New Year's Dresses, Taye Diggs, Dan's Yellow Sweater

Yesterday at Macy's, hoping to hand-pick some miraculous item that would soothe away all the bad ju-ju of returning to work, I quickly became lost amidst a sequined vortex. Bright party dresses, all marked down for the end-of-the-holiday clearance sale. One shouldered purples; strappy beiges; shimmering black satins-- all articulating, somehow, the night I didn't have, the night I don't think I ever had.

It's not as depressing as it sounds. I had a very pleasant New Year's, actually-- but those fabulous dresses always stir a little response in me.

It starts with this question. Who really dresses up for New Year's? My parents did, I think, a few times in the 80's. They would go to the Elks Lodge and see party bands play. My mother was so glamorous in her patent leather shoes with the ankle strap and her careful, plummy lipstick. My dad's red striped tie made a semiannual appearance, tucked away after midnight, ready for the next funeral or wedding.

Those nights out probably weren't as elegant as they seem to be in my imagination. A firehall, balloons. But still, a chance to wear something fancy. I have to ask them if those nights were fun. I bet they were. Even now, New Year's seems to be a big thing for my parents and their circle. Always a party, a cheeseball, tipsy dancing on the rug to Sam Cooke. Always that phone call just after midnight, "Alisa, it's so crazy here!!! Say hi to Aunt Joycie and Uncle Tommy!! Oh, I can barely hear you!!"

When I was a kid I daydreamed about kissing some wonderful stranger at midnight: a man in a tuxedo pulling me close. The dress of my adolescent fantasy was purple with a big sash and puffy skirt, similar to the style popular with girls going to bat mitzvahs...the dress I never actually owned, of course.

Because I never had a place to wear it to!

Now flash forward, say, twenty years and one day to that clearance rack. Where would I wear that sheath-y, champagne colored little flapper dress? Jazz club, in the city. No subway. Taxi there and back. Do I have my husband in this alternate timeline? Sure. He's guiding the small of my back through the crowd. We have a little velvet booth in the back, away from the music, so we can talk.

I think in this little alternate reality we are also good friends with Taye Diggs* (as seen in the movie Chicago). He's at our table and flirts with me until Dan gets the hint. My husband and I hit the dance floor, art-deco lighting softening every line.

The one-shouldered purple dress. Sorry, Dan-- that dress is for a sassy single girl. I don't think you can exist in this imaginary timeline. Maybe I meet you the next day?** That dress and me are going to the Tunnel with a gaggle of riotous girlfriends. We will cram into the ladies room and apply lip gloss and use face powder and complain all night about how awful the guys are at the club, how there's no potential good guys out there, how the drinks cost too much. In this timeline I get to kiss someone at midnight and will probably talk about it a little too much the next day and thereafter. The memory will dim a little each year and become grossly exaggerated and falsified so by the year 2067 everyone "remembers" the night I smooched James Franco.***

In my real life, I met my husband the day after New Year's Day. I wore my hair in cornrows**** and I do believe, if Dan had seen my get up for New Year's that year, he would have run for the hills (red satin halter top, mini skirt. and no, I wasn't especially thin in 2003 if you were curious. but I was looking pretty delicious if I say so myself). Who knew that was my future husband staring down the limp rope of an ill advised cornrow? One beer and a plateful of soul food later, though...it's the start of a life. And I'm so glad I didn't write Dan off because of his yellow sweater, which I found unusually bright*****.

After all, clothes don't really mean anything.

*Hey, it's my fantasy.
**I actually did meet you the next day in real life so stop complaining.
***It could have happened I tell you! I know someone who went to NYU film school who had a class with a guy who met him when he did "Freaks and Geeks".
****I sense you're judging me.
*****but aw, he was so nice. and cute.

New Year's Resolutions 2012

1. Send in the paperwork to FINALLY adopt my Cabbage Patch Kid. I've spent twenty-seven years with Luna Nadine and I'm really to make it official, honey! No one is going to take her away from me!
2. Calculate my Weight Watchers points at the beginning of the day rather than at bedtime as to prevent sobbing to Dan that I ate 42 points worth of jellybeans three times in one week.
3. Spend a week alone in Nantucket collecting shells and staring ponderously at the ocean in a carefully chosen pair of J.Jill clamdiggers and a white, flowing sweatercoat. Kinda like the lady in a herpes medication ad.
4. Repeat number four with Dan in Ocean City or Long Beach Island. Substitute ocean pondering for drinking and J.Jill outfit for playful, flippy sundress.
5. Work out kinks in novel manuscript. Can a one-armed popcorn stand owner REALLY stand up to the mafia?
6. Update my Amazon wishlist so my recommendations don't make me look so nerdy: "Hey Alisa, we recommend the box set of Star Trek the Original Series as well this coffee table book about Bigfoot Legends!". Also, flaunt my Federation mug and be proud of all that I've learned from Jean-Luc.
7. Where the f*** is the Mary Celeste, missing ship of the 19th century Azores? Get scuba certification. Learn to swim. Get over fear of sharks. Find her. Find her.
8. Who is the one person in Germany reading this blog? Can you email me?

There's a Girl Crying on This Train

There’s a girl next to me on this train: she drops tears like the beads of a cheap necklace.
He’s not coming, she breathes to me, a sympathetic stranger. She clamps her phone closed and cries. Not coming. Not coming. The refrain is a closing valve, signaling the soon-shutdown of her whole being and her eyes ask, what should I do? What do I know? What can I tell her? She’s about nineteen in a hopeful white scarf and navy peacoat. There’s a man my father’s age sitting across us doing Sudoku. He shifts his eyes to us for the length of a breath. He comes up for air like a slow moving whale, shakes his head a little. He dives back down into his nonsense puzzle.

Here’s what I know, girl on the train, sobbing over some creep in Brick Church or South Orange who isn’t meeting you. Here’s what I know, old man across the leather seat who should say something to help her, to help me. Inside every man lives another man. Antechamber to antechamber we run, hopeless to find the center. Men: brick walls I’ve scaled all my life. Crawling over you, sliding down you. Once I fell off a roof, a stupid girl in the razor-cold snow, just to prove to them I was interesting and brave.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve cried that hard, I tell the crying girl, reassuring her that you can only hurt like that over love a few times in your life.

And then we started laughing, because the man across the seats from us had fallen asleep, and his mouth rolled open, like he was dreaming about his first kiss.

Diving Test: Holmdel Pool Club

In the mid to late 1980's, clearly unimpressed by my high pitched wailing, my parents firmly insisted I take swimming lessons. Again. "Stop it with the damn books already, you've read enough," my mom shouted, becoming the first and only mother in American history to pry a novel from her kid's hands. "You're soft and white and floppy. You are going to drown one day and all the moms on our street will blame me. I won't have it. Put on your bathing suit and get in the damn car!"

I know my mom's anxiety about me drowning is a deep-seeded neurosis planted by her friend Elaine. Years ago my parents had plans to dig a pool. When the nice man came to measure our yard for what would surely be the key to my life-long popularity, the women of Union Street emerged like superstitious villagers of medieval times. "Never, ever, ever, would I put in a pool with two young kids," they all said, shaking their heads with disbelief, as if my parents were installing a basement dungeon equipped with studded maces and a live Civil War cannon. "They could drown, Maria. Do you want that on your conscience?"

It became a thing after that. It was like if my mom went ahead with the pool plan, the whole neighborhood would think she was a bad mother. She was also growing increasingly concerned about the reckless antics of my daredevil brother Billy, who was fond of holding me captive underwater at Sandy Hook. Rather than reprimanding this bad behavior, it seemed more practical to have her daughter formerly learn to swim.

So we joined the Strathmore Pool Club, and later, moved on up Jefferson-style to Holmdel Pool Club, a slightly swankier pool facility with 25% less soggy french fries in the lap pool.

Unfailingly, Mom enrolled me every year in swimming lessons at the start of every summer season. It became embarrassingly obvious by fifth grade, and my thus fifth round of swimming lessons, that I would never progress with my age group. I was doomed to chill with the Guppies while my friends swam upstream to Trout and Shark.

These designations-- Guppie, Trout, Shark-- and the various levels in between pretty much worked like karate belts. Each kid "graduated" a level every summer, keeping with their cohorts, usually kids they knew from school or from day camp, where their gleeful mothers dropped them off to do six hours of forced crafting in the open sun. (Oh yes, it was good times.)

I was mortified on many levels during those lessons. First, they occurred at seven in the morning, when the temperature outside was a crisp sixty degrees (and sometimes windy) and the pool was a terrifying ice bath. I hugged my bathing suit, gasping with cold, dreading the moment when the teacher, fresh off a night's worth of prescription pill abuse over at Kean University's summer housing dorm, made us jump in. Every summer started with the placement swim test and ended with the diving test.

It was dreadful, and I was so powerless: I knew if I didn't pass that dive test, I wouldn't advance out of Guppy. And by my third time around, it became apparent they weren't going to socially promote me. This was the eighties. I was going to be sacrificed up to the work ethic god. Ronald Reagan with his weekend ranch hobby would approve. This little girl is going to swim. And not only that. She's gonna have to DIVE. It's so American.

I stood one morning in August on the edge of the board. The kids gathered around in encouragement. Most of them were at least three years younger than me, compounding my sense of doom and pressure. One kid had missing fingers on one hand but that clearly didn't stop him from having the strongest breast stroke in the class. That kid is probably a world class surfer right now, and there's me, softly crying on the diving board, worrying about getting water up my nose. Worrying I might hit my head on the bottom.

"You can do it!" barked the instructor. Oh, what was his name? Scott. So handsome towering above me in the morning pinks and whites of another New Jersey summer morning. Once I had a bloody nose and he escorted me to first aid to get an ice pack. It killed fifteen minutes of pool time. And I, although around ten years old, was old enough to innocently enjoy the attention of his brown eyes and the wingspan of his tan, long arms. (Where are you now? Sporty lifeguard pool teacher of Holmdel Swim Club? You're probably 45 now. Did you know I faked that bloody nose by scratching at it deliberately? Why couldn't I tell you that I didn't want to do the dive, and that all he had to do was check it off his stupid clipboard, and pass me along to Trout? I already felt like a little freak, with my bunny teeth and noseplugs. But at that age, you fear authority, as fragile and absurd as his authority was, it kept me adequately anxious about that diving test all of July. For years!)

I tipped my head down and leaned forward. It's so easy, the free-fall part; I've seen it done a million times; my own father, in his younger years, could fold beautifully like a jacknife into the Atlantic and come up to the surface in one unbroken line.

All eyes on me, and I held my breath.

I did what I always did: flail downwards, like a diving bird, grabbing my nose at that last precious moment, half-diving. Half-not diving.

"Aww, she didn't do it," lamented my classmates, hopping on alternate feet, shaking the water out of their ears.

"I don't care. I hate diving. I hate swimming," I said nonchalantly, heaving myself up the ladder and hiding inside my yellow towel. I scanned the snack bar ahead for my mother's signature sun hat.

Honestly, I wasn't permanently traumatized. I had come to terms with my small failure by age eleven or so; my interests were in writing stories, lazying around those strappy lounge chairs with a Babysitter's Club book, or playing kickball with my friends. Swim lessons were a small price for the epic days of summer, where each day sometimes was its own self-contained adventure.

But there's a space inside of me. Not a void. Not a longing. Just a small gap. Picture a kid standing on a rock over water. She needs to leap widely to get to the next stone. She's seen her friends do it, so she knows it can be done. She wants to do it because she wants to cross. She wants to do it because everyone is watching. She needs faith in her feet to not slip, even though the distance isn't really that great. It's as small as the gap between a dive and a fall.

Mechanics

The most powerful and enigmatic man in my life this time of year, it seems, is actually not just Jesus (sorry, Mom). It's the guy who fixes my car. Last year my car needed major work just before the week long vacation and just after I spent probably four hundred dollars on Christmas presents. The car did this on purpose.

Keith is my mechanic. Last night he kindly informed me that my car not only has a deflated tire, it has three deflated, floppy tires and one snarky, dying tire in the rear that "doesn't have much time left". He wanted to know "if I've been off-roading". The entire car is sagging for want of tire. And the muffler, he helpfully showed me, is dragging on the road, creating sparks. And danger. Ugh. Big bucks.

"Oh no, Keith. How much?" I asked, standing awkwardly under the dripping oil of my inconsiderate car. The men were all around me in their manly-car-world, blasting music and shouting at each other. Pictures of their kids taken in 1986 are plastered everywhere, as well as wise ass signage such as "5 cents for whining" and "my ex wife got the Rolls." There are old school dirty (literally and figuratively) pictures tucked away from my eyes in that back room, I know it. Everything seems like an engine: whirring and churning. I always feel so stupid in the auto shop, like a wrongly dressed rube, bait for the con. But actually the men at my garage are very nice.

"Do you play chess?" asked Keith, carefully filling out the estimate form. He has huge, cracked hands covered in oil and the pen sometimes slips from his fingers. My father has hands like this: dry; when the first wind of November blows, he'll wince and put on bag balm to no avail. My own hands are the same. Pink and lined and dry. Baby gorilla hands.

"Why? Do you want to play me in chess? If I win, do I get free car repair?" I replied, trying to be cute, fishing for that discount. Am I too old to play this role?

"No. I teach it at the adult school. You should come play. It's right by your house at the elementary school."

Hmm. My mechanic the chess player. I guess in such informal surroundings I didn't see this in him. But it makes perfect sense. He's deliberate, considers everything he says before he says it.

"I'll teach you," he said after informing me that my car needs almost nine hundred dollars worth of work. "Nothing like chess."

He gave me a lift home and told me about Christmas at his house in West Orange. He and his wife set an extra two or three places for anyone who wants to come in and eat, anyone who needs a meal.

"Aren't you afraid of that? I would be afraid," I said almost automatically.

"My door is always open. I'm not worried about anything," he said.

I was humbled by this. I was especially touched when he called me this morning to tell me that in the spirit of the holidays, he wouldn't charge me labor on part of the job, saving me a nice amount of money. "For a nice schoolteacher," he said into the phone, and I could hear the men in the background chuckling.

I guess I'm going to take a chess lesson...

Bridge and Tunnel Girls

Last night I watched a flock of girls in comically tiny, cheap black dresses push their way like queens into a New York City cab in front of Penn Station. "Webster Hall," said one girl loudly. I could tell by the way she said it, by her shiny stockings, by everything, that she'd never been there before.

I took the escalator down to make the 1:24 Dover train home, thinking about how their night is just beginning and mine winding down. It was freezing and I was exhausted. A part of me, though, wanted to dive into that cab with them. My husband, maybe reading my mind, smiled and shook his head. I wanted to talk about those long nights I'd had in my early twenties, how those girls were just like me, dressed all wrong for the weather, their insecurity and vulnerability so pronounced, it was like I saw them naked.

For a very short stretch of time, I too used to plan Saturday nights around Hoboken and Manhattan. "Where are we going this weekend?" I asked my new best friend-of-the-month, Louisa, who lived in Brooklyn with her noisy parents and a mysterious upstairs kitchen we weren't allowed to walk through (old school Italian).

"Tunnel," she'd utter. We'd slip our feet into awful, heavy black shoes. I'd dip my hand into a jar of Aqua Gel and carefully arrange hundreds of spiral curls and blow dry it carefully. We'd select our strappy halter tops and debate over wearing a coat.

Louisa would need to be lectured: if you meet someone at the club, I'd say, please don't leave me alone too long. I'd be pressed up against a wall, the music grinding me down like a tooth, but life pumping through me with all its romantic, dramatic promises. I was terrified of the men, all those handsome, aggressive Israelis, those silent, angry Russians, the playful dance gods otherwise known as Filipinos. (Somewhere right now a guy in Brighton Beach is blogging about standoffish, uppity girls like me in those clubs, scrunched up against the wall and coldly avoiding everyone's eye. You never really know. He could have been a wonderful guy. But in those settings, anyone could be a serial killer. Everyone in the flesh parade. Everyone vaguely terrified until stone-cold drunk).

Louisa was replaced by a few other casual girlfriends. In and out of the city, racing in my stupid shoes to make the 2 am Bayhead train. NJ transit like a circus. My make up smeared on my face with sweat and dance club fog machine grit. My nose a perfect 90 degree angle reflected in the train window. So many anxieties on those rides home. I gave out my number, will he call? Am I too drunk to drive my car home from the station? Will I ever meet someone? It seems like I fretted away my life on those train rides.

We went into the city yesterday for my friend's birthday. I wore flat boots and a warm coat. My husband drove us to the station and we soberly took a taxi from the restaurant. On the train he held my fingers and he let me kiss him when the lights flickered. There were squawky, drunk people everywhere going home. But for the girls piling in the cab, the night stretches open. The necessary abyss.

We have to humor those girls, those flocks of NJ transit girls, running for that last train. Wincing on the sidewalk with their bad shoes and sometimes crying. Sometimes laughing too loud and looking at me like I came from some distant planet, not knowing I'm just like them, just two or three stops ahead on the same line.

There is No Dana, Only Zool. And Other Single Woman Dangers of the '80's.

When I was kid, I was utterly captivated by Sigourney Weaver's character in Ghostbusters: the tall, sassy single cellist living in an amazing apartment in Central Park West. There's this classic scene where she's carrying groceries up the elevator (a perfect brown bag with overlapping leafy greens and a bouquet of flowers in hand) and she spreads her stuff out on the kitchen counter one by one. I always thought this was so awesome. I wanted to be like her. When I fantasized about being a grown up, the image of that grocery bag in my hand was always present after that. (There are similar such props in movies including Romancing the Stone, another sassy single girl adventure story with a dark subtext about being single and independent: you will somehow almost end up in an alligator pit, so watch out.)

Of course, when Dana's back is turned, the eggs starts to sizzle and fry right there on the counter, the first sign of supernatural occupation. Later, Dana herself becomes supernaturally occupied, temporarily the "Gatekeeper' for some ancient Babylonian demon uprising (or something). Again, the single girl: always in peril. I might argue what happens to Dana is sort of a safe depiction of rape, but I don't feel like exploring that angle. I'm fascinated by Dana's overall character trajectory: independent woman/paranormal sexcat/fuzzy headed victim.

The most enchanting part for ten-year-old me is when Dana is getting ready for a date with smart-alecky, but charming, Bill Murray. She's on the phone with her mother, haphazardly pulling off her winter scarf as she talks. She tugs off her jeans, revealing tights underneath. She is telling her mom, "He's a Ghostbuster…(waits a beat.) Those guys on TV." She seems a bit annoyed by her mom. I remember thinking to myself several things: WOW. Tights under jeans??! How cool is that!??? And I was more than anxious for Dana: the subtle staging of the whole scene is a bit ominous. As soon as Dana gets off the phone and closes her eyes briefly, the armchair she's nestled in suddenly starts erupting into a full-on monster dog, dragging her screaming into hell. I can remember yelling at the TV screen on her behalf.

It's hard to be a single girl in the city. Long before Carrie Bradshaw shoe-shopped her way through bad puns, there were girls like Dana, and Dana's sexually aggressive alter-ego, Zool. And the message to me then was this: better off staying in the suburbs. Better off with a husband.

Could these heroines have affected my whole generation? Did Hollywood perpetuate this anti-single-girl agenda deliberately? Or was it just a mirror of the 1980's, where rising divorce rates and women in the workplace became more of visible threat to some oppressive other agenda?

At the end of the movie, Dana is covered in Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man debris/goo and kissing Bill Murray, her rescuer, with wild abandon. I wish I could have told her, there's a sequel coming. Better ask him to move in.