Moment Magnitude

Home for the Holidays

Exactly one year ago, I was in Paris. France. I arrived there mid-December and stayed until mid-January.

I rented a friend's apartment on Rue St. Denis, in the second arrondissement, just south of the Ludovic Arc. All day and night, prostitutes hovered in the building's doorway. It got to the point that whenever I left or returned, they greeted me with "Bonjour, madame," or "Bonsoir, madame." They in their fur coats, push-up bras, rouged lips - and me in my North Face jacket, black NYC watch cap, stretch pants, and running shoes. We got to know each other by face, a glance, and we half-smiled at each other, then looked away.

Christmas Eve, I spent at a friend of a friend of a friend's apartment in the Marais. Our hostess was of South American origin, but tres Parisienne. She works for Emanuel Ungaro, and left the Western Hemisphere far in her past. The food was marvelous, and if anyone insulted me in the oblique way haute Parisiens did, I didn't mind.

Until one of the other guests, a stuffy Swiss fellow, took umbrage at the way I sliced a piece of the brie or Camembert or whatever soft, nondescript cheese was offered, after dinner, after champagne and fois gras, after a stuffed capon with all the trimmings, and after glass after glass of wonderful wine. I allowed it. I gave him the knife, and as acid-sweet as I could muster, implored him in a soft tone, to perforce, cut me a slice. Proper.

And when he patronizingly bent to and completed the task, I thanked him in my most demure tone. Then I pulled him close, and explained, my lips to his ear, "You know," I murmured, ensuring that I had his full attention, "In America, when one cuts the cheese, and thank you so much for this slice, it means that one has farted." And I smiled, then added, "You know, one has passed gas. From one's rectum."

The blood drained from his face. And I kept smiling. And eating.

Note to obsequious French-English-speaking Europeans: do not fuck with a New Yorker.

Now, truth be told, I adore Paris. It took me a while, and more than one visit to allow Paris to infuse itself into my soul. But now? Now I love it. And miss it. In all its seasons, but maybe late fall and winter the most. It's warmer than New York. And the holiday displays that line the grandes boulevards, they're magic.

Pars que, je suis nee en France. C'est vrai.

My family left France when I was maybe one and a half years old. We returned to New York, to Brooklyn. By then, the rest of the family was living there. I remember nothing of my time in France.

My earliest memories were made in Brooklyn. The first is my mother holding me back from a stack of folded laundry because a wasp landed on the top towel, and I tiptoed, straining, trying to see the wasp, only I couldn't.

The second was the criss-cross ladder that she pulled across the house's second-story landing to prevent my brother and me from falling - although I climbed over it, and it hurt - so that I could thump-thump-thump, by my butt, down the stairs, to watch a cocktail party my parents hosted. My father picked me up, and showed me off.

The third was watching a bottle company's window through which a conveyor belt moved bottles, one-by-one, in endless, timed sequence. I was winter-bundled in a carriage stroller on the way back from a concrete, park swing-set. I could have watched forever, if I had the words to tell my mother to stay.

Today, right now, the city is frigid. I will stay here for the holidays, for the mid-winter celebrations.

I am an agnostic. But I like the whiff of tradition. The faint citrus smell of a pine bough, the twinkle of icicle lights hung from windows and balconies twenty stories above the street. The red and green, giant gel-illuminations atop the Empire State Building. Eggnog. Spiked.

Most of all, I look forward to a day of peace. Of quiet. Of staying in my dorky, red-plaid, flannel pajamas all day, curling the cats around me, reading, watching movies on television, dozing. And I'll wonder, would it be better if I had someone with whom I could share the solitude?

One Block in Manhattan

The 24-hour corner deli is closing tonight, after 19 years of operation. The Yemeni family that owns Olympia Gourmet Deli has two other locations - one around the corner on the avenue, and the other on the same block, one avenue west. Olympia has been my de facto refrigerator. I rarely have any food in the house, and I don't cook. A few extra steps to another deli won't hinder me much, but Olympia's closing is testimony to the change in this Chelsea-north neighborhood.

When I moved into my loft, the building was bounded by on the east side by a parking lot. It was often empty at night, and hookers hopped in and out of minivans, soliciting and servicing their johns. One night, up on the roof deck, GV Wonder and I leaned over to watch a fellow get in, his naked, white butt-cheeks shining up through the window. Inside of a bobbing-up-and-down minute, he finished, then cracked open the passenger side door.

GV Wonder whooped and hollered. The man took one look up, yanked his fly, and fled. "That m.f. was one quick nutter."

Those were the days.

Not one, but four high-rise rental apartment towers have sprung up within a block of my circa 1900, former-factory, loft building. Another one will go up across the street, after the building that housed the deli is demolished. More noise. More dirt. Hooray.

Billy's Topless has been replaced by a bagel shop - and the bagels are crap. On the other hand, I have dry cleaners and and a CVS pharmacy almost out the front door, across an intersection.

Despite the big-box development on the avenues, the street remains a microcosm of the whole world. I hurry past Yemenis and Pakistanis, Orthodox Jews, Chelsea boys, downtown-looking artists, leggy model-wannabes, hip hop artists and producers, construction workers, fusty antiques dealers, a handful of lost-looking tourists with those heinous-but-necessary "wheelie" suitcases, backpacked teenagers, bicycle messengers, contraband-carrying Africans, Mexican workers, and smokers huddled in doorways.

I see a handful of my-block regulars, and I greet them in English, or Spanish, or French. Kiss-kiss.

Snow on Sand

I go to the beach year round. Now.

I hadn't spent time in the East End since the summer of 1991. In the last twelve months I've been out almost every other, if not every week. I figured out a way to be there, to find a comfort and solace. Not a house or a home, no. Rather, the gift of a peaceful, quiet space, away from the summer crowds, away from the sleazy, creepy, pick-up freaks and their share-houses, away from the oh-so-fabulous people and their ostentations, their dreadful, wretched behaviors.

I go to the country, into the Northwest Woods, on the southern margin of Three Mile Harbor. That's where I stay. I'm lucky. The Savior, lets me come and go. "Mi casa es su casa," he told me, on the day of my heartbreak. He must have sensed something, a kindred spirit. He's family to me, like a brother.

I love the drive out, once I get onto the open expressways, the way my car feels. I love how the rays of the rising and setting sun flash by, and change with the seasons - or the weather. Serenity from a six-speed stick-shift.

I "pack in." My favorite place to shop is Garden of Eden on West 23rd Street. Hard cheeses, sopresata and chorizo, cured olives, Belgian beers, dark roasted coffee. A snack after I pull in, after my shoes crunch across the gravel driveway, and I turn the key, and open the door. "Anybody home?" A big hello and a warm hug.

Sometimes last summer, I barely left the house. I would write all day, go for runs along the hilly back-roads, then returning poolside, unfurl my mat, and stretch. Other times, I would drink wine and laugh with girlfriends who came to stay, go to the occasional tennis match or private party.

The summer sunsets - along the northern perimeter of the southern fork of Long Island. Astonishing.

           

It's cold now. I return to the city, and the drive is no less exhilarating. I put the car in the garage, walk home to the loft, open the door, and the cats run to greet me. I scratch their ears, and go to the windows. Every now and then, the sky goes crazy, and looking southeast over the rooftops, I think, "This. And then this happens."