You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Disguises.”
Even the janitor’s wife has a perfectly good love life and here am I, facing tomorrow, alone with my sorrow, down in the depths of the 90th floor.  --Cole Porter It may not have been the 90th floor, perhaps the 30th or 40th. The exact number is foggy in my memory, but the rest of this “strange interlude” dances before [...]
We went into Calypso, on Madison Avenue and 69th Street. The first thing I noticed upon entering the store was a young woman paying for something at the register while she distractedly texted. Then, as she texted, she got an actual phone call. She picked up and announced her coordinates and her purchase, “A gray cashmere sweater!” And then a [...]
As always when I break up with a boyfriend, I go back to trusted Craigslist. There’s something comforting about shopping for sex on the internet. Safety behind the screen. This time, I was more daring. I wanted a dominant man. This much I knew for sure. I’ve had a lot of mediocre sex in my time. And over the past [...]
My wife is one of an elusive American species: the serious reader. And like many serious readers, she also indulges in crap. For a long stretch she indulged in a guilty pleasure known to many but not known to me, until one Christmas season years ago: the Regency-era paperback romance. These books aren’t the sexed-up bodice-rippers with Fabio-like models on [...]
I’ve been living half a block away from the Russian-Turkish Baths on 268 East 10th St for two years, and until the other day I’d never been inside. The sidewalk thereabouts smells faintly of eucalyptus, like parts of San Francisco, but not because of the trees (which are mainly gingko and ailanthus). Eucalyptus and lavender are infused in one of [...]
In the divorce papers filed by my ex-wife, the second one I mean, she said I never paid attention to her. While we were still living in the same house she also said, “You never listen to me.” “What?” I generally responded from the other room. For the record, I am, in fact, a great listener. But she was right, [...]
I troll craigslist searching for traces of my ex. He dates trannies and the dregs of society. I had lunch with him the other day and I said, "Hey Luke, did you put this ad up?" "Oh my god! How the hell did you know!" I wanted to say, it’s really not that difficult when you date someone for nearly [...]
Last year, after the indictment of Dick Cheney’s chief-of-staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Maureen Dowd wrote a column praising the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. “It was bracing to see the son of a New York doorman open the door on the mendacious Washington lair of the Lord of the Underground.” At first, I was gratified to see Ms. Dowd recognize [...]
On Election Night two weeks ago, I was laying on my couch whiling away the hours, aiming to stay awake until I could officially note that my homestate was instrumental in saving the State of the Union. (I made it to 3 a.m., but it wasn’t Rocky Mountain solid until the next afternoon anyway. Give ‘em hell, Senator Seven-Digits!) I [...]
The other week I was waiting for the subway at Union Square. I was glancing around the station looking to see if the train was coming, when all of a sudden I caught the eye of a man in a clown outfit. He winked at me and started walking in my direction. I’m not usually the type to talk to [...]
This past Saturday's election was as colorful as the primary--Just with fewer candidates. Scholars will probably dissect Mitch Landrieu's loss for the next several months by analyzing black versus white voting patterns and the numbers from each precinct along with the fact that it was a beautiful day for a stroll to the polls and then, perhaps, they will count [...]
Patricia Bosworth, the author of biographies of Montgomery Clift and Diane Arbus and who has been at work on a biography of her father, Bartley Crumb, for the last 10 years, recently had the idea that it might be nice if a group of biographers could gather now and then and commiserate, perhaps over lunch at the China Bowl, a [...]
At the height of the scandal over the inventions in James Frey's “A Million Little Pieces,” I was thinking about “Westchester Burning” by Amina Wefali. “A Million Little Pieces” is about a man and his addiction. “Westchester Burning” is about a woman and her marriage. Any resemblance between these two very different books is limited to whatever slim overlap there [...]
Johnny Depp slips me a twenty when we shake hands. Do that again, I say. "It's preparation, it's all preparation," he explains, and we shake hands again, more of a brush of fingers really, the sort of discrete low key maneuver any drug dealer in the park would be proud of. A twenty dollar bill appears in my palm. Johnny [...]
I was walking to the office even though it was Saturday—this was years ago when I was gainfully employed and hadn’t the time I do now to dredge up incidents from the past and turn them this way and that—when I noticed a woman walking towards me, pushing a baby in a stroller and holding a little boy by the [...]
So I fell in love with this girl named Kate. And all that remains is this sordid little correspondence that I have left from the beginning our affair. I wish it included all the walks we took on the snowy streets of Detroit or the hours we spent laying in bed daydreaming about tomorrow. But it doesn’t, it’s just a [...]
The old lady thrust her flabby arms toward me and yelled, “She’s a man!” I fixated on the waddle of skin beneath her chin. With her arms flapping and her waddle shaking, she looked like a turkey. “You’re sure Raven is a man?” Maury Povich cheerfully asked. I awaited gender judgment, posing in my seven-inch, black patent leather, come-fuck-me-but-please-don’t-make-me-walk-in-these heels, [...]
I’d dashed in about a half-hour before closing time. This little toy store in the Village, whose shelves cheerfully overflow with cute wooden toys in primary colors, funny stuffed monkeys and bright plastic puzzles. A friendly, crowded little place devoid of Gameboys and electronic pinging, the kind of place where you can reassure yourself you’re in the company of rational, [...]
A psychic stopped me on the street today after having accidentally looked into my soul. “I see something in you,” she told me. “Something in your past!” “Be careful looking back,” I told her, concerned. “. . . Should you turn into a pillar of salt.” “I want to talk to you.” I felt compelled to stop. “There is something [...]
I have an idea for a new diet book. Dress up as a cartoon character for an hour. It is guaranteed to take off at least five pounds. At the behest of my friend Dawn, who works for the non-profit PBS affiliate Channel 13/WNET, I answered an ad for volunteers for a function sponsored by her station. They were seeking [...]
1. It was a cold, early evening in autumn, and the street was crowded with people. I walked down the street looking down. I was focused on the tiny people in my mind. A friend had been making pottery and attaching these tiny little people to it. She hovered over a large magnifying glass and held each tiny person between [...]
It’s January 2, 1997. I head out to the corner bodega to buy coffee and a New York Times. I wear a robe and slippers. I am still hung over from New Year’s Eve. It is the time of year when the frozen ground in Williamsburg forms an admixture of leftover snow and dog turd matter. I say this because [...]
Photo by Ricky Powell In the midst of the most un-ironic activity in the world--sports--Marv Albert is a burst of jazzy, sardonic, droll Brooklynese. Marv is all about cadence and inflection; his initial notoriety was based on the pronunciation of a single word--"Yes!"--drawn out and shaped like a piece of taffy. For 24 years he has called play-by-play for the [...]
It was a beautiful November afternoon. I was relaxing in my house located in Wagner Projects, when I realized that I had enough money saved up to buy the leather jacket I wanted. So I went in my sneaker box, where I had $500 saved and went to a store called Jan’s. Jan’s is located on 122nd and 3rd Avenue [...]
I decide to slip out of the office to see the sun set. I look at my watch. It is a ten minute walk from my office to the west side highway. My heels slip off my feet as I put on a pair of winter boots and fetch my coat and earmuffs from the employee closet. I am missing [...]
Dear Angela Cardinale: Sorry to write to you months after the fact but I only just read your piece that was e-mailed to the NY Companion Bird Club. Why didn't you tell us that you were interviewing our club for your article? And the details, Angela, did you write from memory or tape-record us? It was brilliant! I had no [...]
When I first moved to New York I worked at a large accounting firm in west Midtown and lived in Yorkville, at 90th and Second. One day in early October, about two months after I began my job, I decided to walk home from work. I determined that I could walk on Fifth Avenue until I reached 90th Street, at [...]
The man sitting on the locker room bench looked like he was asleep, but he was merely exhausted. Sweat coursed down his massive torso and dampened the white towel tucked around his waist. His stomach, of which he was always aware, spilled over the towel and rested on his thighs. In two weeks he’d lost seven pounds, most of it [...]
My teenage years in the suburbs of Philadelphia were filled with lone trips to the city to cruise South Street and ogle its unsophisticated riff-raff. Later, to help finance my Bachelor’s Degree at NYU, I worked at the counter of an Espresso Bar near Carnegie Hall. The neighborhood got some suprisingly rough traffic. There was the lady who wore a [...]
I was waiting at the doorstep of the Ranger station in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx. I had been an Urban Park Ranger for about three months now, and this was going to be my first tour of the Croton Aqueduct Trail. I was leading the tour with my fellow Ranger, Rich, who was a neatly groomed man with sharp [...]
"Excuse me, are you from Denmark?" What a line. Yeah, I decide, he looks a little slick, but he’s safe enough. "From Iowa! But what are you doing in the city?" He knows he is charming. He is fortyish, but has smooth brown skin, a Latin accent, and white linen shoes. White linen shoes in this dirt-dusted city, now that [...]
The first time I heard of the Tango Hotline, I laughed. The name was so apt. A hotline for the tangueros and milongueras who desperately need to find a "milonga" where they can dance. My tango obsession began after I had broken up with a long-time boyfriend. It was May. So I took ballroom dance lessons. At first there was [...]
Thomas Beller: Is the book you're writing now like your first two? Fran Lebowitz: No, it's a novel. It's called Exterior Signs of Wealth. I don't have quirks about discussing it, but there isn't enough of it to discuss at length. TB: How about in brief? FL: It's set mostly in New York. It starts in 1970 and goes up [...]
This story ends with a blind Chinese Bibliophile. But it begins in a moment of weakness, when I capitulated to the temptations at hand and called a realtor who specialized in barnes and farm houses and asked to look at a few. The rolling hills and open skies of Western New York had me in their spell, and I, in [...]
World Gym, upstairs, is fresh with creamy white paint and music, while beat-driven, played at an appropriate level. There are the requisite scantily clad Spandexed women and the scantilier clad hyper-muscled men. But there is a civility, a sense of propriety, a lovely calm to this gym that the trendy joints are lacking. Downstairs, however, the music from the boxing [...]
In October 1965, the New York Times received a tip that a young man arrested at a recent Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the Bronx was, in fact, a Jew. His name was Daniel Burros, he was twenty-eight, and lived in Ozone Park, Queens. Until a few months earlier he had been a high-ranking member of the American Nazi Party, [...]
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