe shoe attachment from day one, not exactly discouraged by her psycho mother). That was a big no-no. I had to wrench them off her feet which only made her more pissed off as we bounded onto the mats (a wailing Brookti, needless to say, was nowhere near bounding). I looked to my fellow mothers/caretakers for sympathy but they remained stonyfaced, particularly the older black babysitter clutching her precious charge closely to her breast like he was a Kennedy, glaring at Brookti as though she was going to infect Blondie.

Our next no no occurred as the various teams gathered in a circle to do our ‘stretching.’ (Show me a toddler who needs to stretch and I’ll show you someone over forty without backpain). Since I was wearing a sundress in the 100 degree heat, I couldn’t stretch without the possibility of being arrested for public indecency (by the parental police force not the other one, again my fellow comrades were not having any sympathy) and Brookti couldn’t begin to follow the rapid movements. For that matter, barely any one could follow since the teacher was moving as rapidly as Amtrak on a good day. Again I looked around eagerly for some conspiratorial smirks…or something. The black babysitter avoided my goofy grin assiduously, cheering on Blondie, who, wouldn’t you know it, was the only child able to follow the teacher (and as quickly became clear, the teacher’s pet). The asians were too busy trying to pry their children’s recalcitrant limbs apart. The indeterminate caretaker or parent was too busy running after her child who wanted no part of the circle, which to me seemed promising, as far as potential friendship for either Brookti or me, since Brookti was trying her best to get the hell out of there too.

It was downhill from there. When the teacher asked me if I was Brookti’s mother during the third class, I wanted to reply who the fuck else do you think would go through this charade? (another thought running through my mind was: I’m paying $35 a class for this benign neglect/abuse?) Neither did it help that Brookti started each class so pissed that she had to take her shoes off that trying to tumble or walk on a balance beam at 90 miles per hour when when she was bemoaning her forsaken red shoes was the last thing on her mind. On the brighter side I had learned my lesson and begun dressing like a good mommy should. I was also ready for an oxygen tank from trying to tail Brookti to each station, simultaneously trying to force her through. However I was still giving it my all, ie no one else crawled through the goddamn tube in order to get her balking child through.

As for friendship, still no acknowledgement from the Asians, who were moving grimly yet successfully from station to station. And certainly none from the black babysitter who had eyes only for her beloved—and who I had targeted for my first murder victim the day she would not help Brookti onto some idiotic apparatus, refusing to give even an encouraging smile, even when Brookti collapsed and fell. (I couldn’t get there fast enough probably because I was too busy seething at the teacher who I now actively despised for not giving Brookti extra help, muttering $35. under my breath like whatever the opposite of a mantra is). Meanwhile Blondie/Teachers Pet was getting wet kisses and hugs from not only his keeper, but the the aforementioned despicable teacher who I now referred to as Little Miss Hitler to Brookti and myself.( I think Amowei and I had one of our first ‘bonding’ moments after I relayed the black babysitter story to her; she was as defensive as me, muttering ‘she’s just old school.’ ) However, we’d made great strides with the indeterminate pair since the little boy was almost as bored and uncooperative as Brookti and the parent/caretaker was despairing/giggling along with me.

By the fourth class everyone (except Brookti) even the indeterminate little boy, were moving from station to station at a relatively reasonable clip. It also seemed to me the indeterminate pair were trying to disassociate themselves from us…ok, maybe I was being a little oversensitive. And maybe I was asking too much but couldn’t Little Miss Hitler give Brookti a little extra attention? Just a little? By the fifth class Brookti refused to venture on to the mats entirely—after we’d successfully engaged in the usual battle to wrench her shoes off, to put the icing on the cake, in turn, leading to another battle 45 excrutiating minutes later when she refused to put them back on. Which to my mind was two extra very unnecessary battles I was paying for, mind you, in an average battle-strewn day.

The next class, I said fuck the $35 and we didn’t attend. And when we arrived (guiltily) for the next class there was a new group of teams in place, the semester was over, and we were sent home.

Brookti came from Ethiopia 8 months ago when she was around two. Initially I’d tried to adopt domestically, but it turns out that adopting in the U.S. as a single mother, aside from being a 21st century version of some kind of slave trade, (i.e. black/interracial children are ‘a third of the price’ of Hispanic children), and assuming you’re not a celebrity or loaded, is a slow and ludicrous nightmare.

So when I came across an article about adoption programs in Ethiopia, I thought, why not. Not because I knew much about Ethiopia or Africa, although I had taken my only liberal arts class while at art school on the history of Africa (partly because a friend of my brother’s was the teacher) and had more recently read a lot about the genocide in Rwanda. And I had Africa-obsessed friends who hung out in enclaves of wealthy white American and European quasi-hippies, who maybe went on a couple of romantic safaris, and who, quite frankly, seemed disturbed mostly by the extinction of the poor animals by the nasty hunters, conveniently ignoring the extinction of the poor people by the nasty wars and the nasty disease. I cringed when they raved about how beautiful the ‘people’ were in the same breath as how beautiful the countryside was.

It wasn’t the idea of ‘exotic’ Ethiopia and its exotic people that caught my attention. It was common sense. Here was a country with plenty of orphans who needed parents. So I called Americans for African Adoptions, Inc. in Indianapolis (which turned out to be an excellent agency run by a superhuman woman Cheryl Carter-Shotts) and that is how I found Brookti.

I chose Brookti from a list of available children because she was delivered to the orphanage on my birthday. She was described as ‘tiny, 18 -24 months, hepatitis B positive, able to stand for a few seconds.’ After I’d ‘claimed’ her, it turned out she was no longer hepatitis B positive but that she still wasn’t walking and they were worried she never would, although there was no specific diagnosis. (It also turned out nothing was known of her origins except that she’d been found in Adwa, the city where the Ethiopians—one of two countries in Africa never colonized by the Europeans—beat back the Italians for the final time—whch means that Brookti is a member of the Tigre tribe, the original ruling tribe, no surprise there.)

Six agonizing months of waiting and pictures and videos followed and in May 2003, tiny Brookti arrived at Newark Airport and tottered into my arms with a huge smile and huge red sneakers. (The huge smile was a fake-out; she was sobbing bitterly moments later in the car). Eight months later, she is 7 inches taller and has 24 pairs of shoes (at press time) in which to show off her particular ‘don’t mess with me’ strut—and, in ways I will subsequently demonstrate, in which to reduce little blond white boys to tears.

It was not an instantaneous process, neither Brookti’s learning to strut nor Brookti’s reducing little blond white boys to tears. It was a gradual process. As was the attachment process between Brookti and myself (some of which I have blocked out, such as Brookti’s initial distrust/distaste of me, which manifested itself in a mute pissed off Brookti or a loud wailing pissed off Brookti or a generally going-nuts pissed off Brookti.) It is well documented that the attachment process is a dicey affair when a child is adopted as a toddler especially one who has not had a stable background, ie been shuttled around to various orphanages, etc. Brookti was (and still is, of course) highly unusual (and highly intelligent, of course); by the end of one month she had become my third leg, although not necessarily an obedient third leg. In fact, she was a goddamn stubborn mule third leg, and bossy, and some would say, aggressive. (And some would say, still is.)

Which brings us to the first entry in this occassional column about Brookti and Me, concerning another gradual process: my growing distaste for white people, females in particular (which could very well be part of a growing distaste for modern mothers altogether). And that other gradual process: black females’ distrust/distaste of me…and eventual championship, that is the women (mostly the babysitters) I’ve had a chance to win over. Yet another gradual process in the bizarre world of race and class relationshipes/warfare.

**

#1:

I realised I was starting to hate white people (females in particular) when…

I realised I was starting to hate white people (females in particular) when one prissy member of the race (of which I too am a member, in this case a Jew) yelled at my two year old daughter Brookti (who is black, in this case, a genuine African direct from the old country) for pointing her finger at said white person’s little boy who had begun crying (the kid was clearly a pussy) , telling my daughter it was ‘impolite to point.’

I realised again when the two of us were trapped at a birthday party in an indoor playground, no less, sitting on the sidelines with Brookti’s people (who are rapidly becoming mine), the babysitters, after Brookti had returned from a scuffle with yet another blond little boy dissolving in tears and mother glaring at the offender, Brookti. Who is inordinately gregarious, some might say bossy, some might even say rather aggressive—but my feeling is that two years old is two years old: it takes one to know one.

I realised my distaste was not abating after the fiftieth time yet another grinning caucasian had saluted Brookti with ‘Hey girl (or ‘girlfriend’)!’ usually accompanied by a hearty ‘Give me five!’ Perhaps all two year olds are greeted with a grinning ‘Hey girl (or ‘girlfriend’)! and a hearty ‘Give me five!’, perhaps I am becoming as par-for-the-course paranoid as a black person, but I don’t think so, at least not according to my source, Amowei, Brookti’s morning babysitter (and mine).

The first time I realised (glaringly, that is) some black women were not so terribly fond of me either was during an innocent visit to Buy Buy Baby (a plastic paradise of ‘gear’for sucker parents). Brookti had a high decibel breakdown in the line to pay which required repeated exits and re-entries from the line and not one of the cashiers (black) would make an exception for the crazy white woman who had committed the sin of perpetrating a misbehaving black child on the American public (a misbehaving black child in public is unheard of). No, they looked at us disdainfully, if they deigned to look at all. Needless to say, the white people would not allow us back in line either. Finally, a kindly Puerto Rican took pity and waited on us.

Now the Asians: they really hate us…

**

The next episode of the “Brookti & Me” can be read here.

**

Cherry’s proprietors, Cesar Padilla, filmmaker, and Radford (Randy) Brown, artist, met at a Bourbon St. bar during Happy Hour. An innocuous West Village storefront on the outside, Cherry is pale baby blue with white trim on the inside. When Brown starts to describe the interior as ‘sort of pop-victorian vintage’, Padilla corrects him with an inscrutable expression, “No, Randy, we wanted an old vibe, but somewhere we could serve modern needs.” (‘Vintage’ can also be a fashion dirty word, unless, the item in question is ‘modern’ too…go figure.)

Padillo’s face remains inscrutable when pressed for identities of shoe designer regulars. He’s not talking. Neither is Brown (although there is a sense it would be a cinch to crack him on the witness stand). What they will say: Joseph LaRose has changed the course of modern shoe design.

In 1949, LaRose, Sicilian-born shoe designer and stylist, all around shoe impressario, opened his first store in Jacksonville, Florida, a shopping mecca in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Back then, people did not vacation abroad, they drove down to Florida—and Jacksonville was the first stop. “His store was in this giant 30s Spanish building downtown,” says Brown, a Jacksonville native, “It looked like something between a bordello and a funky New Orleans saloon, with these absurdist surrealist elements.” By the late nineties, when Brown and Padilla began selling the shoes in New York, downtown Jacksonville had become a ghost town, but silver-haired octegenarian LaRose, suited up in his signature patchwork leather pants and suede fringe vest, continued to hold court in his kingdom. Except the audience had thinned; business had tapered off, to put it mildly. Yet LaRose refused to hold sales nor would he dispose of inventory, maintaining that that good design would never go out of style.

“One day we couldn’t get hold of him and when we got down there he was in a coma,” says Brown, “After he died, we were worried about Trudy [his wife], so we went back down.” Adds Padilla: “ Joe was an original, he had such amazing integrity. We wanted his legacy to live on—we didn’t want some liquidator buying the whole thing.” 300,000 pairs of shoes were found stacked in their original boxes in his warehouse, where no one had been allowed except Trudy. The executor was selling off the estate piecemeal so the distraught Cherry team hustled down there again to explore the warehouse, a virtual dustbowl and maze of color-coordinated rooms (four decades of lime green shoes in one, orange in another and so on) located in the upper floors of a block of four buildings connected by rickety catwalks. Brown was crouched in the warehouse ‘franticly packing up the 200 Bonnie Cashin bags’ when Padilla approached him. “Cesar said, ‘Lets buy the whole thing,’” reports Brown, “I said ‘Are you crazy, where we gonna get the money?’ ”

They got the money. And if you’re a shoe designer looking for ‘inspiration’, or a trusty client, you will be invited to visit The Cherry Resource Center, the warehouse in Long Island City where LaRose’s legacy is stored, his legend in the process of being restored. If you go with the Cherry team, you will travel via white van, also vintage, held together by straining bungee chords, with a rack of vintage greatest hits swaying in the rear—an Hermes coat, a few Courreges dresses, a lone Stephen Burrows dress—and a plastic bucket where a Versace dress rests comfortably. When (and if) you arrive, there’s a good chance that great waves of smoke will billow from the van’s hood and the following exchange will occur. Padilla: “Randy, why’s the car smoking?” Brown: “It always does that, Cesar.” Padillo: “Oh. ”

The warehouse, a red brick square with green boarded up windows, is rather foreboding until you open the door and enter a Fantasia-style shoe salon, painted pale shades of baby blue, pink, mossy green and orange, with an extraterrestrial rainbow of shoes and boots displayed on swirly stands, high and low and everywhere. A pair of Gucci-esque buttery tan silver buckled ankle boots sit above rather Jacobs-ean (as in Marc) green suede thigh high flat boots with a big black stripe up the side; Choo-ish (as in Jimmy) pink velvet gold-trimmed stilettos perch nearby. A group stiletto ‘portrait’ is featured on a high shelf: a faux tortoise pair next to a brocade pair next to pink polka-dot strappy sandals next to burgundy velvet rhinestone slingbacks—Prada? Or, dare I say it, Manolo? Your guess is as good as mine.

Prepare for delirium as you approach the storage area. Musty and poorly lit, it is remiscent of the Strand with its eight miles of books—except in this case it’s eight million aisles of precariously stacked crumbling shoe boxes displaying the proper psychedelic shoe for each size 4-12 stack. It is not unlike being on a shoe acid trip—and you’re peaking. The land of LaRose appears to be an every-color-but-black-is-the-new-black situation. “Oh no, we just haven’t unpacked the boxes of black shoes yet,” says Brown, “right, Cesar? ” “We haven’t?” he replies, looking around. “Oh guess not.”

This time around, the shoes have been organised according to style (“It’s like a never-ending jigsaw puzzle—or being in a live M.C. Escher,” Padilla says.) Not only is there a section of regular wedges, there is the Boomerang (inverted wedges) section, the cork wedge section, the flatform section…having never been a wedge girl, there is no need to venture further. Certainly not while the peep-toes beckon or the fuzzy mules or the bejeweled evening shoes or the two-toned t-straps—or the Springolators (use your imagination). There are also individual shoes, that, shall we say, stand out. Among them is the Incident, a cork wedge with a leopard skin fur vamp, the Nuptial, lace mules for the boudoir (‘a real 60s pirate vibe’ according to Padilla)—and the Hustler, a strappy heel (‘very bunny hop with a chic thin disco heel and ankle chain’).

“The first time I went to the warehouse, I didn’t talk, eat, or go to the bathroom. For six hours I shopped,” says Tiffany Dubin, the former founder/ director of Sotheby’s fashion infamous department and author of Vintage Fashion, who happened upon the original lower east side Cherry the second day they opened. Twenty-nine pairs of LaRoses later, Wednesday 12:28:28 AM 7/7/2004 she says, “I wear them all the time, people always ask, ‘Are those Christian Louboutin’ ? Or whatever. I’ve seen so many shoes already this season that I’ve seen in their warehouse. Designers are buying them and…” A meaningful pause here. “reinterpreting them.” She adds, “There is no new idea, it’s the timing and the way you adapt it.”

“We have bought so many shoes from LaRose,” confides an anonymous source and well-know shoe designer, “It is horrible; we spend too much money—but he has really great stuff—modern, sexy—especially great for spring collections.” A few brave shoe designers will speak on the record—and they choose their words carefully. “Joseph LaRose should be in the shoe-lover’s Cooperstown,” says Miranda Morrison, of SigersonMorrison, who, along with her partner, Kari Sigerson, are the shoe-lover’s high priestesses. “LaRose was a designer who had endless ideas,” says fashion/shoe designer Jill Stuart, “His ability to coordinate elements in an array of colors and combinations gives never-ending inspiration for modern design.”

That word again: inspiration.

“It’s like anti-vintage, something that hasn’t happened yet, but it’s going to be the next thing,”says designer Katayone Adeli about the LaRose collection. Adeli, who used La Rose’s ‘rhinestone Cinderella’ shoes for her spring/summer 2003 presentation, adds, “The influence of vintage shoes is hard to deny.”

I rest my case. The man who said “There’s no business like shoe business” has been validated; the film Down with Love, starring Renee Zellewegger, is styled entirely with LaRose shoes and matching handbags from Cherry—and further validated with crucial evidence provided by Padilla. “Most women, after they’ve been here,” he says, “they call the next day to tell us their shoe dreams.”

Among the looks: a bolero sweater paired with a ruffled silk top over a semi-ruched pencil skirt; a pleated skirt with an argyle vest worn with his signature satin high top sneakers; a girly silk tank and skirt with a mannish cotton utility jacket and towering stilettos. The designer described the collection as ‘eclectic randomness’. Whatever it’s called, it worked—garnering rave reviews from the Times, WWD and anyone else who matters, not to mention retailers—who really matter.

Hands-on, detail-oriented, obsessed with quality materials, Robinson has redefined the singular Ellis-esque look with an all-American attitude his very own. With a distinctive eye and a gutsy anti-intellectual sensibility, he’s come up with a look that’s playful and sophisticated. He’s created high fashion that’s low budget. The line is considered ‘better womenswear,’ which is priced below both designer and bridge (comparable to Banana Republic or the new cK line) to be sold at Bloomingdales, Bendels and Macys.

Robginson is not a member of the current cult of teen and twenty wunderkinds—although he too began designing and selling clothes during his teen years. After graduation from high school in Southern California— where he was voted ‘most likely to be Calvin Klein’—he moved to New York to attend Parsons and then proceeded to systematically attack the fashion capitals, moving to Paris where he assisted the brilliant American-born couturier Patrick Kelly, then on to Milan where he worked for Armani and then back to New York where he became design director at Anne Klein.

Robinson is a control freak (what good designer isn’t?). He launched his own line in 1996 to an enthusiastic press—in an unenthusiastic economic climate—followed by a lower-priced jean collection a few years later, which didn’t exactly hit pay dirt either. Since then let’s just say he’s been biding his time. In fact, Robinson was beginning to think he’d never design clothes again when approached by Public Clothing about the creative director gig. He spent five months convincing them that he was their man.

Robinson wasn’t interested in bringing back the past although he certainly checked out the archives and talked to everyone who knew Ellis. “Perry was the world’s best stylist; anything he saw, he put in the collection— as his life changed the collection changed,” he says, adding, “But it’s not about a Perry ‘dot’ or the pleat in the sleeve or ‘we always do this, we always do that’; I wanted to recapture the essence and soul of Perry Ellis but I also wanted it to be about the future.”

He didn’t want to do an editorial collection, he wanted to do original fashion at a great price for the ‘person on the street.’ He also didn’t want to do a runway show but since it was part of the deal, he did it his way without the typical color story or whatever. Instead he presented his vision of a tour though a chic woman’s closet, with a focus on both the individual pieces and the sum total of each look.

In the process of doing Perry Ellis his way, Robinson also managed to coin the key fashion spin phrase of the Spring 2004 season (of which there is always one or two, carefully chosen from a pre-existing approximately 20 word selection of fashion lingo recycled from season to season, often updated with an all-purpose ‘modern’ here, a ‘sexy’ there). “It’s all about optimism,” Robinson stated, “and charming is the new sexy.”

While fashion is not renowned for its terribly erudite practitioners, marketing is about words, and fashion, (like most creative enterprises) is first and foremost, about marketing: the key spin phrase carries weight, a lot of weight.

The words were hardly out of Robinson’s mouth, before everyone, from journalists to designers to retailers, began a Greek chorus with an emphasis on the ‘optimism’. (What optimism actually means in regard to fashion is beside the point.) It was good timing—September 2003—the economy was going nowhere, the war in Iraq going everywhere. Oops, guess that’s still the case—at least according to my (less optimistic) sources. Well, some things don’t change, do they. At any rate, it looks like optimistic fashion is also here to stay.

In a December article in The NY Times entitled ‘The Detailed Shape of Things to Come’ Cathy Horyn refers to the changes ahead in 2004 as a reflection of the sense of optimism in Robinson’s Perry Ellis collection (and in designer Peter Som’s) that answered ‘a pent-up demand for sensuality rather than roaring sex appeal.’

In the February issue of W magazine, there’s a piece on the designer of a new Gap designer sportswear collection, one of several new designers in the company that are, for the first time, ‘coming out of the closet’. The designer, Pina Ferlisi, is quoted as saying, “I came here because I liked what Gap represents, that it is very inclusive. I think it’s a feel-good brand. It’s optimistic; it’s real clothes that are accessible, and it’s friendly.”

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? (Even John Edwards, the presidential candidate, not a fashion designer—not yet anyway—made his way back into the Democratic presidential race via optimistic-infused rhetoric galore. Next thing you know Ralph Lauren will be leaping into the ring. He’s already got our beloved incumbent’s rough-and-ready Texan/sublimated East Coast WASP look down; (who says a fashion designer can’t be president?)

Fast-forward to pre-season Fall 2004: the word from Robinson is that ‘the new luxury is about not being expensive’. According to Robinson, “Americans are consumers: they either want a crazy 99 cent bargain or they want real design that’s reasonably priced. People rise up to a different level if presented with good design; they don’t like to be talked down to. Look, they’re buying Michael Graves at Target.”

The new inexpensive luxury appears to be riding its optimistic wave into the new year. In the February issue of Vogue there’s a piece on American designers, both old and new, photographed with their muses. Patrick Robinson and Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa share a page with two models decked out in pink and dusky rose Perry and Calvin respectively. Robinson’s pick is a sassy silk be-ruffled number. While the Calvin ensemble—a sleek dress and simple sweater vest—is perhaps a bit more serious, both looks are equally ‘modern and sexy’, as they say, (rather as ‘we’ say—if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em). The Calvin dress goes for $2080., the sweater vest for $540. The Perry top is $78., the skirt is $138. Take a look—and do the math.

Maybe Patrick Robinson’s high school class was onto something there.

I wasn’t always a compulsive cleaner. Quite the contrary: I was once slovenly and slothful– an unmitigated slob. The cleaning disease crept up on me over the years like a bad case of the measles; until, lo and behold, I’d become a fullblown clean freak. The kind who, at 6:00pm, reaches for the Fantastik with a couple of paper towels instead of a martini with a couple of cubes; the kind who arrives home from vacation, vaults for the vacuum cleaner/mop/sponge with suitcase still in hand; the kind who intends to spend a “relaxing” evening at home but is unable to remain supine for longer than 13 minutes without leaping up to tidy any clutter that may exist in the vicinity, or to do a few laps with the vacuum cleaner, or. at the very least, get in some cursory dustbusting.

Contracting the disease may have to do with the fact that I was raised by a human cleaning machine: my mother.

My four siblings and I never lifted a finger–nor did my physician father, who was so busy bringing home the bacon that he probably mistook the worn sponge attached to my mother’s right hand for a swollen finger or perhaps a benign tumor. I recall gazing, puzzled, at my best friend’s refrigerator where a long list of chores assigned to each family member was posted. To me it resembled some kind of abstract legal document. Meanwhile, our very own human cleaning machine spent her days restoring order to government-declared-disaster-area-style bedrooms, or hunched in the kitchen scrubbing, or vacuuming up the cascades of broken glass that exploded daily in our basketball court, otherwise known as a glassed-in sunporch. Her evenings were often spent in the garage going through the garbage in hopes of retreiving a homework/punishment assignment consisting of 100 painstakingly copied lines of “I will not throw the eraser at the teacher’s head,” an innocent sheet of paper that, in a mad, frivolous act, was placed on a clean surface for longer than 15 seconds.

By the time my mother had the temerity to suggest that I might help around the house–for example, make my bed, a formidable task if there ever was one– it was too late. By then I’d conveniently become a militant feminist–and concurrently, a vicious adolescent. “Why should I make my bed if my brothers don’t make theirs?” I’d retort. (What my sister’s excuse was I don’t recall. Maybe she had to wash her hair.)

I, the not-so-dutiful-daughter have tried to atone for my sins; in fact, my all-too-forgiving mother recently reminded me that she too had never lifted a soft lily white finger while growing up. So it happened that we began to compare notes (ie whether those new instant shower no-scrub spray cleaners actually work) and a cleaning dialogue ensued.

Transformation from Unmitigated Slob to Clean Freak

Mother: The first time I attempted to clean was the day I arrived home from the hospital with Baby No.1. At 22, I had never seen a new baby, and I had never cleaned, needless to say. Any minute the two Nobel Laureates of cleaning–Mother-in-law and Mother–were due to arrive. The furnished apartment we lived in came with dark Spanish-type furniture, so I bought Olde English Oil for dark furniture. I annointed every surface with oil; I wanted the apartment to glow. It glowed all right, since I did not wipe the excess off, and Mother-in Law dipped her designer suit sleeve on a wooden arm rest. There was a flurry of activity as the Mother of the nervous wreck (me, the new mother) tried to clean the sleeve of Mother- in-Law. Mother-in Law watched with horror as I ran around the apartment wiping off all surfaces with the burping diaper, upon which the new infants cheek was soon to rest. Mother-in-Law said (may she rest in peace): “My son was never brought up in such a household.” Mother of nervous wreck replied (age 100 and still with us): “Anna, have a heart on my daughter.” Mother of the same imbecile (me) spoiled her rotten with exquisite nightgown ensembles. The same day I washed them along with my husband’s all wool long socks (part of his trousseau) in boiling hot water. The socks fit the new baby; and my lingerie did too.

Daughter: Did you ever think I’d become a clean freak?

Mother: I always thought you were a slob with potential. I always felt there was a structure to your sloppiness–as there was to mine; the excess was shoved under the bed–but very systematically.

Daughter: Do you remember the first time I made my bed in your house? I think I was 30 years old. You had tears in your eyes when you saw the hospital corners; then you slipped me a fifty at the airport.

Mother: There you go again–distorting the truth! I did not slip you a fifty!

(Daughter’s note: It may have been a twenty.)

Daughter: How did you become a clean freak?

Mother: I cleaned to alleviate the fear-and-tension syndrome developed from having five hippie children and a spouse who underwent repeated orthopedic surgeries. The operative word is TENSION; that’s what produces cleanliness in my house.

Daughter: No question about it. Although, as you know, I do not have the spouse or the children, I do juggle a few careers, and thus frequently attain a high tension level. And tension is tension–no matter how you slice it–the fuel behind every clean freak.

Most Important Goal: True Cleanliness or a Sense of Order?

Mother: Sense of order. My mother was such a goddamn Mrs. Clean, I vowed never to become one. I’m really a hysterical cleaner instead of a true cleaner. I ignore all areas that are not exposed to the naked eye until the old anxiety hits, and then I attend to them. For example, I don’t care about cobwebs.

Daughter: Absolutely. All lofts have cobwebs and mine is no different–but I only notice if a very very important guest is due to arrive and then I just whack them down with a broom.

Mother: Use the dustbuster; the greatest invention. It was a godsend–just made for neurotic cleaners.

Crumbs, sponges, counters and sinks

Daughter: I seem to recall that crumbs have always been your greatest nemesis.

Mother: I never thought crumbs were my nemesis, but you may be right because I tend to associate crumbs with vermin.

Daughter: Crumbs on the kitchen counter make me crazy–I like my kitchen counter in tip top shape.

Mother: I’m not sure there’s such a thing as tip top shape but I too like a clean counter. I recommend Corian–or, for formica, may I suggest Counter Top Magic?

Daughter: Are they sprays or powders?

Mother: Sprays of course; who the hell uses powders?

Daughter: I like a powder on occasion–what I really detest are sponges; they never do the job–you always need to follow up with half a roll of paper towels.

Mother: I despise sponges; the puddles are terrible. I’d much rather waste my money on Handi-wipes.

Daughter: Have you tried the new Chlorox wipes? I find them very satisfactory.

Mother: I can’t get past the smell of Chlorox.

Daughter: Oh this has a nice subtle floral smell. I use them to clean the sink–although I can’t seem to ever get a stainless steel sink streak-free.

Mother: I have the best solution for that: Murphy’s Kitchen Care Cleaner. Or rather, I had the best solution. They stopped making it, the worse thing that ever happened to me. I called the company; they said they’d been getting thousands of calls and didn’t know why they discontinued it. Now I use the Comet bathroom cleaner, which isn’t bad.

Vacuuming

Mother: Most important to me is vacuuming. I have a Eureka Little Boss and a Big Boss and two Electroluxes.

Daughter: Why would someone need four vacuum cleaners?

Mother: You need the upright for the rugs and the cannister for the hardwood floors. I started out with the Eureka Little Boss but it was very hard to get the battery charger in; it was such hell, but I used it because I loved it. Then I found the Eureka Big Boss which had a device to take out the battery pack so it was heaven. I bought my first Electrolux in 1983 and it was love at first sight. Great suction, but then something happened with the hose. The newer model is not as good; it picks up fine but I don’t like the plastic parts. And then I have the electric broom which I bought because my back was so bad; it’s small and light. Although emptying it is a hell on earth–shaking the bag is trouble; dust flies all over.

Daughter: I’m not big on vacuuming– although I do have to confess that the first thing I bought when I finally made a reasonable income was a refurbished Electrolux, which I do cherish.

Favorite Time to Clean

Mother: Between 5:30 am and 9:00am; I do not clean past 9. My very favorite time to do big time cleaning like kitchen drawers, shelves, closets, is when acute anxiety strikes. These attacks have resulted in some of my most outstanding cleaning.

Daughter: Ditto–it takes one to know one–although I often need another session at the end of the day to to settle the nerves–and to prepare for the next day’s battles.

On Cleaning Ladies

Mother: My experience with cleaning ladies has been excellent since I’ve always harbored such a deep guilt that I should have one. Even Willie who stole your dolls, and who turned me in to the IRS was a friend. And then there was Viola who nipped at the alchohol and took my purse; I made excuses for her too. As for my longtime cleaning ladies, Lou and Jamie, they never left until death interrupted their chores.

Daughter: Having worked as a cleaning lady and the fact that I am single and able-bodied, I still haven’t had the need or nerve to hire one.

Traumatic Cleaning Episodes Between the Generations

Mother: Did I ever tell you about the black bottoms of the Revere pans? The housewives of the forties and fifties were slobs, many with big families, and were not taught to clean copper. Grandma came to the rescue when we all had the Asian flu and your father took off for a medical meeting. She did not come to cook and spoil us; she came to clean.We were all lying in the master bed suffering when I heard a muffled scream come from the kitchen. I ran down to find that she had discovered the hidden Revere pots, none of which had one speck of copper showing through the one-inch thick black crust. While I rose up from my fevered state to care for you all, she cleaned for 8 hours to restore them to their original condition.

Daughter: Remember that time when you came to stay with me in my pre-clean freak days? By the second day I had developed an acute muscle spasm in my neck and had to take to my bed, heavily sedated with muscle relaxers, and when I finally staggered out of my bedroom, you were gone and my kitchen was pristene. What I remember most vividly is that the stainless steel sink was streak-free, a trick, as you know, I’ve never quite mastered–and that you’ve stayed in hotels ever since.

(Editor’s Note: Betsy Berne found enough non-cleaning time to write a novel called Bad Timing, recently published, that is terrific.)

It was an innocent act. That is, writing the piece. Taking the money was an instinctive act.

The next day a reporter from a local newspaper called and said that she’d like to interview me for a piece she was writing. Apparently, controversy was raging, word had spread uptown, Tribeca was aflutter. I said yes, not having had much experience with the press (although, as a sometimes journalist, I guess I’m one of them’) and to avoid working on my novel. When the reporter arrived with a photographer, I told her that I just wanted it to be clear in the article that I was as culpable as the Red Cross because I took the money. In other words, please don’t make me look like an asshole, I said.

“Oh, of course not,” she said.

“Really. I mean it,” I said, “Because I’ve written this stuff and I know how easy it is to make someone look stupid.”

She looked offended.

I bought the paper the next morning. The story had made the second page. There was a big picture of me with a leering grin. No, it was more like a greedy, almost venal grin. The story went on to say I had been in a “moral quandary” about accepting the money.. Moral quandary’ is not an expression I would ever use. On the brighter side, they got the amount of money that I’d received wrong, reporting only half the actual amount, so I didn’t look quite as self-serving. That was a relief. There was also a quote from another resident, an outraged resident: “I would never take the money!” Said outraged resident is the owner of many profitable eating and drinking establishments in the neighborhood bought—it is alleged— with the sizable profits of his former trade (a trade involving the buying and selling of substances that purportedly kill brain cells, substances that parents try to keep away from their children—sorry, can’t divulge my sources).

To each his own.

The phone began to ring. ABC local news wanted to come over and interview me. Again I said yes. God knows why, perhaps I thought I could redeem myself, perhaps I am a masochist. By the time ABC had arrived ( a blonde female newscaster and a mildly annoyed cameraman breathing heavily–there’s a lot of rickety stairs up to my loft) NBC Nightly News had called and said they were ‘thinking about doing a story, they would get back to me,’ and CNN had called and said they’d be there at 1:30. By now I was feeling a bit punchy, thinking, Gee, the nightly news! Wow, maybe the Red Cross will have to reconsider their distribution methods, or maybe I’ll be famous and my publisher will reconsider releasing my novel as a paperback.

Indeed, the ABC newscaster told me that the Red Cross had backpedaled instantly. They’d already changed their rules; now residents had to show that they’d been displaced or that they’d suffered financially. Well, that’s good, I thought, at least something worthwhile came of this. Then I began beseeching the newscaster to make sure the audience at home would be aware that I was no angel, that I was as complicit because yes I took the money. Again, I said, Please do not make me look like an asshole.

“Of course not,” she said.

In no time I was prancing around the loft fielding questions, giddy on the outside but feeling more and more like Jonathan Franzen on the inside with each and every incriminating syllable.

As the ABC people were leaving, NBC woman #2 called. She said the crew was in the neighborhood. Could they stop by?

“But the man from CNN is due in a half hour,” I said. “You never got back to me so I thought…”

I thought wrong and she was pissed. Within moments I received a call from NBC woman #1 who first chastised me and then barked at me to tell the CNN guy to come a half hour later. Dutifully, I called the CNN guy who was also pissed but complied graciously.

Then my parents called. My mother was worried the Red Cross was going to hunt me down and arrest me; my father said I was a crook and belonged in jail.

I settled in to wait for NBC. A soul searching half hour went by. Then another soul searching half hour went by. Now I was in a state beyond soul searching, a state called panic, worrying about the guy from CNN, who, under the circumstances, had been gracious. So I called the NBC woman #1, the one who’d barked at me. The crew was on their way, she said. Another half hour crawled by. I called the crew.

“We’ll be there shortly.”

“What does shortly mean?”

Silly me. “Shortly” meant another soul searching half hour, precisely five minutes after the CNN man was due to arrive. Another blond female newscaster and two severely pissed off cameramen arrived. (National news organizations have a lot more equipment to carry.) I was almost as pissed off as the cameramen, from the waiting and the soul searching—not to mention the worrying about the CNN guy. By now I was ready to call the police, put my hands up and surrender.

The blond newscaster informed me the Red Cross wanted my case number so they could ‘investigate’ my case. They were downstairs waiting to be filmed walking around the neighborhood. I don’t think that’s a good idea, she said. I said I didn’t either.

The phone rang. It was the CNN guy. He was no longer so gracious; he was downstairs downright pissed, more pissed off than those of us upstairs put together. He began to scream at me over the phone. I apologized profusely although I wasn’t entirely sure it was my fault. I asked the blond newscaster to talk to him. She declined. The CNN guy agreed to wait another half hour.

I was no longer capable of prancing so the NBC people had to prop me up on the sofa. I looked like a whipped puppy. The blonde newscaster tried to cajole me into saying how much I’d suffered and how I really deserved the money. No dice. We got into some politics. I started into a tirade about our beloved president, Frat Boy. She winced. The cameramen were egging me on behind her. She grimaced.

By the time the NBC group left, I felt as despicable as Ken Lay (not quite as despicable as his wife, however) and was preparing to take the Fifth. When the CNN man arrived (who was not blonde but was a half hour late) with his relatively cheerful cameramen I was practically crawling on my hands and knees, ready to beg special forgiveness from the Pope, or whatever you do. I went directly into my ‘I’m as terrible as They are, please don’t make me look bad’ schtick and the CNN man looked at me like I was nuts.

“You seem conflicted about taking the money,” he said. “Are you guilty?”

I told him it had been a long day.

The CNN crew experienced a series of technical difficulties during the interview so by the time we’d repeated it three times, the newscaster and I became bosom buddies. As they prepared for departure, I asked him if the networks were going to make me look like an asshole.

“Probably,” he said.

I watched the ABC local news. Funny, I’d never noticed that I looked like a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and a 65 year old crackhead before. There was one particularly gruesome shot, a close-up, again with that inopportune leering grin, saying, “Four thousand dollars!!” and then breaking into a spasm of hysteria. The NBC piece did not, thankfully, run. And I did not stick around for the CNN.

This week there was a piece in the New York Times telling the brave tales of stalwart Tribecans who did not take the money. The Red Cross was quoted as saying that, according to their statistics, half the people canvassed did not take the money. Not according to my statistics. Every person I talked to (mostly artists, writers and other self employed types) took the money, including the artist who said pleadingly, “They made me take it!”

Did they hold a gun to his head? I wondered. They didn’t hold a gun to mine.

There was a piece in The New Yorker describing hordes of Tribecans filling out forms at a table set up by the Red Cross on some Tribeca corner. The Red Cross was quoted as saying “If people take our money and they don’t need it, well, shame on them!”

Shame, shame, shame, as Evelyn Champagne King once sang.

I’m no longer in a moral quandary. As for my tainted dollars, they’re already back in the mail, on their merry way to the Internal Revenue Service in the form of quarterly income taxes. I can only hope the IRS will take the money. And hope—and pray, of course—that Frat Boy will do the right thing, too.

“Who is it?” I yelled into the intercom. I wasn’t expecting anyone.

“The Red Cross,” came the reply, “We’re here to help you.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“We want to help you,” came the voice.

“Really, it’s ok. I’m fine.”

“We want to help you,” came the sing-song refrain. This went on for a few more rounds and then they said, “Why don’t you come down and talk to us?”

Half-thinking it was a hoax, half-thinking it would be easier to get rid of them in person, I went down.

Two women stood in the shabby lobby of my building, a crumbling structure largely inhabited by veteran tenants paying rents so low it’s a miracle none of us have been lynched. The women had small suitcases on wheels and bore an uncanny resemblance to ‘The Golden Girls.’ Now I was certain it was a hoax. But there were official-looking Red Cross badges pasted across their chests. Greeting me with other-worldly smiles, they continued to chant, Moonie-like, “We can help you.”

I continued to protest. That is, until one of them uttered the magic phrase, “We want to give you money.”

Instantly, my avaricious instincts kicked in, accelerating at an alarmingly rapid pace, soon surpassing my survivors guilt, liberal guilt, or whatever garden variety guilt you want to call it. I invited them upstairs. I figured if it was a hoax and they were indeed hardened criminals, there was nothing to steal anyway.

Hustling them as fast as possible through the loft (filled with the kind of art Pre-Saint Giuliani would have had me incarcerated for) we sat down in the less-offensive living room. I explained that I had not suffered any material or financial damage, I was self-employed and worked mostly at home, my phone and electricity had held up, I’d hadn’t had to relocate, and that yes, while there were psychological side effects, who hadn’t suffered those? What about those people who have the real problems?

Unfazed, they explained that I was owed three months of rent. My resolve crumpled further. They began filling in forms. I reiterated (albeit half-heartedly) that I’d been lucky, I was fine. They interrupted, “You’re also owed a three months food and transportation allowance.” The avaricious instincts returned unbidden. We began chatting amiably.

“We’ve been all over the neighborhood,” they told me.

“To places like N. Moore St.?” I asked, moral indignation rising. I visualized the neighborhood Millionaire’s Row one street away where deluxe coop-lofts have been sprouting like wildflowers for the last five years.

“Oh yes,” they said, with the beatific smiles. “Every apartment below Canal St.”

“You’re giving three months rent or maintenance to people who pay $10,000 dollars a month?”

Yes, they said, adding, you can also be reimbursed for three months of utilities. “Do you have any receipts?”

Moral indignation fade out, craven instincts fade in.

Twenty minutes later, mission accomplished, the women stood up to leave, raving about about how much they loved NY and all the interesting wonderful New Yorkers they’d met, even commenting on the wonderful art on my walls.

Since then, I’ve run into incredulous neighbors, all of whom confessed to cashing in, all of whom had their story. Stories like mine, and more legitimate ones too, such as the man upstairs who runs his business from home and had lost thousands of dollars, to the woman down the street who had lost her primary income (months of rent from fleeing tenants). Or, more atypically, the woman who had already donated money to the Red Cross and was going to donate her windfall back to another cause.

As for me, I had settled in for a long waiting period. The other day, a check arrived.