2006-07-01 - 12:36 a.m.
So you see, while I wasn’t writing for you this past month, these are some of the things that happened: I flew to New York, I went hiking in Yosemitte, and my own dear mother bought a new car. Not much in the way of Earth Shattering excitement, is it? Well, New York was nice.
You see, I was feeling like things were in a slump, so what I needed was a week in the Big Apple to cheer me up. And so, with little more ado than that, off I went, all impulsive-like: I just booked cheap ass airline tickets and a hotel room at the Larchmont, and there I was.
It was actually a really good trip, if you want to know the truth. My grandmothers are both in their early 80s, so in my opinion it behoves me to see them at least once every six months. And it was quite pleasing to visit them without the trappings of the rest of my family hanging about and imposing their behavior on my mood and what not.
It was really quite delightful to arrive in New York, absolutely and totally by myself, catch myself the Supershuttle from the airport to 11th and 5th, and check into the hotel myself. Like a big boy! And it was truly pleasant to dump my bags, check in by phone with the various relatives, and then hike my way to my favorite First Night In New York Restaurant – L’Expresse, on 21st and Lex.
Mind you, I could neither remember the location nor the spelling of the restaurant, so I had to endure the humiliating experience of actually phoning my mother in LA for the address. In the end, though, I found myself at the pleasantly upscale-bohemian bistro, which, day or night, is peppered with smart young actors and nice folks in suits on dates or on the make.
The next morning, I trucked on over to Rich Grandma’s place for some whitefish and bagels. You will have noticed this – it is impossible for anyone who is alive not to – but it is a disturbing thing to watch folks you have known your whole life get old. My rich grandma – well, I obviously have known here since she was my age, go figure. And now she just moves so slowly. Really, she just inches along. And her mind is as quick as it ever was – but she is simply not curious about anything that doesn’t directly impact her. The loss of passion appears to be a thing that occurs with age. I myself, at age 42, no longer feel the same rage and searing love that I felt about and towards the world when I was, say, 19. But it’s still disturbing to see how one’s relatives age – and to know that in a time in the future that’s probably sooner rather than later, there will be hard times.
In the afternoon, I shlepped on out to Riverdale on the West Side bus that you catch at 34th and 3rd, arriving at the Hebrew Home for the Aged, where my blind granny was especially pleased to see me. Yes, well, of course she could not “see” me at all, because she is rather blind. But she was perfectly delighted to greet me – and I have to admit I was not at all sad that she could not actually see me, as I have become as fat as a house.
Actually, it turns out that she is not TOTALLY blind, for if you place her in her wheelchair directly underneath a bright light, such as under the skylight in the Hebrew Home cafeteria, she can see shapes. So when she was able to see me, bobbing in front of her in my salmon colored sweater, she marveled, “Ooooh! I can see a gigantic dancing pumpkin! Bless me, I can!”
By coincidence, when I went to visit Blind Grandmother, my cousin Rabbie Ezra Darlingstein was there – and he was quite amazed and delighted by my holiness at deigning to visit the old woman in the Hebrew Home. He patted me dutifully on the head and asked me how I was doing. It is funny, though, how family matters so much to some people. I must confess that extended family doesn’t matter a whit to me: These cousins, these Uncles – eh, I went for decades without seeing them. And if I went for decades more, it would be perfectly all right.
Anyway, the one thing I am pleased about is that, however frail my grandmothers are, their minds are still remarkably sharp. Blind grandmother, particularly, seems especially intellectually adroit, and she maintains her life long curiosity about the world that I find decidedly inspiring. Nothing wrong with that, pets, nothing wrong with that at all.
Also during the trip to New York, I took time out to see THE HISTORY PLAYS, the weekend before it won more Tony Awards than there are stars in the Heavens. What a pleasure it was to see a show that crackled with sharp, ironic dialogue! Who would have thought that a play that winks at pedophilia would ever get awards nods? I really adored the Falstaffian turn offered by the gigantic Richard Griffiths, who is better known for playing the evil Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies. He was splendid, roaming over the stage, flirting with his young male students.
The play was so well written, even if it possessed a slight whiff of condescension towards the characters of the students. That’s to be expected, though, I supposed, given that Alan Bennett is a rather old man these days – and he probably has that kind of an attitude towards young people. The show was beautiful on so many levels – as a nostalgic reminiscence about youth, as a trenchant comment about the idiocy of the Ox-Bridge, modern Liberal academic sensibility, and as a tour de force for Griffiths and for his co-star, the delightful Frances De La Tour, a brilliant, often underrated actress who has appeared in just about every English movie ever made.
During the trip, I dined with rich grandmother at the Turkish Restaurant I adore on 28th and 3rd. And we went to this snazzy new Chinese restaurant that had just opened, for some surprisingly mediocre dim sum. We went there, I suspect, because my rich grandmother simply loves to people watch, which is fabulous, as it’s something I adore as well. And what can be funnier than to listen to pompous New Yorker’s in their native habitat? At the table next to us, there was the most repellant young couple, out on a date. The man just kept bragging and bragging and bragging – he was in some kind of media biz, I think. And the woman just kept smiling and encouraging him. At one point, though, the guy went off to use the bathroom, leaving the woman behind. She promptly rolled her eyes and sighed, clearly unimpressed by the man she was with.
But the hightlight of the trip was not, as you can imagine, THE HISTORY BOYS. It was the fact that I discovered a fabulous new Manhattan strip club to replace the late lamented Gaiety, which closed down a year or two ago! You see, after the closure of that legendary strip club, I found myself desperately perusing the gay rags for places where I might see a near-nekkid lad.
And do you know, I found two places, right next door to each other, no further away than 2nd and 2nd? I was slack jawed with amazement and delight. Indeed, URGE, on the corner of 2nd and 2nd, is, in many respects, even better than the Gaiety, which tends to be over-patrolled by nosy security guards. The dancers at the Urge were all astonishingly buff young men from New Jersey and Connecticutt, it seems, who commuted to the Big Apple for purposes of leaching old ghouls of their money.
At one point, one dancer was being fondled by a surprisingly cute young customer, when the dancer looked down at the guy and suddenly asked, “Hey, aren’t you from Bridgeport?”
“Yeah?” the guy replied.
“Dude!” laughed the stripper. “We both went to Sacred Heart, Class of ’04! What are YOU up to these days?”
The customer noted that he was in real estate and was spending the night closing an important deal, which had netted him several hundred thousand dollars. In reply, the dancer spun around and got on his haunches, proferring his G-string clad butt to the high school pal’s face. And who wouldn’t have that reaction?
And that was my trip to New York!
