No longer a port in any storm

My porting days are over. Translation: I no longer have a chemo-needle-friendly "device" implanted in my chest. It's a far cry from where I was a year ago, at this time -- between rounds 1 and 2 of chemo, with 5 more to go

I've gone, done my time, and walked by the "infusion room" aka chemo lounge at my doctors' office, and finally, had a sigh of relief. No port, no entry. Here's to hoping no one ever wants to appoint me as a Superfund site again. Or make me a one-woman radioactive blip on the sidewalk. The only exception to the latter is, there will be more PET scans, more signs that I am, I hope, home free.

Home, of course, will never be the same again. This season I am snow-bound, but it's better than being the girl in a bubble. Hello, normal white cell count. Hello, immune system. So long, fare well bottles of Purell. Return to regularly scheduled interaction with the public. That is, once I find my snow boots.

I'm all set for sledding, apparel-wise: boots, snow pants, ski mittens, down coat with hood, extra cashmere cap for warmth, all requisite long underwear and thick socks. Only thing I'm missing is the sled, and the assurance of normal bone density. What would it say about me if I took a hill too fast, clipped into a tree, and broke my hip? Age-appropriate? Ha!

For public consumption and to speak the vernacular, I am a survivor. Not at all sure the word is appropriate to describe the experience, but that is what our language, in the world of cancer patients, has labeled appropriate. I have, for the record, survived worse: 40 years of depression vs. less than a year with a cancer diagnosis. By comparison, cancer was a walk in the park. Without snow gear. I'd hardly call it a trek, considering how I've felt in other circumstances.

With lymphoma, the odds were in my favor: 90% "cure" rate is what I'm told. "Cure," not "remission." After two solid years off chemo, "cured" is what they will call me. But what term will I use?

They say you can't go home again, and while that sentence applies to me literally -- my aunt and uncle's hotel in Lake Placid burned to the ground, and Haiti had, well prior to the earthquake, become a politically untenable place to go -- Wonderland, my hometown, looks different as well.

Tourists may like Toys R Us in Time Square, part of the Disneyfication a la Guiliani and Bloomberg; those of us with memories oddly enough prefer the old days, when that was a seedy part of town. We miss the fake ID joints, the peep shows, the 24/7 porn palaces and all the people who frequented them.

What price safety? Total loss of character and place? I'm sure the hookers made a better living than the minimum-wage folk now operating every chain restaurant in the land that's open to reassure tourists that Wonderland is "safe."

Sure, I no longer have to defend my city's crime rate -- in the old days, Detroit's and D.C.'s murder rates made ours look like amateur night -- but I have less of my city to defend. So much has succumbed to another strip of the global village with all of its big-box, made-in-China-but-sold-only-for-export chain stores bleeding our local shops dry that we're losing our personality.

I love New York? We used to lure visitors with a huge advertising campaign. Now busloads enter voluntarily. I would enjoy those who commute much more if they had to pay a percentage of the NY City tax dollars from which they benefit. New York is a city of first-responders, but no one counts how much it costs us and how our neighbors beyond the borough lines have benefited since we stopped collecting income tax from them.

We should have a cover charge for entry, even if it is "congestion pricing" for cars in midtown. We should have neighborhood stickers for cars, so the locals have their place in the street and let the out-of-towners resort to a garage. That is, we should also have temporary windshield-visible signs for residents to lend to those who park here explicitly to see us. That is, for those of us -- most of us, I suspect -- for whom owning a car would be more challenging that learning to speak a new language.

I fall into that category: never have I legally owned a car. As a teen and college kid, I had one that belonged to my parents, but never did I need learn any maintenance skills beyond filling the tank with gas and checking the oil under the hood.

These days I delegate even that little knowledge to those who drive me the most frequently: bus and subway drivers, plus taxi cabs and other car services. For me, maintaining a car simply means I have discount coupons on my refrigerator for whenever I need a ride to the airport.

If you need outdoor camping or related skills, don't call me. If you need urban camping tips, from conserving water to overriding electronic stove ignitions, call me. Inside I have battery-powered lamps, radio and fan; for the great outdoors? Snow boots. If you need a port for an indoor storm, I'll see what I can do. Outdoors? Baby, you're on your own.

Has it been five years? Compare...

October 14, 2004

My blog and welcome to it

Why through a looking glass? Most people see the place I call home, the place I was born, the city where my great, great, great grandmother is buried, as one unlike any other. Many can't understand why I stay. I can't see that there is anywhere else to go.

Perhaps we do look at life differently here, or I do, which explains the looking glass: life mirrored, slightly askew. It's not how you might assume from TV, whether "reality based," i.e., news, or fictitious.

Today? It's the second anniversary of my having quit smoking, and of one of my closest college friends, then age 41, e-mailing to announce she had stage 4 breast cancer. It's the day after my mom's birthday; a week after my own.

Twenty-two years since I have moved to this block, twenty-two years with the same phone number, in the so-called real world, where my mind is prone to wander, and my synapses misfire with some consistency.

It is a strange world, when life's most intimate details are proclaimed in cyberspace -- but since I gave up cigarettes (without becoming an irritating "reformed smoker"), I need a hobby. More precisely, a place to talk to myself, and, I hope, to you, whomever you may be.

It is a challenge, to understand why smoking indoors has been outlawed here, when the average person who stands on the street will breathe in more carbon monoxide in 20 minutes than I would exhale in 200.

I get it -- that I am smaller than the average car, much less bus or truck, so it's easier to try to make me conform to a new social norm than to force the average driver to make an effort. (Car does beat pedestrian; bus beats car, and so on in the run-me-over sweepstakes.)

One caveat: despite or because of all the techno-changes since my brain was young enough to absorb them without forgetting what to eat for dinner, I remain technologically challenged. It wasn't my intention, but there's just TMI out there.

I realize I'm adding more, but no one ever said irony wasn't my strong suit -- it's one I wear well, one that escapes many people in many places, but its absence would be stranger here, particularly at this time in our political landscape, to put it politely.

October 14, 2009

Today? Life is different: I'm smoking again, despite or to spite local ordinances; my friend with breast cancer died on Halloween two years ago; and now the count is up to 27 years on the same block in Wonderland, with my synapses misfiring completely inconsistently.

The world has mostly gotten stranger. For example, we've endured The Big Awful, when the economy cratered, and we all said, "disposable income? It was nice knowing you." Welcome to Brave New World. And, "good-bye, privacy. Hello, Facebook."

On the other hand, five years ago, when I traveled, I pretended to be Canadian, and now I don't have to explain that I didn't vote for the idiot who has belatedly returned to his ranch with My Little Pony.

Back then I wasn't preparing to do battle with Cambridge health plans, my so-called insurance. Now, not only do I need surgery to remove a gland most associated with pubescent growth, I also need a D&C for post-menopausal bleeding (TMI? You bet. But I am still talking to myself here, and so it goes.)

It seems it is better to go under general anesthesia once than twice, and it only gets more complicated from there. One doctor -- the gland guy -- has privileges at hospital A; my other doctor, one of 25 years standing, has privileges at hospital B, 90 blocks south and right around the corner from my apartment.

Chances of their meeting in pre-op? Zero.

Chances of my finding two surgeons from two different hospital departments at the same institution who both take my crappy insurance AND want to tag-team each other in the OR? I don't think MasterCard makes a commercial for this one.

I may have stumbled upon an occasion for which even the most comprehensive electronic Hallmark equivalent doesn't make a greeting card. If anyone did, it would say,

"Sorry you need two surgeries to make sure you don't have cancer."

Inside it would read,

"But congratulations on growing your hair for the past 22 months so now it's long enough to donate to those who do."

Irony: it's not just a concept -- it's a way of life.

Back in the real world, sort of

Home again, home again, earlier than planned. Call me Spanish school dropout. (No graduation day for me.) Just say it in English, because my vocab in espanol is rather limited. So is my knowledge of verbs.

In Argentina, I lived in the present tense. I had no past and no future. It is an interesting way to perceive and the world.

Actually, it is quite apropos, given our brave new world and goings-on in Wonderland and places beyond. The past is history and the future a huge question mark. Will Alice need to find another gig to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed? Or are those days gone, regardless of what gig she comes up with?

Teaching English as a second language seems a possibility. It is a gig with instant credibility, something Alice believes has been lost in her current so-called profession. She thinks Madoff made everyone in her line of work appear as credible as car salesmen are usually wont to be. This does not inspire trust, a necessary element in Alice's work.

In Wonderland Alice is grateful for her health and mobility: TBF (aka Clover's Companion) had a second back surgery in Alice's absence. She will spend months recuperating. Alice would still feel better if TBF would hire a pro for her caretaking, but it's not her choice.

Husband-the-doctor (HTmD), to Alice, appears on the verge of a breakdown. Alice kindly brought him Cuban cigars that she had rolled in a T-shirt in her suitcase. She tells him to take care of himself, but he seems to fall short in that arena.

Today he shopped and brought home the wrong toilet paper, to TBF's dismay. Alice held her tongue. To her, as we know, toilet paper is not created equal. HTmD is a boy; he doesn't make the distinctions Alice and TBF make. He is also bewildered by all things domestic, and Alice wonders how he survived his lengthy bachelorhood.

HTmD is running himself ragged while TBF is incapacitated, calling herself a cripple with a scoliosis-like brace to wear as part of the recovery plan. He is stunningly clueless about their everyday life -- all things remotely domestic.

Alice has never lived in the world of couples, where one brings in the money and the other manages it, much less one in which food supply falls to the female and the male seems unable to manage for himself. Perhaps it is simply all the stress: Alice will buy that. Under stress, brushing teeth can be problematic.

Doctor-husband cannot ascertain by himself where to put the tuna fish cans. He cannot apply heat to food (nor can TBF). That in itself is not a problem, but his failure to find nutrition that is not on the Chinese food or pizza menu puzzles Alice. Shouldn't an M.D. know what they call a balanced meal? Perhaps order one to be delivered? Cash is not the problem, but common sense is in short supply, or perhaps stress has taken its place.

This is why Alice ran away, and why Alice, once she excavates her dining room table, will be just as happy to get on the plane to Mexico next week. She cannot, it seems, bear witness to that which drives her insane. Apparently Alice is a control freak: who knew? Or is Alice the last to get that memo?

In BA Alice had fleeting maternal tendencies: one day she almost decided to wake up the Twit for school, and another night, while they smoked on the balcony, Alice wanted to lecture her about protein and safe sex. (The women of Buenos Aires have emergency kits for sale in their ladies' rooms: two pesos for a toothbrush, one for a condom. That will see them through the night.) However, Alice refrained.

Twit is massively devoted to Boyfriend, with whom she "chats" for hours via instant messaging, although that doesn't stop her from going out and finding a boy to fuck. One morning she came home and announced that she had gotten laid. Alice hoped that having sex would have calmed her down a bit, but no such luck.

When Alice was 19, she probably acted very much like Twit, except that she kept a bit more of her personal life to herself, and she didn't feel the need to tell anyone how intelligent she was. She was probably more about the hair, makeup, and clothes than she remembers. In retrospect, she was definitely more about the conquests than the intimacy.

Thirty years later, Alice has a different take on the world. She is again dating: tonight is her second date with the Artist, a woman Alice met on line and with whom she giggles madly on the telephone. They courted via email during Alice's hiatus. The Artist's Valentine's Day/Friday the 13th email cheered Alice immensely.

So, brave new world aside, Alice is up for more adventures. Keep your fingers (or other parts of your anatomy, as you choose) crossed for her. She wants something to work out with the Artist. Alice, perhaps, has found something to hope for, something/someone to add to her life.

A guide to living in reduced circumstances

Alice is sad to report, it has come to this. She would much rather produce a guide to living under better circumstances; however, in this climate (read, economy tanked), it seems inappropriate.

Until the recent, shall we say, unpleasantness?, Alice made a living, as they say, from offering financial advice, a field whose existence appears rather tenuous. Thus Alice will offer a few words on the way she lives now.

It may be ordinary for some folks, but for Alice, it is not business as usual, not S.O.P. by a long shot. Alice is a baby boomer, part of a generation that has been known to act as if instant gratification takes too much time.

Food: Alice has rediscovered her kitchen. She markets -- in ordinary grocery stores, where she watches for good prices. She is applying heat to food on a regular basis. A prescription for burn cream has been filled, and Alice slathers it on with abandon.

Clothing: Fortunately, Alice was never much of a clothes horse. Now, she is not even a clothes pony. More like a clothes shih tzu, if that. So much for predictions of pricey underwear. It's strictly Hanes -- her way or the highway. As for outer layers, good-bye catalogs; hello, thrift shops.

It's time for pre-owned clothes. Pre-owned shoes. Maybe freebies from craigslist, or bargains at a church rummage sale. (Do they still have rummage sales? Does Alice know how to rummage?) The lipstick factor is prominent in Alice's toiletry plans.

Might even be time to relearn to sew, although that could cost Alice a finger or two, which would push health care out of reach.

Shelter: At least the mortgage is paid off. There will be no improvements to shelter short of hanging already in-house paintings and reorganizing the bookshelves and closets.

Heat may be curtailed, although Alice will be damned if she's going broke in the dark. Perhaps she will rearrange the living room furniture. Or would that be the deck chairs on the ship that may remain nameless?

Travel: all air travel has been postponed indefinitely, with the exception of tickets procured with frequent flyer miles to places where Alice may stay with friends. Inter-Wonderland transit has gone public.

It's subways, buses, and trains. Au revoir les taxis, those little yellow vehicles that have sped Alice from one part of town to another on a regular basis in the past.

Entertainment: Welcome to free movies on demand. Let's watch all DVDs purchased but still sealed against thievery. Read all books acquired with spines still uncracked. Can Alice interest you in a game of Monopoly? (Read about its ironic history here.) Anyone want to ante up for a game of nickel-dime-quarter poker?

Who cares if you lose? It's only money, right? Isn't it? asks the financial planner. What she really wants to know is, how far can we go before we hit bottom? Are we there yet? Please? Even the Wizard off Wall Street, major shareholder in Capitalist, inc., seems a few steps off. (Damn it, Alice should have remembered white men can't dance.)

Is there a 12-step program for the global economy?

Contemplating what to defrost for dinner, Alice is profoundly depressed. Previously she had never considered the freezer section a home for much more than ice trays, nukable proteins, extra smoked salmon, bagels, butter, and coffee.

Now she has said adieu to her menu drawer and has wrapped various meats, first in plastic wrap, followed by aluminum foil, labeling the packets with indelible marker by contents and date received. In the 'burbs, growing up, Alice remembers seeing her father do this with entire filet mignons he had cut into portion size.

It feels different now, and part of Alice is relieved her beloved Daddy isn't around for this 21st century meltdown. On the other hand, he taught her that life was a banquet. It's just that Alice hadn't planned on getting the check.

Here's to hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train.

How Alice discovered Wonderland

Two toddlers walk into a bar, and one of their moms picks them up and seats them on the banquette. They place their standard order: two Shirley Temples, extra cherries, and could we please have some peanuts? We are treated like the princesses we are, the only two children in the entire hotel. There may be a joke in here, somewhere. Bartender, make mine a double.

I'm on the left, about a year older than my friend, the other bar-hopping child in the photo. Actually, we are in Lake Placid, and it's cocktail hour. Since the bar is in a hotel owned by a family member, legal drinking age is irrelevant. For all anyone knew, the concept might not have been conceived, much less reached the law books when it would have applied to us as three-year-olds. We weren't children; we were small adults, and expected to behave as such -- or, perhaps, better than the imitations around whom we grew.

In the Camelot years of the 1960s, two toddlers could have their own designated banquette, with excellent proximity to the bar, and we did. We two little girls of privilege wore our white lace ankle socks, black patent leather Mary Janes, and frilly Florence Eisman (famous designer of children's clothes -- the only designer of kids' cocktail dresses in the days before baby Dior) attire with smocking and hand embroidered detail. We knew how to order a drink, never forgetting our pleases and our thank-yous, or how to keep our legs crossed so our underpants weren't on display.

Two toddlers toasting: if the average picture is worth a thousand words, the one contained on this blog is worth infinitely more. It tells the story, in its entirety, of my first 18 years. As 12-year-olds, we graduated to whiskey sours, hold the whisky -- our adolescent lemonade resembling the ones to which we would graduate, when we learned how to get a buzz on.

When we were 13, Uncle Teddy fired the restaurant glass washer, and appointed we former toddler princesses to take his place. Apart from running the ancient switchboard when it was raining, this was my first job, one with actual responsibility. We took our tasks like a duck to the proverbial water. The bus boys returned trays with half-filled wine glasses to us. We drained them, loaded up the dishwasher, ran it off and emptied it, the last being our first lesson in wine. Taste was never the issue.

However, we could distinguish a Moselle stem from a Burgundy glass from a white wine glass from a brandy snifter -- and no matter how many glasses we swilled, our breakage record was better than our predecessor, the grown-up to whose job we had been assigned. We were greatly saddened to be relieved of our duties.

We had, however, learned lessons well beyond our years: neither of us, since the age of Shirley Temples, had seen an adult respond to reality after 6 o'clock. I don't know about my friend, with whom I have since lost touch, but this inability to distinguish sobriety from altered states may well be why I became Alice, for Wonderland is a place where reality is in the eyes of the beholder, and its bearing on truth has never been established.

I grew up in the fun house of alcoholic blackouts, came of age in a fun house filled with substances grown in a multitude of gardens. If the White Knight is walking backward, and the red queen's "off with her head," what other lead have I than to remember what the doormouse said and take those instructions to heart?

For everything, there is a season

Several years ago, Alice decided to stop spending Christmas with her mother because Mom drank too much. One Christmas eve in particular, Alice and Mom went out for dinner, where the wine was poured very freely, and the service (at a Posh Hotel that used Frette linen) was abominable. By the time we got to dessert, Mom had taken it upon herself to chase down the waiter in the kitchen, to score our sweets and coffee.

When the check arrived, Mom decided to retabulate the sums, so she took the ballpoint pen and wrote down all the figures from the check on the tablecloth. To complete her work, she wrote "FUCK," with a flourish, on the once virgin-white linen.

There was no where for Alice to hide, and no way for Alice to stop her. That was the last holiday meal Alice had with her. Alice has subsequently made other out-of-town plans to save what she can of holiday joy.

However... Mom recently had one of her long-time Closest Friends stay with her for 10 days, and Close Friend drove Mom nuts because CF wanted to start drinking at 4 pm, and was ready for dinner by 6 pm, and in bed, probably passed out, a couple of hours later.

Mom prefers to wait until 7 to drink -- CF loses it somewhere near the end of martini # 3 and the beginning of martini #4 -- and Mom, well, Alice can never be certain when she has left the building, but she weighs 92 pounds, so she's only good for two drinks (Dewars on the rocks, with water, promptly.)

Alice had dinner with Mom and CF one night, and it appeared that CF was going to pass out in the soup, and her conversation wasn't making much sense. Still, when Mom bitched to Alice about it, Alice couldn't help telling her that she got like that, sometimes. Until that exchange, the Christmas-from-hell incident had completely escaped Mom, who never has a clue when she has blacked out. Evidently, however, there is a season for all things. This was Alice's for Truth to Mother about Christmas past.

Alice would prefer it if Mom passed out; then the line of demarcation would be clean. Blackouts, on the other hand, come and go. You can never tell what is real, and what will be a lost memory by morning. Is is any wonder Alice lives in Wonderland? It is the minefield in which she grew up, one which those in less alcoholic families find quite disturbing, but which pass as S.O.P. chez Alice.

For Alice, Truth to Mom was simply one of of the most recent entries into Mom's blackout hit parade, one that began when Alice was 20, in Paris, and Mom inquired one morning, "who poured me into a cab last night?" (The night before, Mom had turned all the do-not-disturb signs on the hotel floor to the please-make-up room side, then stood in her underwear in a picture window in front of the Rue de Rivoli.) That was the dawning of a new age for Alice, the one in which under the influence coincided with leaving the building.

Since CF presented such a golden opportunity for Alice to illuminate Mom's own behavior in a mirror she could see, it was, indeed, Alice's moment.

Independence Day?

Once upon a time I pledged allegiance to Richard Stands, as did many of us in the confusion of elementary school in the 1960s. Now, not so much. Right now it seems the best thing we have going for us vs. the United Kingdom is that Congress is not -- assuming the Democrats have some interest in what shreds pass for privacy -- debating a national identity card. The kind with your finger print and iris scan.

If Big Brother wants to know where I live, I'm sure he can get the job done without any further assistance from me. What I want to know is, why do we celebrate our "independence" with what, for all intents and purposes, sounds exactly like the proverbial bombs bursting in air?

Couldn't we try for patriotism with a bit less gunpowder? It is unseemly, the number of soldiers getting blown to shreds in Iraq and elsewhere, and what do we do? We throw a multimillion-dollar fireworks display for the folks at home. Is this the best use of our resources? Would the right wing curl up and mourn without its annual firepower celebration?

I think there are many ways to be patriotic, if one wants. Waving a flag doesn't do it for me. I'd rather stick with fighting for liberty -- justice, though blind, probably has a smirk on her face given the Supreme Court's latest decisions.

Our local Big Brother of Wonderland has pushed through some more laws to protect us from ourselves: no more trans fat in our food, thank you. I never realized a need to legislate food stuffs beyond assuring that they won't result in a nation keeling over from food poisoning. If I knew anything about cooking, or nutrition, I imagine I'd feel some deep seated hostility toward Wonderland's fascist food police.

Then, too, I wonder: Wonderland just passed some noise abatement laws -- including a five-minute limit on the time your dog is allowed to bark. Well, okay; I'd rather have dogs seen but not heard. But that goes for babies, too, and I don't see anyone legislating where and when it is appropriate for your child to have a public meltdown, or how long you have to rescue your child, in whatever form that takes.

And the fireworks: sound like bombs, much? Going off for nearly half an hour tonight? Surely that should fall under the decibel police's province. Or is it only unacceptable when the decibels are not emanating from a so-called public purpose "celebration"? Since Macy's foots the bill for the Grucci brother's handiwork, then beer ads are sold to subsidize the cost of broadcasting the affair, doesn't that take it into private hands? Isn't that where the decibel police come in? What about the folks measuring our carbon footprints?

Mind you, I don't take all of this as seriously as all that. I just happen to like a little less hypocrisy, a few more protected civil rights, in my legal system. I don't think it's going to happen. Happy Independence Day, anyone?

The day after

Everyone speaks of 9/11, an historic date that changed the way most Americans view the world. It certainly changed the citizens of Wonderland.

No one speaks of 9/12, the day after, the first day of search and rescue, what has happened to the first responders and to the EPA's lie a couple of months later that sounded an "all-clear" on air quality.

In a letter to the editor of Salon magazine, an unidentified woman wrote: "I am sick of hearing about 9/11 and New Yorkers." To her I say, on behalf of all my friends and neighbors, FUCK OFF AND DIE. Don't think we aren't tired of media saturation/exploitation of the day; we are. There are other, more sympathetic ways, to commemorate unnecessary loss of life.

Yet 9/11 and its aftermath are not going to go away, and if you think they are, try getting on an airplane. Wonder if your phone lines are tapped. Are your e-mail conversations monitored? Aren't you curious how the Feds are funding all the end of privacy as we knew it? What exactly are we saving here?

Lady: no one wanted to see you dead. From Alice's vantage in Wonderland, no one thought you and your town were worth the effort to destroy. It reminds her of the survival rate of cockroaches. You can put them through almost anything, and they will live. They won't be any more pleasant to have around, but they'll still be there.

I think about August 7, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan. That was the day after there, another day that changed the world. More than 100,000 civilians were killed a day earlier, never mind the subsequent radiation sickness there and in Nagasaki. That was 61 years ago, and I expect that no one in Japan doesn't know someone, someone's mother, grandfather, who was affected.

The History Channel is still running World War II documentaries. Locally we call it the war channel when we are charitable; the Hitler channel when we are not. You don't see documentaries on the suffrage movement or recreations of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. If you see a woman on the History Channel, it's either Eleanor Roosevelt or Mata Hari.

In media land, women still don't count. Five years later, on the day after, when tradition would have women nursing the wounded, their standard role in wars passed, no one has paid attention to them -- or to the heroism of either gender who sifted through the rubble, whose children may see their parents' lives cut short for their bravery.

Personally, I can't watch any of the 9/11 offerings on TV, no matter what their guise. Some of my friends hiked home four hours on the original date; others lent their efforts to the rescue team at Chelsea Piers. I wrote an article on disaster preparedness, and donated my fee to the fraternal associations of New York's finest and bravest.

Every year I write another check. It is not much, but it is as much as I can manage. I don't need TV to remind me of the 9/11 horror show. But if you always thought New Yorkers were indifferent and callous, think again. We in Wonderland stick together, be it the day after or years after.

Last year I borrowed the entire Thin Man movie series from a friend. This year, I rented the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Once upon a time, love was all around.

No good deed goes unpunished

----- Original Message -----
From: "former friend" (ungrateful@freemail.com)
To: alice, uptown
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 3:22 PM
Subject: SEND AFTER TRIP

Preface: In the summer of 2004, I allowed this woman --invited her, even -- to stay with me for 8 weeks, room, board and rent free -- while she got a job. After seven weeks, she got a job. After eight, she left. She has been unemployed since January 2005.

Her boxes and clothing have lived in my closet (at no charge) for more than 12 months. I recently sent her an e-mail inquiring whether she wanted these belongings, since she had moved (rent and board free) to a friend's house six months ago. I live in an apartment. I wanted my space back.

Originally we had agreed she would take possession of her stuff when she got a new job. It's been 16 months. I needed the space, and since she could not or would not summon the energy to bunny-sit the off-White Rabbit, I doubt employment is forthcoming.

The off-White Rabbit requires two meals (pellets/hay and vegetables) a day, plus the newspaper in his cage needs to be changed every two days, along with giving him fresh water. It doesn't get more complicated than that.

FYI, I have yet to leave for my trip.

New rules chez Alice: three nights on the sofa, and you're out. The Bank of Alice does not lend more than $100. The compassion window is closed for the duration.


"Dear Alice:
"I said I would wait to discuss certain thing until after you returned from your trip and so I have kept my word.

"Now that you are back, I'm letting loose.

"1) There is nothing wrong with my behavior except that I left stuff in your closet too long. What you are forgetting is that we talked about this at lenght (sic) and
YOU agreed it was okay to leave it there until I got a job and then I would get the stuff.

"2) I don't care if I owe you the moon and the stars. How dare you speak to me in such a manner? (See copies of your e-mails below.)

"3) You had no right to threaten me with throwing my stuff away, keeping some of my stuff just because you felt like it. going through my personal things, and talking to me like I'm some sort of lackey.

"4) If you want to be friend with me, you'd better learn right now to treat me like an equal. Just because you were raised with money, have it now, and I owe you does NEVER give you the right to treat me any other way.

"I will NOT tolerate it.

"5) I want the rest of my stuff back and you are going to send it to me via insured FedEx or UPS. I am not schlepping in at your beck and call to get it this
time. If you threaten to throw it away, you will regret it in ways of which you have no idea.

"Just because my life is a mess does not mean I'm an idiot. You might have found yourself in the same boat had you not had the money to keep you out of it."

My reply:

I received this e-mail, a week before my trip. I thought we had resolved many of these issues yesterday, but apparently I was mistaken. You had previously apologized (per my sent mail file) for leaving the closet for so long. From this current e-mail, it seems you were trying to assuage me more than anything else. That may not have been your intent, but that is my interpretation.

I had anticipated you would have removed your stuff from my closet at some point sooner than you did; you had recently asked whether the closet stuff was bothering me, and I had said yes, that I wanted it to be over so we could resume our regularly scheduled programming.

There is a backstory to having someone's stuff in that closet that I don't feel I need to go into now, but my previous experience had been very unpleasant, and I may have been projecting some of that onto you. For that I am sorry.

As for any other belongings of yours, I think everything is accounted for, so I don't appreciate the threat of what might transpire if I came across anything of yours and did not return it in a timely fashion.

You did not send copies of the relevant e-mails. I assume you were referring to the e-mail that I wrote when I was crying and shaking; if that doesn't tell you how upset I was, I don't know what would. Regarding the e-mail in which I asked about borrowing a couple of things from you, I did not go through your stuff -- these were items on top of your stuff, and the only reason I went through anything of yours was that I was trying to help you by packing things in the spare boxes that I had.

Did it ever occur to you that I don't care about the money? That I was a lot more concerned with losing a personal connection to you, which was how the e-mail-only/your stuff living in my closet route made me feel. I am not saying it is right or wrong; it is simply how I felt.

I suppose also I did not make it clear that I never lend more than I can afford to give away. You don't owe me a dime.

I do take exception to your comments about my money. I don't think I ever threw it in your face in any way, and if you were uncomfortable accepting it, I wish I had known prior to our entering into any financial dealings.

I have inherited money because people in my family, my father included, died. I would rather, as I have said elsewhere, have a father. It took me a long time to get over feeling guilty for what I have, and I don't plan to return to that feeling.

Life is like a poker game, and this was one of the cards I was dealt. It came along with the depression and migraine propensity cards, as part of my genetic makeup.

I am concerned about your health and how you take care of yourself, but I think I have expressed that concern on many occasions, and there isn't anything I can add to what I've already said. Based on [a mutual friend's mother's] experience, I do think you have financial options viz-a-viz income and health care that you may not have completely explored; however, that is your business, not mine.

I hope that we can be friends. The off-White Rabbit sends his love (he's not throwing his hay pan around today, which I take as an expression of his happiness to have seen you).

all my best,

alice

Addendum: I hope I never see or hear from this woman again. Threatening e-mails and postcards have arrived all week, and I have blocked ungrateful's e-mail. I now think the off-White Rabbit was expressing his discomfort at ungrateful's presence.

I thought a simple thank-you was in order; evidently I misjudged this woman's grasp of etiquette. The only regularly scheduled programming I had anticipated has been permanently discontinued.

Our block's book club for May and June

Please print out this message for future reference.

alice, uptown

For May, the book is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The meeting will be May 2 at L.'s, 16 blocks north of our block, tel. ###. Please note that L. will be out of the country from April 17 to April 27, and I will not return until May 2.

She and I will be in Prague and Budapest, then I'll stay in Paris for a few days. Photos to follow eventually. (Architecture, not animals, this year. Our safari was a year ago, and I've yet to organize those photos.)

At this meeting or in June, you may want to bring to the attention of the club a book you would like for the group to read in a subsequent month. It would be quite helpful if you suggest a book you have already read and think would be a good one to discuss. (It would also help if the book did not run more than 400 pages at most.)

For June, the book is In the Land of Dreamy Dreams by Ellen Gilchrist. The meeting will be at R.'s on June 6. four blocks south of our block, tel. ###

Please note: R. and B. do not have e-mail access. Therefore, if you are the person who brought them into the book club, please relay this information, as I will not be able to do so.

A few housekeeping notes:

Our book club meets the 1st Tuesday of every month at 8 pm, barring national holidays (i.e., July 4) and other holidays for which half the group will not attend due to religious observances. Those are the only times the date is negotiable -- i.e., pushed to the following Tuesday if necessary.

The hostess is responsible for providing refreshments -- in the past we have shown a distinct preference for dark chocolate, fruit tarts, and various cheeses. I personally favor the assortment of refreshments available at Citarella (three blocks south of our corner). Over the years I have noticed that no one every eats fruit or fresh vegetables, but if you're buying, it's up to you.

The person who suggested the book is responsible for providing some background about the author of the book and other relevant information. Sometimes, the hostess will be that person; sometimes not. In the past we have read both fiction and nonfiction, generally non-genre fiction unless the book is a classic in its genre, i.e., The Maltese Falcon.

We don't tend to read "best-sellers" or Oprah's book club picks, nor do we consider the fact that a book won an award a reason unto itself to consider it worth reading. That's why, when choosing a book, it works best if the person who suggests it has read it. We do read biographies and other narrative nonfiction.

A few important technical details about the book: it must be in print, in paperback, and should be widely available. If it's possible, we like to patronize neighborhood bookstores.

Someone has to keep them in business, and their staffs are knowledgeable, unlike, say, the cashier or "customer service" person at Barnes & Noble. If you are looking for a book to read for yourself, and you know your tastes, these are the folks to ask, or try your friendly local librarian.

If you cannot attend, please notify the hostess as promptly as possible, either by e-mail or telephone. If no RSVP is forthcoming for three or more months, you will stop receiving these e-mails.

Kindly respond to the hostess, not to me, except as a carbon copy to ask to be dropped from the list. All the e-mail addresses are given in the To line of this message.

Again, if you are relaying information to a no-tech person, remind them the telephone is a handy 19th century device, and computers are running cheap these days. Urge the no-tech to upgrade to the current century. If my mother can navigate cyberspace, so can anyone.

If you are new to the book club, you will find that it is rare for us to have a full complement of members, due to various travel schedules. In the past, we have, in certain summers, opted to take July and August off, depending on who will be around. H., L., Sz., and I have tended to have the most complex travel schedules.

Health issues, personal or of one's elderly parents, and sojourns to country houses also play havoc with attendance. Sz. and I also go to the Caribbean when we can, in the winter.

I don't know whether K. or either of the Sn.s will be continuing with the book club, which H. started in the late 1990s as our block's book club. We have since ventured off our block (L. moved), and now we have new members for whom we will brave the streets (only joking).

Here are the addresses (and phone numbers) to the best of my knowledge:

alice's building:

Sz.

Sn P.

Sn J.

alice -- after 1 pm

H., across the street

G., next door to H.

L., formerly in G.'s building, now 16 blocks north

K., around the corner

B., six blocks south

R., four blocks south

Sa.,(no address or phone)

B., (no further info)

I will see you in June, if not before then.

Regards,

alice

Next up: Migraine, she wrote

The inmates have taken over the asylum...

while I have been running away.

It hit home today, once again, that the inmates are my peers. They shared elementary school, high school, college, and other quasi-academic venues with me.

The man who writes front-page New York Times articles covering Bush and Iraq is the boy who my entire sixth-grade class pegged as "queer," in the elementary school vernacular (not to be confused with current gay-pride reclamation of the word).

The boy who graduated a year ahead of me in high school has made his name as my state's attorney general (ruining the careers of many from our alma mater ) in his securities industry cleanup. Now I get invitations to fund-raisers for his campaign for state governor. Governor? This guy wasn't popular enough in high school to be president of the student council.

If I don't know the people writing the best-sellers, I do know the people who edit and publicize them. I danced at the wedding of the New York Times op-ed editor. At that wedding I met the folks who got me my freelance gig at that same newspaper. I was there as a guest of the bride, a best-selling feminist author I'd met at a writer's colony.

Last night I checked the credits for one of my favorite TV shows; in my 20s, I drank nightly for several summers and swam in Vermont with one of the producers, a woman to whom I am related through fewer than six degrees of separation: her father coached a national football team owned by a man whose mistress was my father's first cousin. Small fucking world.

Where have I been, while all around me have become such high achievers? Alive and stumbling in the nervous breakdown lane, making large contributions to members of the American Psychiatric Association and to shareholders in every large pharmaceutical company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda -- well, as it happens, couldn't. Depression is polio of the brain, and there are times my mind needs a wheel chair. When it doesn't, I am off and running, usually as far as I can. It is the only way I don't feel guilty about being self-employed and not producing anything salable. It also affords me some time away from the daily phone calls from my mother, who has taken to calling attention to odd postmarks recently.

As it happens, the year I turned 38 I was diagnosed with osteopenia, precursor to osteoporosis, the disease of disintegrating bones that makes old ladies break their hips.

My solution? Take my calcium and get on a plane. See the world before I crumble. I've succeeded there, six continents in six years: according to the stamps in my passport,

North America: eight trips to the Caribbean -- three to Grenada/Carriacou, two to St. Martin/St. Barts, twice to Barbados, once to Aruba -- once to Mexico; and three or four trips to Canada, from Vancouver to Toronto to Montreal.

Europe: England and Switzerland mostly, the former for a couple of days each way to visit old haunts en route to Africa, the latter four or five times to see my best friend from grad school.

Africa: South Africa (twice) and Botswana, home of the five-star safari.

Australia: all over the East Coast, visiting a friend from my writer's colony, and all over New Zealand, where my best friend from high school lives. I stayed with them in Denmark, but that was another time, and an earlier passport.

South America: Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

Asia: China, Hong Kong (no visa, separate stamp, despite China's rule), Japan.

Next up, per the airline ticket on my refrigerator, is the Czech Republic, Hungary, and France.

I've been traveling for 30 years, sometimes as a student and others as a five-star Eloise, and I don't think I'll stop making plans any time soon, in part because I'm not sure how later will play out, either in terms of my body or the world-at-large.

I have great and horrific hotel stories, bad and worse air travel ones, and, within the U.S., tales that exemplify why a driver should come with whatever car I rent.

If auto makers really wanted to make their cars safe, they would forget about the you-need-your-oil-changed e-mail and concentrate on making a robotic chauffeur. You tell it your destination, and then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Drivers in New York, California, Florida, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia, North Carolina and places unknown can attest to that. My rent-a-car should come with a cautionary bumper sticker: driver doesn't know where she's going and cannot guarantee simultaneous navigation and maintenance of control of vehicle.

I do try to avoid Hertz and Avis in my travels: if there is a bus, a train, a plane, anywhere to get me to my destination that does not involve my having to merge onto highways, I'm there. It is the least I can contribute as my public service and civil duty to drivers everywhere.

I have changed planes in states I would be afraid to visit: Texas, Utah, Georgia and Colorado come to mind. (I do have friends in various parts of Texas, both in the blogosphere and from pre-computer days.) As airports go, I don't recommend Chicago, either, although I have had fun with friends there. Where white supremacists and old-fashioned bigots live, like Idaho, and the Carolinas (North and South), I would not, in the era of Bush, care to return.

For that matter, when I saw the "Jesus is looking after the New River Valley" billboard near the Appalachian trail in Virginia, I got very nervous. Had I not been to see an ur-WASP friend, I might have turned and run. Yet in all the years I vacationed in Haiti, I was not once afraid. No one was out to lynch me for being nominally Jewish, and a born and bred New Yorker. In small towns in the South? I had less confidence.

Given the malignant state of American "democracy," some dictatorships start looking benign by contrast. My father's long-ago comment echoes: "You don't talk politics in a dictatorship." He died before it came to pass that politics deteriorated to the blue-state, red-state level, and that talking politics could be more provocative here than in Athens, the ancient cradle of democracy.

My family visited Athens when I was a teenager, enamored more of room service than democracy, although in retrospect I am glad I climbed on the Parthenon just before a Plexiglas shell was designed to preserve it.

In our hotel suite were buttons to press to summon a housekeeper, a meal, or the bell man. That, however, was long ago and far away, the year we cruised the Greek islands, with a one-day stop (long enough for my non-kosher family) in Israel.

When I was younger, I was happy to tramp through Europe with one tiny suitcase, overnighters in one country one night and another the next, convinced I could get by with my semi-fluent French, regardless of my location -- Italy, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, even Austria or Germany. Now I most reluctantly wheel my own luggage and make sure I have health insurance and bail money wherever I go, and never spend fewer than three nights in one place.

In the U.S., I am sometimes convinced that Wonderland is a country unto itself, since I fail to comprehend so much of what happens west of the Hudson or anywhere near the Bible belt.

Besides, Wonderland is the asylum into which I was born. As I get older, I will know more and more of the asylum-runners, though I don't expect to be among them.