Some loose thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. Maybe if I get them out I’ll have room for fully developed thoughts.

Last night, DJ MrRid came over with eight DVDs of The Midnight Special. You oldies remember those—the live rock shows on TV every week. Oddly, I didn't watch them back then but we had a blast last night. Earth Wind and Fire. Small Faces. Aerosmith. Kiss. KC and the Sunshine Band. Minnie Ripperton. Peter Frampton. Delicious and we still have hours to go.

I was struck, once again, how nice it was to see people on TV with lumpy hair, crooked teeth, pores. People who look like the people we see every day, only dressed up. Or not dressed up. Those were not dressing up days. Some guys looked pretty smelly. But still, it was nice to see people I could imagine hanging out with instead of people so perfectly toned, exquisitely groomed, and impeccably dressed, I would be struck dumb in their presence.

What are we doing to ourselves? We're beating ourselves up with relentless images of unattainable beauty. We're wasting countless hours and dollars on things that have nothing to do with our true potential value to society. We hate ourselves.

**

Has anyone every pined for you? I don’t think anyone has ever pined for me, and that kinda bums me out.

**

Our front yard swarms with busy, busy squirrels and I’m not the only one who has noticed. A red-tail hawk has been hunting here. The other morning, I saw him lift off with a squirrel. I’m haunted by the image of the squirrel’s little legs hanging down helplessly.

**

Tom and I went to the Fair on Friday. Funny how sometimes the Fair clicks for us and sometimes it’s just off. Last year was great, this year was off. We should know better than to try the exciting new fried foods of the year. They’re expensive and we’re almost always disappointed. The chicken fried bacon ($6, I think) was mostly salty, the chocolate dipped strawberry waffle balls ($5) were gummy. Nasty. I didn’t finish mine. Fortunately, my funnel cake was as good as I expected.

But I had the wrong shoes and my feet hurt and Tom had been working like a dog all week and he was tired. We saw a daredevil act, but heights make me so tense that I couldn’t enjoy it. We saw the dancing dogs, sat in a new car, saw a kid throw up, looked at the creative arts. But this visit, we weren’t feeling it. Mostly we felt sticky. The waffle balls were our last-ditch effort at fun and when they didn’t work out, we went home and fell asleep on the couch.



(State Fair 2007)

Although, lest I romanticize State Fair '07, I will report that the fabulous expensive pillows we bought last year suck. They are rock hard and I woke up with a stiff neck the two or three times I tried to sleep on one.

**

Last week, a friend and I went to a dance recital at SMU. Student dancers dancing student choreography. The kids were all very talented and it was a lot of fun.

I’m not big on regrets. I decided long ago not to nurse regrets and have been mostly successful. I acknowledge my regrets but don’t wallow in them. But one of my regrets is the way I ignored my body through my youth. I envy dancers for their control of, respect for, and joy in their bodies. I wish I could dance. I mean really dance—turn my body into a leaf or a stream, into anger or ecstasy. I think that would be swell.

Labels: 1970s, flotsam, memoir, pop culture, texas

Hey look! My first feet photo was not a photo at all. My toenails are like Monet's water lilies--I never tire of their many moods. I made this sketch on my first and only visit (so far) to Washington D.C., in 1976.

My best friend Susan and I went to celebrate our HS graduation. (Our nation's Bicentennial. We have the Bicentennial yearbook to prove it and a tassel with a little Liberty Bell on it.) We stayed in the Howard Johnson's where Nixon's henchmen listened to bugged conversations from the DNC offices across the street, at the Watergate. Too bad I didn't sketch the view of the room beyond my own feet. But drawing feet is hard enough. I probably exhausted myself on that.



Here is Susan lolling in the room.

I've never been good at sketching landscapes but at least I tried.





I preferred sketching the people. These aren't great but at least I was in there swinging. Haven't done it in years and I'm afraid to try 'cause I know I've lost it.





And there you go, today's Lazy Gal post.

Labels: art, memoir, sketchbook, travel, washington d.c.

The other day, I was introduced by a friend/blog reader as an “animal nut” who has a “horrible dog.”

I’ve known people a lot nuttier about animals than I, but “animal nut” is a description I can live with. Compared to some, I’m loony, I guess.

But I feel bad for Jack, being called horrible. That’s my fault. My friend has never met Jack but I’ve told such terrible tales about him on this blog. My friend was clear that the kind of behavior I described would never be tolerated in her home. Her husband agreed while a large cat practicing lap yoga inserted a foot in his nose.

I promise Jack isn’t all bad. But writing about Jack’s wicked ways is simply more entertaining for everyone than if I wrote about the cute face he puts on when he thinks it will shake loose a treat. Or how, when you open the back door, he leaps to his feet from a dead sleep and streaks across the yard with purpose. I wasn’t sleeping! I’m on the job! Or how he climbs into my lap—as much as can fit in my lap, anyway—when I sit on the living room floor and brush him.

Jack is the Rorschach test of dogs. Some people look at him and see a ferocious beast, some want to throw their arms around his furry neck. (Not advised for anyone but me and Tom.) But either way, the real Jack is a chowhound and a goober and far from the noble beast I thought he was when we adopted him. When push comes to shove, he’d rather snack than fight.

He’s not a sociable dog but that’s partly a breed trait. (He appears to have Australian shepherd in him.) We’ve had lots of visitors in and out and if they do as we say and ignore Jack, he moons around them like they’re his long-lost loves. Try to pet him and he shows teeth. That’s just his little neurosis. Poor Jack is conflicted.

But he has changed. Really changed. Granted, he still doesn’t like his back feet touched and never will. We touch them sometimes just to annoy him. Mostly he just gives us a dirty look and leaves the room. He’s much more tolerant of tail touching these days, and with liberal application of weenie bits at the front end will let me vigorously brush his back end. He stills snap sometimes, but he doesn’t have his heart in it. It’s a method of communication for him. I bat him on the nose and he gives me puppy dog eyes.

Jack doesn’t lunge at fenced dogs anymore. His senses are alert as we pass his archenemies but no matter how they try to rile him, he just hustles past. He still barks at dogs on TV but that’s just cute.

There’s even one little dog on our evening route that Jack adores. He insists we pause at this yard every evening. If the little dog is asleep, we wait until he wakes up and toddles up a steep hill to greet us. He and Jack sniff each other and wag and swap a little urine.

We’ve been visiting this doggie for months. The dog often invites Jack to frolic along the fence. He assumes the playful doggie position then bounces in circles. Jack has mostly looked puzzled. It appears he never learned how to play with other dogs. But the other night, for the first time, he actually attempted a clumsy frolic of his own. I got all choked up.

Jack is playful in his own way. Sometimes we play a game I like to call “stick.” We go outside and I say “Where’s your stick Jack?” in that excited voice we were taught to use to engage him. He looks at me all happy and then bounds off into the woods and vanishes. I go back inside.

Tom has better luck with stick. They play each morning and Jack will sulk if Tom tries to cheat him out of his game. I think he’ll even return the stick to Tom a few times. When Jack tires of the game, he settles down to chew the stick into toothpicks.

We’re pretty satisfied with ol’ Jack. I mean, it does get on our nerves that he never closes the back door behind him, after butting it open with his giant head a million times day to stroll inside and see what we’re up. And it would be fun if he liked car rides so we wouldn’t have to lift his large ass into the car every time we want to haul him somewhere. And his plodding pace at the end of our walks makes me a little crazy every night. And I’d rather he didn’t wake me every morning barking his fool head off at squirrels. And he’s gloomy when it rains. We suspect seasonal affective disorder.

I suppose my affection for Jack reflects my allegiance to the underdogs of the world. Jack came from a troubled home. But he's conquered many of his demons and he’s a good boy. Yes, he is.

Labels: dogs, jack, memoir

I’m drinking a crappy cup of coffee. Know why? ‘Cause I’m cheap.

I’ve been house sitting in Austin for a few days. I brought along some good coffee from home but didn’t have enough for my last morning (today) so while I was at Target the other day, I grabbed a can of Maxwell House to tide me over. You know—a $4 pound of coffee. How bad can it be?

Bad.

“Why didn’t you just go to Starbucks and buy a bag of coffee?” Tom asked. “Oh, never mind...”

He knows the answer. It’s because I’m cheap. And now, choking down my crappy cup of coffee, I am chastising myself for the kabillionth time for my cheapness.

Frugal-good. Cheap-stupid.

Being frugal means you buy just what you need and don’t spend beyond your means.

Being cheap means you buy the cheapest version of whatever you need, bring it home and realize that it’s a piece of crap and you get what you pay for. And when it falls far short of your needs, or breaks down after two uses, or tastes like reheated swill that’s been sitting at the bottom of the coffee pot since last week, you have to replace it, thereby spending considerably more than you would have if you hadn’t been so damn cheap.

Essentially, I spent $4 on two cups of really lousy coffee because there’s no way I’m bringing this can o’ crap home. I’ll leave it at the house I’m sitting with a note of apology to my friends. And I’ll probably have to stop somewhere and get myself a decent cup of coffee before my drive home. Perhaps Starbucks, where my one cup of coffee will cost nearly as much as the pound of Maxwell House.

I do this to myself in restaurants, too. I might want the $15 entree, but I order the $8.95 one because I’m cheap. Then a have food envy, watching Tom dig into an “expensive” meals that look a lot better than whatever soggy afterthought has been tossed onto my plate.

I’ve done to myself over and over for as long as I can remember, and every time I do, I vow to change my ways. But cheapness is an extremely difficult habit to break. I need some sort of mantra to chant to myself every time I find myself drifting towards the bargain that isn’t.

Perhaps, “Don’t be so goddam cheap, Sophie.”

Labels: memoir, money

What I’m wondering today: Are there really people in the world who can spend an evening socializing and then NOT go home and chew over everything they did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say that made them look like an dolt?

You would think at my advanced age I would be long past such pointless anxiety, but no. Every social occasion for me is an opportunity for varying degrees of self-loathing. I talked too much, I talked too little. I was too loud, I was too aloof. I asked too many questions, I didn’t ask enough questions. I acted like a dope, I acted like a smarty pants. It’s always something. After any social event, I wish desperately for a do-over, during which I would be an entirely different person. I promise. Just give me another chance.

It's a form of narcissism, this delusion that all eyes are on me. Rationally, I know most people are busy enjoying themselves or worrying about their own presentation or wondering when they can go home or thinking about what to make for dinner tomorrow. Everyone has a million better things to do than scrutinize my behavior. I’m incidental to the movies in which they star, their own lives, as I should be.

But irrationally, when I’m back home, my head is full of invented conversations about the cloddish and irritating embarrassment that is Sophie.

Geeze, I sound like a teenager. When I yearn to stay forever young, this is not what I have in mind.

What is the secret to self-confidence, please?

Labels: memoir, psychology

Having been blogging almost daily for a couple of years, I am reaching the point—it happens in every relationship—where I fear you have heard all my best stories already.

If you are married or in a similar long-term relationship, you know that this is where love is tested. Does your beloved still manage to feign interest when you launch into your story, again, about seeing the Talking Heads at CBGB before they hit big? (And by “you” I mean “me” and by “your beloved” I mean “Tom.”) Can she work up the slightest hint of sympathy when you lament again about how you were forced to take your cousin to the prom? (And by “she” and “you” I mean nobody I know—I just made that one up. Tom was a big hunk of boy candy in high school, with his denim jumpsuit and white boy fro. He did just fine.) And how about those favorite one-liners that have been worn so thin, you can see straight through them. Must we still laugh? Can we manage even a wan smile?

We must at least show common courtesy when our better halves trot out their stories at dinner parties because no matter how many times we have heard them, others may not have had the pleasure. And so we refrain from slumping face first into our enchiladas or rolling our eyes or finishing the stories for them. It is the right thing to do.

At least with this blog, you may simply click on to something more engaging when I get dull. And if you mock me, as long as you keep it out of the comments, I will never know.

I have been tempted to rummage around in my MySpace blog and rerun some of my favorite old posts, from back when I was fresh and interesting.

Every now and then, Tom manages to trot out a story or piece of information I’ve never heard before, even after 20-ish years of listening to him. This is always very exciting. I pump him for every last detail, wring all I can out of the revelation.

Long-term relationships have an ebb and flow. We get bored, we get interested. We fall out of love and back in and out and in. Of course, we always love each other, but sometimes that love is a low-level hum and sometimes it is a loud, joyful noise.

I’m sure I’ll have a second (or third or fourth) wind here. If I’m inconsistent about posting, it’s because I don’t want to bore you. Besides, most people coming to this blog these days are here to read about Dr. Phil. Speaking of boring.

Labels: blogging, memoir, relationships

The amusement park at Coney Island was closed forever this weekend. (Story here.)

Coney Island figures in my childhood memories in a one-off way ... as you will read below, in a story that originally ran (in a somewhat altered version) in the Continental Airlines inflight magazine a few years ago.

My Coney Island memories

Grandma Annie came from a family of vaudevillians and brought theatrical flair to the bedtime stories she told my brother and me about Coney Island. Sitting on a straight-back chair placed between our beds, she would tell us about how riders would sit thigh-to-thigh on tiny seats on the Parachute Drop, to be pulled slooooowly up, up, up into the air and then – she would let out a great WHOOP! at this point in the story – free-fall hundreds of feet before cables caught and lowered them gently to the ground.

When Grandma Annie told us about a funhouse mechanical woman called Laffing Sal, she did her Laffing Sal imitation, rocking forward and back in her chair, hands in the air, hooting with laughter.

It was absolutely terrifying.

I don’t blame Grandma Annie, but in my 22 years living in New York City, I never once visited Coney Island. I grew up in Manhattan in the 1960s, when Coney Island was derelict, dangerous, gang-ridden, and seemingly on its last go-around. About the time Grandma Annie was giving me nightmares, Steeplechase Park – once a star attraction -- was closed and demolished. The Parachute Drop remained standing and the famous Cyclone roller coaster still rattled around its wooden track, but I never saw them. It wasn’t until I had lived away from the city as long as I’d lived in it that I finally made a pilgrimage to the south shore of Brooklyn during a holiday in New York.

Actually, I made two pilgrimages within a week of each other.

The first was with my husband on muggy, drizzly late spring Monday morning. The newly renovated Stillwell Avenue subway station – the end of the line for the F, Q, D, B and N trains – had just reopened but still was not quite complete. The sidewalk outside the station was an ugly landscape of cracked concrete and puddles of nefarious urban slime.

Nathan’s Famous – the original location of the well-known wiener stand -- was open, but the hour was too early for a hot dog, regardless of its historic significance. Most attractions were closed. The boardwalk was nearly deserted. A few families braved the damp sand of the beach but the Atlantic looked grey and uninviting. A smell that could excite only seagulls lingered over the scene.

My husband and I glanced around, made a couple of desultory stops in souvenir shops, watched the Cyclone clatter empty over its track a few times, and then beat it to more welcoming environs. Now, on top of the creepy memories I’d carried since childhood, I had a depressing image of Coney Island as dank and desolate.

Fortunately – surprisingly -- I didn’t give up. About a week later, I returned to Coney Island with a friend for Captain Bob’s Coney Island Tour. This time, it was a sunny Sunday afternoon.

And everything was different.

The lines were long at Nathan’s, where Captain Bob’s tours assemble. Captain Bob (a k a Robert McCoy), is tanned and craggy with a shock of white hair under his captain’s hat. He wore a red and white striped shirt a photographer’s vest and a handmade button decorated with the insanely grinning face that represented George Tilyou’s legendary, long-gone Steeplechase Park and has lived on to represent Coney Island.


Captain Bob grew up on Coney Island in the 40s and 50s and enjoyed all the park has to offer – almost. “We didn’t go to the beach. There were monsters in the water and things,” he said with a chuckle.

Before we started the tour in earnest, he warned us, “Some of the locals that come up to us during the tours are very much out of their minds. But very nice.”

Captain Bob is a local institution. He has led Coney Island’s kooky and increasingly famous annual Mermaid Parade as King Neptune – an honor that has also since been bestowed on celebrities such as David Byrne and Moby. He’s also competed a few times in the annual July 4th hot dog eating contest, although not anymore, since conceding that he could never keep up with the heavy eaters such as current and longstanding Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, who won in 2005 by wolfing 49 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes.

Although Coney Island still attracts sunbathers, roller coaster riders and hot dog eaters, a tour today of its greater glories is an exercise in imagination because so much of what made it an amusement dreamland extraordinaire is long gone. On his tours, Captain Bob provides memories for those of us who never experienced Coney Island in its heyday. His tour is a mixture of history lesson seasoned with personal reminiscences shared in endearing Brooklynese.

He described Luna Park – an elaborate hallucination of towers, minarets and so many lights that ships navigated by its glow – which burned down in 1944. Once Coney Island had 35 carousels and 28 roller coasters (all at once!), but the number has now dwindled to just one of each. The flea circuses that wowed the crowds of the past are gone, but Captain Bob led our group to fellow selling hermit crabs in whimsically decorated shells. “Not too far from flea circuses, eh?” he asked with a triumphant grin. And at the Coney Island Circus Sideshow on Surf Avenue and West 12th, a crowd gathered while barker urged them to step inside to see a fire eater, a contortionist, a tattooed man (hardly the novelty it once was) and other proud “Freaks, wonders and human curiosities!”


After Captain Bob efficiently ran through the history Nathan’s (Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor loaned Nathan Handwerker $300 to open the stand in 1916, and Brooklyn babe Clara Bow once worked the counter at Nathan’s) we paused on the boardwalk where he reached into a tattered envelope he carried and passed around vintage postcards to help us imagine scenes of yesteryear: The boardwalk a mass of happy people, beaches so crowded that each bather could count on only inches of real estate, the glow and excess of Luna Park, the thrills and practical jokes of George Tilyou’s madcap Steeplechase Park.

Nearby, kibitzers at a round plastic table outside a fried clam concession stand cheered Captain Bob. He gave a friendly wave to these beer-drinking locals exposing big sun-browned bellies to the breeze, but compared to these guys, he’s a serious working stiff with no time for idle chatter.



As we strolled the boardwalk, past holidaymakers wreathed in the scent of suntan lotion, Captain Bob reminisced about Steeplechase Park. It was easy to imagine him as a young boy dazzled by its raucous bells and whistles. The amusement park’s signature horse race ride -- mechanical horses running on guide rails -- ended with riders disembarking to brave Blowhole Theater, where puffs of air blew women’s dresses up and men were chased by a clown with an electric paddle while spectators roared. “My face hurt from laughing sometimes at Steeplechase,” Captain Bob recalled in a nostalgic reverie.


The Parachute Drop was saved from decay by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and, while no longer functional, it underwent a $5 million restoration and now looms over the new minor league Brooklyn Cyclones' KeySpan Park.

Ride on that thing?, I thought as I looked up at the 250-foot tower. No way, Grandma Annie.

We wandered with the Captain through Astroland, where a barker urged us to “Win your honey a bunny, a teddy bear for your love affair,” and tykes gleefully rang the bells on a little boat carousel that has thrilled toddlers for 60 years. We gazed up at the 84-year-old Deno’s Wonder Wheel, and finished the tour laughing at the panicky shrieks from the Cyclone, which has rattled the brains of the brave and devoted since 1927. (If I were a roller coaster type of person I’m sure I’d have ridden it, but I find coasters as terrifying as Laffing Sal and so I just watched.)



By the end of the tour, I’d recovered from my Coney Island phobia. My friend and I saluted Captain Bob, who rushed off to where another group was gathering for his next tour, and then celebrated the day with a Nathan’s Famous and fries before wandering a little more, finding further remnants of Coney Island’s past in battered sidewalk mosaics from the long-gone Seven Seas Oyster Bar. “Dere’s even beddah ones around da cawna,” a passerby advised – and he was right.

Oh yes – I did ask Captain Bob about Laffing Sal, but he didn’t remember her. Just as well, I suppose. I don’t think Grandma Annie meant to traumatize me, but I’m relieved that her scary memories of Coney Island’s past have been replaced by Captain Bob’s pleasanter ones. And now I have Coney Island memories of my own.

Captain Bob's Historic Coney Island Tour 2006 is every Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine, year ‘round. Meet at Nathan's famous Hot Dog Stand, Stillwell Ave. and Surf Ave. at noon or 2 p.m. $12 per person, Captain Bob (718) 907 0315

Labels: coney island, memoir, travel

I’ve got flotsam-head but no flotsam.

Things are breaking down here. Tom’s truck is seriously troubled and his laptop sighed and died. Dollars are growing wings and flying away.

Everybody, everybody, everybody owes me money. Every dollar is already earned and long since spent. And my mailbox was completely empty today. I slumped to the post office floor and sobbed quietly.

Not really.

I have lots of little stories to do, lots of tight deadlines, lots of annoying little moving parts. One of the stories involves working with the Choctaw Nation. Working with the Indian Nations can be exhausting. In a way, I admire how much they don’t give a damn about our high-strung ways and needs. But I also embark on stories involving any Nation with dread.

Oh wait, I just got a marvelously helpful phone call! OK, then… never mind.

I’ve been having lots of fun this summer. Lots of parties and dinners, barbecues and gigs, trips and lunches and cocktails. Wheeeeeeee! It’s been grand. Now I’ve had enough. Leave me alone. I have nothing more to say. Go away.

See how much fun I’ve been having?


Photo by Crazy Picture Guy Scott Mankoff

I love this photo. It was taken after the reunion gig of Tex Edwards and the Swingin’ Cornflake Killers. The SCK haven’t played together in, what, a decade? More? They rocked. It was great.

Our lives flashed before our eyes that night. All the old folks made the scene. Ex-wives and everything. We relived our youth. And of course, every great club night ends up in a stinky alley outside a club, which is where this photo was taken.

It was grand.

Will our night at the Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Oklahoma be as much fun? I'll let you know next week.

Labels: griping, memoir, travel

See, that’s the trouble with zits. No matter what you say, no matter what deep thoughts you express, people can’t stop staring at it. "I'm sorry--what did you say? I was distracted by the growth on your face."

Yeah, I have a zit. It’s right there, you can’t miss it, in the middle of my left cheek.

This is actually an unusual zit location for me. Chin, yes. Nose, yes. Middle of my cheek? Not since I was a zit-riddled teenager.

Ugh, I had horrible skin. My father used to reassure me that it would pass. He would tell me that you never see adults with acne, but that’s not really true, is it?

I went to a dermatologist for a while. He injected things into my face. I don’t know what he injected but I can bear witness to the unpleasantness of having a needle in the cheek. Especially a pizza cheek, which hurt already.

He also used dry ice on me, which hurt like a mofo. Do they still do that?

I can’t say any of this torture made the least bit of difference. My face was always red and raw and painful. I had acne until I didn’t have it anymore, although I’ve never stopped getting zits. Now they tend to be isolated embarrassments, though, rather than humiliating colonies.

The week of my wedding I got the mother of all zits on my chin. It required a trip to the dermatologist and even he was impressed.

I still have scars from the worst of it all. If I had lots of money, I’d do whatever it takes to have those suckers sandpapered away. But I don’t, so not only do I have a brand new zit, I also have memories of zits past.

Life is so unfair.

Labels: memoir

This is one of my brother’s early bands, The Eels, circa 1975. That’s brother Nick, doing a Harpo Marx kinda thing, second from left. He played the drums back then. (He can play about any instrument you put in his hands now.) Next to him on the couch is Chris the bass player, who was so laid back he was inside out. Last I heard, he was in some kind of metal band. And then another Chris, the temperamental genius guitarist and my ersatz brother. He and Nick were friends since elementary school and Chris spent a lot of time at our house. Sometimes I would get up late in the morning and there would be nobody in the house but Chris, sitting at our kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

And on the far left, holding the inert warhead in what is known among those who know it as the “Warhead Picture” is Jerry Garcia. The other Jerry Garcia.

Jerry died last week and it’s given a lot of people a lot to think about. A lot of ambivalence surrounds his death, from hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver. As you might imagine, with those particular causes, his death is not entirely surprising but that doesn’t make it any less sad.

Jerry was charismatic, charming, talented and a drug addict. Gosh, that’s a cliché, isn’t it? After the Eels, he played with a couple of important bands in the NY punk scene—Richard Hell and the Voidoids and James White and the Blacks.

My friend Dave, who was close friends with Jerry from childhood, told me that when Jerry learned that he’d made it into the Voidoids, he went straight to Dave’s house and they jumped up and down and squealed like little girls.

But Jerry was a vortex of dissolution and over the years, he sabotaged himself—stealing from friends, band mates and professional associates, for example—and many (most? all?) of his friends dropped him.

One friend one time left a room leaving his wallet and Jerry alone. In the wallet was money and a note that said, “Take the money and never come back.”

At his best, Jerry was social, garrulous and a raconteur but that may be why he tried so hard to bring his friends into his drug-driven life. He liked people and didn’t want to do stuff alone. We all like friends around who share our interests. My family holds Jerry partly responsible for my brother Oliver’s descent into addiction and his ultimate death. I don’t think I ever saw Jerry again, after Oliver died in 1987, though I heard news of him now and then, none very good.

Jerry lived with his parents when he died. There was no funeral, just a viewing of the body. Dave went and a few other people. Just a handful. A small handful. After seeing what was left of Jerry, they all went out together and reminisced about Jerry’s good days, about the Jerry who charmed everyone around before he allowed himself to freefall.

Jerry was not an intimate of mine, although he was certainly part of a gang with which I ran. I still laugh to think of him telling me, when we were both older teenagers, that he likes Jewish girls “because they put out” –which is tawdry but funny anyway. (Jerry was Cuban.) I never put out for him though he once expressed a fleeting interest.

Drug addiction is so sad, so sad, so sad. It steals people away from us, sucks them into a cesspool from which many never emerge. Oliver was sucked down quickly. Jerry spun around and around into middle age before his body gave out.

Maybe Jerry was a bad person. I don’t know. He did a lot of bad things. But I think he was just broken, like Oliver. Now that he’s gone, his friends are mourning the person he once was and could have been. It’s a complicated sadness.

Labels: 1970s, death, drugs, memoir

Hm…one stranger and one friend has expressed concern about my recent rants, wondering if I am depressed enough to require treatment. So I guess I should reassure y’all that I really am fine. It’s hot out, I’ve had some situations that have annoyed the living crap out of me, I’m cranky. But I’m actually living with a lot of gusto (Ole!) these days. The rants are just venting, for my own amusement if (evidently) not yours. I actually find my angry monkey mind strangely funny—I can see what I’m doing as I do it and it’s so stupid.

I’m certainly no stranger to depression, which is a lifelong thing—it comes and goes. Sometimes it’s a BFD, sometimes it’s a low-level psychic headache. My recent pissed-off-itude certainly is a mood swing. I’ll own that but I’m not concerned because I know what it feels like to be at the bottom of the pit and this ain’t it, I promise you. (Had you checked in with me last year, I’d have had a different story.)

What I didn’t tell you is that the same week an editor called what I wrote “flat,” another editor called something else “exquisite.” But being the Charlie Brown of bloggers, I chose to focus on the former rather than the latter. (See my post about cognitive distortions.) Besides, gloating about the latter would just sound boastful. (Rather than talk about it, I just read the email over and over.)

The former also gives me more to chew on. As Ira Glass said, “Every story strives to be mediocre.” Taking criticism seriously is the first step on the road from mediocrity. If it’s valid criticism, that is, and one of a writer's jobs is to sort out which criticism to take to heart and which to dismiss.

I promise you, I am not kicking the dog or putting my head in the oven. Life is actually going pretty well, for the most part. So thank you for your concern but I’m fine. Really.

Labels: memoir, personal growth

Now that the weather is hot (really, really hot), Jack is having to change his walk habits. No more 3 p.m. walks, even though he still looks hopeful every day around that time. These days, we’re walking at night—usually about 9 p.m.. How nice to have a big, strong, handsome, surly quadruped to keep me safe after dark.

Our night walks are completely different from our daytime walks. I needed distraction during the day. I went from listening to music to NPR to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (my little radio gets TV as well—I love that) to Podcasts, yet I still found myself dreading the daily slog. Is it any wonder? I’ve been walking around this same neighborhood for 15 years.

But walking after dark is entirely different. No distraction is necessary. The one time I tried hooking up to headphones, I disliked the noise and chatter. Few cars pass and nobody is mowing or blowing or hedge trimming. No kids are yelling and horsing around on their way home from school and I don’t have to worry about anyone teasing Jack, as they sometimes do, or asking to meet him, as they often do, forcing me to sadly explain his bad manners.

Nighttime noises are soothing. The hiss of sprinklers. The buzz of cicadas. Dogs bark but they seem somehow muffled and distant. Trees rustle in the breeze, when there is one. Last night the moon was big and bright—not full but nearly so. We pass few other people, although we did pass a woman a couple of nights ago.

“I can’t see you,” she said, her teeth flashing white in the last of evening’s light.
I laughed. “I can’t see you either,” I said, and we went on our way until she jogged by me again ten minutes later, a benevolent shadow. “Have a good evening,” she said as she passed.

Some evenings we get out early enough to catch the last of the sunset. In that case, we walk streets to the west of home, at the top of our hilly neighborhood, along a school playing field, where we can appreciate the enormity of the Texas sky. The other night, for the first time, I noticed a church steeple in the distance silhouetted against the dusk.

Jack and I are seeing the neighborhood in a whole different light.

Labels: jack, memoir, the meaning of life, walking

My friends Chuck and Susan in fine disco form


According to the public radio show Marketplace (spinning off a Forbes Magazine article), while gay businesses in general are booming, gay bars are facing extinction. (Story here.)

This is a good thing because it means we find it less necessary to segregate ourselves according to sexual orientation. One person interviewed suggested—and he may be quite right—that the trend applies more to the coasts than to the rest of the nation, where the risks of hitting on the wrong same sex person may be a lot riskier. Hit on the wrong person in New York City and you’ll probably get a “no thanks,” or maybe a night of experimentation by someone who will claim to have been too drunk to remember the next day. Hit on the wrong person someplace like Wyoming and you may be beaten, tied to a fence and left to die. (You know what I mean.)

But I digress … my intent is to reminisce about gay bars in the 1970s, when I was a card-carrying, Halston perfume-wearing fag hag in four-inch heels and Qiana.

The disco movement may have been popularized by the breeders of Saturday Night Fever (a movie I adore), but it was launched by gay men. The first time I danced until dawn was at a disco called Galaxy 21, on 23rd St., near the Chelsea Hotel, which (like the rest of New York City) was a whole lot seedier then. Nancy Spungen had not yet died there; it was still the kind of place where that kind of thing happened.

I was in 11th grade. Galaxy 21 had three stories and that was the first time I’d ever heard Donna Summer faking an orgasm in “Love to Love You Baby.” After a night of dancing and drinking vodka tonics, I went with friends to breakfast at the Cosmos Coffee Shop, on 58th St. Then I dragged my friend Susan home with me to face my parents. We we were met by the stone-angry face of my father waiting for us at the kitchen table. Yikes. Yeah, I was in all kinds of trouble.

But a fag hag was born.

Our casual weeknight hangout was The Barefoot Boy, a dark, woody (no pun intended), cozy neighborhood bar in the East 30s where I learned to do the Hustle. This place was popular with older men looking for younger—chicken hawks, we called them. It’s also where I tried poppers (amyl nitrate) the first time. Yuck. Never liked it but people dancing by sometimes just stuck under the noses of other dancers for a snort.

Sometimes friends and I went to Ice Palace on 57th Street for their Sunday afternoon tea dances. I saw Ethel Merman sitting at the bar there once, surrounded by fluttery young men. That was when she had a disco album. Ice Palace had a “no open-toed shoes” policy which was designed to discourage women. We went anyway, in closed-toe shoes.

When Xenon opened, that became the hangout for my me and my friends. That wasn’t so much a gay bar as full-out glitzy disco—kind of the poor man’s Studio 54, where I went just once. I saw Robin Williams there. He gave my red pumps and vintage robin’s egg blue silk capri pants a good once over, then looked disappointed when he saw the rest of me.

Xenon was great over-the-top fun, with lots of smoke and flashing lights, a giant neon pinball machine, a spaceship that lowered from the ceiling…

Disco Sally, world’s oldest fag hag, a tiny little lady who I believe was an attorney, was often there, surrounded by an adoring gay entourage. I saw Eartha Kitt there once, dancing with a boa constrictor that was a regular (yes, the snake was regular); and Sylvester Stallone, who was surprisingly short; and Truman Capote, hat and all. And there was a guy, I forget what we called him, who spent every night doing interpretive dance alone.

When I moved to Dallas in the 1980s, my gay bar hangout was the Crews Inn on Fitzhugh, where my friend Stan (RIP) and I would get absolutely blotto on wicked strong happy hour drinks Friday nights. Yikes, I can still remember how quickly those hit, and I remember reeling out of there.

I went to the Village Station only once, as I recall. Same with the Roundup. I was new to Texas at that time and seeing people two-step was interesting in itself. Seeing guys two-step together was like entering a parallel universe. I recall feeling that women were not welcome at the Roundup.

I went to JRs once or twice, too, but by that time I was losing interest in bars in general and gay bars in particular because it was beginning to sink in for me that gay boys weren’t just looking for the right woman.

One of the attractions of gay bars for me at the time was that I could go and have fun and never get hit on, which I actually liked. Plus, I always had someone to dance with. (Old joke: Why did God make gay men? So fat chicks would have someone to dance with.) And gay men told me often how FABULOUS I was, especially when I wore Qiana and Halston perfume, which actually was a gift from a gay boy I knew in high school. I slept with this gay boy at one point--I suspect I was a last ditch effort for him. It wasn’t much fun for either of us…

If gay bars go the way of record stores, it will definitely be the end of an era. Not a bad thing. But they were great fun for me, back in the day.

Labels: 1970s, dallas, disco, memoir, new york city, nightlife

I watched the movie Hair on AMC the other night. Some of you know that Hair holds a very special place in my heart. I was a stage door groupie for the Broadway show and even auditioned for it when I was, like, 12 years old. Yeah, really. No, I didn’t get a part.

Anyway, the movie wasn’t great and I haven’t seen it since it came out in 1979, but I was thrilled to see it listed the other night, when I was planning a solo late-night couch party. It was great fun.

Hair depicts the seismic societal changes of the late ‘60s but what the movie brought most strongly to my mind is the very distinct experience of growing up in the 1970s, when I went to see the show over and over, longing for the jubilance of the life of those who came just before me.

My cohort comprises the tail end of the baby boom (I was born in ’58, the boom is generally accepted as ’46-’64). Mine is one of those in-between generations, stuck in a muddy trench between the revolutionary idealism of the ‘60s and the brittle excess of the ‘80s. The 1970s were a dark time, when the drugs really kicked in and the pristine visions of the flower children started looking like snow in New York City, day two—gray with yellow spots and pocked with garbage. Maybe free sex and prodigious drugs weren't such a great idea after all. This was the decade when we figured that out.

A teenager through Watergate, I was acutely aware of it without entirely comprehending what was happening. I just breathed the sour air of corruption, mistrust and anger surrounding it. I didn’t know anyone who went to Vietnam (oddly, now that I think about it) but it flickers on the TV screens of my memories of those days. The nation was hit by inflation and the oil crisis and New York City was deep in the economic crapper.

Drugs and sex were seeping ever more deeply into popular culture but the sex was a lot less jubilant than it seems today. Nobody was used to sexual freedom yet and it all seemed a little bit tawdry--sex clubs and poppers and leather bars. I was too young to be a part of all that but I knew what was going on. (The famous sex club Plato’s Retreat was not very far from my home. Once, a man standing outside asked me if I would go in with him, no strings attached, because single men were not allowed in. I declined.)

Wedged between the nuclear family ‘50s and the loud reinvention of parenting that began in the ‘80s, many of my generation were untethered from their parents. I roamed New York freely, riding graffiti-covered subway cars; getting high with friends in the park, in friends' apartments while their parents were at work, in the staircases of apartment buildings if no place better could be found. I pretended to go to school in the morning but instead met a friend on a patch of grass near the West Side Highway, where we waited until our parents went to work so we could go back home.

That was the '70s NYC-style but I recognize the same style of sad and surly independence in the suburban teen lives depicted in the movie and book The Ice Storm. Tom, who was born in 1960, sees his Texas adolescence in Dazed and Confused—funnier by miles than the Ice Storm (which is devoid of humor) but not exactly depicting a generation on the fast track.

In some ways, the 1970s gave me a dark world view and chopped, diced and spliced my values into a strange amalgam of idealism and cynicism.

I don’t mistrust the government as deeply as some (perhaps the fact that Watergate was uncovered and punished inoculated me against total cynicism) but I believe it bears close watching and that voting is among our most significant responsibilities. I also believe that if newspapers go under, the great loss to society will be unbiased investigative reporting.

I think the era affected how I view sex and drugs. I’ve seen lots of casualties of drugs and so have less of a moral objection to them than a pragmatic one because they do some bad shit. I avoided the harder drugs many of my peers did. I never tripped, but I did do cocaine for a while. I don’t anymore because it killed my brother and I hold a grudge.

Coming of age while culture was in flux perhaps made me more broad minded, more flexible in my rules of morality (for better or worse), than those who came before or after. In general, I am forgiving of our darkest nature, tolerant of transgressions and raw in my assessment of human nature. I don’t think humans are bad. I just think we’re all a little fucked up. And that’s OK.

And, by the way, I miss the ‘70s desperately. Those are my good old days.

Labels: 1970s, baby boom, drugs, memoir, new york city, personal growth, sex

I was paying by check for something at Loehmann’s back in the 1980s. The sales clerk looked at my check and said, with undisguised horror, “Who would name their daughter Sophia Lucy Dembling?”

I muttered something about my parents and finished the transaction as quickly as I could.

Idiot.

My name, Sophia (the more common pronunciation) is the top girls’ name for 2007. I have mixed feelings about this, since it’s been fun having an unusual name.

When I was a little girl, the only other Sophies I knew were friends of my grandmother. Now the nation is crawling with Sophies. Not so many Sew-fi-ahs, though, which is the more Anglo, as opposed to Italian, pronunciation. And yes, I know of two other Sophias in the world who pronounce it as I do.

For the record for the eight millionth time, I did not take on the pronunciation as an affectation. It is my name, as my parents drilled into me through my childhood.

I think of all this after reading this Steve Blow column, spun off a book called Bad Baby Names about kooky names people have. (I do not think my name is the least big kooky, by the way. I like my name. I even like Lucy, which I hated as a child.) I mean kooky like Emma Roid. Her parents should be fined.

Farther down on the same page, I read this very sad story about the funeral of a toddler who was in the line of fire in a drive-by shooting.

It’s a terrible story and all too common, but laying that aside for the moment, note that the child’s name was Knyledge Sutton. Pronounced knowledge. (His mother is Shaterica, his sister is Jurnee.)

Had his life not been horrifically cut short, Knyledge, like me, would have gone through his whole life explaining to people how to pronounce his name and that he didn’t make it up, it’s not an affectation, it’s really the name his mother gave him. (Even so, I can’t figure out how Knyledge turns into knowledge.)

Name pronunciations are tricky things and those of us with tricky names often have to decide at what point, if ever, we will correct people’s pronunciations. I have a friend named Mimi who, after we had known each other a few years, finally pointed out to me that her name is pronounced Mih-mee, not mee-mee. And a friend named Tara who let me know that it’s Tah-rah, not Ta-ra. Therese is Tah-rez, not Teh-reese.

The trick to doing this is to wait for an easy in, and say cheerfully, "Actually, it's pronounced ------." How long one takes to do this depends on how often the person says your name out loud. Sometimes I don't tell people until they hear it on my voice mail or or hear someone else say it.

My friend Lara has claimed I am incapable of pronouncing her name properly but I still can’t hear the nuance she tries to explain to me. Then again, I am frequently mocked for the way I pronounce the name Karen and I can’t figure out what I’m doing there, either.

Sometimes, when I call tech support or whatever, I take the easy way out and pronounce my name the more usual way, just to make it easy on everyone. But it’s funny how, even though the spelling is the same, the name doesn’t feel like mine as it comes out of my mouth.

My friends mostly call me Sophie, which is easy on everyone, although some use Sophia, which I enjoy. I love the name. Still, I'm a little self-conscious every time someone uses it in public because someone else invariably asks about the pronunciation. And every time I’m asked, I feel compelled to explain that it is not an affectation. And I hear that saleswoman in the back of my mind saying, “Who would name their daughter that?”

Labels: baby names, memoir, words

My brother has shipped down to me my mother’s sewing machine, accessories and sundry sewing room detritus. It’s been sitting around in boxes in my office because I haven’t time to go through it nor space to store it. The sewing machine will stay in its box until I can get a new cabinet for it. After some discussion, Nick and I decided Mom’s old sewing machine cabinet, though steeped with deep nostalgia for us, was barely hanging on and wasn’t worth shipping.

In some ways, Mom’s sewing supplies are her most intimate possessions. They were an extension of her. With her hands, she molded fabric and thread into crisp suits, fluttery skirts, dainty smocking. Knitting needles were extensions of her fingers—they twinkled magically and intricate webs spun out.

Although Mom did teach me to do crewel embroidery (it’s been a long time…) needlepoint was a complete mystery to me. Mom would sit for hours on the couch with a large frame perched on her knees, a magnifying glass balanced on her chest from a cord around her neck, a sheet of graph paper with a complicated pattern of miniscule dots and x-s lying on the couch next to her. Her needle flew up and down, sometimes making a tiny “pop” as it penetrated the tightly woven and stretched canvas.

No, I didn’t have patience for that kind of work.

Nick and I agreed to give the needlepoint frames and other needlepoint accessories to our childhood friend Jean, who also does needlepoint and counted cross-stitch and who worshipped Mom’s artistry. She will use them with love.

I got the sewing stuff, which has been sitting around for weeks until this morning. I am excited that sewing has finally “taken” for me and will probably keep me entertained for years to come. I know Mom was happy about it, too. I am thrilled to have Mom’s sewing machine and iron (who knew an iron could be so good?) but didn’t know what I would find in the rest of the boxes, beyond a Ziplock full of tired looking thread and some grubby pincushions.

But as I started unpacking the box, I saw Mom through refreshed eyes.

Mostly, I thought, “Wow, she knew how to use this stuff?”

I opened one box and it was full of sewing machine needles, a multitude of sizes and types, most made by a German company. Different types of needles work best in different kinds of fabrics; for example, you need a ball point needle for knits. I am only beginning to master and appreciate the nuances of needles and was overwhelmed by the selection Mom has collected. In a small scrap of fabric, she had carefully pinned a row of used machine needles, for later use. Clearly, she knew by sight the exact purpose of each needle.

Dazzling.

This grimy box of bobbins has been around as long as I can remember. I’ll keep it for sentimental value, even though I also am nurturing my own grimy box of bobbins.

Then I opened this box full of shiny things:

It’s a treasure trove. If Mom owned a sewing gizmo, chances are excellent it’s a genuinely useful sewing gizmo and of good quality. I haven’t rummaged through this box yet but I’ve already identified a special ruler thingy for measuring out buttonholes. Sweet. I hope I can figure out all the other gadgets. I have no idea what the red thing or the white triangle are for but I’m a believer in the right tool for the job and if I can puzzle them out, I’m sure there are lots of great tools in here.

I picked up a plastic box thinking it was storage for the kind of little useful chazzeri that one keeps next to the sewing machine—stitch rippers (I found three among the flotsam) and thimbles (just one) and stray buttons.

But upon opening the box, I gasped and fell to my knees:

These are all sewing machine feet, each for a different type of stitching. I’ve used a zipper foot and a zig-zag foot and a buttonhole foot, but this…

I’m in way over my head. And my respect for Mom grows.

Labels: crafts, memoir, sewing