Addictions

A few random thoughts and occurrences this week that actually connect together:

This story starts with my eight year old friend, Clayton, who, as a typical young American boy, is a collector. He collects Yu-Gi-O cards, he collects toy soldiers, he collects feathers he finds in the yard. To me, this is a very male thing, but I am not sure why. I just personally haven’t met a lot of eight year old girls who collect like boys do. This was an observation that came and went, for when it comes to trying to figure out the male species, I just try to accept the mysteries and not dwell.

Then a friend sent me an email about Eric Clapton. She had just read his memoir, and shared with me her thoughts:

“Eric Clapton — I love the music. It was just HIM in the book that I hated. But hate is really too strong. I was disillusioned, that’s all. I had, with no real information at all, had come to think of him — because of his guitar and because his baby fell out of the window and because of Crossroads and AA and all that wisdom gained (I thought) — as a wise man; an evolved enlightened man.

But the book reveals his utter narcissism and his recovery from addiction switches to collecting possessions, which to me was really kind of ugly. He talks of his “fine timepieces bought at auction” and his boat and his this and that… and seeing someone’s laptop and thinking “I have to have one of those” and it goes on and on, everyone he sees he gets into that person’s ‘thing’ - or “things” — right down to the most basic — the guitars he first acquired were because someone had that particular one….

But once I get over my disillusionment about him being this Wise Buddha I thought he was, based only on assumption, I can appreciate his talent… and the book is good in terms of how he developed as a musician. You, as a guitar player, might find it really interesting and read it totally differently.

My friend, who plays, found the possession-seeking, etc. just an aside in the book…..”

So here we had collecting again. This time, from a man rather than a boy. Or perhaps a man who has the luxury of still acting like a boy? Who knows….I haven’t read Clapton’s memoir but I plan to. (And by the way, I do think he is a brilliant guitar player. Some guitarists manage to pull emotions out of a guitar; Clapton channels emotions into his. The outro to Layla is one of the most emotionally wrenching guitar solos I have ever heard. Sorry, Jimmy Page….I love you, too. And you too, Pete Townshend.)

Anyway, so here we have, in the form of Eric Clapton, another man obsessed with collecting. (I am not passing judgment on this—every day I make a vow to myself not to judge anything.) What I find interesting is that transferred his addictions to alcohol into a more “healthy” addiction: spending money. I don’t know why it never dawned on me before that collecting is an addiction, but then again I am not the quickest person in the world.

This got me thinking about my own addictions. I never really got into drugs or alcohol, but I do have a classic pattern/history of addictive behaviors, starting with an eating disorder in high school, a boyfriend-disorder in my early twenties, a writing disorder which carried me through my late twenties and early thirties, and now I seem to have a spirituality disorder.

Let me explain. When I was in high school, and feeling unloved and imperfect and misunderstood (and full of a latent rage I didn’t connect with until like last week), I decided that I was fat (I wasn’t by any means, but my perception was warped). So I stopped eating. We all know these stories by now….the perfectionism, the starvation, the denial, the suffering……but in my mind, I thought: my life sucked, and if only I were thin, my life wouldn’t suck.

Right. It’s a warped equation.

Eventually, in college, with the help of drugs, I overcame my eating disorder. And I thank Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and the archangel Michael and Tara and all those benevolent beings out there for guiding me through that.

But I wasn’t “cured” in any existential sense. No, I simply channeled my disorders, and my beliefs that I was imperfect, into a different area of my life: men. Only, back then they were boys. I was in college, after all.

And so, I began to live by this equation: my life sucked, but if I found a perfect boyfriend and could behave like a perfect girlfriend, then my life wouldn’t suck.

Right.

I found myself involved with: a hyper masculine man who turned out to be gay, a fun-loving alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a job, a misogynist writer who stayed up late at night writing love letters to other women, and finally—the one I married—an angry, overly critical, probably bi-polar control freak who emotionally beat me to a pulp.

While married to this man, I think I gave up on men, only I didn’t know it at the time. I think I decided that I was a failure at relationships, and therefore I had to find something else to be “perfect” at.

Thus began my writing disorder. You could call this period of my life “productive,” just as you could call my eating-disorder years a period in which I was looking very good in all my clothes because i was so thin. I wrote many stories and essays, got published, sold two books, and spent a few years writing them. My equation: when my books become bestsellers, then my real life will begin, then my life won’t suck.

But with every piece I published—indeed, with every sentence I wrote—my perfectionism bar kept getting raised. By me.

Somewhere, lurking inside me, is a vicious voice, a cruel cruel cruel critic, who constantly tells me I am not good enough, that I will never be good enough, that I might as well die, because no one is every going to like me, etc.

Nice, huh? Nice to have such a voice inside your own head.

I’m working on it, trust me……

It got so I gave up on my own writing. Some time over the summer, I decided that I was a failure as a writer—a colossal failure—and that I should just give up. Never mind my mentions in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times, never mind the great reviews of my first book—a memoir of all things. That voice inside me INSISTS that I am a failure.

Again, I am working on this. Very often now, in my dreams, I carry in my hand a sword. In my waking hours, this makes me think of Manjushri—a Buddhist boddhisattva who helps cut through ignorance. Having a sword makes me think I can cut through that ancient inner voice.

And Random House, if you are reading this, I do intend to hand in that novel you’ve been waiting for, and to meet my April deadline.

In the meantime, I have transferred my need to be perfect into another area of my life: my spirit. You could say this is the healthiest addiction of all. I spend at least four hours a day praying, chanting, doing yoga, doing kundalini kriyas and pranayama, going to churches, temples and kirtans, practicing Kindness.

But it wasn’t until my friend told me about Eric Clapton that I realized my spirituality was just another addiction. And that it can be a very dangerous one. What if I decide I am a failure at this, in other words? What if that voice convinces me that– just as I failed at being: thin, a girlfriend, and a writer—I fail as a spiritual being having a human experience? I think that is why people commit suicide. They can no longer endure the human experience.

The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing as failure, just as there is no such thing as “perfect.” My task, I know, is to simply accept myself for who and what I am, and to recognize that, all this time, everything has been exactly as it should be. The task is to accept, and not to judge. To love, and not to fear. But now I am getting grandiose.

Perhaps I should just try collection cards, and guitars. Because think about it, what am I “collecting” through all my disorders? I think I am—was—collecting bits of evidence. On the surface, I was trying to collected samples of external proof that I was “perfect” at something. But it just doesn’t work that way. None of that external proof was really changing my external belief that I was a colossal failure. I mean, not even publishing a book helped me believe that I was “publishable.” It’s fucked. I’m not whining here….I’m just stating a series of truths that have bewildered me.

But I am through with all this. I just discovered a technique that comes from kundalini yoga that is said to help a person break through addictive patterns. I am starting it today and will continue for 40 days. I will let you know what happens.

And in the meantime, if there is a Writers’ Anonymous group out there, sign me up. Because I have three months to finish my novel!

Dear God:

Assuming You are internet savvy, please click on the following link and place a bid on my behalf:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110212877169

My birthday is January 31st.  Thank you!

REX AND THE CITY: A MEMOIR OF A WOMAN, A MAN, AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL DOG now out in paperback!

I’m not one to toot my own horn, and I consider that a big fat flaw, especially these days, when books sale based on hype more than they sell on the quality of the actual book. But whatever. I need to be more proud of my work. No more of this I’m-too-shy-I’m-not-good-enough crap. If I don’t promote myself, no one will.

So here goes. Four months* ago the paperback version of my memoir, Rex and the City, came out to critical acclaim! I’ve gotten excellent reviews, and people are actually reading it!

*Yes, four months ago. In this day and age, in which everyone who’s anyone (and even everyone who’s no one) has a blog, you find that most writers let their readers know about such things in advance. But I was too depressed this summer to get very excited about such things as my very own paperback book launch. That’s another story, one I won’t bore you with here.

What did I do to celebrate the launch? I set a copy of the book on fire. This has nothing to do with imbalanced hormones, or pyromania; rather, I saw it as a lovely and symbolic way to “let the book go.” I literally wanted to see the book transform to ash and smoke and float off into the cosmos. I felt it had a better chance of reaching readers this way.

If you are a Buddhist, or have read any of Wayne Dyer’s book, or practice something called “non-attachment,” then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re none of the above, well, just chalk this all off to the fact that I live in Woodstock, New York, and that we do that sort of thing all the time here. There’s always something being burned in this town–and not just spleefs! I’m talking ceremonial burnings. Just last week I was invited to a bonfire hosted by a fresh divorcee, and we were encouraged to bring items to burn from relationships that “no longer served us.”

Anyway, it just so happened that the day my paperback book was released - June 23, 2007 - was also the day I handed in the first draft of my novel, NOTHING KEEPS A FRENCHMAN FROM HIS LUNCH. Right now I’m wishing I had set that baby on fire as well, but that is another story, one I won’t bore you with here (but rest assured that deep depresssions and writers’ deadlines seem to go hand in hand).

We waited until the sun went down, which in June was after 8 pm, and then my friend Greg torched up the bonfire and my friend Lilly cracked open the bottle of Veuve Clicquot. We sat on stones surrounding a great outdoor firepit, underneath an enormous, starry, mountain sky. I made a little speech about REX AND THE CITY - how I wished it well, how I encouraged it to move on and out into the world. This book is a memoir, so it will always be part of me–a literal chronicle of my life. But still, I felt it was important to separate myself from it, to not be attached to its outcome, to not worry about who’s reading it and who isn’t. So I set my book into the fire. Oddly, it didn’t catch right away. It just sat there, nestled in the flames, kind of like a passenger settling in before a long flight. {terrible metaphor, i know, but i am taking a medication right now that seems to produce nothing but stiff sentences and bad metaphors}

So while my book sat on its pyre but did not burn, I talked about Wallace - the dog about whom I wrote this book. I thanked him for being in my life, and for being the inspiration for this book. I thanked him for giving me so much love. I didn’t go too overboard with this speech, because dear Wallace is dead, and I didn’t want to make my bonfire audience too uncomfortable. They are all dog lovers, my friends, but not necessarily the types to make weepy laudatory speeches about their dead dogs four years after the fact. So I kept the real sentiments to myself.

I kept this missive to myself, also: the fact that I silently asked Wallace to watch over the book, this book that now finally had caught on fire. For some reason I felt that this transformation from book to smoke and ash would somehow make the book more accessible to Wallace–or rather, to his spirit. (Call me crazy, if you wish. I have been called better, and worse. ) Wallace had been cremated, after all, and now Rex and the City was being cremated, too. Ashes to ashes. I silently asked Wallace to help this book along on its mission, which is to spread the word about the importance of helping abandoned and abused dog.

So the book burned, and the Veuve Clicquot went down smoothly, and a young man named Clayton played the drums. You could actually hear its echo in the nearby mountains.

In the morning, I returned to the firepit to see what remained of the book and, yes, to collect some ashes to keep in an urn on my mantle. ( I find that sort of thing amusing, and it gives my family plenty to talk about, so why not?). My book, my first book, my little REX AND THE CITY had been reduced to a fine white powder, as soft as talc. The only thing that remained was about two inches of the bookcover–and it happened to be the illustration of Wallace’s face. I took this as a good sign. That I was being watched over. And that a force larger than me was watching over my book. I bid it Godspeed.

Today I googled myself - something I don’t usually do, unless I have an enormous, fearsome writing deadline, and am trying to find creative, ego-crushing ways to avoid writing.

So, I punched my name into the search engine, and came up with some interesting stuff. I didn’t know, for instance, that I have a law degree from Boston College and am currently practicing at Nixon Peabody; or that I am also a quite accomplished painter in Taos, New Mexico; or that three years ago, while a student at UCLA, I wrote a term paper called “Homosexuality on ‘All My Children.’”  I’m also a medical intuitive who has written books on sinus relief and, on weekends, I play football for Bridgewater State. Why, there is even a “Lee Harrington Most Valuable Player Award.”

So this is quite a resume, eh? No wonder I am so f–ing tired all the time! And if I am such a sinus expert, then why is my right sinus constantly closed? Eerie…

Anyway, the whole point of this blog is to bring attention to someone else’s blog. Trashinista! It’s a wonderful, wonderful website for ladies who love to read, and I was pleased to discover a very favorable review of my book : Rex and the City, a Memoir of a Woman, A Man, and a Dysfunctional Dog. (Villard 2007)

http://www.trashionista.com/2007/10/book-review-rex.html

Next, I found a rather unfavorable review of my hardcover book cover (pasted below). It was paired with a very favorable review of my paperback book cover (Thank you Keris!). I’m not complaining about this hard cover review at all–in fact, I think the reviewer is right.  But I am not supposed to say anything about that.  If you want to hear me rant and rave about why I think (and always thought) it was wrong of my publisher to put a cartoon on the cover of my memoir, email me privately, and I won’t just chew your ear off - I’ll blowtorch it! I always wanted a picture of my dog on my bookcover.

That’s what Rex and the City is about, after all. 

But what’s done is done. And I am grateful to have a paperback book cover which at least gives some indication as to what the actual book is about. So many people, when they saw the hardcover version of Rex and the City, assumed it was a children’s book! Or, worse, a novel. But it’s a memoir. Generally, I think memoirs call for photographs, but again, I shouldn’t say too much.

Gratitude. Let us practice gratitude.

So I thank Keris Stainton for voicing the Opinion Which Dare Not Speak Its Name.  I hope it opens up some interesting debate about the power of book covers.

 =====================================================

http://www.trashionista.com/book_covers/index.html 

BOOK COVER: Rex and the City

I wrote about Lee Harrington’s Rex and the City last week and it’s a great example of the power of a cover. I didn’t mention it in book news (though I certainly thought about it) but I can’t stand the hardback cover on the left. It’s so awful, I wasn’t really sure where to begin.

But look! Look at the paperback cover (on the right). Much nicer. I’d pick that one up in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?

In honor of my appearance—as a “celebrity judge,” no less—at the 17^th Annual Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade, I thought I would post, on this blog, an expanded version of my doggie-Halloween story that originally appeared in The Bark magazine in 2003. (Half of this story also appeared in the book version of REX AND THE CITY). But anyway, on to the story…..

Rex and the City: The Curse of the Three-Headed Dog

There’s nothing like Halloween in New York City. New York is home to some of the most artistic and creative people on the planet, most of whom will jump at any opportunity to put on a show. Consider the city’s eight hundred thousand drag queens, who, just to take a trip out to the deli, will put on seven-inch platforms, a sequined butterfly shawl and a two-foot wig. In the weeks before Halloween, the whole city began to fill with a fizzy, randy excitement. Shop windows were crammed with bondage gear, feather boas, broquaded undies and outrageous wigs, and the window boxes of the West Village overflowed with chrysanthemums and pumpkins and squash—all in their final bursts of color before the decay of the winter set in. And all those flamboyant colors; all those sequins, feathers and rubber masks started to bring out everyone’s inner drag queen. And it was no different for the dog people. There are more that thirty dog runs in the city, and therefore more than thirty annual doggie costume parades.

At that point in time (1998) we had just started taking Rex to the Tompkins Square Park dog run. Each run in the city has its own flavor and “First Run” as it was called (because it was the first in NYC) was known for 1) the youth of its doggie parents (most were East Village kids in their twenties); 2) the number of pit-bull mixes (most of the young doggie parents adopted pits from the ASCPA in the East 90’s, or found them on the streets); 3) the number of dog-brawls that occurred daily (it was a transient neighborhood, with a lot of new dogs); and 4) The legendary First Run Annual Halloween Costume Contest, which drew the likes of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.

When I first saw the sign for this Halloween contest in early October, I felt my entire universe expand. Dogs in costume! At the thought of this, something latent was awakened in me—something ancient and profound. I told Ted in no uncertain terms that we had to go to this contest.

“Are you thinking of dressing Rex in a costume?”

“Absolutely.”

“He’ll hate it.”

“No he won’t.”

Ted and I, by that point had begun to communicate in a really weird, passive way through the dog. We would convey our own wants and needs through Rex. For example, I might say to Ted: “Rex really needs to get away for the weekend. I think he wants to rent a room in a nice B&B.”

Anyway, I managed to convince Ted that Rex wouldn’t mind having to wear a costume. I can’t remember how we came up with the idea, but we had decided to dress him up like a little hiker. I think it all started with this brown wool hippy hat that used to belong to a stoner friend of Ted’s from high school. The hat was handmade in Peru, and slightly pointy on top, and had two strings that you could tie under your chin. Ted had asked me once if I wanted it, but I am much too serious a person to wear silly Peruvian hats. (The hats I wear cost $550 and I never even wear those, because I always buy them on a whim, and they are really only appropriate at English garden weddings, and I have not yet to date been invited to any weddings in the UK.) So anyway, I suggested we put the Peruvian hat on Rex, just for kicks.

This opened up a can of worms, of course, that determined much of Rex’s future. For I quickly realized that I got a true and unadulterated pleasure from dressing up my dog. “He looks so cute,” I shouted. “Oh my God. Get the camera.”

“The poor boy,” Ted said. “How humiliating.” But still Ted got the camera.

The rest of Rex’s Halloween costume quickly fell into place. Rex already had his own little backpack, for camping trips, and Ted agreed to donate a pair of ratty hiking shorts he’d had for years. He started to have regrets, however, when I spent $30 on a little wool sweater and cut strategic holes in his cherished shorts to accommodate Rex’s tail and privates, but by then it was too late. The contest was only one day away.

“You’re going overboard,” he said the next morning as I gussied up Rex. “Everyone else will probably show up with their dogs in cat ears and witch hats.”

“So what?” I said. “This is fun. Plus, we’ll win.” For a final touch, I put a Catskills trail guide in the pocket of Rex’s backpack, so that there would be no doubt that he was a hiker.

The day itself was one of those perfect fall days you read about: crisp, cool, clear, with the scent of autumn leaves and hot cider donuts lingering in the air. I insisted on dressing up Rex at the apartment and couldn’t contain my excitement at the cuteness of it all. I started to have visions of Rex being in the movies, of starring in dog food commercials, of his face gracing millions of cutesy-dog greeting cards. And a photographer from the Times would definitely be at the contest—one came every year. So maybe finally I’d get my picture in that paper. With my award-winning dog. “Oh my god, he’s so cute!” I said for the millionth time. (If I couldn’t have my own time in the spotlight, then, by God, Rex was going to have his.) “Will you take a picture of him before we leave? It’s his first party, in his first party suit.”

“Let’s not prolong the torture,” Ted said. “The poor boy.” Admittedly, looked downtrodden, as if he wished he had nothing to do with the human world. He kept lifting his eyelids, and twisting his head left to right, trying to figure out what was on top of his head. He also tried to pull off the backpack with his mouth, but he couldn’t quite reach.

“Let’s just go!” Ted said.

I enjoyed all the attention we got on our twenty-minute walk to the dog run, but Ted clearly did not. “Look at that dog!” people on the sidewalks shouted. “He’s so cute!” All around us, people laughed and pointed and smiled. I basked in their praise; I loved being in the spotlight, even indirectly. But Ted seemed pained.

“He’s such a dignified dog,” he kept saying as we walked through the East Village. “This isn’t right. You’re humiliating him. He’s going to grow up to be a pansy. He’s going to be like Hemingway, who was all screwed up because his grandmother dressed him in girlie clothes.”

“No, he’s not,” I said, undaunted. I stopped to talk to strangers and told everyone cute little anecdotes about Rex. “He used to be a shelter dog,” I would begin. “And he used to hate us. And he would never let us touch his head. And now look at him with his little hat….”

“Rex come,” Ted would say, pulling on the leash.

“Rex was enjoying himself,” I said to Ted when I caught up to him.

“That’s because that woman petting him has a hot dog.”

“No it’s not. It’s because she told him he was cute.”

On and on this went, all the way to the park. It wasn’t until a horde of pretty girls in go-go boots ran up to Ted to ask what kind of dog Rex was, that the tight, slightly pained look left Ted’s face.

When we reached the grassy area within Tompkins Square Park, Rex went immediately went into hunting mode. His steps slowed, his torso sank lower to the ground, and his nose twitched with the precision of a sonograph as he picked up subtle scents. You could tell he had forgotten he had a little ski cap on, and a backpack, and a toddler’s sweater and silly shorts. “Look at him stalking those squirrels!” the girls in the go-go boots shouted.

“Poor Rex,” Ted muttered. “The poor emasculated boy.” But this hadn’t stopped him from bringing along his video camera. He followed Rex along, zooming in for close-ups, as Rex crept slowly toward a squirrel.

When we finally reached the dog run, I was astounded at what I saw. You’re always going to find, at every Halloween contest across the country, a lab in Christmas antlers, and one or two Dog-zillas, and a golden retriever in a store-bought Yankees cap. But try to picture a Harlequin Great Dane dressed up as a giant sunflower. Or a matted grey Shitzhu dressed as a mop and accompanied by a short gay man dressed as a frumpy housewife. The costumes were spectacular. There was a shepherd mix in a curly black wig and Gene Simmons makeup, and a tiny leather jacket embossed with the logo: Kiss. There was a couple dressed up like farmers, carrying baskets of produce, and tucked within the vegetables was a tiny Chihuahua in a pea pod costume, shivering nervously the way Chihuahuas do. There were Pit Bulls sporting cow udders, and six Dachshunds spray-painted yellow to look like a bunch of bananas, accompanied by a giant man in a gorilla suit. “Wow,” Ted said. “I’m impressed.”

“I’m depressed,” I said. One of the great, but also one of the rotten, things about New York City is that no matter how creative you are, no matter how talented or clever or smart, there’s always going to be someone out there who’s smarter and more talented and more creative than you. Every second of every day.

“Look at that costume!” Ted said. And there I beheld my nemesis. Across the run, wearing Gucci sunglasses and surrounded by adoring fans, was a man and his golden retriever, whom he had fashioned into a Three Headed Dog. From a distance the two extra heads looked life-like, and they continued to look life like even as we got close. “How did you do that?” someone asked, through a crowd that was three-people deep. “With Styrofoam,” he explained. “I’m a set designer.” And he went on to describe how he had begun constructing the heads back in August, how he had required his dog, Butterscotch, to pose for an hour each evening as he painted her likeness on the busts, and how it had taken him three weeks to find the best “suspension mechanisms” to attach the heads to Butterscotch’s collar. Then of course he had to go out and find the perfect cape to conceal the suspension mechanisms. And the cape had come from Shanghai Tang ( a high-end Asian boutique on Madison Avenue).

“That shawl had to have cost six hundred dollars,” I said to Ted as we slunk away. “And did you see that they eyes on the Styrofoam heads actually blinked?”

“I’m blown away,” Ted said.

“If I had known people were going to spend six months on their costumes, I would have put more effort into Rex’s.” I stared at the three-headed dog’s magnificent cape. “I don’t even have socks from Shanghai Tang.”

“But look our puppy, he’s adorable,” Ted said. “And he’s being such a good boy.” Rex always stayed by our side at the dog run, because he was still intimidated by the presence of so many dogs. “Come on,” Ted said. “Let’s go sign him in.”

When we got to the registration desk, we found out we had to have a name for Rex’s costume. I hadn’t thought of a name. I thought the costume spoke for itself. To me, Rex looked like a little hippie kid, a Bates student, a Trustafarian going off on a hike. “How about Happy Camper?” I said to Ted. And don’t they always say First Thought, Best Thought? Because then, for some reason, I decided that I had needed to have a more literary name. Something more clever and tongue-in-cheek. I thought then of Jon Krakauer, the author of Into The Wild. “No one is going to know what you’re talking about,” Ted said. But I reasoned that we were in the East Village, a neighborhood full of artists and writers and tortured souls. Any of the above would certainly have read Into the Wild, which was the “it” book of the moment.

So we—or rather, I—registered Rex as “Jon Krakauer” and we took our place in line for the parade to begin. Ted gave me one of his looks—one I liked to call “The Crow.”

The contest began by everyone parading their dogs around the perimeter of the run as a group, and then each of the contestants was called one by one. The whole dog run was lined with was lined with giddy onlookers. As each contestant was called forth they hooted and clapped and cheered. The sound of so much applause was uplifting, and I laughing along, but then Rex’s name was called. The MC said: “And here’s Rex the English Setter, and he’s posing as, as, um, Jonathan Kra……Jon Cracker?” The crowd, who had just been cheering madly for the Mastiff-as-ballerina before us, now grew silent.

In this void, I told Rex to heel and we promenaded along. I smiled nervously and fakely, like a beauty contestant finalist who has just found out she was eliminated after just the first round. I tried to make eye contact with Ted, who was out there somewhere with the onlookers, but I couldn’t find him in such a crowd. Then our moment was over. Rex and I returned to our place in line, and then some other dog’s name was called. “That was our fifteen minutes of fame,” I whispered to the dog. “And it sucked!”

The Three-Headed Dog won of course, soon the dog and his costume designer were mobbed by photographers and fans. Dejectedly, I took off Rex’s short and backpack, so that he could go and happily hump the ballerina and bite other dog’s necks. “I should have just called him the Happy Camper,” I said to Ted as I stuffed Rex’s little hiking shorts into my bag. Across the run, I watched people congratulate the set designer. He seemed a bit too proud of his achievements; a bit too smug.

Ted thought the whole thing was hilarious. “Jon Krakauer,” he said over and over again. “Into the Wild!” He trained his video camera onto me and said, “This is Lee pouting because Rex didn’t win the Halloween contest.”

When he saw that I wasn’t laughing, he said. “Let’s go to Veselka’s and get some lunch.” Ted, like all good city boyfriends, knew that certain restaurants could always cheer certain mopey women up. For me, it was Veselka’s: pirogues (steamed, and stuffed with potatoes, cheese and broccoli), French fries, and a cold Pilsner Urquell on tap.

We leashed up Rex and headed off. As we were leaving the park, a nice young woman ran up and touched my shoulder. “I thought yours was the best costume.”

“Really?” I turned to her and smiled.

“He should have won first place.”

“Thanks.”

This is one of the wonderful things about New York: for every stranger who has the capacity to ruin your day—whether deliberately or not—there are always two or three more strangers who will extend to you a fresh, pure act of kindness.

“See?” I said to Ted at Veselka’s. “Someone got it. I wasn’t totally out of line.”

“Yes, Lee,” he said. “One in twelve hundred people gets you.” He touched my hand. “Make that two.”

Rex, as if he understood us, turned around at that moment and looked at us with what we call his “treat face.”

“Make that three,” Ted said.

This is not where the story ends, however, because from that day forward, for the next two years I tried to devise schemes to out-do the Three Headed Dog and his set designer man.

It was now the year 2000 and, much to my disappointment, the world had not ended as everyone kept insisting it would. Thus, I had to continue living my drudgery of a life. I started thinking about Rex’s costume in early August. Ted and I would be walking along the beach at Fire Island, or hiking in the Hudson Valley, swatting away flies, and I’d say things like, “What do you think of Tommy Hilsetter?”

“What?” Ted would say. “What are you talking about?” He was a serious hiker, who always kept his eyes on the trails, and therefore never really listened to me while he was hiking. Perhaps—and I am seriously just realizing this now, as I write: perhaps this is why he liked hiking so much. It was the only time he could legitimately tune me out.

“For Halloween,” I said. “We could put a little skull cap on him, and really baggy jeans that hang low off his butt. He could be a little ghetto dog.”

“I think that might be offensive,” Ted said. “A lot of kids from the projects play basketball in that park.”

“Well then how about Brittany Spears? We could get Rex some of those big plastic tits and a shiny pink thong.”

“That’s not very original,” Ted said. “Everyone with a Brittany Spaniel has probably thought of that. Plus, Rex doesn’t even look like enough of a Brittany to pass as one.”

Up ahead, we could hear that Rex had flushed out a wild turkey. He let out a war cry and took off through the brush.

“It would be hard to keep a thong on him anyway,” I said.

Eventually—I don’t remember how—I came up with the idea of Dogatella Versace. It was the year Jennifer Lopez had worn that infamous, diaphanous, one-button dress to the Grammys. (And if you don’t know what dress I’m talking about, I can’t help you). I like to think that the idea came to me in one great creative burst; a flash in which I saw the complete outfit: Rex in a mini J. Lo dress, with a long blonde Donatella wig, and his white fur tinted to Versace’s creepy shade of tan.

Eureka! My heart began to pound and the area behind my neck began to tingle, as it always does when I have tapped into The Universal Source.

There were two obstacles to expressing my creative inspiration, however. One was convincing Ted that his son needed to be swathed in Versace, and the other was finding someone to make the dress. Fortunately, we lived in New York City, the land of oddball specialists, so the latter was a piece of cake. At any given moment, you could open up the Yellow Pages and find someone to sing opera to your geraniums while you traveled to Reykjavik; you could hire someone to sew mink to the straps of your seatbelts so that you wouldn’t chafe your chest. And you could find a handful of talented, expensive seamstresses who would custom make a dress for your dog. I found my doggie dressmaker, by providence really, on Manhattan Dog Chat. She just appeared one day in early September, answering a post from someone who had some extra upholstery fabric and wanted to make a little jacket for her “hard to fit” Maltese.

Immediately I called this woman and told her about my Dogatella Versace idea. “How big is your dog?” she asked me. And when I told her Rex weighed seventy pounds she said, “Well, I usually only work with little dogs.” I felt myself getting defensive, and reverting into that hateful “Us and Them” mentality that, as a Buddhist, I try to not maintain: Us being big dog people (they are real dogs, after all) and little dog people. Meanwhile, she was probably thinking I was insane for wanting a Versace dress for a 70-pound spaniel. A male spaniel with no effeminate qualities whatsoever. But because I was the customer, and because I offered to pay her a hundred bucks, we agreed that she would pick out some J. Lo-looking fabric and meet me at my apartment for a fitting the following week. “He’s really cute,” I said added at the end of our conversation, because Little Dog People love to use the word cute.

Ted wanted nothing to do with this. He tried to list all the reasons why I should not dress our dog in drag (i.e.: you’re humiliating him, you have better things to do with your time) but in the end he saw how excited I was about the project and how unwilling I was to back off. “When is she coming?” he finally said in resignation.

“Next Saturday. At three.”

“Well, I’ll just make sure I’m not around Saturday at three,” he said.

When Sheila, the dressmaker, arrived at the appointed hour, we were both relieved to find that we liked each other immediately. You never know with the Internet. She was a theater person, a costume designer, who made clothes for dogs on the side, because it was profitable, and because she loved dogs. “I used to have one,” she said, “but now I travel way too much.” As she talked, she measured Rex’s ankles, and the length of his legs, and the distance from his neck to his tail. “Now, this will be the challenge,” she said, pointing at his privates. “We have to have the plunging neckline to mimic the dress, but it will have to fasten in front of his wee-wee. I’m just not sure it will hang right though.” She stared at Rex thoughtfully, considering how his body would handle the complicated drapes of cloth, and I was glad Ted wasn’t here to witness this. The “wee-wee” comment would have sent him through the roof.

Rex was a perfect fit model. I fed him liver treats throughout the whole process, so that he would stay still, and he didn’t try to lunge at Sheila when she leaned in too close to his head. I was so proud of his behavior, and of his progress as a formerly abused dog, that I started to get teary-eyed. “You’re like the mother of the groom,” Sheila said. “Or the bride, as it were.”

“It’s just that,” I said, wiping my eyes, “he’s a shelter dog, and he was abused, and whenever I see him interact tenderly with new strangers I am just so grateful.” “Now you tell me,” Sheila said. “But he doesn’t seem threatening. It’s usually the little dogs you have to watch out for.”

I agreed.

“Would you like me to take a picture of the two of you when I come back to fit the actual dress?” she said.

We hugged when she showed me the material she’d selected. It was perfect: sheer, green, bold, in a tropical pattern that mimicked the actual dress. Then I showed her the wig I’d bought, which was made of human hair and had cost me $50. “We mustn’t mention costs to my husband,” I said.

“My lips are sealed,” she said.

Then I told her about the Three Headed Dog Man.

“We’ll kick his ass,” she said.

I gave her cash and we arranged to meet for a final fitting in two weeks’ time.

In the meantime, I got a call from one of my mother-in-laws, who said she was going to be coming to New York for a visit. I absolutely love visits from my mother-in-laws (I happened to be blessed with not one but two dynamite mother-in-laws, who liked me despite the fact that I never cooked for their son/step-son, never wrote or called, never produced any grandchildren, and talked non-stop about my dog). But this visit was scheduled for the weekend of Halloween. I faced a true conflict. My manners, upbringing, and sense of general decency suggested that I should scrap the Halloween contest and act like a proper hostess. My mother-in-law was a sharp, sophisticated woman who, when she visits the city, likes to spend her time good restaurants and sample sales. But I’d already invested all that money into Rex’s dress, and I couldn’t get the smug face of the Three-Headed-Dog man out of my head. “Do you think I could talk you into going with me to a doggie Halloween contest?” I asked her on the telephone. “It might be fun.”

“Sure,” she said. “We can do anything you want.”

Her graciousness did not put me entirely at ease, however. I worried that I was

taking a risk with my reputation with that half of the family. In fact, years later, when Ted and I got divorced, I wondered if that particular weekend continued to come up in conversation, when the family sat around the dinner table discussing “signs.” As in, “we always knew that marriage wouldn’t work out; why, think of the time she forced her dog to enter a Halloween contest….”

Anyway, the big day of the contest arrived and I was nervous. My mother-in-law, had arranged to meet me at Tompkins Square Park so that she could do some shopping beforehand, and Ted had decided not to come at all. “I have to work,” he said, which I noticed was something he had to do whenever I had Rex in costume.

He had to work on St Patrick’s Day, when Rex wore a headband with sparkly shamrock antennae. He had to work on Easter (bunny ears) and the Fourth of July (flag hat). He was a hard worker, Ted, and that morning he apologized to Rex for not being able to spend the day with him. “Someone had to pay for all your food,” he said. “And your clothing.

I was busy combing Rex’s wig out. Then I combed my own hair.

When Rex and I got to the park, the sky was overcast and the day was humid—an uncommon phenomenon for October. I was wearing a turquoise vinyl jacket to match Rex’s costume, and the vinyl made me sweat. This for some reason made me cranky, and it was a mood I couldn’t shake. The whole vibe of the contest was off that year. Maybe it was the humidity, maybe it was me, but the dog run seemed less festive; less crowded. “There’s another doggie parade this year over in Chelsea,” someone told me. “All the drag queens are over at that one, I’m sure.” I felt a bit dejected by this—once again something better was happening someplace else, where I was not. And the best place to be is always Where the Drag Queens Are.

But then I got a good look at some of the costumes and felt better again. There was a Corgi transformed into a Hoover. There were two baby cocker spaniels dressed as a bride and groom. Then the Three-Headed Dog man entered the dog run and Butterscotch was dressed up as—get this—Dogzilla. I could hear Ted say, “How unoriginal,” and I couldn’t help but smile. Sure, it was a spectacular costume—he had created a twelve-foot, elaborately airbrushed Styrofoam tail, with spiky fins, savage scales, and moveable parts. But please. Even Aunt Mabel in Idaho could have come up with Dogzilla.

Two years had passed since The Happy Camper had faced the Three-Headed Dog. And Rex was a completely different dog by this point. He was happier, and better adjusted, and the dog run no longer meant “defend thyself” to him; it meant Play. So the minute I took his leash off inside the dog run, he took off after a Border Collie and the two of them ran like mad. “Rex!” I shouted. “Your dress! You’re ruining your dress!” I told him to come but he wouldn’t listen to me. It took fifteen minutes to finally cornered Rex and put him back on his leash. “Now stay still,” I said to him. “Sit!” His wig had been thoroughly dragged across the ground and was now tangled with woodchips and leaves. I told Rex he was the worst dog in the world.

My mother-in-law showed up just as the registration was about to begin. She waved to me from beyond the fence. Only dogs and their guardians were allowed in the run. I blew her a kiss and smiled. Rex’s wig kept slipping off, and every time he moved his dress would shift sideways, and he’d step on the hem with his back paws. “Stay still!” I snapped at him. “When I tell you to sit, you sit!” There was irritation in my voice, and I looked around to see if anyone had heard. Butterscotch and his guardian sat placidly in line, both confident that they would win the contest. Meanwhile, the Border Collie kept running up to us and biting at Rex’s wig. “Go away!” I said to her, and to Rex: “Stay still! When I tell you to sit, you sit!” But poor Rex wanted to play with the Border Collie. He wanted to stalk squirrels. But I was convinced the whole “effect” of his dress would be ruined if he even lifted his leg to pee. So every time he tried to get up from his sit, I’d apply pressure on his shoulders and push him back down.

Years ago, I’d worked at a children’s fashion magazine and one of my jobs was to assist the art director on photo shoots. Once a month, stage mothers would arrive with their stiffly coiffed sons and daughters. I remember my shock the first time I saw a toddler girl wearing makeup and four-inch heels. Her hair had been curled a la Shirley Temple, and she was unhappy that day—perhaps because of the shoes. But her mother was even unhappier. She kept insisting to me that Kelly normally didn’t act so ornery, that Kelly knew how to be a good girl. “She’s just being very bad today,” the mother kept saying loudly and bitterly “Very bad.”

Now the line of dog-contestants moved, and Rex stood up without permission and stepped on the hem of his dress. “Sit!” I snapped at him.

Then, suddenly, I saw myself: angry, snappy, perfectionist, dissatisfied.

I had become a stage mother. I had put my own needs before my child’s. When the beginning of the contest line-up was announced, I couldn’t even look at my mother-in-law. I thought she might see the shame on my face and I didn’t want to see it on her face too.

The crowd roared with laughter when Rex was introduced as Dogatella Versace, and they cheered madly when, later, he won first prize. Last year first prize had been a six-month supply of California Natural and a CD player; this year it was a $40 gift certificate to a new pet store. When we went up to the stage to take the prize, the judge hung a “Best in Show” medal around Rex’s neck. It was brass with a red white and blue ribbon that made him look like an Olympian. As the crowd clapped and cheered, a newspaper reporter snapped our photograph, but I refused to tell him my name. I, who for years had told myself I had sought the spotlight, was suddenly ashamed.

As soon as the contest was over I took the medal off Rex’s neck. Then I took off the dress, and the wig. “You were such a good boy today,” I told him, and then I knelt down and apologized for the beastly way I had behaved. “I’ll never put you through that again,” I told him. “I won’t even make you wear a birthday hat if you don’t want to.”

And so far, my promise has been good.

The medal still hangs on Rex’s bulletin board, which hangs above his “feeding station.” I’d like to think he notices this medal every time the bowl of ground turkey and boiled potatoes is set down before him, and that he somehow feels wistful, or proud, but mostly he just gobbles his food rapidly. Grateful, perhaps, that he isn’t being forced to wear a wig.

The (Dog) Boys of Summer

My dog Chloe has been in a serious relationship for two years now. Her boyfriend is a handsome English Setter named Rainbow, and they are very well-matched. Both weigh about sixty pounds, and both are not-very-birdie bird dogs. Both love play tug and keepaway; both love to swim in our nearby creek and hunt for fish (Chloe actually sticking her snout into the water and trying to catch them; Rainbow barking at the fish from a safe place on the shore.) In terms of hierarchy, Chloe is definitely the boss, which suits them both fine. Chloe always passes through doorways first, always wins the rope during games of tug-of-war, and will always try to steal Rainbow’s food. And because he will so willingly let her steal his food, we tried to feed them separately, for Rainbow is always on the verge of being too thin and Chloe is always on the verge of being too fat.

“Chubs,” is what Rainbow’s guardian, Greg, calls Chloe behind my back. I know this because Greg’s seven-year old son, Clayton, tells me everything. We are neighbors in idyllic Woodstock, New York.

But anyway, it makes me happy to see Chloe and Rainbow together. It makes me happy to witness dog love: the joyous, raucous way they greet one another; the impish, playful ways in which they bite each other’s ankles; and, at the end of the day, the adorable way they nap together, sometimes facing each other with their legs entwined, other times spooning like an old married couple. Always, their bodies are touching, and I love to see the content, tired look on Chloe’s face when she sleeps with her head draped across Rainbow’s neck. That look speaks of companionship, and ownership, and true love. It always makes me want two dogs, but that second dog would have to be Rainbow, and he’s not on the market. So, as with most relationships from which we want more, we take what we can get. I call Rainbow my half-dog.

This summer, however, Chloe and I went on an extended book tour, which meant that for seven weeks we had to leave Rainbow behind. That’s seven weeks without anyone biting your ankles, or pinning you to the ground so that he can bite your neck, or trying to take away your saliva-soaked stuffed bunny rabbit, or cuddling with you on a big stinky dog bed. By “you” I mean Chloe of course. Every night, before we went to sleep, I promised Chloe that soon we’d see Rainbow again–September 15^th to be exact. She always smiled at me and thumped her tail.

Then, in August, I heard the news: “Rainbow has a new girlfriend,” my friend Greg told me. Greg, of course, is Chloe’s godfather.

“Who is she?” I said, in the same exact voice I used, oh, twenty years ago when my shit-ass boyfriend, who was also the Love of My Life, told me he was in love with someone else.

“Her name is _____,” Greg said. “She lives next door.”

“What kind of dog is she?” I said, again in that voice. If I had had long red fingernails, i would have been clicking them menacingly on the counter.

“A black lab.”

My heart stopped. You see, Chloe hates black labs. I can’t explain this hatred; it seemed to come out of nowhere twelve months prior. One day Chloe was a friendly, open, I’ll-play-with-anyone kind of dog; the next day I had to pull her off a female black lab who had had the audacity to come say hello to Chloe at the dog park. Since then, any time we see a black lab, Chloe makes a strange rumbling noise—not quite a growl, more like the revving of an engine—and strains determinedly on her leash. It’s the sound of hatred, I guess, of exacting some sort of revenge. But for what? I thought dogs were color-blind…..Maybe Chloe, all this time, had been psychic. She knew the love of her life was going to cheat on her with a female black lab.

“Rainbow really loves her,” Greg was saying on the phone. “They play all day long. She’s a really fast dog.”

Chloe, being on the verge of being fat, was not as fast a runner as Rainbow. But that was part of her charm.

“But what about Chloe?” I said to Greg in a whiny voice.

“Chloe’s in Massachusetts. So are you. He has to play with someone.”

So basically it was out of sight, out of mind. Spoken like a true man.

After Greg and I got off the phone, I sat down on the floor next to Chloe. I smoothed out the sun-bleached fur on her ear flaps, I stroked her heart-shaped little brown nose, I told her she was a pretty, pretty girl. I can’t explain how heartbroken I was at even the thought Rainbow loved another dog more than he loved Chloe. That Chloe had been replaced. Just like that. We turn our backs for ten minutes and look what happens! I actually started to cry.

And maybe I was reading too much into this. Now is probably the time to admit that I myself do not have a boyfriend. I am not the love of anyone’s life. No one nips at my neck or my earlobes. So of course it would give me pleasure that at least my dog was getting love! Someone in this equation has to get the guy! I mean, in order to believe in love you have to see it, every day, in action. That’s why so many women read romance novels and see sappy movies. You have to keep that hope alive. Otherwise you become the pathetic single woman who lives alone in Woodstock and apparently lives vicariously through her dog! Geesh!

I did not tell Chloe about Rainbow and his black lab mistress. I simply told her another truth: that we would see Rainbow on September 15^th.

Meanwhile, there we were on Cape Cod. Which is not a bad place to be Without Love. We spent our mornings at the shore of a tiny freshwater pond in Brewster, watching the mist rise off the water in the post-dawn light, and revealing the lily pads underneath. Chloe swam around hunting for fish while I meditated and read Harry Potter. In the afternoons we went to the beach, where Chloe hunted for more fish—a smorgasbord at low tide—and I just watched the horizon, never growing tired at how vast and mysterious and promising the world could seem, if you just kept your eyes there rather than on your computer screen. By “you” I mean me. I never leave this computer. Which is probably why I have no love.

But Chloe! She found love.

It happened at the Brewster Book Store, in Brewster Massachusetts. I had gone in to sign some copies of my paperback, and to introduce Chloe to the store owner (Nancy, a real dog lover who has rescued several dogs herself).Nancy had set up a wonderful display of dog-themed books on a small antique table, and had placed, at the table’s base, a large stuffed animal—a black and white husky, with one of those benign Husky smiles on its face. He (I assumed it was a he) was about the size of a Springer spaniel, which is perhaps why Chloe fell so hopelessly in love with him.

You should have seen it! First she stood in front of him and touched her nose to his. (This is what she does to me when she wants my attention—she pokes me with her snout.) Then she went down into a play bow, with her tail swishing madly. Then, because the Husky still had not responded, she barked at him—just a playful, flirtatious little yip. Still, the Husky remained mute, stiff, and guarded. By this time I had 1) decided that the dog’s name was Skipper, because he looked like a Skipper (all he needed was a red and blue nautical print bandana and he’d be all set): 2) decided that maybe Chloe wasn’t as smart as I’d always made her out to be.

Chloe poked Skipper with her snout again, and then threw herself at his feet, rolling onto her back and displaying her pink spotted belly. Nothing. She shimmed a little and barked and flailed her legs in the air dramatically. Nothing. Still Skipper remained impassive. Then she finally nipped him on the ankles—a sweet, playful gesture that always worked with Rainbow.

Meanwhile, Nancy and I watched, along with a number of very amused customers. We laughed. We made comments about “men.” How aloof they can be, how non-responsive, how no female can resist the strong and silent type.

I’ve always loved to witness cross-species friendships: the tiny kitten that snuggles with a Pit Bull, the horse who nuzzles a pig, that famous Ridgeback in South Africa who foster-mothered a baby lion. This says to me that love knows no boundaries; that love is simply Love. So even though—standing there watching my dog Chloe flirt with an inanimate object—I worried that she was less intelligent than her other Border Collie brethren, I also told myself that didn’t matter. Who ever said love had anything to do with intelligence anyway?

Finally, fed up with all that ankle-biting, Skipper finally toppled on top of Chloe and then just lay there, on his side. Chloe in response sprung onto all fours–in that remarkably quick ways dogs have—and proceeded to bite Skipper on the throat – another one of her favorite moves with Rainbow. But Skipper just lay there. “I used to date a man just like that,” one of the store customers said. And we nearly died laughing.

About a year ago, I developed a disturbing and all-consuming celebrity crush. I’m really not the celebrity type—I don’t watch TV or read magazines or even see all that many movies. And I certainly have never followed celebrity gossip. But in this case, I happened to meet the man in person, locked eyes with him (eyes as blue as the sea!) and experienced, well, a form of zap that stayed in my system for months. I won’t bore you with the web-trolling, image down-loading, fan-site drooling details….but I will share with you the conversation I had with one of my friends, a lesbian who’d had a similar obsession with Stevie Nicks. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I remember her telling me. “This crush has awakened something in you. Since your divorce you’ve been kind of shut down toward men. You should be thankful that this person has brought back in you your capacity to love.”

“And lust,” I said.

“Oh yes, that too.”

Anyway, seeing Chloe flirt happily and unabashedly with her fake-dog boyfriend made me think fondly of that long-gone celebrity, and of all the happy times we had together (in my head). It made me realize that it can just be so much fun to love someone. It doesn’t matter if he/she does not love you back.

And what does this have to do with Rainbow? Nothing really. This is a blog, not an essay.

When we got back to Woodstock, the first thing Chloe and I did was visit Rainbow. Their reunion was riotous. Leaping, chasing, biting, throwing themselves at one another. Rainbow brought Chloe one of his latest toys—a little rubber Giuliani—and Chloe immediately stole it from him and then flaunted her triumph, tossing the toy in the air, and refusing to let Rainbow have it. They chased each other around the pool, across the tennis court, in and around a grove of pine trees that bordered the land. They took turns tearing mock-savagely at one another’s scruffs; they bit each others’ rumps and ankles. They played until they were exhausted, and too weak to stand up anymore. And even then, lying together on the rug at the hearth, they played, mouthing each other silently, and clacking teeth.

As I watched them, I found myself filling with happiness again. And relief. It was clear that Chloe was still Rainbow’s favorite girlfriend. She had not been replaced. At least not at this instant. Plus, the thing about Dog Love is, there’s always plenty to go around.

I never told Greg or Rainbow about the stuffed dog. Primarily because they would have made fun of me, and I didn’t want anyone to think of my dog as unintelligent. Plus, I figured what rainbow didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Chloe’s brief affair was like any summer fling….fleeting, insignificant, all style no substance. Rainbow was both Chloe’s Mr. Right and her Mr. Right Now.

===========================================================

Lee Harrington’s best-selling memoir REX AND THE CITY: A WOMAN, A MAN, AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL DOG, came out in paperback this year (Villard 2007). Her award-winning series “Rex and the City” has been appearing in The Bark magazine since 2000.

Below is an essay I wrote in the winter of 2002, when I was still numb from all the 911 horror. You can tell by the prose alone just how numb I was. I was so numb I didn’t realize I was numb, know what I mean? Another thing I didn’t realize at the time of this essay was that, deep down, I had decided to leave my husband. There’s an apathy in this essay that is VERY clear to me now, as I reread it. But back then, than January, it was hard to have clarity about anything.

“The events of September 11th” had that effect on a lot of people. A lot of couples I know–those that were on the fence about their relationship–either got married right away, or split up for good. Suddenly there were no longer any gray areas in relationships. You either wanted to be with this person for the rest of your life, or you didn’t. In my case, I realized that I had been waiting for many many years for “things to get better” with my husband.

I spent the weeks after the towers fell watching them fall, again and again and again, on the television set (and in my dreams). I spent those weeks alone, because my husband, a television news producer, made the decision to spend his time at his job rather than with me. And that is fine. People make choices; people have priorities. But I felt surrounded by metaphors.

I tried to get this essay published in the usual places (New York Times, Salon, some travel magazines) but everyone passed. Perhaps rightly. But the beauty of blogs is you can now self-publish even your worst shit. And there’s no guaranteeing anyone will read it. But at least this essay will no longer belong to me, once I press that “publish post” button. SO here goes. ANd bon voyage. And blessings, love, and light to all those who were affected by the events of September 11th. Which is so say, every last one of us.

=========================================================

All Rise

In the first few months following the attacks of September 11^th, I was unwilling and unable to leave New York City. Like a child who has lost one parent, I found myself clinging needily to the surviving one, and in this metaphoric case, that other parent was Rudolph Giuliani. I wept with him at countless televised funeral services, I marveled at his composure and elocution at every press briefing he held. Thanksgiving passed (along with an opportunity to visit my husband’s relatives in New Mexico) and then Christmas (along with an opportunity to visit my sister’s country house in New Hampshire) and still I could barely get off the sofa because I didn’t want to miss anything this man did or said. He had become my symbol of hope and strength, my higher power, and I probably would have licked the sidewalks in the fish market section of Chinatown if he had asked me. So when he started urging us New Yorkers to get on with life and spend money; when he started appearing on those tear-jerking, I Love New York, airline and tourism industry commercials encouraging us to fly, I felt I no longer had a valid excuse to sit glued to NY1 and the Times‘ “A Nation Challenged” section. I had to obey Giuliani, so at the end of December my husband I booked a last-minute flight to Acapulco, where some friends of ours had rented a bungalow for the week.

Normally when I travel, I make it a point not to pack t-shirts, or Nike Air Max running shoes, or anything that will peg me as a tasteless, fashionless, logo-obsessed American tourist, but this trip was different. The entire world had changed, and I was a refugee from a proud, fallen city, so into my suitcase went a Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt, an NYPD T-shirt, a baby blue, baby tee emblazoned with our famous area code: “212.” As I packed I was reminded, of my summers during college, when I waitressed on Cape Cod and how my fellow waitresses recoiled every time we saw a car with the Empire State license plate pulling into our restaurant’s parking lot. “Oh no!” we would say, truly aghast. “New Yorkers.” That meant rudeness, obstinacy, and a huge sense of entitlement was heading straight for my table! And then I remembered how I used to recoil at the sight—or the mere mention—of Giuliani. How I loathed that man. And now, as I zipped up my suitcase, I found myself getting teary-eyed.

“What’s wrong?” my husband said when he came into the room.

“We’re going to miss Giuliani at the ball-drop,” I said with a quivering frown. “We’re going to miss the ringing of the bells at six.”

“In all the years we’ve lived here you’ve never once wanted to go to Times Square on New Years Eve.”

“I know,” I said, holding back more tears. “But it’s his last public appearance as the mayor and I’m not going to get to see it.”

“It’s twenty-five degrees out there.”

“I know.”

“We’re going to have a great time on this trip. We’re going to have sunshine and water–”

“I know, but—”

“We’re going to have a great time. And we haven’t left the city since August. It will be good for us to get away.”

“You’re right,” I said. “We’ve been needing a vacation for a long time.” I pulled an

I © NY ski cap tightly over my head.

And soon, we found ourselves having been transported to Acapulco; indeed, to another world: one of aquamarine water and sand the texture of talcum powder, one of freshly caught fish and creamy piña coladas and non-traumatized friends. As the four of us sat, fresh off the airplane, at a beach-front café, enjoying our drinks and the naked, foreign feeling of tank tops and shorts, I realized that here was a place I could actually not think about the WTC. I felt hopeful.

Winter, in our part of the world at least, makes you close in on yourself, seek refuge inside small apartments and sterile office buildings, and encase yourself constantly in a giant tortoise shell of North Face down. Here in Mexico, though, we opened up again like blossoming flowers. Sunlight warmed our skin, a breeze tossed the palm fronds of the thatched roof above and rum, glorious rum, ebbed and flowed through our veins like the tide a few yards away from us, rum that loosed our muscles and unclenched our city jaws.

“Isn’t this heavenly?” I said to our friends. They are a fun-loving, easy going couple who live in California and travel like pros. They agreed, and we leaned back in our chairs, and gazed at the bluer-than-blue sky, and into our vision came to rainbow colors of a parachute, attached to a parasailer, gliding noiselessly above the bay. The sight horrified me. He looked–this parasailer–like a person falling from the sky. He had–this man suspended in the air–the same rag-doll, caught-in-a-moment look as the jumpers caught in photographs those first few days after the attacks. Immediately, without thinking, I pointed out the similarities between the parasailer and the WTC jumpers, and immediately I realized I had made a socially awkward mistake. My friends blinked and were left momentarily speechless–and what do you say to a comment like that? It’s an association that 9 out of 10 people wouldn’t make unless one is exceptionally morbid. Or downright sick. Or a New Yorker.

In the ensuing silence I turned my gaze away from the parasailer. I looked instead at the hundreds of brown heads bobbing in the water. At the rows of high rise hotels lining the Acapulco Bay. Each high-rise was painted a beautiful bold color—like chili pepper red or guacamole green, and each had mirrored windows that reflected the sky. Balconies lined each side of each building, and I saw that there were people on many of these balconies, leaning against their railings, admiring the view. And then I saw that photograph from the Times of all those people hanging from the windows above the burning floors and then I got teary eyed again, and I hastily put on a pair of sunglasses so that no one could tell.

I was not in or near the World Trade Center Towers on September 11. In fact, I am so afraid of heights I have not been inside either tower since 1987—the one and only time I could be coaxed onto the observation deck. So what is it that holds me there now? What holds me inside top floors of the North Tower, with the 700 doomed Cantor Fitzgerald employees, at the windows, in that moment of indecision between burning alive or jumping to the most frightening of deaths? I don’t know. And I guess I will never know because anyone who does know what it was like has disappeared.

That evening—the eve of New Year’s—the four of us dined at Las Brisas, a five-star restaurant on the edge of Acapulco Bay. We had to drive through seven gates manned by armed guards to get there and thus were giddy with expectation and irony by the time we reached the restaurant, and a team of valets swarmed around us to tend to our car. We were led to a beautifully laid table that was positioned between a sea wall and a tidal pool. The pink uniforms of the waitstaff matched the pink tablecloths and the giant bouquets of fragrant pink flowers. They brought us pink lemonade margaritas that matched the pink, sun-setting sky. A few margaritas later, we were greeted by a moon so huge and white moon it looked like something from a children’s book. “It must be because we’re so close to the Equator,” my husband explained. But I preferred to think we were in the presence of something magical, a sort of NeverNever land untouched by the rest of the world.

The hours passed pleasantly, as we were brought course after course of delicious food and the waiters would never let our wine glasses get below half-full. All that wine, and the food, and the soft air and the huge benevolent moon, seemed to lift us a finger’s breath above the table, so that we were suspended in that place of gastronomical happiness—a realm in which there was no World Trade Center, no trace of disharmony with my husband, and no ill in the world at all.

We remained there all evening until the countdown at midnight, when there was a cacophony of fireworks and noisemakers and the band played Auld Lang Syne. We all got out of our seats to hug and kiss and dance, and at the stroke of midnight, they released an enormous batch of silver balloons. They were just balloons, yes, but in that hour, in that place, they seemed otherworldly. They seemed to move in tandem and the way their metallic surfaces caught the moonlight as they rose and turned reminded me of a giant school of fish. Suddenly I was teary eyed again. “What’s the matter?” my husband whispered. He had his arms around me and I had my back to him and we both watched the balloons in the sky.

“Those balloons must be for the World Trade Center,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t think so, honey,” my husband said. “They’re just balloons. I think they do this every year.”

“But there are thousands of them,” I said. “There must be three thousand one hundred and sixteen. For all the missing. Don’t you think?”

My husband must have sensed my desperation, because he kissed the top of my head and said, “I think you’re right. I think there are three thousand balloons.”

And so, stubbornly and drunkenly, while the rest of the crowd danced, we watched the balloons rising, and prayed three thousand times for the three thousand souls. I wondered, as one always does, where balloons end up. Do they pop? Do they disintegrate? Or would some child in New Zealand find them, washed up like anemones on the shore? We watched them soar past that impossible moon.

Six days later, when we returned to New York, I found a slightly different city. Giuliani was gone, the daily “Portraits of Grief” had been discontinued, and the sports section of the Times was no longer upside down. They had opened up a viewing platform right at Ground Zero and I decided to go there with a balloon. I thought it would be uplifting to see it soar above that charred spot. The wait took hours and my Mylar balloon (which said, I’m ashamed to say, said Happy Birthday on it,) lost quite a bit of its zest in the process. By the time I released it at the platform’s railing, it barely took flight. It merely hung in the air in front of me for a few moments and then sunk rather dramatically to the ground. People around me were crestfallen—we all needed this little symbolic lift. “Was it someone’s birthday?” a woman finally asked. Everyone was listening. I shook my head and said “not really.” I didn’t know how to explain. But in those days, people no longer needed explanations, because suddenly the whole world made no sense. We were all just looking at that balloon on the ground, bereft. Maybe death wasn’t like soaring at all, I told myself. Maybe death was just–death.

Then one of the rescue workers came over and picked the balloon up. You could tell he’d seen three weeks of horror but behind it all, there in his eyes, was pure kindness. “Whose birthday is it?” he said to all of us, in a fatherly way. A little girl said, “Mine” so he gave her the balloon. The applause was thundering. It soared.

The Girl Who Heard The Boy Who Heard Music

There’s not much to be said, in terms of social life, to living in Upstate New York, where stores close at five and restaurants stop serving at nine and the bars call last call at –Good God!—midnight, but this is a New York City girl talking. I spent my formative years in New York City, so I suppose any town that doesn’t offer me 24-hour martinis and drag queens is, quite simply, dull.

But life has its way of delivering nice surprises. Just when you’re about ready to pack it in, and give up your 9-acre farmhouse in Woodstock for a 300 square foot apartment on the Lower East Side (which will take eleven additional years off your life and cost five times as much); just when you are about to have a nervous breakdown because you find out Pete Townshend—your most favorite, most admired artist—played a small gig at Joe’s Pub, and you weren’t there because you were too busy yawning in Woodstock, and spending countless hours on the internet reading about other peoples’ exciting lives; just when you are about to question why the hell you left New York City in the first place, a friend calls you up and tells you Pete Townshend’s new rock opera, the Boy Who Heard Music, is going to be workshopped just across the river in Poughkeepsie New York.

“Are you serious?” I said. And then: “Why?”

Poughkeepsie is not the sort of place you’d expect International Debuts of anything. Poughkeepsie is one of those places no one wants to live, but they have to because they either go to or teach at Vassar. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a beautiful city; a river town, a faded Grande Dame of the Hudson. But it has suffered, dear readers, from years of neglect. Just the sort of place for great Art and Theater wouldn’t you say? Abso-f-ing-lutely.

I looked online and found a few sites selling tickets for $300. This led to a half-hour’s worth of depression and self pity at the thought of not being able to go, but then I had one second of intelligence and called Vassar direct. Tickets via the theater itself were only $25. Won’t get fooled again.

And now, a brief tangent:

In my teens, twenties and thirties I was a rabid Who fan and considered Pete Townshend some sort of soul brother (I still do). The vibration he put out in his music and the vibration I felt as a teen (and wasn’t even aware of ) perfectly matched and that, my dear, is how a fan is born. You connect, you clink, a chink is made in a long, lovely, electric chain, and you find yourself entwined to a person you never met. Forever. These things cannot be undone, although they can certainly be forgotten. By the conscious mind.

In my late thirties, I was told by my then-husband that i had to “grow up” and for some reason I thought that meant having to give up my love for rock and roll. I told myself I had “grown out” of Pete and Robert and Jimmy and Jim and that I should be doing something more sophisticated with my time, (like working at a job I hated, writing stories that nobody read, and arguing with a husband I didn’t really like). Anyway, that is another story, which you can read about in my second memoir which will come out in 2009.

My whole point is to explain why I had never heard of The Boy Who Heard Music until this summer, when it landed in my lap. You see, apparently my soul brother Pete had been writing TBWHM as a novella, and he had published this novella online, and he has hundreds of fans with whom he corresponded online regarding the revisions of the novella. So while I was busy trying to dig my way out of an avalanche of a marriage, Pete’s fans—folks like me—were busy offering input on story lines, plot developments, characters and scenes. They were like talking to Pete! God bless them!

(This is what I do for a living, by the way. I edit writers’ manuscripts. Adult literary fiction mostly. And anything written by my favorite rock stars. So Robert Plant, if you’re looking for an editor, I’m yours.) End of tangent.

Now you know why I am one of the few people who saw TBWHM “blind,” meaning I have not yet had the pleasure of reading the novella on which the play is based.

Pan to the Powerhouse Theater: an alarmingly clean, civilized, user-friendly theater nestled on a college campus so picture-perfect you bemoan the fact that you did not attend college there. I got to Vassar two hours early, expecting paparazzi and mobs, and a parking lot full of middle-aged men blaring Quadrophenia from their car stereos and stoking up hot dogs on their tail-gate grills. Instead, I found a sleepy college campus—sleeping in that lazy summer way: cicadas softly buzzing, willow trees swaying in a light breeze, the grass freshly cut and green, despite a drought, because Vassar has big bucks and can afford to keep the sprinklers sprinkling. I couldn’t find the theater straightaway, but that was fine, because my dog was with me and she needed to pee, so we strolled along the wide paths, she trolling among the old oak trees and clipped hedges, me looking for another Pete fan who could steer me toward the Powerhouse.

But it was the dog who ultimately led me to the theater. She caught a scent trail and bee-lined it toward an impressive looking building: clearly modern, but modern in a tasteful way that did not violate the august codes of the Ivy League, which say a college must have old stone buildings and a colonial scale and a limestone library flanked by lions or statues of dead white men or some such thing….

The dog was bee-lining straight toward the building that housed the theater. She was seemingly on a mission. English Setters are always on a mission of course, but mine seemed to have caught a very special scent trail. Pete’s perhaps? Was she determined to go sniff out Pete and get his autograph. “He’s not here,” I told her, sadly. “But that guy from ‘Sex and the City’ is.”

She howled when I told her it was show time and I had to put her back in the car.

And now, on with the show.

The Boy Who Heard Music was described in the program as a “hallucinatory tale about the rise and fall of a band made up of three teenagers from different ethnic backgrounds as seen through the eyes of an aging rock star.” I knew that the aging rock star was Ray High (I’m not that out of the loop) and I knew Ray High pretty well from Psychoderelict. What stuck in my mind most about that concept album was the little S&M scene between Ruth and Rastus Knight (which to me is one of the best names a fictional character has every received. I want to ask Pete some day if I can steal that and name one of my own characters Rastus). Anyway, as I sat waiting for the show to begin, I wondered just how much of Ray, and/or Psychoderelict, would be in this play. I wondered if there would be any underage sex and or whipping scenes. But the program did not allude to this whatsoever.

I sat in the front row between two Little Old Ladies—both of them seasoned theatergoers who had subscribed to the Powerhouse Theater for many years. We chatted before the show and I asked them, with a straight, kind face, if they knew anything about the show, or the playwright, because I could tell they didn’t. They spoke of a “Peter Townshend” who lived in New York, and was a “musician of some sort.” They certainly did not know of The Who, or of the windmill arm swinging or of the guitar smashing, of Psychoderelict or the original conception of Ray High. They didn’t know about Rastus and his taste for whips. I am not saying they were at a loss for not knowing this, or that I am a superior human being because I can recite and sing all of anything Pete has ever written word-by-word. I just worried a little that they might be, well, surprised, at Mr. Peter Townshend’s interpretation of the term “musical theater.” There would be no men in top hats and canes in this piece, I didn’t think. I couldn’t wait!

And sure enough, when the first bass note hit after a lovely piano prelude, and the drums smashed, and the band’s keyboardist, drummer, bassist, and two guitarists ripped into “Pick up Peace,” the little old lady at my right literally jumped in her seat. We happened to be sitting right in front of a triple stack of speakers, and I was psyched to discover that I could feel each bass note in my heart—kind of a pounding in my chest, like those machines they use to jolt a heart-attack victim back to life. What are they called? I’m no medic. Just a big-ass Who fan who felt the bass bringing me back to life.

But my neighbor had her ears blocked. I smiled at her, nodded at the stage and gave her kind of a “check it out” look. She smiled back and unplugged her ears. I told her I’d hold her hand if she’d like, and she laughed, and I told myself to remember this moment if I ever got to that age when I decided rock and roll was just “too loud.”

The first act consisted of thirteen songs, and begins with Ray High delivering a short monologue about, um, I’m not really sure. He exists in the future, and—as the lovely, lovely director Ethan Silverman pointed out before the curtain was drawn—is living in an insane asylum in London. The casting of Ray was perfect. Because I was in the front row I had the pleasure of studying John Hickok’s face, and the nuanced facial expressions and body language he maintained throughout the performance, even when he was just a spectator to the “main” story.

But I have to confess here that, from the get-go, the plot of this play, and its myriad story lines, were almost totally lost on me. This, I gather, is because I did not read the novella and came into this totally blind. I really tried to follow the story, and latch onto at least some of the plot points, but most of it was over my head. I will take full blame for this, of course. I don’t consider myself a great intellect, and Pete clearly is. But as a writer and an editor, it is programmed in me to always try to find a very clear story in a theatrical piece, and its forward motion. So again, take me with a grain of salt. I actually started to take notes, writing down the areas where I felt confused, making notes of the dialogue that was effective, and the dialogue that was less so, thinking all the while that my input would somehow help the director and the author, until finally, my nice Little Old Lady neighbor asked me what on earth I was doing. “Are you a journalist?” she asked. “Well yes,” I told her, but not officially. I’m just here to see the show.” Her eyes flickered down to my notepad and she smiled, and I caught her meaning and put the pad away.

So let’s get back to the music. There I was worrying about the LOLs and how they would react to the volume, but as the show progressed and I surveyed the crowd behind me, I saw that all the Little Old Ladies in the audience were rocking out. Feet tapping, chins nodding, bodies swaying to the rhythm. And smiles everywhere. Some of them looked almost beatific, as if they were being carried to a far-off time, when they were young, and wore bobby socks and poodle skirts, and liked to turn the car radio as far up as it would go and dance on the hood.

This is a real tribute to Pete, of course, and the band. I made notes about the music too—which songs I loved the most, which ones sounded the most “Pete,” which ones fell more into the category of musical theater—but alas, I have misplaced those notes. Because I did actually pack it all up and move back to New York City after all. And now I want to go back to Woodstock, but that is another story.

The audience seemed to respond most to the “Townsend moments”: “Fragments” with its echoes of both Quadrophenia and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” ; “We Got A Hit,” with its classic Townshend guitar solo; and the kick-ass “Sound Round.” One must keep in mind that most of the audience was wearing old Who concert T-shirts from the 70s and 80s. I’d say the audience once one-eighth little old ladies and 7/8 Who fans, with a Vassar College student or two skulking around at the back.) I too seemed to respond most to those Townsend moments, and found that my body moved of its own accord. Perhaps it’s because hearing those riffs awakens something ancient in me, and reminds me of my teenage years, and brings to the surface those teenage feelings of hope and daring and euphoria and rebellion.

But I also recognized, in Pete’s opera, moments of pure musical theater—which as we know is its own unique genre with its own rules—which made me realize Pete really is branching into new territory with this piece. To hear both elements of rock and “musical theater” in a single song, or (in Act II) in a sequence was delightful. Truly progressive artists will bridge gaps. Kind of like me and my little old lady friend, who’s name, I learned, was (bless her) Gertie. Anyway, the most “Broadway-ish” songs (and the ones that seemed to get the most positive response from the LOLs), were “He Said She Said” (narrated by a couple trying to understand one another); and the lovely, light, and romantic “Tea and Theater.” Just the line “Will you have some tea/after theater with me” is one of the most romantic things I have heard