Reading Henry Miller on the Subway

At 7pm, I exit the main branch of the New York Public Library, having spent all day inside a palatial reading room. I’m not complaining by any means, because I love staring at the ornate gold mouldings and rows upon rows of ancient wooden desks, but my feet were near frozen. I must remember to wear a closed shoe of some variety when I go there again because sandals that leave my feet mostly naked are not really an option.

I walk down the beautiful white stairs, holding on to the gold railing. I’m wearing a red dress, almost like Audrey Hepburn in that scene from Funny Face, if Audrey Hepburn were carrying a bagful of writing materials and wondering where the hell her cell phone is.

Outside, the air has the slight chill and stronger wind of early fall. It is already dark and if there were any traces of summer left they’re now gone. In true Elyssa fashion, however, I am still dressed for summer and the fall breeze rushes right through me. By the time I arrive in Grand Central Station, I am cold enough to buy a Café au Lait from Financier, which turns out to be a good choice because they give free, tiny pastries with each purchase. Scores of people rush past me, men in their late 30s and early 40s looking to catch the MetroNorth back to their suburban lives. My plans, thankfully, are different.

I am headed where I always go when I am by myself and have no plans in particular: The Strand. On the corner of 12th Street and Broadway, just off of Union Square, The Strand occupies four floors packed top to bottom, inside and out, with books, books, more books, and miscellaneous things book readers love, like Moleskines, calendars, and a variety of tote bags emblazoned with The Strand logo. The store is said to have in its clutches over 18 miles of used and new books, which is longer than the length of Manhattan. I always feel at home when I go there, running my fingers over the colorful paperbacks, reading the summaries in hopes of finding the next book that I will call my own and hold close to my heart as I walk through the city looking for a place to sit and read.

Today I found myself hovering in Fiction, a pleasant surprise since I am often drawn to other areas, like Sociology, Photography, New York History, Creative Non-Fiction, Journalism and, of late, Food Writing. I have to be in the right mood for Fiction, mostly because I have always preferred the truth to the imaginary. Staring up and up and up at the bookshelves, around each corner and into each crevice where books are stacked, I’m thinking a modern classic tonight, but I don’t really know where to begin. I contemplate Nabokov, Updike, Janowitz, and others before I spot Tropic of Cancer. The novel by Henry Miller I remember is advertised in the front window in a celebration of Banned Book Week (I will find out later that upon publication, Tropic of Cancer was banned in all English-speaking countries. I think this is pretty badass.) Deciding I could go for a bit of salacity and dry wit from the 1930s, I pick up the book and, involuntarily, hold it close to my heart. Miller and I have already begun our love affair, and I am eager to jump into bed with him later. I realize a smile crossing my face and remember just how long it’s been since I bought a new book—my income is not as disposable as it once was, so I am only the utmost selective when purchasing a book. Sometimes too selective. I think it has been almost six months. Nevertheless, I am glad to have chosen Miller to end the dry spell, in what is perhaps a perfect exercise in irony.

I tell the cashier no thanks, I don’t want a bag for my book and I walk out happily holding it in my hand. I am excited when I remember I will have time to start the book on the train, as it will take about 15-20 minutes to get to my stop. I enter the station, and sit and wait for my train. Another gift of reading time! The subway station is loud and clatters and clangs with the noise of incoming and outgoing trains and passengers, but funnily enough it is a perfect place to read. Once my eyes start taking in the words, external sounds fade to nothing and I am lost in a sea of quiet punctuated only by the words in the novel. Is this what being a New Yorker feels like?

A blond man to my left with a bag of Whole Foods groceries at his feet asks if I’m enjoying the book. I smile and say I’ve just purchased it, but I hope so! He is visiting for three weeks from New Zealand, he says, so he has a lot of time to read. I smile again and turn back to my book. I could have easily kept talking to this attractive man and perhaps we would have started a grand love affair, but I am not interested, especially since the far more interesting Miller is in my lap at the moment. Just call me Belle (start video at 1:02).

Eventually the man departs and offers his goodbyes, and my own train shows up. I get on and open the book again, wanting to ingest as much of the book as I can (I sometimes find it difficult to read elsewhere because I always think I should be doing something else). But I quickly realize I really am a funny girl with her head stuck in a book—I have gotten on a train going in the wrong direction, which I have not done since I moved to New York. This Miller chap has quite a spell over me it seems. Ah, well! More time to read on the train home.

Buttery, Flaky Deliciousness

You wouldn’t think there’s a place called Sunnyside in a city that had three blizzards last winter, but strangely enough there is. It’s a neighborhood tucked away in Queens, right off the 7 train, that I had the pleasure of visiting when writing a story about it for a magazine recently. My assignment was to walk around the neighborhood and find cool things to do, places to eat, things to see. It turns out Sunnyside is a cultural fondue pot, with vendors and restaurants from places all over the world—everywhere  from Nepal and Russia to China and Colombia. 

Though it didn’t make it into the article, my favorite place was Nita’s European Bakery, a Romanian bakery in a little space snuggled right next to Greenpoint Avenue under a yellow vinyl sign for about 30 years. I absolutely loved its warmth. Two little tables sat to the slight left of the doorway, display cases filled with cookies, cakes, and pastries savory and sweet forming an L shape. Romanian crooners’ CDs were sold behind the counter, along with coffee, iced or hot, for $1.50-$2.25. Jugs of candy lined the edges of the cases. Signs in Romanian written in swirling, red cursive hung on the wall. In the back, the owner apologized for not being able to answer my questions right away because she was in the middle of making a meringue.

So often in Manhattan, or anywhere if you really think about it, you’ve got bored teenagers with lip piercings they’ll one day regret shoving your cupcakes into a paper box, smudging the frosting all over the inside, not even caring about where the sprinkles end up. The attendants at Nita’s, however, were just so kind. Yes, they knew I was there for a magazine, but I’ve had people respond not-so-nicely even upon hearing that. They offered me buttery, flaky pateuri—like a puff pastry, almost—stuffed with beef (or cheese, if you so desire), that melted in my mouth. 

 

They helpfully explained all of the different Romanian pastries (it’s a Romanian bakery), like savarina (vanilla cake with orange syrup), amandina (chocolate cake with rum syrup, chocolate crème and chocolate icing), and mascota (chocolate ganache, dried fruit, lime, lemon, orange peel and dark chocolate). Each of the delicious-sounding treats, which were really quite large, clocked in at only $2.25 each. I couldn’t believe it—the mere sight of such delicacies in Manhattan costs $5 at least! But the bakery was inexpensive AND delicious (MASSIVE sugar cookies for only 75 cents!), though it is cash only.

“Here, have a Linzer tart!” the girls behind the counter smiled. Having already had my fill of pateuri, I laughed and declined, but they happily persisted. “No, it’s fine! You have that one savory, and this one sweet! You take it home and eat it later.” Okay, I said finally. Who was I to decline a Linzer tart that was half the size of my face? I thanked the girls profusely, and we all smiled. I just felt so welcomed into their store, even as a complete stranger. I think that they would treat anyone so kindly who came in there, however.

I know I am not wrong when an elderly woman sitting at one of the tables pipes up. Her name is Mary, and she was born and raised in Sunnyside. She has been coming to Nita’s for a very long time, she says. “She’s one of our best customers!” one of the girls smiles behind the counter. Nobody goes back someplace repeatedly if they’re not treated well, no matter how buttery, flaky and delicious the pastries may be. This makes me happy, and I’m glad that even when the reporter leaves the customers will still be treated kindly. Their delightful nature actually kept me in good spirits the whole day. There are few times I have felt so instantly welcomed upon entering a place, in New York or anywhere for that matter. 

Not one for sweets usually, I didn’t actually get around to eating my Linzer tart until about a week later. I was expecting it to have gone stale and crumbly, but no such thing happened. The cookie was fluffy, if that’s possible, and the powdered sugar stuck deliciously to my lips as I sunk my teeth in. The raspberry jelly was fruity and not too sugary, and with the fluffy cookie it was surreal. For your fill of Romanian and non-Romanian deliciousness, check out Nita’s European Bakery, at 40-10 Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside, Queens (718.784.4047). I decided this is the kind of stuff they serve in Heaven, if such a place does actually exist.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Taking Neil Simon as my inspiration, I decided my next big adventure would be to Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. Brighton Beach is Coney Island’s Russian exchange student roommate. Though it’s right next door to Coney Island (you can actually see the Wonder Wheel from the Brighton Beach boardwalk), Brighton Beach parties with the other Russian exchange students, accounting for its nickname, Little Odessa. European Jews were some of the first people to settle in Brighton Beach, but eventually these families made their way out of the area by the 1970s and 1980s. Then, a new wave of Russian immigrants entered the area and grew it into the bustling ethnic neighborhood it is today. I had never been to Russia, but I figured a visit to Brighton Beach was a good substitute for the time being.

GD, J, and I head to the shore in J’s car (a supreme luxury in itself since getting to Brighton Beach by train normally takes an hour and a half at least). Pulling up to Brighton Beach Avenue, there are grocery stores, cafes, and bars as usual, but all the signs are written in Russian first, with English underneath. It is all I had hoped for and more. “It’s like we’re back in the old country!” I exclaim to GD and J who, like myself, are of Eastern European descent. They roll their eyes and laugh.

Brighton Beach Boardwalk

After finding a parking space, the next order of business is food. I learned earlier that there are two primary competing Russian restaurants on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk, Volna and Tatiana. We decide on Tatiana. I wonder if anti-Tatiana people will start shouting at us and throwing things, but it must be a more friendly competition than advertised because nothing happens.

When we sit down, we hear the pitter patter and slur of Russian around us, which turns into broken English from our waitress as we order foods we can neither identify nor pronounce. GD and J order cheese vareniki, which turns out to be tortellini-like dumplings dusted with sugar and served with sour cream. I go for the borscht because, even as a person of Eastern European descent, I have never tried the stuff. They’re out of cold, though, so I order hot. It also comes with a side of sour cream. It’s salty and magenta-colored, with onions and celery floating about in it (they eventually sink to the bottom and hug the bowl as I devour the broth), but the salt is lessened by the freshness of the sour cream. J makes a joke about Russian rappers and hot beets.

We then make our way to the beach which, for Labor Day, is surprisingly empty. Along the boardwalk, elderly women wear burgundy velour track suits and have their hair backlit into blonde cotton candy. An elderly man snoozes on a bench wearing only a Speedo. More Russian whirls past our ears and, if it were not for Coney Island in the not-too-distant horizon, I’d think we were in another country. Even so, I’m glad the beach is empty—in my mind, that means there will be less garbage on the beach and less old men leering at me.

GD on the beach

I am right on the first count. The beach is clean, for the most part, but the sand is embedded with tiny broken pieces of glass that are on their way to turning back into sand. An old man sits on a towel close by and stares as we sit and play in the water. Can’t win ‘em all.

The waves are cold, but not too cold to play in. In the wake of Hurricane Irene, they come up to my waist which, granted, isn’t that high, but it’s bigger than you’ll get in South Florida. On the beach, a youngish mother yells at her son, Yakov, in Hebrew.

Innumerable varieties of beet products

We walk to Brighton Beach Avenue and head up and down the street, the neighborhood’s main drag. Pharmacies, supermarkets, butchers, fur vaults are all in Russian. We go into Food Heaven, which has a variety of prepared side dishes involving beets, as well as a fine selection of Russian candies and sodas.
“What’s this one?” GD asks me.
“I have no idea,” I say. “Why don’t you try it?”

Russian candy and soda

GD’s candy looks like a truffle on the outside but tastes like a strawberry marshmallow on the inside. I get one that looks like a piece of chocolate covered tofu, and kind of tastes like one, too. I also get a soda that’s bright green and has the licorice-y taste of anise. I guess you can carbonate anything if you try hard enough. We sit and watch Russian soap operas in the store as we finish our treats.

GD with Russian Harry Potter

Next up is a large Russian bookstore. We find a well-developed children’s literature section featuring Harry Potter in Russian. Throughout the rest of the store, there are also crossword puzzles with naked women on them, matryoshka dolls, CCCP t-shirts and Russian versions of magazines like Elle, Shape, and Cosmopolitan. You know, the essentials.

Last is a visit to the large local grocery store, which has cole slaw by the heaping helping in a buffet-style serving area. And the most beautiful strudels I have ever seen (rather, I did not think a strudel could be so beautiful) just hanging out in the open air. I think it’s funny how the culture of a country translates into its food markets. You don’t want? Don’t buy. We do not change for you. Take or leave. I wish I could say the same so easily for myself.

Finding our way back to the car, we head home, the ocean turning to river on our left, sun setting behind grey clouds. As we drive, I resolve to be more like that strudel. 

Come On, Irene

I should have trusted my instincts, which said unequivocally, it won't be that bad. Being from South Florida, I had slept through worse hurricanes than what was supposed to hit New York in the form of Miss Irene on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It’s true—I’d managed to live through Hurricanes Andrew, Wilma, and even Katrina sleeping peacefully. Yes, we lost power; yes, we packed up all our patio furniture and put it in the garage; yes, we were sweltering hot in the dead of a humid Florida October and I remember distinctly lying on the Mexican tile (which absorbs cool air) in my house wishing the air would just magically turn on and we’d all be saved. But those were Category 4 storms and above. Irene, as it approached New York earlier in the weekend, was merely a Category 2—small potatoes in comparison. By the time Irene hit New York, it was a Tropical Storm; in Florida, that’s like a sneeze. We’d be going to the beach to watch the waves at that point.

I understand, of course, that in South Florida we are mentally and physically prepared to withstand such storms and the situation is quite different for New York. Trees up here are not as thirsty as they are in Florida, so when there’s too much water they simply pass out and fall over. Drainage systems are not the same, I’m sure. The list goes on. At the same rate, though, if those houses in Key West’s Stiltsville, perched precariously above the water, can weather storm after storm after storm, couldn’t New York City?

I was firmly entrenched in my beliefs. Friends from New York who had never experienced a hurricane called and texted in distress. Was it really going to be that bad? No, I said, without fear. A bunch of wind and rain. Nothing staying inside wouldn’t cure. My confidence was catching, and I was grateful that I was able to set some minds at ease.

I stayed confident until around around Saturday afternoon when, after repeated calls from my mother, from friends outside of New York who feared for my safety, and reading the Mayor’s office Twitter, I began to worry. See, I don’t have a television in my apartment, and I’ve never been much for the news (judge away), so I only knew snippets of what was going on. As I sat down to finally check out some of the details, I felt tiny bubbles of fear beginning to float toward the surface of my brain. I tried to burst them, but they just kept appearing. What kind of Floridian are you?, I thought to myself. But I realized they were the same fear bubbles I got when I was at home during a hurricane—I was never fearless, by any means. But being scared was never going to do anything. You had to roll with the punches, put your patio furniture in the garage, and snuggle up to some Nabokov with a book light when the lights went out.

Since I didn’t have any patio furniture or a book light, I decided it would be a good idea to get some candles (I knew by the time I went out, at 1pm, all the flashlights would assuredly be gone), some non-perishable foods, and…what else did I get? Oh, right. Nothing.

I left home, and there was a line in front of the hardware store near my house. Masking tape Xs began to appear on window after window. I scoffed, having never in my life owned hurricane shutters and never doing anything to my windows but closing the blinds. People roamed the streets with umbrellas searching for necessary hurricane gear. The air was sticky and wet, and after a while I didn’t know if I was sweating or if it was the air.

The non-perishable food shelves at Duane Reade were bare, as were the diaper, battery, candle, and condom aisles. New Yorkers know how to prioritize. I grabbed some tasty apocalypse food—beef jerky with no corn syrup and white cheddar Pirate’s Booty—but couldn’t find any candles. Eh, I’d try another store. All the pharmacies were out of them and I began to worry. I only had two candles in my apartment, and I knew that these stupid fear bubbles would subsist a little bit if I could just get some damn candles. Eventually I found some fancy and not so fancy ones, along with some canned salmon and Chef Boyardees and headed home, satisfied.

I tuned in to the Mayor’s office Twitter and NY1’s weather Twitter while working on an article and got all the updates I needed. The storm was supposed to start hitting around 9pm and be the worst between 2am and 2pm. I braced myself. Directly against orders, I sat next to the window in my apartment—I knew I would feel most unsafe if I couldn’t hear anything. If it got really bad I would just move.

But it never did. Nine pm passed and I heard some wind whooshing outside. Two am arrived and I heard some more. I fell asleep eventually, but I kept waiting to hear the slap and screech of wind and rain against my window that I knew a real, big hurricane will make. No such sounds arrived.

I woke up the next morning and looked out into the street—some leaves covered the wet ground…and that was it. I checked online for some news and found that many parts of New York were unscathed, but quite a few were not so. There was flooding, uprooted trees, more damage I’m sure, but nothing the city couldn’t really handle in the long run, I think. Frankly, I had seen far worse. I mean, almost all New York transit was up and running a day later. South Florida was out of commission for two weeks, if not more, during Wilma and Katrina. New York did not get the worst of this storm. Unfortunately, other parts of the East Coast did and they need our hopes, good will, and help more than we need our complaints.

How do I feel about the way government officials handled the event? I think telling people if they didn’t evacuate they’d die was probably not the 100% best course of action, or true, as it turned out. But at the same token, if people didn’t think their lives were threatened, they wouldn’t move a muscle. Just in case they were threatened, it was important to get them to leave, so hyperbole I think was the only way officials knew how to deal with it. I think the city did its best to handle a storm it had never experienced before—evacuation centers, dissemination of instructions and information, and so on. In the future do think it will be different, though.

I think experiencing a hurricane in your own home (i.e., not your parents’ home) is a rite of passage in South Florida. Okay, so I was a little more north for this one, but I feel good to have gotten through whatever it was on my own. Would I do it again? No. Next time I’m having a hurricane party. There will be tequila. You can come if you want. If there is a next time, of course.

One Year

If you have not already noticed, today is the first anniversary of Miss Manhattan!  On August 14, 2010, I set forth to describe my Manhattan (plus) adventures, and I’m proud to have come so far, and of course to continue the process.

In a year, I haven’t just found my favorite spots in the city, but I’ve felt what it is to continually be inspired by the city every day. When people say New York is the city that never sleeps, they don’t just mean movement—New York never stops, well, being New York. The lights at the corner market will always be on, illuminating stacked tubs of unnaturally colored daisies ; there will always be “little skate fuckers (High Fidelity reference, anyone?)” in Union Square with their boards; deliciously chiseled men will always be running shirtless through Central Park; I will always be ‘accidentally’ shoved by a feather-haired old woman with a grocery cart in the cheese section of Zabar’s; there will always be friends sleeping on my couch after a night of debauchery on the Lower East Side. Some things you just learn you can depend on.

To celebrate my first year of living in New York, which was actually July 30, EH and I went out for Italian food then miraculously found a $5 bottle of wine at a store near my house and drank it on my roof. Happily, it wasn’t disgusting, and we were pleasantly buzzed as we headed to Fat Baby on the Lower East Side for bumps and grinds on the dance floor to some good, bad, and awesomely bad Top 40 hits. I was glad EH was able to come out to celebrate, as she was one of the first people I was able to hang out with in New York as a “real person,” i.e., a scared-shitless post-grad wondering how this whole New York thing was going to work. A year later, I am no longer scared but strangely blissful, floating about on a Manhattan high brought on by the sound of honking taxis, stilettos on the sidewalk, and the sizzle of gyro meat on a food truck at 3am.

I realized, however, that I made a very important step in earning the title “New Yorker” just this past week. On my way home Thursday night, I fell asleep in the back of a cab. In the midst of my sleep, I somehow knew how much time had passed, and knew exactly what neighborhood we were driving through (Murray Hill) on the way home (not Murray Hill), even with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes to test myself, and I was right. My eyes flickered closed and I smiled as the cab rushed through the neighborhood. When, even in the darkness of your mind, you can still tell where the hell you are in Manhattan, I believe you’re that much closer to earning “New Yorker” status.

And then there are days like today that make you realize even more how to be a New Yorker. I was never one for Sundays, finding them to be the days when you have to catch up and do all the work you put off the entire weekend; not something to be looked forward to, by any means. But today I worshiped at my temple (read: bought some fabulous new clothes at Bloomingdale’s) and then sidled up to Neil’s Coffee Shop with EmLa. We sat at the lunch counter on beige spinny stools, staring at the refrigerator case filled with pies, rice pudding, grapefruit and beer while we ate grilled cheese and tomato on wheat bread and drank coffee. The Sundays like these, when you may not do much but what you actually do makes you so happy, that’s what a New York Sunday is like. Some things about being a New Yorker you can’t seek out, per se—you just kind of stumble upon them and realize you’ve just learned another lesson.

There are some things that are so New York and “New Yorker” without even trying—white mugs and lunch counters and how wet your feet get walking up Lexington Avenue in the rain but you don’t even care because there’s no place in the world you’d rather get your feet wet. You’ll take off your shoes as you walk in the door, leave your umbrella out in the hallway to dry and sit down and write, because some days all New York can give you is inspiration and all you can do is honor the muse. Here’s to another year, and another, and another…

Oh, Penny: Part II

Penny Arcade is a petite lady, of voluptuous shape. When I meet up with her, I notice she is much shorter than my own 5’1 ¼” inches, that she must have been wearing heels when I first met her. Her face is wiped clean of makeup, so her eyes are much brighter and friendlier, with the hint of the finest lines at the corners. I notice now she has small dimples on the tops of her cheeks, so whenever she swears it’s like listening to a delightfully foul-mouthed doll. She is wearing a black lace and sequin dress, having just come from a funeral, with royal blue ballet flats covering her tiny feet (her light pink high heels are wrapped in newspaper in her silver snakeskin bag, since she stepped in gum while wearing them earlier).

She called me this morning to tell me our itinerary for the day. I was to meet her at 2pm in the lobby of a building near Madison Square Park. We would then talk for a bit, get on the train, and I would then accompany her to her physical therapy session and wait for her in the lobby, and we would talk some more. I was happy to go wherever I was led.

As we leave the lobby, she notices her bag keeps messing up the sequins on her dress and asks me to carry it. On the way to Madison Square Park, she begins talking about exactly what I asked to hear—her life. Even before we sit down on a bench, I am enthralled. She reaches into her snakeskin tote and finds a yellow pack of Natural American Spirits, striking a flame from a Duane Reade matchbook with eventual success.

As the cigarette burns, I listen again with rapt attention as she talks about what it means to be an East Village artist, that close-knit community of out-of-the-box thinkers and doers of performance art, sculpture, music, you name it based solely in the East Village. It means to be a part of a kind of community that doesn’t exist like it used to, she says. People get further and further away from each other with technology, even though technically it brings them ‘closer together.’ I smile. I’ve believed for a while that no amount of text messaging replaces the warmth of someone’s voice, though I have been known to bend toward technology on occasion, much to the disdain of my mother.

She talks about art not being equal to poverty, that who the hell are these kids who live off their parents and do nothing and move to Williamsburg because ‘that’s where the artists are?’ She is incensed. No! The artists are here! Doing their art! Living amongst artists does not make you an artist.

She talks about the exclusionary nature of modern homosexuality (Arcade describes herself as a bisexual faghag), about the Howl! Festival and Debbie Harry and Patti Smith and performance artists like Ethel Eichelberger and Karen Finley and how 22-year-old women do not want to sleep with the 60-year-old men who hit on them at art galleries. She says nobody is enthusiastic anymore, that everyone thinks they’re an expert and they don’t value the people who came before them. It’s a youth culture, she says, which is good for entrepreneurship but bad for knowing where you came from.

As we walk to the subway, she tells me how she liked John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatre better than Andy Warhol’s factory crowd because the factory was too disorganized. On the train, she tells me how she went to Spain and performed with a communist puppet theatre. One night she brought home an American sailor and the leader of the group yelled at her the next morning, telling her she was a whore, that she smelled like a whore. “I don’t smell like a whore!” she said. “This is Kiehl’s! I’m wearing Kiehl’s! It smells like rain.”

Her eyes sparkle as she imparts story after story, idea after idea. Soon, she asks me about myself. I tell her freelance work is nice for me right now because I never really liked taking orders from anyone. I think this resonates with her and she squints with happiness. “I like you,” she says. “You’ve got guts.” I am floating. Penny Arcade thinks I have guts. There was never so fantastic a moment on the N train.

We walk toward Columbus Circle and into her physical therapist’s office. ‘I’ll be 30 minutes,’ she says with a smile. She leaves and I try to process everything. I want to remember all of the details, all of the stories she tells, all of the names she mentions. Quentin Crisp, a writer and dear friend who called her “Miss Arcade” and with whom she once went to a leather bar, among other things; Taylor Mead, a performer who, at 86 years old, still performs once a week at the Bowery Poetry Club; about being the ‘little sister of the avant-garde,’ because avant-garde is not a style, she tells me, her mouth moving around the word ‘style’ with disdain, it is an artistic movement.

While I am still processing, Penny comes back out, and we sit and chat some more but eventually our time comes to an end. “Do you have any more questions for now?” she asks, genuinely curious. No, I say, but I could listen to you talk all day. It’s the truth.

We walk outside and while Penny has another cigarette, I am happy that she wants to talk to me some more. She leans against the window of a Pax restaurant, her elbow in the photo of a giant wheat flatbread sandwich. She tells me about her book, ‘Bad Reputation,’ a collection of performances, essays, and interviews and its (non)review in The New Yorker. She tells me about the success of Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, her long-running performance in the 1990s (her name still stands on the cornerstone of Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. The venue used to be the famed Village Gate nightclub, and Arcade's show was the last to be performed there, along with Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). She tells me how people used to tell her she looked like famed Italian actress Giulietta Masina and wanted her to run off to Hollywood and join the circus (read: the industry), but she chose to stay here in New York and is always glad she did so.

I am too. I think the world needs people like Penny, who do whatever feels right for them despite what other people tell them is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. There’s grand happiness to be found following your bliss, not someone else’s. She wants to pass on what she knows to people like me, she says, because people did it for her, too. How else are you going to learn?, she says. I am honored that she has chosen me as a worthy vessel for her wisdom.

Penny’s cigarette burns out and I walk with her to her last destination for the day. We part ways with big smiles ‘I like our little relationship,’ she says. We give each other a great big hug and promise to get together upon her return. I wave and walk away, smiling. What is this life? Is it even real? I shake my head in disbelief. I still wonder if it really happened.

Oh, Penny: Part I

This story starts with a book. It is torn, weatherbeaten, highlighted and tabbed into oblivion, and it is the closest thing I have ever had to a Bible. The book is ‘Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk’, a book I have read and reread so many times that I see the story of punk unfolding in front of me every time; I know its plot twists and turns, and I know all of the characters by name.

I elevate this book to mythical proportions because during a time in my life when I understood nothing, when I felt like a joke missing a punchline, I still understood this book. It starts in New York, the home of punk, tracing the development of the genre along with its side-genres and subcultures. More than the history of punk, though, Please Kill Me reaffirmed my love for New York, for all of its acceptance of wild, abstract thought and not-so-misspent youth. It made me understand the beautiful messiness of creativity, how the muse worked, what a community meant, how people learned about themselves. This book gave me hope that one day I would never have to see another minivan, that I could meet insightful, intellectual, artistic people who would become my friends, that the life of creativity I wanted for myself was real.

As much as I relished every part of ‘Please Kill Me’, as far as I knew I would never come in contact with any of its colorful cast of characters—most were either far too famous (although I did meet David Johansen once), far too on the fringe or far too dead for me to ever really meet them. But New York is funny that way—it’s so big, but it’s still so, so small because so many of its communities overlap, especially in the arts—and you never really know who you’re going to meet or see where.

**

This story continues last Tuesday, when I had the distinct pleasure of attending Book Club Burlesque, a raunchy, bawdy, and so, so smart burlesque variety show at the Parkside Lounge on the Lower East Side. Each monthly Book Club Burlesque is inspired by a particular work of literature (past shows have been themed Lolita, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Handmaid’s Tale, etc.), and the show I attended was themed after Louis L’amour, the prolific Western writer. A slew of performers in and out of drag and back in again performed Western-inspired acts, like a naughty Native American trading her clothes for whisky, or a drag Dolly Parton (portrayed by the incredible, chiseled and glittery artiste Faux Pas) disrobing to forget her sad, country heart. There were also musicians and comedians on the bill. None, however, was as unreal a surprise as the last guest performer on the bill, one Miss Penny Arcade.

At the announcement of her name, I gripped the leg of CH, my guest that evening, in pure disbelief.  A shriek-whisper shot from my mouth. “HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! PENNY ARCADE! THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL.” I covered my eyes with my hands and slid them down my face. If I were standing I would have fallen over. I was sitting and I still almost fell over. The entire synopsis of Please Kill Me ran through my brain again. One of its memorable characters sat before me. My jaw dropped, and my mouth stayed open for probably the next ten minutes, my eyes sparkling in the room’s darkness. What the fuck is my life right now?

“Who is she?” CH whispered to me. I didn’t mind that he didn’t know because many don’t. To merely list the facts, Penny Arcade is an internationally renowned performance artist, famous for critiquing culture in a loud, opinionated and generally challenging way. She speaks openly about sexuality, art, cultural values, and what we need to do to fix each of them. She appeared in a film by Andy Warhol entitled Women in Revolt, is the author of her own one-woman plays, and has been a staple to New York’s downtown performance art scene (and the international performance art scene) for myriad years. One of the places she began her career with theatre director and playwright John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatre, a gay-friendly experimental theatre group in 1970s New York. It is here that she becomes part of Please Kill Me, narrating her experiences in the growing art movement downtown and coming into contact with people like Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.

You don’t forget a lady like Penny Arcade. You don’t forget a name like Penny Arcade.

She has bleach blonde hair with dark black layers underneath, thick black liner on her eyelids, darkened brows and pink lips. She is wearing a white dress and speaks in a throaty voice caressed by years of cigarettes. She reads a piece called Cowboy Mouth (not named for the Sam Shepard play, but rather for the Bob Dylan song “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”), about being post-menopausal and feeling aroused for the first time in a while. In it, she says, “If The Vagina Monologues were really feminist, they’d be called The Clitoris Monologues.” I am sold. As I sit, rapt with attention and my mouth still hanging open, I know I must go talk to her after the show. I must say thank you, it was such a pleasure to hear you read. I must say I never thought in my wildest dreams I would get to see you in person, much less see you perform.

Thankfully, though, I introduce myself and only say the first part. Penny is kind and says thank you and CH takes a picture of us. She asks about what I do, who I am. I answer coherently and we chat for a bit, but the only thing running through my mind is “PENNYARCADECARESABOUTSOMETHINGIHAVETOSAYOHMYGODOHMYGOD” I must sound flustered because she says with a smile, “You know, I’m just a person,” her big green eyes searching for recognition on my face. I smile, and my brain calms down a bit. But then she says, “Are you on Facebook? Do you have an email address?” and my brain talks in all caps again. “PENNYARCADEWANTSTOKEEPINTOUCHWITHME?????” I have more difficulty with the words this time, but I write down my info on the back of her piece like she asks. CH and I leave, and I bury my face in his shoulder, squealing with delight. “It’s like you’re starstruck,” he says. It’s true, I am. But at the same time, I don’t expect to hear from her ever again. I mean, I’m just some flustered person who talked to her after a show. What could possibly happen?

Well, she could friend me on Facebook and email me some articles she was featured in. I could nearly fall off my couch in excitement and then have the guts to ask if she would meet with me and tell me about her experiences and she would say yes of course and then I would cry tears of joy in my apartment.

Penny is incredibly welcoming, and willing to make space in her very busy schedule for me before she leaves to Europe for a month and change. It is now a week later and my brain is still tripping over itself as I get dressed to go meet her. What does one wear to hang out with a legend, anyway?

**