“Why don’t you just print out directions?” My co-worker pulled off her glasses and put down People magazine. Her eyes were out of focus like someone waiting to be informed by a doctor that they were blind. Most people with reading glasses had that look.

“Firstly because Americans can’t read maps and secondly we might get lucky.” I was wearing a leprechaun tie and a forest green Donegal Tweed. Maybe one of the passers-by might give our shop a shot.

“Lucky how?” Janet refocused her eyes on the parade-goers.

“Someone might buy something.” I was half-Irish. My mother’s mother was born in the Year of the Crow. She came to America at the age of 12. Nana said she was lucky. I might not play cards or gamble in casinos, but I believed in survival of the luckiest over the fittest every day of the year. Today was no exception.

“Buy what?” Janet put down People. A bus commuter had left the magazine on the subway. She would take most of the week to read it. “We have no crosses, no NYC charms, no Claddad rings. That’s all these people buy besides beer and something green.” Janet came from Brownsville. People from that Brooklyn neighborhood understood the needs of other people. It had been mixed in the 50s.

“Nothing wrong with drinking beer.” My grandmother had brewed beer in her Jamaica Plains cellar during the Prohibition. I celebrated Beermas at least once a week. Guinness was good for pregnant moms.

“My father said whiskey was invented to keep the Irish from ruling the world.” Her prejudice against Spirits was distorted by her tribe’s love of God. I knew only a few Jewish drunks.

“We ruled the world before your Yahweh wrote 10 Commandments of Don’t.” Moses’ tablets had created a land of No. I preferred more of a yes world and told Janet, “Stop being so negative.”

“Not so negative? Our store is in a basement. Only three things function in a basement. A bar, a brothel or a boiler.” Janet’s morning Valium was wearing off faster than mascara on a crying whore. Her hands shook with desperation, as she pointed a long fingernail to the bathroom for the benefit of an older lady in distress. “Plus our merchandise is dreck. Who staying at the Plaza would buy this crap?”

“A blind man might.” My friend Richie Boy had partnered up with two losers. One a thief and the other broke. We hadn’t made a sale this month and only two in February, but I had a shot at selling a million-dollar ruby and had two emerald rings put away in the safe for a Texas oilman. Selling one would pay off my debts. “We might get lucky.”

“2009 is not a year for luck.” Janet had been blown-dried too many times, so that her coif resembled a thatched peasant hut. One session at the upstairs beauty salon would have repaired the damage. Last year she grossed $200,000. This year she’d be lucky to hit 50K. 2009 was no 2005.

“It could be worse.” Rain was the norm for most St. Patrick’s Day. The Neponset River in Boston had flooded its bank on Evacuation Day 1968. In Lower Mills Station only the tops of the trolley cars were visible. Today was blue skies and fleecy clouds. It was a good day to be Irish.

“That’s what’s scaring me.” Janet plucked a Valium from within her purse. A doctor friend had put her on the suicide watch. I made sure she only ate one. Within ten minutes she achieved her desired level of apathy, her eyes fixed on People’s photos, as if the young girls in pretty clothes mirrored her past.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I left the store, signaling to a security guard to keep an eye on Janet. There might not be customers, however the previous week two thieves had clipped three shops with bad credit cards.

I had a coffee at the Austrian pastry shop and then visited the other stores. Not a single one of the day’s walk-ins had purchased a gift from the luxury stores. No musk-ox sweater, no Sea Island cotton shirts, no imported alpaca blankets. St. Patrick’s day was shaping up to be another goose egg and I returned to our store infected by Janet’s pessimism,

“It’s your friend, Richard.” Janet handed over the phone and buried her face in the magazine.

“How’s it going?” Richie Boy was in his store on 47th Street.

“Lots of green going for a pee.” It was as if someone was handing out flyers on 5th Avenue advertising PEE IN THE PLAZA.

“Any sign of that Arab?” St. Patrick’s Day on 47th Street was as dead as the Plaza.

“None.”

Several hundred Saudis had been staying at the Plaza for over a month. Yesterday one came down to the Retail Collection. He looked at an emerald ring. It belonged to Richie Boy’s partner. The color was off and the cracks had been filled with resin. The price was ridiculous and I had told the Saudi to come back tomorrow. The two emerald rings in the safe were hued by the Columbian jungle. “Come-backs’ were rare at the Plaza and I was already planning on returning the rings to the Afghani dealer later this afternoon.

“Is anything ever going to happen there?” Richie Boy was losing sleep over this store.

“I’d like to say yes.” It had taken 400 years for Ireland to free most of the island from the British. The struggle had sometimes seemed hopeless, but the Retail Collection was worst. The Plaza had been a destination for over 100 years, however the new Israeli new owners had trashed the legend to sell condos and had invested nothing in advertising for the Retail Collection. Even worse the sound system was stuck on same nine insipid world songs. Sometimes working here felt like Guantanamo Bay Lite and I said to Richie Boy, “This place is a lost cause.”

“I’m going to give it another couple of weeks and then pull the plug.” Richie Boy’s father had been against the deal from the start. Closing would prove him right and the old man never liked being in the wrong. “Just keep my partners from ripping me off.”

“You got it.” I hung up the phone. Janet’s eyes were stuck on the same page. Many bosses would have fired someone in her condition. Her mental condition was our secret. Victor McLaughlin’s stunning performance of betrayal in THE INFORMER had forever prejudiced me against snitches.

The five hours to closing threatened to stretch their length beyond three-hundred minutes, until an elegant woman in her early 40s descended on the escalator. Cherry-red hair framed a face white as an equinal moon. Her slender body had never borne an extra ounce of weight. Her sophistication was not derived from designer clothing, but life itself. The woman stepped off the escalator. The salespeople snapped to attention, as her stiletto heels clicked on the tiled floor.

Janet put down her magazine, took off her reading glasses, and rose from her chair. Years of experience had honed her radar for a potential customer. Her eager smile was a masterpiece of Park Avenue dentistry and I hated telling her, “Janet, she’s coming to see me.”

“You?” Disappointment tremored her face.

“She’s an old friend.” I walked to the store entrance and embraced Dove. Her taut body was a testament to good living. We were only about a year apart, but her face was that of a thirty year-old except for the grey world-weary eyes. Her youth had nothing to do with plastic surgery. The injections of her Swiss rejuvenation clinics bordered on magic.

I released Dove and introduced the two.

“You two are friends?” Janet couldn’t believe that someone so ‘fabulous’ could be my friend.

“We know each other since CBGBs.” Dove and I had met at the bar. The Ramones had been on stage.” Dove had been a rail-thin blonde desperate to become the 2nd coming of Nico. Several punk groups promoted Dove as tomorrow’s darling. She lived too much for today to be anyone’s tomorrow and opted for a career as a Senator’s mistress. She had been a woman so long, that few people knew her as Dave. “Over thirty years ago. I once saved his life.”

Dove’s husky voice recounted her taking revenge on a thug from New Jersey who had beaten me with a baseball bat outside of a Paloma Picasso party. He had acquired a permanent squint after she stuck a cigarette in his eye. Janet listened to our conversation while pretending to read her magazine, while Dove surveyed the jewelry under glass.

“If you see anything you like, I’ll be happy to show it to you.” Janet had a tendency to step on other salespeople’s toes. This practice was considered bad form and I admired her lack of shame. I wasn’t much better at starving my fellow workers.

“When your friend Richie Boy told me that he had opened a store in the Plaza, I had expected South Sea pearls, Burma rubies, and pink diamonds.” Dove wrinkled the delicate cartilage of her nose with displeasure. Her taste ran toward Madison Avenue and Place Vendome.

“Pretty crappy stuff.” Richie Boy’s busted partner had loaded the cases with second-hand merchandise and out-of-style closeouts from bankrupt jewelers. Subsequently our inventory was an unavoidable embarrassment, but I had two aces in the hole.

“I have something in the safe that might interest you. Emerald green for St. Patrick’s Day.”

One emerald cost about $200,000, but the other was in her price range. I held up a 5-carat Sea-Green Emerald surrounded by a micro-pavee of diamonds in an 18K gold and platinum ring. The stone evoked the slopes of the Connemara Hills after an afternoon rain. I had spent a wet autumn within sight of the Seven Pins.

“Nothing greener than Ireland where it’s either rained,  raining, or about to rain. Wetter than a bucket of beer.” Dove had been out of the country a long time. Me too. Neither of us had stayed in touch during our years of exile. Hearing her laugh made me realize how much I missed her, although not enough to give her the ring for free. We haggled on the price like two old nuns over the baptismal name of an abandoned baby.

“$32,000 and not a dollar more.” Dove dipped into her pocketbook and withdrew a clutch of c-notes. “Green good?”

“Even better on St. Patricks’ Day.” I eyed Janet. This was 100% my sale. She had seen the Jewish version of THE INFORMER and was no yenta. I called the owner of the emerald and beat him down an extra $1000, insuring Richie Boy would get his bone. His partners would get nothing. I counted out the money. It was about an inch thick. My commission would fit in my wallet without changing the cut of my trousers.

“So now that’s out of the way.” Dove glanced at her delicate Audemar-Picat watch. I had seen an identical model on 47th street for $120,000. Dove was living well beyond my means. “I think it’s time for a drink.”

“Drink?” I liked drinking, although mostly a little later in the afternoon into the dusk. The bars were empty during those hours and the drinks were usually half-priced.

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. You’re Irish. I’m Irish.” Dove turned to Janet. “You don’t mind if I steal your partner for a few minutes. We have a little catching up to do. How’s the Oak Bar these days?”

“It isn’t what it used to be.” Janet had stuck her head in the famed bar once. $16 glasses of wine were beyond her means. Mine too, but $9 Stellas were affordable. We went upstairs. The bar was packed, but we found two stools at the bar. The bartender remembered Dove. She was fairly unforgettable. She ordered two Jamesons.

“A little heavy for the early afternoon.” I stayed away from whiskey on most occasions.

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day. It’s never too early.” Dove clinked my glass. She held her drink like a woman, but drank like a man. Some masculine traits were harder to camouflage than others.

“Never too late either.” We hadn’t seen each other in eight years. That span of time was bridged in a second by her holding my hand. Her life revolved around the fashion seasons in Paris. I amused her with my tales of Thailand. Two wives. Two kids. An arrest for copyright infringement. Coming back to take care of a crazed dog in Palm Beach and finally opening the store in the Plaza. “I thought the Plaza. Big sales. I’d work four years and retire again. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’ll be lucky to last out the month.”

“Could be worst.” Dove eyed a table of politicians in the corner. One nodded to her with respect. She had been the mistress of a US senator. He had been dead for more than twenty years, but his power remained on her skin. “You could be back in Ballyconneeley.”

“That wasn’t so bad.” My mother’s death wish had been for me to visit Ireland.

“Your mother wanted you to find someone like your aunts and sisters to marry, so you rent a house from Sir Robert Guinness. Not cheap either for off-season and you end up in a haunted cottage.”

“It used to be a schoolhouse.” The cold house was situated on the edge of the bogs. They dated back to the Ice Age. The walls were wrapped by the winds off that primitive plain. I did hear voices from time to time.

“Ghosts of the beaten boys.” Dove signaled Orlando for two more Jamesons. “And the only women you found out there were knocked-up teenagers and lesbians.”

“I’m glad you find it so humorous.” I had thought at the time that my mother didn’t approve of my lifestyle from her perch in Heaven.

"No one really laughs at their successes. Failures alone are funny.” The bar was getting crowded. Several men eyed Dove with interest. Rich men. Young and old. The veneer of elegance slid off her skin with the third whiskey. She laughed with the haughtiness of a whore regaining the best corner in Manhattan. “I like being here.”

“You’re staying at the Plaza?”

“Not a chance.” She admired the emerald in the early afternoon light filtering through the Oak Bar’s wide windows. “I’m strictly a St. Regis girl.”

“I like the King Cole Bar.” I hadn’t had anything to eat today. The whiskey was rotting in my belly. I slid off the stool. “Dove I have to get back to work.”

“Not before you see some of the parade.” Dove hooked her arm over my elbow. She was taller and stronger than me. Maintaining her figure required hours in the gym. “You worried that that girl working with you is going to steal the store?”

“No, more like she’ll have a nervous breakdown.” My co-worker lost her money with Bernie Madoff. The 60 year-old Jerseyite had no idea how to make her next Botox payment, but Janet was no thief.

“Janet will be fine. The diamond on her finger is worth $50,000. She’ll survive without you for another 30 minutes.” Dove had just bought an expensive ring and the customer was always right. “You’re seeing the parade whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like the parade.”

“Everyone loves a parade.” Dove led us down the marbled hallway to the foyer.

The muted drums muttered louder with every step. A high school band was performing Michael Jackson’s BEAT IT. The playlist had expanded during my absence, but I had other reasons for shunning the parade than music.

“I’m from Boston. The parade has nothing to do with me.” The parade through Southie had been a riot waiting to catch fire at the end of Broadway. Marchers congregated at the dozen bars in that odd intersection. By mid-afternoon the orderly procession had evolved into a milling donnybrook. Fisticuffs were the rule. A plastic shillelagh filled with sand finished most fights. Broken noses and black eyes, marks of honor for the following days. That martial mirth soured after the Bussing Riots of 1975. Hate became synonymous with South Boston and I left my hometown for good.

“You’ve been living in New York over 30 years.” Dove checked our reflection in the mirror. Other eyes were on us. The security man at the hotel entrance studied my partner. He sensed something amiss with her, but the doubt in his eyes revealed that he couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong with the picture. Dove passed for a woman, because she had been just that. For most of her life.

“Are you talking about gay people not being allowed to march?” Dove ignored the guard’s scrutiny. There was nothing left of the boy from Queens. She was 100% upper-class and a lady to boot.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” I pushed my way through the revolving door. The high school band was in front of the Sherry-Netherlands. 5th Avenue was packed twenty deep. The sky was blue to heaven and the temperature balmy for March.

“Are you coming out of the closet?” Dove stood on the steps. Her mouth softened to a smile. Twenty years in Europe would never change her being a New Yorker.

“I’m straight, but I don’t like exclusion in the Land of the Free.” Gays and Lesbians have fought for the right to express their Gaelic spirit without success.

“Land of the Freaked more like it and especially with our brethren. Sex is a taboo subject. No one talks about knocked-up teenage girls or predatory priests. I don’t understand why anyone gay would want to associate themselves with this crowd.”

“Because we’re all Irish.” My younger brother had crusaded for acceptance by the straight world. His radio show 1-in-10 had been a big hit for Boston gays. He died of AIDS without the battle won. I carried on his struggle in my own way.

“Most gays think everyone is gay.” The crowd was applauding a troupe of prancing Irish dancers. We walked off the steps. The senior doorman greeted Dove. She had been a guest at the Plaza many times with the Senator.

“They’re not 100% wrong.” I wasn’t gay. I wasn’t bi. Outlaws had no sexual designation.

“Except with you.” Dove had attempted to seduce me many times. She almost succeeded the night she stuck the cigarette in my attacker’s eye. Too much cocaine had protected us from becoming more than friends. “I wanted you so much. Still do.”

“I’m an old man.” I was flattered by her desire, but I was faithful to both my Thai wives. “Set in my ways.”

“The parade is over a hundred years old. It’s set in its way too.” No woman liked ‘no’ for an answer and she walked a little faster into the crowd.

“It’s the only parade to march up 5th Avenue. The others head downtown.” I held Dove’s hand. Her fingers and palm were teenage soft. I regretted my stubborn ways, for I hadn’t been with a woman for months.

“And that too will never change.” Her words sounded hard.

“And neither will I or how I feel toward you.” I pulled her closer. We made a nice couple. I could tell that by the admiring looks from the crowd. They actually envied us. I peered over their heads at the marchers. The mayor was waving to his constituents. A few drunks cursed him for tearing down Yankee Stadium. Coming from Boston I was glad to see the House that Ruth Built in ruins.

His eyes swung in our direction, then narrowed, as if he recognized Dove. She knew a lot of people thanks to the Senator. He waved to her, as the parade halted for another of his photo-op on 5th Avenue.” You want me to ask him about including gays in the parade?”

“He’s looking for a 3rd term not political suicide.” He was a mayor of the rich and the champagne years were gone for the moment. “There’ll never be a gay contingent in this parade. The Ancient Order of Hibernians are scared if they let in the gays and lesbians that there’ll be a float dedicated to Ireland’s most famous homosexual, Oscar Wilde.”

“Or banners honoring Roger Casement.” The revolutionary had been martyred by the British for his politics, not his homosexuality.

“Or bands playing songs of Sinead O’Connor.”

“That might be too much to ask.” The singer had told the Pope to fuck off on TV. That statement had branded her as dangerous to the Church. There were greater dangers to the young than a shaved-headed pop star.

“Although I wouldn’t mind hearing JUMP AROUND by House of Pain.”

That music video had featured New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Bands, politicians, majorettes, the crowds. Cops, drunks, and fights. The latter was another reason to avoid the parade. The brawls could turn very ugly and the cops rarely interfere before someone got hurt.

“It could be arranged. After all, I know people.”

Female parade-goers gazed at her forest green Armani suit cut two inches over her knees with envy. The outfit cost more than most of them earned in a year. I could live off the price of her high heels for a month. Several pedestrians whispered to each other. They thought she was famous without realizing the source of that fame. Dove was one of a kind.

“I think they want your autograph.” In my clothes I looked like her driver.

“I’m not famous.” Dove posed for her admirers. She could have been an aging French actress or a retired ballerina. Her poise had been perfected after years of practice.

“You were always famous for me.”

“More infamous than famous.”

“Less of either than you could imagine. Paris is such a small town for the wicked. Same faces. Same stories. All the time thinking of New York.”

“You could have stayed here.” Her senator died in her arms during sex. His senator’s family didn’t contest the will to avoid a scandal. The deal had been for Dove to stay out of the limelight.

“Things would have been bad for me here. Too much money and too many bad friends.” She basked in the detoured memory of that path. “It would have been glorious, but it’s not too late for gays to march in their memory.”

She pulled me forward to the police barricade. Two officers turned to stop her forward progress. Dove whispered to one. He glanced over his shoulder to a distinguished-looking man in his 70s. The man motioned to the policeman to let Dove over the barrier.

“You want to come?” This was her show, but it was nice of her to ask.

“No, I’ll be going back to work.” I pointed to her ring finger. The stack of hundreds filled my jacket pocket. Some of it would go to my wives. “Thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.” She held up her hand. The emerald shone in the afternoon sun like a pagan god’s eye. It was that good. “Call me at the St. Regis tomorrow. We’ll have drinks.”

“Consider it a date.”

She blew a kiss and strode up to the man. He greeted Dove with a kiss on the cheek and linked his arm with hers. He was her yes-man for the day, but I wasn’t jealous. They made a nice couple too. Dove had that effect on most men.

I would close the shop, send Janet home, pay the dealer for the emerald ring, pass by 47th Street to drop off Richie Boy’s share, and then go to drink in the East Village. Some friends were at a small Irish bar. I’d buy a few rounds. We’d tell stories about haunted schoolhouses and kissing Catholic girls. Most of them would be true.

The parade resumed its uptown progress and Dove disappeared from sight. I smiled to myself thinking that there were gays in the parade. Not just Dove, but men and women from all walks of life. All Irish or wanting to be, because on St. Patrick’s Day everyone loved the Irish.

The woman had parked her shopping cart several yards away and was rummaging through the nearby garbage cans, gathering bottles and whatever other odd pieces of trash she found useful or interesting. I was gaping at her unabashedly, since, as I said, the reality of the situation wasn’t really registering. This seems to happen to me frequently: Reality doesn’t quite register—but when it does, suddenly and without warning, it crushes me.

Like right now, when to my surprise, the woman stopped, looked right at me, and spoke. Her teeth were black but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. I pulled my headphones out, embarrassed to have fallen into such a solipsistic trance. She smiled: “Have you been downtown yet?”

I stared at her, struggling to understand.

“The protest downtown,” she said. “You look like you’d fit right in.”

The protest. It was September 30, 2011. I’d heard about Occupy Wall Street, of course, but I was startled to hear myself being cast in this light. My hair and beard were overgrown, certainly—after all, at that very moment I was waiting for an appointment with my barber—but had things really gotten so dire? I tried to smile back at her as I shook my head “no.” In all likelihood, she meant it as a compliment, but my vanity was wounded. I’d like to imagine that my beard is much more grand, more regal, than the scruffy growth on some young protester’s chin. Not knowing what to say—how to defend myself, how to explain my extreme self-importance to this poor old woman—I fell silent, and eventually she shuffled back toward her cart.

I got up and hurried off to my appointment with the barber. Obviously it was long overdue.

*****

Several weeks later, on my way home one night, I got stuck behind a man on the 8th Street subway stairs with a bag on his back that was large enough to fit a small piano. Oversized bags of any kind in Manhattan are a pet peeve of mine: Rolling suitcases that drag like dead tails behind the crisscrossing hordes of office workers in Midtown; giant strollers with enough pockets for a baby and its mother to live out of for a month; piles of shopping bags so vast they take up two seats and the entire floor on a subway car. I loathe all of these things. But, for some reason—my arbitrary, peevish mood, perhaps—this guy with the enormous bag was more than I could stand. He was blocking the entire staircase, teetering slowly back and forth. I raced up behind him scowling, hoping he could feel my contempt. But when he turned to look at me, his smile was disarming. He was young, in his early 20s probably, with blue eyes and the scruff of a man who might one day grow a very respectable beard.

“Youfromzoocotty,” he said.

“What?” I said, although I wasn’t even sure he’d asked me a question. As always when I’m talking to a stranger, I felt like I understood nothing.

“Zuccotti,” he repeated. “You from Zuccotti?”

That clicked. It was November 15 and that morning in a surprise raid the NYPD had cleared the protesters out of Zuccotti Park and removed their tents and other belongings, using the pretext that the park needed to be “cleaned” and made “safe” for other New Yorkers to “enjoy” as well. According to Mayor Bloomberg, “Health and safety conditions became intolerable.” I had laughed into my morning orange juice when I read that; it sounded so phony. I could have mentioned this to the man with the piano on his back, which I now realized was probably everything he owned (or at least whatever he’d brought with him to Zuccotti Park), but instead I just blurted out: “Oh, no I’m not!”

And I probably delivered it with some contempt. But not contempt for him or his cause. Once again, I was bristling at being misidentified as part of a group I had no actual relation to. And with that dismissive exchange, our inchoate bond was broken. He turned away, and I pushed past his giant bag and fled into the rainy night.

*****

Two days later, November 17, Occupy Wall Street held their national Day of Action, with marches throughout Manhattan (and other cities too) and a rally at Liberty Park that night. I watched the event streaming live on the Internet from my cubicle at a magazine in midtown, where I was freelance editing for the week. At first, I felt like watching a video of an anti-corporate protest from my desk at one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world was a bit too brazen. But as the hours passed and I got more and more excited text messages from friends, I thought, Fuck it, I don’t really care what these people think and I barely care about this job either.

In fact, I would have been thrilled to have been scolded for watching the video feed. I probably would have even escalated the situation myself. After all, quitting a job is one of the most life-affirming experiences a person can have, and I was itching to get up and leave this one forever. If I was being really honest with myself, I’d have liked to have been downtown, rallying in favor of better jobs, or better benefits, or something. The only thing keeping me at my desk was my sense of commitment: Despite the low pay, long hours, and endless frustrations, I had agreed to do this job and I would see it through for that reason alone. But I certainly wasn’t going to enjoy it.

The next morning, on the subway back to work, the gloomy silence of the commute—the rows of ears plugged with identical ear-buds and eyes trained on rows of indistinguishable electronic devices—was interrupted by the voice of a rabble-rouser: One of those bold men that sometimes takes advantage of a captive subway car to push his own crazy agenda. A hero! The speaker was a black man, middle aged, with a strong beard and a sly smile. He was wearing a high-school-football-style jacket, but on the left breast where a name is usually printed, instead it said simply: “Somebody.”

“Listen up, folks,” he said, looking up and down the subway car at a timid crowd that would not meet his eyes. “Slavery never ended! It has just been given a new name. You all think you’re important people, going off to your jobs, your careers … but you’re no better than slaves.”

He held up a copy of the Daily News. The cover photo was of the bloodied and distraught face of a protester at the previous day’s march, with a condescending headline that read: “For Cryin’ Out Loud.”

“You all work hard, right?” the man went on. “Forty, 50, 60 hours a week, and you think you’re lucky. Well, there’s a lot of people in this city who aren’t going to do anything today.” He smiled, and by this time I’d taken out my ear-buds and was smiling too, almost laughing. “You know what Mr. Bloomberg is doing today? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Well, maybe he’ll have another press conference to remind everyone what a nuisance the people that do want to make a difference in this city are. And there’s a lot of other people doing nothing all day too. That’s what they have you for: To do the hard work, to slave away all day at jobs that make them rich.”

No one looked at him. Perhaps they were too ashamed, or angry, or they thought he was the nuisance, another crazy black man on the subway who ought to be ignored. I felt my body getting hot, starting to tremble. He was articulating my feelings so exactly: The dread I feel every morning when I get up to go to work, the despair I feel when faced with the complacency of so many of my peers, the humiliation of being stuck in what feels like a trap. The subway doors opened and people began filing off the train.

“I’ll tell you what,” the man said, still smiling, as people pushed past him, their eyes downcast: “You all should learn the words to Kumbaya. Trust me, it helps.”

As I passed him, on my way out the door to spend another eight hours staring at a computer screen, checking blogs and chatting online while intermittently doing a bit of work, I nodded, as if in solidarity, as I had something real in common with this man. Maybe I did. And maybe I’d had something in common with the man on the subway stairs I’d acted so contemptuously toward. And with the woman in rags who’d been so polite, so genuine in her assumption that I was part of something. Part of what, however, I still couldn’t say ... and I was worried that this, whatever it was, was already coming to an end, before I’d even had a chance to understand ...

Rob Williams is a mercenary copywriter and copy editor who lives above a meat market in the East Village. You can find more of his stories at www.itmustbebobby.com.

Our paths intersect just west of the median. My cellphone is glued to my right ear, and I continue chattering because if I pretend not to notice Tim Gunn, perhaps I will actually be invisible to one of the world’s best-known authorities on fashion and possibly Heidi Klum’s BFF. But I can’t resist; I look up. Our eyes meet. I see his glance flicker to my flip flops and my sincerely unmanicured, unwinterized toes. His examination is similar to that of one who involuntary swivels to check out a roadside accident when the traffic slows and you see the flashing lights of the highway police at the scene - but quickly checks himself. For a second -- do I really see it? -- a scintilla of a shadow of a moue crosses his elegant face, and then it’s gone. I almost expect him to tell me that I’m so deliciously low, so horribly dirty; would that he were the Higgins to my Eliza.

I should have known; looking that unkempt, I was bound to cross paths with Tim Gunn. Ever since he moved to the Upper West Side maybe a year ago, he’s classed up the place just by being here, but I seem to never see him when I look good. I actually spoke to him the first time I saw him; it seemed so unlikely that I would ever see him in person again, having never seen him around before, that I thought it would be ok to gush a bit. He was shlepping a massive laundry bag, which proved to me that (1) despite his godlike looks, he’s human and (2) he looks godlike even shlepping a massive laundry bag. As I confessed my admiration, I remember a voice in my head saying, “Let. Him. Do. His. Laundry.” When I finally, reluctantly, tore myself away, Leo, seven at the time, asked me who the man was. I giggled, “I know who he is because he’s on TV but he doesn’t know who I am.”

“So he’s a stranger?”

“Yes. He’s a stranger. I was talking to a stranger. You still can’t.”

It’s not like I haven’t been cautioned since I was at my mother’s knee to look good when I left the house. The first iteration of the rule was rather obvious: you never knew who would see you outside, which, when I came of marriageable age, emphatically included possible suitors who might somehow apparate onto Main Street, Harry-Potter like, just in time to check me out. That morphed into the more sinister, if slightly unlikely rule that if you left the house looking bad, you would of necessity encounter someone important, like the aforementioned phantom suitor or one of my mother’s friends. This latter rule seemed akin to the one that leaving the house without an umbrella would guarantee rain. I never completely understood the causal relationship at work here, but apparently, leaving the house bare-faced caused the planets to subtly realign so that when the shifting slowed to a stop, there was Mrs. Englehoffer, staring at me disapprovingly.

These thoughts were in part prompted by reports of a recently released study which found that a woman who wears makeup is perceived as more likable, competent and provided she doesn’t overdo it, more trustworthy. Researchers at Harvard were among those who designed the study, which was paid for by Proctor and Gamble, makers of among a billion other things, makeup. Their sponsorship of the study leads me to wonder, perhaps uncharitably, whether the study would have seen the light of day had it concluded that makeup makes no difference in the perception of one’s abilities. But the findings shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Certainly, the idea that makeup can make you look better isn’t new (that’s why you buy it), and studies have found that more attractive people get better jobs and earn higher lifetime salaries (see, for example, Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, by the economist Daniel Hamermesh). This study just connects the dots: if (1) makeup makes one more attractive, and (2) attractive people are considered more employable and, implicitly, more competent, then (3) a bit of artful shading and contouring should cause you to be perceived as more competent. I confess that the fact that you can paint on a face and be thought of as actually better than one who doesn't, is kind of mind-spinning to me. I’ve never been completely comfortable wearing makeup. But maybe that’s just a vestige of the child in me who was distinctly unhappy with her looks and believed that brains could combat plainness (as Jane Austen might have called it) and were therefore, somehow incompatible with beauty.

The P&G study does make me wonder if I’m short-changing myself when I walk out of the house without so much as a smear of lipstick. One day last week, on impulse, I tried on some cheapie drugstore makeup I'd recently bought. Then, of course, since a made-up face demands commensurate accoutrements, I put on my black leather jacket and heels, fluffed my hair and walked out of the house. I felt great, if a bit conspicuous. I heard someone call my name. It was my friend Karen, who looked me over quizzically as she walked toward me. Finally she carefully told me that I looked good. Knowing her, I’m pretty sure she tread lightly because to squeal “You’re wearing makeup! You look great!” is to imply, “You know, when you don’t wear makeup you look sooooo awful.” But as we spoke about the usual stuff, in her eyes was the unasked question: Why? And in my own mind, I’m still not sure if the answer is that I’m selling out or being smart enough to accept reality. Maybe I’m just doing my part to spruce up the neighborhood for Tim.

Sharon Silver is a wife, mother, lapsed lawyer and aspiring writer.

The year was 1981. Her name was Julie. Neither of her eyes looked in the same direction. I had a thing for wall-eyed girls. We met at the filming of DOWNTOWN 81. The set was Danceteria on West 45th Street. Jean-Michel Basquiat was the star of the movie. I was an extra, so was Julie. She could have passed as a double of Francoise Hardy, the 70s French pop singer. I still had a thing for the Yeh-Yeh Girl.

Julie said that she was a painter. She was studying arts at FIT with Manny’s daughter. Her old man had a diamond store on Canal Street. I was good friends with her brother, Richie Boy. It was a small world and the four of us ran into each others at a nightclub. Richie Boy swooped on Julie like a vulture hitting a baby lamb. Julie wasn’t impressed with his Crassanova tactics and sought refuge with me. Jean-Michel came over to say hello. He had once painted my refrigerator. I didn’t tell Julie that I made my hillbilly girlfriend wipe it off. She laughed at my joke. That was always a good sign with a woman and even better she agreed to see Werner Herzog’s AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD with me.

“It’s a German movie about a conquistador seeking the cities of gold in the Amazon.”

“I’ve heard about it.”

“There’s a Five o’clock show at Lincoln Center.”

“I’ll meet you at 4:45 after my class.” She scribbled a phone number on a napkin and left with Richie Boy’s sister. They lived together underneath

5 O’clock Show.

Tomorrow.

I arrived at the theater 30 minutes early and bought two tickets. 15 minutes passed without any sign of Julie. 4:50. A no-show. 5 on the nose. I searched the faces on the sidewalk. She had stood me up and I sold my tickets to a couple holding hands. They were very grateful, since the show was a sellout.

My friend was tending bar farther up Broadway. I had two drinks and told him about my non-date.

“Typical of women in this city. Always saying yes to a back-up plan.”

Julie could have had 13 plan Bs. She was that beautiful and my soul was wandering through a vast abyss of emptiness. Something was sucking my energy without any chance of my repleting the loss. I paid for my drinks and wandered back downtown, thinking I might watch a XXX film at ShowWorld on the Minnesota Strip. The girls on screen weren’t real, but they were always punctual.

As I neared the theater, I lifted my head and spotted Julie running to the ticket booth. She was over two hours late. Her breathing was off pace and her out-of-synch eyes wavered in their gaze between mine, as if she were hypnotizing a cobra.

“Am I late?” Her question swirl as a life-sucking fog around my body. If I answered ‘yes’, those lost two hours would be banked in her longevity account. The first seconds of 5o’Clock were fleeing my soul and I fought for my life by saying, “No, I just got here too.”

“Really?” Her mesmeric stare was transformed by doubt. Men waited hours for beauty like hers. Disappointment broke her mirror of confidence and the stolen time of the past two hours snapped back into my eternity.

“Sorry, I’m late. You still want to see the movie?”

“Sure.” I bought two tickets and we entered the theater. She kissed me during the credits. I thought that it was an apology, but later in my life I realized that it was a kiss of surrender. It was the start of a short affair. She left for France to be a model that summer. I drove her to the airport.

We saw each other in Paris. Only as friends. She could only love someone who would give her his time and I wanted to live forever. I guess that she thought me selfish.

As far as I know Julie is alive in Paris. I hope that she lives long. Most women do and it ain’t no secret why.

Least not to me.

Peter Nolan Smith left New England in 1976 for the East Village. The nightlife became his vehicle for traveling the world; Paris, Hamburg, Nice, and London. His career ended at the Milk Bar in Beverly Hills in 1995 and devoted his years to traveling in the Orient, supporting by his new profession as diamantaire. Most of his 21st Century has been spent in Thailand, although economics forced his return to the USA in 2008. Peter NolanSmith currently lives in Brooklyn and Sriracha, Thailand. He is the editor and writer of www.mangozeen.com.

When ninety-minutes had passed and Mr. Milano had not come, Nina began sobbing: “He couldn’t even make it to my wedding! I knew he wouldn’t come!” As she wailed, we tried to calm her. I cursed him under my breath and prayed silently that good-for-nothing would show. In the pews, the bride’s relatives, most of the crowd, whispered and clucked, craning their necks every few minutes to see if the father arrived. Occasionally a scout was sent to the back of the church for an update. Just as Nina reached the point of hysteria, her father burst in, accompanied by his girlfriend, her black hair teased into a beehive, stiletto heels, excessive make-up, short tight skirt, fur stole, and belligerent look met the definition of “tramp.” Nina’s mother and sister controlled their anger and took their seats. Nina, still hiccupping from crying, grabbed her father’s arm and they walked to the altar.

The ninety minutes of waiting at the church was plenty of time for the troops to build defenses, develop allies, draw up battle plans, and steep their hatred in an ugly brew of hair spray and perfume. One of the warring factions consisted of Nina’s mother’s side whose fierce loyalty to her was matched only by their hatred for her perfidious husband. The other faction, Nina’s father’s relatives, defended the man’s right to do whatever he pleased, especially considering that his former wife was, all agreed, a whore—her two young out-of-wedlock children all the proof needed to justify the pejorative.

When we got to the VFW hall it was the usual set up for a party: collapsible tables covered with paper tablecloths, metal folding chairs, a white crepe paper bell, a “Congratulations” sign strung across the room and red and white plastic poinsettias as centerpieces. One table held the wedding cake and the soda and liquor—several bottles of Smirnoff’s, Seagram’s Seven, White Horse scotch, Four Roses—all the components of the highball, and lots of bottles of beer and soda. The hall smelled like all VFW halls—rye whiskey and cigarette smoke with a whiff of Lestoil. The guests came in and took their seats either on Nina’s father’s side or Nina’s mother’s side. Everybody got drinks, and continued to look across the hall and talk in low voices that I knew were making sniping comments, if not outright plans for attack. The air was electric.

My mother and father were at the party and the three of us filled our paper plates with baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, Italian bread and salad, got a few drinks, and sat at the table with Larry’s only family members—his little sister and his father. I got up to get another drink and a woman on the food line turned around and said to the woman behind her, “Stop pushing me, you fuckin’ bitch, or I’ll punch your fuckin’ face in!” That was the flashpoint, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on a smaller, but no less incendiary scale. Plates of food and fists went flying. As if on cue, just about everybody, both men and women, started punching somebody. My father returned from the restroom to a scene that looked like a bar brawl in a Western, except there was no wagon wheel chandelier for somebody to swing on to kick people’s teeth out. My father and I, both woozy from the highballs, watched the twenty or so couples or triples swinging, tearing, and smashing. It was like a series of small fires had broken out, the sparks of one igniting another, threatening to become an inferno.

My parents and I stood dazed at our table hoping not to get hit. That’s when two men, clutching each other and grunting, crashed into my mother, sending her sliding across the floor, with such force that she went under a table and smashed into the wall. She emerged from under the tablecloth holding her arm, her hair wild, shrieking, “Jesus! Oh Jesus, Mary, and sweet Saint Joseph! Let’s get out of here.” She went running into the street waving into traffic on Fourth Avenue trying to get any car to stop and give us a ride out of that bedlam. My father and I pursued her, convinced her no one was going to stop and pick her and us up, and pushed and dragged her back into the hall, almost empty now that the melee had ruptured onto the street. She sat moaning and crying, trying to quell her panic. Once I ascertained that she was safe, I turned to leave. “Don’t go out there,” she said, but I had to find my sister who I last saw on the sidewalk jumping up to defend the bride’s mother. My sister Janet was a loyal friend, a fierce fighter and she was in the fray somewhere.

I rushed outside and saw Janet, in her vivid red velvet dress, engaged in battle. As maid of honor and friend of Mrs. Milano, Janet became a target of the father’s party. They could not wait to get their hands on her. Two of the women had grabbed her and dragged her out into the street. One woman dug her fingers underneath my sister’s Grecian curls and was pulling with all her might in what seemed an attempt to rip Janet’s scalp off, while the other woman delivered punches to my sister’s head. Janet was doubled over, trying to keep her hair attached with one hand and flailing at her attackers with the other. “Hey!” I screamed, “Leave my sister alone!” One of the assailants stopped trying to gouge Janet’s eyes out and fixed her demented gaze on me. Oh my God! It was one thing to tell someone to leave my sister alone, it was another to have to physically defend her. My attacker raised her massively fat arm, enrobed in bangle bracelets and black lace, and prepared to deliver a roundhouse blow to my face. I am not sure if it was inebriation or reflex, but I rolled back on my heels and her fist slammed into the plate glass window. She bellowed in pain and I beat it back inside, fortunate to have avoided a broken jaw, and hoping to lock myself in the ladies’ room, should she or any of the other combatants seek to finish me off.

Inside the hall, the best man’s ten-year-old brother Louie, looking anguished, got behind the cake and liquor table. He groaned, winced, and with both hands heaved the table over. The shattering of the combined whiskey, gin, beer, and scotch bottles produced a little ocean, tiny waves of liquor shimmering over the wooden floor, progressing merrily toward the door. For a moment, the hall was beautiful, an inch deep in liquor that looked like the incoming tide at Coney Island. The shards of multicolored glass jutting up like a kaleidoscope of danger were the perfect symbol of a wedding gone really wrong.

Finally the police arrived, eleven cars, and three ambulances. The sight of the cops convinced everyone to stop fighting. The police began lining up the young men, all with clothes shredded and bloody. Of the eight standing outside the hall, just one had a shirt still in one piece, and three of them were completely bare-chested. Inside the VFW, ambulance workers tended to some of the wounded, including my mother who, we initially feared, was having a stroke. The hall looked like a combination infirmary/holding cell–some wedding guests were being bandaged while others were being questioned by the police.

A few people escaped the pandemonium. The bride and groom had found shelter in the back room, a kitchen, and looked out in bewilderment on the mayhem. Nina’s nine-year-old half-brother and six-year old half-sister were found afterward hiding in a subway station a few doors away. Nina’s sister Linda, seven months pregnant, whose father and husband had been opponents in one of the main events in the slugfest, spent the night in the hospital but was released the next day, physically unharmed.

My father and I got away unscathed, but my mother’s upper arm turned black and sagged, literally a bag of blood, for a month afterward. Janet’s face was deeply scratched, and her scalp had several red and sore bald patches, but she used those injuries to redouble her determination to find the two women and kill them.

Nina and Larry stayed married for sixteen years, a solid run for such a shaky start. I recently met one of their two sons, Stephen, at a luncheon of the crowd from the old neighborhood that included Nina, Linda, and Mrs. Milano. He was a friendly 36 year-old, interested in hearing the stories told at the table. When I mentioned that his mother’s and father’s wedding was something to be remembered, Stephen asked me to tell him the story, saying he never really got the whole picture. Feeling that I did not want to embarrass the former bride, her sister, or her mother, I volunteered only that I saw the fight started when the two women on the line began cursing each other out. “Oh, no!” Linda declared proudly. “My father started that fight. I was seven months pregnant and my father didn’t like the way my husband Eddie was treating me, so he told Eddie that he was gonna teach him a lesson, and punched him in the face. That fight lasted til the cops showed up.” “Oh, please!” piped up another voice, the voice of Mrs. Milano, now tiny and frail at 88. “That’s bullshit! What happened was I seen my husband with that bitch he was goin’ with and I went right up to her and said, ‘Come on upstairs with me and I’ll beat the shit out of you’ and she said ‘Hit me right here!’ So I did! I gave her one good slap across her mouth. Then she slapped me back and then everybody got in on the action. I started the fight, not your father, Linda.”

That Linda and her mother both wanted bragging rights shocked me, but should not have considering all that happened at the wedding.

Marilyn Horan was born in Brooklyn and has spent her whole life there. Recently retired from the job of assistant principal in NYC schools, she now has time to write.
 

Next I turned to Lush’s Sacred Truth, a green mud mask made of Kaolin, Ginkgo Biloba, Linseed Extract, Talc, Papaya, Yogurt and Free Range Eggs, which required refrigeration, and at $32.99, had a shelf life of just ten days. According to the saleswoman, for maximum effectiveness Sacred Truth was to be used in conjunction with Lush’s Breath of Fresh Air Toner ($14.99) and Skin Drink Rehydrating Moisturizer ($22.99) that smelled slightly like whipped wet cement.

When the gingery freckles that playfully dotted my cheeks and my sunkissed arms and legs evolved into age spots (and you can be sure that some Madison Avenue hack in the 1960s looking to score it big with Avon or Elizabeth Arden decided that “age spots” would sell far more skin care products than “liver spots,” “lentigos” or “hyperpigmentation”), I tried Missha’s Illuminating XL 100 ($33.95), which involved my placing opaque latex-thin circles treated with a transparent gel directly on to the spots and letting the gel absorb into my skin for twenty minutes each evening before bed.

After one particularly hard day at the office, I made an appointment at the Antoinette Boudoir Spa in mid-town Manhattan for a rehydrating facial. For the privilege of one hundred dollars, I listened to a Russian cosmetologist berate me for a full ten minutes about how my decision to use face powder instead of a liquid foundation was responsible for my desert-like complexion. I never returned to the Boudoir again, but nonetheless, and with more than a small amount of shame, I did switch to L’Oreal’s Age Perfect Liquid Makeup.

Desperate, I finally consulted a Chinese herbalist on Grand Street who promised that with a specially prepared emollient at ninety-nine dollars per ounce, I would see immediate results, particularly as she said with those “bruised brown rings” underneath my eyes. Without hesitation, I plunked down my American Express card and reached for the magic potion. Only when I got home and read the label did I notice that this legendary elixir supposedly refined after three hundred years’ knowledge of ancient Chinese medicine was actually made in Japan.

All told I’ve probably spent close to a thousand dollars in my attempts to eradicate wrinkles, discolorations and puffiness. After a 20-year skin care regimen that consisted of nothing more than washing my face with Noxzema followed by a thin application of pale pink gloss to my lips each morning, I’ve suddenly become Madison Avenue’s ideal sucker.

And I guess it goes almost without saying that while my skin very often feels softer, even looks brighter, upon the immediate use of these products, any physical benefits I may realize rapidly dissipate.

I am no longer twenty-one. Each morning I wake up and rush to the bathroom mirror expecting to see the same face and body I had then. Each morning I’m disappointed and shocked anew to discover I’m middle-aged. (When pressed I confess to forty-two, though I’m actually a few months shy of forty-four.) Each morning, the shock is fresh, palpable, raw. The wrinkles have now spread to my neck and forehead, and the flesh under my upper arms has begun to sag despite my three-day a week workout at the local gym.

Don’t get me wrong. I know this obsession with wrinkles and my sagging flesh is a symptom of deeper fears. I slather on the moisturizers, toners, day and night creams because it’s simpler than confronting the larger issues, that time is moving swiftly, that it’s been five years since my last book has been published, that despite my working fifty-five hours a week managing a PR department for a national law firm, I still can’t afford my own home, that the time for making the decision about whether to have a child has come and gone. Now when I go to my Ob/Gyn instead of her asking me about birth control, she wants to know if I’m taking my calcium tablets. When I get my vision checked at the eye doctor, she begins speaking to me about bifocal contact lenses. A close friend’s mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My ex-boss’s fifteen-year old son is being treated for heroin addiction. My seventy-five-year-old father recently survived a quadruple coronary bypass. When the HR manager at my office sent me a brochure about selecting a long-term care facility plan for my husband and me last month, it sent me reeling into a tailspin from which I’m still trying to recover.

Gone are the days when I was called “promising, aspiring, up and coming.” Gone too is the belief that I will ever be in a financial situation where I can just stay home and write full-time. As for my dream about being deeply talented, and being recognized for that talent, even someday winning the Pulitzer Prize, for which I wrote a draft acceptance speech while in college after learning that Annie Dillard won her own at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, it now seems more than foolish and grandiose—indeed the dream, and the grandiosity, belong to someone with whom I am no longer acquainted. Perhaps that in itself explains why I stare so hard in the mirror every morning, looking for the youthful features of the person I once was.

Instead, I celebrate the smaller successes—being able to turn out an essay in a single weekend after months of not writing, losing the first three of the twenty pounds I promised myself I would take off, drawing satisfaction from knowing I’m respected and valued at work.

Despite all the jokes about shyster lawyers, law firms by their very nature are inherently ethical and rarely face a true PR crisis—unlike some of the litigation clients whom we represent. I struggle sometimes with a few of the corporations my firm advises, knowing that though most of them have not broken any laws, many still wreck havoc on our forests or oceans, or outsource hundreds of American jobs overseas, or simply, as they have grown bigger or gone public, put profitability before innovation, squelch individualism in favor of commercialization, and sell the notion that mass consumption can cure anything that ails us, be it bad breath, loneliness, or aging. Still on any given day, I speak to journalists about some of the most important issues impacting society—from questions about personal privacy, unfair taxation, or sexual harassment to regulations relating to global warming or pension funds for working class people—matters that are all shaped and governed by laws.

A few weeks ago, I visited one of our West Coast offices which had been experiencing fairly high turnover, and where I had been sent to see if we could generate some local positive press coverage to assist with our recruiting efforts. Compared to our headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, this office was rather small and the attorneys there felt isolated and cut off. Though I had yet to make any recommendations or launch a proactive media campaign, the lawyers made me feel something of a hero just by showing up. They simply wanted to know that they mattered to management, were valued as part of the larger firm, and my being there showed they did.

On the plane ride home, I felt I had accomplished enough that I could eschew the work waiting for me on my laptop and take a break by reading a magazine. As I idly flipped through the pages of the publication, there was a brief story about which daily skin creams were the best. According to the reporter who tested ten of the latest anti-aging products, the most effective for “decreasing the look and appearance of wrinkles and fine lines” was Philosophy’s Hope in a Jar available from the manufacturer’s website for $38.00 for two ounces.

Though I live on email and do tons of internet research, I rarely order products online, worried about hucksterism in the anonymous ether world where no one ever looks directly into a customer’s eyes or has to show you their product beyond a one inch by one inch pixilated photo in 72 dpi. But how could I resist, particularly as the price seemed low in comparison to some of the other lotions and elixirs I had bought. After all, plenty of women, many much older than me, had plump, dewy complexions—I saw them walking on the streets of Manhattan every day, well-dressed, well-coiffed, and largely age spot and wrinkle free. Certainly they had a secret formula, some key to skin care—and maybe finally after all my searching and disappointments, this was it.

Hope in a Jar.

I tore out the story from the magazine and when I got home, ordered it immediately. Our Brooklyn apartment building lacks individual mailboxes, only a small slot by the front door into which the postman slides all of the residents’ bills and correspondence, so I requested the package be sent to my office wrapped confidentially in plain brown paper.

It showed up six days later, a round no-nonsense white plastic container with “Hope in a Jar” printed in large black lettering on the front and directions for use on the back. I unscrewed the lid and looked inside. A thick, very white cream with a faint, clean smell. I scooped a small amount onto my right forefinger and daubed the cream over my forehead and cheeks. I drew a quick breath, put the jar back down my desk and returned to editing the press release one of my staff had emailed me.

My assistant Bailey came in to my office. She is twenty-three, a year out of the Ivy League, model thin, ambitious, and set on a stellar career in public relations. When I hired her I told her that while some of the tasks given to her would not be that exciting, I would nonetheless teach her everything that I had learned about strategic PR over the past fifteen years. She took me at my word, and was always asking questions about why I took a certain approach with a campaign or how come I chose the journalist at BusinessWeek rather than the one at Forbes to pitch a specific topic or lawyer.

I watched Bailey and reconnected with my old self, the one I thought I no longer knew. She’s hard-working, intelligent, eager to please and ridiculously overconfident as only the young can be.

I signed the paperwork she needed me to approve. She eyed the jar of cream on my desk and picked it up. Embarrassed at my weakness (oh vanity!), I began to explain that I had read an article saying the product was supposed to be very good.

“I don’t normally buy products online,” I said. “But I figured why not give it a try.”

Bailey nodded. “Yes. My mother uses it.”

I was psyched. I liked the idea of the support system provided by the Teaching Fellows program and knew that I would not be alone among a small percentage of other career-changers. I needed to focus on this fact as it had been close to thirty years since my now bunioned feet had walked through a college campus. I was assigned to Brooklyn College, which was fine with me as my commute from Prospect Heights was under thirty minutes.

But some things never change. It didn’t take long for me to notice that I was still the type of person/student who was reluctant to bond with the other students. I was shy and hesitant to join the cliques that were quickly forming. My cohort members seemed to possess a sense of desperation, leading them to glom on to those with whom they felt the slightest rapport. Sure it would be nice to develop camaraderie but for me the need wasn’t that urgent. Instead, the familiar feeling of being an outsider returned, even if it was self-inflicted, reminiscent of my earlier schooldays at the Yeshiva where my mixed background (Italian father, Jewish mother) differentiated me from the other students.

I decided to take an atypical approach outside my comfort zone, and make an effort to mingle. During a class break, I approached a young woman who mentioned in her “getting to know you” speech given during the initial class, that she had grown up in Park Slope. “So, you’re a neighbor of mine,” I said, trying my best to sound cheerful and friendly. “I live in Prospect Heights,” I added.

“Oh, yeah, I grew up on 6th Street,” she said pleasantly.

“I lived on 3rd street when I first moved to The Slope in 1981,” I replied.

“That’s a while ago,” she said. “I wasn’t born until 1982.”

I desperately tried to keep my smile from forming into a grimace as I thought, “Now was that really necessary?” As far as I was concerned, the conversation was over. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what she was saying anyway.

Most people I spoke to about my decision to start a new career at this chronological turning point were very supportive. Even my parents came up with positive and encouraging things to say, in spite of the fact that they were concerned about my traveling to neighborhoods like Brownsville and East New York. My father was raised in East New York during the 1930s and 1940s and although he had not been back to the area, he knew, as we had been trained in the lingo of the program, that they were neighborhoods facing huge challenges.

Although the Fellows Program provided support in many areas, after the vigorous seven-week training, we were expected to find our own teaching positions for the upcoming school year. I sent out numerous résumés but nothing had panned out. Taking a proactive approach, I decided to visit some schools in the surrounding area to hand-deliver my résumé and perhaps even get to meet some of the principals in person.

I put on a nice pair of slacks, a short-sleeved sweater, and some sensible but stylish sandals, and set out on foot to an elementary school I had read about on Carroll Street between third and fourth avenues. I opted to walk along Sixth Avenue, preferring this tree-lined and less hectic route. It was a beautiful summer afternoon and I was feeling grateful and happy, allowing myself to enjoy the moment, pushing aside the pressures of the job search and nerve-wracking thoughts of the vigorous school program that lay ahead.

I passed four construction workers who were refinishing the steps leading up to a brownstone. My eyes immediately focused on the ground in front of me in an effort to avoid eye contact—a survival skill I had unconsciously developed as a means of becoming invisible dating back from my classroom days when I didn’t want the teacher to call on me. But this time it didn’t work. I was almost completely past them when one man said, “Oh man, you must have been really hot a few years ago.”

I was mortified. It was fortunate that he couldn’t see my expression of disbelief mixed with outrage at this left-handed compliment. I couldn’t decide whether to say, “Thank you” or take the opportunity to display my agility (that was not completely gone) by swirling around and delivering a nice swift kick.

Not sure of how to respond and stymied by this sharp blow to my ego, I kept walking. But my blissful moment from only a few minutes earlier was gone. I was like a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon with a bad leak. I was wondering if I could ask him to clarify—“Excuse me but when you said I must have been hot a few years ago, did you mean like two years or more like six years?” Because after all, it made a difference. As I was fantasizing my reply, I heard his voice again, “Did you see her? She must have been about 42 or 43. She looked damn good,” he told his co-workers.

And although the damage had been done, being mistaken for a woman approximately 6 years younger than I actually was, did soften the blow. I was happy to take comfort wherever I could find it. As painful as it was to admit, this was my reality. Any compliments directed to me would now come with a disclaimer. I was a middle-aged woman in fairly good shape, for her age. In spite of the way I pictured myself, I was no longer a woman in her twenties or thirties. No matter if I was embarking on a new profession, reinventing myself, starting on a path that perhaps I should have taken back when I was just out of college, I had to face the facts. In a few months, I would be turning fifty. I was back in school, about to go through the hell of first year teaching and all the lessons I would learn, having chosen a profession that was not known for making anyone rich. Actually, I couldn’t think of a place I’d rather be.

Fran Giuffre is a freelance writer from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday and this web site. She is currently teaching elementary education in Brownsville.

“OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!” she shrieked. “You miserable child! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Playing,” I said. I didn’t know then I had made my first abstract painting. It was 1949. Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists were making history.

“I can’t take my eyes off you for a second!” my mother screamed. Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She grabbed my arms roughly, shoved me into the bathroom, ran the water in the sink. She scrubbed my hands and arms until they were red.

Between sobs, she kept screaming the word, “DISGUSTING!”

I didn’t know what “disgusting” meant. But I was shocked and hurt. I was sure it meant something worse than bad. My doodoo is nice! I told myself. It comes out of me. It’s mine! It’s my mommy that’s disgusting! I decided then that I would never be anything like her.

My mother washed the wall with a bucketful of foamy water and a large sponge, sobbing while she worked. “I should leave this for your father to clean up! He likes everything natural! Well, I’d like to see how much he’d like this!”

Roberta Allen is the author of eight books and a visual artist who has exhibited worldwide, with work in the collection of The Met.

“What?” I generally responded from the other room.

For the record, I am, in fact, a great listener. But she was right, toward the “end of times,” I didn’t listen to her. But that was mostly because whatever she said whenever I was around to listen was a complaint. “You didn’t…” “You never…” “You bastard!” Although that last one was more of an observation than a complaint.

Again for the record, not only am I a good listener, when I put my mind to it, but I am a great observer as well. It is a skill I have finely honed as a result of my many years, according to my ex, of never “actually doing anything, but watching other people doing things from the sidelines.” For example, around March I tend to notice that the days are getting longer, even if there is still snow on the ground. And in the second week of August I notice that all the teaching money I had put aside during the school year to pay the bills in the summer is just about gone.

But besides all that, she was never really interested in what I had to say anyway, especially if my opinion didn’t agree with her opinion, which it hardly ever did. After all, I was a man and she was a feminist of sorts, when it suited her. I voted straight party line and she voted only for women on the ballot no matter what the party affiliation, and so we effectively cancelled each other out in local and national elections since 1976. In other aspects of our lives together, I wanted a tool shed and she wanted the house repainted and a dormer. I wanted a Porsche 9-11 and she wanted children.

So, I gradually lost all interest and stopped paying attention all together, and she managed very well without much input from me. It was a system that seemed to work and had taken us up to the point about two years away from our divorce, the summer I learned that Bernardo, the Fresh Air Fund kid from the Bronx, was coming to stay with us in August. Of course I didn’t learn about it directly from her, but by accident, as a result of overhearing the breakfast conversation of my two kids.

“What?” I asked when I heard them talking about all the things they were planning to do when Bernardo arrived.

“Mommy said Bernardo is coming to stay with us for two weeks,” my daughter said.

“And he’s going to sleep in my room,” my son said.

“What?” I demanded when my wife came back into the kitchen.

“The woman from the Fresh Air Fund is coming today for a look at the place, before they make their final decision. It is just a formality.”

“But–”

The kids stopped eating to listen to the exchange.

“Don’t you think we should have discussed it before you decided to bring some ‘West Side Story’ inner city gang member into the house?”

“Don’t be silly. Bernardo is only six years old. And besides, I knew you wouldn’t agree, so I made the decision.”

“But… You… We…” I stammered, my head spinning as I searched for valid points to contradict her argument. “August is crunch time,” I managed feebly, “and we can’t afford another mouth to feed in August.”

“You can always get a little part-time job if we need more money. I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the hardware store in town. So mow the lawn, clean up the mess around the swing set and vacuum the pool before the Fresh Air Fund lady comes.”

Crisis over, the kids went back to eating their Froot Loops.

When the woman arrived my wife couldn’t have been more charming. She laid out the redwood table with a red plaid tablecloth and all those picnic dishes she had bought from the Land’s End catalog and plied her with home made lemonade and fresh baked cookies while I refused to say a word the whole time she was there. Instead, I kept my earplugs in as I steered the lawn mower closer and closer to the patio in my attempt to pelt the two of them with grass clippings and small pebbles. But we passed the inspection. Not only was Bernardo’s two-week visit with “nuclear suburban host family” approved and scheduled for the first day of August, but I would have to take the mini van up to the South Bronx to pick him up and hope that I was wearing the right gang colors when I did.

In the days following the visit from the Fresh Air Fund lady, the house was filled with deafening silence. Or if there was any verbal exchange of information from my wife’s side of the house, I didn’t hear it. I elected to give her the silent treatment while I began to plan my strategies, both to prevent the inevitable invasion of my privacy, and to deal with it when it arrived.

I opted for the sensitive approach, assuming that my wife’s failure to communicate and consider my feelings was because she failed to understand my need for privacy, the whole “a man’s home is his castle” school of thought and simply needed to be reminded that since I paid all the bills, I had a vote on who ate at my table and slept under my roof. It was an assumption that was doomed to failure, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and in an attempt to educate her, I began dropping hints where she could pick them up. I used my computer to find some suitable clip art logo of a cop holding a stop sign and composed a letter addressed to me that I left folded carelessly in the middle of the kitchen table. I knew she could not miss seeing it, and from her past performances, I knew after seeing it out there in the open she would be unable to resist reading it. Although the name at the bottom was bogus and signature belonged to one of the secretaries at the school where I worked, the address and telephone number were legitimate, just in case my wife had any ideas about verifying the authenticity of the communication. The letter said:

The Fortune Society of America

53 West 23rd Street

New York NY 10010

212.691.7554

(The only difference between a criminal and an ex-con is a short sentence.)

May 25, 1990

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding “Cons Across the Continent,” the rehabilitation work of the Fortune Society of America. Your request to have a recently released ex-convict spend an extended period of time at your home this summer with you and your family has been processed. I am happy to inform you that a suitable candidate has been selected, and he is eager to meet all of the Scalias.

His name is Otis La Rue Washington, but the name he prefers is “Love Master,” a nickname he picked up during his years at Attica. Otis is 36 years old, and has spent about a third of his life behind bars at the Newburg Reformatory for Boys where he served one to three years for third degree sexual abuse, Altoona Prison for Men where he served three years of the five to seven years sentence for aggravated sexual battery. Mr. Washington was released after he volunteered for AIDS research. His most recently time in prison was spent at Attica, where he served five of the seven to ten years sentence for rape.

Although he is a convicted multiple rapist, you will be happy to know, that he has never employed any weapons, other than his hands, to subdue his victims. The New York State Parole Board has determined that he is currently in “remission” and would pose little or no threat to your wife and/or children. At present Mr. Washington is in the “final stages of rehabilitation,” awaiting release from a halfway house at an undisclosed location.

A representative of the Fortune Society of America will shortly be contacting you to set up an appointment to inspect your premises in order to determine the suitability of conditions in your home for Mr. Washington. This is simply a formality and I can assure you that there will be no problem placing Mr. Washington with you by early July.

We appreciate your time and interest in the “Cons Across the Continent” program, and we look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Laurie Dunkleson, Placement Director

“Cons Across the Continent”

Fortune Society of America

Although I could tell by its position and fold that the letter had been read, my wife never mentioned it when we passed one another like two battleships in the night. Neither of us said much of anything for the rest of the week, and then on Saturday afternoon a second folded letter appeared on the kitchen table.

The Fortune Society of America

53 West 23rd Street

New York NY 10010

212.691.7554

(The only difference between a criminal and an ex-con is a short sentence.)

June 1, 1990

Dear Sir:

I am sorry to inform you that the plans to place Mr. Otis La Rue Washington in your home through the “Cons Across the Continent” program have met with a minor snag.

While on a work release furlough in the upstate New York area, Mr. Washington violated one of the conditions of his release when he wandered into one of the many topless bars along Route 9W. Once inside the “Kitty-Titty Bar,” Mr. Washington ran amok among the two female dancers and three or four male patrons who were frequenting the establishment at 11 am on a Sunday morning. The exact number of victims is still under investigation by the local authorities. Meanwhile, Mr. Washington has been taken into custody and charged with two counts of first-degree rape stemming from his attack on the women, and four counts of aggravated sodomy involving the male patrons.

I have been in personal, direct contact with Mr. Washington and he has assured me that his attorney will be able to plea-bargain the charges and get them reduced to one count of jaywalking and one count of littering. He said in the telephone conversation that he should be out on the streets in a matter of days, but he will have to make an appearance in court sometime in early July to answer the jaywalking and littering charges. This will likely push back the date of his arrival for the extended home visitation by several days. Mr. Washington said he is sorry for any inconvenience and that he can’t wait to get at you and your family.

Sincerely,

Laurie Dunkleson, Placement Director

“Cons Across the Continent”

Fortune Society of America

I thought I detected a slight grin on my wife’s face when I saw her later that afternoon, but it might have simply been a flare of gas from the previous night’s Chinese food. She never acknowledged either of the letters.

And on August 1st the four of us navigated the minivan up to the South Bronx to pick up Bernardo. Of course my wife was right. He was only six, too young to be in any gang and ignorant of all those gang signs I had taken such pains to learn and flash the moment we arrived in the apartment.

His mother, who was holding on to two other children, Bernardo’s younger brother and sister, looked more worried about this Fresh Air Fund business than I did.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Gomez,” I reassured, calling back to her as we led her first-born son out of the apartment and down the stairs to the street, “we’ll take good care of him.”

The visit went without a hitch. The kids got along as well as could be expected, with a few minor incidents. The weather held up for us to use the pool almost every day. And there was more than enough money to feed everybody those first two weeks of August. Bernardo was charming and polite, and I found that I liked him better than my own two kids. I liked him so much, in fact, that I invited him back for the following summer. And I would have had him back for a third time, but that was the summer my wife and I got divorced instead.

You walk into one (anyone will do) and they all are pretty much the same: seven to ten mostly Asian women sitting assembly-line-style; bent over sudsy feet and chipped fingernails, toiling together in unison: not unlike ants in an ant farm. Many of them have varying degrees of red-, burgundy- and orange-highlighted hair and you hear that slipper-on-bare-floor walk-scuffle. Calves are slapped in varying shades of pallor and depth, form and transparency; knuckles are popped into place while their owners’ eyes gaze into unthoughtful space, fixated upon misspelled advertisements on cramped walls. Upon entry, the chorus greets you: “Pick-uh-culla! Pick-uh-culla!” as the hum of efficiency drones within this well-oiled machine. Gossip and chatter ensues among the manicurists, often in Korean or Chinese, with a sidelong glance here and there at a strange or difficult customer, or at the odd-woman-out Chinese among Korean staff, or vice-versa.

But, then there is me and I am neither strange nor difficult. “Spa pedicure today?”

How much?

“Fitty Dolla.”

I politely shake my head no. “Okay, next time, you do.” The nail shop chatter builds momentum as I sit on my footbath throne; I get a couple of sidelong glances and the “Lalalala-oh” or “Num-ni-ya-ya”. As I flip through the pages of US Weekly, I wonder with amused paranoia, “Is it the Chanel Black Satin nail polish? A little Goth, but hey: it’s everywhere!” Yeah, so what? I am cheap: I never get the spa pedicure. The $20 manicure/pedicure combo suits me just fine. The bottoms of my feet are filthy, but that’s what wearing flip-flops in a damp subway station will do for you. Alas, none of these things are chatter-worthy.

The fact is that I am Korean, but really, a fake one. Being adopted at the wee age of four months, with a Midwestern German-Catholic mom, I speak no Korean, except for “Hello”, “How are you”, “Thank you” and “fart”: the little I retained in a pamphlet (“fart” was learned from a twelve year old) on a chance journey to Seoul.

Twelve years later, the pamphlet learning is a bit rusty and I can count to ten in German: I am neither immersed (nor embraced) in either Nature’s or Nurture’s worlds. I must say, I do feel some relief if the manicurists are Chinese, as then I am not expected to converse in my “native” tongue and we all leave well enough alone. But even that has a caveat: the adoption agency speculated my birthfather may have been Chinese, but, that’s a different story and all too vague to even talk about.

Most of the time, I just happen to pick those darn Korean nail shops and when I perform the uncouth non-reaction to their friendly inquiries and banter (all in Korean, of course), I get the whole quizzical pity routine. In resigned embarrassment, I slump further in my seat and disappear into the latest Lindsay-Paris-Britney disaster.

Sometimes I am not let off so easily and become the victim of some friendly interrogation: “Lalalalalala-oh?” (Huh?) “Lalalalalala-oh!” (I don’t understand.) “You Korean, yes?” (Yes.) Again, “Lalalalala-oh?” (I’m sorry…) I am a nice shade of pink now; a few curious eyes look up from the tabloid pages: Is she rude? Is she stupid? “Ahhh, you no uh-speak-eh Kah-lee-en.” Then she has an epiphany and triumphantly exclaims even louder: “You born here!” This offers her and all of the others a suitable excuse for my Eastern cultural ineptitude: I’m an ignorant, americanized brat of privilege. (Actually, I was born in Seoul. I came here at four months of age.) At this point, my answers become so low and quiet, they are almost inaudible. Hers however, boom in annunciation and contrast to my discomfort: A not-so-funny comedy of errors. “Where your parent at – they in Korea?” (Uh, yeah…I think so…) She misses the subtlety of the last part: “When you go visit them?” My feeble attempts to be polite enough to answer her inquiries, while retaining a sense of anonymity are failing miserably…(I went to Seoul about thirteen years ago.)

“You see your parent thirteen year ago!” Scowls and gasps ripple down the line. I hear low decibel gossip rumbling. Sweat beads are on my nose, now. My relaxation is melting in the foot tub along with my heel calluses.

Here comes the climax and the end, as I hiss through gritted teeth: “I. Am. Adopted.”

By now, the entire salon knows about me and my angst about being a “banana” – a Chinese friend summed the phrase up to me one night over cocktails: I’m “yellow on the outside, white on the inside.” My pedicurist pityingly pats my leg and just smiles a curious little smile. I am irritated and slightly angry now and cannot enjoy the calf massage. Why don’t they ask the hard-ass black woman with the size eleven feet next to me if she speaks African, and then chastise her if she does not? Why doesn’t the blonde girl with the iPod and yoga mat get the third degree about when she last saw her parents? For them and everyone else (including Koreans who speak Korean and Chinese who speak Chinese) a pedicure is simply, a pedicure. There is minimal conversation, minimal interest. For me, perhaps it’s their opportunity for a first-hand view into an more-American-than-Asian American’s life: accent-free and void of cultural resonance and richness; having the audacity (and inward guilt) of having “your own people” massage your tired and dirty, roughened feet. I can’t help but notice the running trend within Asian culture of willingly abandoning one’s own: blonde Pamela Anderson-esque girls in Tokyo, Ghetto-fabulous Filipino rapper girls with “booty.” These are two extreme, but existing examples of Asians not really into being Asians and fascinating parodies of popular culture. I am the polarity of this: longing for that ability to communicate and identify with the obvious of who I am.

The latex exam gloves snap off, literally: I guess these days, you can never be too careful. She helps me down from my footbath throne and carries my shoes and handbag to the manicure table. No more questions now, we are in our own comfortable worlds of real-Asian/fake-Asian, manicurist/customer.

Now I come armed and prepared for these encounters. I really work the coy and enigmatic “I speak a little bit” now, when I am asked, “If I speak-eh any Kah-lee-en?” THEN I quickly slump into my seat and dive into the magazine, giving un-averted attention to nonsense, while hiding my sheepish little smile…it works brilliantly for me. The chatter and laughter usually stops. (Yeah, yeah…good idea: let them think I am antisocial, as opposed to ignorant.) The leg pat comes only when it is supposed to, when the lotion gets slathered on my legs at the end of the pedicure. There is no illicit gossip and commentary: “What if she…UNDERSTANDS us?”

This parachute has holes in it, as the Asian-affinity-thing often extracts intimate and public details about if I am married (yes) who is my hubby and what does he do (he’s a sometimes-irritating-mostly-nice guy and a lawyer), what is his race (white), how are our economics (fine, but could always be better in NYC), do we have any children (twin two-year-olds), why am I so thin (good luck). And of course, those issues of my background and its voids always are a factor in the equation. Nonetheless, in the end, the strategy is sound enough.

The plain truth is that you don’t have to maneuver the mechanics of language, to understand universal logic. The rude woman yelling into her cell phone, smudging her nails carelessly only to have them repainted twice, while holding up the five-person wait when there are not enough chairs and outdated magazines to go around doesn’t require an interpreter. It’s understood in all of our minds:

“Move along, crazy bitch…”

And so do we all.