Rossi Rant

2002-09-11T05:55:00.000-04:00

September 11th, 2002

Stop.

Put aside all your busy thoughts.

Turn off the television.

Shut off the CD player.

Be still.

Breathe.

Be present in this moment.

Be here, with these words.

Be here entirely.

Breathe in.

Out.

Feel this moment.

This moment is a gift.

This day is a miracle.

You are here.

You are alive.

You have a capacity to love that is so vast you could never reach its limits.

There are no limits.

One year ago today, you watched thousands of innocent people die.

You watched two seemingly invincible icons crumble.

They were the big twin brothers at the bottom of the city, boyish and pompous and rich and powerful and young and playful. There were nothing like the simple elegance and constant beauty of their classically elegant older sister, the Empire State Building, but they were family. They were our boys. Just like we often do with family, we took them for granted until they were gone.

Now our baby brothers are dead.

One year ago, you watched something so horrible that no disaster movie will ever feel quite like a movie again.

You saw them jump.

You saw them disappear into a mountain of dust.

And when it was all quiet again, you saw the few, far too few, survivors crawl out, covered in layers of chalk, blinking, helpless and hopeless.

You felt helpless.

You felt hopeless.

Some of you, may have relived that day a thousand times and told yourself all the things you would do differently if you could go back in time.

Maybe you would have tried to help.

Maybe you would have been kinder to the people around you.

Maybe you would have remembered to tell the person lying next to you that you love them.

Well it’s September 11th again.

It is today.

It is now.

So what are you waiting for?

There are people who need to hear your voice. Tell them you care.

Walk everywhere today. Find total strangers and give them something, anything, a simple gesture of kindness. Buy lunch for a homeless person. Go to an animal shelter and save a life. Take your shoes off and walk through the grass.

Look in the mirror.

Do you like what you see?

Do you feel that you’ve done enough?

If you don’t feel that you’ve done enough, congratulations!. You’ve still got time. Get out there and spread yourself around like peanut butter. You’ve got so much to give.

If you do feel like you’ve done enough than I’ve got news for you. You’re full of shit! There is never enough. There can never be enough love or goodness.

One year ago today, we watched our family be murdered. Maybe they were of no relation to us. Maybe they were strangers. Maybe. But they were part of us.

Haven’t you wondered why it is that you mourn these strangers so deeply?

How can you feel their deaths so personally?

Why even now do you feel chills when you think of them?

Why is it when the families of the victims appear on television talking about their lost loved ones you feel like you understand? You feel the loss. You feel guilty for even trying to share a slice of their pain, but you do feel their pain.

Why?

Because they are your family too.

Because we are all in this together.

It is September 11th again.

Here, now, today, in this moment, we are in “911.”

Today is “911.”

Here is your chance.

Don’t make their deaths be in vain.

Try to fill this terrible cruel void in our hearts, in our skyline, in the cosmos, with something else.

Fill it with your goodness.

Fill it with your love.

Fill it with your honesty.

Fill it with your bravery.

Fill it with your vulnerability.

Fill it with you.

This will be the last rant at www.rossi.blogspot.com.

All new rants will be at www.rossirant.com. rossirant

I started this site one year ago and wanted to finish it on this day; September 11th, 2002.

This site has been something more than a voice for me. It’s often felt like salvation.

Thank you for listening to me.

Thank you for answering back.

I hope you’ll follow me to my new domain. I promise to keep ranting as long as you’ll keep reading.

A special thanks to Nancy at jillmatrix for creating my new web site for me as an awesome birthday gift and for helping me every step of the way with my old web site. She’s been like the Florence Nightingale of web-land for moi. Thanks, Flo!

2002-09-04T19:04:00.000-04:00

Yahrtzeit

The anniversary of a loved ones death.

We of my faith, commemorate this anniversary by lighting a simple white candle. You know the ones. You’ve seen them in the super-market aisle. They’re a glass jar filled with white wax. Sometimes they have Hebrew lettering on them.

In my hood they are most often used for low budget roof parties. They blend well with the Jesus candles you find in the corner bodega. I’ve always liked the white melting Star of David candle burning alongside the red Jesus candles. Nice touch for a tar beach soirée’.

Yahrtzeit candles seem to burn forever. I always light them as the sun sets and they’re still burning the next morning. They’re stoic little things. Only cost 69¢ too.

I’ve been lighting Yahrtzeit candles in September since 1993, the year after my mother died. September has become a smorgasbord of emotions for me. Not only does it house Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the only times of year I go to the synagogue as a "High Holiday Jew" but when you throw in mom’s Yahrtzeit, it becomes a one way ticket to "mishegash" land!

This year, September mourning meets the anniversary of “911.”

The first Yahrtzeit of the day America lost its virginity.

No amount of white candles in glass jars will ever burn long enough or bright enough to blot out the pain of this terrible day. Just as no amount of tears can ever bring a loved one back.

But we try.

I’ll try.

I will go to “Shul” on the bookends that surround September 11th. Open myself up to my own blend of spirituality on Rosh Hashanah, find my own way to deal with it all on the morning of September 11th and try to snap myself shut, seam up my exposed inner self on Yom Kippur.

One can’t really function in New York City, with one’s inner self exposed. It’s a bit like walking around naked…during rush hour…in Times Square….a lot.

I’m still tossing about the “what the fuck do I do that day?” anniversary rap. Most of my pals are too. Some plan to leave town, some plan to watch TV and cry, some plan to go to a comedy and attempt to laugh.

I don’t plan on laughing that day.

I will say, however, that thinking of 911 as a Yahrtzeit has made everything click properly in my head. The word anniversary seemed to have a happy tone to it. Memorial is just well shit…we’ve had so many.

But Yahrtzeit feels right. It is the one year remembrance of a terrible loss. It is a day to light white candles and pray to whatever you believe in or whatever you don’t and it’s a valley nestled between two holidays that for me have always been symbolic of healing, mourning and reflecting.

This is not the Jewish column and I’m no preacher of this or any other religion. I don’t really know what happens to any of us after we die. I’ve never died. But I do feel, that when I light the Yahrtzeit candle this year and I shut out all the lights and watch this simple little glass jar burn endlessly through the night and I ask out loud that this terrible loss not be in vain, that someone will listen.

I believe that someone will listen.

It’s the answering back part I’m not so sure about.

La Shana Tovah

--

By the way…regardless of what religious calling you have…atheist, wicca, Catholic..
jewsweek (in case this link doesn't work just go to www.jewsweek.com) has an amazing September 11th special issue up now and they’ve also published my story of my time at ground zero one year ago during Rosh Hashanah. My piece is called “Days of Awe” you’ll have to scroll down a touch to find it.

2002-08-31T09:35:00.000-04:00

special thanks

I just need to take a minute here
to thank the following most excellant folks for their wonderful words and great support of yours truly.

I'm just a little blonde newbie in this great web world but these heavy hitters have taken the time to be very kind to moi. So go read their sites and learn something.

Tell em I said thankee while you're there.

acdouglas
jillmatrix
buzzmachine
asparagirl

2002-08-28T12:50:00.000-04:00

Considering the fact that this has been a site almost exclusively dedicated to the way September 11th has affected this one little wacky life ... mine ... I guess you may be wondering why I've been so quiet about the impending one-year anniversary.

The thing is ... the closer we get to September 11, 2002, the more I realize how far I really am, and how far perhaps many of us are from moving on. I've been quiet on the subject lately because, well shit ... I'm just tired of dwelling on it. I want to get up and get on with things.

I've had some great validation in my writing and painting career. My catering life is back on track after a post 9/11 dip. I've paid my bills and still have something left over to get out of town with. I've got people in my life who love me. I've got a really amazing set of ... hmmm ... nevermind.

My point is, there are things to celebrate. There are huge things to celebrate. The very fact that I'm alive and well is cause for a party, but I can't celebrate.

I have survivor's guilt.

Don't know why this comes a surprise to me. I can suffer a guilt complex at the drop of a hat. You get a headache; I think it's my fault.

I'm convinced my mother would be alive today, if I'd just called a little more often. Well, she would!

I've thought a lot about what I want to do on September 11th. Part of me wants to make sure I'm not alone for a second. One of the hardest things about that day, was how incredibly alone I felt. I've made my cubana promise to spend the day with me. She has a friend who has an office overlooking
ground zero. His totally illegal terrace literally protrudes over the site. I'm planning on trying to go there on the 11th. Maybe watch some of the memorial service from that perch.

I also have a project I finished some time ago that I'd like to deliver that day. I made prints of a painting I'd done last year dedicated to the brave men of Ladder 3. It's called Heroes Never Die. I made 12 prints, one for each of the families of Ladder 3's fallen heroes. I want to deliver the painting and the prints on the 11th. I figure the guys will need a cheer up that day.

But then ... if I were to really re-live that day as it went for me nearly one year ago, I'd climb up on the roof again at roughly the same time as just after the second plane hit ... close my eyes and watch the towers burn again, open my eyes and look at the hole in the sky, close my eyes and watch them fall again, open my eyes and scan the clouds remembering the thick billowy smoke that lasted for days and days.

Then I'd remember what it felt like to be so helpless, so horrified and so frozen. I'd remember the panic of my neighbors running to buy canned goods and water. I'd remember the women in my neighborhood pushing baby strollers ... so ordinary ... except that that they and the babies were wearing ventilation masks.

I'd walk west to the highway again and remember the dust and the terrible smell and the sea of news crews for as far as you could see and the first buds of red, white and blue like tiny little flowers pushing through the cracks of concrete.

I'd call my friends and family and remember what it felt like to know that they thought I might be gone but have no way to get word to them.

Sigh.

I have no idea what to do on September 11th.

I want to do all of these things and I want to do nothing.

Part of me just wants to stay home and hide under the covers, with the phone off.

I want to lie there perfectly still, in total quiet and listen ... listen ... listen ...

Shhhhhhhh.

Maybe this time I'll hear them.

I'm still waiting for those nearly three thousand souls to answer.

I've been asking them the same question for almost a year now.

I always ask the same thing.

Why?
----
Oh FYI, I just have to take a minute here to say thanks to Jeff at buzzmachine. ... Jeff has been one of my web heroes, and I got to meet him live and in person, and he is NATCH truly fabulous. ... Thanks, Jeff!

2002-08-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

Considering the fact that this has been a site almost exclusively dedicated to the way September 11th has affected this one little wacky life…mine…I guess you may be wondering why I’ve been so quiet about the impending one-year anniversary.

The thing is…the closer we get to September 11th 2002, the more I realize how far I really am, and how far perhaps many of us are from moving on. I’ve been quiet on the subject lately because, well shit..I’m just tired of dwelling on it. I want to get up and get on with things.

I’ve had some great validation in my writing and painting career. My catering life is back on track after a post 911 dip. I’ve paid my bills and still have something left over to get out of town with. I’ve got people in my life who love me. I’ve got a really amazing set of…hmmm..let’s skip that.

My point is that there are things to celebrate. There are huge things to celebrate. The very fact that I’m alive and well is cause for a party, but I can’t celebrate.

I have survivor’s guilt.

Don’t know why this comes a surprise to me. I can suffer a guilt complex at the drop of a hat. You get a head-ache I think it’s my fault.

I’m still convinced my mother would be alive today, if I’d just called a little more often.

Well…she would!

I’ve thought a lot about what I want to do on September 11th. Part of me wants to make sure I’m not alone for a second. One of the hardest things about that day, was how incredibly alone I felt. I’ve made my Cubano promise to spend the day with me. She has a friend who has an office over-looking ground zero. His totally illegal terrace literally protrudes over the site. I’m planning on trying to go there on the 11th. Maybe watch some of the memorial service from that perch.

I also have a project I finished some time ago that I’d like to deliver that day. I made prints of a painting I’d done last year dedicated to the brave men of Ladder 3. It’s called “Hero’s Never Die.” I made 12 prints, one for each of the families of Ladder 3’s fallen heroes. I want to deliver the painting and the prints on the 11th. I figure the guys will need a cheer up that day.

But then…if I were to really re-live that day as it went for me nearly one year ago, I’d climb up on the roof again at roughly the same time as just after the second plane hit…close my eyes and watch the towers burn again, open my eyes and look at the hole in the sky, close my eyes and watch them fall again, open my eyes and scan the clouds remembering the thick billowy smoke that lasted for days and days, Then I’d remember what it felt like to be so helpless, so horrified and so frozen. I’d remember the panic of my neighbors running to buy canned goods and water. I’d remember the women in my neighborhood pushing their baby strollers, as if nothing had happened at all, except that that they and the babies were wearing ventilation masks.

I’d walk west to the highway again. and remember the dust and the terrible smell and the sea of news crews for as fare as you could see and the first buds of red, white and blue like tiny little flowers pushing through the cracks of concrete.

I’d call my friends and family and remember what it felt like to know that they thoguth I might be gone and have no way to get word to them, that I was okay.

Sigh.

I have no idea what to do on September 11th.

I want to do all of these things and I want to do nothing.

Part of me just wants to stay home , hide under the covers, with the phone off.

I want to lie there perfectly still, in total quiet and listen…listen…listen…

Shhhhhhhh.

Maybe this time I’ll hear them.

I’m still waiting for those nearly three thousand souls to answer me back.

I’ve been asking them the same question for almost a year now.

I always ask the same thing.

Why?

2002-08-23T17:50:00.000-04:00

Very few people who know me these days can believe that I ever lived anywhere besides New York City.

I am often called by my pals "The Quintessential New Yorker" and they're right. After 21 years in NYC, I more than live in NYC; I am NYC. The fact that I ever lived anywhere else, was just a freak of nature. I was born to live in New York.

I grew up (in another life) on the Jersey Shore. If it weren't for the fact that my parents had some sort of white-trash wanderlust that kept us perpetually taking off on road trips around the country, I might have gone mad, well ... a little sooner.

You see, no offense to you Jerseyettes, but I was always way to ... um ... avante garde to live on the Jersey Shore. Especially in a town called Rumson, which was and is very beautiful and evidently is NOW having some sort of moment in the sun as a New York Ex-patriot Camelot these days, but back then it was so conservative you could get run out of town on rail for flipping the color of your Izod alligator shirt up.

I hated alligators and I certainly didn't want them on my shirt. I spent my high-school years determined to wear only two things, black t-shirts and blue jeans. For accessories; a bandana wrapped around my neck (rockabilly style), a pink fuchsia feather earring hanging off one ear and shoes had to be either Frye boots or California hikers.

My t-shirts proudly bore the emblems of my favorite bands. Some were deemed acceptable by my peers. ... (Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones) and some not (Blondie, The Sex Pistols). Having an interest in punk rock was a tad too "out there" for my high school circa 1978-1981.

There were other things that seemed far to out there for my high school, too; I remember distinctly the time I walked across the freshman cafeteria (white kids only) to sit in the sophomore lounge (black kids only). Every perfectly coiffed white head turned as I walked across that barrier. It was the best lunch I ever had. Have no idea what I ate, but the pride was delicious.

Don't get me wrong here, I had a lot of friends there. Some of em are still in my life.

It was a strange place to grow to young adulthood. Two-thirds of my peers, might just as well have been the same person. The dressed the same, talked the same, listened to the same music, went to the same beach clubs and country clubs. Their parents drove the same cars. They were destined to have the same jobs (stock-broker, lawyer, doctor or junior vice president in Dad's company). It was an eerie feeling to walk past a hundred or so kids all wearing either alligator shirts or cashmere sweaters, all wearing corduroys and either dock-siders or Bass shoes.

I wasn't like you had to die your hair pink to be different. All you had to do was not buy from the L.L. Bean catalogue.

The good news was that the kids who did manage to exert their individuality had to be ballsy as hell. You had to more than go against the wave, you had to smash it to smithereens. I'm still proud of my gang of no nonsense nuts.

I had great friends: Lauren the diva of punk rock who never ever backed down, Jenny the preppie with the cool edge, Sue, the ballet dancing hippie, Carolyn who turned every occasion into a party, sweet Joan from grammar school who never said a mean word to anyone, ever, Sandy V the rocker from hell, the list goes on and on. These cats were just cool to their soul.. They had to be.

I think "rebel" must have been stamped on my forehead in those years. Between my conservative town and the fact that my folks were trying to get me to be an Orthodox Jew, there just was no were to turn. So I lit a joint, cranked up David Bowie and put safety pins in my clothes.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

I think of this part of my life like a past life, something I might remember in hypnosis, but it all came crashing back into my world this weekend when I went to that strange right of passage known as High School Reunion. Since you've probably already done the math I might as well tell you it was my 20-year reunion.

Yeah ... I'm gorgeous but I'm no spring chicken, more like an autumn hen.

I'd been to my 10-year reunion and found it to be somewhat dull except for Carter who had become a wild child fashion model since her high school days
and really whooped things up.

I coerced my old pal Lauren of punk diva days who lives in NATCH Manhattan to come with me. My babe the Cuban rented a limo and off we went. I was prepared
to not only have a good time but to French kiss my woman lover and send a few yuppies into cardiac arrest.

We arrived late, but it was fine, they were all there. A sea of folks in their now late 30s most of whom looked like they'd never left Rumson. Preppy L.L. Bean button up shirts, khaki pants ... the whole shebang.

But there were surprises. Cary who'd been a 4-foot-tall nerd boy the last I saw him, turned into a 6-foot buff hunk who owns an "adult novelty company." Cary the porno mogul ... I just loved it!

There were some of my ol pals; Joan dressed head to toe in black (how chic) showing pictures of her gorgeous 17-year-old daughter. Carolyn who (damn it) hadn't aged at all since high school ... and yes ... there she was again. ... Carter ruling the dance floor and nearly dropping dead when she saw Lauren and moi.

"Yay!!!" she screamed. Later on Carter told me that Lauren and I were her
high school heroes. Shit it's not often someone tells you that.

The bar was cash (cheapos) the food was ... well, let me just say that my cubana gave me a bite of what they were calling dinner and I think, days later, I am still digesting it. Yech, how can you burn the outside of a turkey breast and leave the inside raw?

Everyone was friendly although I didn't recognize most of the people who seemed to know me, even after I looked at their name tags. "Who the hell was that?" I asked Lauren all night long. "Not sure."

I think some of the kids from the Izod army just didn't make a lasting impression on us.

A woman who had been my worst enemy in the 7th grade came up to me and hugged me as if we were long lost best pals. It was so strange I just had to walk away.

The rocker dudes who had been my smoking buddies in high-school were there. Jamie who still looked like a hard core rebel, long hair, beard and all, had never sold out, as he might have said. Ricky's long blond hair was now (oddly) short black hair, but he was still mellow as ever.

Jill was wild and perky and I'm pretty sure I saw crayon red highlights in her hair -- you're as young as you dress I always say.

Jenny who coaxed Lauren and I out on the dance floor by screaming our names into a microphone must have had some sort of voice change. She made Kathleen Turner sound like a soprano. Who was that man hiding inside Jenny's throat. I told her to do voice-overs immediately.

The dramas of the evening were: Lauren kicking some jerk named Ricky in the shin because he managed to insult her while apologizing for insulting her 22 years ago and me making the aforementioned worst enemy cry when I reminded her of how evil she'd been to me when I was 12.

There was also an odd moment when this sweet guy named Willy reminded me that I'd actually gone out with his older brother Billy and I'd completely deleted the memory from my files. "Billy who??" I asked at first, and then I remembered. We had d gone out for about 3 months and I had just removed him from my brain. Kinda made me feel like a big blonde HO.

The highlights were when we crammed Carter, Jill, Joan, Lauren, M.E. and moi into the limo and drank ourselves silly.

Also loved finding out that two cheerleaders were lesbians and so was the young lady standing next to me who seemed to know me very well. I have no idea who she was, but she was cute. Don't worry I just looked, well maybe smiled a little, too, but my cubana was waiting in the limo.

I never had that shocking French kissing close dance with my babe, actually she and most of the other spouses wisely disappeared while we all played, the "who looks better" game, but it's ok.

Funny enough, whenever I told anyone I was there with my girlfriend, they just thought I meant a girl that I'm friends with. Ha. ... Oh well.

The sad part of the evening was all the short (not short enough) chats I had with people who had been uptight boring preppies and had grown into uptight boring yuppies. I guess I was hoping for a few more surprises, but it seems that most people really didn't change that much.

"Wow, you live in Manhattan!" they would say as if it were a distant exotic land. They lived in Rumson, only an hour and fifteen minutes away, faster by ferry.

Anyway, I was glad I went and glad to catch up with my old excellent pals and glad that Lauren lives like 15 blocks away and now we're back in touch and mostly, mostly, mostly, glad to be back in New York Fucking City!

2002-08-12T20:34:00.000-04:00

If you want to take a break from the atrocities of terrorism, anti-Semitism and strong feelings of "what the fuck can I do?" then just do what I did: Get an inner ear infection.

I think this is the third one I've had this year. My doctor says they're brought on by my allergies, which somehow quadrupled after September 11th.

I'm fully expecting to turn on the television one day and see a special on the airborne disease downtown New Yorkers caught in September of last year that was all hushed up.

But enough about conspiracy theories. My point is, having an inner ear infection sucks if you want to have any balance whatsoever, (ballet and tight-rope walking are lost to me, alas) but it's great for zoning out from life.

Hell, I feel like it's the '70s all over again, and I didn't have to smoke anything.

I had another one of my fabulous roof parties, at which I grilled steak for 50 people and fed it to 13. Everyone was talking at once and floating in and out of conversations and I couldn't focus on a single thing anyone said. So I just sat there and smiled and agreed. The really weird thing was everyone thought I was totally entertaining.

They thought I was ^%$#& charming! This weekend, I went to my pal Joanna's wedding. It was truly beautiful. She went with a Pacific Rim theme, and everything was jade green or bamboo brown with chopsticks and candles and lots and lots of tropical drinks. Joanna looked glorious, and the Asian-inspired food was beautiful (even though GASP, I didn't cook it).

The food, FYI, was prepared by Caroline, who occasionally works as one of my sous chefs, but clearly she's been holding out on me, since she never once shaved a jicama or pickled a ginger on my watch.

M.E. says I intimidate kitchen babes. ... Must be the army boots, but I digress.

Anyway, the point is that all this gorgeousness was made magical and dreamy and, well, rather blurry by my inner ear infection.

It was great!

Normally, (whatever that is) I feel far too guilty about the thousands of lives disappearing before my eyes those many months ago in September to allow myself to truly enjoy something as shallow as, say a celebration of love.

How can I possibly allow real joy to settle in, when so many have suffered? I should put down my margarita immediately and mourn!!

Yes, and all that self-sacrifice does exactly what?? For anyone??

I'm quite certain the innocent lives lost on 9/11 will not be brought back by my lack of joy and their families will not gain happiness by my suffering. So why not have the fucking margarita?

'Cause I'm just nuts, that why, and I've been nuts since September 11th, and I don't care who knows it anymore!! Which brings me back, yet again, to my inner ear infection.

It let me have fun.

It even, took away so much on my inhibition that I was finally, (after 3 and half years of her trying) able to truly let my Cuban mamasita lead on the dance floor. Honey, you should have seen the white-haired family contingency from Germany. At first they thought we were just being, well ... European.

The dizziness in my head took the fight out of my spine, and I just let go. I let M.E. push me and pull me through the dance floor, twirling and swaying and shimmying and, I might have dreamt this, but I'm pretty sure M.E. even got me to dance to Spanish music without looking like a gringo idiot.

"You were amazing!" she said shocked and confused. "It's called an inner ear infection!" I said, radiant and still spinning in my head from the spinning on the dance floor.

An elderly, but SPUNKY, woman who'd been close dancing with her husband a few feet away came up to us.

We prepared ourselves for some sort of "Don't do that in front of the children" lecture.

"You girls are so courageous! I'm so proud of you!" she beamed and kissed us both. "I see so many couples like you who are too afraid to get up and dance. Don't ever stop!"

She kissed us several more times, and hugged us, too. Then, for the rest of the night, gave us the thumb's up sign whenever we hit the dance floor. Now that was a rush.

One moment I was getting carried around the dance floor while my brain spinned and then next I was a gay role model.

The night was delicious and sweet and surreal and loving, and never once in all that jade and bamboo did I remember the demons that interrupt my thoughts whenever I start to feel at peace.

I guess if I were well, then I'd have to admit to you that letting myself go like that means I'm some sort of a traitor to 9/11, but I had an excuse; really I did. I've been sick. This inner ear infection, you see, and so I think it's OK for me to be dopey and happy until it goes away.

Maybe I'll catch a cold by then.

2002-08-06T23:56:00.000-04:00

Been a bit of an old home week for moi. ...

First of all my (AAAAKKKK) 20-year high school reunion is coming up next week. Yeeesh. Well! Actually my 20-year reunion was last year, but that's only 'cause I skipped a grade. The class all my chums are in is this year's big Two Oh, so hence I go, and yes, I am going to this year's reunion.

An old high school gal pal of mine hooked me up with the reunion web site, and as soon as I added my name to the RSVP list another old, blast from the past e-d me up.

Suddenly I'm hearing names I haven't heard in 20 years, some of them single moms, some of 'em single dads, two of 'em suddenly dead, some of them rich, some of them poor, some of 'em coming to the reunion to brag about their lack of body fat, some of 'em not going because of a severe lack of things to brag about, and then there's me.

I'm going for the most noble of reasons: revenge.

Yep, you see, chitlins, while I did fairly well in high school when it came to having friends, fun and mayhem, I also just hated to my very soul the homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and general uptight, uptown cunty-ness that went on in my school.

So I'm going ... with my girlfriend.

Yep should make for an interesting evening. I'm trying to find someone with a video camera to film a few of the not so young babes going into cardiac arrest the first time Miss Thing and I slow dance.

My old pal L is coming with us; she says she doesn't need revenge. Her life is revenge. You see, L took a certain amount of shit in high school for being different, and now she's turned out to be what all those uptight bitches dream of being; successful, glamorous and young looking without Botox.

I'm looking forward to watching her strut to the buffet in her size 6 leisurewear.

I'm told 20 years can make people more progressive, but the first thing I received after I RSVP'd was a phone call inviting me to a pre-reunion keg party.

A keg party??? Who has keg parties after the age of 21??

So as if there wasn't enough nostalgia floating through my vents, I wound up taking my goddaughter to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, for a day at the beach. Sandy Hook, FYI, is my old teen-age (wasteland) stomping ground. Suuuurrree, it's all cutesy, cuddly kiddy park now, but when I used to hang at Sandy Hook, we called it double vision beach ... for ... um ... well, obvious reasons.

I kept expecting to look up and see one of the rockers I used to date, or shall I say tease, sitting on a rock banging on a guitar, joint hanging out of his furry face, but nope it was like the rated G beach, and I don't mean G for gay. Not a single bong, guitar or long-haired freak in sight. Even the lifeguards were clean shaven and polite.

So as if I haven't been in retro over-kill this past week, Iâ€™ll go one further, Kathleen (of downstairs-neighbor fame) took me to a concert in Madison Square Garden. It was The Who with Robert Plant opening for them.

20 years later, we've got money, so Kathleen got us seats about 50 feet from the stage, best seats I ever had in a rock concert. The first sign that I was truly in a rock fest for the over 35, under 55 crowd was the waiters. ...WAITERS??? ... walking around selling plastic cups of champagne with strawberries floating in them.

WTF man! Champagne and berries at a rock concert??

But this was a champagne and berries crowd.

So what's a girl to do? We had three glasses each.

Anyway, while Robert Plant looked like he really needed to stay out of the sun and stop perming his hair and get a new wardrobe and maybe just stick to the Led Zeppelin tunes, the Who were amazing. Roger Daltrey's voice was strong and gutsy. Pete Townsend still did his wild-ass guitar thing, and if it weren't for the pictures of John Entwhistle projected next to the stage, I might never have known he was dead.

Really the band sounded great. There was one moment when Roger Daltrey's hearing aid fell out, but other than I totally forgot these boys were pushing 60.

The best part of the concert was the audience; thousands of middle-aged men trying to dance and playing air guitar, women with bleached blonde hair and retro '70s were screaming and swaying. It was tacky and kitschy and passe and all of that, but it was just plain fun.

I'm proud to be a '70's rock babe, and I don't care who knows it.

"Finally!!!" Kathleen screamed through much of the concert as she ogled Daltrey, "A sexy middle-aged man!!"

She was right, really. Daltrey looked good, grandpa-elf ears, hearing aid and some sort of hernia scare aside, the man really did pull it off.

So I shook and shimmied and hooted with the rest of the mostly suburban crowd and almost choked on the damn strawberry, too, but I had a blast.

Oh, and by the way, I had a birthday, thru all of this ... yep turned 38. I'm an old bird now what can I say. But you know all this retro, reunion, '70s rock, tie-dye and keg party stuff Is reminding me of one thing: You're only as old as you dress.

That's right, baby, and you can ask anyone who knows me -- I dress like a 16-year-old boy.

Talking about my generationnnnnnnn ... my generation babyyyyy ,,,

My generationnnnnnnnnnnn. (always loved that song). ...

2002-07-30T17:52:00.000-04:00

Hola!

I'm back from Spain.

Man, what a trip.

I've been gone for, hmm, 9 days, but it feels like a month.

Lemme give you the Reader's Digest version.

Got to the airport ... the travel agent never phoned in my info to the airlines, so I had to re-do my entire itenary (which entailed flying five times, mind you) right there at the check-in desk. Phew! Luckily a little guilt ran a long way, and I was able to re-book my trip.

The flight to Madrid had the meanest stewardess I have ever met. She seemed to either be recuperating from a stroke or having slept on one side of her face for way too long but decided to take it out on us, her helpless victims.

After being delayed on the runway for two hours while a storm blew over, I made the mistake of asking for a ginger ale, you'd have thought I'd asked for her left kidney.

But I survived, landed in Madrid at 9 a.m. their time, got to my hotel and was not allowed to check in for two hours so I walked around the block for two hours feeling a strong need to brush my teeth (and have a ginger ale).

Finally I checked in, slept for a few hours, showered and was ready to take on Spain.

Madrid was ancient, gorgeous and just swept me away to another time immediately. Other than the fact that it was exceedingly difficult to find anything to eat that did not contain pork, shellfish or wheat, I had a wonderful journey.

I walked for miles using a little map and a lot of "¿Donde esta ...?"

Oddly, though, every time I met up with a proper, well dressed Madridian woman over the age of 40, she'd gave me the look of death. It seemed like everything about my shorts, tank-top, curly hair and tattoo offended them deeply. If they'd known I was gay, I'm sure pandemonium would have ensued. Their husbands, on the other hand, had far different reactions. These linen suited gentlemen with hankerchiefs peeking out of pockets looked at me as if I were a wild animal that they wanted to tame or mount or something.

It was just freaky.

I'd come to Spain expecting to find all the things my Cuban Spaniard lover is about, and instead started to find all the things she rebels against, well, in Madrid, anyway.

Granted I was staying near the opera, Madrid's version of truly uptown society, but man these folks were snobbbbbbyyyy.

I could not get myself to eat the way they did, four-course lunches and dinners after 10 p.m. So instead I gorged myself in the hotel's buffet breakfast, walked all over Madrid in the tardes (afternoon) and then sampled tapas and sangria from every outdoor caf that looked inviting in the early evening. I had meatballs and Sangria at the Plaza Mayor which was this huge many century old plaza surrounded by gorgeous buildings, outdoor cafés and lots of beggars.

I had the classic, potato and egg omelette with, yes, more sangria near the opera.

I had lots and lots of ensaladas mixtas (to remain regular as they say) ...

I visited the Prado museum to see the Spanish Renaissance paintings, darling, and, well, after two full days in Madrid, I was starting to feel like a snob, too.

Thankfully my next stop was Ibiza.

Going from Madrid to Ibiza is a bit like going from Connecticut to San Francisco. I mean I went from the uptown ascot crowd to the wild, sex- sand jet set junky sect.

My plane to Ibiza was loaded with gay men and older women who'd had way too much plastic surgery.

Thankfully in Ibiza my boy toy pal Tommy and his entourage were waiting to occupy my nights. I spent my days floating in el mar (the Mediterranean) for those like moi who have never been in this ocean before ... it's a lot more salty, so don't shave your legs less than 24 hours before a swim. OUCH!! ...

Tommy showed me the old town ... and took me into a magnificent 400-year-old fort that is now filled with tiny cafés, gay men's bars, lots of horny very young straight folks and little shops. It seemed impossible climbing the narrow stone steps farther up into the fort that anyone lived there but the place was riddled with little holes that turned into people's apartments.

It felt a lot more like Greece than a Spanish island, and I just loved it.

But I must say although there were enough gay men to fill a decent size city, there wasn't a lesbian in sight ... unless you count those rather large German women. I mean, who knows?

The boys, by the way, are little, and no, I don't mean that way. Well, I didn't check, but most of them looked as though they'd be 120 pounds soaking wet. Hell, I had more muscle than most of them did.

Tommy (who has a swimmer's body, rather buff but not overkill) explained that one of the reasons he likes Spain so much is because all the boy-boys love muscle but hate working out so its easy to be a superstar.

Well lemme tell you honeys, I put on my sexy silk top, avec rather noticeable cleavage and felt like chopped liver next to Madame Tommy. I thought our waiter was gonna pour beef sauce on my lap just to get a little closer to Tom.

Seemed like the only folks in Ibiza who were interested in moi were old drunks from London. Sigh. Story of my life. The more they drink, they more they love me.

Anyway I was anointed fag hag extraordinaire and taken into the boy bars with Tommy and company ... quite an experience to be looking out over 400-year-old stone steps and walls, the distant twinkly lights of the old town and meanwhile watch a parade of drag queens on stilts promenade by.

After four days of sun, fun and grilled sole with the head on, (had to cover it with a napkin it kept staring at me) it was off to Barcelona.

I expected to like Barcelona the most and did.

This city seemed to capture the best of Madrid and mix it with Paris and the edge of Manhattan. It was a big city that never felt overwhelming with something for everyone.

I walked the Ravel, a kilometer or so of street acts, peddlers, cafés and flamenco dancers and then cut into the wondrous old gothic quarter which wound me round and round tiny old streets too small for a car or even a large tourist, where laundry clinging from iron balconies perpetually dripped on my head.

At 10 at night, I dressed up and went out to the adventure called dinner. One night was a Spanish Renaissance place that fed me half a lamb pulled out of some wooden fire. One night a Basque meal of salt cod and tomatoes. I had more tapas and sangria and way more cheese than anyone should ever eat, and still expect to wear tight jeans.

I visited the beaches created when an industrial area was turned into housing for the '92 Olympics. I counted five beaches and hundreds of restaurants on a port nearby. It was so amazing to go from the center of the city to the beach in a 6-euro cab ride. Then to walk from a beach filled with families and children to an entire nude beach in a matter of minutes. ... And yes ... as it turns out ... they really were that small. ... Sheesh don't these guys take vitamins over here?!

I took a tour to visit all the modernist buildings of the mad-man architect Gaudí, who seems to have done to buildings what Dali did to canvas. My favorite was the gothic church with what looked like baskets of fruit perched on top.

Barcelona was either filled with lesbians or filled with rather aggressive women wearing back-packs who seemed to love to make eye contact and not look away no matter what. I don't know if they were cruising me or doing some sort of rite of passage thing that I was not privy to, but what do you expect from a city that loves bullfights?

That's gross by the way. Shit, 15,000 people gathering around to watch some jerk torture a bull. Someone needs to send PETA out there PRONTO!

I walked so much in Barcelona that the bottoms of my feet are covered in blisters, but I just never seemed to tire of the way the streets would wrap around and around and into something new and yet all made sense. I loved the modernist buildings next to the two- or three-century-old ones. I loved the gothic sections, remnants of the 14th century (although they weren't very nice to Jews around then, were they? Hmm.) ...

Actually when I went in search of the Jewish quarter I couldn't even find it. This was the section in the old city left after what was a large thriving community of Jews were either murdered or exiled. Nice.

What do you expect from a country that refuses to make anything without ham?

Anyway, that was many centuries ago, so I moved on. Forgive and forget sorta thing. ... Went to the Picasso museum to view his blue period, which I loved because it's dark, moody and, well, blue -- all the things that appeal to the New York aesthetic.

On my last night in Barcelona I visited the port for a huge plate of really frightening fried tiny fish with huge mouths filled with teeth. I just could not eat them for fear of them biting back. But the wine was wonderful and the olives glorious and all seemed just fine with the world.

And now I'm back.

And my muchacha is presently cooking me a Latin break-lunch that includes eggs and plantains, and I am rolling in the welcome that comes from having left her and run away to the country of her ancestry for nine days.

Was she worried? ... Hmmm. I don't know, but the attention is sweet and fruity like sangria.

Sangria by the way was fabulous in Madrid but disgusting in Ibiza. They put something in it that makes it taste like wine-flavored Alka Seltzer. In Barcelona, they add bubbles, too.

That's called fizzing up a good flat thing, amigos. ... Just leave the damn sangria alone.

Anyway, I'm back in my nice gray, brown and beige home ... enjoying a fabulous lack of red. There are no fish with heads on them here ... that I'm aware of, anyway ... and the evil stroke stewardess is a distant memory.

Next time I start with Barcelona and work my way into the tiny towns in the south, and I have go to learn how to say, "Stop staring at me or I'll stab you in the throat" in Spanish.

Adios!!

P.S. - All kidding aside ... Spain was mucho fantastico.

2002-07-17T23:10:00.000-04:00

My mother was a Depression baby.

I don't remember a single day in my entire childhood that I ever felt we weren't living on a budget.

"For a rainy day ..."

or

"You never know ..."

... were phrases offered to me instead of "Let's go to Mexico!"

My family did travel a lot, but our method for doing so was a camper wedged on top of my dad's old Ford pick-up. There was no AC in the back, (the camper part), no television, no music, nothing but the endless, stream of billboards whizzing by.

It wasn't so bad in the early '70s when the billboards were plentiful and entertaining, but by the late '70s, highway beautification had stepped in, and all we had to look forward to was another 60 miles of trees before the next rest stop.

I became a champion day-dreamer.

To this day, I have a fear of driving long distances without a co-pilot because I may go into "the zone" the second I hit a nice long stretch of open road.

I asked my folks a lot when growing up, if we could travel in higher style, to better places, or if I could just stay the fuck home and sun-bathe in the yard while they high-tailed up the highway, but Mom was relentless. She wanted us to see the country, and she wanted to do it all within some magical budget that she revealed to no one, but that was always there hovering over us like a green cloud.

Mom spoke fluent French and had a love of all things French. She had a pen-pal for 50 years in France whom she hadn't seen since college. We'd been to Montreal (cause you can drive there) countless times, but she'd never been to France or anywhere else off the North American continent.

I remember the time when, after all the kids were out of the house and life was quiet, my mother surveyed her retirement accounts, my dad's pension plan, the savings, the real estate investments and what was left for the kids and decided it was ok to let loose.

"Now I'm gonna have some fun," she told us. She had a stroke that year and died 5 years later.

"I will not postpone my life!" was the message I kept with me after she died.

But I forgot.

I got busy.

I spent years obsessing about my future, trying to create some kind of a nest egg for myself, trying to do something to make myself feel safe in this world.

I traveled a lot but rarely out of the tri-state area.

Then September 11th happened.

After months of feeling as though I could not leave New York City for any reason, because to do so would mean walking out on a loved one in trouble, I slowly started putting the pieces back together. But the puzzle had changed. I wasn't who I'd been anymore. I was someone new. Most of us were.

I looked at the new me with bewilderment. I'm still looking.

"I will not postpone my life" morphed into "Today I will live life."

I went to London and spent a week walking around in the rain, discovering the city by foot.

I took chances.

I let my guard down for the right people.

I jumped instead of tiptoeing.

All this is leading up to my crazy spontaneous trip to Spain.

I've never been to Spain. I don't speak Spanish. I hate to fly. I am frightened of going to new places. I am frightened of different countries. I am frightened.

I'm practical. I book trips well in advance. I get the best prices.

Not this time. It's a last-minute trip. Well, at least for me. I got a good price but not a great one, and I'm flying 4 times in one week. I fly into Madrid and after a few days go to Ibiza, spend some time there and then to Barcelona for 4 days.

It's not very me, but it is who I want to be.

More daring, more fun, more willing to embrace newness and change.

I head my mother's message and my new September 11th mantra, and they play off each other.

"I will not postpone my life. Today I will live life."

They have bonded into some kind of melody that plays in my head often. The lyrics change but essentially mean the same thing. It's usually sung to me by a raspy voiced rock-tress like Janis Joplin or Melissa Etheridge.

Today. I will live. Today I will fly. Today I will not be afraid and if I am I will take my fear and ride it into this excellent un-written chapter of my life. My life is today.

Buenos tardes, noches, dias ... take yer pick. I'll eat some fantastico comida for you-all.

Adios! This pequito senora is off to Madrid!

2002-07-11T18:08:00.000-04:00

Had something of an odd experience the other day.

I was walking to the gym (wanted to work off one too many orders of fish and chips from my recent Long Island trip).

A friend of a friend stopped me on the street to say hello. We got to talking, and she said she'd seen me in the 'hood before but did not say hi.

When I asked why, she said ... I had been simply unapproachable.

I assumed she was referring to the emotional battle armor I tend to strap on whenever I walk anywhere, a remnant of too many years in bad neighborhoods, but she wasn't.

"You were covered head to toe in soot and the look on your face ... your face ... well ... you were just glazed over," she said, but I still didn't understand until she added, "It was a few days after September 11th."

She'd obviously caught me on the end of one my long walks home from ground zero. I remember those walks. I would leave the site, filthy and exhausted and could never bear the thought of a taxi or the subway so I would walk home from ground zero to the East Village. I always cut through Chinatown, then went up the Bowery, over Houston and into the village. It was a long walk, but I never felt my feet touch the ground. It always seemed like I was riding on a conveyor belt. I think I must have daydreamed most of the way, I was always surprised when I reached Avenue A.

I guess what felt so odd about this simple exchange with this woman I barely know is that this walk, which seemed to me to be something out of a past life experience, had been witnessed by someone. She had watched me stream right past her on my conveyor belt and instinctively knew what I did not at the time understand, that I was not really there. I was buried somewhere underneath my numbness. I was standing still and the world was taking me for a ride.

I thought about the way my fingers and toes, arms, legs, cheeks, eyelids, scalp feel today, when I walk about the city. I can feel these things. When my feet touch the ground I can feel the impact. I wiggle my toes when they fall asleep and they wake up. The sun on my cheeks burns a little in a nice way. The breeze pulls my hair and I tilt my head back to let it pull some more. I like having my hair pulled. I'm in my body now. I'm back.

But.

How long was I gone?

Where did I go?

Did I bring anything back with me that I wasn't supposed to?

Did I leave something behind?

Were you gone, too?

Did you ride on conveyor belts in the fall of 2001?

Have you come home yet?

Have you?

2002-07-05T18:28:00.000-04:00

Did anyone in Manhattan try to mail a letter yesterday?

Yesterday being July 4th.

Well I did.

Yep I was determined to pay some bills that had been collecting dust in my Things to Be Ignored box, so I wrote a few checks, shoved 'em in envelopes and off I went.

At my corner mailbox, I pulled the handle, but the dad-burned door wouldn't open. Didn't faze me. I mean, this is the East Village. Anything could have happened. Might have been someone too wasted to tell the difference between the garbage can and the mailbox who crammed too much stuff in there, or the thing just might have been broken.

So I plodded on, undeterred.

Found another box on Avenue A, but it wouldn't open either. That's when it hit me. Duhhh. The mailboxes were locked shut.

I know it's odd to say, but none of the terror warnings for the Fourth of July had sunk in. This did. The %$#@&* mailboxes were locked!!

Not only did the reality of the fact that this city was worried about someone dropping bombs into our mailboxes hit me, I was also struck with the terrible notion that I would now have to finish all my day's errands while carrying a huge wad of letters.

Oh, how I suffer.

As the day progressed, I noticed other things, about a hundred cops on the corner of 14th and 1st getting ready to patrol the FDR, a whole lotta very nervous people walking even faster then usual, a ton of police barricades piled up to be delivered eastward.

Naturally all of this made me feel profoundly patriotic.

How dare I consider doing not much of anything on this day when I should be celebrating freedom and the fact that my building has a killer roof-deck.

So I threw a spontaneous potluck rooftop soiree.

Tommy and Ed came over with beer and wine. I bought a shit-load of Chinese chicken wings, some hummus, chips, cheese crackers ... the usual Rossi vittles. Carol and Sandy came over with Thai food. Kathleen brought up a tart (the kind you eat not the kind you date).

Turned out my neighbor Mike was having a get together with some of his rocker (DUDE!) pals on the roof, too, so it was a real party.

Now here's the deal with my roof. Even though it's practically on Avenue C, we get a lousy view of the fireworks, 'cause one of the projects is so huge it blocks out the central view. So basically what we see is the fireworks that shoot up high enough to be over the building or what comes cascading down the sides. It kinda sucks, but when given the choice of cramming in between thousands of rowdy people on the FDR amid high terror alerts, or watching the tops and sides of the fireworks from a comfy roof deck with tons of wine and munchies, everyone thought this was the way to go.

First thing Kathleen said to me when I met up with her on the deck: "Did you see the Batmobile?"

Turns out a fighter jet was patrolling, not to mention a whole lotta helicopters.

Next door to us is Christopher's tenement building. It's a story higher and a bit to the east, so they have a perfect view of the works. Earlier, Christopher had promised to invite us all up to his roof. I was expecting to get a call to go over there any second. Instead some cops were peering down at us from his roof.

"Did you see the snipers?" one of Mike's Dude! pals asked.

Is that what they are?

Then Kathleen's cell phone rings. It's Christopher. An elderly woman who lives in his building was just found dead on his roof. Yeah the roof that was only about 15 feet away from us. The cops were there for her, not as snipers.

The woman, who as a rule could generally be found buying beer at the corner bodega had gone up on the roof in this sweltering hundred degree day to drink. She'd passed out at some point and lain there in the intense heat all day long. How long she'd been dead, I don't know, but Christopher said she was barely recognizable.

The night took on a bit of an eerie tone after that. None of us knew her except as one of the many characters in the neighborhood, but knowing that a corpse was lying just beyond the wall 15 feet away is a bit of strange element to mix into a party.

I guess it was good thing that she died on July 4th. Who knows how long it would have taken for them to find her if not. This night was the most social night of the year for her building. Christopher told me the whole building goes up there on July 4th. It's tradition.

They were there last night, but they were quiet.

I wondered how it felt to them to climb up there, ready to celebrate and instead find a dead neighbor.

When the fireworks started, I forgot all about the corpse, and the mailboxes and the cops and the batplane and delighted in the tops and sides of a gorgeous fireworks display. We all cheered and hooted and hugged and kissed and joked.

Kathleen passed the tart around, and I kept screaming, "Stop calling me that!" every time she offered, "Tart?"

Carol regaled us all with her non-PC rants about the proper revenge for 9/11. Let's just say it left the Sears building as the tallest in the world. Tommy flexed his newly developed biceps (swimming with resistance paddles or some such thing). Ed and Kathleen bonded over celebrity bathroom decor. Sandy explained exactly what "Mushy" means in her country. It was a fun group.

This, then, was the night, the first Fourth of July after September 11th, with good friends and lots of laughter amid the strangeness of it all.

I let my eyes stroke the perfect view of the red, white and blue Empire State building and then turned toward the hole in the sky that was the World Trade Center.

"The sky seems so empty over there," Carol said.

"Not to me," I thought to myself, because I see them still standing there. They flicker in and out like candlelight, but they're there.

They are always there.

2002-06-26T18:26:00.000-04:00

While I was in Provincetown, I saw Promises, a documentary in which 7 Palestinian and Israeli children were filmed over a two-year period.

The documentary, filmed by a Jew, did seem to me, to have a slant in favor of the Palestinians. It certainly managed to highlight their plight without emphasizing the fear Israelis face over suicide bombings. Aside from that, the message I got from the film was simple: Children are born ready to love and embrace each other, then are taught hatred at a very early age.

The most touching scene perhaps was when twin Israeli boys maybe 11 years old are brought to meet a family of Palestinian children, and they all wind up playing and laughing together like school chums. Two years later, there is no hope for them as friends. The seeds of hatred are far too deeply planted. For the Israelis it seemed to be mostly about fear. For the Palestinians it seemed to be mostly about anger.

I've thought a lot about the war in the Middle East, and I have always felt far too uneducated to talk about it in depth. I try to study as much about it as possible, but in the end I think the only way I can speak is to go with my gut instincts.

I'm not a political scholar, and sadly, I have never been to Israel, so I think I'll just tell you what I think and feel, and you may or may not agree.

What has always come shining through to me is this: The true enemies of the Palestinian people are the Palestinian leaders and the leaders of the surrounding Arab nations. The Palestinian leaders have either been useless figureheads who refuse to admit their failures or warmongers who only want the destruction of every Jew in Israel.

Certain Arab leaders have never done anything to help the mishmash of people from various Arab nations whom we now call Palestinians. They have not let them into their own countries, and they have clearly seen them as valuable only as a pawn in their public opinion war against Israel. These Arab leaders have purposely done nothing to improve the lives of Palestinians because they want them to be a shining flag of martyrdom and anti-Semitism.

To this end, they have succeeded.

Anti-Semitism is the worst it has been since the Holocaust. Israel has been attacked by countries all over the world as a murderer and warmonger for simply defending itself.

No rules that apply to anyone else apply to Israel. Even the term "refugee" has been changed for the Palestinian. For them, "refugee" applies to anyone who had been living in Israel for more than 2 or 3 years, and their children. So 750,000 refugees are now in the millions.

Why have the Arab nations not talked about the right of return of all the Jews who were kicked out their countries, their positions taken, their lives threatened?

If I were running things in the Middle East, I would say, simply, "Let's stop trying to get along and accept the fact that at least for this generation, the hatred runs too deep." I would create a separate Palestinian state, erect a 20-foot wall (a wall is in progress, anyway) and say to the Palestinian people, "Have a nice life. Please go in peace and never talk to me again unless you come as a friend."

Israel has always been willing to come to the peace table. Time and time again it has tried and compromised and tried again. Israelis want to live their lives without fear of being murdered by suicide bombers. They are human. They want and will always want peace.

I know that many innocent Palestinians are caught up in all this and are living in less then adequate conditions. They want a nice home. They want peace. They want a good life for themselves and for their children. They are human, and they deserve these things.

So I say to these people. "You can see what your suicide bombers and your hatemongers and your useless leaders and Islamic fundamentalists are doing to the peace process and to you. Rise up and stop them.

"Tell them to shut the fuck up!"

I have never liked President Bush. I don't care for the Republican party, anyway.

But I have to say that this bold speech he just made asking for the replacement of Arafat and the halting of terror and for a total restructuring of the Palestinian leadership was right on.

Arafat is a terrorist, a murderer, a liar, a double-talking false leader, and he needs to go, yesterday. Hamas needs to go. Terrorists need to go. The Palestinians need to get rid of bloodthirsty pseudo holy men who anoint themselves as godly and then call for the murder of innocents.

If I were running things over there, I would exile Arafat to Brooklyn and have him spend the rest of his days living in the Chasidic section of Williamsburg.

Bon voyage, motherfucker!

2002-06-19T12:50:00.000-04:00

Oddly, it hadn't occurred to me how much 9/11 has seeped into my very pores until I woke up yesterday morning after three days in Provincetown and realized what that odd, "I forgot something" feeling tugging at the bottom of my stomach was.

A complete lack of 9/11!

That is not to say that this fun, lazy, artsy, gay seaside summer community feels no remorse for September 11th ... quite the contrary. This is, after all, a town largely fed by city folks from New York and Boston. ... It's just that the gritty, in-your-face 9/11 reminders of downtown Manhattan are nowhere to be found.

I guess it really hadn't occurred to me how much these little daily reminders have flavored my life. The memorials of candles and dying flowers in front of the fire-stations, the mural of the towers and the remnants of Jesus candles on Avenue A and 13th Street, the corner I swing by on my way to the gym.

There are all the local businesses displaying "Remember Our Heroes"-type posters and the hawkers on 14th Street with their "ground zero" baseball hats.

My whole neighborhood is seasoned in September.

But not here.

No Provincetown is the last stop. The last piece of land before the ocean, the tip of the cape, the end of the road.

This is where you come to escape your life or to find a new one.

Everyone here is trying to forget something or find something.

There are people falling in love, even if it's just for one night.

There are people starting over, even if tomorrow they will start over again in another bar with a different beer on tap.

I've been coming here on and off for 10 years.

I've fallen in love and in lust here, buried loved ones here (well, in spirit, anyway), walked the beach along the harbor, watched the sunset over the breaking waves.

This is a town for new pains and the healing of old ones.

What better place to come with the spirits of 3,000 souls haunting you?

Perhaps I will bury them just before high tide.

There are no memorials here, no World Trade Center murals, no ground zero T-shirts, no Jesus candles filled with old rain water and flower petals.

But there are the distant sounds of gulls and whale boats sounding their horns and waves and heartbeats and many, many, broken hearts ... mending.

Slowly, slowly mending.

2002-06-13T21:03:00.000-04:00

I'm working on a self-portrait.

This is a dangerous thing, because it was a self-portrait that prompted me to stop painting for eight years, about 10 years ago.

I think it was some sort of reverse Dorian Gray thing, but the more I painted it, the uglier I got. Finally when I was looking like Elvira on a really, really bad hair day, I threw the damn thing in the closet, took out a pen and paper and wrote for eight years.

I'm not saying I regret it. Although it was a little odd to just stop painting for ... eight friggin' years!! It was kinda nice to spend that time discovering my voice, and not just the one I hear in the shower. I don't even know why or how I started painting again, and FYI I haven't slowed down a bit. But I can tell you this: I must either be an idiot or the bravest motherfucker around, because here I am painting a self-portrait again, and it's the same damn image -- me in the grass in Provincetown -- and the same colors, too, brown, green and burnt orange.

It's like I'm being eaten alive by the colors used to paint picnic tables.

Sheesh. Well I guess I'm facing my demons or something, but what is it about me in the grass that mucks up my entire creative mojo?

Was I once attacked by a lawn-mower?

Did a giant praying mantis jump off a blade of grass and bite my nose?

Whatever. ... this painting is about as fun as Newt Gingrich at an S&M convention. ... Hmmmm. Then again ... Well, nevermind.

My point is, oh what the hell was my point, ah yes, my point is that its very dangerous to paint self portraits when your entire sense of self-esteem rests securely in two things; how many phone calls (or emails) you receive from friends and admirers and how many editors want to publish your work.

Presently I've just has a nice little score with a cover story in Jewsweek, but my self-esteem is still scrubbing the toilet bowl, because the woman in my life is busy, and all my pals seem to have managed to survive without me for two days.

Two days!!!!! Doesn't anyone like me anymore?!?!??!?

This all stems from the 7th grade cafeteria; I know it.

Anne Owens, wherever you are, I owe you a punch in the nose!

Anyway, there's not much rhyme or reason to this week's rant, but then, that's why they call it a rant, anyway ... isn't it?

I got to start using more pink ...

2002-06-05T12:53:00.000-04:00

Life is full of ceremonies.

There are the obvious ones we all know about and often celebrate: graduations, weddings, the blowing out of candles.

Then come all the tiny ones, ceremonies so subtle we don't even know they've occurred until we look back.

I remember the last walk I took through the house I'd grown up in. It was emptied of all the clutter and mayhem my mom used to fill it with. It was empty of my mom. It wasn't really a home anymore so much as a shell.

I walked through every room, running my hand along the walls. I climbed the stairs and let my fingers trace the banister. Mostly I sat on the windowsill in my old bedroom. This room seemed shockingly small. Well, it was, maybe only 100 square feet at the most. Yet this tiny haven had been my salvation. For the seven years I lived there, it was the only place I could go to simply be myself. ... Whoever that was. How often had I slid open the window so I could sneak a cigarette late at night while my father lay sleeping in the next room? How many times had I hid under the covers with a flashlight writing poetry about rebelling against everything I was told I had to be.

In the '70s, the room had been wallpapered with Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin posters; a black light illuminated the fluorescent rock stars. Then I'd switched to punk rock and Blondie and The Sex Pistols took their turns at decor. I'd regarded my home as a prison, my parents as the wardens and this tiny room as my one window to the world.

Then I ran away. ... A lot.

Sitting there in the windowsill of my childhood perch, I was holding my own private ceremony. It would be the last time I would see this home ... at least this way. Shortly after that, it was sold to a young family who quickly renovated it, expanded it and modernized all its features. I've driven by. It's barely recognizable now.

I understand now that my pilgrimage that day was more than a good-bye, it was a full circle kind of ceremony, comparing who I became to who I was and maybe taking a moment to just decide that there really was a lot of love back then, mixed in with all the fighting.

I've had some ceremonies of a different kind in the last week or so.

Since September of last year I've had a bright yellow hard hat,a Seaman's Church volunteer pass and other bits of ground zero paraphernalia hidden away. These things sat in the back corner of my hallway coat closet, wedged under the pile of 9/11 photographs yet to be put in an album (if I even decide that's what should be done with them. I really have no idea what's right).

Opening the closet to hang a jacket became an odd experience for me. At face level was an array of coats and jackets. At knee level was my entire September 2001 experience in photos, ventilation masks, flashlight and mostly, in that hard hat.

It was like my dirty little secret.

'That closet started to feel like some weird morph between Pandora's box and ... well ... coming out of the closet.

Last week I took my hard-hat out of the closet. I dusted off the volunteer pass I'd worn and draped it around the hat. Then I looked around my home. The walls were still empty since I'd yet to pick up the paintings that hung there from the gallery . I found a place near the window and hung the hat and pass, adjusted them, stepped back, re-adjusted them. It was as if I were hanging a master work of art.

My whole mood lifted. The dirty little secret wedged in the closet instantly became a source of light. There it was, this yellow beacon of brightness. I looked at the hat and in just the seconds it held my gaze, it seemed as though it had always hung there, as much as who I have become as a result of my experience in those days in September now feels as though it was always a part of me, a new thing that feels old.

It's taken me these nine months to come around to this point, but I now know the reason I had a strange smile in the photographs taken of me down there and in the video tape that I have just now, finally, cautiously viewed.

It's because there, in the midst of the worst horror, of mass murder on a scale that went beyond the imagination, I was doing something, anything to help and so was everyone else around me. We were scared, angry, sorrowful, lost, desperate and so many other terrible feelings, but we were also proud. We were proud as hell.

I have some extra videotapes that I bought from the church where I volunteered. St. Paul's created a documentary of sorts about their relief effort. I appear early in the tape, in my yellow hard hart and volunteer mask. I'm wired and chirpy and probably in shock, but I'm there.

I've started giving these tapes to the people in my life that I love, partly because I want them to see what it was really like down there, because no words can ever really capture it and partly because I want them to have this moment in my life, preserved on tape, when I was the proudest I've ever been.

The viewing of the tape, by the way, was another ceremony. I shared it with a friend who has just come into my life in a huge way and an old friend with whom I'd fallen out of touch in the last year or so. We sat there together on a comfy white couch and watched the second plane hit, the massive destruction of those first days after and the rescue efforts.

Then I appeared on the screen and talked about what I'd seen when I first got there. I described the 200-year-old tombstones covered in the day-to-day work papers of the World Trade Center.

The irony of viewing this tape for the first time, nestled between a friend from my past and a new friend who had blossomed in my life after 9/11 was not lost on me.

I expected to feel something terrible after seeing this film, but in fact I felt a sense of peace. It was the first time since those days, that I could simply point to the screen and say, "That's what it was like," instead of trying to find the words. Those words really don't exist, anyway. No piece of language can ever truly describe that level of devastation.

It was also a moment of closure for me and perhaps an acknowledgement that who I have become as a result of 9/11 and who I used to be are now meshed together into this new person, whoever she is.

I can't wait to get to know her better.

2002-05-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

There were no speeches this morning, no priests or rabbis offering blessings.

No clergy of any kind claimed this moment for their own.

There were no celebrities sharing witticisms or condolences with the crowd. Politicians came to show their respects, but did not take this occasion to drum up a few more votes for Election Day. They did not take the podium.

There was no podium.

Not this morning.

Today was a quiet day.

The crowds watched from their perches in and around ground zero or from television sets scattered about this country as a fireman struck the bell in the 5, 5, 5, 5 alarm signaling the loss of one of their own.

We watched as the stretcher draped in the American flag, acting as a symbol for all those whose remains would never be found, was carried out carefully, solemnly, quietly by a group of rescue workers.

We watched them place the stretcher in an ambulance and escort the ambulance away. Its lights whirled, but no siren sounded.

Suddenly, there was sound, as the beating of the drums in the pipe and drum band broke through the quiet. The drumbeat was slow and steady like a heartbeat.

Burly police officers in kilts began their march.

We watched as the last steel beam, draped in black then red,white and blue was slowly driven out on a flat bed truck. This beam, on which was scrawled the names of too many who were lost so clearly looked like exactly what it was, a giant coffin, a majestic coffin.

We listened as buglers played taps and knew this was more than a funeral. It was an end and a beginning at the same time.

We watched as the men and women saluted, then slowly joined the line of rescue workers walking out of ground zero, leaving the site on this their last day.

The former mayor was there, the senators, our present mayor and other political figures but they kept quiet, some with their heads bowed and slowly walked off as others did without calling attention to themselves. This was not their day. This was not about them.

This nightmare began nine months ago with screams and explosions, fire and horror, but it ended with dignity, quiet pride and wondrous, selfless heroism.

I wanted to go to ground zero in person this morning but something inside of me decided that the space I might occupy was better left for the mourner or a loved one or a cop or a fireman or someone who just needed to be there more than I did.

I closed the door on my business and my day-to-day world and watched with the rest of you all as grace was illustrated more clearly than I'd ever seen it.

When it was over, I walked to the canvas I had just begun painting and looked at the words I had scrawled in the upper-left corner.

   Today

   I forgot

   To

   Be

   Afraid

2002-05-27T12:57:00.000-04:00

Now they say the work at ground zero will end and there will be a ceremony and all those men will try to go on with their lives and so will we, and I'm sitting here wondering why I don't feel happy that the work is ending.

Maybe some part of me feels that as long as there are people there working and searching for bodies and answers, there is some kind of hope.

Hope for what, I don't know.

It's been a rough week for me, to tell you the truth.

First there were the terror alerts, rekindling all my paranoias. I climbed the stairs to the roof the morning after the alerts hit the airwaves to have my coffee in the sun. It was a beautiful crisp morning.

It was hard not to feel an eerie deja vu sipping my coffee as countless helicopters whirled by. Most of them whirled about downtown.

The Brooklyn Bridge was just off to the downtown east of me.

The World Trade Center had been just off to the downtown west.

I don't think the helicopters would have bothered me much if it weren't such a pretty morning.

Pretty, crisp, sunny mornings tend to make me nervous now.

What I mostly felt, as I watched far too many helicopters whirl by, was lonely.

My dirty little secret of September 11th was how alone it all made me feel. No one in my life seemed to truly understand what I was feeling, what I had seen, where I had been, but then I couldn't understand where they were coming from, either. All of our processes were and are so different.

My lover and I dealt with 9/11 in ways, as opposite to each other as could be. I needed to throw myself into it head on and had no interest in anything else for some time. For her, 9/11 hit too close to home, home being war-torn. She opted to stay as far away from the towers and the turbulence as possible, which meant uptown or out of town. Needless to say, September was a rough time for us, neither one being able to really understand the other. I have no idea what its like to grow up in a war-torn country. She has no idea what it felt like to watch the towers fall or to be down there in those first days. I guess we're even.

I know it's unfair to expect any one else's process of this horrific event to be similar to my own. Even the great people I met down there who were in the trenches with me, were dealing with things in their very own and very different way.

Carol has still not accepted that it happened. She said she crawled inside herself and has not come out yet. If that's true, I'd love to meet the full her one day; the submerged Carol has been so sweet.

Dom says he got hooked on the adrenaline and now wants to join the Marines. Dom is over 50, but I think he can do anything he sets his mind to.

As I said, it's been a strange week.

The terror alerts rekindled those moments of real fear after the towers were hit. I felt frightened at the oddest times. For example, I was waiting for the subway, and I could see it stopped on the tracks not moving. I started to wonder if the blast would carry the 200 feet or so to me, if it were to blow. I realized I was backing up.

Then my personal life just, well, blew up this week.

My ex-wife was in town. We shared 5 years together, and while we didn't work out as lovers, she probably was the closest thing I had to family. I think of her now as some morph between my sister, daughter and mother. You can see why we needed to be platonic. Her parents (my former in-laws) wanted to have dinner, just the four of us.

I hadn't seen them since she and I were together. We've been broken up now for over three years.

It went well actually. They were very sweet, and the conversation flowed during dinner. We even went for a walk through my neighborhood after. In the times I'd met them before I think they were more concerned about their daughter's sexuality and me being caught up in that. I don't think they ever really saw me before. I don't think I ever really saw them, either.

I like them.

My sister was in town (yes same week), visiting yet another doctor to help her with a disease that her doctor has said is part real, part imagined. He gave her drugs, as all her doctors do. It took her less than 24 hours to complain that the drugs weren't to her liking. I think they're running out of things to give her. I guess I am, too.

So, as if this past week could get any longer, or more complex, my lover and I mutually decided to separate, or "take a break," as we put it. I don't know whether it will be for a week, a month, a summer or forever. I honestly have no clue, and I have no clue how to work out the problems between us either, if they can be worked out.

Certainly there's no shortage of love between us; there never was. I could fill this site with myriad theories, but that would be far too personal to share with you and far too unfair to her, so I'll just say ... things seem to really suck right now.

Also, according to all the theatre folks who were in Reaction, I've got the post-show blues. They all warned me about this, that if you dedicate six months of your life to a project and then the project finally happens and then ends, no matter how successful it was, you may wind up feeling like total crap afterwards.

Evidently the only cure is another huge project and, oh, traveling helps. Dror, my partner, is taking the month of July to travel from China to Russia and beyond on the Mongolian Express. That guy has balls. Well, he's a guy, he's supposed to have them.

I guess I feel the travel bug, too, but all my pull points to the same place its been pointing to for a year now, Israel. I'm resolved to go there soon. Fuck the suicide bombers. I need to go to Israel despite them. Or maybe because of them. I have no idea.

Anyway, my brain is fried, and this rant has delved a little deeper into my personal life than I generally go, but hey, life is short. I might as well say what I have to now; sometimes tomorrow never comes.

2002-05-17T21:14:00.000-04:00

I was coming up to my favorite place on the 59th Street Bridge: on the upper roadway, a little more than halfway in. That's where it happens ... Manhattan spreads out like giant open arms, dazzling my eyes with a million twinkly lights. It's just perfection.

Close to midnight, after a hard night's work catering someone else's wedding, reeking of garlic, basil, and champagne vinegar (especially from my boots, where I tend to drip everything), I had forgotten about the 59th Street Bridge moment.

My kitchen is now closer to the Midtown Tunnel, and with traffic what it's been, my drivers always beg to take the tunnel and I always give in, even though it means spending the extra cash on tolls.

But not last night.

I don't know if I've been on the bridge at night since 9/11, but if I was, it must have been like so many moments in my life, lost in the busyness of my mind and my hectic work week.

As a matter of fact, I'm just coming off one of the busier weekends in, like ... um ... forever.

Friday night was the closing bash for the art festival I co-produced. It was pretty involved, between the DJ, performance artists and live art auction. Yours truly was the auctioneer. Yeah, I had stage fright, but it passed quickly. I found myself hamming it up on the microphone, even offering a sensual foot massage with each purchase.

When someone bid on a piece, I would immediately compliment them: "We have an offer of $100 from the very attractive, well dressed and clearly sophisticated paddle number 15!"

It was a lot of work (six friggen months to put this baby together!), but the show was a huge success. We wound up coaxing about one thousand people through our doors and that's not easy when the gallery is on 3rd Avenue between 118th Street and 119th Street.

118th Street!?!

I get nosebleeds at 14th Street! Most of our patrons would not have been surprised if they were asked to show passports at 100th Street.

But they came and they loved us, and 12 of them bought art.

I would have loved to stay in bed the whole weekend. I can always tell when I'm beyond my exhaustion limit, because my knees hurt. My knees were on fire.

But I had a wedding to cater for 160 people, and the client was one of the most difficult, spectacularly annoying grooms I've ever catered for.

Let me just take a moment to illustrate the annoying part. At the beginning of the party, he handed me enough antipasto perhaps to make seven nice plates, and asked us to make 18 plates, one for each table.

We were also given the appropriate amount of (truly inferior) pate for 10 plates and asked to make 17 display plates. Then we discovered that two of the terrines had turned bad.

The joke of the night went something like this; I would hold up a sprig of parsley, and James would say, "Be careful! That's garnish for 78 plates!" Then Neil would chime in, "Are you crazy? That's the entire entrée!"

Well, you get the point.

Anyway, I was annoyed, exhausted and relieved when I finally left my staff to deal with the cutting of the cake and caught a car service home.

Once on the bridge, traffic was light and we moved quickly. I forgot about the obnoxious yuppie groom instantly. The breeze was crisp and delicious. It sliced thru the back windows and seemed to soothe all my troubles away.

Then it appeared: my long-awaited, perfect Manhattan view. How I love this moment. I began to savor it, as I always have. (I've been known to ask others in the car to stop talking.) I let my eyes scan left toward downtown and right toward the Upper East Side. I smiled at the red, white and blue of the Empire State Building.

The city seemed larger than life, impossibly huge, and yet soft and accessible. I felt as if I could reach out and touch the upper windows of the skyscrapers.

Then it hit me.

Just like that ... it hit me.

I'd seen the World Trade Center fall down.

I had awakened one morning, climbed the stairs to my roof and watched the World Trade Center fall down.

I watched the World Trade Center fall down!!!!!!

Is it possible that this is the first time I have truly realized this??

Have I been just going through the motions these many months since 9/11, telling everyone about my experience, but not really telling myself?

Is it like the sudden, impossible death of my mother during a drive back from Florida? I would get little bits of information, every so often, a little more every year until I was finally ready to get the whole story ... if that has yet occurred. Has it?

I saw the World Trade Center ... the fucking World Trade Center ... fall down!!!

It was such a beautiful morning. God, can anyone remember a more beautiful morning? The sky was gorgeous and blue, laced with perfect, sheer clouds. The sun was radiant. This was the kind of morning that forced you to call in sick just to run to the nearest patch of green and lie down.

It was such a pretty, pretty morning.

Bad things never happen on such beautiful days, do they?

Even when we were on the roof -- I and the neighbors and I had frantically dragged up there so that they could verify that I was not dreaming -- even when we were there watching the towers burn, I knew that bad things never happen on such beautiful days.

They will put the fires out. No one will die. It will be okay. They will send helicopters and do whatever they have to do and it will be fine. It will be fine because it's such a glorious morning.

I felt the sun soothing my cheeks and shoulders, and it made me smile nervously. I stared at the towers burning like giant candles, leaking smoky gray into the backdrop of endless blue. Suddenly, little silver squares began to spray out from one of the towers. They caught the sunlight perfectly, like thousands of tiny mirrors and came cascading down. Like a gazillion silver cards, they sprayed out and down, and then suddenly, one of the towers was gone. It was just gone.

I held my breath and felt the pull of millions of other people holding their breath, on this morning, this pretty, pretty morning, and then we exhaled. We exhaled in cries. We exhaled in disbelief. Mostly we exhaled in screams.

To some extent nothing else I saw, heard or felt really registered after that. Not the demise of the second tower, not my days in ground zero feeding the rescue crews, not all the walks on the West Side Highway looking for answers.

"That was the funeral," Nancy explained to me. "Everything after that was just the funeral."

This really happened.

When I got home, after the my reality trip on the 59th Street Bridge, I felt dizzy. I grabbed my mail on the way up the stairs but didn't sift through it until after I'd taken a bath and breathed for a bit.

There was a package from St. Paul's Church. They had sent me a copy of the magazine printed by Trinity Church and a video of the relief work done by the churches. I am told that I am in this video.

I fell into my old leather chair and sifted through the magazine. It was filled with the kind of photos we've all seen, the 9/11 shots of the buildings being hit by planes or falling down and then all the shots of those first days after.

I came upon a picture of a group of rescue workers lining up for food in ground zero. In the background is a blonde woman in a yellow hard hat working the barbecue. The smoke from the grill makes a haze out of part of her face, but it's clear who she is.

She's me.

This means, I was there.

The timing of receiving this package 30 minutes after the hugest reality jolt I've probably ever had, seems more than a coincidence.

I'm not a religious woman.

I don't even know if I'm a spiritual person, whatever that means.

But I do think that sometimes, God tells you things when you're ready to hear them.

2002-05-08T17:54:00.000-04:00

My life has been very intense these last weeks. ...

I've found myself in a constant state of stress, anxiety, expectation, pride, disappointment, amazement, fatigue, adrenalin and exhilaration.

Have I begun a wild, torrid affair?

Moved to a new city?

Joined the NYFD?

Nah.

I've been co-producing (along with my new fave boy buddy Dror) an art festival.

I never thought I could find something to do that would so totally combine every aspect of my past.

When I was 16, I worked as a barker on the Long Branch Amusement Pier, calling people in to spin the wheel and win cigarettes. Closing night (this Friday), I'm supposed to be the art auctioneer.

At the age of 17, tired of pacing the gallery streets begging the snotty curators to look at my portfolio, I produced the first of several alternative art shows. Twenty years later ... here I am again.

I spent five years in my early 20s working as one of NYC's more flamboyant bartenders and five hours opening night ... making sure all the beer and champagne was iced down.

I've been a caterer in New York for 12 years now, and aside from the fact that I kept waiting for the bride to cut the cake ... I felt exactly like I was on the job at Friday's art opening. Actually, I was on the job. I catered opening night; 1,000 hors d'oeuvres, to be exact.

Thank God for Neil, my fabulous chef, who allows me to be in three places at one time.

In my late 20s, I joined up with some of my gal pals (which included two ex-lovers ... natch) and founded Nasty Girl Productions. We promoted wild girl nights and had the distinction of being the first dyke party in New York with strippers. We were even picketed by the dykes-against-pornography posse, many of whom I have since seen in women's clubs tipping go-go girls.

Of course, what have I been more than anything else? A promoter, handing out flyers, emailing, constantly on the phone, calling the newspapers, getting liquor sponsors ... and hey, we almost had a stripper opening night!

A woman with a full back tattoo paced about as the walking display piece for one of our artists. The artwork creeped down unto her waiting buttocks. Nice; very nice. I did not put any money down her backless, buttless dress, although it was very tempting.

Lastly and perhaps mostly ... I am and have always been an artist, either as a writer or a painter.

In this show I displayed my paintings with written text on them, I suppose this is my last ditch effort to try to smash both parts of my brain together. Everyone seemed to like it. I hope. Actually a few people said the work was powerful. I like that word a lot.

Powerful.

I guess powerful is how I've been feeling ... and yeah, pissed off, exhausted, burn-out and terrorized. With 13 artists and 7 performance artists in the show, I feel like the mom, but not of The Brady Bunch ... more like of the Osbourne clan.

I'm not sure where all of this is going, although I do know that we haven't even hit closing night yet, and Dror and I are already chatting up ideas for our next show.

I do know that producing a weeklong art festival/exhibition/benefit in Manhattan feels like a very excellent "fuck you" to the pricks who thought September 11th was going to crush our souls.

What better way to fight against terrorism: to survive and excel and help create something new and magical.

The labor pains have lasted six months, and I know I'm gonna have some vicious stretch marks, but the baby is pretty damn adorable.

By the way, if you're in New York this week, come to closing night! No strippers, but there are some sexy cocktail waitresses in low-cut red dresses. Don't put any money down their cleavage though; they don't seem to like that. ... Odd.

REACTION
A Multi-Media Art Exhibition/Festival To Benefit the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
At the DNA Studio Gallery
2174 3rd Avenue (between 118th and 119th Streets)

Friday, May 10, 2002
7-10 PM
Live Auction at 8 PM sharp.

Some art festivals open with a bash; Reaction did. 700 art lovers attended opening night, but Reaction has a lot more celebrating to do.

Closing night promises to be the biggest event of this weeklong art festival with a live auction, MC'd by two noted New York City performers: Joanna Lange and David Tornabene.

There will also be a night of music by the world famous DJ $mall ¢hange of WFMU!

...and special live performances by Laura Dubrule, Suzie Evjen and Max Evjen!

This week long Art Festival at the DNA Studio Gallery in Spanish Harlem, which opened May 3, offers a chance to celebrate the great surviving spirit of New York artists. Reaction explores the ripple effects of September 11th on the work of a wide range of painters, sculptors, photographers and performers working in a variety of media. Each artist shows samples of pre-9/11 work allowing the viewers to note whether or not subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes have occurred in their style, media, or subject material. The bulk of the work on exhibit are pieces created after Sept. 11th, 2001.

Fifty percent of all sales from the show go directly to The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a non-profit organization known for having provided free art studios in The World Trade Center. Funds go towards LMCC's programs that provide workspaces, grants and exhibitions for emerging artists
throughout New York City. The remainder of income goes directly to the exhbiting artists. DNA Gallery is donating its space and services for the exhibition/festival.

Visual artists in Reaction include Gus Murphy, Brenda Bradley, Lisa Barnstone, Jeremy Garrett, Dan-thanh Ton-That, Kathleen Perkins, Dror Katz,
Rossi, Yehudit Feinstein, Fawn Potash, Melissa Cacioppo, Ed Williams and John Daquino.

Performance artists include Caroline Brown and Sally Sockwell, Laura Dubrule, Joanna Lange and David Tornabene, Suzie Evjen, and Jen Abrams.

Exhibition/festival produced by Dror Katz and Rossi.

Contributors- Campari, Anheuser-Busch, Coca Cola Enterprises, New York Beverage, Tri-Serve Party Rental, The DNA Studio Gallery, The Raging Skillet, Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless and Paul Smart

**Bring cash or checks for the auction **

Silent auction from 7-8 PM

For further information go to www.dnastudio.org, or call 212-289-8959.

2002-04-29T12:51:00.000-04:00

Hey, y'all.

I'm in the pre-production crazies for the big art show, (see info below), so I'll be short and sweet in this week's rant.

Basically, I've dedicated the last four months of my life to co-producing this amazing event that will showcase the work of a wide range of NYC artists and performance artists.

100% of the profit goes to a great cause; The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

It's been a wild few months, and there's still plenty more to do, but working with these talented sculptors, painters, photographers and installation artists and combining all our work, (mine, too, YAY) into this one great show has been a life-changing experience.

I look on this as my revenge against 9/11.

You tried to kill us, take our spirit, turn us into darker, frightened people. ...

Well, here we are ... the artists ... of NY Fucking City saying ... we're here ... we have no fear, and our work is more powerful and we are more powerful than ever before!!

Hmmm, ok ... I'm getting into Norma Rae mode again ... gotta stop drinking caffeine. ...

Maybe I'll shut up. ... Just come to the show ... and buy something, for crying out loud!!!

See ya.

REACTION
A Multimedia Art Exhibition and Performance Festival To benefit NYC Art and artists.

At the DNA Studio Gallery
2174 3rd Ave between 118 and 119

Opening night Friday, May 3, from 7-11
Performance art Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.
Gallery hours Monday, May 6, to Friday, May 10, by appointment

Closing Friday Night May 10th, 7-10 PM, Live Auction at 8:00 PM sharp

This weeklong Art Festival at the DNA Studio Gallery in Spanish Harlem is a chance to celebrate the great surviving spirit of New York artists. Reaction will explore the ripple effects of September 11th on the work of a wide range of New York artists.

This diverse gallery/festival will showcase art created before and after 9/11. Each artist will show a sample or samples of pre- 9/11 work to allow the viewers to note subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes in their style, media, or subject material. The bulk of the work on exhibit will be pieces created after Sept 11th, 2001.

"Without planning it, I and a lot of other artists have seen our work change," said Rossi, co-producer of the show. "It's like, here we are, so many months after this terrible tragedy, and suddenly we realize that the color of our paint is softer or perhaps the subjects we photograph are suddenly dolloped with tiny bits of patriotism."

The show will feature a wide range of media from painting, sculpture and photography to digital art, movie making, installations and performances.

"Our point is to show that creativity could not be stopped by terror," said Dror Katz, co-producer of the show. "We believe that art, in any form, is the way to express emotions, feelings and ideas about the historical events we have witnessed."

The artists in New York were deeply affected by the tragedy: In addition to the emotional toll, artists' funds were cut and grants canceled. In the spirit of the show, the producers of Reaction are giving 100% of all gallery profits to an organization that helps artists in need: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. This nonprofit organization is perhaps best known for providing free art studios in The World Trade Center.

They are now active in providing workspaces, grants and exhibitions for emerging artists all over New York City .

50% of the sales of art will go directly to the artist, the other 50% to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The show will consist of visual artists ranging from painters and photographers to sculptors, film-makers and installation artists and an impressive roster of New York City performance artists.

Reaction will begin with a gala art opening Friday, May 3 from 7:00 until 11:00 PM, with catering donated by The Raging Skillet catering company.

The next two days will be an art festival dedicated to showing the works of talented performance artists. The performances on Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, will be at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.

Monday, May 6 until Friday, May 10 will have gallery hours by appointment only.

Reaction will close with a gala art auction and reception on Friday, May 10, from 7:00 to 10:00 PM. The live auction will begin promptly at 8:00 PM. Buyers will need checks or cash on hand to bid.

Reaction is being produced by Rossi and Dror Katz

DNA Studio Gallery
2174 3rd Ave., 3rd floor
NY, NY 10035
212-289-8959
www.dnastudio.org

2002-04-25T07:33:00.000-04:00

I've felt more anti-Semitism since 9/11 than in my whole life put together.

Some of it from other Jews.

There was my neighbor (a Jew), who stood with me on the roof of my building on the morning of 9/11, watching the towers burn, and said, "Why don't they just bomb Israel and leave us alone?"

The other day, a artist pal of mine (a Jew). said, "Why don't they just give them back Israel. It's causing too much anti-Semitism. The Jews should come here to America, where Jews control the media and the money."

Spoken like a true neo-Nazi.

Just perusing The New York Times today, I read about the destruction of over a hundred Jewish graves in Slovakia and the possible election of a Nazi sympathizer in France.

"Is there a difference between being anti-Israel and being anti-Jewish?" my editrix asked.

"It depends," I answered.

In the case of all the anti-Semitism in Europe, clearly not. Europeans are pissed at Israel and are taking it out on synagogues and Jewish soccer teams and Jewish cemeteries.

In the case of my Jewish neighbor on the roof, yes, possibly there's a difference. Although I think maybe he's just anti-human, to tell you the truth.

Almost immediately after 9/11, I started receiving "Help the Muslims!" e-mails from a pal of mine who works with an organization of Jews that fights for racial equality and justice for all people. This same organization now sends me e-mails denouncing the violence against Palestinians.

Jews fight for the rights of other people all the time. We are a minority, after all.

But who fights for the rights of the Jews?

Who fights for the right of Israel to protect itself?

Oddly, (oh my *&^$ God) unbelievably ... it seems to be Republicans and the Christian right. I cannot even believe this is coming out of my mouth, but for once, right--wing Republicans are on my side??!?!? Gasp! I don't even have a filing cabinet in my brain to handle the fact that Newt Gingrich and I are on the same page here.

I think I'll just keep this as like a fluke of nature sorta thing, but where are the Democrats?

Helloooooo, Democrats!! Israel needs you! We're still small. You can still like us!!

Damn! Now I'll really be screwed on election day. My lesbian feminist side will be voting Democrat, and my save Israel side will be voting Republican.

The Passover massacre was a turning point for me. Perhaps before that, I was trying, really trying to fight with my Zionist soul and feel the plight of the Palestinians.

Then they blew up a seder.

They walked in and blew up a seder!!!!?!?!?!

I assumed that no one in the world could condemn Israel after that. How could anyone deny Israel the right to defend itself from this kind of cowardly terror?

And yet they did, and they do. ...

If Israel were not a Jewish state, but a Christian state or a Muslim state, or shit ... almost any other kind of religion, I highly doubt they would be taking this kind of shit.

I was not alive in the 1930s when plumes of anti-Semitism laced through Europe like poison gas, easing the way for the discrediting and the dehumanizing of the Jews, which then made it oh so easy to simply slaughter them like cattle.

But I wonder ... that poisonous anti-Semitism ... did it really subside after WWII or did it just go undercover, lying in wait for a time when hating Jews would be all the fashion again?

Israel is in trouble. It is surrounded by Arab enemies plotting its destruction. It is chastised by Europeans who prefer the Palestinian plight to the Jewish one. Only the United States is hanging in there as an ally, however frayed those ally strings have become.

I have this terrible fear that I will witness the demise of Israel, and I will have to confess to my children and my grandchildren that I did nothing to stop it.

"What did you do to save Israel, Grandma??"

"I wrote it about on my website and prayed."

Is it anti-Semitic to be anti-Israel?

It depends who you ask.

If you ask me ... I'd say abso-fucking-lutely.

2002-04-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

I went to Miami.

Yep, I did. Had a good time, and I'm tan, too.

I decided it was okay to take a break from worrying about Israel or processing September 11th. ... Well, for a weekend, anyway.

Besides it was my ex-lover's wedding.

I had to go.

If you happen to be of the heterosexual lot, you may not understand that the process of going to your ex lover's wedding in Lesbianland is like a rite of gay womanhood.

It's what we do, we of the tribe of Lesbos. We stay pals with our exes, go to the commitment ceremonies they have with their new lovers. It's sorta the dyke version of that Circle of Life song from The Lion King.

I kept waiting for Elton John to break thru any moment and belt out, the circlllleeee of dykkeeeee...

Anyway, it was great, however weird.

I went with la cubana, my babe and the woman who was my ex, when my ex-about-to-get-married and I were lovers. After my ex-now-married and I broke up, I got back together with my ex-before-my-ex.

Keep up here.

So my ex-now-married, who is a %$#@ genius, I must say, had an ice breaker soiree, which allowed la cubana and I a chance to get over our nerves and my ex a chance to check out la cubana and me a chance to cause trouble by lining up all the ex-lovers of my ex's new wife and get the dirt on everyone, which was my way of covering up for the fact that I kept remembering that the last time I was in this house, things were not very ex- like.

There was a great, diverse crowd at the ice-breaker soiree, including several lesbians from Atlanta, one of whom is a probation officer and just had me on the floor with tales of her many parolees.

"Oh, it just fell into my bag. I didn't take it!"

There was the totally tattooed NYC DJ, also an ex of my now-married-ex, whom I forced to strip in the bedroom (it was innocent I swear) the professional bridge playing mom of bride No. 2, who refused to give me her secret Caesar salad ingredient, the sister of the bride No. 2 with her boyfriend who had perfect hair. Twas fun.

The next day was the big wedding..very sweet, very, very sweet. Tears and white tulle and blue ocean and lots of black mascara going to hell. It was so sweet that it started making la cubana twitchy. I think she thought I was gonna hold down the minister and scream, "Come on!! Marry us next!"

Please. I do have some class. I planned on waiting till after the reception and then holding our nuptials in the women's room.

The reception was fun, light, easy with none of this boring sit-down breakfast stuff. It was early, so we sipped mimosas.

La cubana and I fell into easy chit chat with two Cuban dykes, one a fellow ex of my ex, who seemed to almost ... ALMOST ... talk her into going back to Cuba for a visit.

... and I got the secret ingredient from Sweet Pea, the bridge mom. It's Worcestershire and -- GASP -- I can even spell it.

There were some weird moments for moi over the weekend, I mean I was at my most recent ex-lover's wedding, after all, and I did have to spend a big chunk of the day after the wedding reassuring my babe that I did not have the minister hiding under the bed, ready to marry us the second she let down her guard, but it was gorgeous. All in all, it was downright nice.

I never saw my ex look so happy, not with me, not without me. She looked radiant and in love and I guess that's just what everything should be about.

As for moi?? Well I'm tan, as I mentioned, and the Cuban and I will patch things up probably by the time you read this.

But I'm keeping that minister under the %$#@ bed ...

My moment will come. I know it!

2002-04-09T19:03:00.000-04:00

I think I've become the Norma Rae of 9/11.

Seriously.

I'm starting to make myself (and evidently all or most of my friends) rather ill as I stand grim-faced on a table and hold a sign that reads, "WTC!"

It's not that I'm not interested in moving on.

It's just that, the more time goes by, the less other people talk about it, the more I feel obligated to fill in the gap.

... and there's still lots of stuff going on.

Hello!

There are still firefighters going down to ground zero and digging up bodies.

There are still victims of 9/11 in total emotional ruin.

Sigh.

And I'm still going to sleep and dreaming that the Empire State Building gets hit by an airplane and starts falling toward me.

You might say I've had a bit of a 9/11 week.

I spent Friday at this great warehouse run by a mother and daughter who have been running supplies to the rescue crews since day one and are committed to being there till the last bit of rubble is gone.

The babes have got it going, man!

This is a great operation; really, really high quality stuff comes in, brand
new name brand work boots, Carhard jackets monogrammed with a 9/11 logo, glistening new tools, pocket knifes, gel insoles, heavy duty sweat-shirts, over-alls.

This was not the pile of crap I sorted through on September 16th; vast amounts of somebody's old socks and stained T-shirts.

To tell you the truth, the latest stuff was so primo that I started drooling all over it.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was there to support the boys, but hell I wanted everything I saw, especially those jackets. Phew, they were sexy!

Is it wrong to admit that after all my experiences on ground zero and in other 9/11 non-profits, I feel a real need to have something I can wear to remind me of my time down there?

Come on, ground zero babes! Send me a Carhard jacket!! Puleeease!

Sigh. Ok, well, I never said I was a nice person. I just masquerade as one.

Anyway, I worked away the day by doing exciting things like filling plastic bags with cough drops, hand lotion and lip balm and then sorting through a kazillion of those aforementioned Carhard jackets, which had already been specially sized to fit each of the firefighters on the new tour.

I think the highlight of my day was when this huge, burly, mustached fireman came in just to give me and the other lady volunteering with me a hug.

"I just love to hug the ladies before I go back in," he said.

I thought, "So do I," but didn't say a word. He was sweet, really. I liked the hug.

On Saturday I went to my orientation at The September Space (no web site yet, but ask for info at septemberspace@aol.com. There I met the goddess Lisa, with whom I have been e-mailing with back and forth, and who aside from looking exactly like Sandra Bullock is probably the nicest person I've ever met.

Seriously, I couldn't find a single nasty bone in her body.

It was weird!

I signed up for a seminar that all their volunteers need to take. It's called "reflective listening," and sounds a lot like the way therapists listen to you. I think for moi, the toughest thing about this process is going to be listening without interrupting.

I wanted to ask Lisa if they had a seminar in "shut-up and listen," but I didn't have the chance.

The September Space, FYI, is awesome; it's this huge space in Midtown with the most spectacular view of the Empire State Building (hmm hence the dreams, perhaps). They are going to offer everything from art therapy to children's groups, to spouse support, to just a cafe with free Starbucks that the early
responders to 9/11 such as rescue workers and volunteers and the victims of 9/11 can come to.

Lisa herself was an early responder, running supplies down to the hole.

Evidently I was an early responder, too.

Who knew?

Anyway the place is great, and they need your help so email them and say Norma Rae Rossi sent ya.

Meanwhile, how the hell do I get interested in anything that's not 9/11 related?

Everything in my apartment is starting to look like twin towers.

Last night my bath bubbles started forming two peaks. I'll be building them out of mashed potatoes soon.

Oyyyyyy.

Do you think they'd give me when of those ^%$#@ Carhard jackets???

2002-04-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

I think there's a chance I've become a boring old fart.

I don't know how it happened.

I mean, I wear leather pants, orange sneakers, vintage '70s shirts and live in the East Village.

But evidently, I've become, somehow, some way, a boring-old-fart.

I know this now because my 17-year-old nephew just came to stay with me and he seemed to think I was about as thrilling as ice in Antarctica.

I assumed he'd want to see ground zero. He didn't.

I suggested a boat ride in South Street Seaport. He suggested ... not.

I offered to take him to see a Janus Joplin musical. He offered to vomit.

I tried to show him fun, global fusion restaurants. The only thing global he wanted in his food was the shape of his hamburger.

... and so, just when I beginning to think that absolutely nothing in Manhattan besides sneaker shopping and girl watching would interest him, he suggested the WWF-theme restaurant.

World Wrestling Federation ... restaurant.

Doesn't seem to quite go together, does it?

Our first pleasure at the WWF was standing in line. We got there early -- 6:30 p.m. -- so we only had to wait an hour to get inside, and 15 minutes more to get to a table. Once seated (at 7:45) it took us another hour to get our food (which disappointingly, wasn't entirely terrible).

The place was huge. There musta been about a thousand people there, and television screens everywhere. Our table was surrounded by television screens. All the TVs played continuous footage of wild wrestling moments and WWF commercials.

The idea, Andrew explained, was to get in, grab a table and then hoot and holler as much as you could at exactly 9 p.m. to try to get on television. From 9 to 11, you get to watch the wrestling live. Well, live on TV. Monday night is something called Raw and Thursday night is something called Slamdown or Smackup or something. As an added bonus, just before the show starts, they bring out a wrestler to talk to the crowd for a few minutes.

OK, so am I missing something here?

We stood in line for an hour, then paid a $10 cover to have the pleasure of eating mediocre food for a ton of money, all so we could watch wrestling on TV?

I guess it's all about the ambiance.

Andrew loved it.

He rushed the stage at 9, screamed and waved and was convinced that he wound up on television, although I didn't see him, unless that speck of red shirt and brown hair was him.

He chanted with the rest of the motley crew.

Evidently, this wrestling thing requires some audience participation.

Like when the guy with the shaved head and leather vest comes out, everyone screams "What ... what ... what!" over and over again. I don't know why ... or, ummm, what.

There's another guy with platinum hair who I think tried to pick up my sister in the late '70s. When he comes around, everyone screams, "Woooo!"

It's sort of like The Rocky Horror Picture Show ... with tights.

The liveliest moment was when the two women with very apparent tit jobs, wearing nothing but bikinis, wrestled.

The men at the bar went nuts.

"Yeeeeahhhh, babyyyyyyy!"

Yecch.

I hadn't seen that much white trash since my family went "camping" outside an all-night convenience store in South Carolina.

Oddly enough, it was fun (the WWF, not the camping) in it's own rather sad and twisted way. It certainly was something I'd never done before, which doesn't happen that often.

After three hours of wrestling screaming through my ears, I was ready for two aspirins and bed.

Andrew was mildly disgusted.

"Tired out, old auntie?" he asked, teasing.

"What ... what ... what!" I replied.

2002-03-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

Aaaaahhh, Passover

The chance to be constipated for a week from the deadly combination of matzo, hard-boiled eggs and potato kugel!

The once-a-year opportunity to submit to a long, long, long and very long explanation of the symbolism behind the food you are about to eat (and no Emeril).

But beyond all the piddly inconveniences, Passover has always been, at least for me, a sort of Jewish Thanksgiving. ..a chance to sit down with loved ones and remember the ancient story of Moses (before Charlton Heston ... although he's pretty ancient now, too, not to mention heavily armed) ... and to give thanks for just being there, eating a ton of food and feeling the good company around you..

Plus ... the chocolate covered macaroons are awesome!!

This first night seder was my first Passover with Zora, my soon-to-be-5-year-old goddaughter, as guest. I can't say Zora was impressed with the seder. I think she far preferred using my antique leather furniture as a trampoline. But she loved, loved, loved the hard-boiled eggs.

Go figure.

Zora's folks managed to actually find -- GASP -- decent kosher wine, which was enough right there to give thanks over. Adeena came over with her 4-year-old blonde vixen, Saphia, to give Zora a trampoline mate, and my two cats cringed in terror behind the bed.

All in all, a very successful seder.

So after al the folks left and I plowed through the mountain of dishes, threw myself on the bed (minus the terrorized cats) and flipped on the news.

"Passover massacre!" read the anchor.

"Nineteen Israelis died, 100 are injured from a Palestinian suicide bombing at a Passover seder."

My heart and the taste of undigested matzo ball soup rose in my throat.

Women, children -- innocent lives who had joined together to share this first night of Passover in peace and harmony -- murdered, maimed, forever terrorized and for what?!??!?! To help the Palestinian cause??

To help the Palestinian cause do what???

Anoint themselves as murderers ... as cowards ... as full out SCUMBAGS!!

I'm sick of this.

I've had it.

I'm tired of trying to be kind and understanding and open minded.

You want to walk into a Passover seder and murder innocent people while they're in prayer and now you want my sympathy for your cause.

Well, I was sympathetic. WAS, as in past tense.

Now I'm just disgusted.

This is Rossi with my not-so-PC Passover rant, and I'm here to say to all suicide bombers:

Go fuck yourselves.

2002-03-20T20:33:00.000-05:00

Here's something I haven't thought about since September 11th:

I'm gay.

Yep, I'm gay!

It's not that I've forgotten. It's just that this part of the many, many parts of me seemed to fall to the wayside after 9/11. With all the sights, sounds, smells and feelings assaulting my very being, I guess my sexuality just didn't seem to have much to do with anything on my mind.

Three thousand people died that day. One can assume that at least 10% of those people were gay, but it just doesn't seem to matter. Who's really thinking about the victims of 9/11 in terms of race, sexual orientation or religion??

The victims of 9/11 fall under only one kind of label: Victim. Or perhaps another kind of label: Innocent. Except, of course, for the ones we also call Hero.

Sure, there is by many accounts, the most famous hero of 9/11, Father Mychal Judge, who is widely known to be gay but Father Judge's sexuality just doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with his heroism. So we don't talk about it, and our not talking about it is probably the reason mainstream America can honor him so freely.

Don't think, don't tell, just mourn.

I have heard of gay charities helping to raise money for the same-sex partners of 9/11 victims who got anything but the same treatment when it came to the financial compensation of the heterosexual married spouses. But I just kinda brushed that under the massive rug that I'd put all my personal issues under since 9/11.

9/11 took the gas out of my anti-homophobe engine.

I've been far too busy thinking about the big picture.

You know, the big picture?? The one where we all live happy and equal free from racism, homophobia and Regis Philbin.

But television this past week has shuttled me back to Planet Gay.

First there was the Rosie O'Donnell coming-out-to-save-the-children special. (Hey, Rosie, thanks. By the way, we all knew, a lonnnngggggggg time ago, but it's still cool.) Rosie was inspired to speak because of the case of the two loving foster fathers who have raised an entire family of HIV-positive babies, nurtured and nourished them so that now these children who were not expected to live past the age of 2 are 5 to 14 years old.

Florida says these men are good enough to be foster parents, possibly for the entire lives of these children, but not to adopt them. The fathers may now lose one of their sons. They were good enough to foster him to health, but now that he's healthy, they're not good enough to adopt him.

Florida needs a kick in the Bush.

Then there was the Matthew Shepard story on NBC. I just can't talk about Matthew Shepard without sharpening up my chopping knife and heading into a redneck bar for revenge, so I'll drop it for now.

Sigh.

But oddly the thing that really got me the most was simply the news.

It proclaimed proudly and broadly how wonderful the St. Patrick's Day parade was this year with its tribute to the 343 brave fireman who gave their lives and all the heroes of 9/11.

That was all wonderful, of course, but this is the first year that I didn't even hear a peep about the exclusion of gays from the parade.

I guess the parade picketing folks felt like I have, that it's ok to postpone our gay selves in the wake of 9/11 because the massive tragedy of 9/11 is far more important then our personal rights or lack of rights as gay Americans.

But two wrongs don't make a right.

9/11 was the most terrible thing to happen in my lifetime, probably in yours, too.

It was the cowardly act of ignorant, racist, evil bastards who just wanted to end innocent lives simply because they were American lives.

The best way I know to fight back the terrorists who did this is by obliterating homophobia, and anti-Semitism and racism and sexism and any other kind of -ism you want to throw in there.

Some might say that this was the year that no one should have mentioned the exclusion of gays in the St. Patrick's Day parade, but I think just maybe this was the most important year to fight for those rights.

I admit I didn't want to see any picketing or controversy on the news. It would have seemed, well, disrespectful, but when the 343 flags marched by as teary eyed spectators pointed and smiled, I suddenly felt so shut out. Heck I'm about as far from Irish as you can get being a Hungarian Jew and all, but amid all that goodness and heroism it just felt even sadder that this parade really does stand as a symbol of homophobia.

If Father Mychal Judge were alive today and wanted to march under the banner "gay hero," he would not have been allowed in that parade.

Everyone has their heroes. My 9/11 hero is Father Judge. I picture his kind face kneeling over the fallen firefighter trying to administer last rites as he loses his own wondrous life. To me he stands out as a symbol of selfless kindness and bravery, but he could not march in The St. Patrick's Day Parade with a banner proclaiming who he is.

Haven't we learned anything?

Like I said, I felt sad when I watched the news footage of the parade and I felt sad as the news ended and sad as Saturday Night Live began and then I watched Sir Ian Mccellan come on stage and say, "Thanks for making me feel so welcome, which is more than I can say for the St. Patrick's Day parade does, as an openly gay man. ... Although they don't seem to have a problem with priests."

I just love that guy.

2002-03-13T14:28:00.000-05:00

Did you see the documentary 9/11 ?

It was so controversial that in the days before its broadcast, my e-mail was crammed with arts organizations wanting me to take part in web chats about whether or not the film should have been aired.

As a matter of fact, I’m invited to one tonight.

So I figured if this flick was stirring up so much debate it would be graphic as hell: blood, gore the whole shebang.

But it wasn’t.

At least not to me.

They must have edited it mercilessly, because they managed to film the destruction of the towers inside and out without showing the multitude of broken people that were all around them.

There was the heart-wrenching, horrific sound of the jumpers landing on the awning, but mostly the horribly graphic images where what they told you they were not filming.

“There are two people over here completely on fire, but I will not film them.”

I understand some of the controversy was over filming people who are now among the dead, so perhaps I do not have the right to comment here, but I can tell you how grateful I was to see the clip of Father Judge. There he was, surveying the situation with his fatherly concern. I never knew the man, except from his photos, but immediately after it was too late, I felt like I wanted to know him. Now, at least, I have been given this brief peek into what he must have felt like that morning. His expression said it all.

He was trying to keep it together while slowly realizing the magnitude of what was happening around him. He was preparing to inspire while praying for inspiration.

Of course, it was agonizing to watch these brave men, milling about, waiting for orders, setting up their command post, heading up the stairs, all the while knowing they had to get out; the building was coming down.

That’s how it was that day. No one, NO ONE expected those towers to come down. No one I know, anyway.

I was up there photographing them on my roof, not to watch them collapse but to watch what I felt was going to be an amazing feat; the putting out of those two horrible towers of flames, so high up in the sky.

I guess it’s silly to say, but I was expecting to see helicopters dropping water.

I don’t think the reality of what happened dawned on anyone, not the firefighters or New York, until the next day.

The camera really captured it, that terrible moment when the men saw for the very first time, what was left of the World Trade Center. Their dulled ,shocked faces said it all. Simply put, their entire world, and ours, had been completely altered.

There are no words to really describe the visions that unfolded from that first plane hitting, to the towers collapsing, to the New Yorkers in terror, the people preferring to jump than to burn, the smoldering remnants of what were thousands of lives, but I do feel that this documentary, respectfully and almost kindly managed to get these things across.

My apologies to the people who lost loved ones and had personal issues with the airing of this film. I do not pretend to understand your pain and I won’t dishonor it by commenting further on your position.

I watched this documentary and cried a bit here and there and then I felt an eerie calm set in. Oddly enough, the night before I had a terrible nightmare. I was running as the Empire State Building was falling toward me. No matter how fast I ran, it kept coming, crashing down bit by bit just a few feet from me. I was still running as I woke up.

But the night I watched the documentary, I slept soundly. I felt validated somehow, almost like a secret I’d been carrying around had been let out .

My girlfriend called just moments after the film ended to tell me she loved me, and I know what she really meant -- that with all my efforts to convey to her what it looked like down there, she’d never grasped it fully until now.

There’s a gallery in my neighborhood, The Bolivar Arellano Gallery. They have a long-running exhibit up of the photographs taken by photographers of New York’s many daily papers. These photos, some of which were published, some were far, far to intense to publish are an uncensored, truly graphic portrayal of everything that film did not show.

What the people looked like jumping (they looked like angels).

What they looked like when they landed.

What the survivors looked like, half their clothes burnt off, their skin blistered and red.

There is a warning on the door about the graphic nature of what you are about to see.

I go to this gallery often. I think I’ve been there six times now. They’ve only added something new once, but I like going there. I feel like when I’m in that gallery I’m allowed to feel exactly how I feel all the time walking around the PC world where people are trying desperately not to talk and think about September 11th anymore.

That’s why I felt so happy for this film and for the commemoration of the 6-month anniversary.

It was a chance for everyone to stand up and say, “Yes this is still on our minds and in our hearts. We just pretend it isn’t.”

I went up on my roof last night and turned toward the place in the sky where the towers used to be and watched the memorial lights shoot up into the sky for their first night.

They are haunting and bluish-white and soft and strange.

My friend Wolf, visiting from L.A., calls them “The Ghosts.”

There are a lot of ghosts walking around Manhattan these days.

Some of them are dead and seem to brush past us when we walk anywhere near ground zero, or a fire station.

Some of them are alive and smile at us a little sadly when we look in the mirror.

2002-03-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

Heard about an amazing organization that's just starting, called September Space.

What SS is doing is something I've been thinking about for a long time, dealing not only with the victims of September 11th but with the first wave of volunteers, what they call the "first responders."

They will offer a social space, counseling, art therapy and many other great services where the men, women and children affected by the disaster can come.

I think this is so wonderful because while all the help to the victims and the rescue crews was and is crucial, the volunteers who saw all that atrocity need help, too.

I think about myself. I don't know if you could call me a first responder (or what exactly dictates a first responder) because I did not make my way to ground zero until September 16th -- five days later, but to this day there seems to be nothing in my life, not changed by my experiences down there. and by watching the towers collapse on September 11th.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I lost no loved ones. I was not in or around ground zero on September 11th. I did not dig out body parts with my hands or fight fires. All I did was feed the rescue crews and go on gator-aid runs to "the hole."

With the exception of my first night there when the hotel next to us, The Millennium, was considered unstable, I did not fear for my life and I sustained no injuries, unless you count a lot of dust up my nose.

Yet here I am, all these months later.

I wake up every morning and look out the window to make sure The Empire State Building is still there.

I feel like crying whenever I see a firefighter.

My heart crawls into my throat at the sight of a plane descending, (they always seem to be flying too low).

When I look at any construction site I always drift back to the smoking wreck that was the WTC.

The list goes on.

So do the good things that have happened to me, hopefully, permanently.

I pet my cats more.

I say "I love you" to my family and to my friends.

I try to make sure that I am always doing something, anything for someone besides myself.

I think about Israel -- a lot.

After September 11th, I went back to painting and discovered that without planning on it, or even trying, my work had changed. The colors were softer ... child-friendly.

I talked to other artists whose work had also changed in the most surprising way. Not what you might think: their work filling not with fear and anger but the opposite.

"I used to make films and collages," said my new friend Lisa. "Now I make dolls."

Maybe it's the need to create something soft and comforting to balance all the pain we've seen. I don't know. I'm not a therapist.

My friend Nancy said stopping trying to figure out the why and just live it.

That sounds like a great plan.

I decided to come out of retirement.

18 years ago I used to produce art shows.

I'm co-producing one now to show case how September11th has changed the work of many artists, especially here in NYC.

It's going to be a huge show of multimedia artists, ranging from painters to installation artists, video artists and performance artists.

We're giving all the profit to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the nonprofit that used to be housed in the WTC. They're the ones who supplied free artists studios in the towers. Now they're between homes.

I like the idea of artists surviving and moving past September 11th, helping to raise money for an organization that supports artists.

Artists for artists; a self-supporting, self-healing thing you might say.

History tells us that it's always the artists and the writers who preserve time. How would we know about so many things that happened a thousand years ago, if not for the statues, the poetry, the paintings?

I wonder if the artwork from this time, will one day be given a name. There was Cubism, Surrealism. Will this be Septemberism?

I'm looking forward to visiting the September Space. I may even show my work there. I'm certain to volunteer there.

September Space has managed to do the one thing no one else has been able to do: convince me that it's all right to consider myself a victim, that it's okay to let myself realize that I was damaged, too.

I'm in the midst of repairs at the moment. The sign posted on my forehead reads, "Caution. Road work ahead. Reduce speed."

I plan on re-building myself, perhaps with some help, a bit stronger and a lot softer.

Wanna know what my favorite TV show was as a kid? The Bionic Woman.

OH! FYI, here's the info for the art show, in case you're in NYC in May.

2002-03-05T21:41:00.000-05:00

REACTION
A Multimedia Art Exhibition and Performance Festival To benefit NYC Art and artists.

At the DNA Studio Gallery
2174 3rd Ave between 118 and 119

Opening night Friday May 3 from 7-11
Art festival Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5 from 12-6
Gallery hours Monday, May 6 to Friday, May 10 by appointment

Closing Friday Night May 10th- 7-10 PM, Live Auction at 8:00 PM sharp

This weeklong Art Festival at the DNA Studio Gallery in Spanish Harlem is a chance to celebrate the great surviving spirit of New York artists. Reaction will explore the ripple effects of September 11th on the work of a wide range of New York artists.

This diverse gallery/festival will showcase art created before and after 9/11. Each artist will show a sample or samples of pre- 9/11 work to allow the viewers to note subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes in their style, media, or subject material. The bulk of the work on exhibit will be pieces created after Sept 11th, 2001.

"Without planning it, I and a lot of other artists have seen our work change," said Rossi, co-producer of the show. "It's like, here we are, so many months after this terrible tragedy, and suddenly we realize that the color of our paint is softer or perhaps the subjects we photograph are suddenly dolloped with tiny bits of patriotism."

The show will feature a wide range of media from painting, sculpture and photography to digital art, movie making, installations and performances.

"Our point is to show that creativity could not be stopped by terror," said Dror Katz co-producer of the show. "We believe that art, in any form, is the way to express emotions, feelings and ideas about the historical events we have witnessed."

The artists in New York were deeply affected by the tragedy: In addition to the emotional toll, artists' funds were cut and grants canceled. In the spirit of the show, the producers of Reaction are giving 100% of all gallery profits to an organization that helps artists in need: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. This nonprofit organization is perhaps best known for providing free art studios in The World Trade Center.

They are now active in providing workspaces, grants and exhibitions for emerging artists all over New York City .

50% of the sales of art will go directly to the artist, the other 50% to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The show will consist of visual artists ranging from painters and photographers to sculptors, film-makers and installation artists and an impressive roster of New York City performance artists.

Reaction will begin with a gala art opening Friday, May 3 from 7:00 until 11:00 PM, with catering donated by The Raging Skillet catering company.

The next two days will be an art festival dedicated to showing the works of talented performance artists. The performance festival on Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5 will run from noon to 6:00 PM, with live performances starting at 1:00.

Monday, May 6 until Friday, May 10 will have gallery hours by appointment only.

Reaction will close with a gala art auction and reception on Friday, May 10 from 7:00 to 10:00 PM. The live auction will begin promptly at 8:00 PM. Buyers will need checks and cash on hand to bid.

Reaction is being produced by Rossi and Dror Katz

DNA Studio Gallery
2174 3rd Ave., 3rd floor
NY, NY 10035
212-289-8959
www.dnastudio.org

2002-02-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

My brother is going to Israel.

We've been talking about this for years: me meeting him and his family, in Israel on Passover.

The reason he e-mailed me to tell me about his spontaneous trip to the holy land was not to invite me, however, but to ask when he could fax me a copy of his will.

Nice times we live in.

Now I find myself torn.

Do I squish a last-minute trip to Israel this month, or do I stay home safe and sound in ... hmm ... ummm ... Manhattan??!

I've never been to Israel, yet I've always felt love for Israel. As much as I'm an American, my sentimental side has always considered Israel to be my promised land.

I know I've romanticized this country to some sort of ridiculousness, but then that's part of the purpose of Israel, to give us a place to feel so sentimental about that nothing makes sense and sense doesn't matter.

As a child of a Yiddish mama who never tired of talking about the Holocaust, I remember feeling even at a very young age, that Israel might be the only place to run to if America should one day rise up and try to exterminate my people as the Nazis had done.

"Remember, Shana Madelah, Germany was considered to be as wonderful to the German Jews then as America is to the American Jews now," my mother warned me -- part of her way of ensuring that I would grow up to be as paranoid as she was.

Nice thoughts for a six-year-old, but my mother felt that the only way to keep the Holocaust from happening again was to keep talking about it. I don't know. Maybe she's right.

For my bas mitzvah, I was given a lifetime membership to Hadassah. Now I regularly receive newsletters about the state of things in Israel, interspersed with advertising about relief for constipation.

Jews have always been obsessed with regularity; don't ask me why. Too much matzoh meal perhaps. That stuff can clog up an elephant.

When the violence between Palestinians and Israelis started again, I felt confused and uneducated. I hated the Palestinians for their cowardly, cruel suicide attacks on innocent lives, yet I wondered what made them so angry. How can they be helped? What pushed them to such extremes?

September 11th certainly brought Israel to the front lines. It also gave us as Americans a taste of what Israel has been going through all these years. After watching the towers burn and collapse, how could we ever feel so disconnected to suicide bombing again?

We weren't virgins anymore.

I spoke with my friend Dror about his job doing security for an Israeli airline.

"Your life must be very stressful since September 11th," I said innocently.

"For us, it's the same," he answered giggling at my naivete. "Israel has always had to be on the defensive. Americans are just starting to do what we've done all along. Now they come to us for advice."

I feel confused and torn when I talk about Israel.

As a Jew, I know Israel is the only place in the world that really is my holy land if there is such a thing as holy land. I think there is, but then, I'm not very holy. When the recent violence started up again I felt ashamed that I had not make my first pilgrimage to Israel.

The newsletter from Hadassah said that Israel has been saddened by the demise of its American tourist support. But how do you visit Israel and not go to Jerusalem, and how do you go to Jerusalem without feeling immense fear?

I feel like a coward. I feel ashamed. I am a Jew, and I have never been to Israel.

I am a humanitarian before all else. I need to understand how to support and preserve and adore this special place and still find a place in my heart to try to understand where the Palestinians are coming from. What is right? What is wrong?

I do not feel qualified to express my opinion in peace among these two peoples, except to say that there must be peace. I need to go to Israel to understand something about right and wrong. I need to stop hearing the Holocaust stories in my head to be more open-minded.

I must admit that I have not been very open-minded when it comes to Israel. I do not want this place that I have never been to taken away from me.

Will I do as my brother has done -- leave my will with someone I love and join my family in Israel? I don't know. Maybe. There's the little matter of who the hell will run my business while I run off on this spontaneous pilgrimage. I think perhaps I've used up my vacation days for this off-season, but this does not feel like a vacation.

Part of me feels this pang of fear that if I don't go now, I never will, that either the Israel I have grown to love without ever really knowing will change in my absence, or I will.

I'll keep you posted.

L' Chaim.

2002-02-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

I think I have always been looking for love.

Sure, I called it other things along the way.

In high school, I said I was searching for freedom, acting out against the hypocrites of my hometown. Man, whatta uptight Republican, conservative Jersey town. To be gay in that town, well just forgetaboutit.

I had the word rebel planted on my forehead. All the other kids filled their closets with cashmere sweaters and alligator shirts, but even then, I hated colorful clothes. I contented myself with a yearlong array of black rock & roll T-shirts, tucked into two pairs of patched up, worn out Levi's. For a splash of color, I tucked a red bandana in my hip pocket.

Hey, the bandana had a use,too. It helped cover up the pint of Hiram Walker Blackberry Brandy.

Nobody told me that I couldn't turn my piece of the late '70s into the '60s.

But then, peace love and punk rock aside, what I was really doing was looking for love.

I guess I figured that if I made enough fuss, smashed up enough authority, that I'd find a nice safe, place that I could be myself in and then all those people dying to love me for exactly who I was would just line up, poetry and casseroles in hand.

New York City is the best place in the world to come to, if you're the hometown freak looking for love.

My weirdness didn't even register a blip on the wacky scale once I moved to NYC.

Everyone in New York in 1981 was a freak.

New York had just pulled out of bankruptcy, race riots, a decade of burning buildings and homicides and everyone was walking around in the rubble, shell-shocked. People were downright cool.

Washington Square park was like a baby Woodstock unplugged. Guitar players banged away next to poets, homeless drunks, NYU kids smoking joints, drug dealers looking to sell to the NYU kids and tourists, dogs drinking in the fountain, lovers pretending to be cool, street comedians making fun of your race, religion or attire and then getting you to laugh so hard you'd pay them 50 cents just for making a fool out of you.

The first time I walked into Washington Square Park, I thought I'd entered Planet Wild. I was 17 and firmly convinced that I was the baddest girl around. Five minutes after I walked into the park, I felt like Mother Theresa. I don't think I ever felt like a bad girl again.

I'm sure I fell in love with somebody that year. There was always somebody to fall in love with then. I fell in love a lot in the '80s. That was the thing to do then, fall in love and survive and hate yuppies and wonder when I would get my piece of easy times.

Now it's 2002, and I'm feeling a little blue. Well, just this week.

I don't know why.

My career (whatever that is) seems to be doing fine.

My real career (whatever this is) is coming along.

The most wonderful lady, who has been in my life on and off for three years now, has been unusually attentive of late. Together we seem to have emerged from some sort of long-term haze to find each other. It's been thrilling.

But still, from my center, I feel this melancholy.

Well, sure there's still the post 9/11 blues that has lots of us treading sand, especially we of the downtown Manhattanites. I imagine it will be years, if ever, before I move past those images, but things are looking up in NYC. People are surviving and growing, changing for the better, caring about each other more.

There really are reasons to rejoice. The human spirit has been working over-time and it's an awesome thing to check out in action. I've seen it now up close. I've still got dots in my eyes from the flash.

Last night my cubana and I celebrated a late Valentine's Day/anniversary combo. She took me to see Love Janis, the Janis Joplin musical about her life, based on the letters she sent home to her family.

I sat their in the rowdy crowd with all the lights out, listening to the music of Janis Joplin that always was about one thing; looking for love, and I reached out and touched my girlfriend's hand and thought to myself, no matter how much love I've got, I'll never stop looking for love.

There just isn't ever going to be enough of it; love of friends, love of admirers, love of goodness, love of charity, love of strangers.

Maybe the day I stop looking for love will be the day I decide that the world is fine just the way it is, that things don't need improving, that I no longer need anyone's appreciation.

After the show, my cubana took me to Nirvana, (well, in this instance I'm talking about the restaurant, not the state of being), and we devoured our tandoori chicken and sipped our mango champagne cocktails and looked out over the great impossibility of Central Park.

I've always loved that here in the height of ultraexpensive real estate, in the very heart of big-money Manhattan, sits more than 50 blocks of park land, unspoiled, untarnished and unprofitable. It just sits there, for all of us to enjoy to free.

Central Park is like childhood. It reaches out innocent and green and lush and ripe against all the skyscrapers and symbolisms of big business and overpriced doorman buildings. It sits there and giggles.

Central Park is for lovers.

Are you looking, too? Looking for love.

You can find it. I know you can. The secret is just to stand still and let it all happen around you. That's when the biggest chunks of love fall on your toes: when you're standing still and when you're barefoot in the grass.

Love always falls on bare feet.

2002-02-13T21:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I found out that my friend Paul's baby brother, David, died of a heart attack at the age of 40.

The heart attack was brought on by him smoking crack.

The last time and the only time I met David was at Paul's wedding last year. I opted for playing in the grass with my god-daughter instead of joining the merriment of the wedding crowd inside. David decided to hang outside, too. He seemed like a sweet, down-to-earth guy. I liked him instantly.

Tray and M came outside with wine and we all filled our plastic cups and watched Zora chasing bumblebees. It was a peaceful, lovely afternoon. The sun was just right.

"I really like Paul's brother," I said to Tray.

"Yes," she responded thoughtfully, "but he's got some demons chasing him."

I didn't understand then what she meant: that he was hardcore addict and had been for all of his adult life.

I didn't know him, except as Paul's cute baby brother, but I find myself in this strange place thinking about spending that lovely afternoon in the sun with him and now finding out he's dead.

There is something eerie and bittersweet about this seemingly easy-going guy who shared a few hours with me on a special day and now is gone forever.

I can't imagine how Paul must feel right now, or maybe I can.

"Life is short, so live it!"

This is the mantra I hear in my head.

Joanna and I were talking about all the little subtle things that have changed inside us since September 11th. She said she cries at movies much more easily now. It's as if some of those protective layers have been peeled off.

I guess I'd have to say the same. I'm much more easily pushed to tears now. I can well up at a sappy commercial. Breakfast cereals seem to really get to me.

I pet my cats more. I find myself waking them up when they're fast asleep just to squeeze them. I think maybe they think I'm annoying as hell.

But they're 13 years old, both of them. How much longer do I have with my two friends, these two little furry things that have been with me through the best and the worst of times.

People die.

People get married.

Babies are born.

Jobs are lost.

Eras end.

Eras begin.

Today, just for this one day, for this one special day, let me experience something precious.

Today is a beautiful word.

2002-02-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

If you ever want to feel love from a stranger, respect, admiration and some kind of brother/sisterhood from a total stranger, go to London and tell everyone that you meet, you're a New Yorker.

After having suffered a serious bout of snobbery on my one and only trip to Paris some years ago, I just assumed that Londoners, like the Parisians, would think they were better than everyone else, most of all the lowly American.

I realized how wrong I was in my first hour of arrival.

"Where you from?" asked the driver of one of the wonderful, huge London taxis that make New York cabs look sub-human.

"New York!"

"How is it over there now? Are you OK now? Is the economy picking up?"

He spent most of the ride, which I would have preferred to use interrogating him about everything we passed, asking me if I and all of New York were all right.

"Did you hear about that woman who had burns over 70 percent of her body? What a trooper she is!"

"Yes," I said.

The love New York thing continued during my entire week trotting all over central London.

On my first night in town, my hotel sent me to Rules, a 200-some-odd-year-old eatery with truly authentic old-style British cuisine. Although I must say Rules added a new dimension to the term Yech! by serving me duck breast that was blood rare. (It's still poultry, for crying out loud, and it's not supposed to bleed when you stick it!)

I also tried the smoked haddock salad, which was far closer to sushi than smoked fish.

I started up a conversation with a very proper elderly couple sitting next to me, when I asked them what they were eating. Turns out it was steak and kidney pie (another rather large Yech if you ask me).

They were fairly reserved until they found out I was a New Yorker. Then it was an hourlong conversation about how much they loved New York and how even though they didn't care for Tony Blair (they were something like Republicans, whatever the Brit version of that is. Hated Clinton, too), they loved how their Mr. Blair had immediately hopped to it. By the time our chat was done, they had given me their phone number and address in a suburb outside London.

"Sometimes it's nice to know someone, in case you get into any trouble."

Maybe it was the lone woman trotting all over London's back alleys, or the fact that I had wild hair and men's ankle boots, but these total strangers had decided that I might need temporary parents and they were willing to fit the bill.

On my next night in London I went out to the theatre in grand style, a 280-year-old royal theatre on the strip they call the Haymarket, named for, well, once having been a place to buy hay, I suppose. Dame Judy Dench was the star, and while I must say the play was badly written, I felt so wonderful in this grand, ornate, ancient theatre watching Judy.

At intermission, when girls with trays come out and sell little ice cream cups with plastic spoons (love that!!) the couple next to me started a polite chat. Once they found out I was a New Yorker they seemed to fall madly in love with me.

Seriously, dears, it was practically alarming.

"We felt so close to you when that happened," the woman said, getting misty-eyed, "I mean here with the IRA, we've gone through terrorist threats for years. Nothing as terrible as what happened to you, but I think we know something of what you felt like."

On the famous Portobello Road outdoor antique market, I came across one of the most popular booths on the long stretch of outdoor stalls, a woman selling New York T-shirts.

On my big girly night out I visited an amazingly hot women's club in the Picadilly Circus area called The Candy Bar. Wanna know what the hippest gal in the place was wearing; black leather pants and an I Love New York T-shirt.

Even if I had tried not to think about September 11th on my trip, London was determined to bring it up every time I opened my mouth and they heard my accent, or lack of accent, however you look at it.

Since New Year's I've made a strong effort to get on with my life. I started to feel as though it would be so easy to wake up one day and realize that I'd spent 20 years wallowing in the memory of the World Trade Center. Going to London was part of getting on with living, my September 11th pledge, to no longer postpone the things I've always wanted to do, because life is short ... sometimes very short.

I looked at the gorgeous two-, three-, four-hundred-year-old buildings with nary a skyscraper in sight, unless you count the dinky 30-story things they call tall. I visited Buckingham Palace (not much to see there, oddly), rode over the London Bridge, dined at many an old very British pub, ate fish and chips, rump steak, Yorkshire pudding, truly great Indian food, drank tea at 3:00 and submerged myself into this wonderful, busy, complicated city.

I loved London.

When I arrived home at JFK airport, went past the battalion of armed guards, threw myself into a lousy cab with a driver who didn't give a crap about me, I wondered if maybe London wouldn't be a great place to live.

As the cab approached NYC, I saw the majestic, miraculous New York skyline stretch out before me and felt my heart catch in my throat like it does every time I approach Manhattan.

Twenty years of living in NYC and I still get goosebumps at the site of the skyline.

Home.

I'm home.

On behalf of myself and evidentially most of London, can I just say, I love New York.

2002-02-03T19:55:00.000-05:00

Cheerio and bloody hell and bollocks and fancy a shag and spare a fag mate and rightoo then. ... Here I am in Merry Ol' London, spending more money than I thought humanly possibly.

Sheeesh, they say New York is expensive, but this place really takes the cake (tea cake, that is, love).

Anyway, this is part one of my "I will not postpone my life Sept. 11th pledge. ... Part two will most likely be nude bungee-jumping (gotta buy a 36-hour bra for that one) or a trek across some mountains that are interspersed with room service.

Anyway, mates, London is really a gas, I must say, once you get past the money thing.

The cabs are amazing. They're all huge and sorta like brand new 1940s cars with drivers who all speak English and even are willing to share many a witty remark. (Oh, yes, that's where Dodi used to live before, well, the incident.)

I seem to be doing it all quite swimmingly, I must say, from a night out at the theatre (do you know they serve ice cream at intermission? ... Ice cream!!) to a day shopping all along Nottinghill, and nary a Hugh Grant in sight, though I did see a travel book shop.

I rambled all over an area called Picadilly Circus that I thought was going to be some kind of lions, tigers and clowns sorta thing, but the only thing circuslike about it was a truly wild SM scene.

That's the other thing, dears.

These folks are sooo uptight during the day -- very, very grumpy. But at night, they are total freaks! I've never seen so many different shops dedicated to latex!!

Faves so far are the fish and chips, although I seem to have gained two pounds from eating them, and that's the weight kind, not the money kind.

Also really, really love the doubledecker buses and the truly fabulous coffee. Can you imagine, dearies? Good coffee in London. Who knew??

Well, lambs, I think my 10 pounds of Internet time are used up here.

Did I mention that London was expensive?

I'll write more when I return.

Cheers, love.

Oh, FYI? Bangers and mash is not yet another SM party as I had suspcted.

Pity.

2002-01-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

Anne Marie and I are saving Broadway.

Yes, dears, it's quite true.

It all started when AM, (a former Broadway song and dance girl, turned restaurant manager, turned dance instructor, turned champion vegetable gardener) called me up and said, "Oh my Godddddd!! Bossy Rossi! Do you know how many shows are going dark because of September 11th?"

This was code for two things; A) it's time to support Broadway in its time of need. It is, after all, the heart and soul of New York culture ... Well, aside from off-track betting, of course. B) We might get cheap tickets.

Our first excursion to the great tourist way was the show Contact, which was really very good, and even a little sexy, although I felt as though my body was shoved into a seat that could fit into Barbie's camper.

Helloooo! It's called leg room, and we don't mean for chickens.

We chased our cultural matinee with some really good Chinese fusion and some really bad service at a trendy eatery with a name that rhymed with "achoo." I might have loved the place if if weren't for the fact that I could actually feel myself aging in the time it took to get a drink.

This weekend was part two of our "Saturday Matinee, Save Broadway and Pay Less" grand plan.

We met at the discount ticket kiosk that generally has a line of tourists wrapped around its dividers like a giant multi-colored sausage.

How can anyone wear that much color? I'm not saying I'm opposed to colorful clothing; black, gray, dark green, beige and off-white are fine, but these folks look like they walked through a crayon factory.

Anyway, I was saddened to see only a few folks in line, but when we got to the board, we saw why. There were only two big shows on sale. Les Miserables and The Full Monty. This was good news for Broadway -- meant things were sold out -- bad news for us, since neither option seemed too scintillating.

We opted for Monty, although I'd already seen the movie and just couldn't imagine wanting to see that in singing form. I never quite got over having been one of the only victims to see Carrie, the musical. I won't go into it, but imagine a chorus singing about pig's blood.

We were jazzed up all the same. It was a gorgeous, sunny day that felt more like fall than winter. Broadway had clearly picked up since NOTHING WAS ON SALE!! AAK and we were just two blonde babes weaving in and out of the slow-moving colorful folks like rockets from hell.

Why would anyone come to Manhattan and then slow down? Just boggles the mind.

Anyway, as soon as we sat down, AM being the responsible perky thang that she is, bent down to turn off her cell phone, and within a second the very large, very colorful bitch ... err, umm, woman behind her taps her on the shoulder and says, "Excuusse meeeeee, I can't seeee!?" and the show hadn't even started.

AM did what any former song and dance babe would do. She glared at the bitch, errr, um, woman like razors were shooting from her eyes and said, "I wassss jusssttttt turrrnnnniingggg offfff myyyy cellll phoooone."

Then AM whispered to me rather loudly, "must be from Wisconsin."

Luckily for us, the show was actually fabulous, really, really, really fun with great songs and fun choreography and lots of penises that we couldn't see cause they turned the lights off at just the wrong, err, umm, right moment.

After our matinee, we had drinks at a snazzy place on 50th Street called Martinis that makes martinis that sit in glass cones imbedded in a bowls of ice, which is just what I wanted to do after sitting for 3 hours, but they didn't have any ice bowls large enough.

We toasted the success of yet another venture to the theatre, darling, ate a lot of asparagus, had dinner with Mr. Anne Marie and their pals: J (with the permanent tan) and S (with no body fat, ever..!). Then AM, S and moi dumped the boys and high-tailed it downtown (where the altitude is more to my comfort level), and danced ourselves silly at a lesbian bar with a '70s disco night.

Never mind that fact that we knew all the words to all the songs cause we were there when these songs came out. The adorable waitress with the chains wrapped around her exposed belly I ream of Jeannie style fell in love with us and danced around our table. She'd just purchased a 1970s halter-top from a second-hand store and was displaying it and most of the rest of her for all enjoy.

"Yeaaah!" AM said to the cutie, "I'm probably the one the store bought that from."

Second-hand '70s, meet the first-handers.

Oh what the hell, it was a fun night and the girls were out in a wide array of butch, femme, leather, yuppie, cowgirl, home-girl and lesbian trapped in a gay boy's body.

What better way to cap a day on Broadway than with a lesbian buffet?!

Anne Marie and I are saving Broadway ... one Saturday matinee at a time.

Look for us at the corner of 46th and 7th. We'll be the blur of black, gray and blonde.

2002-01-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

We had our first snowstorm.

It was pretty wimpy as far as snowstorms go -- only 6 inches. No roads had to be closed that I know of, and it happened on the weekend, which was very convenient, trafficwise.

Still, it was great to see the snow.

I've always loved snow.

When I was a kid, snow was the glorious present from the universe that might close school for an entire day or days.

It was the soft, luscious white stuff that might offer me a chance to make some real money. Twenty bucks for shoveling out a walkway and a driveway. If I did three in a day, I could practically move out on my own, or so I thought at the grand old age of 10.

In my now-20 years in NYC, I never tire of the wonder of this soft, white blanket covering my city, muffling its sounds until all of Manhattan seems to purr.

To me this wondrous sheet of cotton is pure peace.

Well ... yeah ... by the next morning, it's either speckled in yellow by dogs, turned brown by car exhaust or simply relegated to the role of nuisance by any who drive, but still, all in all, I love the snow.

Things feel quiet today. I can hear the plip-plop of bits of snow falling off the trees as the temperature warms up just enough to get things melting. From a distance, someone shovels snow on the roof and tosses it over the side. It lands with a soft slump, like laundry being tossed it into a basket.

I don't know why it is that as much as I love open skies, trees, flowers all the usual bits of nature, nothing moves me more than watching this busy city in the snow.

Maybe it's something about finding beauty in rough places.

These are the same heartstrings that get a resounding yoink when I find a wildflower peeking out of the cracks of a sidewalk or a small community garden in Alphabet City, turning trash into roses.

You can keep your ranches and your farms and your nature trails (although a back yard would be nice one day).

I've got icicles clinging to the chins of brownstones and children throwing snowballs at taxicabs.

I've got the sensation that while I?m looking out my window at the snow, so are millions of my neighbors, all at the same time, all saying nothing, all thinking, for just this one moment, absolutely nothing.

Damn!

I love New York.

2002-01-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

Not even 24 hours have elapsed since I returned from Puerto Rico, but it seems like I was there months ago.

Worse yet, I fear I am already in desperate need of a vacation.

This might have something to do with my next-door neighbor, who seems to have decided that our parking lot is a great place to store his old refrigerator. This is the same neighbor who is convinced that everyone in the building should pay the sanitation fine resulting from his improper trash disposal.

Hello! It's called responsibility. ... Get some!!

Could be the letter from my insurance company letting me know that they will only pay for about 25% of my recent medical bill because I did not get prior certification. Yes, of course. Next time I will plan on getting sick.

Then there's the stack of bills that came spilling out of my mailbox like a paper bomb. The pile of bills adds up to thousands. The checks ... well, there's just one ... for $421.09.

There's also the little matter of my walking into my apartment last night after a rather rocky flight to discover that my two darling cats had managed to puke over just about every square inch of my formerly Zen-like home. The few corners here and there that had somehow escaped their regurgitation installation art were dusted in cat litter.

Let's just say it hasn't been a grand homecoming.

On the brighter side ... I am tan.

If I can get past this rather pukish finale and drift back to where I was only yesterday, I must say it was a fabulous 6 days.

La cubana took me, (yes, took me, eat your hearts out) on this holiday away from it all, and it really did take me away.

This was my first time out of the area since September 11th, and oddly, I had no idea how truly submerged in 9/11 I was until I left the continent.

Along with the palm trees and the ocean and the sand and the rum punch and the tiny little birds that eat out of your plate, there was also something else, something very vast, and very quiet and very overwhelming; the complete absence of The World Trade Center.

I'm not saying Puerto Rico didn't feel affected.

I'm just saying that as a New Yorker who has lived and breathed (literally) the disaster of 9/11 every day since that day ... going to this new place, felt a bit like going back in time.

I felt as though I were submerged in a calm, sweet slice of time, that trickled along on its own pace utterly unaffected by all the things that broke on September 11th.

Is it wrong to forget for just a little while?

I don't know.

But I did, and it felt totally awesome.

So sue me.

Now then, does anyone know how to get cat puke out of carpeting?

2002-01-08T20:32:00.000-05:00

I paint.

Don't know if I've ever mentioned that, but maybe that's because painting is something I rarely talk about ... now.

I used to talk a lot about my painting. I didn't paint nearly as much as I talked about painting, and I wound up having something like writer's block for painting for ... hmm ... oh, eight years.

I was in Provincetown, where most folks go to inspire their artistic selves. I lived there for six months. This was going back a spell to 1992, when I was just a cute little thing.

Hmm. Well, I was actually still a bad-ass New Yorker with a chip on my shoulder the size of Pittsburgh, but I was, (and incidentally, still am) quite cute.

Anyway, there I was in this dinky hell-hole of a bungalow with exposed insulation and a shower in the kitchen, painting away at a self-portrait.

The more I painted, the uglier I got. By the time I threw the portrait aside, I felt like I was stuck in some sick rendition of Dorian Gray.

I decided to take a break from painting and write for a while, and then, overnight, eight years went by.

All the friends and lovers who met me from 1992 until the magical year 2000 didn't even know I painted. Or they knew it like some little hobby I'd cast aside in my formative years.

I kept my old work hidden in the closet, my dirty little secret, this decrepit skeleton covered up in garbage bags and bubble-wrap. I didn't like who I was in the years I painted, my teens through my late 20s.

Well, to tell you the truth, I've only recently started thinking I'm pretty great. It's a new thing -- knowing I'm kinda cool. I think I'll keep thinking this way. It sure beats the alternative.

Anyway, in the fall of 2000, while I was licking my wounds over a marathon of painful break-ups and what felt like mental menopause, I just started to paint.

I didn't announce it. I didn't talk too much about it. I just started to paint.

And I (knock on every imaginable kind of wood) haven't stopped and hope I never will.

I don't think I ever really was an artist. All those years when I dedicated myself fully to my work and talked about little else and pounded the pavement trying to get someone to look at my slides and show my work to little avail ... I don't think I really was an artist.

I know this, because I cared far more about what people thought about my work than about the process of creating that work. I used to rush madly through the painting process, hungry for the end when I would have something that someone might admire, or better yet hoping that someone might admire me.

That's not what it's all about; I know that now.

I might never sell a painting in my lifetime. I might sell a thousand. I might never achieve any kind of recognition for this facet of my life.

I might become well known as a painter, (or more likely a painter/chef/writer/lunatic who can't decide who and what she is).

But I love the process.

It's not always fun, painting. Sometimes it's terrifying, like recently when I started painting the World Trade Center, the firefighters and my many demons brewing since September 11th.

Putting these things on paper was far easier than putting them on canvas. Putting them on canvas gave them a face. It made them real. I can touch them now. They hang on my walls to remind me that these things did, in fact happen.

I'm not an artist.

I paint.

I'm not a writer, but I do write.

Please, oh please, let me keep on loving the process.

It feels a little bit like flying.

2002-01-03T18:43:00.000-05:00

It's the day after New Year's, and I'm sitting here with a wad of tissues piling up on my desk, a hot cup of tea and enough cold pills to take the snort out of an elephant.

Aaaaaa-chooooo!

Sheesh! Why do I always catch a cold on my vacation time?

It's like my body goes, "Whooohoooo! We've got the month off! Time to get really down and funky. Bring on the germs! Calling all viruses!"

Luckily my body at least waited till after New Year's Eve.

What a weird New Year's it was.

Five minutes after the ball dropped and my gang of pals had exchanged smooches, we were left sitting on my bed staring at New York's new mayor and saying out loud, "Man. It really doesn't feel like New Year's."

There were less people in Time Square than I'd seen in previous years.

There was less screaming from the roofs and fire escapes of my neighbors.

There was less energy in the air.

I guess after everything that's happened to this city, it was hard for a lot folks to say those words, "Happy New Year!" without feeling like a liar.

For me, there was also the added bummer, that I had to spend yet another New Year's Eve with no lover to smooch at midnight. M.E., my significant other, was only able to stay for the early part of the evening. Her mother (whom evidently one doesn't say no to) had coerced her into ringing in the new year at The Plaza -- nice if you like being surrounded by old money and pretentious tourists.

I did have some great friends over; Laura the actress, Erin the writer, Carol the banker, Sandy the insurance guru and Neil my chef and occasional therapist.

I tried to compensate for the sadness of the year, by serving Jewish love food; potato pancakes and applesauce, stuffed cabbage, roast chicken, sweet carrots and home-style rye bread. Like all my meals, I made enough food to feed Pittsburgh.

"Please, for the love of God, have seconds!" I begged my 5 guests as I looked at food for 20.

We drank champagne, ate cabbage, sat in front of the burning Duraflame log and told each other stories about our lives. It was a wonderful non-party.

But it didn't feel like New Year's.

At 11:30 in an effort to stir things up, I brought out Twister. You remember Twister don't ya? That plastic sheet full of dots. You spin the wheel, put your left hand on blue, your right hand through your friend's legs to yellow, your butt hovering dangerously over green.

I think Twister is one of those things that was a lot more fun when you were 8, (unless of course you play naked Twister, but that's another party entirely).

I was the spinner, and Carol, Sandy, Laura and Erin were the twistees. Everyone got tangled up and giggly. It was fun. Really fun, but it didn't feel like New Year's.

At 10 minutes to midnight, my pals piled onto my bed to watch Dick Clark. None of them wanted to leave the warm apartment, so I pulled on clunky boots and a down coat and climbed the stairs to the roof. Kathleen from 1G was there, rosy faced and laughing, surrounded by a smiling crew of very tipsy women with very large wine glasses.

Standing on the roof at midnight is a tradition I started as soon as I moved to my new home in The East Village. This was my third year. I always took my favorite spot, standing in the center of the deck with The World Trade Center to the left and the Empire State Building to the right.

I still remember the amazing sound of thousands of New Yorkers screaming when the clock struck twelve for the year 2000. It's odd to say that the sound I heard of the countless people screaming when the first tower collapsed on September 11th was eerily similar. Only the distant notes were of horror not joy.

I looked into the place where the towers had been and felt ashamed that I could no longer remember exactly where they stood. Was it right behind that building? Or that one? How soon we forget.

"10, 9, 8, 7 ..."

I turned to face Kathleen and her friends.

"6, 5, 4, 3 ..."

It was Kathleen whom I wound up kissing at midnight and then raced down to my apartment to share smooches with the gang.

"Happy New Year!" we all cheered to each other. Laura and Erin were French kissing, Neil was looking pink and adorable. Carol and Sandy hugging.

"Just how old is Dick Clark, anyway?" Laura broke the moment to ask.

"That guy must be 80!" someone said.

We watched our new mayor shake hands with the man most people call a hero these days; citizen Giuliani. It was a weird moment; a new year, a new mayor. There was something about Giuliani leaving that seemed to say, the curtain is closing on September 11th. It's time for all of us to move on now. I suppose that's a good thing. There might be something healing about a new face on the news, a new beginning.

It's 2002. We have before us an unpainted canvas ready to be filled with the many colors of our adventures yet to be. How do we fill this new place and remain faithful to the lessons so recently learned?

How do we move on, without forgetting?

As in the aftermath of all terrible tragedies, I guess we just do.

I think back over what I've seen these last months ... not on the news, but in my own little neighborhood; the weeks when we needed ID to get home, the many days when half the people on my block wore ventilation masks as if that could do anything against the intense smell of dust and death that seemed to permeate our very souls, the flyers of missing sons and daughters, husbands and wives that caught us off guard, eerily smiling out at us from the many makeshift memorials that sprouted up around Alphabet City like wildflowers.

It's a new year. Time to re-energize ourselves and strive for something better than we've had before. There were so many things that seemed important before September 11th. So few of those things seemed important on September 12th. It's those few things that I hope for now; peace, courage, love, family, goodness.

Happy New Year??

Hmm. No not really especially in this city, but I can live with that. It's okay not to feel happy right now, especially if what has replaced that happiness is hope.

Here's wishing a Hopeful New Year to you all.

2001-12-24T00:53:00.000-05:00

Christmas in Manhattan

I've always felt, other than ... hmm ... the North Pole, that Manhattan has got to be the Christmas capital of the world. It's not that we city folks are any more merry than the rest of the world (although we are better dressed, I must say). It's just that there's something about Christmas in New York. There always has been.

Ice skating at Rockefeller Center (not that I've ever actually done that). ...

The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall (never actually seen the Rockettes ...).

Holiday shopping up and down 5th Avenue ...(who can afford 5th Avenue?) ...

Hey! Just knowing these things are there has filled me with downright giddiness, and I'm Jewish for crying out loud!

Manhattan on Christmas is simply wonderful.

I love the way die-hard New Yorkers get soft-hearted in the days before December 25th. Yes, they do still tell you to go to hell if you're in their way during rush hour, but they smile as they say it. Some may even add, "and ... umm ... Merry Christmas!"

I love the sight of iron window guards laced with pine and twinkling lights, and ooohhh the sounds of Christmas carolers and car alarms.

Christmas in Manhattan has always been magical.

But what about this year?

How much magic will it take to conjure up this soft wonderful spirit against the backdrop of all that we've lost this year?

How can we muster up a decent waft of joy when the thought of all those families mourning their loved ones keeps drifting in and out of our hearts?

They say it won't even snow this Christmas.

We need some $%#@ snow!

I've ventured out to try to find this thing called joy this season, and what I've found instead are other things: resolve, kindness, pride and heroism.

There was Carol, who with a band of determined Christmas carolers attempted to serenade the workers at ground zero. They weren't allowed in, so with bagpipe player in tow, they sang so loud that even against the wind and the tractors and the avenue of distance their songs were heard ... or so they hoped.

There are the many, many people in my neighborhood and in all the others who have dressed their doors and their windows and their trees with more lights and tinsel and tiny angels than ever before. Amid the abundance of twinkling, blinking lights is a new Christmas ornament; the American flag.

Red, white and blue has joined red, green and gold as part of the rainbow of Christmas.

I tried to volunteer at ground zero feeding the rescue crews, thinking that most people would not want to give up their Christmas to dole out mashed potatoes, but I was wrong. There are so many volunteers this Christmas that the coordinator did not even want to take my phone call. "Call back in January," she said, "We're slammed."

She wasn't very polite, but I got her message; everyone wants to help.

Is it sad this year?

Endlessly sad.

With there be joy?

We'll try.

Do we have the Christmas spirit?

You bet your ass we do!

2001-12-19T13:47:00.000-05:00

If you want to know what real New Yorkers are really thinking about the war, put a tape recorder in a commercial kitchen.

I share my catering kitchen with a company that supplies food to a college commissary. Between our two crews, we've got a mishagash stew: one Ecuadoran, two New York Jews (best kind), one all-American rocker (cross Kurt Cobain with John Tesh), one Colombian, one Filipino raised in NYC and an African-American from the projects.

A typical afternoon banter might start something like this:

"So, Sergio, what are your feelings about the war today?"

"Oh, you know. ... I think it sucks!"

We never used to discuss politics in the kitchen, but things have changed.

After September 11th, the rocker plugged an old television set into an extension cord shared with the meat slicer. It only got two channels. One of them ran 24 hours of news, so the kitchen stayed in touch with the outside world, even if the slicer ran a bit slow.

Our kitchen, by the way, is the last warehouse in a row of warehouses, with thick concrete walls and 20-foot ceilings. We're in Long Island City, only a minute from the Mid-town Tunnel or the 59th Street bridge, but it feels like we're nestled on the Isle of Nowhere.

FYI, Long Island City is part of Queens, not Long Island. You'd be surprised how many diehard Manhattanites don't know that.

It's pretty easy to feel disconnected from the world out there, especially if you enter 3,000 feet of concrete and stainless steel before the sun rises and leave after it sets, as the rocker's crew does.

As for moi, well the entire reason I started my business is that I'm incapable of facing the world before 11 a.m. So I send in my chef at 10 and saunter in jovial and bubbly (NOT) at about 11:30.

When the towers were hit, the rocker and his prep cook walked down to the end of the block, where Manhattan suddenly unfolds like a giant postcard, and watched. They stared dumbfounded as a second plane hit the towers. With eyes wet and jaws hung open, they watched the first tower implode, then they trudged back to the kitchen lost and speechless.

How do you make egg salad for 200 after that?

"That's when I plugged in the TV, duuuuude," said the rocker, trying to shove his long, blond hair under his headband, "I wanted to know what was coming next!"

Before 9/11, the most our kitchen ever talked about current events was during the recent presidential election. We kept track of the counting and re-counting of the votes, on our radio and cheered when Gore was ahead. When Bush was ahead, we stirred our sauces and chopped our onions with a vengeance as if that could somehow just push him away, out of our world.

When Bush stole, errr, um, won the election, we began a chant that seemed to last for weeks. "Fuck Bush! Fuck Bush!"

But no one cares about that now. Some of the crew is glad to have him in office, because in the words of my chef (one of the New York Jews; I'm the other, natch), "We need a war monger right now. Gore is too decent of a guy."

To which I always add, "Bring back Clinton!"

Our motley crews have not always been in agreement, especially when the U.S. first started simultaneously dropping bombs on the Taliban and food for the Afghan people.

"We're dropping food?? Dude!! Just blow them all the fuck up!" screamed the rocker. A lively humanitarian speech ensued from the New York Jewish contingent.

When the anthrax reports started, we listened on the radio and seasoned our marinades and roasted our turkeys and thought out loud, "This shit is getting scary."

But mostly the comments bantered around are about how much the war has changed our lives. Business is down. Deliveries take an extra hour or two or three. Our vans are searched (and uncharacteristically, we don't mind). Strangers asking for directions are scrutinized as though they have a bomb taped under their Mets caps.

Every time we pass the armed guards as we enter the Midtown Tunnel, we are reminded instantaneously of the real-ness of this war. I always feel a pang of fear that first moment we plunge into the tube. I picture it all crashing down on me. When we emerge from the other side, I remember to breathe again.

In the first month after September 11th, I had a lot of trouble caring about whether my vinaigrette had just the right hint of honey. I did not ask the others, but I could tell that we all felt it. Nothing we were doing seemed that important anymore. How can you obsess about the right proportion of salt to sugar in coleslaw, when thousands of people died, right over there, in the empty space cut out of the post card?

The Filipino doesn't come in as often now. He spends a lot more time with his kids. He comes around to make a sauce or two and then runs off to pick up his children. He's a nice guy. His kids must adore him.

Members of the Latin contingent seem mostly lost in their own thoughts, going about the business of their inner lives. I know the Colombian sidelines for a company that fed the rescue crews, but he doesn't talk about it. He smiles a lot and reminds us what sucks and what doesn't. Mostly he thinks any war sucks but doesn't question the need for this one. None of us do.

The Ecuadoran doesn't speak English, but she laughs at our jokes. I have no idea how she feels about the war, but I think the television irritates her.

As for our brother from the projects. He mostly just does his job and leaves. Doesn't want any shit from us, doesn't want to dole it out neither. He always seems a bit bored with all the war stuff. "I just want to get home," was mostly all he said this fall. We've nicknamed him "Mr. Personality."

My chef ponders it all and questions everything. He questions the authenticity of the bin Laden tape.

"I don't know if it's fake or not, but it's great timing."

He rolls his eyes at the very mention of Arafat.

"Yeah, sure he wants peace. That's why he's been doing such a grrrrrrreat job getting it."

He laughs at the notion of capturing bin Laden.

"He's probably in his little private cave right now with a candle and a lot of books."

As for me, well, sometimes I like to lose myself in this concrete cavern, just push myself over to a back table and make my marinades and listen to jazz and try to pretend that I haven't seen and heard all the things I've seen and heard these last few months.

Yeah. Well, that lasts about 10 minutes, but it's a sweet 10 minutes, let me tell you.

If you want to know what real people really think about the war, just come over to our place. We've got it all covered. Mostly though, we're a little out of sorts like the rest of the country and a little sad. Even the rocker. He hasn't said "dude" all day. I'm worried about him.

2001-12-09T14:15:00.000-05:00

Maybe it was the 50th news telecast about the Christmas tree at ground zero, or the fact that all the help agencies down in the trenches seem to be Christian: The Salvation Army, St. Paul's Church, The Trinity Church.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings about being left out on the Christmas holiday season, but I woke up on the morning of December 8th with one blazing thought in my mind: What about Chanukah at ground zero?

I'd spent Rosh Hashanah volunteering down there and was shocked at the slew of soldiers and volunteers who clustered around the Jewish chaplain as he put together a make-shift service amidst the dust.

Why was I surprised to see so many Jews in uniform?

I suppose it just didn't fit the stereotype.

Being a soldier, a fireman or even a construction worker, for that matter, wasn't the profile I'd been taught since early childhood, (Jews were supposed to be doctors, lawyers, accountants or television producers). If we can't do that, we're at least supposed to go into the wholesale apparel business.

I did the next best thing; I became a caterer.

If you can't beat them ... feed them.

Anyway, as I said, I woke up with a mission.

It was a cold Saturday. Our record warm spell was over, rain was impending and the first night of Chanukah was in one day.

I dressed and started my trek to the closest thing Manhattan has to the holy land: The Lower East Side.

Past Yonah Shimmel's Knishes and Katz's delicatessen, I turned on Essex street and found the old Jewish-style candy store that will always remind me of fresh halvah and chocolate-covered matzoh: Economy Candy. I waited in a long line of impatient tourists from Long Island and finally purchased my bounty.

I now had ammunition: dreidels filled with fruit chews and jelly beans, milk chocolate gelt (Chanukah coins) in gold wrappers and dozens of tiny treats including chocolate racing cars.

With my Jewish Santa's sack slung over my shoulder I trudged crosstown into Tribeca, determined to get my parcel into ground zero.

The last time I'd been down there was the week after the towers collapsed, It was different then. If you looked like you belonged and said the right things, you could get in. You could help feed people or dole out water or socks … something. If you wanted to get in bad enough, amid the confusion and the despair, you could.

Not now.

From Greenwich Street in Tribeca I could see the collapsed mass of wreckage. It was shocking to weave through restaurants and holiday shoppers and suddenly come upon this monument of death. I made my way through a hundred or so tourists pushing against the wooden barricade to take pictures of the pile.

They seemed excited … not happy, but jazzed up. Their cameras flashed furiously as they climbed up on police barricades and garbage cans to get a better view.

It made me a bit peevish.

I cut east and tried to walk around another block, but each time I found a street leading into ground zero it ended with hundreds of tourists with cameras and a police barricade that no one, not even the police, could get through.

Finally, on Broadway, I found myself back at St. Paul's church, the oasis of food, clothing and support, where I had volunteered in those days after the 11th. There were no more buffets set up outside, no socks or clothing or news crews. Instead possibly a thousand tourists pushed their way past the church taking photos. A tour bus drove by with its passengers pressed against the glass, snapping away.

It felt like madness.

I stared at the old brown church. The last time I'd been here, St. Paul's was covered in dust and burnt papers, now it was covered with a memorial made of drawings, t-shifts, teddy bears, letters, candles and police hats

I needed to get away from the cameras and forced my way to the front step. St. Paul's was closed to the general public, but the reverend recognized me and ushered me inside.

"Nice to see you again," he said.

"Hello, Lyndsey. Wow, it sure is different now."

"Yeah, but they're still coming in."

They were.

There in the warm cozy church, I saw volunteers doling out pharmaceutical supplies, chiropractors with their massage tables set up, priests ready to give counseling and two women doling out hot soup and cold cut sandwiches. It was a one-stop relief center for tired and beaten rescue crews.

Small groups of visitors sat on the pews and prayed silently as a young woman played the flute.

The moment struck me as oddly absurd: I was standing in a church filled with clergy, carting a sack full of Chanukah candy.

But I had a mission.

I left St. Paul's and tried to come around from the south side and then from the west, each time meeting a guard or cop who told me they never went into "the hole" and could not help me.

Finally, on a quiet, seemingly ignored street I saw a green wooden wall behind police barricades and two cops standing guard.

"It's Chanukah … and I need to bring these things to the guys in there that are Jewish," I said trying to look as small and demure as my black leather boots and jacket would allow. "I don't want them to feel left out."

I must have caught them on a sympathetic day. "Let her through."

I was allowed into what turned out to be the private observation deck overlooking the very center of the hole. This was the place I assumed was reserved for politicians and celebrities. A small group of official looking people made room for me. I felt a chill when I realized that I was also probably standing in the private deck used when family members of the deceased needed to visit the site.

I had been this close to the debris before, the week I volunteered, but never stood directly in the center of it all. It was so staggering, I almost forgot what I was doing there.

The ruins were massive; I began to feel insignificant. I felt small and lost and useless. Were it not for the aching in my shoulder bringing me back to reality, I wonder if I would still be standing there staring at the burnt steel.

As miracles would have it, a construction worker I asked to help me get my gifts to the crews turned out to be Jewish. Who woulda guessed? I would have bet the bank he was Italian, but then everyone says that about me, too.

He was going off shift, but he agreed to take my sack of goodies and distribute it to the tents where the crews took their breaks.

"They are going to have a menorah lighting tomorrow night," he said, as if to reassure me that I wasn't the only one who woke up thinking about Chanukah on ground zero.

"Thanks," I said, shaking his big hand. "I was worried that my guys wouldn't get anything for Chanukah this year." My guys?

As for my good Samaritan ways paying off (a little New Testament allusion never hurt anybody … ), well, minutes after I left, the rain started and it grew icy cold and windy. There were no cabs, and the one subway station I found was closed. So I wound up walking the 35 or so blocks to my home in the East Village.

I trudged through crowds of Christmas shoppers, honking traffic jams and icy rain muttering something to myself that at any time in my life before September 11th would have been "So this is the thanks I get," but in fact was "Man! I feel so amazing right now!"

I did ... feel amazing.

I do ... feel amazing.

I guess it seems silly talking about it now. Going on a ridiculous 100-block trek to and around downtown Manhattan trying to give Chanukah candies to some rescue workers.

But you've gotta do something, even if it's small, and that's what I love about New York right now, all the small things people are doing.

As I said, I always feel left out of the holiday season, but I've got a feeling that I'm not going to feel that way this year and maybe my guys (and girls) won't either.

Happy Chanukah to us all.

2001-12-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

Let me just say it out loud.

I have always loved Christmas.

Phew!

Is that ever a relief!

Hey! The ceiling didn't come crashing down. No lightning. My mother didn't come back from that great sample sale in the sky screeching, "OYYYYYY VEYYYYYYY!!!!!"

It must be (gasp) okay for a Jew to love Christmas.

As a kid I always felt left out in December. All the other kids were writing their lists for mom and pop Santa, out caroling, decorating the tree. They seemed so damned giddy it made me sick.

I wondered aloud why, why, why didn't we have something to sing in public about, (unless, you count Gershwin show tunes of course).

Sure, Christmas was short compared to the eight days of Chanukah, but the thrill my schoolmates described in waking up on Christmas morning to piles of gifts and the smell of French toast just seemed infinitely better than candle lighting and Kugel.

Night after night, we circled the kitchen dinette set hoping for something grand. Night after night, my supremely eccentric mom doled out bottles of shampoo, tube socks, three-for-a-dollar underwear and other officially lousy gifts. Maybe on the fourth night, after we were practically suicidal, she'd bring out some decent gifts -- a Barbie doll, a Tonka truck -- but it was too little too late for moi. I ate so many potato pancakes on Chanukah week that I began to think the real meaning of this holiday was eight days of constipation.

Green was the color of Christmas, all right, and I was rolling in it: green, green envy. There were all those great Snoopy cartoons. Wow! Cartoons at night! What a treat for a kid, right? Think again. The second any of the Peanuts gang broke into a Christmas song, my mom flipped the channel.

"That's a Christian show!" she'd shriek, as if she'd caught us sitting on the couch devouring a pork roast. "Turn on Channel 13. Maybe there's a Chanukah special."

If there was a Chanukah special on, it consisted of a very dowdy man in a yarmulke, slowly explaining the meaning of the festival of lights in that same monotone voice my science teacher used when he wanted to send an entire class into a coma.

Couldn't somebody make Chanukah as fun as Christmas??!

Clearly there are Jewish families around the world who manage to have a whole lot more fun than my family did. I know for a fact that my brother's kids don't miss Christmas a bit, but then my brother's idea of Chanukah is a week in Disneyland.

How I love the Christmas spirit; weeks and weeks of excitement all building up to one night of champagne and then a morning chock full of goodies.

It's like a one-night stand with Santa!

But not for me (never liked big fat hairy men, anyway, or … hmm … any kind for that matter).

So here I am, ready once again to be bombarded with Christmas cards and Christmas gifts from my friends.

I'll try to keep with the Chanukah spirit and send my friends their gifts in time for the first night of Chanukah, but they'll only sit them under the *&^%# tree and open them on December 25th, anyway.

Yeahhhhh. I'll be lucky if I have a bar of scented soap to unwrap on Chanukah. Most of my gifts will come, you guessed it, just in time for Christmas.

But this year's gonna be different.

This year I'm gonna stir up some green of my own.

I feel my spirit is renewed. I will, yes, yes, yes, I will make Chanukah as fun as Christmas.

I will go to the Second Avenue Deli and buy latkes by the dozen (you don't think I'm gonna spend Chanukah peeling %$#@& potatoes do you?).

I will spin the dreidel.

I will dole out gefilte fish and guilt.

I will kvetch.

I will kvel!

I will play Klesmer music until my neighbors either call the cops or convert.

I AM YENTL; HEAR ME ROAR!!!!

Sigh.

Oh hell! I always hated eggnog, anyway. What do they put in that stuff?? It tastes like sugared down Hollandaise sauce. YEEEECH!

2001-11-29T22:06:00.000-05:00

I want to go home.

I've been thinking about home a lot since the morning of September 11th. Somewhere buried under layers of despair, I heard the call. Go home. Go home.

It was home that pulled me out of the East Village and then down the West Side Highway, trudging as fast as I could, until my hips hit the police barricades. I don't even know how I got there.

It was home that ultimately dragged me to ground zero and once there, as close to the smoking remnants as the armed guards would allow.

"I need to get in," I said to the guards, using my wheelbarrow filled with ice and Gator-ade as an entry pass. It worked.

As I purposely aimed my wheelbarrow to the tent nearest to the sculptures of steel jutting up, I felt myself being pulled apart by opposing sensations. Here was complete devastation, yet I felt oddly comfortable, peaceful. Was home nestled in the furthermost reaches of that fiery pit?

Flipping through the channels, I always stop when an image of ground zero comes on the screen. I wait until the news moves to another subject and only then change the channel.

It's always the same puzzling sensation: complete sadness and soothing calm.

It's like watching a video of the town you grew up in being totally destroyed, and then remembering in a rush all the wonderful things that used to be there. That remembrance washes over the burnt image until you see the two images at once: terrible and wonderful.

There are children playing in the dust. There are people laughing in the sky.

I'm looking for home.

No, I don't think it's the house in Rumson, N.J., that held me captive for the last eight years of my childhood, although the memory of my mother holding court at the kitchen table with her coupons and sugar-free cookies does pull at my heartstrings.

"Have another nosh, my shana madela. Make your mother happy."

Hmm that would be so delicious right about now, a little bite of childhood, but no. That's not the home I'm looking for.

I spent Thanksgiving with a friend who has been so close for so long that she has become my family, her daughter my daughter.

She has a warm, crowded, adoringly cluttered house filled with children's toys and the artwork of friends. Her table was filled with comfort foods made from recipes passed on to her by her grandmother and her mother.

The conversation flowed seamlessly from the moment I walked in until the moment I left: good people sharing over good food. It felt like a home. It is a home, a wonderful home, but not my home. Not the home that's been calling me.

How does that expression go? Oh, yes. Home is where the heart is. I suppose that answers a lot then, doesn't it? Home is where the heart is.

It's such a crisp night. The rain has stopped, and the children are playing.

I think I need to take a walk downtown.

2001-11-22T18:13:00.000-05:00

September 11th must have been a maddening day for New Yorkers who moved away.

Those of us who were home in "Ma'ha'an" got to be a part of our city's worst and finest hours. We ran, we feared, we cheered, we cried, we did everything the rest of the world did, but we were here and that was something.

Yeah. That was something.

The out-of-towners were stuck watching it all from the TV.

I thought about this last night when I had dinner with my ol' pal Wolf. No, not Wolf the CNN correspondent. Wolf the hair dresser.

He moved to NYC when I did.

We were both teenagers who were a tad too wild for the Jersey Shore (and a tad too gay).

So we stuck together.

We formed some sort of inner group of suburban outcasts who finally found a place so diverse and crowded that it ultimately became quiet and peaceful.

Manhattan in the early '80s was the perfect place to blend in when your idea of casual wear was a Sex Pistols T-shirt, zebra spandex pants and a pink pair of Converse sneakers.

But we grew up ... sort of ... and Wolf moved to L.A. in search of this thing called "a back yard, a swimming pool and a place to park your car."

"It was so weird watching it on the news ... at the gym ..." he said while digging into his fat-free chicken. "That's why I came to town. I needed to go there ... to ground zero."

I'd thought the reason he was in town was Thanksgiving with the family, not to walk through Tribeca to the closest vantage point of what was left of the towers.

But, of course, that's why he came.

Wolf always had, well, a little too much edge. Let's just say he was the one guy I knew who got PMS ... a lot.

But he wasn't like that last night.

He was sweeter and softer.

As we all are, I suppose.

I've always been an angry woman, well except for the time in my life when I was an angry girl and then before that, an angry baby.

Could be a past life thing, or I just inherited the angry-as-hell gene, but damn, I've had a fire brewing.

I assumed after the towers went down that I'd be the poster child for rage. ... and ... yeah, some of that came, but really ... I don't feel so angry anymore.

Maybe it's because I've now seen firsthand what anger can do.

Maybe it's just because I want to throw some kindness into the mix of all that despair and pain.

New Yorkers are starting to go back to their old selves.

I knew the spell was broken the day the firefighters at ground zero, pissed about the cut back in crews, assaulted the police officers.

Watching them brawling on the news, I sighed and said to myself, "Yep, the 'nice' marathon is kaput."

So we're honking our horns again. We're fighting over parking spaces and telling the slowpokes entering the subway car to "move it along, buddy!"

But we're not the same.

We smile at the armed guards at the entrance to The Midtown Tunnel. We don't look at cops the way we used to, like they were human traffic tickets.

We probably give more money to the homeless and maybe don't go for quite as many manicures. Like perhaps most Americans, we are thinking more about love.

Harry Potter couldn't have come at a better time. We all need to escape to magic land.

So Wolf is in town to come face-to-face with this terrible thing and then he'll return to L.A., I'm sure, as immeasurably changed as all are who visit ground zero.

I'll think of him today as he makes his trek. I know full well what it feels like.

I'm a softer kinder person, but I'm not perfect.

I'm still letting Wolf do my hair when he comes back from ground zero.

Hey just 'cause I'm a creature of love doesn't mean I don't want my hair to look fierce!

2001-11-15T11:13:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about money.

Yes, yes, I know, half of America is worried about money right now, and the other half is obsessed with bargain-hunting in the slow economy.

But I never think about money.

It's not that I don't have my budgets (I must cut down to taking a taxi only twice a day and three times a day on weekends) or my concerns (is ordering in Chinese food 4 days a week excessive?).

It's just that as a matter of principle I try to never think about money.

Call it an act of rebellion!

Growing up as the product of two Slavic Jews who were born in the Depression and never, ever, EVER seemed to tire of planning for the next one, I got a little sick of day-old bread and powdered milk.

Helloooo! It's called a carton, and normal people buy milk that comes in one!!

My mom was so convinced that another Depression was waiting just around the discount bend, that she would literally go into convulsions if we bought anything that was not at least 20% off.

Even 20% off in my house was considered top dollar. That's right up there next to highway robbery and the Hope Diamond in terms of excess.

If you wanted any kind of support from the folks, you had to shop for things that were at least half off. Not that that was the very best there was, because remember, half off was still half on.

Free was where it was at.

My mom had spent years, studying the art of getting things for free, and it was a talent she honed and sharpened to the point where her ability to acquire free stuff was akin to Einstein's talent for math.

She was the queen of freebies.

The bank down the street was giving out flashlights if you opened a Christmas club account; my mom opened up 20 accounts of one buck each.

The Shop-Rite was doling out free wristwatches for every 50 bucks worth of groceries. My mom had us crawling around the parking lot in search of other people's receipts.

This might sound funny … at first … but trust me, it was mortifying.

No one wanted to invite my family to a birthday cause they knew what they were gonna get. … A Shop-Rite watch, a Seaman's Bank flashlight and a keychain that read "Bayer Aspirin."

The kids in school jibed me for years about the time they went to our house trick-or-treating on Halloween and mom gave out bags of snack mix marked "free sample."

Sheeesh!

By the time I moved out on my own, the very last thing I ever wanted to think about again was money. Unfortunately there was the little matter of my not having any, but really aside from being broke, I tried to never think about moolah.

Aside from getting evicted, I really tried to never ever think about cash.

Aside from …

Well you get the point.

But now things are different. Now I'm thinking about MONEY!

Friends call almost every day to say they've been laid off.

"Just lost my job sweetie. Conde Naste laid off a third of their internet people."

"Have you got any work?? I just lost my corporate chef job of 10 years. …"

Now the freelance waiters I hire come into the kitchen at the end of the night and say, "Thank you so much for the work."

Man! The day a New York City cater-waiter says thank you for making them work, is the day you really know times are hard.

My business is down. Natch. But it's not that bad. I can make it. Luckily I'm a wedding caterer and weddings seem to be the only luxury spending that anyone still wants to partake in.

Getting married and, well … also getting drunk. Then there are those who get married while drunk, but that's another story … and I promise to never do it again (kidding).

I'm thinking about money.

I'm thinking how good it feels to be able to throw some work at down-and-out waiters and bartenders. It feels great!! It's odd, but it's only been since September 11th, that it suddenly occurred to me that I am an employer not an employee.

I'm thinking about how lucky I am that I can still pay my bills and feed myself and my two phenomenally fat cats.

I'm thinking about my mom, and how no matter how much I complain about my shnorr childhood, I'm thanking my higher diva for Mom now. I've got a little nest egg to lean on during these rough times, and that's mainly due to her voice drummed into that back of my soul, "Two for five dollars is nice, but three for five dollars is nicer. …"

I'm thinking about my father and how he somehow managed to not be worried about my physical well being since September 11th, but called in a panic last night when he read about New York's struggling economy.

"Is your business okay?!" he asked frantically.

"Yes, Dad … and so am I."

I'm okay.

Sigh.

Thanks, Mom.

2001-11-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

Miracles are in the dust …

I lit my fire last night for the first time this year … and expected to fall into a deep trance staring at the flickering Duraflame.

Instead, a deep panic set into my throat followed by what felt like a swallow of sadness.

I put my hand to my chest as I stared into the new fire and remembered … yes, yes, of course, I was on the roof on September 11th the last time I stared at a fire.

The last time I stared at an impossible, impossible fire.

It’s funny how these little treats have been tainted now hanging out on the roof, lighting the fire. It was hard enough to get through my guilt over having any human pleasure at all … to light the damn fireplace, but now the glowing tongues of red, orange and blue licking their way up the chimney bring it all back.

I lay there on my side, staring into the flames and let all the spectacular images good and bad that I have seen, felt, heard or smelled wash over me.

There was the dust-covered, ground zero building I passed on a Gatorade run to the pile. Someone had dragged a finger through the thick, gray nothing to etch out a message to all of us who passed: “They may destroy our buildings, but not our souls.”

There was the man, my last client on my last day at Safe Horizon who lived two blocks from the WTC. He told me about watching a chain of four people holding hands who jumped together. He watched them sail downward clasped to each other.

“Most people say they jumped to die. … I say they jumped as their last act of rebellion. They chose to rebel against death by putting it on their terms,” said this quiet, unintentional prophet who’d lost his home and his business.

I think of him often.

I read of a woman in Israel. She referred to this as our time of sitting Shiva, and I think that feels right, only how long does it take to sit Shiva for so many thousands of innocents? How do you sit Shiva?

I have done this before, covered the mirrors, poured instant coffee for other mourners, doled out bagels with cream cheese, small cakes, but that is not this kind of Shiva.

Although covering the mirrors seems oddly okay.

I am thinking about the miracles: the young woman I met who was just a few minutes late for work at Windows on the World and missed entering the building.

“I’ll never scold her for being late again,” said her fiancé. They expect to be married sometime next year.

I am thinking about the cloth.

I watched the rabbi at ground zero slowly unfold a blue velvet cloth with a Star of David on it and then place the prayer book and shofar on the cloth before beginning Rosh Hashanah services.

Yet when Brian mailed me the photos he’d taken of the services, the cloth was gone.

I asked him if he remembered the blue velvet cloth and he did. He absolutely did, only he remembered it etched with a symbol perhaps of the Torah.

We both saw the cloth, but saw two different emblems. We saw the cloth as clearly as I am looking at this computer screen as I write this and yet the cloth did not appear in the photos.

“It was a windy day,” Brian wrote in his email, “It must have blown away just before I took the shots.

But it didn’t; I think we both knew that.

Was the cloth ever there?

Was it just invisible to the camera?

These are the kind of questions that could drive you mad, but I choose to think of it as my own private little miracle. … Well, Brian’s and mine.

I don’t know him well, but now we’ve shared a miracle …twice.

Rosh Hashanah services at Ground Zero, followed by the amazing appearing and disappearing blue velvet cloth.

Someone is trying to tell me something…

I ordered up Chinese food, as usual and broke open the fortune cookie I never eat.

It read, “Courage is contagious.”

2001-11-04T15:47:00.000-05:00

There’s a wild-ass clown running my life.

I’m thinking Dick Cavett after a sex change and a Viagra overdose.

I mean just when I thought I was the queen of re-evaluating-my-life syndrome, I get laid up for a week recouping from surgery (trust me you don’t want to know) and am forced to do guess what. … Yep … re-evaluate my life.

Sheeeeesh!

How many inner-child sessions can a girl have before she just wants to smack the shit out of her little brat and scream, “Will you please $#@%^& grow up already!”

Breathe … deep breaths.

This probing the inner-self thing is really not all its cracked up to be. Especially since THIS self has been probed quite enough for one week -- OUCH!! -- thank you very much.

So it’s Day 5 of my cabin fever, and I’ll probably be indoors for at least another few days, followed by a week of shuffling around like a crab with bad arch supports.

I had planned on spending this time catching up on bills (I said catching up on, not actually paying), writing, painting, reading all those books I display to show how smart I am, but never actually had the time to read.

My ambitions were … hmmm … well … ambitious.

But what have I really been doing?

Buffy.

Errr … not doing … watching that is …

Yesindeeedeeeeeeeeeee!

Thanks to the FX network, Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs have been on five days a week for two hours a night! Add to that the Halloween Buffy marathon and the normal, Tuesday night new Buffy show and you’ve got an all you can eat … Buff-et.

Hahahahahah.

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.

Listen when you’re alternating Tylenols and Percosets just to walk across the living room. … You have to keep yourself amused.

Besides Buffy is a great healer.

She’s downright spiritual.

Ohhhhmmmmmmmmmm. Pow! … Ohhmmmmmmmmmmm. SMACK!

I love a little zen mixed in with my fight scenes, don’t you?

I have to admit I was a tad embarrassed when I first realized I was acquiring a secret little addiction to the show. But then I started noticing that some of my friends seemed to never, ever, ever, be available on Tuesday nights and mysteriously never answered their phones between 8 and 9 p.m. on Tuesdays, either.

First there was Mendel, the political cartoonist and father of my goddaughter. Turns out this cantankerous inventor had given up every Tuesday night since the first season of Buffy and had actually learned how to use a modern appliance (gasp) just to tape the show so he could watch it again and again with Zora the aforementioned daughter/goddaughter. The great Zora, now does Buffy high kicks around the house scaring the cats and the neighbors.

“Hiiii yaaaaaaa … aaaaawasaaaaaa!”

Yep. … Nobody needs to worry about that four-year-old. She’s got it all covered.

Then there’s my most recent ex-lover who used to chide me big time about my little Buff-addiction and now admits to watching it dutifully with her new babe. She blames it on the babe, but I have noted her growing obsession with Spike the vampire/leather boy with the punk rock hair. Hmmm and the new babe’s got short spiky platinum hair,too. Hmmmmm.

So ANYWAY, as I said, I’ve been in-bedded in Buffy this week, (nothing sexual here, she’s actually not my type though I kinda liked Faith the evil vampire slayer … natch … but that’s another story).

So in-bedded (love that word) that I found the show was creeping into my dialogue. Like when my significant other came over to bring me soup, and then later on popped by to bring me soup and then later on dropped in to bring me love and oh yeah … soup … but she was so sick with the flu. … We couldn’t hug or even be in the same side of the room at the same time … else I might catch the anthrax errrr ummm flu.

Frustrated (big time) I finally blurted out what I’d been thinking for months, ”We’re just like Buffy and Angel!”

To which she added. … “Yeah and when we get together the world stops.”

Very dramatic, my little cubana … but cute. … No fangs, though. Damn it!

I think this is getting outta hand. Maybe I should even myself out a tad, start watching Dark Angel or throw in some Friends. … There’s gotta be another show that mixes queer humor, battle scenes, attractive teenagers, dark despair and great clothes.

Oh yeah! CNN! But that’s not fun. … It’s life.

Speaking of my life … ( back to self-probing) … my problems seemed to start when my mother discovered JCPenney mark-downs. The other kids got
corduroys and alligator shirts, but noooo, not for moi.

I started having deep inner yearnings to own a pair of jeans that did not have little rabbits or other furry animals stitched on the back pockets. … I wanted Levi’s!

The rabbits had to go.

I was prepared to take them out … dead or alive.

(to be continued)

2001-10-27T15:04:00.000-04:00

On the list of nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine reasons I should never be in charge of doling out money to people in need … is the simple fact that I seem to take …

EVERYTHING SO %$#@^&* PERSONALLY!

AAAAK!

On the heels of having had such a positive experience, interviewing victims for “Safe Horizon” last week, I was feeling rather cocky when I went back the other night.

Yes, yes, yes, here I am the guardian of the good, I told myself, chest
puffed out even more than usual and lemme tell you, this chest does not need to call any further attention to itself.

Sheesh! Did all you guys (and girls) stop breastfeeding too early?

Anyway, I picked up Kathleen, my leatherette Buddhist bathroom designer pal, and we went back for another night of volunteering on Pier 94.

We were given new guidelines immediately; the well had run dry for all the car service drivers. Evidently, someone at United Way woke and
said, “Hey those guys still have jobs! We can’t give them a thousand bucks just because they lost their WTC fares!”

A good point, I suppose since there are more than enough jobless, homeless folks who could sure use that thousand bucks.

Plus I was getting tired of looking at a waiting room full of Middle Eastern guys who talked constantly on their cell phones and wore more gold around their necks than I will ever own.

(Note to PC monitor) Hey! I’m not generalizing! That’s what I saw!

So with pen and guidelines in hand I went up to the waiting room desk for my first ummm client. A rather sizable guy with an overstuffed briefcase, bursting at the hinges took my hand.

“The internet company I worked at closed cause of the WTC and then promptly relocated to Florida. I can’t get a hold of them, get paid nothing.”

“Okayyyyyyy. How much was your weekly pay?”

Seventy-five dollars an hour. I usually made fifteen hundred bucks a week.”

Shit! I thought to myself. This guy was making some bucks.

As it turned out, he could neither prove his income nor that he even worked at a downtown company. He had an unsigned letter, no pay stubs and when I called what was supposed to be the company in Florida I got someone’s personal answering machine.

I set him up as “file pending” and sent him home empty-handed.

“Hey at least the food is free! Why not grab some dinner and come back tomorrow with signed papers! “ I called out to him as he trudged away, utterly dejected.

That was pretty much the way my night went.

Jobless victims with not even the smallest amount of proof of their predicaments.

“I’ll set you up as pending … pending … pending …” was my mantra.

By the time I got to my worst case, I was ready to commit suicide with a sharp No. 2 pencil right there at my interview table.

She was an older woman, perhaps early 50s, with tight little dreadlocks and sad eyes. She started crying as soon as we sat down.

“I have no money. My son is out of work. We are getting evicted. No one will help me.”

“Did you lose a job below Canal Street?”

“No.”

“Did your son?”

“No.”

“Did you live down there?”

“No.”

“Did you lose a loved one down there?”

“No.”

Sigh.

There was nothing I could do for her.

So what did I do?

Natch.

I asked for her home address and told her I would send her a check toward her rent from my personal banking account.

She thanked me (and seemed rather unsurprised, all things considered), and I sent her off for her free dinner.

“Do you think she was conning me?” I asked Kathleen over our volunteer meal of mashed potatoes, tortellini and salad on Styrofoam plates.

“Maybe, but Buddhism teaches you that anytime someone asks you for money, it’s like God asked you.”

Sigh.

I really can’t do this anymore.

I’m much better at flipping burgers.

The mashed potatoes were good though.

2001-10-22T22:31:00.000-04:00

So am I am the only one who watched the 50-hour long “Concert for New York” on VHI and cried through 51 hours and fifteen minutes of it?

Sheesh! Even The Who made me cry, although that might have something to do with how old those guys got while I wasn’t looking. Man. Roger Daltry’s got those hanging grandfather ears that dust the tops of his shoulders. Pete Townsend looks like Sean Connery’s older brother. But WTF. The boys can still rock!

Seemed like the only one of the classic rockers that hadn’t shown any signs of slowing down was Mick Jagger, natch. He’s the same ol’ wily, manic pogo stick he always was, skipping from one end of the stage to the other.

Tell me the truth girls. Don’tcha just hate a man who weighs less than you do?

Anyway, all the boys were there, as you probably know, and they all rocked on with nary a tech problem or hitch that I could see, anyway.

But then my homophobe alarm started going off when Melissa Etheridge took the stage. One second into her first song, her mike went dead, so she had to keep banging on her guitar, till they got her a new mike, then someone squashed a fireman’s hat on her head, so she couldn’t see. And when she started into song number two, she had to switch guitars because the first one had been tuned by Helen Keller.

But Melissa kicked ass, as usual and even made me like Bruce Springsteen for a moment by cranking out “Born to Run.”

Always hated The Boss. It’s a Jersey thing. No offense to all you Jerseyans. It’s just that I hated living there so much as a teen that I built up a natural dislike for Bon Jovi, Springsteen, The Asbury Jukes … Michelob Light … anything that reeked of Exit 11.

But I digress.

As I said, I cried myself silly. I cried that The Who got back together for this. I cried at every camera close up of someone holding a photo of one of the heroes killed in the WTC. I cried at the shots of the New York skyline with the towers still there. I cried because I just hate The Backstreet Boys so much.

My inner ’70s rock babe was getting down, big time, but my outer New Yorker was having her intestines wrapped around her heart.

Damn! It was touching.

My fave moment of the whole night; the tough guy firefighter from Rockaway who upstages Michael J. Fox and tells Osama bin Laden to “kiss my royal Irish-American Ass!”

You gotta love a moment when a no-name bruiser from the boroughs can cause the crowd to ask “Michael J. who?”

I was also partial to the Woody Allen short film that ends with Bebe Neuwirth (oh you know that actress who played Frazier’s wife) talking on her cell phone saying things are so strange ... she heard Al Sharpton and Giuliani are getting a house together on Fire Island.

Ahahahhahahahha.

By the way, did anyone notice that all the firefighters booed when they brought out their fire chief for intro? Or was that just the sound system sending a wailing, steady, bass OOOOOOOOOOOOOO?!

I loved it all, dearies, even John Cougar Mellencamp, who sets off my Jersey alarm, too, even if he’s from Indiana.

It was a great night to be a New Yorker, and everyone was a New Yorker last night, well at least everyone in Madison Square Garden or in any home that got cable.

I fell asleep as Paul McCartney capped the show with “Yesterday” and “Let it be,” which suddenly sounded as though they’d been written for the occasion.

I never liked the Beatles, either, and there’s nothing New Jersey about them,(’cept maybe the hair). I just hate boy groups.

But man ... last night, I felt like McCartney was some kinda prophet!

“Yesterday ... all my troubles seemed so far away. Now I need a place to hide away. Oh I believe in yesterday.”

So do I, Paul. So do I.

“When I find myself in times of trouble....[insert Jewish equivalent of Mother Mary] comes to me ...speaking words of wisdom ... let it be ...”

AAAKKK!

I gotta go buy more tissues. …

2001-10-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

It was my chic downstairs neighbor Kathleen who helped me discover that there was a way I could stay involved in the WTC tragedy and actually remain above Canal Street.

Being the hardcore type of gal that I am, I've felt all along that the only way I could help was by getting within a couple hundred feet of the towers. Like the sheer amount of dust I inhaled would deem me worthy in same way.

Hey, I never said I was fully screwed in.

Anyway a friend of Kathleen's was heading up an organization called Safe Horizon that was giving financial aid to WTC victims. Kath got us signed up for a night shift.

Safe Horizon is sponsored by United Way and the September 11th Fund. It's a huge operation nestled into Pier 94, the one-stop-shopping oasis for the bereaved, jobless and homeless victims of the WTC collapse.

The giant structure on the pier, normally used for fashion shows and other large-scale functions has been divided into countless booths and tables, where representatives from the many agencies offering help to WTC victims sit waiting to cut through the red tape and offer food vouchers, money and counseling, pronto.

To see this place is awe-inspiring. There are family help centers, mental health support units, free food cafeterias, give-away items, and everyone from the armed guards to the Red Cross water girls seems to keep smiling.

After Kathleen and I went through three security checkpoints, we were given temporary passes and sent to Safe Horizon for training.

We sat through a 45-minute talk that explained the process of interviewing victims for financial compensation.

For those who lost jobs below Canal Street, we would look for pay stubs, work ID and possibly a note from an employer. We would then present the person's case to an approver who would hopefully give it a thumbs-up, and we'd be able to tell our client that in about an hour, they'd have a check for two weeks' net pay.

For the homeless, we would look for a lease, mortgage statement, driver's license -- whatever they had that would prove they lived in an area that had been deemed unfit. Then we were authorized to reimburse them something toward their hotel bills, clothing bills or rent.

For family members of the missing, we would try to just help them out on whatever bills they brought with them.

Mostly we were told that we'd been running back and forth to the approvers asking questions a lot.

We did.

We were all asked to sign a confidentiality form, which is why I won't mention anyone's name here. Not that I would want to.

My first, shall I say, client, was a driver.

The bulk of the victims turning up in recent days have been drivers from car services who lost a lot of their business in the WTC disaster. Once the word got out that we could offer them up to a thousand bucks, a whole lotta drivers started coming down.

It's a lengthy process for compensation. You have to sign up for an interview, wait about a week for the interview, then wait several hours before your name is called.

But it's worth it. I hope.

The man was young and Middle Eastern, very polite and very nervous. He came prepared with vouchers and pay stubs that proved he had at least 10 drop-offs in the WTC area in one average work week. I was able to match the account numbers on his pay stubs to WTC-area companies, which proved very quickly that, in fact, a noticeable chunk of his weekly pay was now missing.

I took him over to our notary, had his signature notarized and then presented his case to the approver, who stamped an OK for one thousand bucks.

"Why not go have a coffee and a snack for a bit, or walk around? You'll be getting a check in about an hour."

"Thank you!!!!" he said, ecstatic.

What a nice way to start things off, I thought to myself as I walked to reception to pick up my next client.

Naturally, things changed.

We had been told in advance that some victims might be in a bad state emotionally, and that if we were worried, we should offer to escort them to a Red Cross counselor.

I was worried about this young woman from the second she shook my hand. It felt as though she were about to implode.

She'd been working at the Century 21 that you have probably seen on the news. The one right there at the WTC that looked so eerie, rows of new clothes covered in thick, gray dust. She'd watched people jump from the building, lost her job (at least until her employer is able to transfer her), and probably knew plenty of people who were now missing.

She didn't have much documentation. I was able to piece together what she did have, and she was approved for two weeks' pay, plus a hundred bucks toward the three pairs of shoes she'd lost in the wreckage.

After I gave her the good news, she let me walk her to the other side of the pier to the Red Cross station.

She seemed weak, and I couldn't keep myself from placing my arm around her shoulders as we walked.

"You take care of yourself," I said taking her hand.

"Thank you so much!" she said, still shaking.

It was very hard not to cry.

My last client of the night was a young man who had been forced out of his home and was still not allowed back in. An armed guard had escorted him up the 22 flights to his apartment for one chance to get out what items he could. He'd dragged what her referred to as "200 pounds of crap" down 22 flights.

Since then, he and his fiancée had been living in a hotel.

His cell phone bill alone was 900 dollars.

This was a tough case, as he didn't have any receipts, anything really except his driver's license that clearly stated he lived in one of the "unfit" zones.

Ultimately I was able to get a verbal confirmation from the assistant manager at his hotel and, between that and his driver's license, we were able to approve him for $1,500 worth of assistance toward his many bills from being displaced.

It wasn't much, I suppose, but it was something.

"If you're still homeless in two weeks, you can come back and try for another check," I said, shaking his hand.

"At this rate … they won't even tell us if we'll ever be able to move back in."

"Take it easy," I said. He laughed and walked away, scratching his head.

I never seem to know the right thing to say.

"How was your first night?" I asked Kathleen on the way home.

"Not bad, really … but I'm ready for a drink now."

"… And some food!" I screamed, feeling half-starved.

We grabbed a cab on the highway and headed off in search of this thing called "decent Japanese food in Manhattan."

There wasn't any dust on my boots when I got home that night, but I felt as though we'd returned from the trenches all the same.

It was a good feeling.

2001-10-15T16:04:00.000-04:00

Back in the saddle again …

Never mind the fact that back in the saddle for moi, means catering four weddings in a row, up to 200 guests per wedding.

Let me tell you, that's a lot of baby carrots!!

Sheesh!

But it was good to get back to work.

Good to focus on stirring the sauce instead of just how many news folks caught anthrax today.

The first wedding was the roughest, because somehow, after September 11th, making chicken stock just doesn't feel that important anymore.

Then, there were all the small parts of my caterer's work day that have been changed because of the WTC.

Deliveries, take an extra hour or two or three or even (AAAK) four to get through because of the security checks for commercial vans.

But I'm not complaining. I'd much prefer to have my salmon show up three hours late than let another terrorist attack Manhattan.

There there's the little matter of so many businesses abruptly closing.

The day before my first hell weekend, the owner of the company that supplies my pastries called. She spoke in an eerily calm voice: "Due to the loss of our … um … downtown business, we are going out of business … today."

There's nothing like finding and buying 240 pastries on 24 hours' notice to get a girl's blood moving.

But, WTF. Even buying retail doesn't faze me after September 11th.

Nothing does.

So I did what I could to keep my spirits up while helping some lovely couples try to find a way to take a break from death and celebrate life.

I wore an American flag wrapped around my head, which had a twofold effect: It showed my patriotism, and it kept my crazy head of blonde mishegash out of the vegetable curry.

We were all glad to be back at work, back together, this dysfunctional fun-loving group of freaks that make up my catering family.

José is out of work now. His restaurant in Federal Plaza was not be able to recuperate from being shut down for so long. But he was in high spirits all the same. Unemployment and an amazing joie de vivre kept him joking.

"Welllllll, helloooo darlings," he said walking into the party location. "Have you all missed me terribly?!"

"Yes, mamasita!!!" we all replied.

The weddings went fine, natch, all four of them, although there was the little matter of the groom from the first wedding crashing the cocktail hour for the second wedding, the bridesmaids from the second wedding trying to steal my hors d'oeuvre tray flowers, the brother of the groom from the third wedding demanding to be fed three hours before the reception began and the synagogue for the fourth wedding neglecting to mention that they didn't have air conditioning … or, evidentially, an exterminator.

Oyyy!

But for me, it all came together last night. The two brides, (yes, two brides, dearies) were so madly in love that no one in their combined families of very straight Jews and Italians from the outer boroughs could do anything but kvel.

"Kiss her again!" screamed the big-haired aunt from Long Island, and the brides were only to happy to oblige.

I cater a lot of weddings, but rarely see a couple so in love that it's out and out contagious. Even the Equadorean janitor hiding in the sanitation room with a mug of scotch looked touched.

I wound up getting teary-eyed with Carolyn in the kitchen.

"I'll never have that … " she whined while washing the strawberries.

"I want that! I want that!" I bellowed, taking my sorrow out on a very moist eclair.

Oh well. Sugar's almost as good as lov,e isn't it?

Then I hear Bride A announce to the cheering crowd, "Can you join me in thanking a very special person who made this all possible?"

Hmmm. Wonder who that is?

"Rossi, can you come out here please?"

And I am called out, blushing red from head to sauce-covered toe while the guests join the happy brides in a hearty round of applause.

Sigh.

Maybe there's hope for us all yet.

There are certainly enough sweet potatoes.

2001-10-11T16:01:00.000-04:00

I went up on the roof deck yesterday.

How the sound of those words used to thrill me. … "Why not come over and have some wine on the roof deck?"

This is the very first place I ever lived in New York that had access to the great outdoors. (This means access to open air, not nature, although there are two trees that I can see in the back.)

I've been living in NYC for 20 years now. YES, 20 Years!! Oddly, I only just realized this. I've been saying 17 years for about three years now.

Odder still, September 11th would have been something close to my 20-year anniversary. I moved here sometime around late August or early September of 1981.

This was during New York's high-crime era. My present neighborhood, Alphabet City, was nothing but a sea of heroin needles, Polish immigrants, homeless people and dealers.

My first two apartments in New York were in a Chasidic neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, during the height of Crown Height's racial tensions.

You could say I pretty much moved to New York during one of its worst times and promptly moved to one of its rougher neighborhoods.

I was broken in quickly.

I grew up on the Jersey Shore, only an hour and 15 minutes away, but it might as well have been 500 miles away. I was practically run out of town on a rail the day I highlighted my hair in pink.

However much Jersey has progressed since then, it wasn't exactly the hippest place in the universe in 1980.

I was born to be a New Yorker.

Since the murder of The World Trade Center, a lot of folks seem to be talking about what exactly makes a New Yorker. I think that's pretty easy to figure out. The New Yorkers are the ones screaming "Get out of my town, you %$#&%% terrorist bastards!" or "You think that's enough to make me leave Manhattan! $#@!! I've got rent control!!!"

Well, that's not quite fair, actually, because most of the real New Yorkers I know can't afford the rents here anymore, so they're spreading out into Jersey City, Westchester, wherever is commutable. But make no mistake about it; they're still New Yorkers.

You can pick them out in the check-out line at the supermarket. They're the ones drumming their fingers on the magazine rack and chanting. "Just how long is this gonna take … ladyyyyy!"

From my early days, here, I saw a lot of people come and go. My roommate, Davy, ran home screaming after he was mugged. Another roommate of mine high-tailed it back to the Midwest after watching the news too many nights in a row.

As I said, this was the high-crime era of NYC.

If you made it here for three years and still liked New York, you were a New Yorker, and nowhere else in the world would ever do again.

I think of New York as a drug of some kind. Once you get hooked, you're hooked for life. You can move away, but you'll always be known as the New Yorker.

Once I moved to Provincetown, Mass. For six months. I loved it. I still do. Six months was great! A year would be fine, too. A year is probably a perfect amount of time to spend in a town dedicated to sex, booze, beach and partying in the spring and summer, art, writing, reading, all sorts of culture in the fall and total unending depression in the dead of winter.

I fell in love with the town, but there wasn't a single day that I ever felt like a townie. I was always the New Yorker in P-town. Wearing black in July might have given me away. Even my bikini was dark blue.

I don't know why we New Yorkers have such a disdain for wearing anything that isn't black, white, gray, blue, smoke, teal or dark green, but we do.

There's a reason New Yorkers wear sunglasses in Miami … at night.

For the past 20 years, I haven't thought much about being a New Yorker. My friends and family say I am what they'd call "the quintessential New Yorker," or some say "the most New York, New Yorker they know." I guess the fact that I always take this as a huge compliment means it might be true, or perhaps it's the fact that I wish they'd just get to the point already.

Since September 11th, I feel as though New Yorkers have been baptized.

We've been baptized by fire.

I went up on the roof deck yesterday. This used to be one of my favorite places in the world. The World Trade Center on the south end of my roof, the Empire State Building on the north. I felt perfectly perfect in their valley.

I don't last long on the roof anymore, hardly ever come up now. I walk my big, fat, black cat on the roof. He's a tad, well, challenged, so I keep him on a leash and walk him, else he might take a nosedive off my charming old brick building.

Everything's fine until I look up. Then I see it; the carved out place in the horizon that used to be the WTC.

Then the slide-projector in my head starts up again, and I see the first tower implode. I hear my neighbors screaming. The goose bumps crawl over my arms and legs just like they did that day. I usually start to cry.

I've haven't been able to erase the feeling of watching thousands of heartbeats end.

I doubt I ever will.

I fight the urge every day, to close my business and go back down there and beg to dig in the rubble with the clean-up crews. But I know I'd only get in the way.

Besides … going out of business is no way to help New York.

I love the common roof deck of my little 10-unit building. It's on my list of the things I always dreamed of having one day in NYC: a roof deck, a terrace, a fireplace and front steps to sit on. Oh, a front stoop; that would be like a dream come true.

Life is strange.

I might even leave New York one day, (when I'm very, very, very, very tired) in search of open space, green (dark green) things around me and the chance to live somewhere in my old age that's larger than 700 Square feet … or I might just move to the Upper West Side.

Hey that's right next to Central Park!! Practically rural!!

2001-10-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

Strange things are happening

It was Debbie’s birthday, a fact that I suspect she felt conflicted about, given all the sadness in the world and especially in New York City these days.

So conflicted that it wasn’t until the afternoon of her birthday that she decided it would be all right for her to call up some friends.

She had taken hearing Sixteen Candles on the radio that morning as a sign that the universe wouldn’t mind her accepting a bit of joy.

"Can you meet at The Hudson for a drink? … It’s … um … my birthday," she said, a bit embarrassed.

What an emotional minefield this time has become. You can rack yourself with guilt for wanting the simple pleasure of a cocktail with friends, the faintest hint of a birthday celebration.

I was thrilled to meet up with her.

Like most of my friends, Debbie and I have not seen each other since the world ended.

The Hudson was trendy, crowded, smoky, laced with attitude and overpriced drinks, too fabulous, darling, and … well, you know all the things that Ian Schraeger hotels are supposed to be.

But it was fine.

Personally, I always appreciate a cocktail waitress with a neckline cut to her navel.

Three more of Debbie’s gang showed up -- Leanne the outspoken one, Suzy, the wild one, and Evonne, the quiet, complex one, whom I knew nothing about and still don’t. We sipped our drinks and swapped "Where were you when it happened?" stories for an hour or so.

Suzy had been two blocks away when the plane hit. As she climbed out of the subway that morning, she saw pieces of the WTC on the ground. She went to work on Wall Street thinking it would be much safer to be indoors, and watched, with the rest of her horrified the co-workers, as the sky turned black.

"It was like midnight, total blackness," she said with tears in her eyes.

Now Suzy’s boss has her sing songs about America for her co-workers. It’s good for morale.

After downing our spectacularly overpriced beverages, we left the den of fabulousness and walked a few blocks until we found a mellow little Italian restaurant with an incredibly hideous mural of clowns with huge, beaklike noses and muscular asses.

There’s nothing like a clown with a big nose and a tight ass, I always say.

We sipped pinot noir, ate our salmon and debated the politics of New York vs. the world.

Leanne was angry. She had clearly taken this attack as a personal assault. "This is my city. Look what they did to my city!!"

Debbie was quiet, content to let us all vent. She listened intently.

Debbie is an incredibly kind person.

We sang to her and she blew out the candle flickering from the chocolate mousse.

Then we left.

Suzy split off to go, hmm, uptown, I think, and Debbie, Leanne and I went on a long walk through midnight Manhattan.

We didn’t say it aloud, but we were taking back our city, sauntering, defying all the things that go bump in the night, from West 58th Street to 34th Street

We hit a police blockade and were told it was nothing to do with the disaster. Nowadays, you assume any police block is a bomb threat.

We walked a little farther and came upon a much larger police barricade. The whole street was taped off. Traffic was being diverted and a crowd was gathering.

"What’s happening?" Leanne asked the cops. We were scared. We thought, "What now?"

"The façade of the building is falling down," the cop said, pointing to the old three-level with the tacky bar on the first floor.

"So it’s nothing to do with terrorists?" we asked.

"Nah. Just an old building," he said.

We laughed out loud when we realized that we had all collectively said, "Oh, just a building coming down. It’s nothing."

How changed we are. … Just a normal shooting, just a regular fire, nothing to worry about.

We crossed the street so as not to be hit by any bits of building and found ourselves in front of a fire station with a memorial that encompassed its entire front and stretched halfway down the block.

Pictures of the 14 firefighters who had been killed from this station were mounted on the wall. Underneath was an avalanche of flowers, stuffed animals, letters and burning candles.

We stood there on the sidewalk in between the crumbling building and the mourning fire station for many minutes.

"Look one of them is Jewish," Leanne said trying to break our blue mood. "You never see Jewish firemen."

We kept walking. After a few more blocks, we passed a bronze sculpture parked on the sidewalk. It sat perched on a flat bed trailer. The sculpture must have been 10 feet high or more. It was simple and beautiful, a bronze firefighter bent over in prayer. His hand had been filled with rosary beads by passersby. There were flowers and candles all around him.

The prayer was in case he might not make it back.

He didn’t.

We kept walking. We walked through Times Square and reminisced on how much more we liked it when it was seedy and real. The new Disneyesque Times Square was both pretty and repulsive.

"At least Show World is still there!" Leanne said.

"Remember the peep shows?" Debbie asked.

We passed the Port Authority bus terminal and looked up at the huge American flag. Each star was a big as our heads.

Even at this hour, there were a dozen or so entrepreneurs peddling American flags, sweatshirts with American flags on them and my fave insignia. "New York, U.S.A."

"I’m a native New Yorker," Leanne said. "This city is in my blood. It’s like they attacked my farm."

"A lot of people say get out of town ..." Debbie chimed in, "but it’s just too weird being anywhere else."

"I feel ashamed to say this …" I said stopping for a moment to look at each of them, "but right now. ... I guess I feel a little superior to the rest of the world. Like New Yorkers are the best."

Leanne laughed. "We ... New Yorkers have always felt that way. Why should now be any different?"

We opted to take the subway even though it was after midnight because we wanted to be as embedded into this city, this night, as we could.

Debbie and I took the Q train.

It felt good to be underground. We were taking back our city, from above and below.

We parted company at Union Square. I kissed her good-bye and stepped out of the car.

Then I saw it.

A suitcase.

Sitting there, all alone.

There was no one around it.

No one near.

A piece of terror started to form inside my stomach.

I looked around for a cop.

There was no one.

I ran to the exit.

It was locked.

Suddenly I felt trapped inside the station … with the suitcase.

I had to go back, past the suitcase again, to the other exit.

I began to feel the need to run.

Then I saw them, three cops guarding a WTC memorial.

"Excuse me," I spoke, shaking slightly. "I just saw a suitcase down there by the downtown Q. There is no one with it. Just the case. Normally I wouldn’t panic, but with things the way they are …"

I did not have the chance to finish my sentence.

The cops thanked me and raced toward the suitcase, talking on their walky-talkies.

I watched them run off and wondered for a brief moment if I had wasted their time sending them off to examine a simple old abandoned suitcase, or if I had signed their death warrants.

Then I got the fuck out of the station as fast as I could.

I think it went ok.

I didn’t hear any explosions last night.

There weren't any more sirens than usual.

Just a suitcase … weird place to leave it, but everything’s a little weird these days.

Debbie called in the morning to thank me, and I told her about the suitcase.

"Hell of a way to end our night together," I said.

Sadness entered her voice as she said, "Even a suitcase isn’t just a suitcase anymore."

2001-10-03T13:27:00.000-04:00

I’m what you call an old-fashioned girl.

I was the last person I knew to switch from a rotary telephone to touch-tone. (Hey! It wasn’t that long ago!!!) I’d probably still have a rotary if it weren’t for all those answering services that force you to punch in who you want to talk to.

“Press one for customer service. Press two for the location nearest you. Press three to scream into the telephone.”

How I used to love that rotary dial noise: brrrrrwwwwweeeeehhh … rrrrrrrhhhhhhhaaaa …

Admittedly I had a lot more time back then.

What can I say??? I’m ruled by nostalgia! I get misty-eyed at the sight of an 8-track tape.

Yes, yes, I know, darlings. None of you remember 8-track tapes. But can’t you appreciate the pleasure of hauling around a cassette the size of a video that hissed through every song?

Hmmm. OK, it needed a bit of improvement.

Anyway, as a writer, I’ve always had this huge need to see my words wind up on the printed page.

Don’t know why, because clearly folks who are like me, who aren’t exactly mainstream, are much more appreciated on the web than by the hordes of old-school editors in the print world.

So … as with all of my clearly passé notions, it took a concerned friend to coax me along.

In my case, it was Nancy, aka Jill Matrix.

I was on my annual self-pity whine about how I dreamed of writing a weekly column about anything I wanted … a column that would wind around and around whatever subject thrilled me at the moment … a column … that … that …

Well, thankfully, she stopped me, or I’d still be sitting here whining and not writing.

“What you need is a website,” she said.

To which I replied … but I don’t know how, where, what … helpppp … etc., etc.

She said, “Hang on.”

And in about five minutes she had created a website for me at blogspot. Whatever that is.

“What would you like to say?” she asked.

And as at all great moments in my life, I was struck absolutely dumb.

“I’m Rossi. Welcome to my brain,” was all I had in me.

But I recuperated, natch, and having a site that I could finally pour my manic, rambling self into seemed absolutely freeing.

I wrote two columns in the week prior to September 11, 2001.

The first was just a light, rambling rant about my day.

In the second, which I spellchecked at 8 a.m. on September 11, I wrote about how I loved noise and hated quiet. I wrote that quiet made me feel like 1,000 bankers were sitting on me. I finished the rant and e-mailed it to Nancy (who fixes my shockingly flawed punctuation).

As I was sending the e-mail, I got a phone call from a client to tell me that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. Shortly after, the phones went dead, and my life and everyone else’s were changed forever.

As you’ve probably read or can read from these archives, I watched the towers topple from my roof. I paced Manhattan trying to help and trying to make sense of it all. At times, I went into a very dark place.

My cute little weekly rant became an echo of the countless images of death, hope, terror, wonder, sorrow, warmth that were unfolding around me.

I wonder who I would be today and what I would be feeling if not for this new friend in my life, this thing that listens to all I have to say … this site.

Hours after the towers were murdered, I wrote about it here.

The day I joined a group of New Yorkers cheerleading for the rescue crews on the West Side Highway, I came home to transcribe it for these pages.

When I finally found my way down to ground zero and found myself utterly speechless, Nancy gently suggested I describe it for this waiting canvas, and I did.

I tried to explain the eerie, haunted feeling of being in a room filled with 6,000 people on Yom Kippur, when the rabbi had us stand and look at each other, to try to comprehend what the numbers missing in the WTC would look like, if they could all stand up, now, from their dusty grave.

I began to count on this new haven as the one place that I could safely purge all the visions burning inside me.

What I hadn’t counted on was what came back.

First there were the e-mails I expected from my friends.

But then it grew. The friends of my friends began to e-mail me. Then their friends. Then their in-laws.

Nancy put a link on her site, so that her readers could read about my WTC experiences, and I began to hear from them, too.

I began to hear from other people who had read a link on still other sites.

The letters were wonderful.

"Thank you for sharing your amazing experience."

"My heart and prayers go out to you."

I received an e-mail from a young woman in Calgary, a total stranger: "All we hear over here is terrible news. Your story was the first one I have read about hope. Thank you so much. I am sending it on to everyone I know."

I received an e-mail from a Jewish man in San Francisco thanking me for the Yom Kippur story. He sent his warmest holiday wishes.

I received a joke in the mail from someone who just thought I needed to laugh.

I know it’s madness to say I felt loved by these strangers, but the feeling I got when I read their e-mails was just that … a waft of love.

As I begin to emerge from these weeks of bottomless sadness, I feel grateful that I have had this place to document and preserve everything around me and to share it with anyone who could find me.

What a strange time to be a newbie on the web. … What a perfect time.

I’m an old-fashioned girl. But I guess, when all is said and done regarding this new-fangled thing called the wild world of web writing, there’s nothing more old-fashioned than people reaching out to each other in a time of need.

And there you have it.

2001-10-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

How long is ok ...

It's pretty safe to say that I have been emotionally submerged in the World Trade Center since the morning of September 11th.

A lot of my friends are gingerly letting go, beginning to shine and blossom again. They are opening themselves up to new beginnings.

And, of course, that's all good.

But not me.

I'm not sure what the protocol is here.

How long am I allowed to mourn before my friends begin to think I am obsessed?

My mother died nine years ago, and I am still mourning her, but do I have the right to mourn for the thousands who died in the towers? The ones to whom I had any personal connection (that I know of) were only the friends of friends.

This time we enter now, 19 days after the very worst tragedy most of us will ever see hopefully), is a tricky time.

Some of us have already moved on, emotionally changed, but ready to take on the next thing, whatever that might be.

Some of us were perhaps never so deeply affected in the first place. These are probably the same people who don't care about anything until it lands on their own doorstep. I pity these people.

There are folks like me, who did not lose a loved one, but saw the towers crumble and spent some time on ground zero seeing this thing face-to-face. We are perhaps, forever altered. I am, perhaps, forever altered.

I have been utterly and completely tattooed.

There are the ones who have lost family, best friend, lover, spouse, child. Who line up on Pier 94 in search of counseling. Who are only now, however reluctantly, asking for death certificates.

There are the heroes, who are still down there. How can they still be there? Some of them since Day One. The only thing I can compare their homecoming to is that of a Vietnam vet. Will they ever really blend in again?

I remember growing up, my mother would tell me the stories of the Holocaust, about our family members who had died there and the stories she had heard from those who managed to escape. She began to tell me these stories when I was quite young, maybe only 5 or 6 years old.

They terrified me.

When I got older I asked her why she felt it was so important to keep telling me these stories over and again, the same stories each year. She said it was so I would always remember. That it was my duty to remember so it would never happen again.

She said, "Slovah ... you must always remember the words ... never again."

So I do remember, and if I ever have children, I will tell them about the Holocaust and make them promise to repeat the words "never again."

Then I will tell them about the towers and try to explain that in every generation, evil, blind, soulless people do inexplicably terribly things.

But the good has always outweighed the bad.

And for those 19 hijackers and the ring of countless terrorists that they sprung from, there are millions of people sending money, donating blood, lighting candles, holding vigils, volunteering, fighting back and holding goodness in their hearts.

19 days after September 11th, I still smell the weird, thick, burnt smell whenever the wind turns. I wonder how long this aftertaste will be in the air.
Or does it stay simply to keep us from passing this on too quickly?

New Yorkers are not known for their patience. There is nothing more intolerable to us than yesterday's news.

But 19 days later, there is nothing about this that feels yesterday. It is all still on us, as surely as the dust and the smoke has been.

I'm pretty sure it will always be a part of our skyline, the what was, versus the what is.

Yesterday was a very busy day. I had meetings, brunch with friends, shopping to do. I woke up determined to not obsess over the WTC. I figured such a busy day would keep me from going back to it.

On my last meeting of the day, I met with a young couple whose wedding I will cater in two weeks.

The bride asked to have her agenda changed to fit in having her guests sing The Star-Spangled Banner in honor of her close friend who died in the WTC.

"We were planning our weddings together. Hers was just 6 days after mine," the bride explained. Then her fiancé nudged her. "Tell her, " he said, "Tell her."

Her friend had mailed her a gift on the morning of September 11th on her way to work. It was a Barbie doll in a hot red outfit. It was just a fun joke-gift between girlfriends. The sexy Barbie had reminded her of her gal pal. So she popped it in the mail and caught the train to work.

The package had arrived yesterday.

"She called me on Monday, the day before it happened and told me she'd never been happier in her life," the bride-to-be said, "That's the only thing I cling too, that at least she got to feel that much happiness."

Maybe today, yes, today, I will not talk about The World Trade Center. I will not think about it, and I will move on with my life.

Enough is enough ... Time to think about other things ... nice breezy day ... a little cold, but nice ... kinda gray but ... nice ... a little sad and overcast ... but ... but ...

2001-09-27T12:30:00.000-04:00

I'm what you call a high holiday Jew.

For those, not in the know, this means essentially, that I don't drag my tuchas to the synagogue or as we say, shul, any time of year except Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I feel that since I manage to find my higher power in just about everything from a bubble bath to a cheese omelet, as long as I make it to shul for the opening of the books (Rosh Hashanah) and the closing of the books (Yom Kippur) I'll be passed on to the next grade.

I admit this might be a throwback to how I got through high school.

But this year is different.

After having spent some of Rosh Hashanah on ground zero watching an army chaplain blow the shofar, I knew that Yom Kippur would be intense, to say the least. Yom Kippur has always been, for me, a time of mourning.

What I had forgotten was that The Javitts Center, the giant glass and steel structure that Congregation Beth Simchat Torah holds its Yom Kippur services in, was also something else: the command center for the disaster.

When M.E. and I showed up in our little shul outfits, we were confronted with a barrage of state troopers and police. Most of the side streets leading into the center were blocked off by police barricades, and helicopters buzzed over head.

It truly felt as though we were at war.

I walked up to the armed guard, and he demanded to know what I wanted here.

"I'm here to go to … the synagogue??" I asked meekly.

"Down there!" he pointed as if to say, "and get away from here NOW!"

So we walked to the other half of the center, feeling something far beyond strange.

As we entered, we passed a dozen state troopers standing guard and had to walk through a security check, where M.E.'s bag was inspected.

What could be more dangerous two weeks after the demise of The Towers? A room full of thousands of Jews praying. But to combine that with the fact that this room was nestled in the same building that housed the command center was what you might call a double whammy.

In past years, Yom Kippur services for this synagogue, founded as a haven for the gay and lesbian community, was always held upstairs against a wall of glass through which you could see the sun setting as services neared a close, or an opening.

But this year, we were ushered to a vast, curtained space on the main floor. I assumed it was to protect us from whatever flying thing might want to attack us through the glass, but when we walked in, I understood the real reason; there were far too many people.

These services always draw a crowd of about 3,000, but this looked closer to 4,000, maybe more.

Every imaginable kind of person seemed to be there: black men in yarmulkes, lesbian mothers with Asian babies, elderly husbands escorting their elderly wives, downtown boys in shaved heads and facial piercings, clearly devout Jews wearing tallis and their own embroidered yarmulkes … and us.

M.E. didn't read Hebrew (something about being Cuban, I should think), but she kept along with the English and seemed to be loving it.

"It's so beautiful!" She would whisper whenever the cantors led the choir in another song.

She was right.

It wasn't until the end of services when the rabbi's sermon came that the real magnitude of what we were all feeling hit me.

Rabbi Sharon (I never remember her last name, but trust me it sounds very Jewish) is my first female rabbi, and I truly do think she's fabulous. I must admit, however, I have been known to sneak out before her sermon, because, well, what can I say? I have the attention span of a 3-year-old.

But not this night.

She said, "When services began, I told you that this was our largest Yom Kippur attendance ever, at least 4,000 people, but since then, we have added chairs. There are now 6,000 people here tonight!"

She had the front row stand up to look out at us in the back, had the side rows stand up to look into the center, had us in the back row stand up to look toward the front, and only when the full magnitude of how many of us were standing in this place hit us, did she say exactly what were all thinking.

"This is something close to the amount of people missing in The World Trade Center."

I looked around at all of us. We were young. We were old. We were beautiful. We were ugly. We were fat. We were thin. We were black, white, Asian, Latin, women, men. We were 6,000 souls standing together as surely as 6,000-plus souls had died together.

Many of us started to cry. I was one of them.

She went on in her speech trying to find the words to help make sense of this unfathomable tragedy and told us that our broken hearts were part of who we are now.

Those words were the only thing I seemed to remember later on that night.

Our broken hearts are part of who we are now.

I have been broken. We all have.

I know that the person I used to be died when I watched the towers crumble from my roof.

Since then, I walk too fast, talk too fast, don't sleep, eat without chewing, run to the gym and then want to leave as soon as I get there. Answer the phone and then need to hang up after five minutes. I feel as though I've had 10 Cuban coffees every day since September 11th. At night, my heart pounds against my chest every time a car beeps or my neighbors pounce on the floorboards.

I have been, like many of us, searching for where to put myself, now that the me I have been is so utterly and completely changed.

We were broken and now must take the broken bits of who we were and what we saw and incorporate them into who we are and what we will be.

I'm not a religious woman, but I pray that who I become will be better than what I have been. I wish that for us all, because clearly what we have been was not good enough to stop this from happening.

2001-09-23T18:47:00.000-04:00

And now comes this thing they call "moving on."

But how?

How?

This weekend, I let myself be social with someone other than dust-covered volunteers.

I had dinner with Tray.

She was wonderful, talkative and clearly worried about me.

After dinner, and glasses of wine in a local place that played old Motown and 70's dance music, Tray said she needed to find a swing.

It's an odd thing about this lady, who spends most of her life, being terminally adult.

Tray has always been in charge; from the large company she runs a sizable part of, to somehow managing this high pressure job while tending to her precocious, adorable 4-year-old daughter.

Tray is what you a call a self-imposed Super Woman.

So what does she do to refuel?

She swings.

I've been best friends with her for 20 years now, but only discovered her little swing secret in the last year. I learned about it when we were searching for a place good enough to feed us, along Brooklyn's new restaurant row, Smith Street.

"First I have to swing!" announced Tray, and I had a moment of confused horror, thinking she was either about to join a spouse-swapping group, or drag me to big band dance hall.

But no, it was just a playground. She laughed at my bewildered expression as we waited for one of the real kids to give up their joy ride to the grown-up lady with the wild black hair.

And then Tray climbed on her rubber strap and took off. She swung high, so high I got frightened watching from the safety of the ground.

To tell you the truth, I've never been much of a swinger. I suffer from a life-long problem with motion sickness.

I once even got seasick on a sea-saw.

What can I say? I'm a bad ass mama, but when it comes to swings, I'm a total wuss.

But I watched her then, and understood, like I understood this weekend, when we saw each other for the first time since the world ended on September 11th, that once her feet kicked off and she left the ground, Tray was truly flying.

"I looooooooooove swings!" she said that night in Brooklyn, and she was a wonder, her dress flying up in the slapping wind she was creating, her hair jetting Medusa-like around her head, in some state of half-afro half-curl. She was beautiful.

The playground in Tompkins Square Park was locked when we went on our swing search.

"I guess the police figure they'll sell the slides for crack," I said, joking. "Don't worry, Tralena, I'm sure there's a see-saw treatment center that will take you off your swing addiction."

But there wasn't, of course, and I fed her into a Yellow Cab, sad to see the disappointment on her suddenly girlish face.

She had spent the week dealing with the duties of keeping her life together and that of her family, while her place of work was embedded in smoke, so close to ground zero that she had to produce two forms of ID to get to work.

"I'm going to find a playground in Brooklyn," she said, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was close to midnight.

I have no doubt that she found one.

I thought of her swinging high into the air as I closed my eyes in the early morning and the image of her flying was so sweet, it rocked me to sleep.

2001-09-20T20:02:00.000-04:00

And then there was Rosh Hashanah

On my fourth and last day at ground zero, I opt to skip Rosh Hashanah services and get out to the site early, but I am delivered to a gloomy crew.

The Board of Health has shut down our grills and any food production. We are only allowed to dole out, pre-cooked burgers and sandwiches.

We are given something over a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to dole out. They're a flattened, flimsy excuse for nourishment. The rescue workers were about as interested in PB&J as we were.

"No more burgers," says a dejected cop, who goes on to show me his hands, raw and beaten. He says he has been digging out nothing but death all day.

"I've been in there with my bare hands, but it's just shit, body parts and dirt."

This day is different than the others have been. There is sense of gloom in the air that is thicker than the dust. Gone is the rush of adrenaline and hope.

Roger, the man who has seemed most like a leader of the delivery crew, chews his cigar in frustration. He wears a hard hat covered in graffiti with an American flag taped to its side.

"They just want us to pack up and get out of here!" he says.

I step into the church in search of serving utensils and find a dozen rescue workers scattered on the pews, most of them with tears in their eyes.

After serving the few non-peanut butter sandwiches that we had, mostly turkey, I decide to take my last walk through the hot zone.

I deliver a bag of a hundred PB&J sandwiches to the guards at the pile. We are no longer allowed in to deliver them ourselves.

I find Brian, one of the guys who works for my catering company, sorting through boxes of underwear and t-shirts. He is organizing things to be sent elsewhere, perhaps to the Salvation Army.

He, too, is filled with gloom.

But then, as we are commiserating on how this is the strangest place to spend Rosh Hashanah, an amazing thing happens.

An army soldier with a long, white beard piles up some Styrofoam crates one on top of the other and places a plastic holder used to transport bread on top as a make-shift table. He covers the plastic with a blue velvet cloth on which is embroidered the star of David.

Then he lays down a prayer book for "The Day of Awe" (the High Holy Days) and a shofar.

A group of Jewish soldiers gather around him as he begins to recite the prayers. Brian, myself and some Jewish volunteers who hear the prayers quickly join in.

Then, there in front of the worst vision of death and ruin any of us may ever see, he blows the shofar.

The sweet-sour mournful sound of the ram's horn pierces the dust and the gloom and resonates far off into the distance.

I feel something warm and wet wash over me and wonder if this is what it means to feel soulful.

The women being to cry, and we all kiss each other. "La Shanah Tovah!" we say, holding each other. We are all total strangers. We will probably never see each other again, but we kiss and hug like family.

"Thank you so much!" I say to the man as I notice that he is wearing a tallis made of camoflage.

"Aaaah! It's nothing," he says laughing and taking my hand in his. "This is the army. I do this all the time."

2001-09-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

Cooking in the hot zone …

The cars that sat idling in the traffic jam stretching on The Bowery watched me walk past. I must have looked like quite the sight, this woman with tangled, blonde hair covered in grease, a face smeared with charcoal, carrying a bright-yellow hard hat and a ventilation mask.

But the reactions were strange. Some people looked at me with a knowing smile, but some could not make eye contact with me. The few locals who had managed to forget about the disaster for a day and were having fun, drinking cosmopolitans in trendy little eateries or just joking around with friends, froze as I walked past them. They had actually allowed themselves to forget about it all for an afternoon, and the sight of someone obviously connected with the rescue seemed to make them feel ashamed.

I wanted to say, "It's all right. You're allowed to let in some joy this week." But I kept on walking. I was feeling ashamed, too, because I knew they all thought I was one of the brave men and women who were down there digging and looking for bodies, but in fact I was just cooking for those heroes.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the ground zero hamburger mama.

I have worn many hats in my life: painter, writer, bartender, chef, caterer, bitch-from-hell … you name it, but this particular title is the one I wouldn't mind seeing on my tombstone, although, of course, I'm hoping that won't happen for some time.

It all started with a phone call. I'd been walking up and down the West Side Highway, trying to volunteer, but no one would take me. Then finally, a young woman whose wedding I was supposed to cater, called to tell me it was canceled because her party space looked like a scene from M*A*S*H.

They had turned the Seaman's Church Institute from a maritime museum/chapel/party location into a home for hundreds of rescue crews. There was no electricity, no plumbing and no running water, and they were trying to feed, clothe and give counsel to anyone who could get to them.

I wasn't sure what to expect, so I showed up ready, in camouflage pants and my baddest girl boots. If anything happened, I wanted to at least look like I could handle it.

Billy and Dominic were there, unloading trucks filled with supplies. Billy and Dom are the security guards at the institute, sweet guys whom I've gotten to be pals with over the many years I've been catering events there. Dominic looked like he just stepped out of a Bruce Willis movie. His head was wrapped in a flag; he probably hadn't shaved in days. They were both wide-eyed and pale.

"We were trapped in the tunnel when it happened," Billy said. "I had to walk out and leave Dominic. He told me just go, go."

A close friend who was the best man at Dom's wedding is among the missing. "There's no way! He was on the 76th floor!" Dom said, "I can't think about it. … Just keep moving! I've been here since Day One, haven't been home in a week."

It didn't take much to get me on board. "She's a chef," was all Dom had to say to the man in charge.

I was given a volunteer pass, a hard hat and a ventilator mask and put on a pick-up truck en route to ground zero.

"She's going to St. Paul's!" someone said.

"Where's St. Paul's?" I asked the driver.

"Next door to the Millennium Hotel, but don't worry they say it's stable."

We were led through police barricades and armed guards until the truck finally dropped us off at the church.

It felt like I was dropped off in Beirut.

What I saw was an old brown church, with a row of port-a-johns parked to the right and a long stretch of eight-foot tables to the left. The tables were covered with everything from hot dogs to thermoses filled with coffee and boxes of doughnuts, eye solution, Band-Aids, hundreds of apples and thousand of bottles of Gatorade on ice. Dozens of firefighters, cops and construction workers were in line to eat, and a small group of young woman were doing their best to keep up with the hot dog requests on two small back yard barbecue grills.

In an instant, I was no longer a volunteer, no longer at ground zero, no longer anything but a caterer with a job to do. I added coals to the dying fires, threw on a few more packs of hot dogs and looked for anything that could be remotely called a pair of tongs.

It was only after things fell into some kind of order that I took a moment to survey my surroundings. This historic church dating back to 1762 had been the place George Washington prayed. Here it stood, defying the impossible. There was something remarkable about its brownstone walls covered in dust. All this destruction, and yet the church stood, dirty but unharmed.

Each step leading into the chapel held a different goody box; socks, flannel shirts, work gloves, second-hand hard-hats. Inside on some of the wooden pews teary-eyed policemen sat collecting their thoughts; in the back rows were napping soldiers.

My grills were set up in front of the church's cemetery. Two-hundred-year-old tombstones, so ancient their inscriptions had long since been washed away, poked out from an avalanche of burnt, charred papers. These were the day-to-day works papers of the World Trade Center. I looked at one, a bit of banking business of some kind, a cover letter from a fax. These were the bits of this and that being worked on by people who may now be dead.

"Have you been given the drill yet?" the young woman stuffing the hot dogs into buns asked me.

"No?!"

"If you hear the alarm, you've got to run around and out of the gate. Then run as fast as you can, that way toward the seaport."

"Okay…" I said, trying to push my heart out of my throat.

This was my first day cooking at ground zero.

But that was a lifetime ago.

On my second day grilling for the troops, I was taken on a cold drink run to the place they called "the hole." I went with one of the guys, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with ice and Gatorade. The hole is, of course, the collapsed area of what was the WTC. This is also called "the pile." I wondered if "the hole" meant, well, the hole, and the pile meant the parts jetting up, but I never had the guts to ask anyone.

We were let in by soldiers guarding this area and permitted to come to the tent set up only about 100 or so feet from the WTC. It was then that I made the mistake of looking up.

It felt as though I were jettisoned into a scene from a multimillion-dollar Spielberg flick.

There smoldering in front of me was a giant wreck of a sculpture. Smoke and steam streamed out of it as firefighters on their air-breaks sat seemingly unfazed just a few feet away. It was massive. Nothing I'd seen on the news had prepared me for this.

There were sharp burnt bits of metal sticking up 50 feet, 100 feet; have no idea how high. I had to crane my neck to find the top of it. These shards of bent, broken metal just shot up like some giant, cruel death trap. In the background was nothing but total destruction.

I felt my heart beating out of my chest and breathed hard in my mask.

"I'll take one of those!" a silver-haired firefighter said, and I handed him a Gatorade. "Where you from?!"

"I live here," I said.

He took off his helmet and ran his fingers along his scalp. "I'm sorry what they did to your city. We just flew in from California to help out."

"Thank you!" I said feeling dizzy from the sight I was still catching in my peripheral vision.

I think he patted me on the shoulder, but I'm not sure.

The tent of full of firefighters cheered when we poured ice into their cooler of warm sodas and energy drinks. We handed out the cold Gatorades all around.

"I haven't had something cold to drink since 6 a.m.," said one of the guys. It was sometime after noon.

Seaman's delivered two hunks of steel they'd welded into grills. They were four-foot-long pits filled with charcoal that sent up smoke and fire so intense you had to throw down a burger and then jump back. They'd made the legs too tall, so Hector, the tallest griller among us, had to stand on milk crates to flip the burgers. I kept up on the backyard grills.

Every time I threw a burger down, the fat would send fire and smoke shooting up into my face. After two full days of this, I felt like one of the guys. My head ached from inhaling too much of the smoke and I took to popping Tylenols on the hour.

When shifts would change, 50 rescue workers at a time might show up hungry for burgers. The hot dogs were only what they'd settle for when we ran out of burgers, which we did all the time. Someone said we fed a thousand people on my second day. I don't know if that's true, but it felt like it.

"You guys are the best," said a carpenter from Queens.

"No. You're the hero," I said.

"Nah. We're all in this together. It's you guys feeding us and the people who run up with eye wash the second you rub your eyes, and the people cheering you on as you drive in. That's the reason I can do what I do, because you all do what you do."

"Thank-you!" I replied feeling like I was blushing.

"Do you know how many times I've heard that since I've been out here. I can't even count them." He walked away shaking his head.

There was an air about the area they call ground zero that was not filled with overt sadness so much as an intense burst of something like love. Everyone was going the extra mile. No one looked as though they had slept.

There was Steve the out-of-work actor, who had been there for a week throwing foil-wrapped hot dogs directly into the hole. The men would catch them as they worked.

"More! More! I need at least a hundred hot dogs," he shouted at us. He was wired and pushy, but none of us took it to heart.

There was Scott, who had taken his place supervising the many drug store and clothing donations. He'd been sleeping on a blanket on the floor of the church for a week.

"Are you with the church?" I asked him.

"Naah. I just found my way out here."

There was the pastor from some other church who came to deliver ice and stayed for a week. His job was simple. He ran to Costco six times a day and bought all the burgers and dogs he could carry, then drove them out to the hot zone. I did not ask if he was spending his own money.

There was Meredith, who works with Steve. She is tiny, blonde and adorable and looks like a high school cheerleader. She knew the men perked up when they saw her, and she made sure they saw her all the time.

Everyone here is a hero.

But where else could we be, any of us? There is a bond that all of us here feel, from the clergy to the relief people to the construction workers volunteering for days on end. None of us fit in anywhere else. None of us can mix with the real world.

In the days after I watched the towers collapse, I walked around Manhattan feeling like a lost, out-of-place freak. I was just making the motions, but could not force myself to do anything normal. Eating breakfast in a restaurant or having a glass of wine with friends felt like an atrocity.

Most of the people I met felt the same. Some had given up going home at night because the thought of dealing with anyone outside those gates was just too impossible. I wondered how any of us would be able to blend back in again when this was over.

On my third day at the site, things changed. There had been no official statement, but you could feel internally that this had gone from being a rescue mission to being a clean-up mission. Even the pace of the rescue workers changed.

I was told that the dogs sent out to sniff for survivors had gotten so depressed from only finding bodies, that the crews had to take turns hiding so the shepherds and labs could find them. Once they sniffed out the hiding man, they would be given hearty praise and hugs all round. It was only in this way that they could keep the dogs from going into a state of total despondency.

I went with a relief run to the hole and handed out packets or trail mix to the crews. They loved the chance to eat something healthy and grabbed handfuls of the packets from me. It was then that I noticed the dumpster on which was painted, "Airplane parts, FBI." The sight of the dumpster was a jolt back to the reality of what this all really is, a giant graveyard.

The men have a look on their faces that clearly reads, "It's over."

This day, the Board of Health sent inspectors to make sure we were wearing plastic gloves. They asked us to wrap the apples in foil and cover the grills. They felt the dust was a health hazard.

"We're pretty sanitary over here," I said. "Are you worried we might be creating a health problem?"

"More like we're worried about your health," the inspector said.

One of the girls told me they think the bodies might be creating a bio-hazard in the air.

We were told that they would shut us down soon.

"These guys are going to be down here for two months," the inspector said. "We want to come up with a long term way to deal with this, working with the local restaurants that have been closed."

I understand what this meant. This was no longer a rescue mission, though no one official had said this. This was a long-term clean up process and they wanted the workers to start dealing with local businesses, paying for their food.

Too many businesses in the area were going bankrupt.

We were told that we could not use the huge steel grills, as they have no covers so we added a third backyard barbecue and I ran back and forth turning hot dogs and replacing the cover on the three grills.

A truckload of replacement volunteers arrives to give us all a break, but no one wants to go.

"I think tomorrow might be the last day they let us do this," Scott says, instructing the new crew on how to sort clothes and supplies, "but I'll be here for as long as they'll let me stay."

2001-09-18T09:56:00.000-04:00

What I love about New Yorkers:

The lady who just had to have something to do; she could not volunteer because she had two small children in tow, and besides they weren't taking any more volunteers. So she found a place on the West Side Highway, where most of the rescue vehicles drove by.

This was the same place where 50 or so other New Yorkers, myself included, (finally, 20 years after high school, I became a cheerleader) held up signs and flags or just gave the thumbs up to the vehicles as they drove by. "Thank you!" we all yelled. "God bless you!" Some of us with no use for words just screamed, "Wooooooooo!"

But this lady had a mission. She'd realized that for some unknown reason, many of the vehicles seemed to think they had to slow down, or even stop as they approached the intersection at Christopher Street, and it was her duty to let them know they could just keep on truckin'.

"Keep going! You don't have to stop!" she yelled at them as she rolled her arm in a come-forward way, like she'd probably seen traffic cops do a thousand times.

"They think they have to stop, but they don't!" she screamed at us. We smiled and nodded, as we had the last 12 times she told us this.

"Mom! I want to go home," her older son said.

"Not now! Sit in the shade if you're hot! Mommy's busy!" Her son obeyed and plopped himself in the few feet of shade provided by the garbage container. His "You Are All Heroes" sign sat folded on his lap.

She was a fairly obnoxious woman, I'd have to say, with a hint of an accent that most likely originated in Brooklyn or Long Island. She had a stout peasant-like frame all the more embellished by the fact that she'd chosen to wear overalls, unusual for a 40-plus, silver-haired woman. I had this urge to give her a pitch-fork and call it a day, but she didn't care what anyone thought of her. She carried an expression on her face that clearly read, "I feel more important than most." I imagined that I might have given her a dirty look or told her to shut up a week ago, but this day was different.

She had evidently walked up and down the West Side Highway looking for something to call her own. They were giving out bottles of water a few blocks downtown, but no, too many young pretty women already doing that. They were making sandwiches near 16th Street, but her kids would only slow things down.

Then she found it, this tiny flaw, a patch of highway that made hundreds of army trucks and sanitation workers think they had to hit the brakes, when in fact there was no cross traffic and with the exception of the cheerleading squad, very few pedestrians to contend with. This was it; this would become her niche.

"Come onnnnnn!!!!! Keep movinnnnnnnn'!" she screeched, her voice growing hoarse and rough, as every bit of the accent she'd probably spent years covering up came out.

"Maybe they'll get there faster now!" she said to me as if to answer the amused amazement in my eyes.

Maybe they will! Or maybe all her effort just like all of our flags and signs and clapping till our hands were raw, did absolutely nothing except to perk up the spirits of the many rescue crews driving into the dusty unknown.

A sanitation truck picked up speed at her beckoning and the driver nodded at her as he drove by.

"You be careful out there!!!" she yelled at him as he drove past.

I stood there watching her, my arms too tired from waving to raise my flag, I was spent after two hours of hooting and clapping in the sun, but she'd gotten there well before me and showed no signs of fatigue. She was charged as if by some internal power pack, and her energy was contagious.

For this one fleeting moment in a week of death and smoke, I found myself filled with warmth at the sight of her.

For this one fleeting moment, I just adored her.

2001-09-12T10:36:00.000-04:00

And then …

Early in the AM at least early for me, while I was spell checking my rant about how much I need noise and hate quiet, a rant that ended with how friggin' peaceful I felt ... I heard an explosion but did not even flinch ...

I hear explosions all the time from the projects, figured it was just the usual big firecracker in a garbage can thing

Then a client called and said, "I wanted to talk to you about business, but they just crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center." ...?? So I hung up, turned on the news, freaked out and ran up on the roof. ...

There from the roof deck of my Lower East Side building I saw the unbelievable -- the twin towers on fire, gaping holes on the tops of each. It took a moment for me to remove myself from all those Armageddon movies. This was real. In a rush that went from my heart to my stomach, I felt the fear of all those trapped in the towers. It wasn't even 9:30 a.m., but I spun around to see a sizable chunk of my neighbors climb up onto their roofs and fire escapes, their jaws hung as low as mine was.

I ran downstairs for my camera, feeling like a louse, but I just had to, and grabbed Mike from next door and the baby sitter from 5A. I needed someone else to see this and tell me I was not dreaming.

"Holy shit!" Mike screamed. I snapped some pictures, but the camera felt poisoned, so I tossed it on the picnic table and just stared.

We all just stared.

I tried to comprehend how many floors were smoldering.

"It's not so bad. … They'll get them out," someone said, or was it me?

Then it happened -- just as I was thinking, "How much more will this burn before they find a way to put it out?" there was a flash of silver, bits of silver catching the sunlight, just trickling down … and the first tower, just seemed to implode. It came crashing down into itself, right before our eyes. And there were screams from every window and every roof top, and one of them was mine. And I started to cry

This silver deck of cards had just collapsed right in front of us.

It was so absurd, it could not even register.

"No, no, no, no, no!" I heard myself say.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" came the yells from roof tops stretching to the base of Manhattan.

Armin from 2A came upstairs and just stared blankly. Then we turned our sights on the second tower. The fear from all those people trapped in the top of the other tower and the ones trying to make their way down 30, 40, 80 flights of stairs was so tangible, you could feel it floating in the air amid the vast billowy black and gray smoke that came up like a nuclear mushroom cloud.

We watched, and our cell phones did not work, and our home phones did not work, and our loved ones were trying to call us. We watched.

My neighbor Ray the lawyer came rushing up. He had just escaped from the financial district only a couple blocks away. "I just climbed out of the subway, and a wall of people pushed me back!" he yelled panting and sweaty.

Mike snapped pictures with his zoom lens, shaking his head, trying to make jokes that did not work. The baby sitter bounced the baby on his lap and pointed to the black sky saying, "Man, you are going to tell your grandchildren that you saw this!" to the bewildered baby. A frozen chill began to creep up my arms and legs.

"You've got goose bumps all over you, man!" Mike said..

I ran downstairs to get coffee for myself and the baby sitter cause I felt dizzy and weak and just as I touched my door the screaming started again, ran back upstairs just as the second tower is crashing down, the unbelievable has happened twice. … And the screams are everywhere, everywhere, and the smoke is so thick that all of downtown Manhattan is obliterated as it blows endlessly towards Brooklyn. I watched the end of the second tower disappear into a mass of black and silver.

And we can all feel the death of thousands

They died right in front of us
I could not see their faces, but I could see their faces
I still see their faces
I stroke the part of the sky where they were with my fingers

There is no peace
There is nothing but smoke

We are frozen there on the roof for a thousand moments

I have the sensation that everything I have ever known is being rewritten in my head, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

And then the aftermath
The panic

What will happen now?
Is this our Pearl Harbor?

Ray's secretary gets through to him, and I ask her to call my brother. Kathleen comes home and we run to the grocery store for supplies. At times like this, they say to buy water.

The grocery store is filled to the walls with terrified people buying nonperishables.

I load up on anything, I don't even know what I bought.
Some sugary juice, cheap cat food, water, something frozen
Cheese
Canned pineapple of some kind, or maybe it was corn, yes, corn

The police are all around when I emerge
The off-duty officers called in
All of downtown is blocked off.

But we are downtown.

You can feel the tension
Crime yet to be born
The city filled with people who will not work today, pacing, what to do now, where to go.
"Everyone I see is drunk or high," the laundry lady says. ..
There is the sense that nothing makes sense today.

There is a strange dead burnt smell that I can taste in the back of my throat

The fighter jets buzz by
The helicopters climb through the murdered skyline

No one will vote in the primaries

Kathleen goes to Beth Israel to donate blood
Carolyn to Bellevue

I can not give blood, but I wonder what, what, what can I do

I check the air, and worry about the smoke and my cats
And see the tower collapsing, over and over and over again in my head

Carol and Tommy are bankers; they work downtown.

M.E. finally gets through on the phone. She was about to walk the 84 blocks to my apartment. She missed her flight to Washington. Thank God, I tell her. Thank god

"I love you!" I say and ask her to find out if they are ok, Carol and Tommy.
I think they work on Wall Street but I'm not sure.
Tracey calls. Calls can now get in but not out, I have her call my father to tell him I'm ok. She invites me to take the cats and come to Brooklyn but I opt for staying home with the windows shut and the A/C on to filter the air. I would have to walk to Brooklyn across the bridge and home with the cats seems a better bet for now. I've always been afraid of heights.

"Tell my father I'm alive," I beg her.

I am alive.

This day now sits before me like a pathetic afterthought.

There is nothing to do but ponder and watch the tower crumbling, crumbling, crumbling in my head.

Later on, after the news has shown me the videos of what is already taped to my eyes forever, I go back up on the roof to monitor the smoke. Is it blowing my way? Do I need to evacuate? It has mellowed, turned more gray.

Then all of sudden it is black again. Black and billowy and thick, but lower, not like the towers. It covers the buildings like a thick blanket, then spreads out piercing the gray, this new terrible thing, a floating dark ocean.

"Did you see it?" the baby's mother screams rushing up on the roof. "We just heard it on the news! The smaller building, No. 7, just came down!"

"I saw it," I say knowing I have not seen anything today since the first tower crumbled before me.

The city has become a game of dominoes.

I look at the Empire State Building and wonder, who will be next?

2001-09-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

There aren't many things that scare me: lousy haircuts, rayon underwear, those Styrofoam surfboards that obnoxious little kids squeak until the noise makes my brain explode and I scream, "Leave me alone, you bloodsucking gherkins!" and, of course, absolute silence.

Silence.

A lot of folks would sell their left kishka (that basically means any internal organ below the belly button) to get out of town and find a nice quiet place to chill out. Aaaaaah yes! It all sounds so lovely; charming old bed and breakfasts in the country, lovely cottages on the sea and of course, that perfect mountain cabin for skiing, hunting and illicit affairs with postal workers.

Yes. I love, love, love it all. Love, that is, until the lights go out and I'm left nestled inside a black wall of silence that feels like a thousand fat bankers sitting on me.

Interesting visual, I know, and yes, I do promise to bring that up in my next session.

So I do what any downtown girl would do, I turn on the A/C regardless of how cold it is, put on some tunes, crack the window to let in a little night noise and whisper over and over and over again to myself, "All work and no play makes Jill a very dull girl."

I remember the first and last time I rented a house in the country. It seemed so perfectly picturesque; the running creak that babbled its way down a natural waterfall into a shady pond filled with fallen leaves, the tall trees circling the house like a protective mother.

But once the sun slid down its chimney and the last glass of wine was sipped, everything changed. Mosquitoes from hell sent us screaming into the house covered in war wounds. The old creaky stairs that had felt so quaint hours ago became a death trap waiting to break our ankles. And as for those protective trees ... well, they were still motherly, but the mother in question was Joan Crawford on a very, very, very bad day. The Mommy Dearest forest formed a dark circle that locked us in, yet seemed to keep nothing of the mysterious wooded night out.

Then the quiet started. Well not quiet so much as the sound of total nothing through which the screeching bugs, and howling demons of the void could voice their death cries.

"Screeeeee!! (We're coming to get you!)"

"Waaaaaoooooo Haaaaooooooo! (Your ass is mine)!"

I spent the night huddled up in bed with my significant other (hmmm, this
would be ex-lover No. 14. No, no, ex-lover No. 12. We skip 13 like an elevator floor, and the previous No. 12 was deleted due to being far too embarrassing for me to remember, so ex-lover 14 became ex-lover 12. Try to keep up.) who was, of course, sound asleep. I kept one hand on the flashlight and the other on the telephone.

Why the flashlight? Hey! If something's coming to get me, I'm damn well gonna see its face!!

As for the phone, well ... as in all my impending-demise fantasies, I always have time to make a few guilt calls just before death takes me.

"Hi. It's Rossi. Remember me? Yes, well you made my life pretty miserable in the sixth grade. Just because my feet were a size 9 was no reason to call me Big Foot! Just wanted to drop you a quick call to say I'm dying. Don't feel too bad about how you ruined my childhood, because I've heard I get a chance to come back and haunt you. So I guess I should say ... see ya real soon! Anyway, I'm just rattling ... so I'll let you go."

Hehehehehhehe.

Aaaahh well. I'm not dying today, and there's a lovely thunderstorm banging around outside. I can hear children screeching as they run from the rain, taxi drivers cursing, bolts of lighting vibrating against the buildings like a sledgehammer and the panoramic stereo sound of a dozen car alarms going off at the same time.

Yawn! I think I'll just take a li'l nap.

So peaceful! Sooo very peaceful.

2001-09-05T11:17:00.000-04:00

Things have a way of happening to me on unscheduled days ... like the time I was meandering around the East Village in search of this thing called breakfast. It was two in the afternoon, rather early for my morning feed, and a six-foot iguana came flying out or nowhere and landed on the stretch of Avenue B in front of me. The creature had evidentially managed to push its way through a child's guard (they're for children not dinosaurs your freaks) and plummeted onto the sidewalk like some sad Spielberg joke.

There it was, hissing and licking and crawling about while a crowd of the usual local mishmash (three Puerto Rican kids, two pink-haired teen-agers, four yuppies trying to look downtown-hip and failing miserably, one artist with dog, one lesbian with no visible back pack, but several facial piercings and two gay men who didn't -- GASP -- work out) looked on in an amazement that would grow into mild boredom in just a few New York minutes.

Oh we are such a fickle bunch here in NYC, but it's the edge, edge, edge that we love ... isn't it?

Ultimately, the iguana was just fine. It was roped rodeo-style and left to scare off the customers of an import music store till Mommy and Daddy came home.

I had breakfast at about 3:30 and chalked it up to another one of the many oddities that are thrown at me on, as I mentioned, unscheduled days. Don't know why the eggs looked green.

Unscheduled days for moi, FYI, are pretty often.

So this weekend, on my unscheduled Labor Day, I decided to meander over to see "Planet of the Apes" since none of my very scheduled pals had gotten around to seeing it with me and I was still mortified about the fact that I finally saw "Crouching Tiger Hidden ... what was it ... Muffin" on Pay-Per-View.

Somewhere along 12th Street, or was it 13th or 11th ... who's counting? ... I saw a crowd of college chicks, attacking a table of magazines like it was a post-Christmas sample sale. There towering above them all was one very crummy looking geezer who kept screaming, "Take them all! They're freeeee! I need the room! I need the damn roooooooooom!"

Free is a very sexy word don't you think?? Come to think of it, in New York, so is room.

So I joined the crowd and very delicately elbowed and kicked my way in until I had managed to grab 14 Saturday Evening Posts from 1962!! Wooo. So what's a little blood under my fingernails for some free vintage mags, anyway?

They were great! There was the one written about Vietnam from the "Come over and join a war cause they, really, really need us perspective." The cool car commercials (slurp 1962 Corvettes ... yum) and my personal fave, "The new and amazing resilient tile made out of ASBESTOS"

Re-do your kitchen today!!

Of course I became completely obsessed and almost missed "Apes" while reading with great interest the interview with Rosalind Russell. ... Yes I know you have no idea who the hell she is. Listen!! I'm not old enough to know about her either damn it!! Unless you count that brief fixation with "Auntie Mame" movies, but she's fabulous trust me and had evidentially been in like 45 films and still found time to garden, mix a perfect martini and make her hubby happy. … Now there's a woman!

Speaking of women's lib ... I love that in the ape flick...Helena Bonham Carter is supposed to be like 10 times stronger than a human or former Calvin Klein model, but she still needs Marky Mark to save her like the lil hairy damsel in distress she is.

She's a giant ape for crying out loud! She doesn't need a man!! She needs electrolysis!

Did love the interspecies kiss between Marky Mark and Chimpy Chimp, but did anyone other than then myself notice how incredibly lousy that ending was … oops won't ruin it for y'all but trust me the Saturday Evening Posts were far more invigorating.

I really don't like walking out of movie theatres feeling like I read the wrong subtitles, especially when there weren't any.

Personally I loved the old "Planet of the Apes" flicks and yes, now I surely am dating myself, (and why not I'm fabulous on a date). Was a huge Heston fan, too, until he caught that nasty little gun habit ... story of my life.

Well, time to go. I hear my Saturday Evening Posts calling me.

Here, Rossi, come drool over this early '60s stereo system with matching coffee table and love-seat.

Don't forget to polish up your shiny new asbestos floor!!

And there you have it ...
One small rant for moi
One giant "What the ...." for y'all