Imagine

So there I was last night, sitting on my couch and watching Law & Order, as I am wont to do on weeknights when I am actually at home, when the phone rang. 503 area code. Oregon. It could only be one person.

It was my dearly cherished, long-lost friend Jim, red of hair, blue of eyes, kind of heart. And also, sadly enough, a foot soldier in the sugar wars.

Jim and I met on the very first day of freshman year at the University of Delaware. How I ended up there still remains a mystery. Sure, they gave me a crapload of scholarship money, but in at least 87 different ways, it was the wrong school for me. That being said, I definitely didn't want to go to the tiny upstate Catholic college that my parents had in mind. At 18, I just wanted to get the hell out of New York. I didn't want to deal with the snow, mean state troopers patrolling the Quickway, or seeing people that I knew from high school.

What I didn't know at the time was that there were no bagels, no art-house films, no good hair stylists, and no one I was close with to be found in the state of Delaware. So when I met Jim, at a sunny September afternoon reading group for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (one's of UD's required summer reading titles), I was happy just to have made a friend.

And we were great friends, inseparable for that first semester. He was, inevitably, the person who got me fascinated with the Old Testament, since we would stay up till all hours debating religion, talking about books (poetry in general, Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions in particular), classes, music, family expectations - all the strange and lovely things you think about when you're 18. When you don't have any idea that soon enough, you won't have time to think about them anymore.

In some way, perhaps because he wasn't one of the 87,000 students who already knew each other through Delaware's incestuous high school system, or maybe because we both loved the Beatles, poetry, G-d and hiking through the nearby state park, my time with him made up for almost all of the things I was missing about New York.

When my dad had a heart attack that December, Jim was the person who took the eight hour bus ride up to NYC and back with me, and then went with me on Metro North up to New Rochelle so we could visit my dad in the ICU. I remember that when we walked into the room, my dad was sitting up, with that irrepressible grin, green eyes sparkling. He pointed to the clock on the wall. "Do you believe this crap?" he asked us. "Not even a TV set. All I've got is this goddamn clock. If I had my gun, I'd shoot it."

All righty then. Hi, Dad, this is my friend Jim (who probably now thinks that the next bullet is for him).

After we broke up second semester (I went home over winter session to break up with the person I was dating; he didn't) we drifted apart somewhat, especially after his exceedingly immature and hostile high school sweetheart arrived at Delware in our sophomore year. But somewhow, we managed to stay friends throughout college and for years afterwards, years that brought us his wedding to that very same exceedingly immature and hostile high school sweetheart, my Masters degree and the pathetic first draft of The Bookseller's Sonnets, his divorce from his high school sweetheart, my getting pushed down a flight of South Philly stairs by a drunk ex-boyfriend.

When he finally left town in the wake of that painful divorce and moved to Alaska, I visited for a couple of weeks, some of which we spent hiking the Kenai Peninsula. Those weeks were among the happiest and weirdest and most awkward of my life. We didn't know where we were going, what we wanted to do with our lives, how to get ourselves out of the long-distance mess we had gotten ourselves into. Finally, homesickness got me in the end and even as much as I adored him, and as much as I cried on that eleven-hour Northwest flight back to JFK, I couldn't wait to get home to my real life - my friends, my family - back in New York.

Collectively, our parents thought we were a perfect match. I bought him a watch for Christmas. My dad helped me pick it out. "We're here for the watch now," he told the family jeweler. "Next year, I think we'll be back for the ring.

But in the end, we never picked out that ring. It wasn't anything specific, like religion (which it could have been) or the distance (which it also could have been). Time passed; being apart brought with it too many tears, too much drama. And by the time we had both made three trips back and forth across the country, we realized we just didn't love each other in quite the right way that you need to make a life together. It just wasn't destiny. It wasn't basherte. It wasn't meant to be.

Time has changed us both; last night we talked about sugar, carbs, the glycemic index. Then I got to hear all about life in Oregon with his wife and his two beautiful little girls - his is a good life, a blessed life. And listening to his advice, hearing us both laughing again, made me feel just as safe and cared for and befriended as I felt all those years ago, walking into the ICU to see my dad, afraid of what the outcome would be. I didn't feel old enough to lose a father then. I still don't feel old enough now.

After I hung up the phone, I was hit with a sudden memory, unbidden, of the two of us sitting together in the dark of the movie theater on Main Street in Newark, watching the documentary Imagine. The phone rang again - my friend Ellen, from California, checking in - and I picked up the remote to surf with the sound off. And there it was, nearly twenty years later, on VH1 Classic - John and Yoko, hand in hand, walking towards the warm orange light of a New York City sunset.

As I stared at the screen I realized it: we are both now almost as old as John Lennon was when he died.

So it goes.

A Public Service Announcement from St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower

"I have reached the point where I can suffer no more, because all suffering is sweet to me." -- Saint Therese de Lisieux, a.k.a. The Little Flower

Yeah, sorry, St. Therese: I'm not there yet.

For any of you who may currently be, or may someday be taking shots of methotrexate to control an auto-immune disease, here's some advice: your ass, really, is the best location.

Yesterday I had my weekly shot, and just not wanting to deal with the perpetual indignity of dropping trou every damn week, I asked my rheumatologist if I could get it in the arm.

Big mistake.

When I started methotrexate, I knew it was a tough drug to deal with, but my RA has become increasingly severe, and the other drugs (steroids, plaquenil, etc) weren't making an impact. So I decided to look upon methotrexate as a band of roaming, angry nuns who were going to restore respect and order to my g-dless immune system. Get those white blood cells under control. Show those damn rheumatic fevers who's boss. Whip out the paddle, yardstick, or two-pound metal ruler (favorite teaching tools of the nuns of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception) and go all Barefoot Carmelites of Prague on this disease.

But it didn't really work that way. First of all, I was taking pills. Six of them broken up into two pills three times a day - once a week. Everyone said to make sure I took them before the weekend so that I wouldn't be in bad shape once Saturday arrived. Unfortunately, there were still Thurday and Friday to think about. Methotrexate taught me many things: for instance, how many words one could make out of the phrase SPARE ROLL PUSH engraved on the toilet paper dispener in our restroom. (So far PURPLE and LEPROUS are my faves).

It also taught me a different way of observing Shabbat by being too sick to move from one's couch on Friday night, and falling asleep in front of What Not to Wear; or alternatively listening to Stacy and Clinton berate some poor unsuspecting woman for her fashion choices, as I hung out at an undisclosed location on the floor of my bathroom. I would, of course, much rather have been at services. Prostrating oneself before the porcelain god - not exactly the same as standing before the Ark, if you know what I mean.

So in desperation, I switched to shots. Went to the pharmacy to get hooked up with syringes and vials (and found out that syringes apparently are not an everyday request in Larchmont), but my health insurance wouldn't pay for me to self-inject in the privacy of my own home. So every week I get the grand and glorious opportunity, at $50 a pop, to moon my doctor and get injected with 6ccs of this horrific solution that looks like piss and smells like formaldehyde. I stand there, temporarily pants-free, feel that damn needle go in and think to myself that this just can't be good for me in the long-term.

My family, in their usual helpful way, thinks this whole RA thing is all a crock. At best, I think they see it punishment for my failure to adhere to their standards of beauty. That I got this disease by my own fault, by being overweight. And I shouldn't complain about it, because if only I were thin, I wouldn't even need the damn drug. And that when I lose the weight, the RA will pack up and go away. Not only will being thin solve that problem, I'll also get married! And then perhaps I'll even shoot rainbows and butterflies out my ass.

But this week was different. I got the shot in my arm yesterday, and lo and behold, I am sick as hell today, the way I was when I took the pills. So far, I've managed to eat an apple. And drink some water. And a couple of sips of diet Coke. What I really want is a ginger ale and maybe some rice, but I'm scared of the sugar and carbs. Maybe I can't win for losing, but then again, as far as the diabetic thing is concerned, I do agree with my family: I did this to myself.

So, Little Flower, suffering may be sweet to you, but it surely can't be as sweet as kvetching is to my people. I don't exactly see your point of view, because my illnesses - and maybe even yours, too - are anything but sweet - and I mean that in the Splenda sense of the word. But you're a saint, and heaven knows, I'm not. So perhaps it all worked out for you; then again, since you died at 24, you missed out on a lot of potential sweetness in life. I may be a kvetch, but I'm planning on avoiding dying young, no matter how sweet it is.

The Corner Table

Today this blog is being brought to you by the good people at the Scarsdale Borders Books and Music, located on White Plains Road in the Vernon Hills Shopping Center.

Technically I am working from home, but since the cable is out, and I have no phone line, I came on over here for the WiFi and the coffee.

This Borders holds a special place in my heart, as this is the place I spent a significant amount of time back in the spring of '05. Saying that being here saved my life might be a bit of an overstatement, but perhaps it isn't. That year, on March 1st, was the day I decided to end a relationship that I thought was going to be my saving grace - it was supposed to change my life, get me out of a New York that was haunted by the ghosts of smoke and ash and low-flying planes. He was supposed to be my rescuer, my knight, my sweet prince. But in real life he was sad and struggling, and the sadder he became and the more he struggled, the more he seemed to feel that it was my fault; that my success was somehow to blame for his failures.

And so it ended. I knew it was for the best, especially when friends and family members, one by one, came forward to spew the simmering invective about the Former Loved One; seeing how much angst and anger and anxiety they had held back taught me a lot about the lengths that friends will go to in order to keep from hurting your feelings.

But the transitional period didn't end with a breakup. Nope. Ten days later my father was gone, in a strange flash of blood to the brain, like the final bright blink of a lightbulb. One last light, one luminous blinding eyeful - then nothing.

After shivah I went back to work. A week later, I was told that while I had been out, the foundation realized that it didn't really need a communications director anymore. They handed me a three month severance package and wished me good luck.

It was that point at which I wondered what exactly the point was in waking up the next morning.

But there was a point; a light; a reason: the one thing my father had never let me forget was that I was a writer. That like him, I loved nothing more than a good story. When he was a homicide detective, it was as if he loved justice most, but in close second was his desire to put the right end to a story that a murder or a rape or an injustice had begun. I had been hit with three acts of injustice, right in a row - it was as if he was telling me that I needed to find the right ending.

And that was how I found the corner table - the one here, at Borders, where I arrived every morning between nine and ten, ordered my toasted bagel and a large Coke (oh, G-d how I miss Coke), and sat down at my borrowed laptop to write. In the space of ten weeks, I completed the first draft of The Bookseller's Sonnets, my beloved little book about murder and justice, rape and identity, history and eyewitness: with my story I tried to put to right all of the things that had happened to me. It wasn't justice, certainly, but it was something.

I sat at the table every day and gazed out the window at the little garden terrace. There were days that friends came over and bought me coffee and rice krispies treats; I loved that they knew where to find me. There were days I sat alone and wrote chapter after chapter, days that I sat and wondered if I would ever find another job, if I would ever find love again, and I wrote nothing at all. Some days I just sat and cried about my dad. Other days I was able to recreate the scene of his death in the hospital for one of my characters in a way that I could never do now because it is too sacred and scary to think about.

Three years later and the corner table is gone. It's been replaced by a couple of leather chairs, a small table to hold lattes and magazines. But that little corner is still sacred to me. It is still the birthplace of hope, of creativity, of my healing. It is the place that helped me create the perfect ending, and at the same time, a new beginning.