Putting the U.N. in Fun

Recently I found myself hanging out at the U.N. bar with a bunch of Middle East dignitaries not named Michael.

The U.N. bar is not some hipster haunt in Williamsburg, and no, "middle east dignitaries" is not code for "other suburban moms." I was literally at the United Nations delegate's lounge-- a guest of my girlfriend, Dahlia-- chatting with foreign dignitaries who asked that, were I to write about them, they each be identified as Michael.

Dahlia's been my girlfriend for twenty-five years and working at the U.N. is the culmination of a string of global career moves she's made to keep herself engaged in foreign politics and the plight of the war torn and emotionally mending. For years she's brought me hand woven scarves, hand bound journals and beaded strands of beautiful craftsladyship that have made it all the way from Rowanda, East Timor, Nepal, India, or Hong Kong safely back to me in New Jersey. She travels alone, always has, and has never so much as batted an eye at narrowly evaded military coups, raucous uprisings or surly cab drivers. I've marveled at her unflappable gusto and wanderlust-- which blows mine out of the water-- ever since we met in Paris on a trip to Moscow all those years ago. And now she's in New York City, for another ten months (or ten minutes), until her next opportunity opens up and she flies out the window, leaving yet another sublet to store her bare-bones belongings in some basement in Queens. She's got boxes all over the world filled with the flotsam of sudden moves-- undeveloped film canisters, needless formal wear, letters and trinkets-- awaiting the day when she makes her global rounds to claim them. I love her because besides being ballsy and wearing all the world's hearts on her sleeve, she's funny and laughs at my jokes.

The Delegate's Lounge was located at the end of a massive room the size and scope of a large museum cafe. One wall was compromised entirely of windows-- an interesting safety choice for the U.N.-- and the ceiling was in another stratosphere, which was a good thing, because on the opposite wall hung the most exquisite and enormous rugs I'm ever likely to see.

I was immediately frustrated that I didn't bring my camera.

One rug had an Escher-through-the-looking-glass design that began broad at its edges and pointedly delved into such dizzying minutia that I couldn't help but picture the famous Iranian artisan, crouched on the floor with his forehead pressed against the fibers, a knotted carpet thread in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. The other rug was also a gift, from China, and its topic was the great wall of. It was a breathtaking depiction-- just the sort of misty mountainous vista that I get lost in leafing through expensive glossy coffee table books or watching animated Pixar movies. It was so exquisitely detailed and so ridiculously huge that I felt for a moment that I was perambulating the great wall itself. Completely encompassing my vision, I followed the wall as it snaked and wound between enormous teal green mountains, low lying fog clinging to forgotten blackened trees, until eventually the wall, too, disappeared into it's own distant minutiae.

I'm no rug-hugger, but I was completely awestruck and I asked Dahlia, if this bar was open to the public. Everyone's gotta see this rug, I thought. Goodness, no, was her reply which I should have known as I recalled her having to meet me at a gate about eighty yards from the building where she presented me to a security guard only minutes before. Then Dahlia told me that this summer they'll begin renovating this 1950s vintage monument to Bauhaus Buck Rogers architecture-of-the-future and I felt an immediate concern for the rug. What if it doesn't make the new interior designer's cut? What if they go with flocked wallpaper and a nice arrangement of plates? I’m going to miss the wall-to-wall carpeting, hospital-blue formica and all that curved, blonde wood paneling. Where will they store these rugs and how did they get them into the room in the first place? My concerns gave way to introductions as I was lead to a table under the windows and introduced around.

Five relaxed, attractive, swarthy men in jackets and ties looked up to greet me as Dahlia introduced me around the table counter clockwise. "This is Michael, Mike, Mikey, Mick and Mack," she didn't actually say. Their true names were more colorful to me, but really they were the Tom, Dick and Harrys of the Middle East, or to be more current, the Dave, Steve and Johns of my generation. I found in them no trace of bravado or outward display of chauvinism. They each looked me respectfully in the eye-- something I'll admit I hadn't expected them to do-- and were modest and soft-spoken. I knew I had no business talking to these guys and I was smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to engage them in any variant of meaningful political discourse that they haven't had a zillion times before. There was nothing so tedious to me, in the many months over many years that I spent in Europe, as having to have the same clichéd debate over and over with smug, humorless internationals, most of whom, had never been stateside. So, as they looked to me to inject new life into an hour old cocktail conversation, I threw them a curve ball.

"What kind of games did you play as children growing up?" I asked.
They looked at me and finally, one of them spoke up. Mike, I think it was.
"You mean games with other children?"
"Yes," I said, "Tell me about the games you played with your brothers and sisters and all the kids in the neighborhood where you grew up."
There was a bit of shifting in chairs but it was Mike again who spoke up.
“There was this one game we played where all the kids ran around while one kid chased after them and kicked them in the bottom. If you sat on the ground, you couldn't be kicked, but the moment you stood up to run, you were chased and kicked again.” I thought this sounded like fun. Also like something the Little Rascals would have played. I considered asking them if they wanted to play. There was certainly enough space. We wouldn't even have to push any tables aside. I smiled.
"Sounds hilarious and really fun," I said.
"It was," said Mickey. He was older, a friend of the dignitaries and a doctor now, but remembered playing it as well.
"What else?" I asked.

Michael told me about a game they played on a flat surface with round flat pebbles or thick discs. The object was to knock your opponent's to the corners of the table, (or out of bounds or off the table), by flicking. Each player took turns. I asked them what the flicking looked like. "Show me," I said. Michael leaned forward and moved his beer out of the way, then he held his bent forefinger back with his thumb and flicked it low against the table. I asked Mickey if he had the same flick. No, he said and he showed me his. He held his forefinger back by his index finger and the two fingers stayed straight while they flicked.
"It sounds a bit like pool or billiards," I said.
"Yes, it's very much like this," answered Mack.
"Did you all play this game?" I asked. They had grown up in different parts, mostly cities, of two separate but neighboring countries.
"Oh, yes. Everyone played," said Mick.
"Will you all show me how you flicked?" I asked, "I want to see everyone's flick."

They all sat up and moved their beers aside to show me their own individual flicking positions. Each one differed from the last and every finger was used to a unique effect. I thought about how these men must have learned their particular styles from their older brothers and fathers before them. Or maybe they came up with their own. For a brief instant I pictured these well-respected and well-comported men as excitable five-year old boys, studying the older kids and then racing off to perfect what would one day be their own signature style.

It was then that I heard my girlfriend say something to one of the Michaels about how she could fit six spiders in a matchbox. "What did you just say?" I asked. She grew up in the Philippines, raised, along with the chickens, by nuns. Electricity was available every other day. Easy Bake Ovens and Big Wheels were not.
She said, "If you sectioned off a matchbox you could fit six spiders perfectly in each compartment."
"To keep?" I asked.
"No, to fight," she replied.
"I don't understand."
She explained, "When I was a child we used to catch spiders and keep them in matchboxes. Then we would find a stick and someone would hold it. Then two people would put their spiders on either end of the stick and we would watch them fight until the death."
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
"They would move to the center of the stick and fight each other until one wrapped the other in its web around the stick. That was the winner." I didn't know there was an arachnid version of the cockfight.
"How long did this take?" I asked as I imagined this drama unfolding with the riveting speed of a six-hour cricket match.
"Oh, two minutes or so," was her answer.

Wow. Clearly it is not a small world after all. It's a big, big world and my slice-of-America ala mode upbringing looked nothing like theirs. All those childhood hours I logged making up dance routines to The Carpenters I could have been ass-kicking and spider-fighting. I suppose I can still teach my son these games. Of course I'll have to make him promise not to tell the other mothers where he learned them.

Our round table chat took on the feel of an intimate campfire heart-to-heart and the dimming dusk light softened our faces and defenses. Stories of childhood games turned to the re-telling of cherished lore: epics of romance and the quest for God and love. The men sitting around the table grew from boys to lovelorn teens in my mind and their eyes grew a bit lonely and remote. Years before they would find themselves eating take-out dinners with plastic forks and defying parking signs in New York City, they were gangly teens, at home with their families, craving the kind of unattainable romantic perfection they had only read about in school and whispered about in the dark. It's then that they began their grope for what they perceived as true enlightenment. Half way around the globe, I was doing the same.

The barmaid took one last sweep of our empties and a security guard gave Michael a sideways glance. The room had darkened and I looked up to see that the rugs had lost a bit of their command. Rising from the table we wordlessly shook off whatever intimacy had been garnered over the last few hours. The men walked ahead, their faces out of view and Dahlia and I followed, arm in arm, a few steps behind.

That much I had expected. The rest was a pleasant surprise.

Hair Care

I went in for a haircut today. It’s a cozy, small-town salon with four chairs and a sink. And though the palette and décor is steely blue and cool, there is undeniable warmth to the vibe. The last time this woman-- the owner-- cut my hair, my marriage was on the skids. I’d been losing weight, sleep and marbles. As she draped the cape around my neck with the finesse of a lady matador, she asked me what I wanted in her signature bright and measured tone. I straightened my shoulders, tossed back my hair, and said, “Something that will save my marriage.”
“You mean the number five,” she said.
“Yes, give me the number five,” I said and we shared a tentative laugh. I added, “No pressure,” then took off my glasses and we relaxed into the business at hand. (Needless to say, that haircut did not save my marriage. I did not fault her or the haircut.)

Today I went in for a whole new do-- a different one from a year ago. She did her thing and then asked her question with the same earnest verve as ever.

I smiled impishly. I'd be dropping another bomb today, which some might think not only cruel but in poor taste, but I went for it. I need a chuckle, and if anyone could handle it, she could.
“What can I do for you today?” she chirped.
"Can you give me something that will bring my father back from the dead?”

“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry,” she said and she meant it as she touched her hand to her chest. I followed up quickly by saying, “It’s o.k.!” but I felt a bit bad for using my dad's recent death as material. I was pretty sure he wouldn't mind. He'd think it was funny. Then we laughed and I settled in to tell her my tale and we got down to the business at hand.

The more I talked, the more she listened, and she did that with finesse, too. She combed and cut and talked and listened and I imagined the compartments inside her brain whirring, like a jazz drummer using both hands and feet and smoking a cigarette while he plays. She wove strands of our old conversations into this one effortlessly-- her mind able to retrieve nuggets from my spotty client history without delay. This impressed me even more than the cutting hair/chatting, patting-head-rubbing-tummy thing, since I rarely see her out of the chair and only come in three or four times a year.

The things I've told her in that chair-- on and on as if there were soundproof walls separating me from the dye job next door. But there aren't. There's just hair and air. I don't even have the excuse of flimsy hospital curtains to act as a veil for my delusion of privacy. (And my payments have lapsed on my personal laser shield.) For some reason I'm able to carry on and on as if the other occupants, inches away, are stuffed mannequins, deaf or European. I've never, in my life, been able to recount someone else's conversation in the chair next to mine, so, perhaps they pump something into the air. I'll go with that for now.

My cut wound to and end and my dad did not materialize-- some things not even a haircut can fix. I complimented myself by complimenting my hairdresser then walked out of my haze and into the haze.

I thought about women and discretion, that little-spoken, much-considered notion of generosity.

All my life I've read and heard of a man's character described as great or strong. A man having good moral fiber or keeping his word have been germane to the great American novel and most black and white films since long before cable, but not enough credit is given to hairdressers and bartenders and the woman I've sat next to in waiting rooms. Not enough merit is given to women for discretion, most of whom, after all, are like walking skeleton closets-- reams and reams of personal information, available at the sip of a tea.

Girlfriends are forever coming and going as their distances are assessed and re calibrated. The concentric circles of friendships that ring every woman like so many hula-hoops, reverberate with confidences and data. And the onus is on us to not divulge. There are no meter maids for innuendo. The files of past friendships are thick and bulging with hardship, infidelity and sex. There are biological descriptions and renewed prescriptions and run ins with cops and his ex. Children and parents, husbands and neighbors, there's enough material there for a lifetime. But it's hard to read clearly the expiration date on a friendship. Like so many lines, it's smudged.

There's a powerful seduction at play with most women, to use this fodder to grow closer to another, newer friend. Confidences are currency and the strings that bind us become thicker and more cord-like with each moment two bodies lean in. But women have choices like the men who wear hats in the movies. They can say, "It's not for me to tell," or "You'll have to ask her." "It's in the vault," is a phrase I admire. Then they can lean back and change the subject or get themselves a refill. They can reconsider. They can stop.

It's not easy to do, and I'll admit, I'm no warrior. I've leaned in and recounted thickly veiled yarns mostly by saying, "this woman I used to know," or, "an old girlfriend of mine once," but there are times when I'm weak. There are times when I leak. I've eaten more than my share of dangling carrots.

At the end of the day, trust and discretion are a valuable portion of what amounts to a woman's character-- poorly lauded, perhaps, not as attention grabbing as other brassier traits, maybe, but no less valuable. And when you add a good haircut on top of that-- well, then you've got yourself a woman of fine character and considerable talent. What a find! And all too rare, indeed.

Little Voice

Here's the situation and grim doesn't begin to describe it:

I've just found out that my dad is dying fast and although The Good Doctor has told me that he thinks Dad's got as many as five days to live, I just don't see him lasting much past three. It's Thursday afternoon, and just five days ago, on Saturday, we were all sitting at the dinner table together at my parent's house. Since then he's gone into the hospital, deteriorated, spiraled, and now we're breaking him out of the joint to take him into hospice care at our family's summer home at the Jersey shore. So, to recap: In five days he's gone from a man feeling not quite himself, eating a sandwich at a dinner table, to a man unable to walk, strapped onto a gurney, with the knowledge that he's got a few days to live nestling into his psyche. And my head is about to explode.

It's an hour and a half drive south to the beach and Mom will be riding in the ambulance with Dad. Since we've all descended from different points on the map, everyone-- both sisters, my brother-in-law and me-- will each be taking one of four separate cars. And everyone's left. I'm last to leave.

Now, for reasons too tedious to go into, I'm driving my beat-up, second car-- the station car-- with a near empty gas tank. It's a twenty-year-old manual shift junker that I adore madly, but it's seen better days. There are no airbags because they weren't mandatory back then, and there's no right rear view mirror, because they were optional at the time. Optional! There's no AC or FM radio, no lighter and not a single computer chip to be found. The car is totally off the grid and looks it. There are bumper stickers of varying degrees of irony and a bit of a side swipe-y looking dent over one of the back fenders. It's a work horse of a four speed with manual windows and manual steering that got me back and forth safely across country and through years of parallel parking in Boston, San Francisco and L.A., but, let's face it, it's a glorified golf cart.

And it's out of gas.

Then. For reasons involving the chasing down of nurses, doctors and hospice coordinators in the ICU, and the magazine article Mom read once years ago about hospital theft, my wallet is in my mom's purse. My mom is in the ambulance with my dying dad and the ambulance has left. I have to get my car out of the hospital garage, pay for parking and put gas in the car with no money. And I'm crying pretty hard. Nope, scratch that. I'm probably crying harder than I ever have in my life. This is a pre-verbal cry of such depth and anguish, that I don't feel exactly human. We've held it together for five, long, dizzying days, and now, with no more information to leech out of anyone, no patient to advocate on behalf of, and no loved ones to hold it together for, I've lost it.

I'm rolling down the window to tell the nice shift worker in the little garage tollbooth that I have no money to pay the seven bucks for the garage. She manages to decipher what she can from the hysterical gasps and sobs coming from the crazy, sallow-eyed lady in the little, blue shit-heap and waves me through saying, "Drive carefully."

Now that I've cleared that hurtle, there's the problem of gas. I'm thinking, thinking. Every one's left. I guess I could have gone back into the hospital and ask one of the nurses for ten bucks, but I didn't think of that at the time. I considered driving directly to a gas station and asking the pleasant, swarthy, foreign man who seems to manage every gas station in New Jersey now, if he'd give me some free gas. Honestly, he might not give two hoots. I just couldn't be sure how the sympathy card might be received across cultural boundaries or how much fudge factor a small business owner has to play with at the pump. On this day of all days, I couldn't chance it.

I know, I thought, I'll ask some stranger for money. Over the years I'd handed cash to strangers. Maybe some one would hand some to me.

There was the midwestern looking mom and her teenage daughter who I noticed crying to a cop in Times Square once. I walked up to the mom, asked if I could help, handed her forty bucks, and smiled and walked away. There were the three other people I shared an uptown cab with the day of the black out. They were low on dough and I'd just been to the ATM so I handed them each twenty bucks, just in case. In seventeen years of living in New York City I'd lost my wallet three times and each time it was returned to me with everything in it. I felt I'd seen the magic of money karma at work in my midst and that there must be some errant pixie dust floating around somewhere, perhaps in my glove compartment. So I looked around.

A man in a dark suit was about to cross just in front of me. Bingo! I thought. If this guy is in a suit, there's a good chance he's employed. He looked like a pharmaceutical rep; mid- forties, maybe not the countenance of a super benevolent guy, but not the look of a total jerk, either. I wiped my pink, puffy eyes, tucked my greasy hair behind my ears, brought my sobs down a notch and craned my head out the window.

"Excuse me, Sir," I said, "you look like you have money."

My god. Can you imagine? I could have said, "I hate to trouble you, Sir," but no. I said, "You look like you have money," like he's from an old, New England family. Like some pick up line from the Great Gatsby. And if you've forgotten what kind of shape I'm in or what kind of car I'm driving, re-read the above. I'm a blithering mess. But I have gotten his attention. He walks towards me with a slightly pained look on his face-- the kind of face I make when someone asks me if I have a moment to take a brief survey.

I stammer. "I'm s-so sorry to ask, Sir, b-but my muh-om's in the am-bu-lance with my f-father and she's g-got my wah-hallet and I'm-m out of gas and, he's d-dying, and I'm-m s'posed to f-follow and could I puh-please have t-ten dollars?"

He glances down at my ridiculous car and my wet cheeks and bleary eyes and his furrowing eyebrows say to me, Really, lady? I don't have time for this. Are you serious? Can this really be what they're teaching in Small Con School these days? But he's reaching for his wallet-- albeit slowly and with a look of achy, quasi-resolve-- so I continue.

"I just nee-ed enough to g-get me an hour and a half-f down the parkw-way. Ten dollars sh-should be enough."

He hands me a five.

I nearly laughed. 'Th-thank you s-so much," I said, "thank you, Sir, th-thank you." He gestured meagerly and I drove off. And I gotta tell ya, it cracked me up. It actually made me smile. For a brief moment in an otherwise dark, forbidding stretch of time, I had to laugh at the guy who thought, Yeah, what the hell, I'll give this dame some money, but I'm sure as hell not giving her ten bucks. She'll take five and like it. Jeeze, I gotta be crazy. Women, today. Criminy.

So I drove to the station and put gas in my car and made it all the way down to the shore where I joined my family in helping my father die; which he did, incidentally, a day and a half later. And I couldn't have done it without that surly guy, in the navy blue suit, who didn't really want to help me, but did anyway. He'll always be part of the motley cast of characters that made that incredible week even more surreal that I ever could have imagined. And the next time I'm at a dive bar I'll order a cold Pabst in a can and toast to the little voice inside that man that kicked his ass into leaving the trajectory of his morning, to walk over to a shit-heap of a car, where he took one look, pried open his wallet, and spotted some hysterical broad a fin.