Two Days in New York

Friendship, cellulite, small boobs, jewelry and a hair style video tutorial

Instead of seeing art or plays in NY, I invited friends to my hotel room, one at a time, and we sat on the bed and ordered room service and talked and talked (on brand, I know.) One friend brought some elaborate chimes and a mallet and wanted to play them before we did anything else. I had some hesitation, which she felt (being such an old friend and familiar with my controlling ways), but I also longed for the chimes; some part of me said: Never mind Mother, play the chimes! Mother being a part of myself. The vibrations thrummed through my body; I never wanted it to end.

Two of my visiting friends were my age and both of them, in different ways, spoke about looking older, the hardness of that. But both were actively looking for another path; they are radical feminists, queers, and conscientious objectors to the thousand year war for control of our bodies. One friend and I showed each other our thighs in the light to make sure the other one really saw our cellulite. I told her the truth: I had assumed hers was much more extreme because of how she had spoken about it over the years. For years, I had placed her in a different category from myself, cellulite-wise. But now I could see that we were neck and neck, thigh and thigh, and there was some morbid satisfaction in this. I thought both friends looked great. Having known them for thirty years, I felt like they were only now really coming into themselves (and anyone can see that is true of me.)

One friend used the phrase mortification of the flesh, and I nodded, not being sure if this meant how mortifying it is to have flesh, or simply: the death of flesh, mors - death…I reached blindly back towards my middle school Latin, like trying to grab something off the back seat while you're driving. (The phrase actually means subduing physical desire for God, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t how she meant it since she’s literally fucking trees.)

While peeing that friend asked if my boobs were still bigger-than-usual and I said no, sadly they went down again when I went off Prozac. I lifted my shirt so she could see, but she ooh and ahhed anyway. “Well, that's nice to hear,” I said, “because no one I’ve ever had sex with has been particularly into them.” I always assume they are smaller than the last girlfriend's and I feel sympathetic, as if I, myself, am nostalgic for the previous girlfriend's tits. Sometimes I even say, Squeeze my huge tits, figuring this is no different than calling a cock huge, even if it isn’t or if the lover doesn’t technically have a cock. Maybe it’s just as exciting with tits? (So far, it isn't.) My friend said, “if I were your girlfriend, I'd be squeezing them constantly, cupping the one perfect handful,” and I said, “Really? Go ahead.” And she said, “Are you sure?” and I reassured her that I had done this before; I had a track record of friend tit-squeezing (would hate to be a soul full of regrets about what I didn’t do when I had a human body). So she did it and I even felt something very faintly in my pussy, like a music from someone else's headphones.

After talking and eating on the bed, one friend took me to her favorite resale shop. While I was flipping through the racks, she spied a great necklace; we both thought it was perfect, but she had seen it first and so she bought it. After the clerk wrapped it up in a little cloth bag, my friend dropped the bag into my hand, “to celebrate the paperback,” which was shocking. Generous and sweet, yes, but also bold, the sweeping gesture of it. There are so many things we can do with style, now that we’ve gotten our bearings in life. Earlier, in the hotel room, I had told her the story of suggesting a man buy me a piece of jewelry and him saying, "Not my forte”. “You’ve always wanted this,” she had reminded me, and I had admitted, Yes, it was even in All Fours. It didn't need to be particularly expensive jewelry, just the act of receiving it, wearing it, knowing it was purchased with me specifically in mind...I guess I don't have to spell this out like it's some new concept; giving jewelry is as old as time. [Jewelry, from the Latin word jocale, meaning plaything. Which tracks. I don’t want a binding ring, a wedding band, but rather a way to play our love or flirtation or lust, as my friend played the chimes.] I bought a butter-yellow skirt that I wore later that same night to the McNally Jackson/Pioneer Works event with Elif Batuman.

Elif, the butter skirt, the hair style from the tutorial. It was a wonderful night! Thank you to Elif and that warm audience. Were you there?

As I let the third friend in, I said “I feel like I'm running a brothel!” By this point, I was exhausted and worried I had nothing left to give this friend. “I'm sorry,” I said, “but I think I have to meditate to revive myself,” and she said, “Great, I need to also.” I had forgotten that she did TM too; in fact, she was the friend who had gotten me into TM. She sat in the desk chair, and I sat on the bed, leaning against the pillows with such poor posture that she said, “Your body looks like a C,” and I said, “I know, but it's sooo comfortable.” She used the TM app on her phone, which began with a chime sound, a vibrating gong. After 20 minutes plus the 2ish minutes of "slowly coming out," we simply moved on with our hang; I was full of energy for the rest of the night. But I did ask that we leave the room for dinner; I was starting to feel like an invalid.

When I was packing up this morning, I decided not to empty my water bottle; I trusted myself to drink it all before I got to airport security. This was a mistake because the bottle somehow opened in my purse; as I slid into the Lyft I realized I was holding a black leather bag of water, with all my things floating in it. I asked the driver to pull over and did the only thing I could think of: knelt on the sidewalk and dumped the bag upside down. My lipsticks and pills and sunglasses and granola bar and headphones etc etc were going to end up on the sidewalk anyway, either like this or fished out one by one. At least this was quick. I shook the dripping bag and then quickly threw all the things back in and returned to the car, exclaiming, "Now everything is wet AND dirty!"

As we pulled up to JFK, the driver said, “I'll be back here later today! I’m going to Barcelona!” And I said, “Wow!” It really did seem like a special thing, I was happy for him. When I got inside, I prepared myself for this next part, putting on my mask, getting my ID ready for fast handing over. Hate to slow down the system or have anyone think I don't know the drill. But my ID wasn't there because my wallet wasn't there. I saw myself emptying my purse on the sidewalk and was stunned to realize I must have somehow not picked up my wallet with the other things. But I had my passport. Did I? I did.

I tried to move through TSA in a chill way, like a person whose bank account wasn't being drained by a stranger at this very moment. I thought: the thing to do here is limit the number of people who need to be stressed out by this. Like, if you lose your wallet and no one knows, is it even so bad? I marveled at my own tidiness and discretion, and wondered vaguely if this response to calamity was the result of Complex PTSD in my past. I called the hotel but was put on hold and hung up when I realized that no one was likely to walk to the end of the block and cross the street to scan the sidewalk where I had thrown my wallet an hour ago. That was like saying: “My wallet is somewhere in NY, can you find it because I was a guest? I'm the woman who has been running the friendship brothel out of room 908 for the last two days!”

I texted with the Lyft driver about my wallet, Was it maybe in the back seat and not on the sidewalk? He said there was nothing in the backseat (not even my middle school Latin) and he'd had no other passengers after me; he'd gone "straight to the gym”. Now that I had a sense of his whole day (drive me to JFK, work out, go to Barcelona) the pull towards a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship was very strong; I think we both felt that we could continue from here and it wouldn't even be the start of our relationship, more like three years in; no more sex but there for each other. So I shifted to more formal language now: I understand. Have a good trip — not to discourage him, but as a challenge. If he saw through this avoidant tactic and continued on with our well-worn intimacy, it would be through no coercion on my part. I really make them come to me. But he only thanked me for my large tip; there were no more support messages waiting in the “help” section of the Lyft app.

And now, while standing at the gate, I remembered going out to dinner last night with the third and final friend. I had used a different purse from the one I was using now, and so there was a chance that my wallet was still in that grey purse, which was in my checked bag, which is in the hull of the plane I am flying in now as I write this. A long flight of not knowing.

(It was in the other purse. Also, I finished The Safekeep on the flight, if anyone wants to discuss.)

A way to play our love