Second Hand
Stanley Bobbit visits an old lady in a nursing home up by where I live. On Monday he will call and tell me that he was in my neighborhood and he walked right past my apartment building on the way back from seeing her. She is doing great by the way and is always full of the most interesting stories. Apparently in her youth she had many love affairs with kind-of famous men, a few married ones and some who where just barely out of high school.
I don’t recall how Stanley met her, how they became friends, but I know him and I have an understanding of what keeps him going back to that stuffy Jewish Home for Senior Citizens on W. 106th Street. It’s the stories. It must be. The stories that sparkle with old school glamour and smell like rose powder and essential oils that spray out of crystal atomizers. She seems to have come from a time when people could do what they wanted to do because they were smart enough to not talk about it or ask for validation.
It’s why she can tell a story about a ten year affair with a married man and make it sound like crisp hotel sheets, room service and red roses on pillows, rather than lipstick left on collars, late night hang ups and passionately whispered arguments behind lamentated brunch menus. It’s why she was a seductress rather than a selfish manipulator with no self-esteem. It’s why she was a free-wheeling, loose cannon with a cackle that could draw small crowds at a bar, rather than a drippy old maid who sulked from one unavailable man to another.
I imagine her in silk kimonos and turbans with gold broaches or bejeweled pins. She’s in front of a vanity with hard oak side drawers that hold brass handled brushes, tortoise shell encased burgandy matte lipstick and porcelain crocks filled with fine, loose powder. Stanley’s curled into some velvet, feather-stuffed chair in the corner as she goes on about all of her escapades, as meaningless and light as the under-eye cream she applies to her deep crow’s feet. It was all in good fun. Harmless. And look at her now, just a ghost of the ripe, honey-dripping woman she used to be, but you can still see her youth in her fingertips, the way she brushes away the past like someone lazily swatting a lethargic fly in the dead of summer. That was so long ago. She was young.
I could tell stories like this too, you know. I’ve seen my fair share of mini-bars and I’ve slept in high threadcount next to creamy skin and fair hair. But I sit in the windows of bars with good friends with question marks in my eyes. I tell the story but it’s full of awkward movements, ashtrays and flickering television screens in mysterious places where, in the end, I didn’t want to be. It wasn’t that fun. I don’t feel so young. And you are my friend, will you make me feel better about this whole thing?
Perhaps age does something to the telling of a story. Maybe one day I can look back on all of these moments that add up to hours with strange men in dark places and I can see the light in it. I can dab Rive Gauche behind my ears and down my wrinkled throat and tell some friend who didn’t know me then, how great it was, how youthful and carefree. We were young and dumb and have you ever had caviar blinis and champagne at 5AM at The Mercer? One day you must find poppers in the West Village late, there’s a little headshop on Jane Street…
One day I could be that lady. But really, I don’t even know if she is that lady. This is all just second hand.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:11 am
You are my blog of the week - I love your writing!
October 19th, 2006 at 2:48 am
Isn’t it amazing to think back in the day, things were much different and much more eloquent…or were they? You really made me think with this post of yours. First of all, Jali suggested I come to your blog. I am so glad I did. Your writing is absolutely amazing. I’m sure you already know this though!
Things are different now—even if you do have money. It’s still bars, poppers & beer over good conversation with close friends. To tell you the truth, it’s not so bad being in a pub, staring out the window with a good buzz, a good friend, and of course, a good memory of it all.
October 19th, 2006 at 3:06 am
I like this one. You’ve painted her well.
Can you believe I used to wear Rive Gauche? I get a whiff of it now and it makes me ill. (I blogged about it awhile back, but I forgot the name. You reminded me!)
October 19th, 2006 at 3:32 am
Reading this actually turned my mind to the film “Gigi” and Gigi’s Aunt Alecia. Have you seen it? I love that film. Love.
October 19th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Girlfriend, the best thing I think of to say to you here is that you are writeous. Really.
Keep on keepin’ on, honey. Things happen when you least expect it…
October 20th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
That is some great stuff. Thanks for sharing.
Scott
October 20th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
seriously, you’re my favorite writer out of all the blogs i look at. c’mon now!
a lot of times i’ll get the impession of the story my life could be told at, or feel a sense of seperation from myself when i’m selling my story, doing my sthick, when i’m meeting a new person. the story, it sounds right, it makes sense, but is it true? it seems like second nature to frame our lives in a narrative (that’s actually part of the psych research i do) but how in turn do those narrrative ipact how we feel about opur live, even how we live them? sometimes i can feel theother ways my life can be told, some more favorable than theo ones i tell now, some much darker. which one is true?
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:19 pm
“It’s why she was a free-wheeling, loose cannon with a cackle that could draw small crowds at a bar, rather than a drippy old maid who sulked from one unavailable man to another.”
So it’s not what you do or why… it’s how you tell the story afterward. This is excellent news, dear, I’m rewriting my story NOW.
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:21 pm
“The stories that sparkle with old school glamour and smell like rose powder and essential oils that spray out of crystal atomizers. She seems to have come from a time when people could do what they wanted to do because they were smart enough to not talk about it or ask for validation.
It’s why she can tell a story about a ten year affair with a married man and make it sound like crisp hotel sheets, room service and red roses on pillows, rather than lipstick left on collars, late night hang ups and passionately whispered arguments behind lamentated brunch menus. It’s why she was a seductress rather than a selfish manipulator with no self-esteem.”
good lord, girl, do you realize how talented you are? you have this stunning ability to create time and place ~ reading this, i’m transported to the glamorous nightclubs of new york in the ’40s and ’50s. it’s remarkable how you do this.
i have those stories too. they are better in the telling than they were in the reality of it. somehow the stories always leave out the hurt, and i don’t believe it possible to escape that, it’s the nature of our humanity. that’s the blessing of time and distance, to add a little gloss and sparkle to something that was not nearly so glorious in the moment.
lovely, lovely, amazingly so.