F--- That S---, You F---ing A-----!

It started with the children's-but-really-for-adults book "Go the F--- To Sleep" which was a clever and hysterically funny title for new parents who are losing their minds from lack of sleep. And now, in the American tradition of "more is better" and "beat an original idea into the creative ground" it has gotten a little out of hand. This image from the humor section of the local bookstore.

I Don't Understand Why Everyone Is Jealous of Me! I Hate Being So Beautiful! (A Modern Love Parody)

I was 19 and gorgeous, but for me my beauty was always a curse. I know you regular people can barely comprehend this, but we who are gorgeous suffer. Terribly. As long as I can remember, I’ve been given compliments. “You’re so pretty”, an Aunt would say, meaning well. “You are adorable” would say a Grandparent. Little did they know that I hated their attention, their flattery, even though I had just asked them, “Am I the prettiest little girl ever?”

As I grew up, men cat-called me, fought over me; I hated it. I tried not to invite more than two men over at a time, but because I’m too good-looking to remember things, it happened again and again. I would let some random guy follow me home, forgetting I had a boyfriend and in fact was going to his home; as you can imagine it became awkward. But when you’re super good-looking, this is what you have to deal with. You are forced to develop coping strategies.

Time and time again, men would fight over me, and the coffee table in the living room would become the victim. Fighting men must have fallen atop of and smashed my coffee table 10 times that year. I was lucky; my parents simply kept replacing them. They asked me once to just get a wooden one or perhaps to stop inviting two men over at the same time, but I just liked those glass ones.

That year I was attending an Ivy-League school on the Upper West side which shall be unnamed, oh ok, it was Columbia, and I lived alone in a loft my parents had bought for me. It was the top floor of a renovated industrial building in Tribeca – but I hated its airiness, its numerous closets (why must there be so many of them?), its granite countertops and Miele appliances. They made me angry. I didn’t clean or cook, or shop – doing chores made me feel inexplicably sad. My empty refrigerator, cold and bright, mocked me. My friends, those few that I had, suggested, “For Pete’s sake, just go grocery shopping!” but I became clammy at the idea of all the men staring at me and lusting after my body in those places where men went, to stare at women like me, and so I could not.

Instead I ordered in. I was terribly lonely so I slept with the Chinese food delivery guy. I would throw him out afterwards – without a tip. That was the kind of person I was then. I also slept with the doorman, the guy that collected the change from the washers in the laundry room and the guy who installed my Ikea cabinets. It did no good. I continued to suffer. I hated myself for being so good-looking. People didn’t realize the burden I carried.

Even though my parents had paid my for education - my SAT scores were so high they sickened me - and gave me a generous monthly stipend, for reasons that are hard to explain, even to myself, I worked as a stripper. It was as tawdry a joint as you can imagine, and I hated the way men looked at me when I was up on the pole stripping – as if they had a right. Perhaps I didn’t need money the way that the other girls did, but I was desperate in my own way; the pain of being gorgeous was almost more than I could bear, and this seemed one way to dull the pain. My logic was the logic of an idiot, but I was only 19.

I knew that people exchanged glances behind my back when I told them in great detail about the professors who wanted to sleep with me – I hated their judgment. I felt powerless against their envy and this drove me into the arms of even more men. My loft was becoming a disaster area – the lack of my housekeeping skills and the constant fistfights between the various men that were showing up was taking its toll. I hated my need for men and theirs for me, and was ashamed and then I did it again and again. Why? I was great in bed (or so they all said; who really knew the truth?) and it made me feel validated, and yet sickened, and yet exhilarated and yet somehow sad. But happy too. But more sad than happy.

My enormous breasts were crippling – to me they were nothing more than oddly buoyant and pointed nuisances that drove men wild and so I wore a talisman that dangled into the crevasse between them, so that men, instead of crassly thinking how hot I was, would know that I also was a talented metal-smith and welded jewelry out of old fire escapes that I had sat on smoking after having sex with other men. Yes, I smoked.

After stripping I would find solace at after-hours clubs where I treated the bouncers like footmen and “forgot” to tip the bartenders and shouted loudly that “I need another drink!”. I may have come off like a giant asshole, but it was a front: I was only 19; afraid, insecure, and cowed by the men who desired me, and whose SATs were probably average at best.

I was miserable. I drank whiskey exclusively, except when I was drinking vodka or Tequila, or entire bottles of wine which I would share with the guy at the wine store who I slept with – I was simply too miserable to not ask him to come back to my apartment to sleep with me. How I hated being beautiful and sought after. Leave me alone! I would shout at the men I invited to my apartment. They looked at me as if I were nuts. I didn’t blame them. Perhaps I was.

I would often retreat to a nearby coffee shop to work on my novel – I knew I was a talented writer but my talent only made me miserable. I thought of what my creative writing instructor said to me as I left his apartment after sleeping with him, just after I stepped on one of his vintage LPs, weaving with the post-lovemaking dizziness of our 9 orgasms – all of which I hated. I apologized – rare for me (I was 19 after all), but he only said, “Jesus, what is your problem? I thought you left a half hour ago! You’re letting the air conditioning out!”

As if that was the problem.

At some point, I met Kevin. He was a musician, yet kind, yet with a lot of money, and he looked at me differently than the others. He thought I was gorgeous and hot, of course, but he also knew that I was smart – at some point during lovemaking my SAT scores had slipped out – and he was interested in my mind. We went for long walks on the promenade – I felt a need to prove to him that my long legs, which I hated, were good for something other than wrapping around him when my sexual hunger got the best of me. But he liked walking. And he liked talking. And finally, I realized that he wasn’t impressed with my beauty and wasn’t put off by my sexual insatiability or the fact that my loft had its own elevator – he saw the real me. For the first time, I was with a man who understood me, and asked nothing more from me than to listen to me play the harpsichord (I’m a talented musician as well, but he doesn’t seem too jealous) or listen to me recite my poetry for yet another slam.

Reader, I settled down with this man and now we live together in my loft. I made room for him here; it wasn’t too difficult as it’s a three bedroom so there’s plenty of room for the two of us, as well as a recording studio, a wine cellar and a room for me to paint – I’m an amateur painter with two paintings at the MOMA – and we have made a simple yet meaningful life together. Now that I have someone to share the burden of my beauty, someone who cares nothing about it, and understands that it’s not my fault I’m so hot, I have gotten a new coffee table and that’s where my coffee table book of my photos (published by Taschen) sits even as I write this.

I still suffer. I still hate the beauty that stares out at me from the wall of mirrors in the living room and in the bedroom and kitchen, and especially the recording studio, and the little one I put in the freezer, but as long as I have Kevin, and we have each other, and especially he has me, I think somehow, we’ll get by.

I Don't Understand Why No Winks?? My Profile is So Great!

What am I like? Well, let me ask myself. What are you like -- oh, sorry, I didn't know I was on the phone - sorry, I'll wait.

OK, now, let me ask you if I may: What are you like? Are you like, some kind of a stalker who won't take no for an answer? Or perhaps a person who uses an online dating service to post pictures that are 6 years old in an attempt to lure some poor schmuck to the rocks like the Sirens in that movie "Jason and the Argonauts"? Or was that Jason and the Golden Fleece? Anyway, the one that got the Oscar for best supporting Cyclops.

Or, continuing this line of questioning: are you generally a nice person who hasn't had sex since 2002 and is just a little anxious? Perhaps a combination of all three? But not a stalker really, at least that's what my friends say (except for maybe David but he's not a friend anymore, not since he sent that mass email about what he called my "problem" which was really not my problem but his which most everybody wrote me back to tell me).

Most of my friends would say I was fairly "normal", just like you probably, and I like all the same things that "normal" people like, for example: long walks on the beach with a metal detector; jumping into public fountains in a wet suit and snorkel collecting spare change; going to shows and shouting out the lyrics to all the songs along with the cast; hitting the rowing machine at the gym while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", or, alternatively, “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore”, and also making friends with guys who are bench pressing 200 lbs. right when they’re sucking in their guts for that big lift.

As you can tell from the pictures, I am in pretty good shape for someone who's 45, even though I'm not 45 and I am 37, and my friends are also 37 and I was born in 1971 or 78 (I can never remember). I like to do all the things outside my apartment that other "normal" people do, like shopping for food and toilet paper, and sometimes going to Starbucks and "having it my way" by spending twelve minutes constructing a drink out of all the adjectives they have on the overhead signs. Sometimes I like to go to Starbucks and just sit and listen to people at the other tables, and sometimes I interject my opinions in their conversations just to be friendly. Sometimes I'll join them at their table, just so I don't have to yell. Every once in a while you get a meanie who doesn't want to listen and looks at you like you're some kind of a nut, but I just usually handle that by knocking their mocha latte onto their laptop. Typically, when I come back (I like to visit Starbucks several times a day) they're gone and never return, which is OK with me! As you can tell, I am very social and a lot of fun!

So you might be thinking: why do I have all this time to go to the gym and to Starbucks, but why would you think that unless you yourself were unemployed? If you are one of those judgmental suspicious types, maybe we just aren't meant to be. You might want to ask yourself, why do I always make these negative assumptions about people? Maybe that's why you're still single and have to resort to an Internet dating service, did you ever think of that? Don't you have any friends who could fix you up? Anyway, since you're wondering and even though I don't really care what you think, I do have a job and it is fairly high-paying which allows me to be in actual semi-retirement (even at the age of 39!). But more on that later.

A typical day for me is to wake up (I don't need an alarm, usually the people pounding on my door to turn down the volume on my TV is enough to rouse me), get dressed (by myself, silly!) taking care to turn my socks and underwear inside out, then I take my medicine, and head out for breakfast. I used to go to a local diner but I found that the Episcopal Church offers such a great breakfast special which even comes with a free orange, that you'd be an idiot and a snob to pass it up. And I hate snobs! Right after breakfast I head over to Starbucks where I like to work at my job, which involves typing on my computer and looking at the screen and occasionally looking up to see who else has come in.

I have all the hobbies that "normal" people do, including working out, reading, leaning out my window and yelling "Watch out below!" and waiting to see what everyone does, and dancing. I am a great dancer and will get up and perform at the drop of a hat, or a strategically placed dollar, and I don't necessarily have to have a partner. Sometimes I just get up on the table and let loose, but not at Thanksgiving and never on the kids' table, so don't worry!

And you, what are you like? Well, you are single or you can get out of the house regularly between the hours of 2 and 5:30pm. You like to have sex but you don't always have to have the lights on, and you aren't adamant that your partner takes off all their clothes or even gets in bed with you. You are fit and healthy and willing to be tied up and left for hours on your own without complaining or wondering what the point is (sometimes I like to go shopping and you never know when the urge will hit me!). You also have your own apartment that you own and that there's no way you could get evicted no matter how many cats you had or how loud you had your TV volume turned up or if you liked to check the recycling bins for cans and bottles late at night when it really shouldn't bother people.

So I hope there's someone out there for me; I haven't had that much luck on this particular site, even though I have had a few "repeat" customers (Melvin622 if you are reading this, you can forget about me coming back out to the oil rig!), I am a real believer in that old adage, "There's someone for everyone," or is it, "As long as you don't take the bracelet off, you're not breaking parole"? I look forward to hearing from you!

I Don't Understand How Anyone Can Cast Stones. We're All Morons At Something.

(Photo credit: the Ricky Gervais Show)
You read a lot about how stupid and greedy those people were who in the early aughts bought homes they couldn't afford with money they didn't have, resulting in bundles of "toxic" mortgages that, when they ballooned in cost, began the collapse of the house of cards it turns out the U.S.'s and in fact, the world's financial system was built upon.

Many people look askance at those who bought homes virtually without money, who perhaps bought a second home they intended to "flip" at a profit. And yes, some of these people were "greedy" and "ignorant" and blind. Perhaps many of them.

But just for one moment can we consider the path that was laid out for them by the people who permitted them to make those purchases? The banks and mortgage brokers who looked at these people's assets and paltry income and nodded sagely and then offered these hopeful buyers a new-fangled instrument called a "no-income verification" loan, which in fact was created for just these very people?

These folks (the borrowers) weren't ever in a position before to get a loan; perhaps their credit was bad, perhaps they had an erratic employment history, perhaps they simply didn't have any money beyond a modest down payment, which in some cases was dropped from the traditional 20% to 10 or even 5%, just to make it easier for people "just like them". But now, bankers, professional "money people" are telling them that yes, they can afford it! Their assets have been examined by professionals who examine assets for a living, and even though these potential buyers had little money and low-paying jobs, it turns out, there is a way they can do it! Or so they are assured.

These buyers didn't set out to buy above their means. But the truth is, in many, many cases, they didn't understand what they were getting into. Like all of us do in some aspect of our lives, they trusted the experts.

They sat down with professionals, white collar guys and gals who explained it all to them, who told them that their house would be increasing in value, that in fact, they could borrow against the increasing value of their home, that they could sell at a profit in 5 years (before the mortgage reset at a much higher rate), thereby improving their credit, giving their child a place with a yard to grow up in, finding a modicum of independence from a landlord, and finally realizing the "American Dream". And when it sounded too good to be true, and when these first time buyers doubted it themselves, these mortgage brokers patted their hands and assured them: "Look, I've been in this business for 15 years. There's never been an opportunity like this. This may be your only chance, ever, to own your own home, now's the time to get in, mortgage rates are at their historical low and real estate prices will continue to climb! In fact, you'd be a fool not to."

Who didn't buy this on some level?

In fact, in this era of specialization, who doesn't trust the professionals to lay out a path for us in some field that we don't understand, nor are expected to know all about?

Who among us hasn’t boarded a plane with the implicit belief that the pilot has flown this particular type of plane thousands of times before, and knows what to do if the plane stalls? That the wings have been de-iced by the professionals who do this every day? That the pilot’s mental health has been vetted before he was given control of a passenger plane? We all assume we're getting a pilot like the hero Sully, but the fact is, we're not, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it, because in this specialized world, you have to operate on faith. Not faith in God (although for some there's an element of that too), but faith that the people you're putting your trust in, know what they're doing.

You have to hope that the babysitter you hired is not hitting your kid when you're at work, that the bus driver who's operating your tour bus winding along those cliffs in Mexico hasn't been drinking, and that Con Edison is truly charging you for the electricity you're using. But do you really know?

How could you?

You assume the FDA will keep you from eating tainted peanut butter or spinach, but as it turns out, it doesn't. In 2008, six people lost their lives (and over 500 became ill) eating not just peanut butter from a jar, but a product that they might not even have known included peanut butter, trusting as they did that the "professionals who make these products wouldn't knowingly poison them? Trusting the professionals.

And it's not just the middle class or a group of uneducated consumers who have recently been victimized. How about the wealthiest 1% in the world who were ripped off by Bernie Madoff, trusting him, or his agents, with their life savings?

The SEC whose very existence is predicated on preventing just such crimes, and catching just such thieves, blatantly ignored 5 years worth of warnings from whistleblowers who wrote to them multiple times that Madoff's investments were a scam, that his greatest work was a giant Ponzi scheme.

And yet thousands of highly educated and sophisticated investors assumed incorrectly, naively, perhaps stupidly, based on assurances from their financial advisors that their investments were going into high yielding stock funds, even though it seemed impossible that the returns they were getting could be as high and as consistent as they were.

And it turns out, Madoff was only one of what will surely turn out to be dozens of investment crooks who have been stealing money from rich, sophisticated investors, pension funds, museums, philanthropic institutes, and Ivy League universities, all of whom had highly paid professionals on their staffs steering the money toward the "best" investments, those funds with the best returns.

Immediately after Madoff, three more massive investment thieves were uncovered: Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh (of the WG Trading Company) managed to steal (what seems paltry in comparison to Madoff), $667 million from mostly New York investors, (unlike Madoff who actually went global), and Mark Bloom (who ran the North Hills Fund) and who apparently learned at the knees of those two masters and in 2001, started his own theft ring.

Greenwood and Walsh ripped off Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh among other clueless, naïve, some might call "greedy, ignorant, and blind" investors. Probably unfair to well-meaning and educated board members who were making decisions based on the expertise of highly trained financial advisors.

But there is a truth in the world now that is unavoidable and that truth is that: no one can be an "expert" on everything. No one person can know everything, and so we rely on "experts" who, for whatever reason, we choose to advise us in matters we don't completely, or deeply understand. Not just financial matters, but everything. The world as it exists now means that we go to professionals for almost every repair, for every product we need, for any health care question.

When my mom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, the oncologist and her internist sat us down and gave us the options, such as they had determined. She could get radiation only, or combine it with chemo. She could do them simultaneously or one after another. If the tumor in her throat shrank enough, they suggested she could get an operation that would cut out that part of her esophagus that was affected and yank up her stomach to attach to the part that was left. Sounded horrific.

After they laid out all the options they asked her what she'd like to do. She looked at me; I looked at her. What would she LIKE to do? She'd LIKE to go home and watch TV, and probably, knowing her, smoke. But no, the professionals had told us what options she had and she was now being asked to make a choice.

It was like Sophie's choice. How much pain do you want to endure? None of it will probably work, and you will suffer horribly with every option, but if you're very, very lucky, and beat all the odds stacked against you, it just might work. The professionals gave us the facts and we made the decision. And this is how the world works. You consult with the professionals, you make an "educated" choice, and you are the one who suffers.

Because I was the only family member with her, she looked to me to help her make the decision. I told her to take both chemo and radiation; get it over with was my thought, and see what happened. And so she did, and what happened was the combined treatment was too much for her weakened system, and within 6 weeks she suffered total organ failure and died of what seemed to have been a heart attack. I had the hospital do an autopsy because I couldn't understand what caused the heart attack, and the ultimate irony was that the tumor had actually shrunk. And so, it was the treatment that killed her. The treatment I suggested; the treatment that was one of our options and that we chose based on "professional" expertise.

So when I hear people complain about the stupidity of people, the unfathomable greed of "poor" people buying homes they can't afford, I can only dredge up that old expression: "Let he who is without sin (or in this case, guilt), cast the first stone". Or more specifically: “Let he who has not relied on the wisdom of those who ‘know better’, criticize those who did.”

Perhaps you didn't buy a home you couldn't afford, but perhaps on the advice of professionals, you invested your IRA in stock mutual funds, or perhaps you trusted your money to a brilliant investment fund that had nothing but positive returns for the last 20 years, and now your savings are decimated.

(And, oh, by the way, those "lucky" ones who pulled their money out before the scandals broke are not so lucky after all. Unfortunately for them, they were required to return the money they so cleverly pulled out of their accounts, since, as it turns out, it's not "theirs" but belongs to the Justice Department since it was not earned but simply transferred from one victim's account to another's. Soon they will be sued by the Justice Department for that money, and if they don’t have it, perhaps they’ll have to stop paying their mortgages; perhaps they’ll even have to sell their houses to earn it back.)

So those geniuses who thought they "got out just in time" or who thought they beat Madoff at his own game, and who crow at those who left their money in these non-existent funds, are just as screwed as those whose money simply vanished. Not so clever, and not so lucky after all.

So none of us are as smart as we think, and one doesn't truly know whom one can trust; with your money or your life. The only thing we can do is our best, and hope we don't stumble into the way of a thief, or simply, a wrong decision.

And finally, perhaps, we should all have a little compassion for others before we leap to judge them.

I Put My Thong On Sideways... Again.

You'd be surprised (or I suppose men would be surprised; not women who wear these things) how easy it is to do. This happens to me fairly regularly, me with my undies on sideways, and sometimes I catch it before the jeans go on, and sometimes I 'm in a hurry and don't figure it out until I get home and wonder what all the weird, pulling was down there (when I was younger, I might have gotten some sort of thrill out of it - now I am just annoyed), and then I have a good chuckle once I figure it out. I'd like to say my old boyfriend used to chuckle heartily along with me, but no; the boyfriend was always appalled at this; he thought it was inconceivable. We're no longer together.

I mean, it happens! Thongs are like this, this triangle of cloth, with three sides, three openings, and a front and a back. Geometry was the only kind of math I was good in at school, but this thing is like a really hard geometry question on a standardized test, with a misleading drawing and no multiple choices below. In the half-dark of my bedroom, in the morning, when I'm tired, every corner of the thing looks the same; every corner offers a pocket where the… goods go. Here's me, standing there at first, with all the confidence in the world, on one leg, thinking I'm getting dressed. Still on one leg, I see it's one of these inscrutable pairs (question: why is a single piece of clothing referred to as a "pair"? This query includes "pairs of pants" but not "au pairs"), of which I have a few. There are a few pairs in the drawer but not a lot, and since I only wear them for dates, or the prospect of sex, they rest, for the most part, untroubled by my hand, which is why when I pull them out, it's like, "Oh these are nice! When did I get these? How do these work?"

So OK, now I realize there's going to be some trouble ahead, so the raised leg gets lowered; I'm going to need my balance, in fact, all my faculties if I'm ever going to get these on.

The tricky ones are the ones without the identifying tag at the back (that makes it easy!), and are small and cute, like a Russian doll's headscarf, with perhaps some ruffles. Sometimes, the little ruffles go in the front and sometimes they go in the back, so here's me, turning it back and forth, back and forth, trying to figure it out.

Say I choose putting the ruffle in the front. Ok, I've made a commitment. That leaves those three holes. And you'd think it'd be obvious, the pelvis on (most) women being slightly larger than her thighs. But we're dealing with a thong here, isn't that the thing David used to slay Goliath? (And what was David doing with a pair of women's underwear? Was Goliath standing there thinking the same thing? "What the hell, Dave, where did…" THWACK!) And it's meant for war. It's meant to baffle and lull its enemy into a false sense of security by its tiny flimsy little self, cute, sweet, weak. But man, it is powerful. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So back to the triangle. Now I've got a front, and a back (probably) and I know your ass is supposed to sort of be exposed a little in the back, so I'm thinking the back part of the material should be kind of smaller than the front… but not on this pair. This pair, every way you turn it, you have the same amount of material. You've got about one inch of material on each of the three sides and so even though I have a back and a front, I'm spinning them around and around, like a guy spinning plates, really, or like a girl trying to get into a game of Double-Dutch, trying to figure out how do I get in.

After a while, I just stop spinning, sigh and climb in anywhere, just so I can get dressed. I have, on occasion, felt that weirdness you feel (or women feel), when you've got your underwear on sideways, where you can't take quite a full step over to the dresser, because something's pulling on your… parts. Since I'm not a regular thong-wearer, sometimes I just chalk this up to: this is the way these things feel, and this tightness in the wrong (or right) places, is just part of the deal, as is feeling the material of your jeans on your bare butt and trying to remember if you put underwear on at all, since it seems nothing is coming between "you and your Calvin's" if you know what I mean.

But sometimes I have to go to the mirror and look, because it's the only way I can confirm my suspicion that all is not right with the world, or at least with my panties, which, at 6:30am in your bedroom is where your world starts.

And yes, there I am, looking unsexy, ridiculous even, with the little hanky sort of listing to the side, with the middle part really taut across my belly, and on the left side, the material kind of puckering out because I've stuck my leg in the part where the whole body is supposed to go. If you've ever seen one of those ads for weight loss where the formerly fat guy climbs into one leg of his old gigantic pants, that's sort of what this looks like.

This is not a good look. Even alone, just you, it's not a winner. When the ruffles are going kind of vertical but on a slant, instead of parallel to the floor, this is a problem. So I take 'em off and start again, and, it has happened on more than one occasion, sometimes when I put them on the second time, they're still wrong!

And that, sir, is why I was late to the meeting.

I Don't Understand What's Going On Upstairs??

I have put my earplugs now, and I can just barely hear the sound of rocks being tumbled in a cement mixer in the apartment above, so now I can gripe. It’s noisy here. Real noisy. I recently bought my first apartment in NY.

I was living the cloistered contented life of an Upper West Sider, living in a solidly built, Pre-War building, with walls a foot thick, taking the quiet for granted, clueless and happy. But I was renting and wanted to own, and so I departed that gentle place.

After the typical tortured search, I found a place I could afford to buy, in a Post War building. My new apartment was the right size, a decent price, in a good location. Being a Post War building meant it didn't have the details of my old place – in fact it looked a little like a hospital inside – but it was immaculate and on a block I loved, and did I mention it was affordable?

The noise didn’t begin until the second month I’d been there. It was the most amazing sound: the crisp, clipped, clomp of high heels, treading down the public hallway upstairs. I sat up and did the human equivalent of cocking my ear as I heard the key upstairs inserted into the lock, the turning of tumblers, the entrance of the high heel-wearing neighbor above.

As my eyes widened (which they do, by the way, whether or not you can see the remarkable thing happening), I heard her (I assumed it was a her – I hadn’t yet gotten into the fantasizing part of this sonic experience), put her lead-lined handbag on the floor, kick off her heels – into the wall – and pound into the kitchen.

After a few minutes of quiet, I relaxed. I comforted myself with the thought that there must be some special level of humidity in the atmosphere, carrying the sound in a particularly extreme way, like how you always hear a train when it rains, or a lawnmower when it’s sunny outside, and never any other time.

An hour later, I was lying in my bed and I heard the woman above clomp into the bedroom above me, and heard her take off her high-heeled shoes again – didn’t she already take them off once?? – that I knew this would be my acoustic fate. As I lay there, now with my book on my chest, I heard her take off her shoes two or three more times, each time flipping them handily off her big toe against one wall or the other. I imagined she was seated and about to recline when I heard her get up and walk around the room WITH HER SHOES BACK ON. (With no actual visual evidence I started now to try to deduce what was going on up there. Fantasies began forming, not of the fun variety).

It was like “Ground hog’s Day” or a Stephen King novel. The shoes would not stay off her feet, and she could not stop walking around. Even more bizarrely, as I followed her path with my eyes marking my own ceiling, it seemed that she was walking on every inch of her bedroom – criss-crossing here, tossing the shoes off on this side of the room, and then the next.

Where is the bed?? I thought to myself. In every bedroom I’ve ever known, you can’t traverse the entire floor because: there’s a bed in the way.

But no matter how I tried to visualize the space above, she kept thwarting me – because she walked here, there, and everywhere, as, I assumed, she tried to shake off those horrible shoes (Manolos?) that kept re-attaching themselves to her feet!!

I finally fell into sleep (dreaming about Savion Glover trying to put out a fire) until 6am the next morning.

My eyes opened without my moving my head because I was on a certain level, still asleep. Working nights means that I sleep in, at least until 7:30am, and this particular morning, my body couldn’t believe that I had set an alarm. Only it wasn’t an alarm.

The woman upstairs gets out of bed and, yes, she already has shoes on. She must sleep in them I think. They must be sleeping stilettos. In a new state of amazement, I listen as she clomps to one edge of the room. A moment, and then I hear her pull out a Titanic-era steamer trunk from her closet, dragging it to the middle of the floor where she unzips it. (I know most steamer trunks don’t have zippers – this one apparently does). She unzips, and then she unzips some more, and then I hear the zipper chattering yet again, or in another direction, and then again she unzips, and then one last long unzipping makes me sit up in bed. This is ridiculous. How many zippers does this thing have?

But it’s the packing that gets me standing.

For apparently she is (I imagine) a shoe salesperson, and she stores her 600 shoe samples in various bedroom closets, and when she leaves each morning, she packs by yanking out pairs and throwing them across the room into the suitcase. Clomp, Bang, Clank, Whap. The banging continues, until she’s finished, and then she zips the trunk’s eleven zippers up again. Finally, she sets it upright and drags it away. Some mornings she has a limp as she drags, making the whole thing fairly sinister.

Suddenly the walls of my apartment shudder with the slamming of her door, and the world is still again. A picture tilts on the wall.

Since then, I’ve come to know her and her partner well without ever having met them or even seen them. He arrived the next night, unzipping his suitcase (!) for he too it seems, is a shoe salesman. He (apparently) sells steel-tipped work boots. Each night, when they get home, the routine is the same. They tip their suitcases onto the floor of the bedroom, spilling the shoes out into an enormous pile (there’s room because there mustn’t be a bed). And then, each takes turn putting the shoes on and clomping around the room showing each other the new product line. Sometimes he wears the heels, sometimes she wears the boots. Each time a route is completed, they ceremoniously remove the shoes and throw them against the wall.

They also (apparently) sell steel cylinders, perhaps thermoses? which they carry from the bedroom to the living room and back, dropping 4 or 5 in each direction. They may also sell aluminum pots, small dogs with unclipped toenails, cymbals, gongs, cue balls, and loose marbles.

There is occasionally an electrical motor of some kind that sounds in the bedroom. This thing is fascinating to me in its mystery. Even as I lie there at 1:30am, exhaustion tugging at my eyelids, I still muster the strength to marvel at the mystery of this sound. There’s electricity involved, simultaneously grinding, creaking and buzzing.

It must be a winch I imagine, perhaps used to lower the bed from the ceiling or tilting down from the wall, like a drawbridge. Even in my semi-conscious state, I admire their clever use of space.

Revenge is not called for since these two are blameless – this is their job (I think). Everyone needs shoes, and I get a sense they’re good at what they do, or at least they have an enormous inventory. But I can’t do nothing.

My newest idea is to start painting. Buy some Benjamin Moore white, and start rolling it on the ceiling. Just start that first layer of paint that every Pre War building started with in the early 20th century, lapping on another coat every year for the next 80 years, until my ceiling is 5 inches thick and soundproof.

By then I figure the market will have improved and I can just sell the place and go live in an Ashram. As long as it’s in a Pre-War building.

Is It Just Me? I Don't Understand How Someone Can Misplace $40,000.

Forget all this twaddle about people going broke and losing their homes and living in tents and not having enough money to buy milk and bread and Tall skim frappuccinos.

If you just look around, like open up empty boxes left in a corner of your office hallway, you too can be rich!

I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of money being lost. Misplaced. Forgotten. And we're not talking a tenspot.

For example: in 2009, the New York Times reported (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26cash.html) that a little box was left on the counter at a car dealership in Orlando filled with $40,000 in cash. The box was small and unassuming, unmarked, unlabeled, unnamed, containing a mix of old and new bills, none of it “dirty”. Cash. $40,000. That someone “left” there, the assumption being (since no one there could recall threatening to break someone’s kneecaps if they didn’t “pay up”) it was left “accidentally”.

So my question is: how the hell does someone put $40K in a box (in a box?), take it somewhere for whatever reason, whether it’s on its way somewhere else or not, and then, like a $12 pair of sunglasses or a $3 New York umbrella, leave it on a counter? Forget about it?

When I go to Duane Reade for a pack of gum, occasionally I drop a quarter on the way from my hand to the clerk’s. When that happens, all commerce stops for 10 minutes, while I hunt for it in among the Snickers bars under the counter. I enlist the help of the salesperson who is apologetic and equally concerned, and sometimes someone in the line behind me will join in the search. This is for a quarter. I am slightly less anxious about dimes and nickels, but I will take a moment for those as well. Pennies? Eh.

But $40,000 in cash? That I would not walk away from. Not only would I push the Snickers bars out of the way but I would tear open the counter with my bare hands, knocking People Magazines and Chapstick out of the way, clawing and scratching like a terrier until I found that cash.

Forget about the ridiculousness of having that much cash on hand, and the equal insanity of putting it in a cardboard box; how could you just leave it somewhere, because, why? You got a really important text message from your spouse about picking the kid up from school? Did an old flame friend you on Facebook? Did you get a raise or get fired? WHAT could distract you enough to forget about your $40,000??

I guess it wouldn’t have come to this - a post - if it weren’t for the frequency with which this happens. Why work for a living when, in April of 2008, you could find $140,000 (in cash) on a street in Cerritos California, tied up in bundles of twenties? Left (again, “left”) by a Brinks truck on its way to make a deposit (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/09/state/n113337D59.DTL&tsp=1).

Or the more modest $10,000 left in December of 2008, on a grocery store bathroom in Federal Way, Washington, by someone who was moving (http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=230943)? Hey it’s not $140K; maybe some people would leave it holding out for the bigger payout, but, you know, it’s better than a quarter.
Or what about one of my favorites: the $97,000 that was found in another bathroom (it pays to hang out in bathrooms despite the experience of some Republicans), this one a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee (http://www.blinkx.com/video/lady-finds-97-000-in-a-cracker-barrel-bathroom-and-gives-it-back/ONajwyt8uqhyH1SHcCvsVw) in the SAME MONTH as the $10K was left in that Washington water closet? (Proving I suppose that absent-mindedness occurs at every latitude and longitude…)

The $97 grand was in a purse, which makes slightly more sense I suppose than a cardboard box, or a paper bag, the more typical conveyances for wads of cash to be left in. But then, who leaves their purse hanging in the public bathroom? Where are you car keys or your bus pass? Your sunglasses? Your cell phone? How did this lady get home? Even if you forgot about the $97,000 you had jammed in there; what about your breath mints???

In October of 2007, another $65,000 was “dropped”, “left behind”, “lost” by another armored car (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/05/Southpinellas/Hey__65_000_in_cash__.shtml) near St. Petersburg, Florida. A sanitation plant employee found it lying in the roadway near the garbage bags. It wasn’t in one of those cool canvas bags with the single dollar signs on it (which I know they come in from years of “Batman” reruns), no, it was in a PLASTIC BAG. Apparently it had been run over several times. It apparently dropped out of the back of an armored car which had recently passed through.

Hey, forget about bolting sheets of lead onto your truck! Just CLOSE THE BACK DOOR. Write it on your hand if you must, as soon as you put your hollow point bullet-loaded gun away: “Note to self: Close back door of armored vehicle!”

In Littleton, Colorado in 2005, a teenager left the $50,000 his father had given him “to start a new life” (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local/4926337/detail.html), on top of his car and DROVE OFF, spilling the money all over the roadway. I too have left stuff on top of my car and drove off; many cups of coffee, a few cans of Diet Coke; at least two times, the gas cap after pumping my own gas.
But I just know that if I left, like, the change from buying the newspaper, or say, $50,000 in cash, I’d have this little niggling feeling like, “Where the heck is that $50,000 in cash? Darn, it was just here…” Not to mention, WHY WOULD YOU PUT IT ON TOP OF YOUR CAR IN THE FIRST PLACE??

It’s much more common of course for people to leave cash in taxis, along with the iPod, or iPhone or iGlasses. And that’s what happened in July 2007, in Manila, when someone left $17,000 in a “motorcycle taxi” (what’s that?) (see: http://hubpages.com/hub/Taxi_driver_returns_lost_money_worth_US17000).
The other favorite thing people love to forget about: priceless Stradivariuses. (Stradivarii?)

In April of 2008, some guy left his $2 million dollar Stradivarius in the third row of a shuttle van he’d taken from Newark after returning from a concert in Texas (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90252259). So, you might ask yourself, when you’re exiting the shuttle, “Ok, I’ve got my rolling bag, my camera, and my house keys. Now what am I coming home from? Why am I here? Oh yeah; I just was in Texas performing on my $2 million dollar Stradivarius. Well, I’ve got my house keys; I’m good to go.”
In May of 2004 (http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/18/local/me-cello18) a Stradivarius cello valued at $3.5 million dollars was left on the owner’s front stoop in California. Some lady found it a few days later near a Silver Lake dumpster.

In October of 1967 (now we’re going back), some guy in LA left a “Duke of Alcantara” Stradivarius violin either ON TOP OF HIS CAR or maybe (he can’t remember) in his UNLOCKED car when he went grocery shopping (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl101794.htm). Who goes grocery shopping when you have a Stradivarius in your car?? Can’t the Pop Tarts wait? Can’t you go home and drop off the (in this case, piece of crap, valued only at $800,000) instrument before you go into Waldbaums to buy your arugula??

And again, who puts their Stradivarius on top of their car? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?? I am starting to understand the $50K, but the Stradivarius??

As it turns out, even those people whose names are synonymous with their instruments can forget their names, er, instruments in the back of taxis as Yo Yo Ma did in 1999, forgetting all about his $2.5 million cello on the way to a hotel from his home in Manhattan (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19991017&slug=2989399). Did I mention he was in the taxi on his way to rehearse for a concert that night, which would certainly have been a boring concert without his cello?

And the most amazing thing of all? All these wads of money were either returned to the owner, or pending return (except for about $29,000 that the teenaged boy lost in increments of $100 bills). That’s pretty cool.

I once found a $20 bill on the sidewalk and I was happier than a clam for 2 days. I felt lucky, privileged, attentive and in the right place at the right time for the first time in my life. Clearly, I was wrong.

I Don't Understand How Your Lululemon Leggings Get You In The Front Row!

If there's a lingering doubt in the mind of anybody regarding a woman's ability to fight on the battlefield alongside men, I suggest those doubters head over to my gym and try to get into my aerobics class on the half hour, when Stretch Those Sinews lets out and the Shrink-Your-Big-Butt Step Class attempts to enter using the same doorway.

Getting into the classroom and claiming your spot on the studio floor is like a Knicks-Bulls game in overtime. The slamming you see on the rugby field? The full-force body-checking you watch at professional ice hockey games? Nothing, compared to the elbow jabbing, hip-checking, Capezio bag battering mayhem that erupts as we attempt to squeeze through the single door into the workout studio. Watch out, that Evian bottle is loaded and the safety catch is off; you're going to be sloshed! Duck! She's got a backpack and I think it's loaded -- with leg weights! It's like merging on a particularly vicious LA freeway where your fellow travelers are dressed in tights, thongs and Avia cross trainers. At the heart of the struggle is -- what else in New York? -- real estate. In this case, a prime spot on the studio floor.

At my aerobics studio and at most others across the city, country and the world, we women know the drill. Those just finished with their class know better than to try to exit while we're on our way in; rather than be flattened by stampeding hordes of Lululemon-clad Amazons, they stand aside, backs pressed against the studio wall and watch, eyes wide, as we pour through the doorjamb, a multi-colored mob running in a panicked frenzy as if it were an Entemann's give-away; charging toward the "best" spots (the ones in the very front with the full-length mirror view), or just a spot claimed out of some neurotic habit.

Once inside, personal workout space is claimed, staked out and protected as strictly as territory delineated in the Treaty of Versailles. Water bottles and aerobic shoes are dropped into little white piles all over the room as boundaries are marked. Women stand stiffly, hands on hips, legs wide, defying anyone to enter their tiny exercise realms. Any negotiations for additional space are purely symbolic: no one's budging. Latecomers plead for an extra inch or two, attempting to nab even the tiniest view of themselves in the mirrors from their spots in the back of the room, next to the dreaded radiators. (Next to the radiators is no man's land, where you spend the whole class trying not to jump your jack onto a hot metal picket.) They'll get an inch if they're lucky -- if the leotard-wearer blocking them shifts to the side that much -- granting maybe a view of a shoulder or a hip. But once all the invisible lines on the hardwood floor are drawn, and the exercise music starts, the battle really begins.

You just don't know how frightening exercise can be until you've experienced an aerobics class in almost any exercise studio in America. This is a world where women's thighs run the show, don't let anybody kid you, and there's no better place to experience that truth than in a mirror-lined room with 25 women who are not completely happy with their figures. You can read their minds: "Why do I have to have hips at all? I'm obviously never going to have children!" they're thinking, as they rip off their jackets and throw backpacks helter skelter under the coat rack. "I love this class!" one woman lies to another. You can tell she's lying because she's earlier made reference to the fact that this teacher is the hardest. "You get a really good workout with Don!" she assures a newcomer. Translated, she's really saying, "I made it through the class without actually crying and I want the world to know!"

We'd all rather be home watching Oprah, let's be honest. And yet, we women do love an event where we get to see what everyone else is wearing. It's like a party, only with fewer clothes. There's the American Beauty, whose socks and shoes always match her jogbra. I don't know how she does it, but somehow she manages to pull it off three times a week. Then there's The Dancer, wearing leg warmers and what look like sauna shorts. This woman is the picture of grace. She knows what they're talking about when they order an arabesque, while the rest of us are just throwing our legs out in back, trying not to look like a dog burying something behind him. There are even a few punkettes looking for that sculpted look cigarettes and coffee alone just can't accomplish. They sport black Converse high tops, stitched bustiers and fishnet support-hose. And then there are the usual types that populate every exercise studio: the ones who are carved and chiseled into shapes that defy any intake of nourishment; the ones in full make-up who reapply their lipstick just before class; and those new to exercise, who look like they never saw a tennis shoe prior to 2000 and always thought the weights in the weight room were car parts.

Once the instructor starts the warm-up, the ones up front had better be good, or at least have sharp outfits, because if they don't, the ones behind will creep into their territory and do homicidal arm lunges within inches of their backs. Interlopers try to sneak, floorboard by floorboard into each other's space during the "grapevine" (step, cross, step, KICK!). Some women protect their fiefdoms by jumping wildly, flailing their bodies in such a way there's a chance of suffering grave bodily harm if you inadvertently leg-lift yourself onto their property. We've all learned to stay far back from the one in a skimpy black outfit who fends off encroachments by flinging her dreadlocks in a mad whirlpool of aerobic enthusiasm. Think "Ben Hur" and lethal, protruding spokes on chariot wheels...

Then there are the ones who attempt figure intimidation; flaunting their iron hard bodies in thongs and modified G-strings; in short, one-piece unitards; in screaming paisley-patterned Pranas whose design defies all warnings that loud patterns make the wearer look fat. "What are YOU doing here!" the rest of us scream silently. Since they're always in the front row, we have to stand behind them, fuming. We're forced to dodge their butt as it swings its way toward us during the squats; obliged to stagger our kicks so we don't boot them into the next row. Every once in a while though, I let a high kick fly and I fan 'em, like a pitcher fans back the batter, just to let them know I'm back there. It's every woman for herself, truly survival of the fittest, and also of those whose outfits fit best.

But we all have our strategies and this is mine. I go to class three times a week. I wear the baggiest t-shirt I can scrounge up, a pair of my ex-boyfriend's boxer shorts, one long sock and one short sock, and Keds. Plaid Keds. I limp into the back row right before the class starts, dragging my Step platform behind me (the idea is I'm too weak to lift it). I position it upside down like a blue canoe and then I stand there pretending to ponder the mystery of where the risers go until the instructor, with a thinly veiled look of contempt, suggests I come up front since I'm obviously an exercise moron.

It's been 6 weeks now and he still hasn't caught on. I've managed to get to the front row every time and, although I never look as cool as the women who surround me, I'm happy. Like finding a cheap one bedroom apartment three times a week, it's my little real estate victory. The front row, across from the mirror; the best piece of property in the whole studio!

Let it be a lesson to outsiders: aerobics are not to be taken lightly. As we improve our bodies, we hone other skills. Strategy, negotiation and finally, compromise come into play within these mirrored walls. And once we get up to speed, we're a force to be reckoned with: we women (and men) who, for forty minutes, move with the music, in step, as one, together! (Somewhat together.) We become a team, a unit, a unified wedge of cardio-active machinery! Give us a task and we'll complete it, as one!!

Just don't stand in front of us.

I Totally Do Not Understand How to Tell if It's On or Off. I Mean, Everything.

Back to things I don't understand anymore: remember when buttons for off and on were understandable? Clearly marked? Made perfect sense?

When you knew that when you pressed a button, and it responded, the power would be on? And when you pressed it again it would obviously be off? Because it was clearly marked "power"?

These days we have the "smiling cyclops" which indicates nothing when it's pressed. It offers no information, it assists you not, and one might actually forget if one has pushed it, because if it is pressed and nothing happens, one might believe it hadn't been pressed at all.

So today's "I Don't Understand Anything Anymore" post: the contemporary and ubiquitous off/on button. I don't get it. Whose bright idea was this?

Um, I Don't Understand How to Operate Your Shower...

I'm one of those who travels for the holidays; not to anywhere interesting but to the homes of friends and family who put me up in the spare bedroom, on the couch, or who kindly kick their small children to the floor so I have a place to sleep. These small children still seem to like me, because I'm their Aunt who they don't see that often and so I have the advantage of always being a novelty to them. Kids between the ages of 5 and 14 have a kind of instinctive caution about talking back, rolling their eyes, using the kind of foul language reserved for the bowels of slave ships, and borrowing my clothes, which they reserve for their parents and those who they see regularly. In fact, as long as I show my face only once a year, they actually roll their eyes TO me, in a conspiracy against their parents, and how "dumb" or unreasonable they are, especially when those parents ask them to eat vegetables, turn off the video games, or not to have sex with the goth guy in homeroom.

So all in all, it's great, except for the problem of the shower. I live in NYC where, on the Upper West Side where I live, the shower valves haven't changed since 1941 and therefore have a "Hot" device and a "Cold" device, clearly labeled, separated by a natural distance and incredible in their logic and simplicity.



I mean, just by looking at them, you know: 1) how to turn the water on, 2) how to make the water "Hot" or, alternatively "Cold", 3) how to get the water to come out of the overhead valve onto your head, 4) how to turn it all off at the end of the event. You can also figure out fairly quickly what to do if the water is: 1) scalding and your skin begins to redden and peel off, 2) freezing so that everything made of flesh rises in self-defense, 3) brown with chunks.

Let me be the first to report that this is not true outside of Manhattan. Apparently everyone else in the world lives in a house that was built post WW2, and at some point, some smart-ass engineers decided that having separate faucets was "too much trouble" or maybe simply not cool, and started building these things into one unit so that the person of average intelligence, and perhaps even people with advanced degrees, cannot figure out how to take a shower without being injured or asking a 7 year old for help.

This phenomenon is most obvious at the gym, where a shower needs to be fast, not only because other people are waiting, but because there’s always a chance that the naked girls with the “buns and abs of steel” might shove you out of the way because, let’s face it, they’re stronger and worked out harder and need showers much, much more than you.

I don’t live far from my gym, so usually I work out and walk home and shower there, with my normal, logical shower that leaves me confident and cheerful at my ability to operate something mechanical without breaking it or having to call in professionals. But sometimes I have to shower at the gym because I’m headed somewhere other than home and I don’t want to have people do that sideways-shifting-away-on-the-subway-bench that I do sometimes when people are… let’s say, unfragrant. So at my gym, here is what I’m faced with:



Now I get the color scheme, ok? I get it. Red is hot, and blue is cold; this is common most cultures and I don’t want to visit the countries where it’s not. But… please. What the hell? There is no way to figure this thing out without getting in there and just – doing it. This means, in my case, getting alternately scalded and frozen, at least twice, until I find the mid-point of water comfort. Those shrieks and whoops coming from the third stall? That’s me, and I’m alone and there is in absolutely no sex involved. The small crowd that gathers around the extra towels awaiting my exit exhibit the collective expression of a group that is concerned, but maybe not enough to risk their own lives to find out what is going on in that glass chamber. And of course, upon my exit, I act like I don’t know where the yelling came from either and walk out shrugging blithely at the be-toweled clique.

And the problem only gets worse outside of Manhattan. This is Cleveland. House of Brian. Nice house, modern, many bathrooms.



There’s an “H”, a “C” and an “Off” which you’d think would make things oh-so-obvious, but is it hot when the faucet handle is pointed at the H or when the handle is pointed at the C? Why isn’t there an arrow? Where’s the color scheme? There are many teen-agers at this house and if you think I’m asking their help, when I’ve already been humiliated not only playing Wii baseball, but even the low-tech board-game “Risk”, you’re nuts.

My family is a “Four Christmases” kind of a deal, so from Brian’s house, I went on to Alison’s (his ex-wife and my friend), also built in the era of the ambitious engineer. This shower is in the redone basement, and so it’s super special, and makes even less sense.



It’s a kind of diamond shape (and tastefully, looks like an actual diamond! Your guests will actually think you have the Hope Diamond in your downstairs bathroom!) and comes to a point, leading one to believe that if you point the point at one of the key letters (H, and C), you’ll have Hot or Cold water. Getting started here is the issue. You pull it out and then you have to dodge that spray until you can snake your hand in there and adjust it until you can safely get the whole body in there. A flushing toilet somewhere in the house can add layers of confusion and trauma, trying to understand whether it’s you controlling the spray, or some outside agent, and whether you should passively wait until things settle down, or go bold, adjusting wildly as armies of 13 and 14 year old girls dab their make-up upstairs, tossing little tiny pieces of toilet paper away, flushing each time, in their quest for Bratz-like slutitude.

I also visited Kelly who just redid her bathroom (what’s wrong with having an old, functional bathroom? People: leave your showers alone!).



This one stumped me utterly. The Barbie was ecstatic: I was glum. What’s that long metal thing over there? What does that do? How can that help matters? Why do we need extra devices protruding from the spigot? It was getting late and people were waiting for me for yet another blended family walk by the water. I tried, I honestly did, but ultimately I had to open the bathroom door and call for assistance. Her 7 year old, with an expression reserved for people who visit regularly (that is: disdain, annoyance), showed up and said, “Let me do it” and she did, getting it right the first time as I towered above her, wrapped in a towel, reminding her that I had a Masters and a driver’s license and also many boyfriends and my own apartment, which didn’t seem to impress her. This one required doing something under the faucet at the bottom, which I pretended I understood (like when I took Chemistry and stared dumbly at the blackboard for a whole semester), just so I could preserve some dignity and not let the little girl get the upper hand. “Oh yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought, it’s so simple, much easier than mine at home,” I suggested.

The holidays are over and I’m back home and I’ve been taking showers with no problem at all, and planning my trip to Miami in March, hoping against hope that either the retro-rebuilt town hasn’t touched the showers since 1941 or has redesigned them for the simple-minded, or perhaps, that a smart 7 year old is down the hall.

Fingernails: I Don't Get it. They're Dead and Yet Still Giving Me Problems

It’s an internal conflict from which all women suffer - one that forms one of the basic struggles of female identity. It’s not dress size or hairstyle, career path or marital status. It’s our fingernail length.

Some people trumpet their identity via the buttons they wear on their lapels. Others have bumper stickers. When it comes to women however, fingernails are a crucial barometer of the female self. I am them and they are me: the truest bellwether of a transient identity.

In my life they've been long and polished (the "Young Business Woman" era) or short and dirty ("The Artist Years"). They've been a different length on each finger like a ragged graph of the stock market (“The Happy Gardener”). There have been periods where 9 were long and one short (snapped it using trying open a CD), or the left hand has been short and the right long (learning the guitar). They've had 6 coats of $15-a-bottle polish during some phases and gone stark naked during others. Every once in a while, I go through a period where I don't think about them at all. It doesn't last more than a week.

I have traveled extensively and bravely between the most extreme territories of fingernail length. I have explored the rugged inner realm of nails bitten-to-the-quick, and I have journeyed to the outermost regions of nail length, exploring the netherlands of practical fingernail possibility with talons extending a half inch beyond the tops of my fingertips.

In college as an art major I wore them short. I had to, of course: I was an artist. I wore overalls and clogs and wore my hair long and wild. My fingers were serious and functional and even if my paintings were mediocre, I was to be taken seriously.

A few years after I graduated however, I found myself curious about the world of women with beautifully done nails. Sometimes, wishing I were that kind of a woman, I too would get my nails done, and for a time, I would be one of those women. My posture would be better. I would toss my hair. I'd use my fingers more, to point at things that really didn't need to be pointed out; to run my finger down lists; to touch-tone dial. I would handle things gingerly, with the pads of my fingers. It affected my whole physical self: when I ran with long nails, I'd run "like a girl". Breaking one would induce dismay and anxiety. Sometimes I'd catch myself admiring them as if they weren’t attached to me: watching them twinkle as I pushed elevator buttons or set the dial on the washing machine to Permanent Press.

My fingernails have been an Almanac-like measure of my mood at various times in life. At one point in my dating past, a date could look across the dinner table at my hands and know approximately what his chances were for an extended evening (shaved legs were an equally reliable measure). If they were painted at all, that was a good sign. To know my fingernails was to know me. Sometimes, in the biblical sense.

Most women will tell you that their fingernail consciousness was raised initially by their mothers who typically guide their daughters from: “For heaven’s sake, that dog can dig his own holes!”, to our first introduction to the proper way to use a nail file. Not baked in a cake to break out of prisons like my four brothers insisted, but gently, on one's finger tips, in one direction only, at first making the nails pointed and then rounding them, carefully pushing back the cuticles so the "moons" show. That was then.

Things have changed, fingernail-wise. Like everything else that can adorn a human body, the decoration of the fingernail has come to mean something. These days you have moody colors that are mixed in blenders, mostly dark, from deep burgundy all the way to the very popular black. There are deep purples, dark blues and rich greens with glitter mixed in. You can have nails as metallic as the side of a toaster or striped like a zebra hide. If you put plain pink on your nails and still frequent the lower East side, you're saying something about who you are... and who you aren't.

Culturally, there are fingernail differences as well. Black and Hispanic women seem more likely to sport exotically long nails, painted with patterns that would make Juan Miro envious, perhaps imbedded with a jewel. There's the classic "French manicure": the white-tipped, flat-topped style which prime-time TV actresses and female newscasters seem to favor, representing both approachability and responsible journalism. And then there are the bright red claws of porn stars and men's magazine models, meant to both intimidate and entice.

I always thought having someone else do one's nails was a silly luxury -- until I had mine done. It’s like handing over one part of your body to the curators of a particular wing of a museum. Your nails become the fine canvasses a staff of experts are trained to restore.

My informal research (conducted across countless manicure tables) has revealed that most nail operations are run either by rows of small, lovely Asian girls, or in spas and hair salons by middle-aged Eastern European women with oddly smooth skin. When we sit down before them and extend our hands, what do they think? It’s a question that kept me away from the table for years. What must they think of a woman who can’t do her own nails? Now, I assume they are just waiting until I leave so they can get their own nails done.

Unlike hair salons, we don't walk in and ask their advice; generally women know what they want in a fingernail. Frankly, I've always been afraid that if I did ask for advice, the news would be bad; that I'd be nail-cast: "Honey, bright red just isn't you. You're just not the type. Here's a nice pink." You mean you don't see me with a jewel? It's that obvious I'm not a "Purple Passion" person? Can I at least have a darker shade of pink??

These days, my nails are plain: unpainted, mid-length, kind of between here and there, sort of 5'5", brunette, Midwestern average. Sort of like me. And for now, I'm content. But I see blue on the horizon. And it’s called “Midnight Sky Metallic”.

The Book Club: A great place to discuss Angelina Jolie's upper arms. And, oh yeah, books.

I was incredibly flattered recently when a friend whom I consider one of the most sophisticated and intellectual of my circle, invited me to join her book club. It's not that I don't already have many other intellectual things to do with my evenings (as long as "The Simpsons" is over), it's just that I was thrilled to participate in what has become the urban equivalent of sorority rush. So many of my friends had started or were already in book clubs that I began to fear I wasn't going to get asked to "pledge". In cities across America, large and small, book clubs are taking the place of extra-marital affairs as distraction for intelligent urban women, and if you haven't yet been asked to join a book club well, either you're a Foreign Legionnaire hiding out in a distant, sand-locked outpost of the desert, or more likely, it's only a matter of time.

For the present generation of women, book clubs became popular when Oprah began reading and promoting books on her daytime television show. This was of course in the days when first-time book authors were poor and grateful for any crumbs of attention that might be tossed their way, unlike the present, when 21-year-old authors are annoyed if they are the second guest on Leno. Soon after author Jonathan Franzen became irrationally insulted when Oprah read his book "The Corrections" and lifted it from the oblivion wherein it would have most likely lingered, Oprah decided she herself didn't want to be in a book club, complaining that there just not enough "good books" (perhaps she meant "humble authors").

The book club baton was passed to Kelly Ripa, which had the potential to make even the most bookish of us give up the whole thing for periodicals. But instead, the reading thing has become a newly found old pleasure that has sort of wafted into our collective unconscious like the smell of fresh bread through an open window. Book clubs provide today's over-extended women an acceptable way to socialize without the guilt of it being purely leisure.

Many people talk about how they used to read all the time when they were young and how much they used to love it. I for one, remember getting books for Christmas, usually Nancy Drew mysteries, and spending all that day reading, not speaking a word to my brothers (who were busy outside in the back yard with their own Christmas gifts, attempting to put each other's eyes out). Even then, girlfriends would pass beloved books to each other: mostly sweet, girlish stories about girl sleuths or clever airline stewardesses. These were supplemented of course by books we considered "sexy", by Erica Jong or Philip Roth, found on our parent's bedside tables or more likely, under their beds. A book that had a scene where two people disappeared into a bedroom or any mention at all of anyone's "panties" would send us into red-faced paralysis and would be passed around with guilty terror at slumber parties for the whole slumber party season.

(I could top even those by pulling out one of my father's medical journals, wherein photos of bizarre genital afflictions were guaranteed to send at least one girl screaming out of the room. These were met not with titillation but with wonder and would change the party dynamics so that instead of talking about sex, we'd end up discussing seriously tangential topics like, "What would you do if you didn't have any eyebrows?")

But most people find they just don't have time to read. It takes a certain kind of a commitment, not unlike exercise or marriage, all of which ultimately make you feel good but are awfully hard to start. So I was extremely pleased when my girlfriend Pam called me and asked if I would be willing to join her book club to which each core member had invited one friend. "How does it work?" I asked. "'How's it work?’ It's a book club!" she responded. "We choose a book, we read it and then we get together and talk about it. How hard could it be?" Not so easy as it turns out.

First of all, when you join a book club it means you actually have to read the books. No kidding, there's no way around it. And not every book is going to be one that you want to read or would even enjoy using as a paperweight. At these moments, when you see the nine hundred page life history of Moses Cleveland held up for your approval, you must either say "Yeah", "Nay" or "No way, Sister"! Of course the latter is generally considered rude, and reserved for gigantic leather bound books with dictionary sized print and tissue paper leaves, pulled out just as summer is starting and it's all we can do to finish our "OK!" magazines. To ensure that no one goes away thinking they'd rather have joined a knitting circle, the book decision process is a fairly democratic one.

The first thing we do in my book club is weigh the book. By that I don't mean we weigh its length against the time we have available or weigh it against other books of its genre, or weigh its educational value versus its entertainment ratio. I mean we actually weigh the book. Each of us in turn gets a chance to heft the book, holding it in one hand or both hands, lifting it up and down slightly, turning it over, seeing if it gets any lighter if we split it open and heft it again.

We utilize our own personal sense of weights and measures: "light" weighs about as much as a single fork: that would be your Penguin paperback and your pithy-quotes-at-the-cash-register type books. "Not too light" would be the approximate weight of a pair of strappy sandals in a shoe box, like for example, your latest Abused-Intern Tell-All, or the: I'm-A-Married-Woman-Who's-Having-Trouble-Having-It-All novel. A middleweight book might balance the scales against a wooden cutting board, depending of course on the thickness of the cover; those would be your "Memoirs of a Geisha" or a biography of someone with very little to say like, perhaps, Larry Birkhead.

"Heavy" as far as we're concerned would be the approximate weight of an empty clay casserole dish: those would be your original hardback editions of a typical Tom Wolfe novel or any one of the recent Looking-Back-At-the-Last-Century-By-an-Attractive-Newscaster tomes. "Too heavy" would be the weight of a full casserole dish, with maybe lasagna in it, which would include Webster's dictionary, anything by Salman Rushdie or any biography of a philandering politician from the '30s. It's not precisely that these books are "too heavy" in content but that they are in fact, just too heavy and have the potential of spraining your wrist if you try holding them with one hand, and will, in fact, demolish anything below them in your purse. They can be used effectively for self defense: one can always throw them at a mugger.

So now you have your assignment, and the first thing you do is look at the calendar and count each of the days between now and the date you have to finish the book, figuring in several days of trashy magazine reading, one or two Sunday papers, a couple nights of reality TV, and at least one indecipherable instruction manual for yet another digital product.

And then comes the reading. Not every book makes you long for the moment when you'll be alone with it, to crack its spine and dive into its world. Some of them sit on your nightstand like a fat Buddha, arms crossed, glaring at you, wondering when you're going to pick them up and get to work. Some of them make you so depressed by the third page that you have to rush out to a magazine stand to buy a "Vogue". There've been afternoons when I've sat among piles of laundry and dirty dishes, one eye on the clock, reading frantically to finish before the meeting that evening.

But every once in a while there's that one you'd never have picked up on your own: a book that is utterly enchanting or hypnotically interesting, or which makes you giddy with its observations and glad that there are writers like these. At those moments, you remember your love of reading, happy to be an explorer once again.

Our meetings are held at each member's house in turn about every six weeks. The reunion itself usually takes a good thirty minutes before we even get to the book, as follows: 4 to 5 minutes of telling each other how fabulous we look, 2 minutes denying how fabulous we look, 3 minutes complimenting each other's home furnishings ("Is that new?"), 2 minutes discussing how difficult or how easy it was to find the furnishings, 12 minutes talking about our spouse, child or boyfriend (or lacking those, the cute guy we rode up with in the elevator), and then roughly 8 minutes where we tell each other how we're doing ("I don't know; lately I've just been in a funk. Do you think I should get my teeth whitened?" to "We have finally concluded that my sister-in-law is an idiot," to "I've decided to get implants."). These are crucial bonding moments and are essential to the expediency of the actual meeting. Without them we've found the group tends to get distracted during the book discussion, breaking into subgroups to discuss shoes and Angelina Jolie's upper arms.

Like I assume most book clubs brag, our membership is made up of women who are strong, smart, independent thinkers who are, more importantly, very, very funny, capable of hilarious and pointed opinions. The discussion of the books is always interesting. A book we all love is rare, translating into an hour of favorite moments recalled and favorite lines reread aloud with reverential enthusiasm. More frequently is the book we all hate, for which the evening turns into a trash fest of the author, his or her beliefs, and the book jacket photo. The most passionate discussions erupt around book endings: half the group disappointed that for example, it didn't end happily; the other half insisting that it couldn't. After we've dissected the book to our heart's content, we eat (fattening food at a friend’s house doesn’t count), drink (lots) and chat, sometimes about topics the book has generated, more frequently about how unbelievably expensive it is to get a hair cut these days.

Once the selection of the next book has been made, our evening, for all intents and purposes, is over. Reluctantly we gather our stuff and head out, but the rate of chatter that starts up as we're nearing the door is like last call at a singles bar. We say our good-byes like we're standing on a dock watching a ship pull away, as we leave one world to reenter another.

New friends were not the point when the book club was started; we have barely enough time for our own. But being with new people, discussing things outside of the realm of redundant days and predictable conversation has been a powerful thing; an opportunity to use our intellect for more than figuring out how to gracefully exit a department store after our kid has thrown up on the clerk. It's not the books that keep us juggling our schedules, it's the whole package - the camaraderie, the conversation, the pure haven it provides in the context of lives filled with errands. For me, it has become a necessity for health and well being: like an aerobics class for the brain.

If you haven't been asked to join a book club (yet), start your own. The way I look at it, it's an organization devoted to the protection of at least one natural resource we can all get behind: our minds.

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