I HATE ALL OF YOU ON

THIS L TRAIN

SELECTED STORIES

RICHARD GRAYSON

Canarsie House 2009

These stories originally appeared, in somewhat different form, in the following books:

Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog

With Hitler in New York

I Survived Caracas Traffic

Highly Irregular Stories

And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Grayson. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Canarsie House

P.O. Box 6969

Brooklyn, New York 11236

ISBN # 978-0-557-08077-9

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Tao Lin

CONTENTS

The Best Rosh Hashona Ever 1

With Hitler in New York 16

I Saw Mommy Kissing Citicorp 32

Twelve Step Barbie 53

Diary of a Brooklyn Cyclones Hot Dog 64

Schmuck Brothers of East Harlem 74

I Hate All of You on This L Train 93

The Best Rosh Hashanah Ever

Somebody like Pete Hamill or Norman Podhoretz or Gloria Steinem once observed that one of the longest journeys in the world is the trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I made that trip last Rosh Hashanah on the D train, which is a very good train as far as they go. It was one of the last really warm days of the summer and I dreaded staying home doing nothing but playing solitaire or watching soap operas.

Actually, I used to be a soap opera addict, and I still get the urge to turn them on when I’m at home during the day. My friend Willie and I used to rush home from Meyer Levin Junior High School to catch the last fifteen minutes of Another World almost every day. The best actress on the program played Aunt Liz, and I truly hated her. The last time I saw Willie, he told me a new actress was playing Aunt Liz now and she’s not half as evil.

During the 1964 World’s Fair, Willie and I were waiting to get into the Johnson & Johnson pavilion when we were approached by this guy from some little jerkwater religion whose name I don’t remember. The man was trying to convert people, and when he found out we were Jewish, he went into a long harangue about Jews having animal sacrifices. I don’t remember much of what he said. I wanted to get Willie out of there. Hell, he hadn’t had his bar mitzvah at that point and in another ten minutes he would have converted. So I pulled Willie from the line and told him I needed to pee really badly. As we walked away, the man kept yelling at us, "But where’s the blood, fellas? Where’s the blood?"

When we moved to Mill Basin, my parents joined a synagogue, the Flatbush Park Jewish Center. It was "modern Orthodox," and I think we belonged because their friends did since we certainly weren’t Orthodox. Temple Sholom, the Conservative shul, was just a few blocks away but that might have been better. I never knew I could hate school so much until I went to Hebrew school at Flatbush Park. And on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Mom and Dad made me wear a suit and tie for services where all that constant jumping up and down made me crazy.

The last time I dressed up for the High Holy Days was in September 1966. That was also the same month I started in psychoanalysis because of my anxiety attacks. If you remember, that was the time when Governor Rockefeller had all those cute commercials for his reelection. He could afford it, I guess. One of them was about a talking fish. Not that I’m saying those commercials had any connection with my seeing a shrink; it was just a coincidence. Dr. Weinberg had his office in his big mansion on Albemarle Road, just off Coney Island Avenue. I took the D train to Church Avenue to get there when I didn’t have to take a taxicab. Dr. Weinberg’s house smelled of jasmine. When Arlene gives me a cup of jasmine tea, I remember Dr. Weinberg.

The year before that, I enrolled as a sophomore at The Benton School, which catered to upper-middle class Jews. Nearly everyone at the school lived in the city, and it was a long trip for me from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, but I always arrived early, even in the winter. Sometimes I got there before the registrar, Mrs. Mogg, who opened up the school. It got very cold in the mornings and I’d have to stay in a telephone booth. Incidentally, on all of Central Park West, I never found a telephone that worked.

The principal of The Benton School, an Englishman who occasionally took a nip of brandy for the malaria he contracted when he was a spy in the First World War, told me on that first day that he would assign an older student to look after me for a while. He told me not to get too dependent on this one student. The student’s name was Peter. His stepfather was the producer of documentaries I’d seen on CBS News.

By the time I was a high school senior, we had stopped going to synagogue. By then, though, I wasn’t going out much at all. At first Mom and Dad freaked out when I’d wear jeans and sneakers on the High Holy Days instead of getting dressed up, even if we weren’t going to shul. They told me they didn’t care what our Jewish neighbors thought, that they were worried about the Catholic families on the block.

"If they see you don’t respect your own holiday," Mom said, "how can they respect you?"

I just shrugged and agreed, saying, "Yeah, I guess they’ll stop saluting me."

Quite a while after that, I put an ad in The Village Voice. I don’t remember it word for word, but it was good, like a prose poem. I asked for a friendly guy or girl to share a trip around New England. At the time I was trying to get over my agoraphobia. I got a ton of replies, mostly from weirdoes or old people. When I read Erik’s letter, I knew he was the right one.

First Erik and I went to New Haven. I didn’t like Yale, probably because it wasn’t what I expected. I expected some elegance. All I got was noise and confusion. Sometimes I think I should have been born in the nineteenth century. I’m a Victorian at heart.

I heard a cute story about my little next-door neighbor’s first day in nursery school. The teacher put up one finger and asked the kid what it was, and the kid answered, "One." Then the teacher held up two fingers and asked what it was. The kid answered, "Peace."

Last Rosh Hashanah was the fifth time that I had gone into Manhattan that year. Once I went to a dental laboratory to pick out a shade for my capped tooth, the one I broke in the obstacle race in Willie’s basement when we were in eighth grade. Once I went to visit a friend who worked at the Barnes and Noble textbook store. Twice I went to the Village, to Washington Square. That’s also where I was heading last Rosh Hashanah.

By then, my parents had given up even the pretense of pretending we observed the High Holy Days. My father went out on Rosh Hashanah morning to play tennis with his business partner Frank Amatuzzio.

Did you ever notice that the West Fourth Street station of the IND has entrances on Sixth Avenue, West Eighth Street and Waverly Place, but no entrance on West Fourth Street? Mansarde loves to hear about things like that. She’s my pen-pal in Madison, Wisconsin. Her real name is Mary, but she calls herself Mansarde because her last name is Garrett, and mansarde is French for "garret." Before he went out to play tennis, my father brought in the mail, and I got this letter from Mansarde.

Dear Kevin,

This has been a momentous day, and I celebrate it with this letter. Two of my friends and I (hard core hoodlums all) were invited to leave French class for the next two weeks. The teacher thought she was threatening us, be we plan to take her up on it. We were accused of "disrupting the class, disrespectful behavior, inattention" blah blah blah. What really happened was that I questioned her translations and teachings, Pat broke into laughter when asked to translate, and Cris stuck up for us. Cris is overly sensitive and almost broke into tears under the tongue-lashing she received.

Speaking of trouble, there have been four or five fire bombings around the University. They bombed the wrong side of the gymnasium so that the only thing that remained unscathed was the ROTC offices. Although these people are rather inept, I sympathize with them. I’d really like to burn down West High first, tho, and then the University. I don’t dare say that at home.

I’d like to grow all my own foods, grind the grain, dye and weave the cloth, use the sun and wind for power: in short, be more self-sufficient. Speaking of handicrafts (writing of them, actually), Cris and I are selling macramé belts at a local store. I made a blue belt for you, but I either measured wrong or it shrank in the dye, because it came out three inches too short (26"). So I sold it to a kid. But abandon not hope, I’ll try again, I’ll knot be defeated.

Dr. Conigliaro has been playing with my hair again. He’s always telling me what a good wife I’ll make some lucky man. Yesterday he was muttering about how he’d like to ‘get first crack’ at me.

The Cream record is ending, so so long for now.

Love,
Mansarde

It was the year before, September of 1968, that I had a complete nervous breakdown. I didn’t sleep for three nights in a row and I fainted. I had chills and nausea for hours. I shook and shook and shook. I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t leave my house, which meant I was excused from dressing up for the High Holidays.

I was even scared to go down to the basement. It was as though my nerves were sticking out, as though my flesh had been torn away. It lasted for months. My pediatrician prescribed Librium and hot baths. My shrink prescribed Triavil and group therapy.

I was almost totally recovered by last Rosh Hashanah. I bought a magazine – I believe it was Ramparts – and strolled over to Washington Square to sit in the sun by the fountain. Next to me, perched on one of the pedestals, was a young kid, maybe sixteen. His dark brown hair fluttered over his eyes. He was wearing an old work shirt like I was, but he had on black dungarees with the name "Diann" written vertically down the right leg with white paint. He had on very abused brown loafers, no socks. (I was wearing black Keds.) He had a large nose, the kind that kids around that age get when their noses grow faster than the rest of them. He was squinting himself, at the whole scene, as if he were reviewing it for a magazine. Outasight. He looked a little like Peter.

I was fourteen, Peter was sixteen, and we were in the bathroom of his East Side apartment. I started to feel a bit funny, as though I were being torn apart from myself, and pulled away, but Peter drew me closer. "Nothing’s happening," I heard myself say. Soon enough, though, persistence paid off and I gasped, "Christ!" Like a meteor being drawn to earth by gravity, I fell toward Peter’s long smooth body and exploded. After about a century, Peter smiled and said, "Great. But listen, could you try and be a little neater next time, huh?"

Peter’s mother committed suicide last year. It made page three of the Post. I thought of sending a sympathy card but decided against it.

A bearded man in his forties came over to the kid in Washington Square and started asking him all kinds of questions. From time to time, I could make out snatches of the conversation. The kid said he was in from Minnesota to be at his mother’s wedding.

"What if your new stepfather takes a liking to you? You know what I mean?" asked the dirty old man.

"I’m not going to live with my stepfather," the kid announced. "I’m staying with my aunt at her motel in Hibbing." He spoke with a very broad A.

The man started talking about himself: he was a science fiction writer and he wanted the kid to come up to his nearby studio to see his collection of flying saucer photos. By this time, the kid kept looking over to me for something, and the man noticed this.

"Are you his boyfriend?" the bearded man asked me.

I smiled, looked at the kid, who nodded, and I said, "Yes. Yes, I am. And if you’ll please leave us alone."

The man snapped his fingers like a movie villain so that we almost cracked up, and he moved on to the next young boy.

"Thanks," the kid said. "He was getting to be a drag."

"You don’t know how to handle these dirty old men," I said. "But I guess you don’t get much of that sort of thing in Minnesota."

He brightened tremendously and said, "You believed that story? I made the whole thing up. I’m from Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights."

Dumbfounded, I could only manage to say, "I’m from Brooklyn, too." We talked for a while. I told him my name.

He was Jack Krantz, born in Tennessee, but moved her when he was a baby. His father was a surgeon, his mother a pop artist. He was fifteen and went to Poly Prep. He was waiting for his seventeen-year-old sister to get out of her yoga class.

I didn’t get much out of group therapy, mostly because I was more interested in the other patients than I was in myself. One girl was a heroin addict who was going cold turkey, and she was awfully fidgety. One girl was having two love affairs at once: she liked both guys and it became a hassle after a while. One guy stabbed his mother. He lived next door to Dr. Weinberg, and I guess the good doctor took him on as a favor to his neighbors. One girl was pregnant and not married. She had been molested by her grandfather and told some of the greatest jokes I’ve ever heard. I never did find out what was the matter with the last guy, mainly because he never said anything. Oh, sometimes Dr. Weinberg would try and ask him something, but he always said, "Talking makes me nervous." Which is the opposite of me. I can go on and on, and I usually do.

Jack’s sister was named Arlene. He introduced me to her when she arrived, and they invited me to wander around the Village with them. Arlene was blonde, with freckles: skinny but really well-built. She was very bright. I inferred this right off, when we were eating burgers at The Cookery and Arlene asked me what I majored in at Brooklyn College. I told her I wasn’t sure but that last time I’d been an English major. "Really?" she said. "What regiment?" I think it was then that I started to fall in love with Arlene.

It was the best Rosh Hashanah ever. The three of us watching the kooks and the tourists, shopped in all the stores (but only bought some incense sticks at Azusa), had bad pizza for dinner (which I paid for, happily), and generally joked around. We were on West Eighth Street, just in front of Orange Julius, when I looked at my watch and saw how late it was.

"Gee, you guys," I told them. "It’s been great, but I really have to get going." I swallowed and said, "Hey, do you mind if I call you?"

"Our number’s in the book," Arlene answered. "Mrs. Sheera Krantz. Nineteen Grace Court." She gave my shoulder a squeeze. "See you soon."

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Erik and I visited his great-aunt in Boston. His aunt was an old maiden lady who would be played by Margaret Rutherford if they ever made a movie about her. Her name was Shifra, and she didn’t mind my calling her by her first name despite her being so old. She was born in Russia but grew up in Brooklyn before moving to Boston. We got to discussing different cities and their names. Shifra told us how to spell Chicago: "Chicken in the car, car won’t go, that’s how you spell Chicago." She also recited a poem from her childhood:

I won’t go to Macy’s any more, more, more.

There’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door.

He’ll squeeze you like a lemon,

A kalatchgazolenemon.

No, I won’t go to Macy’s anymore.

Arlene says the poem would make a good ad for A&S.

I not only spent Rosh Hashanah with Jack and Arlene, but Yom Kippur, too. After great difficulty, I found their apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and their mother made us grilled cheese sandwiches. They were open sandwiches, with tomatoes, and were very good. Then we went back to the Village, but I guess you can’t go home again, and it wasn’t as much fun as Yom Kippur as it was the time before. But we did a lot of things that fall. I would wait for Arlene when she came out of school (Packer Collegiate) and we would go to Coney Island or the Cloisters or Bethesda Fountain, sometimes with Jack, sometimes just the two of us. By November – by the time the Mets won the Series and Mayor Lindsay got reelected – Arlene was my girl.

My father likes to tell the story of the first time I ate Chinese food. My mother asked me how I liked the chow mein. I said, "I liked the chow but not the mein." When I was a baby I had a stuffed lamb that I called Lambie Pie. There was a music box inside the lamb. When you wound it up, it played "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Like I showed Arlene, it still works.

Jack and Dr. and Mrs. Krantz had gone out to visit Mrs. Krantz’s grandmother, who was about a zillion years old. Arlene and I were in her house, watching The Forsyte Saga. It was the episode in which Soames rapes Irene. You wouldn’t expect it, but Arlene and I made love after the show. I felt so secure inside of her that I never wanted to leave. To prolong things, I thought of the starving Biafran children. I came anyway, of course. A few minutes after it was over and Arlene lit a Marlboro, I began to feel hungrier than I ever did in my life. I drank a whole quart of her mother’s skim milk and ate seven slices of toast with Trappist sherry and port jelly. An hour later, I threw it all up on the Clark Street subway tracks.

You know what I like most about Arlene? Her veins. She has great veins up and down her arms, but the most beautiful purple ones flow through her breasts. They remind me of the canals of Mars.

The movies that Arlene and I have really liked lately all have definite endings: Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Medium Cool. It’s almost Rosh Hashanah again, and I can’t think up an ending. It’s like a delicatessen I know in Rockaway with mirrors on each wall. You sit there eating your Hebrew National frank with sauerkraut and mustard and you look over and see your reflection, and then your reflection in your reflection, and so on. There’s a guy I know at school, kind of a jerk. Every time I see him, he tells me that tomorrow’s the end of the world. One of these days he’s going to be right.

With Hitler in New York

Hitler’s girlfriend and I are waiting for him in the International Arrivals Building at Kennedy Airport. Ellen and I stand in front of the West Customs Area. My brother is standing in front of the East Customs Area. He is waiting for my parents. My parents and Hitler have each landed at the same time, at seven o’clock. My parents are flying KLM from Saint Martin. Hitler is flying Laker from London and Manchester. He couldn’t afford any other airline. He had to book his flight forty-five days in advance. But Laker paid for the ferry to England and the train ride to London as well. It is, as Hitler has written me, “a pretty good deal.”

Next to us there is an old Englishwoman. She is clucking her tongue. We are watching the passengers of an Alitalia flight from Rome come out of Customs and hug and kiss and cry and carry on.

“These people are just disgraceful,” the old Englishwoman says. “You’ll see that the people from Laker will be much better behaved.”

Ellen and I look at each other and decide to move away.

Ellen gets worried because Hitler has not yet come out. She is playing with her long blonde strands of hair. When she puts a bit of hair in her mouth, I tell her to stop it. Then she sees Hitler coming out of Customs.

He looks handsomer than I remembered him as being. He is smiling. When he gets to us, he hugs Ellen. He is so much taller than she.

I ask Hitler if I can carry his backpack.

“No, no, it’s all right,” he says in English.

Ellen tells Hitler in German that it’s very hot outside and that he should take off his leather jacket. Hitler replies in English that he prefers to keep the jacket on.

When we go outside Hitler says of the heat, “It’s like a bathroom.”

On the ride back to Brooklyn, Hitler talks only English. It seems to be coming back to him now. Driving up Flatbush Avenue, we pass a bank that advertises its “Tellerphone” service, and Hitler asks what that is. I tell him it’s a checking account where you can pay your bills by phone.

“But don’t you have to say a code so they know it’s you?” says Ellen from the back seat.

“Sure,” I say. “Either a word or a series of numbers or letters.”

Hitler smiles. “A commercial mantra, eh?”

I am surprised Hitler is so quick. Obviously I have been underestimating him all these years.

Hitler has to stay with the Judsons because Ellen’s parents won’t permit him to stay with them. The Judsons are wonderful people. Libby teaches swimming at the YWCA; she is Ellen’s best friend in America, apart from myself. Mrs. Judson is a delightful woman, daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, a happily deserted wife. The Judsons live in a brownstone in Park Slope.

When we get back to the Judsons’ house, Hitler finally takes off his leather jacket. It is about ninety degrees. He takes off his work shirt too. Underneath he has a T-shirt that has shrunk just a little bit. Hitler is very skinny but he is tall. When I ask him what the air smells like up there, he says “Dwarfs,” and we all laugh.

We watch TV for a little while in the Judsons’ living room. It is a pilot for a projected series starring Barbara Feldon. Hitler only likes the commercials. When he sees Senator Sam Ervin doing a commercial for American Express, Hitler really freaks out.

“Imagine Willy Brandt doing a commercial for Beck’s Beer,” he says to Ellen. She explains that German television is very different. All the commercials are on at one time, for only forty minutes a day.

Libby says we should all sit outside and eat ice cream. Ellen has dope that she bought from my brother and we all sit out on the stoop smoking a joint and eating vanilla ice scream. Hitler regales us with stories about his Sunday stopover in London. Ellen tells us that Hitler thinks the English people are so stiff and formal.

“It was tea everywhere,” Hitler says. He has a nice air about him, as though he is so comfortable with his body. I think I would like to be like him. “We went to this pub, and then they took me to see this movie, ‘Black Emanuelle.’ It was so silly, no? There were strange scenes in the bathroom and finally I got up and said to Clive and Zbyczek, ‘You don’t really want to stay, do you?’ They said no, but really they did.”

We go back into the living room, the only air-conditioned room in the Judsons’ house. Mrs. Judson is watching “Eyewitness News.” They are still talking about the blackout and the looting.

Hitler says he is sorry he missed the blackout. “It would have been, sort of, an adventure,” he tells us, and then we say how awful it was.

“This heat wave is bad enough,” Libby tells Hitler, but he has started to doze off on the couch.

“Poor thing,” Mrs. Judson says. We bring down the foldaway bed and wake Hitler up so he can get in it.

“What do you think of Hitler?” Ellen asks me as I take her to her parents’ house. We are driving along the Belt Parkway at midnight with our car windows wide open, but there is not a hint of a breeze.

“I kind of like him,” I say. “I never realized he was so witty.”

Ellen kisses me on the cheek at her parents’ house. I watch to see that she gets in safely.

The next day it reaches 100 degrees, a record-breaker. Hitler is uncomfortable. He hasn’t slept much and he has jet lag. In addition, he seems to be getting a cold.

He and Ellen have gotten breakfast at McDonald's. Hitler likes fast food and there are no fast food places in Germany. When I get over to the Judsons’, Ellen and Hitler are watching a movie on Channel 9. Hitler is lying under the covers.

“I think I’m going to go to the Apex Technical School,” Hitler says. He has obviously seen the commercials for it. “To repair air conditioners in this climate must be profitable.” I chuckle.

The news comes on and all the talk is about the heat wave. A woman reporter asks an official if we will have a “water blackout.” Hitler gets out of bed, puts on his jeans, and we go pick up Libby at the YWCA.

Libby, Ellen, Hitler, and I have dinner at Shakespeare’s in the Village. It is air-conditioned. Hitler has a salad because he is not in the mood for meat. Libby has onion soup and bread because she is a vegetarian. Ellen and I have hamburgers.

When the lights flicker for a moment, Hitler gets excited. He so hopes for another blackout.

After dinner, around nine, we walk to Washington Square. It is almost cool. We sit at the edge of the fountain, facing outwards. Hitler and Ellen are holding hands; so are Libby and I.

A black man with no shirt on comes over to us and says we look stoned. We smile and he asks us if we need more dope to get stoned on.

“We are stoned on the evening,” Hitler tells the black man. He goes away shaking his head.

When I get home, I see my father in his bedroom. He looks very small. I come in to apologize to him for not seeing him since he got back from vacation. I have been spending most of my time with Hitler.

“Grandpa’s very sick,” my father tells me. “He had another heart attack. He’s in a coma.”

“Oh, no,” I say. I think about the phone call I got from my grandfather on Sunday, and how he begged me to visit him in Florida.

I pick up Hitler and Ellen at the Kings Highway station and take them back to my house, to my swimming pool. I am still worried about my grandfather.

Hitler and Ellen enjoy the water. He is so much bigger than she is that he throws her under constantly. She cries for help, and I know she doesn’t like it, but I pretend she is just joking. I do not want to spoil Hitler’s fun.

“You’re a sadist, you know that?” Ellen says to Hitler after they get out of the pool. Hitler shrugs. Then Ellen turns to me. “He did the same thing to me in Greece last year,” she says.

Hitler and I are going to Ellen’s parents’ house for dinner. I let Hitler take a shower and use my razor and shaving cream so he can impress Ellen’s mother, who has never liked him. My own mother seems to like Hitler. She is pleased that he doesn’t mess up the bathroom.

The three of us arrive at Ellen’s parents’, and Hitler and I have to wait outside because Ellen’s grandfather, visiting from Florida, has to put on a pair of pants.

Dinner is dairy: bagels, tuna salad, corn on the cob, lettuce and tomatoes and iced tea. It is too hot to eat a heavy meal. Ellen’s mother doesn’t talk to Hitler except to say, “Pass me that salt bagel.” Ellen’s father tries to joke around. Her grandfather tells us about his meeting with an old black woman customer of his from years ago, when he sold appliances on credit.

The old black woman’s name was Mother Brown. Ellen’s grandfather walked up four flights to see her, and when he opened the door, Mother Brown got so excited that she ran over and hugged him. Then she started crying. “Mr. Glass, I’m so old!” she said. And Ellen’s grandfather said, “Why, you’re only eighty, and I’m three years older than you.”

Across the table Hitler winks at me.

After dinner we go to visit Mike. Mike has just had corrective surgery for a separated shoulder. He comes down wearing no shirt, and the scar looks ugly. They only took the bandage off the day before.

Hitler and I have to shake Mike’s left hand.

Mike’s mother comes out and kisses Ellen. Later Ellen will say that Mike’s mother always wanted him to marry Ellen because they were both Jewish.

Mike’s mother practically ignores Hitler, so we decide to take a walk to the beach.

Above the Belt Parkway we smoke a joint. I cough, as usual.

“Look at all the cars,” Hitler says. “Each one of them has someone going somewhere.”

“I’m really stoned,” Mike says.

“I’m thirsty,” Ellen says.

“Let’s go have eggcreams,” I say.

And we do.

After our eggcreams, we go on the boardwalk. Ellen tells Hitler that there are many old people and Soviet Jews in Brighton Beach and cautions him not to talk German. Hitler nods.

We join a circle surrounding a fiftyish woman in shorts. She is very animatedly singing a Yiddish folk song. All of the old people are enjoying it. It seems like it’s supposed to be funny, or maybe dirty. Hitler is listening intently.

“Farshteit?” I ask Hitler.

“Ja, ja,” he says. “She is telling about how not to have children.”

An old lady next to us smiles. She seems glad that Hitler understands the song. We walk away before she can recognize him.

Libby and Mike are sitting on a boardwalk bench, talking about old times.

Hitler and I are leaning against the rail, watching the dark ocean, the dark sand, talking about this and that.

“Giscard d’Estaing is so funny,” Hitler says. “The things he does to make himself popular.”

I nod.

I tell Hitler I can name all ten states of West Germany. He counts on his fingers as I name them. I can only name nine. I know the other one has a hyphenated name, but it is difficult.

“It’s where Stuttgart is,” Hitler gives me a hint.

Now I remember. “Baden-Württemberg,” I tell him, and Hitler smiles.

I wonder if I am beginning to fall in love with him.

On Friday night Hitler gives me a present, a book of Rilke’s poems. He tells me not to worry about my grandfather, who is still in a coma.

We eat dinner at a Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, Hitler, Ellen, Libby and me. We order four dishes and take from each other’s plates. We eat with chopsticks. Hitler likes Cantonese spareribs, but we will have to get them another time. The oranges and fortune cookies make a fine dessert. We are very full.

When the check comes, we just divide it by four. No one seems to object. Libby, Ellen, and I give Hitler our share and he pays for the meal with a fifty-dollar traveler’s check. He forgets to leave a tip and they call him back for that.

The four of us walk off our dinner by the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. We look at that night view of the lower Manhattan skyline.

“The most gorgeous cliché in America,” I say.

It is actually chilly. The heat wave has broken.

Hitler is hugging Ellen and Libby. They come over to me and they hug me too. We are standing by the rail, all touching each other. It is a very fine moment.

We have walked off our dinner by looking at the brownstones on Hicks Street. We are ready for dessert. The four of us drive to Atlantic Avenue, to the Seeds of the Future Café, a health-food place run by young black women.

Hitler orders Asantiwa’s Carrot Cake and peppermint tea. They do not have Beck’s Beer, which is what he really wanted.

Someone at another table, a Filipino, recognizes Hitler. But everything is too mellow for him to make a scene.

My grandfather dies.

My father goes down to Florida to bring back the body for the funeral. My grandmother is coming back too.

It is Saturday night, the big party Libby is giving for Hitler. I cannot miss it.

I don’t tell anyone that my grandfather has died.

I get stoned with Hitler and Ellen.

The guests arrive.

Everyone seems to be getting along.

Hitler is making a big hit with everyone.

If I were capable of being jealous of him, I would be. But by now I love him too much.

Hitler drinks bottle after bottle of Beck’s Beer. He once worked at the brewery in Bremen. “Just think,” he says. “Maybe I once saw this bottle pass me by on the assembly line in Germany.”

I try my best to smile.

A fortyish ad agency executive, someone’s lover, comes by and says, “Look how that Nazi can drink so much beer and still stay thin.” He pinches the flab on my stomach. “Fatties like us,” he says, speaking of me and him, “just look at beer and gain weight.”

When he goes away, I tell Hitler that he has hurt my feelings.

“He did not do it voluntarily, I am sure,” Hitler says.

Ellen comes over and takes photographs of me and Hitler, our arms around each other.

Hitler gives Ellen many kisses.

We get drunk and I tell Hitler that we should plan to win the Nobel Prize the same year, he for Peace, I for Literature.

“We would have to wear ties,” he says.

“No, tuxedos,” I tell him. “And top hats and canes.”

“And we could get up on the platform and sing, ‘There’s No Business like Show Business’… The Swedish Academy would be talking about us for a long while, eh?” Hitler’s nose is very red.

Libby gets sick and the party begins to end.

I drive Ellen back to her parents’, and Hitler comes along for the ride. I look away as they say goodnight. They are going back to Germany in two days.

Driving Hitler back to the Judsons’ house, I remember my grandfather’s death.

On Ocean Parkway I begin to cry.

“Do not have tears,” Hitler says. He asks what is wrong.

We pull over to a side street and I tell him.

He says he is sorry.

Then he tells me things to try to make me laugh. How a tattooed sailor in New Orleans once offered to support him for a year. How Libby’s mother used hair spray instead of antiperspirant after her shower that morning. How Ellen looks when she wakes up after an all-night drunk.

I feel a little better and begin driving back to Park Slope.

At the Judsons’ door I ask Hitler if he ever feels bitter.

“Useless,” he says.

I do not know if he is talking about anger or himself or myself. In the end it doesn’t matter.

Hitler puts his hand on my shoulder and tells me to sleep well.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Citicorp

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is getting a $200 Visa cash advance at a Chase Manhattan ATM on Broadway. He is waiting patiently to hear the sound of money being counted in the teller machine. Already he has put in his card, identified his PIN number – 1933, the year the Glass-Steagall Act was passed – and given the necessary commands.

Looking down, the Chairman notices empty crack vials at his feet. The tops of them are mostly yellow, with some blue and a few black. The Chairman wonders who manufactures these vials, what kind of profit they make, whether they pay federal taxes, and if any Federal Reserve member banks have lent them money.

Still nothing is happening at the ATM.

The woman at the ATM next to the Chairman's, an actress whose character on a soap opera hasn't had a story line in a year and who is now used only in crowd scenes like funerals and weddings, has already gotten her $100 from her Chase checking account. And she punched in her PIN number – 6606, assigned to her by the bank – two minutes after the Chairman punched in his.

The actress takes back her ATM card and the receipt, which shows that she has $456.34 in checking, and glancing at the Chairman, leaves the lobby. To do this, she must press a button that makes a high-pitched sound. The door opens, and she is on Broadway.

Her place is taken at the lefthand ATM by a man who has tested positive for the HTLV-3 antibody but has no symptoms of AIDS. He wants to deposit a check from his aunt.

The Chairman is still waiting for the money-counting sound to begin.

In her apartment in Trump Tower, the Chairman's mother is waiting for him.

She has been disconsolate since her husband, the Chairman's stepfather, died of lung cancer last year. Her late husband had smoked two packs of Pall Malls every day since he was fourteen.

He died at seventy-nine, which the Chairman thought was pretty good for someone who had been that familiar with nicotine for so long. The Chairman smokes only cigars.

Naturally he does not inhale.

Oh Nigel, the Chairman's mother thinks, I miss you so.

Thinking that her son must be delayed by important Federal Reserve Board business, she decides to take from her videocassette library a certain tape. She places the tape at the mouth of her VCR, which swallows it obligingly.

Turning on the TV monitor to channel 3, the Chairman's mother simultaneously presses the "record" and "play" knobs of the VCR and then realizes in horror that she is erasing the tape she wants to play.

Pressing the "stop" button, she rewinds the tape to its beginning and then presses only the "play" button.

Chuck Woolery is asking the audience whether they think Roger, a black Army captain, should go out with date number one, number two, or number three. The Chairman's mother has inadvertently taped a minute of The Love Connection.

Then there is a moment of grey fuzziness and belching noise before she sees the video image of her late husband.

Nigel's daughter had interviewed him two months before he died. She wanted to know all about her father's life.

"The games we kids played in those days were fun," says the dead Nigel. "Stoop ball, punch ball, johnny-on-the-pony, ringalevio..."

Stepping back, holding the remote control unit, his widow presses the freeze-frame button.

Nigel is frozen in mid-reminiscence. His mouth is open. A Pall Mall is about to enter it.

The Chairman's mother reverses the action, watches her late husband backwards.

On The Love Connection, the audience has selected date number two for Roger. Roger seems very happy about it.

At LaGuardia Airport, in view of the Fed Chairman's mother should she turn her glance away from the TV and out her western window, the Comptroller of the Currency is on the Eastern shuttle.

He has to get back to Washington.

He has gotten his ticket by using his Diners Club card, given to him by the federal government. The Comptroller of the Currency has pushed his charge card through a scanner which has read the magnetic stripe on its back side and has spit out his ticket. The ticket costs $60.

The Comptroller of the Currency is uncomfort-able in his seat.

These shuttles are like cattle cars, he thinks. No wonder Eastern Air Lines is in such bad financial shape that it has to be taken over by another airline, the parent company of its LaGuardia shuttle rival. On the other airline they give passengers bagels, even on evening flights.

The Comptroller of the Currency doesn't mind not getting a bagel, for in his carry-on luggage is a shopping bag filled with a dozen bagels from

H & H Bagels on Broadway. They are the best bagels in the world. H & H's slogan is "There is no substitute for excellence."

If H & H has not been written up in the new edition of "In Search of Excellence," the Comptroller of the Currency thinks, it is only because the company is too small or because the authors have not sunk their teeth into one of H & H's warm, soft sourdough bagels.

In Washington you cannot get a good bagel.

“Excuse me," says the fourteen-year-old girl sitting in the seat next to the Comptroller of the Currency.

"Yes?" he says.

"Aren't you somebody famous?" the girl asks. "I think I've seen your photo in The Wall Street Journal."

"Young lady," says the Comptroller of the Currency, "The Wall Street Journal does not print photographs."

"Then maybe it was in Vanity Fair," she says.

Reaching into his carry-on bag, the Comptroller of the Currency offers her a sesame bagel.

Three blocks from H & H Bagels and their excellent slogan, the Fed Chairman is still waiting for his Visa cash advance.

"Uh, sir, maybe you should call for assistance," says a man on line, the deputy press secretary for the Controller of the City of New York, a politician under indictment on seven counts of extortion.

"What do you know?" says the Chairman sarcastically. "Your boss can't even spell his job title right."

Nevertheless, he picks up the phone next to the ATM. A woman's voice comes on the line.

"Thank you for calling AT&T," she says.

"You're welcome," says the Chairman. "I'm trying to get money from my Visa and it's not working."

"Have you tried selling it to Haitians?" she asks. "Or those refugees from Sri Lanka, I forget what they're called. Those people would pay a pretty penny for a valid visa."

"My Visa is valid," the Chairman explains. "The ATM seems to be stuck."

"That's why you should choose AT&T for your long distance service," says the woman on the phone. "Companies like ATM may promise lower fees but their service is horrible. Does ATM give you automatic credit for wrong numbers?"

"I'm sure I entered the right number," the Chairman tells her. "I'm the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I ought to know my own PIN. Can't you give me any information?"

"Try NYNEX for directory assistance," the phone woman offers.

Some of the people on the line at Chase Manhattan get impatient. Two of them are carrying handguns.

The Comptroller of the Currency hates takeoffs. At LaGuardia there's one runway that goes out into Long Island Sound and he hates the idea of ending up in the water if the takeoff doesn't go right.

But it does go right, and the Comptroller of the Currency is on his way to the nation's capital.

Below, an air traffic controller at LaGuardia files a report of a "near miss." It is her third this week.

Her superior, who's been around since 1967 and who didn't go out on strike and get fired in 1981, takes the report and shrugs.

"Are the Mets playing at Shea tonight?" he asks the air traffic controller who filed the report.

"I can't keep up with everything!" the air traffic controller shouts. In a minute her tears will be smudging her mascara.

Twelve thousand feet up, the Comptroller of the Currency feels relieved when the seat belt light goes off. The girl next to him is on her second raisin bagel.

The Ambassador from South Korea is walking out of the Benetton store in Trump Tower's rose-marble atrium. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, one of his countrymen, has declared the Benetton stores a front for a Soviet spy ring. "Look at the crazy symbol on their logo," the Rev. Moon is quoted as saying. "That has to be some kind of Communist thing."

The Ambassador thinks not, glad he has bought a Perry Ellis matching sweater and skirt ensemble. In the middle of the night he will go into his bathroom in the embassy and try it on.

"Ambassador Park," says an elegant old lady. He knows he has met her somewhere, but these American faces are all the same. "We met at the Leveraged Buyout Ball at the Helmsley Palace last autumn," says the lady. "I'm the mother of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board – you know, the man who controls the monetary supply."

"Ah yes," says the Ambassador. "I remember you well. And how is your pragmatic son?"

"I'm afraid he's stood me up for dinner. I was about to walk down Fifth Avenue to the Godfather's pizza restaurant across from the library and get myself something. Would you care to join me, Ambassador Park?"

"Delighted, dear lady," he responds. "But I am Ambassador An, not Ambassador Park."

The mother of the Chairman smiles. She is too old to be embarrassed. "Well, I knew you were Korean, so I figured I had a good shot with Park. Most of the fruit stands in Manhattan are run by people with that name. And some of the Hyundai dealerships too, no doubt."

Passing St. Patrick's Cathedral, Ambassador An is about to give his companion a faint rebuke, but he notices that she looks faint. Then she passes out.

"Dear lady!" he says. "Help me, someone, this elderly racist has collapsed!"

A police officer comes to the rescue. She bends down close and puts her hand on the old woman's neck.

"Does she have a pulse?" asks the Ambassador. A crowd is beginning to gather around a mime around the corner. The mime is making fun of the way people walk and gesture. Since the mother of the Chairman is unconscious, she is of no use to the mime or to the crowd.

The police officer, also Korean, touches her hand to her nose and sniffs. "The lady has a pulse, all right," she tells the Ambassador. "What I was doing was smelling the perfume on her neck. Unfortunately, I think your companion is the latest victim of the newest wave of product tampering."

"My goodness," says the Ambassador. "What is it?"

"We got word from Bloomingdale's that some joker has been taking bottles of Poison perfume and filling them with liquid Tylenol. Apparently this lady was wearing the tainted scent..."

An ambulance pulls up to the curb, and paramedics take away the Chairman's mother while the Ambassador is questioned by young Officer Park.

Meanwhile, back at the ATM on the Upper West Side, the Chairman is still waiting for his Visa cash advance. Everyone else is using the other teller machine. The Chairman, chief regulator of all Federal Reserve System banks – the Comptroller of the Currency regulates all nationally chartered banks that are not part of the Fed – believes that it is only a matter of a little more time before he has ten twenty-dollar bills in hand.

In the meantime the thirty-fourth floor has gone up on the new co-op across the street and one of the homeless people who was displaced by the new construction has died of old age on one of the benches on the islands on Broadway.

Passing the Chase Manhattan branch where the Chairman is awaiting contact with Visa or the Plus nationwide teller system, a man walking a purebred Jack Russell terrier points to a "NO RADIO" sign on a parked car's windshield and tells his wife, "See, I told you people are getting less materialistic."

She sighs. "I know, I know, if we wait long enough, the Sixties will come back again."

Getting off the Eastern shuttle at National Airport, the Comptroller of the Currency is summoned by the public address system.

He takes the call at a ticket counter where a perplexed customer service representative is looking at the latest automated reservations system work station and thinking, I remember when printers were people like my Uncle Joe and not just peripherals.

"Comptroller of the Currency here," says the Comptroller, ignoring the woman's thoughts.

"This is the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation."

"Yes?"

"We've got trouble."

You're telling me, the Comptroller thinks. Wait till my wife finds out there are only eight bagels left.

On the twenty-first floor of the World Financial Center, Quynchi Cao, proofreader and word-processor in the Junk Bonds Division of Shearson Lehman/American Express, is reading legal documents that are a necessary concomitant to the coming merger of the nation's biggest auto supply company and the third-largest bank in Tennessee.

Someone could make a fortune if they knew this news, thinks Quynchi. Too bad for me I'm too poor to indulge in insider trading. You really need a million-dollar-a-year salary to do that right, setting up phony bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and such. I have a hard enough time finding anything I can afford at Benetton.

"Well, enough multitasking for one night," says Quynchi's nominal boss's boss, an investment banker who wants to get back to his family in Orange County.

"Did you leave the Wysiwyg report for me to proofread?" asks hard-working Quynchi.

"No, unfortunately not. I took the floppy that contained it home with me last night and was working on it on my PC when my wife called me into dinner. When I came back to our media room, my little boy was playing some adventure game on the computer."

"So?"

"So my son says that the Wysiwyg document is now in a cave guarded by a sleeping dragon. Extreme caution is called for."

Quynchi nods.

As she looks out the river to New Jersey, she wonders if this could be as bad as the typo that got by everyone at The Wall Street Journal. When a columnist touted "punk bands" instead of "junk bonds," the office was in turmoil for weeks – though Quynchi did get to meet those very nice guys in The Vomit Seekers.

In their Georgetown home, the children of the Comptroller of the Currency are watching MTV.

In a La-Z-Boy recliner in the back of the room, their father wonders why he had children. They are no longer an asset, he thinks, but a discretionary acquisition that requires tremendous upkeep for twenty years.

The Comptroller's female discretionary acquisition is watching the broad shoulders and boyish smile of Xerox Sankabrand, lead singer of the Vomit Seekers in the group's top ten video, "Information in Motion."

Clutching dollar bills and plastic money, Xerox is surrounded by scantily-dressed girls as he sings:

I pay my Visa bill with my MasterCard

So what's the commotion?

Money's just information in motion,

Information in motion,

Information in motion...

In his La-Z-Boy, the Comptroller of the Currency eats the last of the H & H Bagels, more convinced than ever that there is no substitute for excellence and that children are not cost-effective.

In the newsroom of the New York Post, reporters are watching the CBS Evening News with Frankly Unctuous substituting for the vacationing Dan Rather.

"...And in Manhattan tonight, an ironic drama is going on at one of those automatic teller machines we all love to hate," says Frankly. "It seems that early this afternoon, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board – the man who is chiefly responsible for this nation's monetary policy – was attempting to get a cash advance from his credit card when the machine apparently got stuck. Now, some four hours later, the Fed Chairman is still at the teller machine, waiting for his money. Susan Spencer is on the scene. Susan?"

"Yes, Frankly, this is quite an eventful event here. Hundreds of people have come to this Chase Manhattan twenty-four-hour bank at Broadway and West 82nd Street to watch. The Fed Chairman, as you stated, is awaiting his money. Earlier, I talked with David Rockefeller, former head of the Chase Manhattan Bank..."

The Post reporters continue to watch the news as they work on their stories. One reporter writes about The Cereal Killer, a fiend who bludgeons people to death people while they eat their breakfast.

Another works on an article about a Tofutti vendor who went berserk on Wall Street and put ringing AT&T Nomad cordless phones next to the ears of passing stockbrokers as he said, "It's for you."  The subsequent noise permanently deafened these men.

Another reporter is about to take off for Coney Island, where a splinter group of terrorists is making life miserable for barefoot beachgoers on the boardwalk.

"Somebody, go uptown and cover that teller machine story!" shouts the city editor. He is an Australian.

The Fed chairman's mother is out of the hospital, where they gave her the universal antidote to liquid Tylenol.

She has seen the headlines and the TV broadcasts, and she is worried about her son.

It is after 11 p.m. and Eyewitness News is on. The sportscaster is just finishing up.

"...and in extra innings, it was Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 7, Secular Humanists 5. That's all the scores I have for tonight, Dweezil," he says to the anchorman.

"Well, speaking of scores," the anchorman says, "scores of people were injured tonight in West Beirut..."

The Chairman's mother switches back to her VCR tape, looks at the image of her late husband, and says aloud, "Nigel, what can I do to help my son?"

"Ambassador Park here," says the voice on the telephone. "I mean, Ambassador An here," he corrects himself.

"This is the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency in Washington," says the other voice. The voices are talking long distance on U.S. Sprint, not AT&T, but they can hear each other just fine.

"Yes, sir, what can I do with you?"

"You know about this trouble with the Fed chairman in New York. We'd like you to lower your discount rate, stimulate your economy, buy more U.S. exports, and offer something besides sushi in your restaurants. Not all Americans like to eat raw fish, you know. The microorganisms in them can be dangerous for pregnant women."

"Excuse me, sir, I think you want the Japanese ambassador. I'm from South Korea."

"Oh, really? Sorry to have troubled you for nothing, Ambassador Park."

"An."

“And what?"

"Never mind."

It's midnight. On the Disney channel, they're showing a film called The Horrorville Amity, wherein monsters of all different races and nationalities live together in harmony in a town in Long Island.

I love fantasy, thinks Quynchi Cao as she watches TV.

Then she thinks about her nights with Xerox Sankabrand.

The Fed Chairman is still at the ATM, still waiting for his Visa cash advance. The police, reporters, the mayor, the Comptroller of the Currency, and even the President have implored him to just go home. But the Fed Chairman will not be deterred.

He is staying till he gets his money, his Visa card, and yes, even a record of his transaction. He has faith in the banking system, even in states like Oklahoma. As he looks down at the empty crack vials at his feet, he thinks about the last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee and how they debated whether to ease or tighten monetary policy, whether to buy or sell U.S. government securities, whether to lower or raise reserve requirements, and whether to order out for sushi or bagels from H & H.

The Chairman is becoming delirious.

At 3 a.m., Quynchi Cao has fallen asleep in front of her TV, which is playing the video of "Information in Motion." Ambassador An has fallen asleep in the Perry Ellis sweater and skirt ensemble he bought earlier at Benetton. The Comptroller of the Currency has fallen asleep in his wife's arms.

Even midtown Manhattan is mostly quiet.

Suddenly the elderly mother of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board can be seen at her window on the forty-second floor of Trump Tower. She opens the window and her ample body rises off the floor and makes its way through the window.

To people on the ground she looks like a balloon.

The Fed Chairman has finally given up his quest for his $200 cash advance. Walking wearily through Central Park, he looks up at the sky, only to see his mother wafting through the night breezes.

She must be hundreds of feet up.

The Chairman's mother floats over Central Park to the east, past Fifth and Madison and Park Avenues.

At the Citicorp Center, with its sloped top, she stops for a minute and kisses the Citicorp logo.

The Citicorp logo looks a lot like the logo for NATO.

The Fed Chairman, for the first time in many long hours, feels something akin to relief.

It's the float, he thinks. It's the float.

Two weeks later, the President of the United States announces the retirement of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and his replacement by Xerox Sankabrand, former lead singer of The Vomit Seekers. (The group will now change its name to Special Drawing Rights.)

At the news conference the broad-shouldered, boyish punk rocker says, "The business of America is show business," and at homes across the nation, people like Quynchi Cao and Ambassador An and the non-cost-effective children of the Comptroller of the Currency nod their heads.

On upper Broadway, maintenance men replace a broken automatic teller machine with a newer model that has a computer-generated voice.

Twelve Step Barbie

1. Van Nuys Barbie

Passing the window of a Judaica store in a strip shopping center on Victory Boulevard, she catches her reflection and instinctively begins to turn her head.  But no, this time she will stop and look.  Behind the oversized dark glasses she peers at the woman in the tangerine jogging suit with pink fuzzy trim.  Barbie frowns.

What a disaster.

The young Latino boys coming out of the health food store don’t even see her, or if they do, they think she’s some housewife looking at Kiddush cups and books about the Holy Land.

The nausea she vaguely feels is probably hunger, she decides, and she heads for the McDonald’s at the corner.  She knows she probably should go home and fix herself a salad, but she’ll order the garden salad at Mickey D’s.  And the McLean Deluxe.

But when the perky black teenager at the counter asks, “May I take your order?” she finds herself saying: “Big Marc, small fries, large Diet Coke.”

2. Small Businesswoman Barbie

She’s tried to dress for the interview with the loan officer.  Everything hurt when she got up

at 5 a.m.  Barbie tried those stretches recommended by Amy, the blonde exercise leader on the Homestretch TV show, but they didn’t help much.

Barbie exercises only at home now; she won’t go to the health club anymore.  She likes Amy because Amy seems down-to-earth, says never to do more than you can do without pain, has a bad shoulder herself.  It’s the two women on the raised row behind Amy she hates: the perfect ones, even if they say they’ve had two children.

When they do bench step exercises on Homestretch, Barbie uses a scale because she hasn’t gotten around to buying a bench step yet.

The loan officer at the Takemishuga Bank has been dealing with her for two years now, ever since she and her partner started the asbestos removal business, but the man never seems to remember Barbie’s name.

He has to look for it on the application form for the new loan.  The loan officer is about twenty-seven, a redhead with freckles.  Barbie notices a wedding band on his left hand, a photo of a pretty blonde woman on his desk.  He is definitely the kind of guy who would have memorized not only her name but her face and every inch of her body in the past.

But today the talk is credit crunch, amortization, and asbestos.  He’ll let her know, she hears as they shake hands.  He tries to be hopeful: “At least you’ve found a niche: cleaning up dangerous messes.”

Barbie smiles for the first time that morning.

3. Dysfunctional Barbie

Every time Skipper calls, all Barbie hears is how much pain she’s in.  Skipper was never as strong as Barbie.  Barbie was the good child, the older sister who knew everything.  Now that she and Skipper were in the same boat, Barbie hated having to comfort her all the time, give her advice, jolly her along through another day.

She never thinks to ask me about my symptoms, Barbie thinks as Skipper’s sobs reach the 818 area code.

4. Sun Block Barbie

In the shower, she feels that tingle in the middle of her back, in the place she can’t reach.  The little scar there is the least of her health problems these days, but she wonders why there’s that tingle sometimes when water hits it.

The dermatologist told her it was unrelated to the immune system problems.  No, the little basal cell carcinoma was common for L.A. kids like her who’d spent so much time at Zuma Beach.  She didn’t tell him about Island Fun Barbie.  The sun was the same, Barbie knew, in Southern California as in the Caribbean, but she blamed the tiny cancer on what she thought of as the “foreign” sun.

Today she’ll pull her hair – at least that’s still pretty good – back in a pony tail.  Barbie will use a rubber band, not her old pink skirt that doubled as a pony tail holder.  She uses that when she cleans the Toyota now.

5. One Day at a Time Barbie

In the smoky room Barbie holds the sweaty hands of two other people as they stand up and pulse: “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”  And then what would be the usual sigh if the AA meeting were a person.

She prefers the people at this Burbank church to the non-smokers who meet on Tuesdays in the Presbyterian church closer to her house.  Over there, too many people know who she was.  Barbie’s better coming off with the smell of cigarettes on her clothes.  She remembers not to wear her good clothes to the Burbank church meetings.

6. Laissez Faire Barbie

Midge and Allan are arguing again.  Barbie hates when they go out to a restaurant and do that.  Midge is so petty sometimes, argues just to see how much Allan will take before exploding.  Barbie wonders if Allan has ever hit Midge.  She looks down at her calamari and doubts it.

Barbie takes a sip of water and thinks about the burn Midge had on her cheek last month.  It was probably just what Midge said: that problem with the hibachi.  Still.  She sips more water.

Despite all the recent rain, the storms didn’t get up north, where the reservoirs are.  Barbie tries to be good about conserving water, but even though she lives by herself she can’t bear the thought of not flushing the toilet after each time.

Midge gives Allan a look that says, You’re embarrassing me in front of our friends again.

Barbie couldn’t care less.

7. Bilingual Barbie

Barbie is talking to a health education class in a Long Beach high school. Scooter got her started doing that a few months ago, and while Barbie was reluctant at first, she found that she enjoyed the experience.  It wasn’t the kind of attention she got as Style Magic Barbie or California Dream Barbie, but she liked seeing the faces of the sixteen-year-old girls, so different from the face she had once seen in the mirror of her old fluorescent vanity.

The faces of the girls in this class are mostly Mexican and Cambodian.  The teacher told her that several of the girls already have babies.  Barbie once did a whole talk in Spanish for a class in East L.A., but here she talks in English, without the uhms and ahhs that used to punctuate her speech.  She still says “like” more than she’d like.  But that only makes her more believable to these girls.

A Cambodian girl asks her about condoms, and Barbie’s mind flashes back to Ken.  With Ken, of course, condoms were never an issue.

Barbie answers all the questions, even the personal ones about what her body looks like now.  As the bill rings, the health education class applauds Barbie and a group of Mexican girls ask Barbie to sign the back of their jackets.

8. Reflective Barbie

Driving back from Long Beach, Barbie feels so good about the appearance at the high school that she doesn’t notice the pains in her fingers.  She has the radio on but doesn’t hear Shadow Traffic telling her about the five-car accident on the Hollywood Freeway by Universal Studios, so she gets stuck in the middle lane.  Her mind wanders.

Shutting off the all-news station when she hears the same story about canceling the Japanese rail cars for the third time, Barbie pops in the tape player.  Expecting to hear Billy Joel, she gets Public Enemy instead.

Yesterday her cousin Jazzy’s rad boyfriend Dude borrowed the car; she lets him help out on the asbestos removal jobs after school.  Barbie is about to shut off the rap music, but she discovers, when she can make out the words, that the lyrics make a lot of sense.

“911 is a joke,” raps Chuck D.

Damn right, Barbie thinks. Once again the picture of Ken pops into her head.  In the old days she would josh Ken by calling him “Hardhead” because his hair wouldn’t move – unlike her own thick, lustrous mane.  For a couple of years in the early Seventies, he tried being Mod Hair Ken but it didn’t suit him and he returned to his former style.

Ken learned to laugh when Barbie called him “Hardhead.”  It wasn’t the part of his body that was really the problem.

9. Bill-Paying Barbie

At her desk, Barbie listens to her pet tropical bird make its odd sound.  Not a coo, not a chirp, a sort of sick sound.  She got rid of most of her old things, but she couldn’t bear to part with the bird with its reversible two-color wings.  The Mattel people never should have done that to a bird.  In her checkbook register are records of several checks made out to Friends of Animals.

Writing out a check for the minimum payment on her I. Magnin bill, Barbie wonders if the bird with the artificial reversible wings also had a suppressed immune system.

10. Pissed-Off Barbie

When Skipper whines again about how bad she has it, Barbie finally loses it.

She laces into Skipper, bringing up things from the past, things better left unsaid.  Skipper is shocked into silence.

Later the sisters talk, really talk for the first time in years, over Red Zinger Tea and Entenmann’s fat-free Louisiana crunch cake.

“You’d think our both getting sick would have made us closer,” Barbie says, “but in a way I think it’s, I don’t know…”

Skipper nods.  “Yeah, I’ve been a pain in the ass.”

Barbie smiles.  It isn’t the perky smile or the come-hither smile or the smile on the face of Fun to Dress Barbie in the old days.  “Yeah,” Barbie says.  “I should have told you before.”

Skipper nods again.  And Barbie talks about the Cambodian high school girls in Long Beach and what their parents must have gone through when the killing fields were going on.  Barbie rented the movie three times.  She couldn’t understand how she missed the Cambodian holocaust when it was going on, but in those days she was Young Republican Barbie and she supported President Nixon on the war.

As Barbie sees Skipper to the door, gives her a hug, in her office there’s a fax coming in from her lawyer.

11. Litigious Barbie

She didn’t really mind coming out as the leading plaintiff in the class action suit.  Most of the publicity was favorable, although somebody in Dow Corning’s high command tried to accuse her of constantly suing people back in the old days.  It just wasn’t true.

Yes, there was the problem with those Taiwanese knockoffs, but it was just that – and that messy business with Babette.  It was so unpleasant, really, but they told her that even if Mattel couldn’t meet the demand for Barbie, they weren’t going to let Babette take away any business.

The worst part was when they put Babette on the witness stand and she completely went to pieces under the harsh cross-examination by Mattel’s lawyer.  “Who’d confuse us?!” Babette finally screamed, startling the courtroom by removing her sweater and bra, and pointing to her pathetic little chest, kept saying over and over, “Who’d confuse us?”

Coming out of the courthouse, the press photographers’ cameras were aimed not at Barbie’s face but at her bustline.

Barbie won the lawsuit, of course, and Babette slipped into obscurity.  Now Barbie wishes she had handled Babette differently.

Thinking of her life as a stewardess, registered nurse, skin driver, fashion editor and astronaut, Barbie knows she should have handled a lot of things differently.  Especially Ken.

12. Twelve Step Barbie

Ironically, it was the suit about the silicone implants that reunited her with Ken.  He was Kendra now, a fellow plaintiff.  Skipper had met her (him?) at a new support group meeting that Barbie couldn’t get to.

Kendra told Skipper that despite the arthritis and the deformity and all the other autoimmune problems, she was happier now than when he was a man without a penis.

After he disappeared from Barbie’s life so suddenly, he became Gender Reassignment Ken and finally Kendra with the same artificial breasts that gave Barbie and Skipper and others all those problems.

Barbie and Kendra had brunch at the Boulangerie in Santa Monica, where real birds, none with reversible two-color wings, flew inside freely.  After an initial awkwardness, they rediscovered what they liked about each other, what they had missed the first time.

Diary of a Brooklyn Cyclones Hot Dog

August 22

Wonderful news! Mr. Cohen came down to the ticket office this morning and said that I can be the new Relish for the rest of the season! Since Eduardo quit because his girlfriend is pregnant, I’ve been pestering everyone connected with the team – Party Marty, Sandy the Seagull, the infielders, even Mr. Cohen himself – with my dream that I should be the next Relish. And now it’s come true! I start in two days, when we play the Vermont Expos. I ran all the way from the Kings Highway station to get myself in training.

Grandmother was dismissive, as I expected. “What is it with this baseball?” she yells. “Is this what we came to this country for? Better you should be in school to be an eye doctor like Violeta! Baseball is not something a girl should make of her life!”

Sometimes I want to tell her that Violeta is spending most of her time with that Haitian artist in Williamsburg, but I know I cannot squeal on my sister. Besides, I think it is true love with Violeta and Fesner. I can only wish for that for myself, but I cannot think about that tonight: I have my first love, baseball!

August 23

The hot dog suit is very uncomfortable. And Eduardo left it a little sweaty. Also, the size is not quite right for me. I ask Mustard and Ketchup how they can stand it, and they say I will get used to it. Sandy the Seagull heard us talking, and he said, “You guys should be inside this and you’ll know what uncomfortable is!”

But Sandy is the one true mascot, the star here. Even when the fans do not know the names of the shortstop or even the pitcher, they know Sandy with his cheerful beak, his generous outspread wings, his Cyclones jersey – just like the players wear! – and his Cyclone leggings and his Cyclones hat. The hot dogs are cute-looking, but we are not one of a kind. You can’t find a Sandy the Seagull on the menu at Nathan’s.

I know it is a privilege to be on the field at KeySpan Park. I was happy to be selling tickets and sometimes being an usher, but now I get to be running around on the field every night! The girls I play softball with at Marine Park are so jealous!

The only better thing that can happen to me is impossible: for me to be the shortstop like Webster from Arkansas is. This is still my happiest moment since we left Kiev.

August 24

I cannot believe it was me out there tonight. In the middle of the fifth inning, as usual, the Hot Dog Race began. But tonight I was one of the three hot dogs, my cape of relish green blowing in the breezes. Green is now my favorite color. So much nicer, I think, than Ketchup’s red or Mustard’s yellow capes.

We start off at home plate as Party Marty gives us the signal and we run like the wind to the outfield. I was out of breath by the time I got there – I really need to stop smoking so much – but of course I am Relish and I’m supposed to come in last.

Mustard won tonight. But attention was thrown away from us because Sandy the Seagull slipped while he was dancing in the dugout. He was all right. Later, when I asked what happened, Mike (who is Sandy the Seagull) said, “Oh, I didn’t see where I was going and fell on my good friend, Con Crete.” Corey Ragsdale heard him and laughed but I didn’t think it was too funny. It’s good for Corey to laugh, him with his .188 batting average, especially since he made a fielding error which cost us the game against Vermont.

Violeta says I should look to see if we can get worker’s comp if I have an accident. What a timid one!

August 25

Today we got revenge and beat Vermont good. Duane pitched a four-hitter. I am getting better at running, but of course I had to finish last again. They say I need to come up with better ways to lose the Hot Dog Race, the way Eduardo did when he was Relish. James (Mustard) and Vinny (Ketchup) said I will begin to think of things to do.

August 27

We were playing the Staten Island Yankees today, and before the game I was talking with their mascot Scooter the Holy Cow, who is also a girl. She is quite pretty without her cow head. I wonder if she likes girls, too. She said she used to play softball but now doesn’t have time.

I finished far behind today, but I got distracted by a young Muslim woman in a head scarf who yelled at me to come over and sign an autograph. My first time! Mr. Cohen later told me that is the kind of thing I need to do to keep losing the Hot Dog Race.

After the game (we lost, 5-4, very sad), they asked us hot dogs to pose with Scooter and Sandy and Pee Wee. Pee Wee is a smaller Seagull than Sandy, a kid who just hatched near the roller coaster and was found by Sandy before the season begun.

August 28

Fesner and Violeta took the subway to Coney Island today, just to watch me. Fesner says the Cyclones are like way down in the minor leagues, below the Triple-A and the Double-A and the This-A and That-A. He has a Dominican friend who told him that, since he doesn’t know baseball. I tell him the guys on our team are good, some of them will be on the Mets someday and when that happens, I will turn on the TV and show him and laugh.

Unfortunately, Brian forgot to cover home plate tonight – something a pitcher should never do – and we lost again. The fans booed him and yelled bad words. This happened in the fourth inning, so everyone was in a bad mood by the time of the Hot Dog Race.

It is getting to be a little routine for me. I am more fit (I am down to six cigarettes a day!) but tonight I again was the losing condiment.

“Dead last!” an African American man yelled at me. “You’ve got to run your buns off next time!” People laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders – you have to exaggerate it under the costume – and people laughed some more.

On the Q train after the game, Violeta says I should consider becoming an actress, and Fesner says I could be in a Chekhov play. Because I am Russian? I say, and he says, No, because you already have experience with The Seagull. Ha ha.

August 30

I realize that we have only a few home games left. I don’t understand why it is such a short season. Mr. Cohen says that we are not the major leagues, but we are part of the Mets. Today Ed Charles and Art Shamsky from the 1969 team that won the World Series came to KeySpan Park. They posed for a picture with Sandy the Seagull and waved. I wanted to ask them questions, but they didn’t have time. Also, it is hard for people to understand me because the hot dog costume muffles my voice. I think Shamsky is Jewish, too.

Last again in the race. Today I got distracted by Claudia Cardinal, the New Jersey Cardinals mascot, who wanted to shake my hand. She is a sweet bird in the costume, but I found it is actually a man with a little beard underneath.

September 1

Today the softball girls from Marine Park came to the game. We beat the Oneonta Tigers, 13-3. What a game! And I came in second in the Hot Dog Race. Mustard had some bad clams at Umberto’s in Sheepshead Bay and vomited in his costume as he was running.

September 2

I would have won tonight had I not pulled a hamstring just as I was about to reach where Lester, the right fielder, was standing. He was very nice to me. It is hard on the players because they do not see many girls, so I think he liked helping me off the field. They take them back and forth to their dormitory near Brooklyn Poly Tech downtown and are very strict about late hours.

I do not tell Lester I am from the girls who like softball because I feel sorry for him. Before his slump, people talked about him being sent up to Binghamton, but no more.

At home Grandmother berated me when she saw me putting a bag of frozen peas on my hamstring. How can she understand what baseball means?

September 5

The reporter for the Canarsie Courier asked Mr. Cohen why Relish always loses the race. “He trains as much as Mustard or Ketchup,” Mr. Cohen said, “but things just don’t work out for the kid. But I do believe he lives up to his name, in terms of relishing life.”

Tonight it was that I just couldn’t handle the heat. It was over 90 degrees. Scooter the Holy Cow from Staten Island seemed really concerned, not sure if I was acting.

September 6

I broke poorly from the gate this afternoon, but Ketchup tripped Mustard and they got mad at each other and all of a sudden it looked like I would win. I was maybe ten strides from the outfield wall when Party Marty stopped his cha cha dance and came over and tackled me!

When I came back from Coney Island Hospital – all I had were bruised ribs – even the Batavia Muckdogs players said they were shocked.

Tomorrow is the last game, and Ketchup and Mustard are tied, with seventeen wins each. Relish is winless.

September 7

Sandy the Seagull said this morning that Mr. Cohen is very mad about what Party Marty did to me and thought about suspending him, but today was the last game and he didn’t have the heart.

And I felt well – better than well – for tonight my legs were with me. I caught Mustard and Ketchup at the wire. I think they were told to hold back because a man in a tuxedo came out and said, “I present this once-sluggish sausage with this bouquet of flowers!” As Sandy led the crowd in cheering, I ran around the bases in a victory lap.

Baseball is a wonderful life. I got Scooter’s phone number and a Cyclones cap for Grandmother and we beat Staten Island, 3-2.

Schmuck Brothers of East Harlem

So we’re just walking past Murray’s Sturgeon Shop when my new friend Shira Finkelstein asks me if I’d let her photograph me kissing her boyfriend.

“No way,” I say.  “I’ve got my own boyfriend, thanks.”

I take my wallet out of my jeans, and behind my Washington Mutual debit card I dig out a pic of Adam and me in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.  “And you can see how fine he is,” I tell her.

She looks and nods.  “Um.  He’s okay.”

“More than okay,” I tell her as I stuff my wallet back into my pocket and pick up the pace on Broadway.

“He looks like Will Smith,” Shira Finkelstein says.

“So?  Will Smith’s cute,” I say.

“But he’s, like, old,” she says.

I ask Shira Finkelstein how old her boyfriend is.

“Seventeen,” she says as we turn left at 95th Street and go past the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater.

“What?” I say.  “You’re robbing the cradle.  You’re, like, how much older than him?”

Shira Finkelstein sighs.  She likes younger guys, she tells me, and then she goes into this whole spiel about Adonises and shit like that.

Then, just as we get to the door of her building on West End Avenue, she says, “I just have this thing about watching two guys kiss.  You wouldn’t have to even take your clothes off for the photo.  Although if you wore something sleeveless, I could get your tattoo in.”

I keep shaking my head.  “I have no interest in chicken,” I tell her.

“I want this,” she tells me.  “You haven’t known me that long, but by now you must know I’m used to getting what I want.”

I just can’t get why she wants it.

“Um, I need it.  Kind of an aphrodisiac, you know?  Boys understand that, don’t they?”

“Man,” I tell Shira Finkelstein, “you’re awfully kinky for a frum chick.”

“I’m not that frum,” she protests.

We’ve just walked up from 85th Street, where we had dinner at the Kashbah Kosher Café, above whose doorway is a big picture of Rabbi Schneerson hunched over the Torah, one hand upraised.  Under the picture it says in big letters WELCOME MOSHIACH.

The Kasbah Kosher Café’s logo is a bull and on their awning is this quote: “Bulls will then be offered.”  And under it: “Psalms 5:21.”

Of course immediately after dinner, we did go across the street to Victoria’s Secret, where Shira Finkelstein asked me to approve her two purchases.

I met Shira Finkelstein at a photography class at Cooper Union.  She came right after me in the class roster, Finkelstein following Finch.  The teacher made us partners on a first night assignment and we hit it off.

I haven’t told her, and don’t plan to, that my family name used to be the same as hers till my grandfather read To Kill a Mockingbird.  She’d just try to figure out if we’re cousins or something.

At first I thought she thought I might be boyfriend material.  I don’t know why but I guess that thought flattered me, so I figured I’d let it play out for a while.

But the first time we saw each other outside of class, we were walking on 86th Street near Lex when I got a sudden craving for Tasti D-Lite.

She didn’t want any – maybe because it’s not kosher – and after I’d finished it and thrown away my empty cup and the napkin and plastic spoon, she looked straight at me.

“Do you realize that anyone watching you eat even a single bite of that ice cream would know in half a second that you’re gay?” Shira Finkelstein said.

I might have blushed.  “It’s not really ice cream,” I told her.

Adam doesn’t want to hear about Shira Finkelstein and her desires.

He works on Wall Street, in an extremely important position, so he’s very tense.

Before he came out, when he was in his early twenties, Adam actually was married to a Jewish woman he met in college.  And he converted and everything, to please her family even though he kept imagining her grandparents would never be able to look at him and not think schvartze.

That was a long, long time ago, but Adam never bothered to convert back.  So technically he’s still Jewish.  To me, he’s like the God of the Old Testament, always laying down rules.  And since I live in his condo, I basically go along with him.  Sometimes it’s hard, because he always comes home from work really stressed.

“This girl sounds like a fucking nutjob,” Adam tells me before he turns out the lamp on his side of the bed.  “I really would stay away from her if I were you.”

Although the room is now dark, I need to get out of bed because my Estée Lauder Stress Relief Eye Mask is still on.  I’ve told Adam that the aloe and cucumber in it would do him a world of good, but he won’t listen.

So for a week I ignore Shira Finkelstein when I see her number on my cell phone.  She keeps calling, and I do like her, and finally she starts texting me.  But I feel she’s presuming on our budding friendship so I decide not to answer her about the photo with her boyfriend till I get this message:

ill pay you for your time!

I call Shira Finkelstein and we meet at the Starbucks on 95th Street near her house.

“Does your boyfriend even want to kiss another guy?” I ask her after we sit down with our frappuccinos.  “I mean, is he bi?”

She waves her hand, flashing these wonderful sparkly light green nails, courtesy of Hard Candy Vintage Nail Polish’s classic Tantrum.

“He’ll do anything I ask,” Shira Finkelstein says.

“I guess,” I say, “if he’s seventeen.”  My mom used to play a song about a girl being seventeen.

Shira Finkelstein says, “Is a hundred dollars enough?  It really shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“Fine,” I say.

I’m not doing it for the money.  Well, I am doing it for the money, but not for the particular sum.  What I mean is, oh, I’m such a Mary Ann, and this gives me the chance to do something transgressive – although it’s not something I’m going to brag about to my friends who’ve done actual interesting boundary-crossing shit.

Shira Finkelstein excuses herself and goes back to the counter.  I assume she’s ordering a reduced-fat muffin or maybe those madelaines she likes and I don’t, but when she comes back, she’s empty-handed and tells me, “Igor says it’s do-able.”

“What?”

She points to the barista, who’s working at the espresso machine.  He’s a tall, rangy white kid with long blondish hair pushed back above his pierced ears, making him look slightly like Jar Jar Binks.  He’s got pale skin with a sprinkling of acne above his unibrow.  You can tell he has been trying to grow sideburns but can’t.  Yech.

“That’s your boyfriend?” I say.

Shira Finkelstein smiles and nods, lifting her eyebrows high enough so that I can tell she’s wearing Urban Decay’s Maui Wowie eyeshadow.

I make sure to break the news to Adam when he’s in a good mood, so I give him the SparkNotes version, without too much critical exegesis, over dinner at his favorite restaurant, Café des Artistes.

For Adam, he takes it pretty well.  I guess he’s pleased because he knows I would never hide anything from him or lie to him.

Of course, I always make the mistake of going one step too far.

After I take the last bite of my rack of lamb with herb crust and tomato fondue, I say, “It will be an interesting experience, don’t you think?  I mean, it’s just an innocent photograph.”

“This innocent photograph, what’s she gonna call it?”  Adam says with a snort.  “Schmuck Brothers of East Harlem?”

Schmuck Brothers is an actual store on 125th Street east of Third Avenue, though technically they are the Schmuck Brothers of Pennsylvania, Antique Liquidators Since 1929.

Adam and I discovered it on one of our long walks uptown.  We both like to walk, although we’ve been doing less of it lately.  He’s got a lot of work at the office.  More stress.

If Adam had used the Cellcomet Anti-Stress Cream Mask I’d bought him last week, the clay in it would have exfoliated and detoxified his skin.  And the orange flower and rosewater in it would have calmed him down a little, maybe enough so that he could appreciate this romantic atmosphere.

But no.  Instead we sit in silence as the frolicking nude wood nymphs in the murals look on.

Before the photo shoot, Shira Finkelstein thinks Igor and I should get to know each other a little, so we all meet for dinner downtown at Cooper 35, across from the school.  I think her observance of the kosher dietary rules only holds north of 14th Street.  We sit outside and I have a beer with my cold sesame noodles.

Igor, who looks at my Molson longingly, picks at his salmon.  He does not have good table manners.  I wonder who paid for his Blue Cult jeans.

“It’s such a beautiful evening,” Shira Finkelstein says.

Igor just stares at her, nodding.  He must really like to fuck her.

“Why don’t you give Igor a sip of your beer?” she asks me.  “You know, to break the ice.  At least get your lips on the same glass.”

“Sure,” I say, handing the glass to the kid, wondering if he’d be interested in the number of my manicurist.  Igor has a cuticle problem.

He takes a healthy sip of the beer, then another.

“Aren’t we contributing to the delinquency of a minor?” I ask Shira Finkelstein.

She sighs.  “I’ve been doing that for four months now.”

Igor smiles at me.  “You think she is like Humbert Humbert?”

There’s a mouthful of cold sesame noodles about to enter my mouth, so I wait till I chew and swallow thoroughly and put down my chopsticks and pat my lips with my napkin.  It’s given me time to come up with a Jewish response: “Do you think she’s like Humbert Humbert?”

Igor smiles again.  “No, I think she is like Lolita herself,” he says.

Even though Adam told me he’d be at work till maybe midnight, I’d hoped the evening of bonding with Igor would end early.  But Shira Finkelstein’s parents have gone to Sagaponack for the weekend and she wants to rent a movie at Kim’s and watch it, the three of us, at home.  So I follow her there, in a less puppy-dog manner than Igor does.

I always get bamboozled in video stores, overwhelmed by the choices.  But tonight I decide early on that I’m going to hold out for Diary of a Mad Black Woman.  Igor wants to see Women in Love – not many people know that Larry Kramer wrote the screenplay – but I definitely am not into either Glenda Jackson or nude wrestling.  Of course we end up with the choice of Shira Finkelstein – The Dreamers – which neither Igor nor I am happy about.

Still, it’s not about our happiness, is it?

While waiting for the subway uptown, we’re standing in front a poster for Con Edison.  New York’s Best Street Performers Don’t Mime, Juggle or Do Standup, it says, with the small print touting the skills of its repair and maintenance crews.  There are photos of various Con Ed workers and above one of a female hardhat fixing something halfway under the sidewalk, someone has graffitied this thought balloon:

I would make twice as much money if I were a Ho.

Inside the subway car we get on, two teenage boys a little younger than Igor are b-boying to a boom box with a littler kid of maybe nine or ten.  They’re all wearing black and their breaking is pretty good but not spectacular.  I’d say okay footwork and spinning but they can’t freeze for shit.  Then again, a moving train isn’t exactly solid ground.  I think of getting out my cell to take a quick picture but decide against it.

As we exit to transfer at the Times Square stop, Shira Finkelstein hands the shorty a twenty-dollar bill.

“I assume you put your cell number on it so he can call you for a date,” I say as we walk to the 1/2/3 tracks.  When Igor laughs at this, she elbows him in the ribs.  He pretends he’s hurt and stumbles around, bumping into a Latino woman with a baby in a stroller.

“Perdóname,” Igor says to her.  At least he’s polite.

But when we get out at 96th Street, I tell Shira Finkelstein I don’t really want to watch a movie.

“Me neither,” Igor says.  The peanut gallery has spoken.

Shira Finkelstein doesn’t look dismayed.  “Well, if you guys are both nervous, why don’t we just get it over with?  Come up and I’ll shoot you and it will be all over in a little while and you can just pretend it was all a dream or something.”

“I’ve got a headache,” I say.

“Headaches are what my mom uses for birth control,” Shira Finkelstein says, and Igor laughs.

“Oh fuck, why not?” I say.  “But if I had known beforehand, I really would have put on more product tonight.”

I try to call Adam to tell him I’m going through with it and will be home in a couple of hours – everything needs to be transparent here – but he’s probably still at his meeting because he’s not picking up.

We’re going to sit on the living room sectional, Shira Finkelstein tells us as she fiddles with her expensive camera, a birthday gift from her grandfather.  Before we went to the current show at MOMA, she was under the misapprehension that Lee Friedlander was a woman.

We don’t have to, but she’d really appreciate it if we’d put on the wifebeaters she’d got for us at Tar-zhay.  Before I say anything, Igor’s already peeled off his Pixies T-shirt, so I figure I’ll play along too and start unbuttoning my polo shirt.

Igor seems as surprised by the tacky Star of David that Adam bought for me at Jewelrymaven.com as I am that he’s wearing a mezuzah.  I think we’re both embarrassed.

I talk when I’m embarrassed so I say, “I just have it so that any terrorists who capture me will know to torture me a lot before they kill me.  Also it’s from my boyfriend.  What’s your excuse?”

He shrugs, points to Shira Finkelstein.  “Dunno, she tortures me enough.”

She looks up from her photographic equipment long enough to say, “How sweet, look at all you boys have in common.  I bet you’re both circumcised.”  She motions to the body art he’s got on his right upper arm and the Celtic-symbol tattoo on my left shoulder.  “And neither of you can be buried properly.  You might just as well start smooching now.”

Igor sniffs.  “Wet yet?” he asks her.

I’m not close enough to him yet, but I hope he uses deodorant – even if it’s Mitchum.

My own fragrance tonight is Demeter’s worn-leathery Riding Crop.

“It’s showtime, kids,” Shira Finkelstein tells us.

I’m real worried that the night has gotten away from me and Adam will be wondering where I am, but when I let myself into the apartment, he isn’t even back yet himself.  What a relief.

Not that I have anything to feel guilty about, not really.  Kissing Igor was not as gross as I expected although as we got close for the first shot, I had to offer him an Altoid.

I understand now what movie actors go through.  It actually is kind of uncomfortable when someone photographs two people kissing.  You never realize that usually your noses are being squished together in a manner that looks altogether unattractive on camera.

And I didn’t expect it to take that long, but Igor unexpectedly got a case of the giggles that was totally contagious.  It was involuntary, but it frustrated Shira Finkelstein.  Every time our lips would get closer and closer, one or both of us would start laughing again, ruining the shot.

Igor’s a decent kid.  I think he must care about her a lot to do what he did, because I don’t think he’s bi at all.  They were probably having incredible sex after I left for the East Side.

I kind of got a little excited myself, which is why I’m hoping Adam gets back any minute.  He’s been so tired lately that I can’t remember the last time we kissed, much less fucked.

But I’m pretty much asleep when Adam comes in our bedroom.  “It’s okay, I’m not asleep,” I tell him, knowing he’s been trying not to wake me.

I sit up in bed and move to kiss him.  I get just the corner of his lip.  “It’s late,” he says.

“I need to tell you everything that happened with Shira Finkelstein and her boyfriend tonight,” I say.  “Emphasis on boy, by the way.”

Adam doesn’t say anything.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” I tell him.  His response is a sigh.

And then, rousing myself fully, I recount everything that happened, not the SparkNotes version this time but the whole megillah, including every feeling I had with Igor.  If I’m totally honest, Adam can’t hold it against me.

Maybe it’s just that he wants to go to sleep, but he seems bored by my story.  Or maybe it’s Adam being passive-aggressive as usual.

“Are you upset?” I ask him.  “It didn’t mean anything.”

His fingers dawdle on the bedcover and he says, “Tyler, I think you should start looking for another place to live.”

“Huh?” I say.  “Because of this stupid photography thing?  Adam, it was a big nothing.  You think I give a shit about this icky little boy or his stupid girlfriend?  I’m sorry.   I wouldn’t have done it at all if you’d absolutely said no, but in the end it seemed like you didn’t care.”

He tells me this isn’t about Igor or anything related to it, that not everything is about me, this is about him.  He’s met someone, he’s been seeing someone, he hasn’t known how to tell me but it’s getting…

While Adam is talking, I’m thinking but not saying, You’re always working, when do you have time to see anyone, till it hits me what an asshole I’ve been.  And then I say aloud, “I’m not going to make a scene…”

Adam notes that technically to “make a scene” I’d have to be with him in a public place and we’re in his bedroom.  And then I do make a scene.  When it’s over, my throat hurts a lot and my eyes are so red and puffy that not a single Kiehl’s product could make them look normal again.

Adam won’t tell me about the guy he’s in love with, if he’s younger or older than me, if he’s smarter or funnier, what his body is like, what sex with him is like – Adam says it’ll just make me more unhappy, and that he’s sorry he made me this unhappy already.

Towards daylight I realize that I’d better play on his guilt, since basically that’s all I’ve got going for me now.  I should never have agreed to pose for those pictures.  I want them destroyed.

When I meet Shira Finkelstein at the Union Square Café on a muggy Tuesday over a week later, she gives me not only the check for a hundred dollars but also “a bonus for being such a good sport”: a bar of certified-organic, cruelty-free hand soap infused with grapefruit seed extract.  I bet it’s from The Body Shop and the she’s just placed it in a Sephora bag to soften me up.

“I got some lip gloss there for myself,” she lies, puckering.  “Vincent Longo’s Baci XXX.”

Inside her Birkin handbag is another plastic shopping bag, this one from the St. Mark’s Bookshop.  “And this is from Igor,” she says.  “Well, I paid for it, but he was the one who picked it out.”

It’s a copy of Nabokov’s Pale Fire.  I look inside for an inscription, maybe something similar to the text messages Igor’s been sending me: im bored, wanna hang out?  But there’s nothing personal in it.

“Well, thank you so much,” I tell Shira Finkelstein.  “And thank Igor for me.”

“Thank you,” she says.  “You’re a good friend.  You knew this meant a lot to me, and you didn’t want to do it, but you did it to make me happy.”

“So are you happy?” I ask her.

Leaning over and kissing me on the cheek, Shira Finkelstein says she’s always happy.  Today she also reeks of way too much Ralph Lauren Blue.

I don’t say anything.

“Igor’s happy too.”

“Good,” I say.

Shira Finkelstein clears her throat.  “So how’s Adam these days?”

“Oh, he’s very happy,” I tell her.  I’m being honest, after all.

She nods.  And leans closer.  “Well, just between you, me and the wallpaper: if you weren’t such a Boy Scout with your relationship with Adam – which, by the way, I think is totally sweet and beautiful – I think Igor might be interested in some boy-on-boy action.”

She waits for my response but finally says, “You know, I wouldn’t mind it in the least.”

“Mm-hm,” I say, “especially if you could videotape it.”

Shira Finkelstein laughs.  Then she says: “Are you in?”

I shrug.  “It depends.”

I really have other things on my mind, like finding a new place to live and getting funding to continue my education.

If only Igor were older and didn’t work at Starbucks.  Still, if I insisted, she’d probably pay to get his eyebrows waxed.

I lift my glass of white wine and motion for her to do the same.  Technically, we’re north of 14th Street, but what’s a block or two among friends?

“L’chaim,” I say as we clink wineglasses.

This lunch, like all our meals together, is going to be Shira Finkelstein’s treat.

I Hate All of You on This L Train

Especially you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Grayson is a retired lawyer and teacher. His books of short stories include With Hitler in New York, Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, I Brake for Delmore Schwartz, I Survived Caracas Traffic, The Silicon Valley Diet, And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street, Highly Irregular Stories, and Who Will Kiss the Pig?: Sex Stories for Teens. He lives in Brooklyn and Phoenix.