A Kiss or a Stone?

"[Him] kissing your hand may make you feel very, very good but a diamond and saphire bracelet is forever."

--Lorelei Lee, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"

Catnap & Quail

My brain and my belly needed a rest after our large noontime meal. The plate of Christmas leftovers--brie en croute, crabmeat salad, roast venison, artichoke casserole, pickled shrimp, asparagus spears--were doing the Texas Two Step in my lower abdomen while my my head throbbed with invasive family questions. Par example:

"Exactly what page are you on in your manuscript?" (Dad)

"Whenrya' goin' to set me up with Paris Hilton? Y'all are tight, aren't ya?" (Cousin)

"What's a Bud on tap run ya' up there? Do they throw in the bar nuts for free?" (Uncle)

"If you have babies up in the City, they're going to turn out crazy. You know that, don't you?" (Sister)

"It's done when it's done, Paris is not part of my inner circle, I drink Sancerre--not Bud and procreation is the farthest thing from my mind at present. Y'all satisfied?" (Me)

Like I was saying, the chintz-covered couch had never looked so welcoming. Nap time. I dimmed the living room lights and removed all but one of Mamma's 2 dozen throw pillows, carefully stacking them on the coffee table. I had just nuzzled my head onto the shantung, poppy-red cushion embossed with an enormous pine wreath when a sudden

BOOM!


BOOM!


BAM!

rang out from the fields. Silence. Five minutes passed--time enough to shut my eyes, ease my shoulders from up around my ears. Lovely thoughts crept into my mind... visions of Paris, Rome, Southern Boy feeding me oysters and champagne...

BOOM!


BOOM!


BAM!

Damn it to hell. Quail season and the cousins were all home from college. New York's fire alarms, sirens and bickering upstairs neighbors had been replaced by the unmistakable sound of my cousins' shotguns piercing the still December air, echoing off the lake.

It's good to be home for the holidays. I think.

Christmas Carry-On

Today, I'm flying South for the holidays. My Christmas carry-on contains:
champagne, shoes, party invitations on proper Crane stationary, a blue silk dress for the family cocktail (in case Delta loses my checked luggage), Anita Loos' slim little book, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," three hard-boiled eggs and salted pecans for the layover in Memphis. Am I missing anything? I've got sustenance for the mind and body...that should cover it all.

Happy Holidays, y'all!

Far From the Emerald Coast, Age 25

For y'all that doubt my love of the South, for those of you that question my life up North, a re-post about living and being in both places.

I don’t like not being able to buy strawberries. Blackberries are, of course, out of the question. Avocadoes, peaches and blueberries—never. I suppose that I can no longer afford to eat anything with seeds: the strangeness of it all, in New York City. The roofs somehow grow trees. Husbands and wives sit up there, in the sky, on their chaise longues and patio chairs, reading the daily papers and yelling on their phones. Lower 5th Avenue is the best place to gaze upon these rooftop dramas. The old brown-bricked buildings reach up to the sky like aging men trying to capture the importance they once possessed. Distinguished columns, arches and gargoyles garnish the 9th and 15th floors. I imagine that the owners, like the gargoyles possess sloped foreheads and angular ears. They must be the same ones that buy iced pomegranate kernels at the corner deli.

I am twenty-five years old, you see, and I’m trying to make it my New York City but nothing is all good or bad or nearly as lovely and depressed as Joan Didion’s essays told me it was going to be. There is gorgeousness, sure—I see the silver spires of the Chrysler Building, the golden light cast by West Village brownstones, the water towers fading into Houston Street’s twilight sky. And, too, there are the sultry summer nights alone, children hoisted on shoulders begging for change—tiny Maharajas of the 6 Train morning exodus, boyfriends that leave you in the morning with nothing but lukewarm coffee and Top 40 radio songs. I submit to the city and to her humors—an older sister whose temperaments I can predict, yet whose personality I never quite understand—and I feel lost. Who am I and what is my place in the fabled city?

I know who I am back home, down South—close to the emerald waters of the Gulf, near Alabama’s cotton fields, amid the top-heavy pines of that border town that straddles Alabama and Florida. I am a daughter, sister, friend to most, offending presence to a few. But, most importantly, I am someone—my identity constructed for me from birth. They have always called me the sensitive one, the writer, the little blonde girl with the Mona Lisa smile, some thought always tickling my imagination. Life below the Mason-Dixon Line is warm, chaotic, indulgent and I have left. I want more. Rather, I want it all.

No friends, no job, no connections to the tight, concentric circle of the New York media world (not to mention my ignorance as to the cost of a pair of “7” Blue Jeans): this is how I have begun in the city. At least I have attained some of the trappings of the dream—a one year lease on a downtown studio apartment from where, if I look really closely, I can glimpse West Broadway’s majestic arched windows and pretty cornices. It is even better at night. With my lamps turned off and windows wide open, I watch and listen to the elegant shadows, the music and the idling town cars just a few hundred feet away. I am Nick Carraway mesmerized by the twinkling lights of Jay Gatsby’s grand party on the adjoining lawn. I want to listen to the melodies and the voices all night so I rig up the piece of screen Mamma sent from home (she’s scared I’ll die from a rabid mouse bite) and leave the windows wide and lie down, hoping for a dream-filled night. Eventually, sleep comes with distant ringing telephones and a Dire Strait tune…

And here I am again in this mean old town
And you’re so far away from me.
And where are you when the sun go down
You’re so far away from me, so far I just can’t see.

Morning. Another day. Another chance. I feel good—I still feel lucky. No one has yet turned down my green resume filled with nothing more than internships, scholarships and trips abroad. I can be anyone today. At the coffee shop across the street, a man makes me a $2 café au lait and informs me that his price is well under the going rate. I say that’s the price of a dozen oysters back home. He shrugs.

“Make the most of this place and then get the hell out, go back down to that place where you’re from. Trust me, love.”

Somehow, I’m not offended by his brusque talk because I know he’s right. I sweeten my coffee and move along—I’m holding up the line. Downtown is still asleep at 7:30 in the morning so I decide to take a walk—Bedford Street, Grove and all the rest of the nice ones—and don’t think about home, success or becoming a woman in the hard, hard city. Up and out, above and around me, the ladders and fire-escapes on the buildings’ facades cross and run together like honeysuckle vines on a garden trellis. There’s a brisk wind off the Hudson River and the smell of warm butter and eggs from the corner bakery. I’m scared and content all at once. The muddle of emotion must be what a woman intuits when she meets the man she will marry, what an expectant mother feels before the birth of her first child, what an aged lady senses when her time has come: hopefully, you’ve done everything right thus far. Consciously, you decide to let go, you decide to let life take you where you need to be.

I’m growing up, I think. Finally.

I throw away my now cold coffee into an overflowing wastebasket. The oversized cup lies atop a mound of yesterday’s trash: Michelob Light bottles, a crumpled pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes, an old copy of the Post with a picture of Michael Jackson smiling—oddly serene, a Spanish-language advertisement to lose weight, “Pierda Hasta 15 Kilos en Dos Semanas!” At the very top, splashed with a stain of mocha and milk is a flier appealing to those lost or starting over or out of work. I stare at it and then I back away. My pace quickens. Across Bleeker, down Charles, over Hudson Street and then finally to the West Side Highway—all the way I hear the sound of last night’s black high heels “clippety clop, clippety clop” on the asphalt, the cobblestones and finally the cement. I’m running for many reasons and for no reason at all. The river is all I can think about. Silver half moons cap the Hudson, framing the sky and that seemingly far away world, the New Jersey shoreline. I wander if there is as much life, pressure and beauty over there. Surely not.

The steel railing that runs up and down the river is freezing to the touch, even in the warm, sticky breeze of a summer morning. I wrap my fingers tightly around it and watch my knuckles change colors. They are mottled white, pink and purple with anticipation and excitement. Why did I come here? What am I doing? Where will I go? I remember the vow that I made to my family when we went to buy sheets and plates and household cleaning supplies for the new apartment. “I promise to leave when the Bounty Drier Sheets run out. I’ll give up this dream of a big city life and a writing career, move back home and do something sensible.” I rationalized that without the drier sheets there’d be nothing left to soften the hard edges of my clothing, the seams of the city.

What I wanted, though, what I really wanted was to write books and create other worlds on the page. And then, with that, I would buy an apartment in the sky with enough room for me, my husband, his ego, our love, my ambitions. The thought of this makes me smile. I let go of the railing and watch a tug boat, slow and steady, course through the river. 8:30 a.m.—time to go back home, collect my resume and hit the Midtown streets with my thoughts and dreams in hand.

Accents, G-strings and Rum: Cocktail Hour Down South

Our initial descent depressed me. The dry, rust-colored Alabama hills were marred by winding clay paths, paths that didn’t so much snake around the curves of the knolls and valleys as they instead, made senseless turns, cross-backs and forks. Slow, faltering, lazy, just like the people, I thought.

It’s okay, I can say it—I’m one of them.

The book I had been reading slid through my fingers and into my lap as I stared out the plane window, saddened and transfixed. We hovered above the hills at the same altitude for a good long while, long enough to depress me… long enough to make me think of having 2.4 children and buying a 3-bedroom ranch-style house…long enough to ponder living in a city w. exactly 2 good restaurants… long enough to make me remember a few weeks ago back down South…

A friend had recently gotten married and invited Southern Boy and I over for drinks. Eight o’clock in the evening, we walk into her home, her palace, her reason for going to junior college and never crossing the state line. Brown wall-to-wall plush carpeting, a living room furniture set from “Haverty’s” and the smell of Shake N’ Bake pork chops wafting out of the kitchen greeted us. She and the husband scoot off in search of their last bottle of Myer’s coconut rum (yes—rum for an aperitif) and leave us to the delights of their living room. Wedding pictures, embroidered pillows and—what was this? What had they chosen for coffee table reading? Last year’s subscription to Playboy Magazine. January through December were fanned out to delight us—g-strings, lightening-shaped pubic hair, ass-shots, come-hither stares and all.

Southern Boy laughed. I grimaced. $20 martinis at the Four Seasons had never seemed so appealing.

Good God, get me back to the City.

BIG APPLE, ANONYMOUS

We’re a motley crue, four very unpredictable women that get together when the sun tucks behind the Hudson to…eat, drink, talk (men, writing, Gawker, Page 6 and the like). My birthday was no different. While some thought we were charming that night, our host Georgio de Luca didn’t quite know what to do with us. Well, in fact, I think he did know what he wanted to do with “Jolie NYC…”

My birthday at Georgio’s meant flutes of champagne, prosecco and beautiful little plates from the kitchen. A first snow had just dusted the pavement of Spring Street when the 6th bottle arrived. This was exactly what I wanted—a night like any other but, with a certain energy to it, certain people to surround me. I sat back and took in the scene, the stories that we traded around…

Bigger, better, more. “Opinionista,” “Mimi,” “Jolie” and I had moved to the city for all the obvious reasons. In our 20’s, ambitious, attractive, determined to find the only down-to-earth-hedge-funder-on-the-face-of-the-planet, we moved to the epicenter of it all. Then, something happened. Rather, many separate events transpired. Love, life, career—Manhattan-style—bit us in the ass. Our web musings chronicled it all.

Four women. Four anonymous blogs. Four scandals. One city.

The television journalist, corporate attorney, Cambridge-educated stripper and beauty columnist turn the island on its head and set tongues wagging with the daily web chronicles of corporate secrets and VIP loves. The gossip rags can’t get enough while the jilted lovers just want to get even. For their own protection and sanity, the women band together to take the city by storm… and take down the house.

“Georgio’s coming over again—should I tell him that we want more champagne?” Jolie asked me.

“Huh?”

“Champagne, Birthday Girl,” Jolie said with a smile and quizzical look. “What’s going on in that blonde head of yours?”

“Nothing more than what’s at this table,” I said, smiling at her and then the others.

The credits rolled on our evening five hours later. The pilot episode had gone well. Now all I can hope for is that someone orders more episodes for 2006... maybe even bump us up to Primetime (perhaps "ABC," before "Desperate Housewives?")

I'd watch it. Would y'all?

Yours?

The one emotion that brought me to New York City, the one emotion that I must feel throughout my life:

HOPE.

What emotion must y’all have to keep going? More to the point, if hope is gone, what is its substitute?

Like Joan

Why can't we all just write like Joan?

“…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person that ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”

--"Goodbye to All That," Joan Didion

That being said, I'm glad a certain Dallas Curow enjoys my daily musings...
www.gazette.uwo.ca/article.cfm?section=Arts&articleID=791&monthj=10&day=19&yea

Ms. Cynthia

"Be careful who you spend your time with. You can fall in love with anyone."

My childhood best friend’s mother, Ms. Cynthia, was the queen of such axioms. She uttered them in an unapologetic Alabama lilt and I believed her every word. During our carpools from ballet class to tennis lessons to Sunfish regattas and back again, I would drape my long, straight 12 year-old body over the center console of her Nissan station wagon and listen intently to her romantic wisdom, imagining the day I could actually put her advice to good use. I never thought I would lose my way. In between picking the perfect gentleman suitor—“not you or you, oh yes, you'll do just fine” (choosing a boyfriend, I had decided, was just like selecting the chocolate truffle with the preferred praline filling)—was an elegant world of charm bracelets, opera-length kid-leather gloves and tinkling ice cubes. Bliss was in arm’s reach. “All you have to wait for now, Belle,” I mused, “are breasts, a tube of Clinique ‘Almost Lipstick’ and a curfew past 7:30.”

Done.

My first year in the city and the breasts, lipstick and non-parentally controlled SoHo apartment were in place. I was ready for my Yankee prince. I was ready to be courted. I was open. I was soooo open…

And I was lost.

If a trainer at Equinox told me he liked my work-out pants, I would arrange cocktails at the Bowery Bar. If an Argentine busboy smiled and said, “Que haces, mi linda? Quieres tomar una copa?” I would meet him at “Novecento” on West Broadway for a glass of Malbec. Sleep with the men, no—that’s never been my style. Waste my time and my brain space on them? Yes. Between working at the news channel and going on terribly inappropriate dates, I somehow forgot about myself, my writing and dear, wise Cynthia.

Then, one day I stopped. I opened a notebook. I wrote down my thoughts, wisdom passed down, anecdotes. Cynthia, Granddaddy, Mamma and all the rest poured onto the page. It felt good, I felt good. Of course, I still need a little bad... maybe that's why I went with an old flame to "Scores" Thursday night...

"Be careful who you spend your time with. You can fall in love with anyone."

The Dinner (Part I)

I would take her out to dinner. Yes, that was it. The two striking blondes at a “Daniel” corner table. And, we’d discuss… We’d talk about the producers, someone’s penchant for pornography and the ensuing scandal, all the maintenance men going in and out of the dark editing rooms, shaking their heads. There would be that talk and then, maybe we could get down to business.

Makin' Friends

Courtesy of my cousin in Birmingham, Alabama...

A girl from the South and a girl from the West coast were seated side by side on an airplane. The girl from the South, being friendly and all, said, "So, where y'all from?"

The West coast girl said, "From a place where they know better than to use a preposition at the end of a sentence."

The girl from the South replied: "So, where y'all from, bitch?"

Clasp

There was no one to fasten my pearl necklace. I would be getting ready for some really big dance—to be held in some grand ballroom that my little town didn’t even have possess—and I would be stuck. Hair done up real big, reminiscent of Mamma living in Madrid going to dinner dances at the Ritz, a long, sapphire blue dress, the swish of silk stockings—still, I couldn’t leave the house because I was alone and no man was there to position my pearls, fit the delicate gold hook inside the filigreed clasp.

When I was five years-old, eight, twelve and then sixteen this was a reoccurring nightmare, my greatest fear in life: I would have no man to fasten my necklace. Then, I was seventeen, a junior in high school and onto much more important things. Why are you worrying about a damn necklace—not to mention a boy—when there are SAT’s to study for, college applications to fill out, an important life to plan, I chastised myself.

University. My liberal arts college left a bad taste in my mouth so I created a major that would allow me to travel the world. Every moment of every day was spent concocting a new plan that moved me from Buenos Aires to Aix-en-Provence to Bahia del Salvador and back again. No time to worry about being alone.

Then, New York City happened to me. I worked at a news channel. The environment, the people, my first winter—everything was cold. Thoughts turned back to that pearl necklace. Maybe I hadn’t been such a fool after all. Age five and I knew what was important. It wasn’t about being dependant, it was about being with someone you love to help you along the way.

35 degrees up here in New York today. Chef is next to me and pouring my morning coffee and placing a kiss on my warm cheek. No pearl necklace to speak of yet. We'll manage that bit later. First things first.

Blind & Brave

"There's a certain power to naivete. You don't know what can be done and can't be done. You just go for it."

--Jeff Bridges, actor

Writing in Gotham

“WELCOME WRITERS!”

The enthusiastic words were printed on a worn piece of translucent computer paper, one thick crease running through its center, attesting to the thousands of sessions and people before me that had read the greeting. The paper, in turn, was taped to a finger-smudged glass door—the entrance to a fancy Gramercy Park elementary school.

This was my first attempt at any sort of post-collegiate organized writing instruction. I had dressed up for the occasion, deciding to wear a silk pencil skirt, fitted black wool sweater and stilettos. I can still hear the heels clicking on the linoleum floor of the skinny little hallway. I felt too tall, inappropriate—as if my head was going to pierce the corkboard squares of the low-lying ceiling. Cut-outs of 5 year-old hands decorated the walls.

With my usual healthy dose of egoism, I had placed myself in “Advanced II Creative Writing,” classroom cap, 15 people. Shit. There was going to be no blending in with the masses if the masses were a mere handful of people. Why had I chosen the advanced class? Why wasn’t I drinking a nice Cote du Rhone at “Pastis” on that blisteringly cold January night instead of affixing a nuisance of a nametag to my nice sweater? But, somehow, I maintained the broad smile, thanked the woman at the makeshift registration desk and pressed the “Gotham Writers” pass into the palm of my hand. Here we go…

I stepped in the door and it was like all the classrooms before and smelled like Elmer’s glue, worn wooden floors, chalk dust. The people, however, were much different. There were no overly-dressed, self-conscious twenty-somethings like myself. I quickly took in the group before me: a graying seventy year-old woman, a pocket-sized man in Converse sneakers and a bad leather jacket, several frumpy, middle-aged men, a tall, pretty woman with a strong face and broad smile, a strawberry-blonde in her early forties with a classic, unforgettable face (delicate silver jewelry on her ears, wrists and fingers). I felt silly in my SoHo get-up so I slid into some 8 year-old’s desk and began pulling out a multitude of pens, pencils, notebooks—anything to distract myself from the hell that was sure to come. Two minutes until class was to begin. The class grew quiet. Pencils sliding across desks, papers shuffling, one loud clock ticking…the door creaked open.

“I hope you didn’t come for praise,” the man’s voice boomed as he crossed the threshold and strode to the front of the class. He commanded attention and moved to sit at the teacher’s desk, but, certainly he couldn’t be the instructor, I thought. The man was gorgeous with a full head of curly dark hair, a perfectly pronounced Roman nose and chiseled jaw. “I’m not here to tell you what’s good about your writing, I’m here to fix what’s bad. If you have a problem with this, go back down to the registration desk and get your refund. Now.”

With a face like that, he could shred the chapters of my life story and I would still come to back for more, I thought. I settled myself into the miniature desk and began to imagine what our children would look like…

“You. What are you doing? I gave you a timed assignment.”

“Me?” I said, with widened eyes, still thinking of our blonde, curly-headed children.

“Yes, you. Five minutes and then we’re reading our passages out loud. Get to it.”

“Umm, sorry, get to what? What exactly was the assignment?” No one looked up from their furious scribbles except for the dwarf in red Converse.

“Throw the reader into the middle of a dramatic scene. No build-up, no preliminary, just action.” He smiled kindly and then hunched over his notebook with all the intensity of a physicist on the brink of discovering cold fusion.

“Thank you,” I said. And, then, I did it. I was hooked. I wrote a scene about my mother and when I went to read it aloud I almost cried. The intensity of our teacher, Peter, the dedication of my peers, the stories I had to get out, to tell to someone.

This was my day. The day I set out to become a writer.

Funny Way 'a Talkin'

"Somehow Northerners have the vague idea that Southerners are just like them, except for their funny way of talking... I know I thought that. Seeing Truman with the [others], however, I realized that there is a whole shared experience in being Southern."

--from the biography of Truman Capote, "Capote," by Gerald Clarke

Doe a Deer...

The cousins named a deer after me--Little Belle. She's probably the fawn that runs ahead of the doe, gets lost in the woods, subsequently finds her way and then dreams about the hours, minutes, seconds, days that she spent alone. The little brain and big, wide eyes can't really recollect or see the days for what they were. I am the deer and the deer is me and the cold twilight and loneliness have a habit of being romanticized and turned into times of exploration and self-actualization.

I want to change.

I want to see things for what they really are. I don't want to deify, glorify or over conceptualize things from my past. Zora Neale Hurston said, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." This year--right this very moment!--I want to realize the beauties before me, the blessings that have been handed down (from somewhere--from above?). I don't want to look back with the requisite misty eyes and wish that I were still single instead of with Southern Boy, that I were living in Trastevere, Rome instead of SoHo, New York, that I were writing news scripts for broadcasts instead of chapters for a novel. I want to live in the here and now.

Ms. Hurston would have claimed these past twelve months to be my Year of Answers. In the same manner, Truman Capote would have said that this was my year of Answered Prayers. I fell in love with a beautiful loving soul (a man that I had heretofore only known in my most ambitious daytime reveries), I pursued my passion for writing and actually achieved my dream, I grew closer to my family.

I'm out of the woods. I'm on the right path. I'm experiencing a wonderful time in my life... which probably means that the cousins are up in the tree stand, aiming to shoot me, stuff me, mount me on the bedroom wall.

Damn, there I go again.

Brenda Star

The smell of newsprint thrills me as much today just as it did when I was a little girl, hoisted on Granddaddy’s hip, taking a tour of the back shop. I remember inhaling the heady mixture of ink, bay breezes and dirt while I looked out at the young men, old men, black men, white men, self-proclaimed Gulf Coast crackers working side by side in his hangar space of flickering orange light and deafening noise. They hunched over the monstrous printing presses, smeared in ink, sweat dropping from the tips of their noses. Limp cigarettes dangled from thin, colorless lips. As we walked around the periphery of the machines, Granddaddy mouthed to me, “No rules,” wagging his index finger in my face like an over-zealous stage actor. My 5 year-old perceptions of his words made that cavernous expanse of cement a sort of Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of whimsy and possibility. I thought Pappy rolled out cotton candy machines during the overnight shift, chocolate milk spurted from the water fountain, pillow fights ensued after night fall to keep the men awake. The association of newspapers with fantasy and otherworldliness is a strange one as no other profession is so grounded in the day-to-day. Yet, somehow the visions hold fast. The fantasy remains.

Twenty years have passed, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning, and, now, I’m standing on my own two feet. I pad out to the entry hall of my apartment building (silk robe, white terry-cloth slippers) and hope that, somehow, the New York Times will smell like the back shop, like Granddaddy, like home. I press my nose and lips to the almost translucent gray sheet of “A1” and inhale. Nothing. I try again. Something faint. I tear off the corner of the front section and do something that I haven’t done since I was a child: I bite off a little piece of the newsprint. I chew. Mamma’s voice rings in my head, “She’s at it again! Will you look? She’s chewing on newsprint! Pappy, get that out of her mouth. What kind of girl am I raisin’ here? My child does not eat dirt.”

“It’s not dirt, darlin,’ it’s my Op-Ed column,” he says with a chuckle.

I spit out the wet ball of paper into my cupped hand. I realize that no matter how terrible or trying my experiences have been in the news business, it will always be some sort of sustenance for me, a steady supply of nourishment and fulfillment.

Destiny—maybe that’s the word I can’t get my tongue around.

Dreams

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."

--John Updike

Extra! Extra!

I did it! With--and only with--y'all's help. Many, many thanks to all my readers.


FICTION: DEBUT.
BELLE OF NEW YORK, about a beautiful Southern Debutante who comes to New York and lands a job in the mosh pit news room of a highly conservative cable network while reveling in the hedonisitic pleasures of the city, based on the blog BELLE IN THE BIG APPLE, was sold to Sarah McGrath at Scribner, by Bill Contardi at Brandt & Hochman (world rights acquired).


Looks like I'll be staying in the Big Apple after all... Now, all I have to do is convince Southern Boy to move up here with me.

Ease

“This is it,” Suze said, her tone much like that of my older sister. I knew that she wanted to sound out her definitive vision of me and my life but, she held back, she knew that I could hear the muddle of mischief and disbelief in her voice. “L-O-V-E, love—you love the man. Don’t deny it.” The more authoritative she sounded, the more she wanted me to substantiate her claims.

“I’m not denying anything,” I responded contentedly. I held the phone in one hand and the stem of my wine glass in the other. Our five o’clock cocktail ritual had somewhat changed since Suze had gotten married, popped out a son and moved to Long Island. Instead of the two of us sharing a bottle of wine on my terrace, I nursed a glass and looked out my kitchen window as she breastfed the baby in her living room and sipped a Jamba Juice smoothie.

“Listen to you! You’re so calm and assured and— Shit! The baby just bit my nipple. Can you hold on while I switch boobs?”

Aaaah… The trials and tribulations of having a lactating friend…

“I’m back! Are you there? Belle?”

“Still here.”

“Anyway, I was saying that you’re more calm, more private—is ‘serene’ an appropriate word for a 25 year-old?”

“You’re right, everything is different, easier, you know? Things just fall into place whereas before, with the others, I felt like I had to work so hard. Now I realize that I had to put forth all that effort because it was wrong, the guys were wrong, we were wrong together—”

“Have you ever seen a bleeding nipple? Shit, I wish I could show you mine right now—looks like they’ve been through a meat-grinder.”

“Back to serenity…”

“Yeah, come on, talk to me. Tell me about the little things, the sweet stuff. Christ, at this point I’d be happy to hear about anything that takes my mind off of these giant lactating footballs that the doctor calls breasts.”

“Well, he writes me love letters,” I began, suddenly shy.

“That’s it— you have to read me one.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Suze. It’s kind of private and—”

“Whatever. You know the condition of my nipples, I can know the state of your relationship.”

“Fine. Here goes. This is an email that I woke up to this morning.”

Belle,


As I climb in bed tonight my thoughts are completely consumed by you, clearly that's no surprise, as this is the way it is each and every night. But tonight it's different, tonight I'm not thinking about the way my hand fits around the back of your neck as I pull you close, run my fingers through your hair... your nose gently brushing my cheek... until, finally my lips find yours.


Clearly I have thought about this before.


Tonight I go to sleep worried, troubled as I think of my love in even the slightest discomfort, discouraged that you are so far away, that there is nothing I can do to comfort you, that these futile words are my only offering. Frustration. I find myself in a situation where I am out of control- I want to do something, I want to fix it (this what I do, I fix things) I want to fix you- I want to hold you close and make everything ok. Alas, I can't. Rather I lie here a thousand miles, pulling my covers tight, wrapping my arms around nothing, saying a prayer for you, my baby... Then, just before sleep comes, I pull the sheets a little closer, whisper I LOVE YOU but no one is there to hear it... I sigh, and think of you one last time. Good night, my sweet.

"Killing me, killing me," Suze said in what was her shorthand way of expressing unmitigated approval.

"Everything with him just makes sense. It's easy."

"He's Southern, you're Southern-- The baby just barfed on my new cashmere sweater. Can we talk tomorrow? Same time, same place?"

Everything She Does Is Magic

It’s Dolce & Gabbana and black and slides over the right bits, conceals the rest. The breasts, the taut belly, the thick ass—the dress makes a promise that I’m more than happy not to keep. But, this is fine. This is written explicitly in my contract. I’m to be a young face, a ready laugh, a woman with a flute of champagne always in hand. Nothing more. THE BOLD SENTENCES (page four) of the staff handbook are meant to scare.

NO PROLONGED CONVERSATIONS

NO GRATUITIOUS FLIRTING

NO EXITING THE EVENT W GUEST/S

INAPPROPRIATE HOSTESSES WILL BE DISMISSED AFTER ______ EVENT

I’m the mystery girl—the paid mystery girl—at the party. The corporate sponsors are worried—the event lacks something. They form a pin-striped huddle and discuss, rubbing their fingers together like drunk Frenchmen on the terrace of the L'Avenue, trying to pinpoint the je ne sais quoi that might be missing.

Aha! Women! Decolletage! Perfumed wrists! Silky skin and stilettos! A sweet voice that will laugh and murmur and make you feel wanted again...

They plant me by the bar or the buffet or the stage. No one knows who I am or why I’m at the MoMa exhibit or the Botanical Garden. The buzz begins. The women in PR and the men at hedge funds whisper behind cocktail glasses and alligator clutches.

This all suits me just fine—as does the pay. Sting’s gig tonight. Maybe he’ll leave me and the other girls a handsome tip. I’ll adjust my dress just so, do the smoky eyes, twist my hair into a blonde chignon… a little piece of magic weaving in and out of the guests, catching their gaze just long enough and then out the door…

Every little thing she does is magic
Every she do just turns me on...

Dust

Girl’s night on the town and C. looks like a Hoover vacuum, coke on any flat surface are her dust and debris. I called “Mimi” to come and save me, talk to me, sip vodka with me instead of snorting dust with the rest. She was at home, watching movies w. her new beau. Smart girl.

Maybe I’ll stay in tonight.

All in a Name

I’m afraid to move from

New York City.

Three little words. They cite nothing more than geographical location (as opposed to the ever-important, “I love you”), and yet they invoke awe, envy, disgust, cynicism and wonderment like nothing else. NO ONE harbors neutral feelings about the Big Apple. I’m addicted to this knee-jerk reaction. It all began when I studied in Buenos Aires and then moved to Rome only to extend my exotic city tour to Palma de Mallorca and then to Sevilla. Automatic respect—“street cred,” if you’ll allow a white girl from the South to use such an expression—comes w. these legendary cities. I’m hooked.

There’s that. And, too, there are nights out on the town w. photography exhibitions and dinner of tempura-fried haricot verts and cabrales steak salad (last night) or champagne and Italian men at “Da Silvano” (2 nights ago) or dancing until dawn at “Cain” and “Marquee” (tonight). Everything I’ve cited is immediate gratification for the senses.

I taste it.
I drink it.
I watch their eyes widen when I say it.
“New York City.”

So, what would I do if I were in Birmingham, Alabama or Duluth, Georgia? Maybe I’d try a little harder because there wasn’t a name to sustain me. Perhaps I’d write more (and imbibe less) if I were further removed from the sins of Dante’s seven circles of hell. Or, maybe I’d just be bored.
I’m biting my lip. I just looked away from the screen. I can’t believe that I’m considering a life elsewhere.

Up North

My hair still smells of chicory and pulled pork and my tongue is thick w. vowels and southernisms but I'm FINALLY back in the city--settled in my little apartment in SoHo! Allow me an hour or so to unpack and then'll I'll write a post...

Walking Uterus

"Almost twenty-six, Belle," my cousin intoned, downing the last of his Busch beer. He looked out over the stone terrace, to the hills of Vestavia and let out a long, hollow belch. "When are you gonna pop out a few babies for the family to enjoy?"

Back down South for a long weekend... I've crossed the Mason-Dixon and, once again, been relegated to the status of a walking uterus.

Back to the Big Apple on Tuesday...

Everything She Does Is Magic

It’s Dolce & Gabbana and black and slides over the right bits, conceals the rest. The breasts, the taut belly, the thick ass—the dress makes a promise that I’m more than happy not to keep. But, this is fine. This is written explicitly in my contract. I’m to be a young face, a ready laugh, a woman with a flute of champagne always in hand. Nothing more. THE BOLD SENTENCES (page four) of the staff handbook are meant to scare.

NO PROLONGED CONVERSATIONS

NO GRATUITIOUS FLIRTING

NO EXITING THE EVENT W GUEST/S

INAPPROPRIATE HOSTESSES WILL BE DISMISSED AFTER ______ EVENT

I’m the mystery girl—the paid mystery girl—at the party. The corporate sponsors are worried—the event lacks something. They form a pin-striped huddle and discuss, rubbing their fingers together like drunk Frenchmen on the terrace of the Flore, trying to pinpoint the je ne sais quoi that might be missing.

Aha! Women! Decolletage! Perfumed wrists! Silky skin and stilettos! A sweet voice that will laugh and murmur and make you feel wanted again...

They plant me by the bar or the buffet or the stage. No one knows who I am or why I’m at the MoMa exhibit or the Botanical Garden. The buzz begins. The women in PR and the men at hedge funds whisper behind cocktail glasses and alligator clutches.

This all suits me just fine—as does the pay. Sting’s gig tonight. Maybe he’ll leave me and the other girls a handsome tip. I’ll adjust my dress just so, do the smoky eyes, twist my hair into a blonde chignon… a little piece of magic weaving in and out of the guests, catching their gaze just long enough and then out the door…

Every little thing she does is magic
Every she do just turns me on...

Holding Pattern

Static.

Circular.

Awaiting clearance.

I’m in a holding pattern.

There are worse things, trust me, I know. Long, leisurely mornings w. coffee and the Times, noontime walks around Gramercy, Juilliard concerts in late afternoon, dinner and a bottle of Cabernet w. the neighbors on my terrace. I’m enjoying the details of fall in the city that most New Yorkers are too busy to notice. Halloween Day I was able to stroll around the city—“un flaneur” the French would call me—with no destination in mind. My sole purpose was to take in the costumes, the smells, collect autumn leaves (the virgin leaves—the ones yet to be trampled by excited, sugar-crazed eight year-olds)…

But, I’m ready for the next challenge. I want this period of wait to be over, to hear the good and the bad news and then move on w. my life. Make your decision—swift and decisive!—and let’s move forward. This plane needs to land at La Guardia so I can check all that baggage and make a new life for myself in the city.

Sundays Passed

Yesterday, I tried—in vain—to recreate a Sunday from childhood passed. I woke up in time to choose a proper outfit for the Episcopals and drink my cup of coffee (2% milk, sugar) and listen to the Top 40 Radio Countdown. Ryan Seacrest has replaced Casey Cassum. No surprise. I already knew such. But, somehow, I resent the change on this particular Sunday morning.

“I refuse to arrive after the first hymn, young lady, let’s go!” Mamma should have said, urging me to put down the mascara wand and totter out the door in my kitten heels. But, she’s not there so I leave late and blister my feet as I run past W. 3rd Street, through the arch of Washington Square and onto Lower 5th.

The service: lovely choral pieces, the priest admits he’s gay, heads shake in disapproval, smiles tweak the lips of the younger set, I’m asked to tithe (“10% of what income?” I wonder). Ninety minutes later I’m back outside in the city air. I decide that the coffee hour in the Parish Hall would just be too much. Back home, that’s where I would gossip with friends, whisper in my sister’s ear about someone’s tacky outfit, ask Mamma to take us to an expensive restaurant instead of back to Granddaddy’s house for the usual repast of oxtail soup and collard greens.

I take myself out to Sunday lunch on Clinton Street. The line wraps around the little bakery/cafe so I’m forced to stand outside and look at the couples and the strollers and the men that parade their Maltipoos around on pink leashes. I pull out Carole Radzwill’s memoir, “What Remains” and lose myself in her story of cancer, frustration, love and loss.

When I’m finally ushered inside (“Table for ONE,” the waitress says, as if I’m a waste of space) and the plate of roast pork arrives, I don’t care anymore. Nothing has been recreated. Sunday memories are sullied. I learn the lesson of never going back. I wish that I had never complained all those years. I wish that I had left the house on time. I wish that I had enjoyed my collard greens and asked for more. Please.

Trifecta

Big and blonde. Lithe and fair. Dark and thinking.

We were a sight.

Three writers in the night, in the big, bad city, talking our way out of Thursday and into the next glass of wine.

Wade through the talk of approaching winter, misspent money, boyfriends and millionaires, Southern surrender and Northern sensibility and you have conversation about the important things. Smiles broaden and fingers dance in the air as one glass turns into two and then three. We’re animated and earnest, very serious about this writing thing... and each other.

Not like that, darling.

Like this: we rattle off random sentences and turns of phrase on the computer screen to make the waking hours more bearable. We wish each other the best of luck. When the writing thing happens to turn a dime or two we promise to sail off into the sunset.

Dreams. Yeah. But, "Mimi," "Opinionista" and I will make it one of these days.

Ignorant & Confident

An important day lies ahead of me. I know that it’s a day of consequence because it requires traveling north of 14th Street and remaining there for hours and hours— longer than my usual two-martini cocktail rendezvous at the Algonquin or the St. Regis. After all the meetings, I’ll be fatigued and in need of a taxi and glass of wine. I wish I had saved a good bottle for a day like today.

“I think it is a matter of having both ignorance and the confidence to take on the task of undeveloped paths.” (Tom Ford)

Today, I am ignorant and confident and wearing a chic, little fall suit. I’m even wearing nice shoes that Mamma would approve of. Y’all wish me luck and hope that I make it back down South—south of 14th Street—with a smile on my face.

Majesty

The girl had to learn everything for herself, and she became involved in various situations and some of the first bloom wore off. However, there was bloom to spare... She was faintly tall, with fine rather large features, eyes with such an expanse of blue in them that you were really aware of it whenever you looked at her, and a good deal of thick, blonde hair--arresting and bright...

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Majesty"

Tennessee & Truman

Question of the day: Why can't I write like Tennessee Williams and lead the life of Capote?

Mamma's Right Wing Loves

“Damn Clinton and his privates!” Mamma declared in a rage. “The Arabs wouldn’t have had a chance in hell if our President—the leader of the free world—had behaved like a diplomat instead of a sex-crazed Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother. He’s up there in the Oval Orifice with a Cheshire cat grin smeared across his face concentrating on his willard instead of on national security and foreign policy.” She had vented—a pearl of sweat forming on her brow line in the process—but it had been brief, a mere moment of undignified behavior. Mamma quickly collected herself, adjusting the starched collar of her pink Lacoste tennis dress, tweaking her gold earrings for reassurance.

“I think you’ve gotta thing for ol’ Clinton and you’re just afraid to admit it,” I teased, glancing at her over the top of my People magazine. Mamma was poised on the divan by the picture window, engaged in one of her favorite pastimes, right-wing website surfing. The absurdity of her sleek, silver Dell laptop amidst the antique furnishings of her Alexandra Mauve sitting room was lost on Mamma. Our decorator had gone to great pains to duplicate the Czarina’s wall color for her—the last Russian Czar, Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra were her obsession. Something about their tragic demise enthralled her. Really, the fall of anything captivated Mamma’s imagination—her Confederate Complex, I called it. As a member of the landed, Southern bourgeoisie, Mamma used to cite the War of Northern Aggression (never, ever referred to as the Civil War) as the most disastrous moment in our nation’s history. Then, along came Clinton.

“Really, Mamma,” I pressed on, trying to get her riled up, “the way you get so agitated... Are you sure you don’t have a crush on Slick Willie?”

Motionless, she sat there amid her purple, pondering the ruin of her country at my hands. Mamma was predisposed to hyperbole, dramatics—ruinous thoughts—all the while sitting perfectly still, a gorgeous smile spread across her face. Such theatrics didn’t make her disingenuous—quite the contrary—she was the most real, 55 year-old child I had ever known.

“Oh, come on now,” I continued, “he was happy as a pig in slop during his two terms—let it be.” My absurd statement wasn’t any fun unless she blushed, scratched the side of her neck in discomfort. “We inherited a damn fine economy on account of him and his so-called depraved, left-wing policies. Does it really matter who he slept with?”

“I never thought I’d raise a child with such loose morals,” Mamma said, her jaw tensing, jamming down the space bar with her long index fingernail. Her vein, our vein—from brow to hairline, smack in the middle of the forehead—pulsated quick and blue, the one feature we shared. We were in a race to the finish, blue blood pounding away.

“Rush warned us that the liberal media machine would infect our youth. Cancer, he called it—one big, fat malignant tumor teeming with Yankee talking heads. They’re going to get you Belle, ravage you with their idealistic rhetoric until you’ve elected another gonorrhea-riddled, cocaine-snortin’ Democrat into office.”

Our household revolved around conservative talk radio and internet. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Matt Drudge were the golden trifecta, beguiling Mamma for at least six hours a day. George Will and his musings entered the picture at night—the Fabio of her political fantasies. Mamma had plenty of right-wing love to go around.

“Here’s an idea,” I said, thickening and elongating every vowel, extracting consonants. The accent always deepened when I spoke to mother on important issues. “Why don’t we resume this conversation in two years when Little Dubya’s first term is over? You know, take a step back, evaluate the two men and their presidential legacies.”

“Game on,” she said, for a moment sounding like one of those Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers. “If my George’s legacy beats Clinton’s, you’ll go and work for the media outlet of my choosing—”

“And, if I win,” I said, cutting her off, “I’ll quit pushing paper for Granddaddy and do whatever the hell I want—in New York City.”

She touched her neck, her gold earrings and resumed trolling the internet for proof that all was right within her conservative world.

A Whole Lotta Pork (Political or Otherwise)

“This is Zeola,” the deep, soulful voice greeted me on the other end of the telephone line.

“Hey, there, it’s Belle. Can I speak to Mamma?” I had exactly twenty minutes to unload on Mamma before I had to be at Housing Works Book Store for Jonathan Lethem’s reading. I wasn’t quite sure how I could be both tactful and timely in recounting to her my work woes.

“Belle, is that REALLY you?” I could just see the whites of her eyes growing bigger. When Zeola got excited her eyeballs bulged out of their sockets—Daddy said that she reminded him of a catfish about to expire on a fishing rod. “The connection’s so good I’d think you’re right here with me at the stove.”

“No, still up here in the big city tryin’ to do my thing—”

“I didn’t think your Granddaddy would ever let go of you,” Zeola said, her accent like slow buttermilk coating every word. She lowered her voice, “What are you doin’ up there with all those Yankees?”

“Oh, Lord…” I could just imagine being late, walking in on Jonathan mid-sentence, tip-toeing to the bar to get my complementary, horrificly oakey serving of Chardonnay.

“Listen, I’ll call back and chat later, but I’m in a hurry. Will you just pass the phone to Mamma?”

“Lands above, we worry about you!” Zeola said, adopting the urgent, strained tone that adults use when chastising loud children inside the local Cineplex.

“Put her on the phone!”

“Well, I don’t know if your Mamma can make it to the phone on account of the bacon grease that’s poppin’ out of my skillet but, being the good Christian that I am, and seein’ that I need myself another soda, I’ll just try to holler and see if she’ll come back into the kitchen.”

Zeola was angry. I was angry. Mamma would soon be angry when she heard that I hated working for the News Channel. Marvelous how even long distance we could all get worked up in a matter of minutes.

“It’s Belle you’ve been talkin’ to for all that time?” I heard Mamma say in the background. “Lord, look how you’re runnin’ up the phone bill—hand me that.”

Bacon frying in the house always put her in a bad mood.

“Belle, is that you, honey?”

“Hey, there, Mamma. You got a second?”

“Yeah, but not much more. I’ve got to keep supervisin’ Zeola and the bacon. She’s making a seven-layer salad for the church supper. Damn chintzy Episcopals—the church has money coming out of its ears and we still have to bring in food. Why can’t we just have the vestry meetings catered?”

“I want to quit the News Channel,” I blurted out.

“What?”

“Nothing’s like I thought it would—”

“Lord!” Mamma shouted into the phone. “Zeola, you mean to tell me that you think that hunk of pig is done? You mean to tell me that all of the germs have been cooked out, there are no more trichinosis running around—you would serve that to one of your grandbabies?”

If the issue at hand was either my future as a journalist or the possibile trichinosis poisoning of the Episcopal vestry, the pigs would win out. Growing up, Mamma’s greatest fear was that one of us would die of either trichinosis or asphyxiation. While she argued with the maid, I downed the last of my glass of wine. Liquid courage. I had to tell her what was happening at work.

“Now, Belle, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” she said, once again focusing her nervous energy on me. “Up in New York and at the News Channel, you’re at the center of the thinkin—”

“The thinking, conservative world,” I said, rolling my eyes, finishing the oft repeated sentence.

I'd had enough of them all. I snapped shut my cell phone and grabbed my keys. Walking down Prince Street I wondered--was there more pork frying in Mamma's kitchen or being slung around the News Channel's basement newsroom?

Al Freddo

A bracing wind off the Hudson. The rattle of a broken radiator. Lentils and sausage at the corner of Mercer and Prince. Night falls before the office door is closed. No more lovely dinners on the sidewalk.

Not AL FRESCO.

AL FREDDO.

WINTER.

Cindy Crawford of the Confederacy

“How does it go? If it bleeds it leads?” I asked, trying not to blush, nervously twisting my blonde ponytail into a bun. I stood in the doorway of the hair and makeup room watching D.—the resident femme fatale and alpha anchor—as she sat cross-legged in the barber shop-style black leather chair examining her jaw line in the magnifying mirror. An errant pimple had dared to mar her flawless complexion. The last time I had seen her look so concerned was during the Florida recount.

“Not quite,” she said, shooting me a look of pity in the mirror, as if I’d watched Holly Hunter in Broadcast News one too many times. “There’s a long approval process, darling. Blood and guts alone don’t cut it with the guys on ‘17’.” D. stopped dabbing liquid foundation on her miniscule blemish and swiveled around. “I’m sorry, I know you haven’t been here long. Look at me—it’s been two years since I left CNN and I still haven’t adjusted to the office politics.”

D. had been poached from CNN’s Atlanta affiliate by the News Channel execs for her stunning looks and perfect teleprompter delivery. They could care less about her reporting and writing abilities, though. “She’s got ‘fuck me’ lips—that’s the reason we put her on air,” I heard one of the producers say in the editing room while I was cutting D.’s Ramallah footage. “And, those big, blue eyes—what’s she doing, pleading with the camera to slip a hundy in her thong?”

It was as if the newsroom trenches were a high school cafeteria, everyone loudly casting their votes for the year book superlatives. D.—hands down—would have won Best Looking; Most Popular, however, was way out of her reach. The blonde bombshell and native Southerner fluctuated between pleasant and insufferable like the temperature in the Mojave desert come nightfall. Everyone despised her. But, hell, I didn’t care, I was in awe of her--I wanted to be her. Everyone back home called her the “Cindy Crawford of the Confederacy,” a beautiful product of our Georgia soil.

“I’ll learn my way around soon enough,” I said, turning away from her reflection, stepping into the overly air-conditioned linoleum hallway. I walked down the corridor toward the newsroom ticking off our similarities, wondering how long it would be before I replaced her in that chair.

Girl Crush?

Mamma didn't know what to think about my Friday appearance on Gawker...

"Are they sayin' you're a lesbian?!"

Belle & the Brit

The early fall thunderstorm raged on, rain slipping down the red bricks of my building, sliding off the windows, pooling around my cheap patio furniture outside. What was I supposed to do? Thursday night and I knew that I had to get out of the apartment—I’d been cooped up all day with my computer and Indian takeout. My studio apartment smelled like curry and I looked like Eileen Wurnos (the Florida serial killer as played by Charlize Theron in “Monster”) in flannel pyjamas.

Someone to cheer me up… someone with a sharp wit and a love of wine…someone to be my partner in crime … Mimi!

Mimi (of Mimi New York blog fame) and I decided to finally meet face-to-face and go out for a few glasses of vino and a plate of antipasti. She’s a tough-as-nails broad from England and I’m a sugary sweet girl from the South—or so we thought on our respective taxi rides over to the restaurant. Once we’d had a glass of wine and discussed the New York media scene, men and rent below 14th Street, though, we laughed at how different we were in person than on our sites. Yes, some of the preconceived notions were true. But, who’d have known that Mimi speaks in such a soft, sweet tone that I had to lean into her glass of Pinot Grigio to hear her latest disastrous dating story? Or, that her big, blue eyes would gently encourage me to talk about my life when surely her travails as a stripper were much more interesting cocktail fodder?

Four hours later, and I couldn’t afford any more Sauvignon Blanc. I had to go home even if I wanted to tuck into another bar, order a dirty martini. But, I have a feeling we’ll be going out again. After all of our terrible evenings with Manhattan men, I think Mimi and I deserve some fabulous nights on the town—just us girls.

Mamma's Right Wing Loves

“Damn Clinton and his privates!” Mamma declared in a rage. “The Arabs wouldn’t have had a chance in hell if our President—the leader of the free world—had behaved like a diplomat instead of a sex-crazed Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother. He’s up there in the Oval Orifice with a Cheshire cat grin smeared across his face concentrating on his willard instead of on national security and foreign policy.” She had vented—a pearl of sweat forming on her brow line in the process—but it had been brief, a mere moment of undignified behavior. Mamma quickly collected herself, adjusting the starched collar of her pink Lacoste tennis dress, tweaking her gold earrings for reassurance.

“I think you’ve gotta thing for ol’ Clinton and you’re just afraid to admit it,” I teased, glancing at her over the top of my People magazine. Mamma was poised on the divan by the picture window, engaged in one of her favorite pastimes, right-wing website surfing. The absurdity of her sleek, silver Dell laptop amidst the antique furnishings of her Alexandra Mauve sitting room was lost on Mamma. Our decorator had gone to great pains to duplicate the Czarina’s wall color for her—the last Russian Czar, Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra were her obsession. Something about their tragic demise enthralled her. Really, the fall of anything captivated Mamma’s imagination—her Confederate Complex, I called it. As a member of the landed, Southern bourgeoisie, Mamma used to cite the War of Northern Aggression (never, ever referred to as the Civil War) as the most disastrous moment in our nation’s history. Then, along came Clinton.

“Really, Mamma,” I pressed on, trying to get her riled up, “the way you get so agitated... Are you sure you don’t have a crush on Slick Willie?”

Motionless, she sat there amid her purple, pondering the ruin of her country at my hands. Mamma was predisposed to hyperbole, dramatics—ruinous thoughts—all the while sitting perfectly still, a gorgeous smile spread across her face. Such theatrics didn’t make her disingenuous—quite the contrary—she was the most real, 55 year-old child I had ever known.

“Oh, come on now,” I continued, “he was happy as a pig in slop during his two terms—let it be.” My absurd statement wasn’t any fun unless she blushed, scratched the side of her neck in discomfort. “We inherited a damn fine economy on account of him and his so-called depraved, left-wing policies. Does it really matter who he slept with?”

“I never thought I’d raise a child with such loose morals,” Mamma said, her jaw tensing, jamming down the space bar with her long index fingernail. Her vein, our vein—from brow to hairline, smack in the middle of the forehead—pulsated quick and blue, the one feature we shared. We were in a race to the finish, blue blood pounding away.

“Rush warned us that the liberal media machine would infect our youth. Cancer, he called it—one big, fat malignant tumor teeming with Yankee talking heads. They’re going to get you Belle, ravage you with their idealistic rhetoric until you’ve elected another gonorrhea-riddled, cocaine-snortin’ Democrat into office.”

Our household revolved around conservative talk radio and internet. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Matt Drudge were the golden trifecta, beguiling Mamma for at least six hours a day. George Will and his musings entered the picture at night—the Fabio of her political fantasies. Mamma had plenty of right-wing love to go around.

“Here’s an idea,” I said, thickening and elongating every vowel, extracting consonants. The accent always deepened when I spoke to mother on important issues. “Why don’t we resume this conversation in two years when Little Dubya’s first term is over? You know, take a step back, evaluate the two men and their presidential legacies.”

“Game on,” she said, for a moment sounding like one of those Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers. “If my George’s legacy beats Clinton’s, you’ll go and work for the media outlet of my choosing—”

“And, if I win,” I said, cutting her off, “I’ll quit pushing paper for the conservatives and do whatever the hell I want—in New York City.”
She touched her neck, her gold earrings and resumed trolling the internet for proof that all was right within her conservative world.

Busy In Love

Was too preoccupied being in love down South to post blog entries... very sorry. My musings will recommence tomorrow morning!

Wedding at Brierfield

Flying back down South for a weekend wedding… The invitation reads:

Five o’clock at Brierfield Farm
Little River Road
Brierfield, Alabama
Meander to the barn afterward for the reception

Dinner the previous night is at the Birmingham Country Club. Sunday is a polo match. This all feels very horsey, like I’m going to run across Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and Wills of Wales somewhere in the church pews. I take back what I said about the South being a bastardized version of 18th century Gallic society. Maybe we Southerners are just trying to capture a little piece of England, the Mother Country, that place we originally came from. No wonder I try to create a little piece of Alabama up here in the Big Apple. It’s a survival skill of some sort; I convince myself that I’m back home, but the best version of “home”—a home with tolerance, poetry readings, Barney’s, diversity, the Film Forum, chaos, Cipriani’s, skyscrapers, roof-top gardens, symphony in the Park, a chance to reinvent myself.

Of course, what I really want, is to share this new home of mine with someone I love. Southern Boy, where are you?

A String of Diamonds, Pearls on Sunday

I keep dreaming about Paris—St. Germain, really. The Left Bank and Café de Flore… a nicoise and a pernod in the shadow of the eglise…A cliché—yes. But, I’m all right with that. The fantasy is of me and an older man…

“You have a princess neck,” he says, trying to roll his tongue around the “r’s,” soften them up to suit my American ear.

“I do?” I demur, trying for a moment to be the good Southern girl of years past. At present, I’m very busy being maudlin and analyzing my big city life across the pond.

“One meant for a string of diamonds. Pearls on Sundays.” A slow sip of the Calvados and he continues staring.

It is some weeknight in October and I am stroking the blonde hairs on my neck and the old, tanned Frenchman next to me is thankful for the breeze off the Seine and his Cubano cigar and the forgiving light cast by Flore’s awning. The golden hue takes ten years off and he knows it. Without a pause, he asks me to write my phone number on his crisp, linen kerchief.

“Ahh, but you won’t answer your phone,” he says, suddenly coy.

“Of course I will.”

The Frenchman and I continue exchanging lies.

Why not? Joan Didion told me that, “I could stay up all night and make mistakes and none of it would count.”

Paris begs for mistakes… and then for all to be forgotten over a café au lait and croissant in the morning.

Pressure

Writing, writing, writing... to relieve the pressure on my heart, and conscience.

If You See Something, Say Something

The N train slows to a halt and opens its doors, releasing old passengers, collecting new ones. I put down the Times Magazine to look at the new faces and bulky Sunday strollers that crowd the center aisle. Just behind the families and tourists, barely visible on the faded yellow wall of the subway car, is an MTA poster (Mass Transit Authority, for you non New Yorkers/city-dwellers).

“IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!”

I turn back to the Times and the Didion piece. But, this time, I can’t concentrate. I stare at the poster and listen to the babies gurgle, the blind beggar with the impressive baritone begin an Otis Redding tune. Like a mother’s final warning or an overhead announcement at the airport, “Last call, this is the last call for passenger Belle on flight 6759 to Birmingham, Alabama…” the words of the slogan resonate in my mind.

What is the difference between informing and snitching? Telling and divulging? Enlightening and exposing? If I saw a lone backpack on the subway platform, yes, of course I would report it. The same goes for a suspicious piece of luggage in Penn Station or Grand Central. But, what about when it comes to the more difficult things in life—when there are repercussions for “saying something when you see something?” What would y’all do?

My conscience makes me open up. My conscience makes me reveal things that I wish I could keep tucked in the box springs of my bed, somewhere hidden beneath my feather mattress and silk comforter. My conscience makes me disclose information that, perhaps, I should keep to myself.

“Writing, writing, writing… to relieve the pressure on my heart and conscience.”

I’ve seen too much to sit still, keep my mouth closed. Relay. Release. Reveal. Expose. Expose’…

Lil Ol' Me On The BBC

Looks like the Brits are diggin' Belle...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/upallnight_blog/20050927.shtml

You Snort, We Decide

“Throw me a bone! Gimme a kidnapping, a boatload of drowning Haitians, a Palestinian suicide bomber—something!” I yelled at the Reuters news feed. I peeled off my smelly Banana Republic viscose cardigan and stabbed the “Enter” key with my leaky Bic. Blue ink trickled down the right side of the keyboard. “We need some news—there’s a 4:30 a.m. broadcast!” Aside from the frantic NYU intern, no one so much as looked in my direction. G. pored over the morning’s confidential memos sent down from the suits on “17” while the video editors watched soft porn on Cinemax and the geriatric editor snored to the audience laughter of “Saturday Night Live.” I glanced at my watch and then at the darkened breaking news studio that occupied the middle of the newsroom floor. Suddenly, the orange “Breaking News” light flashed at the bottom of my computer monitor—there had been a subway bombing in the 8th arrondisement. I quietly cheered for the dead and injured in Paris.

Three months into my gig at the News Channel and I was a changed woman. An unshakeable sense of realism (and fatalism) had replaced my reveries. Leaps of faith were well chosen, usually involving my personnel file. I also snuck in a prayer or two at the midway mark—around 5 a.m.—urging the gods of Reuters and AP to bring me a fine, headline-grabbing disaster. I’d cut out superfluous cries and bloodshed with the Avid, attach a menacing graphic or two and then slug the sucker with something catchy like, “Wet Willie: Ex Prez Clinton Visits Tsunami Victims.” I’d end it with a freeze frame of Bill eye-balling a busty native.

It was all a game anyway, right?

“Fucking ingenious,” my director chuckled once he woke up and saw my new segment. “Don’t get me wrong, this is all a shit show but, the ratings couldn’t be any better. Middle America loves infotainment.”

“Yeah, they also like cheap drugs,” G. said from behind me. I spun around to face him and the stack of memos he hugged to his chest. “I like to think that we're crystal meth for the average American out in fly-over territory. ‘You Snort, We Decide.’ Think the PR department would go for it?”

Granddaddy

“Belle’s the only one with any sense in this God damned family!” Granddaddy bellowed to no one in particular. A turtle’s head popped up from the fresh water shallows of the lake, heavy, concentric circles marking its appearance. “Come and sit over here by your Pappy,” he said and motioned to the empty space next to him on the deck swing. I picked up the ridged Folgers coffee canister of fish food and sat down slowly, careful not to spill the brown pellets.

“You’re doin’ real well down at my paper, darlin’. Good thing because there isn’t another God damned thing that you’re qualified to do, no suh…” his voice trailed off and he took a sip of Scotch. He extended the glass in my direction, but I wasn’t thirsty. With me, he was frank: Granddaddy treated me like a man. “I think you should keep on, show these bastards how it’s done. Keep pluggin’ away and in another ten, fifteen years I’ll make you Editor-in-Chief. How’d you like that?”

I didn’t look at him. We faced the lake and drifted upward into the moist, twilight air and—just for a moment—I suspended disbelief and worries and everyday life. Then we came back down, the balls of my feet touching the wooden deck. I wanted to push us back up, I wanted to push for the both of us—

“I want you to spell ‘parallel’ for your Pappy,” he said, a smooth palm now resting on my forearm.

“Granddaddy, I know how to spell and I know that I could keep on writing for you but, I’m moving. I’ve made up my mind.” I looked over and his eyes were fixed on nothing and I pushed us back up because he was too old and too distracted to do the practical things anymore.

“I said, spell the word ‘parallel.”

“P-a-r-a-l-l-e-l.”

“You’re goin’ to be the youngest editor that joint has ever seen,” he grinned, genuinely pleased, punching the air with his index finger. “They all misspell ‘parallel’—my reporters, editors, the boys in the back shop—”

“I’m moving to New York City,” I said flatly.

Granddaddy stopped the swing. The oak tree and its curtain of moss above us stopped moving. I felt dizzy.

“Let me tell you a little something about this place you’re so anxious to leave,” he began, pacing his speech and temper. “We are 1,200 miles south of Park Avenue for a reason. I decided to establish my family in this town because your Pappy likes being the boss, likes doing as he pleases.

“I see you at the paper and you’re the same way. I’ve always given you what you wanted, when you wanted it. Maybe your ol’ Granddaddy’s a patsy, I don’t know. But, I can’t keep on. If you go up there and leave me and the paper, things are going to get real hard, darlin.’ Your Pappy won’t be able to help you.”

“Don’t treat me like a girl,” I said.

“Damn it, you can’t just pick up and move away!”

He had a way of presenting the modern-day, American South as if it were 19th century Gallic society—albeit a bastardized version. For Granddaddy, it wasn’t just the pace of life or the rhythm of speech, but the social structure. Money wasn’t so much earned as it was inherited. Down here, wealth wasn’t acquired through brilliant ideas—it was maintained in estates and property. Staying in his good graces would be far more lucrative than chasing a Northern dream.

“Belle, God damnit, what are you going to do?” Pappy said, this time his voice betraying more concern than anger. “I’d try to give you a name or two but they all died on me, all my contacts are dead. That’s what happens when you get to be my age. There’s only one but, no suh… he’s so damned liberal I don’t want you knowin’ who he is,” he said and then drew a long, slow sip from his glass. “I gave him his first job—youngest beat reporter I ever hired—and now he’s up at the Grey Lady, chief of the editorial page. Think he worked his way up from the Village Voice or somethin’ like that, hell, I can’t keep track. All I know is ol’ Chris Randolph went and turned into a bleeding heart, Yankee Democrat on me. Can you imagine, in good conscience, livin’ like that?”

“The sun’s leavin’ us,” I said, knowing better than to press the subject. “Why don’t we feed your fish before it’s too late?”

I put the canister to the side of the swing and stood in front of Granddaddy, giving him my hands and forearms for balance. Our arms twisted together as only the young and old can manage to do and he pulled himself up to a standing position. I looked into those eyes, so full of quiet, blue secrets, and recognized that he was everything: I would never again be quite as whole.

He surveyed the water. “Now, I want you to look out for Nathan. He comes runnin’ when he knows there’s food. Yep, there he is—oldest, fattest bass in my lake. Greedy bastard, isn’t he? You know, I named him after that blood-suckin’ lawyer uncle of mine… Comes around at feedin’ time and then he vanishes.” Pappy scattered the fish food, wrist bent, fingers pointed in: for a moment, he was the King of Mardi Gras tossing chocolate and gold-foiled coins to the crowd.

“You love me all the time, don’t you Nathan? Not just when it gets dark and there’s no one else and you need to be tended to…” Pappy said softly. He tossed the ridged, metal canister into the grass and then reached for my hand. Together, we watched the last of the bass swim from the clear shallows into the deep green of the distant lake water.

The Interview

Beep. “Bob, where are my scripts? Get the fucking scripts up to Studio A, now!” Beep.

The overhead intercom announced my arrival. It began screaming at the exact moment I stepped through the newsroom’s glass doors.

Beep. “You’re going to fuck me over in front of all of America, Bob. Bring me the scripts for the fucking “C” block.” Beep.

Young guys, about my age, ran past with scripts in one hand and cassettes in the other. They muttered to themselves about voiceovers and live shots, satellite feeds and when they could take their next cigarette break. Computers, television screens and maps of the Middle East crowded every work surface. Phones rang and rang and it sounded as if exactly two of them were answered. A quarter mile of madness stretched before me, one slender path cutting through its core. The racket was deafening. Swivel chairs and video carts obstructed the aisle; candy bar wrappers, empty soda cans and take-out containers littered the computer stations. Primary colored desktops and chairs lent the room an elementary air.

I had just sat down, crossed my ankles, when a tall, dark-haired woman approached me—it looked as if nothing could have parted her thin, maroon lips into a smile.

“Belle Lee?” she said in a flat, lifeless voice.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m Belle.”

“For God’s sake, don’t say ‘ma’am’ around me—I feel old enough as it is. Follow me into my office, it’s quieter in there. Oh, and my name is Cheryl Burke. I’m the Vice President of the newsroom, this whole mess you’re looking at.”

I decided right then and there that Cheryl never could have made it down South. It took five seconds and a limp handshake to determine her potential status below the Mason-Dixon. With her enormous shoulder pads and miniscule ass, she looked like a scrawny, 2nd string high-school football player masquerading as the starting quarterback. She was tense, charmless, overbearing. We stepped into her dry-walled makeshift office studded with plaques, certificates and crystal obelisks; the trophies tried very hard to justify her 6-figure salary.

“I understand you come from a news family,” Cheryl said with equal parts condescension and amusement. She held my resume at arm’s length, up to the light as if she were looking for stains (chewing tobacco spittle, barbecue sauce?). “Your grandfather’s paper is quite influential down there, down, uh…where is it again?” She sounded thoroughly bored.

“Alabama—Mobile to be precise,” I said, trying to maintain a smile.

“Right, right… So what brings you up here? What can the station do for you? Looks like you had a very comfortable place for yourself down there.”

“I want to be the anchor of the 6 o’clock news. I suppose you can’t do that working at a newspaper,” I said quickly, perhaps too quickly.

“Well, aren’t we ambitious?” Cheryl said, arching an over-penciled eyebrow. “Just a minute,” she said picking up the ringing telephone. “What now? Didn’t you hear what he said today in the quarterly? For fuck’s sake, Guy, no. It doesn’t matter if CNN is running it at the top of the hour. If drugs are involved we don’t run it.”

“I’ll step out,” I mouthed to Cheryl, pointing to a swivel chair out in the newsroom.

She cupped the receiver, “No, I’ll be off in minute. Stay where you are.” Completely unaware of my discomfort, Cheryl began screaming at Guy on the other end of the line. “Bush! Does the last name ‘Bush’ mean a God damned thing to you? I know that Noelle was arrested trying to buy prescription drugs. And so does the rest of America because the God damned liberals are wallpapering their broadcasts with her mug shot! Get another fucking lead story and call me back!” Slam.

“Now, the six o’clock news,” she began again, running a slender finger along her upper lip, wiping away the beginnings of a sweat mustache.

“That’s where I want to be in ten years,” I continued, trying to convince both myself and Cheryl that I was capable of pulling off this grand plan. “Quite frankly, Ms. Burke, the News Channel is setting the standard. I want to be part of a news organization that represents the majority of Americans. The Republican Party has a lock on the presidency, the House and the Senate for a reason—our country is fed up.” Cheryl leaned further and further over her desk, nodding in agreement as if I were a toddler about to utter my first precious word. It was almost too easy.

“And?” she asked, pressing for more, perhaps hoping that I would validate the headaches, ringing telephones, and cheap dry-walling that defined the newsroom.

“All I’m asking for is a chance—” I began, suddenly interrupted by the phone.

“What, Guy? Yeah, well, I’m sorry the anchor had a problem with our coverage. Tell her to go fuck herself and then come talk to me,” she said, nodding at the phone as if it were a person.

“Belle,” she said as she hung up the phone, switching back into interview mode, smoothing down her limp bob, “I like what I hear. You’re exactly the kind of person we need down here in the newsroom. Your background, your experience, your point of view—that’s what management and I look for. When can you start?”

It had all gone so quickly that I didn’t know what to say. She hadn't even checked my references. Of course, I would later learn that the News Channel never checked credentials--once again, too many man hours.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow it is. We’ll start you off working the night shift. Great place to gain experience, learn your way around the newsroom. Welcome to the News Channel. Now, get out of my office."

Outside Headquarters

The bold red font of the electronic “news crawl” wrapped around the building, disappearing into an adjacent Broadway marquee. Beneath the moving headlines was a pretty, frozen-faced blonde, playing in Technicolor across three enormous television screens. She looked out at me and the Midtown office workers, her over-glossed lips seductive, taunting. The eyes of T.J. Eckleberg, I thought; she’s surveying the emotional wasteland that is Midtown Manhattan.

Is that what I want—my face on the side of a building, my lips reciting scripts of tragedy, death and heartache? One hour before my interview: too much time to sit and wrestle with fate, stare up at the woman whose job I was supposed to covet.

Pedro Says...

"Everything that isn't autobiographical is plagiarism."

--Pedro Almodovar

Nielsen Before Pulitzer

“Always bury the lead. Always have an agenda. And, for Christ’s sake, remember that a real journalist considers Nielsen before Pulitzer.”

--Anonymous

The Big Time

My producer, G., was juiced, sweating through his “Moody Blues, Tour of 89’" t-shirt and furiously drumming his fingers on the desktop.

“Belle, what am I going to do?” he whined. “You know this place busts my balls.”

“Ask to be transferred to dayside. You’ve been on this shift too long and the hours are killing you—you can’t keep it up.” I tried to focus on the computer screen and the breaking news updates but I was worried—the sweating, and the dilated pupils, scared me. Two hours into the overnight shift and he had made five trips to the bathroom.

G. shoved his hands into his pockets. I knew that the right side was where he kept it. He would finger the small, Ziploc bag in his trouser pocket and then take it out, play with it when he thought no one was looking. It’s as if he were a five year-old boy that had just discovered something hanging between his legs; he touched it just enough to reassure him, make him feel good. For a split second he’d be calm and his eyes would roll back in his head.

“Fuck me if Arafat died before daylight,” he blurted out.

“And then what? You’d get a raise based on the Nielsens’?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Bingo.”

Fact: working the overnight shift at a 24-hour news station means that you are new, incompetent or crazy. It doesn’t matter if you are the anchor or tech support, lower management has scheduled you to work the between the hours of 1a.m. and 11a.m. because upper management thinks you’re worthless, you can’t be trusted with the big stuff.

“What about the networks?” I offered. “Why don’t you leave cable news and go to one of the big three? Better hours, better pay…”

“Three marriages in nine years,” he cried.

I stopped typing.

“Did you hear me? I’m averaging a wife every three years. And, I’m supposed to be on top of my game? Give a shit about producing 90-second news cut-ins?” His enlarged pupils looked at me incredulously.

We all knew that the news room VP couldn’t stand him but, G. was staff. Staff (as opposed to freelancers) were never fired—too much paperwork and too many man hours for the fat cats on “17” to prove him incompetent. He was doomed to a career of graveyard shifts, distant time zone news, collapsed nasal passages. I stared at him and imagined his body slowly adapting to the lack of sunshine and rest, thriving in the dank newsroom air. Soon, he would resemble a blind sewer rat, a thin flap of skin covering his small, red eyes.

I sat back in my swivel chair and began rocking, back and forth, back and forth... We looked at each other and then I shifted my gaze to the Ziploc bag next to his computer. A single wrinkle cut into the otherwise taut plastic surface.

“What? What?” he said, grabbing my shoulders. “We’ve got shit for coffee in the Green Room. You think that’s the same stuff they feed Kissinger and Morris? Fuck no.” G. stood up and began pacing between a row of deserted workstations and the War Room. A string of clocks hung on the far wall: London, Paris, Moscow, Baghdad, Kabul, Beijing…

“We’re so proud of you workin’ up at that station in New York City—you’re at the center of the thinkin,’ conservative world,” Mamma had said at the end of our phone conversation. I liked the way she pronounced “New York”—all whiskey and whispers and silk bedroom slippers. Her accent imparted an exoticism on the city that otherwise belonged to those distant time zones on the wall.

“I just can’t imagine the wonderous things you see…”

Plunk.

G. dropped his bag of cocaine onto my keyboard: it sat upright, a stubborn, white giant on the keys. Letters danced across the screen punctuating the 3:30am news script.

“This might do you some good,” he said, smirking. “You gotta wake up, kid, this is the big time.”

Off the "6"

(slow Saturday... back from the Upper West Side...)

“This is a Brooklyn-bound local “6” train,” a mechanized female voice announced. Her tone reminded me of the “Fox” anchors—detached yet seductive. I quickly stepped into the car, pressing my purse firmly to my side.

Everything about New York scared me then. Terrorism, tragedy, disaster—my reactionary news station had taught me to fear everything about daily life in the metropolis. One month on the job and I was programmed to believe in the worst. (We had the newsroom VP’s pager number just in case, rather, God willing(!), we Fox minions were accidentally at the scene, part of the calamity. “Gotta beat CNN in the ratings!”)

“Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” a stern, male voice continued, sounding like a wise uncle. The artery sealed and we lurched forward into the black belly of Manhattan.

I sat down in one of the few empty seats, crossed my ankles, risked a glance at the car. Directly across from my seat was a pair of hand-tooled, brown cowboy boots. The dark, denim legs attached were spread as wide as the back end of a set of pliers. I expected to see Robert Redford from the “Horse Whisperer” peek over the top of his Post. Mmmmm, handsome…The jumble of newsprint, the smell of the commuters’ coffee and cologne, the smooth plateaus of speed of the “6” train lulled me into a daze.

My eyes fluttered… My grip loosened…

What if I met my future husband on the subway? It could happen you know…
Maybe he’d be an expatriate Southerner like me, trying to make his way, find love, begin a new life… We might have to tell our kids a different story, though, tweak it a bit. Something more romantic.What about the “Waldorf?” Maybe we could claim meeting in “Peacock Alley” or in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum. Yes, better, muuuuch more roman—

“Wall Street,” the sexy voice announced. “Next…”

I had missed my stop. I was leaving the island. The cowboy had left me. My purse was gone.

Ms. DuBois

"I don't want realism. I want--magic!"
--Blanche DuBois, "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Mornings on the "6"

I like to be alone in the mornings, take breakfast on my patio with chicory coffee and cream, “Ceci-Cela” croissants, the “New York Times.” An above-the-fold article, sugar, half-and-half in the mug, yeast and warmth in the air from “Vesuvio Bakery” several blocks away…

The waking hours are hopeful.

Fox News—and the overnight shift—didn’t allow me these quiet, expectant moments. Sometimes I’d walk from the News Corp. headquarters at 49th and 6th to Grand Central, trying to feel everyone else’s expectation and promise. But, I was already numb—the dark hours blended into the morning light. Gray.

Chignon unraveling, eyes dry and reddened from the dank, newsroom air, I boarded the subway for home. Professional New York was just beginning its day as I ended mine, heading home to an apartment with no curtains. Six fitful hours of sleep awaited me—my reward—until I had to wake up and do it all over again.

Hssssss. The “6” train opened and disgorged passengers onto the Grand Central Platform. I was unprepared. It was as if a steel artery had burst and the lifeblood of the city were rushing toward me, surrounding me in a hot, red pool of angst and excitement. Blue suits leapt up the steps two at a time. Head wraps, boys selling bags of M&M’s, folds of fat squeezed into tight blue jeans rushed passed my tired eyes.

(have to run to an appointment on the Upper West Side... will continue this afternoon!)

Next-of-Kin

I’m 25 years old. I live in a 300 square foot box. I’m not gainfully employed. Yet, somehow, my sister, S., named me next-of-kin. I’m supposed to protect the little one (my brilliant, 2-month old niece) if anything should happen to S. and her husband. Where will I put the little bundle of molecules—in my tub? When I go for oysters and Sancerre at “Balthazar,” where will I leave her—with the coat check lady, hoping she won’t get lost in a mountain of mink?

A baby and Belle and New York City…

“You ever gonna have one of these up in the city?” my sister asked me as she lay in mother’s four-poster bed. Dozens of paper white pillows were stacked behind her, arranged to the side of her, on top of her. “Oh, come on, la vie metropolitaine and a baby of your own… you could teach it all those languages that you speak.”


She made a grand gesture, mocking me. Her arm gently descended on the pillow as her voice faded. Slowly, slowly… she almost fell into a quiet slumber before I had crossed the room. Pregnancy kept her eyelids perpetually swollen, the blue irises always searching for the next nap behind padded lids. Lying in that cavernous bedroom strewn with mismatched teacups and saucers, floral sheets twisted and discarded miles from the bed, yellowed book jackets waving like daisies under the fan’s breeze, she looked like a nymph in mother’s overgrown garden. I pried open the three windows that Zeola had been so careful to close and waited for a breeze. The scrub oaks and pine trees that surrounded the house and lake were still and lifeless. The azalea bushes drooped, sun-bleached and shriveled from the summer drought. Five hundred acres of tawny, overgrown grasses stretched before me. I wanted to cry and curse and sneeze all at the same time.


My life in New York was a sham, mother was a mess and the mattress atop the family’s fabled bed was fifty years old and full of dust mites.


“Do you think Mamma minds that I’m laid up like this?” she asked, her eyes still closed.


“She likes having people dependant on her—hell, look at Daddy. You don’t worry about a thing, all right?”


The bed was one of the family’s prized antiques, a golden creation of polished oak, delicately carved pinecones gracing each of its four posts. Having learned of S.’s pregnancy, Mamma decided that S. had to rest in that particular bed throughout the entire gestation period.


“Pinecones are powerful symbols of hospitality and warm reception. As such, we welcome this first, unborn grandchild into our family.”


Asinine.


I felt responsible for livening up her goose down and lace solitary confinement.


I had to rouse her; I had to play my role. The familiar pattern of our conversation would reassure me. Her brow did look smoother and her expression was more relaxed, even playful. The thought of leaving her like that, just so, crept into my mind. I walked over and pressed my palms against the slant of the roof above the dormer window. I stared out the glass panes and squinted.


“What does today’s sunlight remind you of? Can I tell you what I think of?”


“Tell me, lil’ one,” she said, her voice assuring me that things were good this morning. We both had moments of ease, days of madness. Mamma called it an imbalance of humors (“...too much damn Tabasco sauce when I was pregnant with you two girls”). Slowly, my sister smiled and tilted her head to the side. A hand rested on her large belly and she submitted to the morning light, allowing its warm rays to rest on her broad, ivory cheeks.


“Duh duh duh da!” I held up my arms and turned my torso toward the window, to the door and finally to my sister in bed like a gymnast saluting the Olympic committee. “For my very privileged audience of one, in list fashion, I give you, ‘Morning Light!’ Chicken feathers, fresh laundry, Mamma’s golden arm hair, the sheen of a fresh catch of grouper, the reflection pools outside the courthouse and last but not least, the glow of my lovely sister’s smile after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl!”


She gave me a smile, broad and lazy. She was good, I was good—we were both trying very hard to be good in the white, morning sunshine. I stepped toward the window again and looked out.


Decaying grandeur.


I kept my eyes on the property and waited for Miss Havisham to walk up the flagstone.

Fox News Channel

At 22 I began working for Fox News Channel. I idolized Sean Hannity and longed to be Laurie Dhue so I put up with the grunt work, minimum wage, leering, middle-aged producers (not to mention Bill O’Reilly’s roving eye). The environment was toxic. A few months under the thumb of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and I had undergone a crash course in personal compromises, professional concessions.

I hope to never be in such a position again.

Ahh, but Fox News was good for a story or two...

A Sentence a Day...

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

--Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"

Concessions

I’m alone with my thoughts, a Pacino film, a plate of gorgeous, roasted peppers, a hunk of Manchego, a glass of Spanish rose’. I’m not wearing two coats of mascara or a hint of perfume; my neck smells of nothing more than Dial soap. My face is bare, exposed—the shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Tonight, I didn’t worry about purses and panty lines and lipstick on my teeth. The white tank and terry cloth slippers suit my couch just fine—

Two mice just darted across the kitchen floor, ducked into the radiator.

Never had to worry about those down South… but, it’s all a trade-off, right? I’ll take a mouse or two if I can keep my foreign film theatres, fresh ravioli store, gilded reading room at the 42nd Street library, off-Broadway plays, run-ins with Benjamin Bratt in Union Square, wine bars on Clinton Street, midnight writing classes, evenings on my terrace with quirky neighbors.

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs, tradeoffs…is this what adult life is all about? Is “having it all” a myth concocted by Hollywood? When I was in high school, I would run down to the bay, stare across the dark brown water until it reached the green of the Gulf. I told myself that I would do it all, have it all. There was the journalism career, wealthy husband, apartments in Paris and Rome, famous friends… the list went on and on.

Mamma made concessions. She quit a successful career in journalism to take care of four kids—me, my two sisters, my father. She left her typewriter (yes, back then they used typewriters) for the stove, the washing machine, the neighborhood bake sale in July. No more trips to her favorite castle in Ireland or to the tapas bars of Madrid. The life she knew ended so her family’s life could begin. I vowed that I would never give up anything (Me! Me! Me!); “compromise” was not in my vocabulary.

Now, I concede more. Instead of a helicopter out to the Hamptons, I take a commuter plane back down South for a slow weekend of dinners by the lake, babies, walks around the farm. I have a five o’clock toddy with my grandparents instead of champagne with the Italians at “Da Silvano.” I visit Southern Boy in Birmingham instead of telling him to come to the City. Is this growing up or am I on the slippery slope to forgetting about me and remembering the needs of everyone else?

A Young , Worshipful Beginner

"…[New York] is still a city that calls to his ‘young, worshipful beginners’ from the Corn Belt and Mississippi…”

–E. B. White

Celibate in the City

Sex. Lots of it. According to the lead story in the “New York Post”—and my father—we Manhattanites are doing it, and quite frequently.

“Are you kidding me?,” my father taunted my mother during one of our annoying, three-way phone conversations. “EVERYONE is doing it up there—EVERYONE,” he intoned with undeserved authority. What does he know, tucked away in their mountain house, high atop the Blue Ridge Mountains? And, moreover, why aren’t I experiencing any of the fabulous coitus down here in the nether regions, in the tip of the island of Manhattan? I have my theories…

Sex oozes from the over-priced loft windows high above Prince Street, from the “Wolford” hosiery store on Greene (the mannequin almost always sports a thong and sheer chaps), from the picture window of “Olive’s” bakery where, every morning, the counter guy (and girl) follow my body a full city block with their lusty gaze. The City itself is sex. Engaging in the act would be excessive—a sensory overload.

Last night, I had a lovely dinner at “Giorgione,” one of my favorite haunts near the Hudson. My friends and I sat in the front, by the French doors, to feel the evening breeze, steal glimpses of the moon-lit river and—most importantly—to people watch. We had barely taken a sip of our Sicilian white when a pregnant Christy Turlington and her husband, Ed Burns, walk in the door. Christy cradled her belly—fertility goddess incarnate—looking content and lethargic. Ed smiled at her, looking smug, satisfied, accomplished. He then proceeded to stare down every breast in the restaurant. Just as they were seated at a banquet table, David Schwimmer came in. Handsome… humble…demure… was this really the $1,000,000 an episode sitcom star? Then, the hostess paraded him past a bevy of New York beauties. He puffed out his chest, threw back his shoulders. If I had looked closely enough, I would have seen his pupils dilate, his nostrils flare.

New York City.

Sex

Sip of wine.

Before I could decide between the asparagus and ricotta ravioli or the pear and pecorino risotto, G., the restaurant owner, tries to kiss my neck, invite me on his next trip to Ipanema, extend an invitation to “do some party favors” up in his penthouse. It’s all too much and not enough.

“Celibate in the City.” Do you think HBO would buy it?