"Dreams are My Reality...the only kind of reality..."

I am back there. It is the only acronym that causes me pain with just three curvy letters... I am back there, and nothing has changed, not even the secretary whose appetite for gossip parallels her appetite for unhealthy foods. Her body has given up all hope on decently representing what might be a soul. Underneath all the bitter gossip and fascination with the death of celebrities lies a lonely fifty-year-old. Her short curls are sheeplike in texture and mousy in color. Her behind is so flat one can bounce tennis balls off of it. Her body is untouched by a man, at least for the last 20 years; do not ask me how I know, I just do. There is a certain fluidity to a body that is caressed, loved or even merely desired. She seems burdened by her own presense too, at least she is terrified to be alone with her thoughts, and is constantly occupying herself with other people's business. Hence the formidable result: she will bad-mouth you the second you walk out the door (she desperately wants to be the center of attention) and yet, when you are there, she will offer you help even if you do not ask.
As it has imprinted on my subconscious, she is ever-present, good and evil, wanted and not wanted. Hello Kiddo, she would say for the first couples of months, sometimes I almost convince myself that she liked me. It is only after the winter break that there was no more "kiddo"...
In my dream she watches me audition for a man, a day with whom I have spend a long time ago. All that exists as a proof of that day is a photograph, but a photograph I have only heard of and have never seen. I know that what is frozen, what is immortalized on that photo is the moment he is about to kiss me. I must have been very young when the photo was taken, because he keeps on telling me that I was very young. The protagonist of my dream is in his late fifties. He is not particularly attractive, but he is warm and all his attention is on me. There are only four people auditioning for him, making his intense concentration on me, anything but surprising. I am pretty interesting, aren't I?
I do not know what we are auditioning for. Perhaps for a read at a conference, since in my dream I am back in graduate school. But he asks me to play the guitar, and I do not play the guitar, I only play with men, play with their minds and their level of attachment to me. It is now, just me and him, as though the camera shifts, and I, a slumbering voyerist, am observing a different mis-en-scene. The wonderful, exquisitely luxurious element of dreams is that you are both the audience and the lead.
His face is close to mine, but contrary to my day self, I am not concerned that he is not at all attractive; he is undeniably charming and intelligent, and I do not care about that either. He says that I was nineteen when we were together last and shows me that aforementioned photograph. My bangs are cut too short and my face is in the shadow of his face...on the photo he is barely touching my upper lip with his. He is the same age as he is now infront of me.
He seems baffled and embarrased to have been so intimate with a teenager. 'What an old fool I was,' he exclaims. I do not answer. I am mesmerized with myself on the photo. Was I really ever that young? I am looking straight at the camera when a dizzyingly talented man lowers his face to mine and succumbs, or rather allows himself to momentarily descend (no, plummet!) to my airheaded-unconcerned-self-absorbed-gawky-insecure-waste-time-23-hours-out-of-24-self. I, however, was looking for a camera to play with, to bond with...I was waiting for the lightning of a flash when all I had with him was that moment. And now there is a photograph. And his aging. And I no longer young, but just as self-absorbed, still looking for a camera to bond with, while those I love look at me, barely touching my upper lip.

Yellow Photograph (Memory Waltz) -- this is one of my older stories..

"Every man's memory is his private literature."
Aldous Huxley

Her lip was bleeding. Her short brown hair, neither unkempt nor neatly flat, made it easy to mistake her for a boy, and back then, she always ran with the boys during recess; except sometimes when she didn’t. That day she stayed by the classroom and played ‘war’ with two other girls.
I do not remember when I realized that I am not pretty. There must have been a specific moment, a definite divide, between the time when I felt that I was and the time I realized that I wasn’t. Or was it an instance between a lack of opinion on the subject and the stinging realization, a simple moment that separates nothing from something?
Anyway, her lip was bleeding, and it bothered me; it seemed unnecessary and disturbing. In a snotty, pedagogical tone; so uncharacteristic of my perpetually in trouble, borderline C student self; I told them not to play so rough. The three of them, immersed in their military pretend, strived for realism, but her efforts seemed to be especially dedicated, for she repeatedly bit her lip in order to crack it open and bleed in a real, awe inspiring way. One of the other girls was dragging her to her prisoner’s dungeon, an old bench standing in the middle of the school corridor, to be tied up. The bleeding sadomasochist was now a prisoner of war. I interfered, as I often did in my pre-teen years (who am I kidding?! When did I stop interfering) and she told me in plain 9 year old vernacular to stay the heck away from her business.
It is not quite appropriate to use the term ‘vernacular’ to refer to the discourse of third graders in a specialized English school in the middle of cultural capital of the Former Soviet Union. Most of my classmates were from intelligent (hate word choice!!) Russian families who valued education and hence signed their children up to attend a school with daily English classes, dance lessons and a reputation to die for.
It is often said that we never really know anyone’s journey, which makes speculating about anyone’s feeling (other than one’s own) utterly pointless, but it seemed to me that N. thought that she was perfect. Looking at the slightly yellowing school photograph makes me wonder where this enviable conviction (but far from enviable appearance) came from. (The mere fact that the photograph is becoming yellow (the picture’s equivalent of old age and sage) makes me stare at it in disbelief. I am a decade older than that snapshot of our class. Are the signs of my aging just as obvious? My 'nostalgia for a year in California' self-tanner gives me a yellowish glow too, but which one of my corners will start to rip soon?) N and I were on a subway, we could only find one seat; I took it and she piled her book bag and gym bag on top of my lap and got out her famous Questionnaire.
For a mere second, I will let this moment be; I will freeze it along with the exhausted passengers, the downward glances, the grey palette of Soviet attire of mid eighties, (stop, before you falsely associate gray will melancholy, or God-forbid, tranquility). As I sit, squeezed into the tiny space N. noticed when we were carried in (yes, we did not walk into the train, the force of anything but controlled crowd of tired adults on their way from work carried us into the subway train) between a large lady with netlike bags of potatoes and a elderly gentleman who seemed very irritated by his new found company of two loud 11 year olds, chatting away…
My school was gloriously..., I apologize it is still standing in the middle of St. Petersburg, but it could have been anywhere. The school building was old and beautiful; built in 1805, it was the oldest academic institution in the city; though for some reason in my memory the glorious Roman columns of the central stairway go hand in hand with the constant renovation project underway. I do not think we ever did use the main entrance, at least not in the 7 years that I was there.
The portraits of Pushkin (though it were Pushkin’s sons that attended the school century or two ago, long after their father succumbed to his own pride and a bullet) and other famous Russians were staring back at us from the walls of the second floor and most classrooms, but I do not remember most of their faces. I hardly remember the faces of my teachers, even of the one's I loved. Yet, Every single one of my classmates is before me, as though twenty years has been reduced to a month, a week, a day...
It is hard for kids to imagine what it is to go through ten years of school with the same class of about forty people. But looking back this relationship with a forced on family of forty, seemingly miniscule part of the billions of people that live in the world: defines your core, your conscience, your loves and intolerances for the rest of your life. (Please forgive the unintended pomposity.,
All I can do is measure the world through my own prism, my own almond shaped windows, three or so inches below the hairline. Almost everything I feel, hear, think and smell, reminds me, hurts me, warms me, but in one way or another, it surely carries me back to those seven years in my Soviet school with Roman columns. )
But back to that moment, when an older man is bothered by the constant chatter and N. gets out her thick red notebook. These were drastically different from their long and lean American stationery sisters; much smaller, with a rugged cover and sheets of graph paper. Soviet stationery does seem more practical, for one can write equally well on graph paper as well as lined paper, but writing formulas in math and science is much easier on the former. But that is of course beside the point. N.'s questionnaire was that ninety page square red notebook that most girls in the class dedicated specifically to a series of questions ranging from the more obvious “What is your name?” “Who is your favorite singer?” to “Who do you like in our class?!” “Who do you dislike”! The notebook was to be passed around the class for everyone to put down their set of answers, upon receipt the the proud owner would comment on the margins. Something along the lines of "I can't believe you like this band. I would have never guessed."
With N.s questionnaire open on my lap, I felt nervous, in a way, that should not be familiar to normal 10 or 12 year olds. I felt that I couldn’t swallow, as though a sharp object lodged itself somewhere in my chest and refused to relent, to let me breath in. Why did I care if my name was in there? What would it change? With a sincere, comforting look on her face N. announced, “Lets see who else wrote about you?””Who else?” What do you mean who else?” I was caught off guard.
Didn’t you know that last week S. wrote that she hates all the boys in the class and you? - N. Seems surprised that this reassuring news hasn't reached me yet.
I squeeze tighter into the space between the gentleman who is getting more annoyed by the second “In my time, children knew how to behave in public. Don't your parents teach you anything? You need a good whipping!” he mumbles. Parents? What is he talking about?! Does he understand that my life, my essence, my ability to wake up in the morning, dress and walk into my class has been compromised forever? "What is your problem?" N. yells trying to be louder than the subway train. The man is panting with anger. N. is oblivious to our unwilling audience. Don't you want to know what is written about you?
We are getting closer to her stop. No she doesn’t live there. She simply has to switch trains. I want her to go, but at the same time, I want to know what else is in that wretched notebooks of hers. Her questionnaire is almost full, she was the most popular girl in the class. “Lets see:” she repeats, trying to reach the metal bar above her head so not to completely fall onto me, the gentleman that is ready to explode and the lady with her potatoes. Her notebooks is still on top of the pile of our bags, she is leaning against it, the angry gentleman is still mumbling that this ride would be a lot of tolerant if we were to shut up. "Lets see..." N leafs through the pages, reads two or more names from her stationery social barometer, but it doesn’t seem to matter or hurt as much. She chatters away about a girl that all the boys put in their "attracted to" column; how she doesn't get it what they see in her? But even back then, I knew that she was simply jealous. She is just a girl, and until this questionnaire it seemed certain it was her that everyone liked.She has long and well manicured nails covered with bright red nail polish, I hide my ink stained hands with short, uneven fingernails and think how amusing it is that my last name starts with the same, rather rare, letter of the Russian alphabet, as that of a girl that all the boys like.Its just a few different letters of a last name…and it could be me?!
The voice of the recorded announcement reminds N. that she has to make her way through the crowd, taking away my irreversible social verdict and her incredibly heavy school bag. An avid reader and a perfect student, she seemed to carry her knowledge on her back and public transportation, an hour and a half one way, to and from school. She hurried towards the exit, the old man signed with relief. Finally, some peace and quiet!
I knew that I was not pretty long before that day on a subway. Once, when N. and my other friends were looking at my kindergarten picture one of them blurted, “Wow! That’s not bad. I guess you were actually cute back then.”Once again, I am looking at the yellowing photograph of my Russian class of 1994, though it was a while before the nineties came. It was 1987. N. is amazing unattractive, she looks mousy, but her strength and intelligence shines through the crowd of forty kids and the distance from the lens and two decades of fluid time. The girl that all the boys liked, is beautiful and serene. I have a goofy smile on my face, it is ironic that I am one of the few kids that is smiling. I guess back then I was still oblivious to my lowest rank in the class.
The girl with the bleeding lip has a gorgeous Italian name. The ultra feminine moniker did not suit her ultimate tomboyishness. But back in third grade when she was dragged away by her captors towards the bench-prison, I did not realize why she was so incredibly angry at my unwarranted interference. She didn’t bite her lip to be a realistic prisoner of war, she bit it to fit in. She bled her way into acceptance, and I got in the way.

Apres moi le deluge?

All of the rooms were on the third floor, but the kitchen and the bathroom were on the fourth. As I ran into the kitchen I saw one of my neighbors -Tanya- a rigid, masculine woman in her mid thirties, already missing a couple of teeth, holding on to her daughter with one of her massive hands while gripping tight hold of another neighbor, six year old Dimka, with the other. In what seemed as a surprisingly calm tone, she was instructing her daughter to bite her playmate: "bite him, Natasha, bite him while I can grab hold of him." Natasha obliged. He screamed in pain and I became frozen inside the high pitched sound…
I must have not thought that he was little, for I was his age; all I remember was the redness of their faces and the air of determination. The mother and daughter were indomitable in their conviction that Dimka must be taught a lesson He was screaming and kicking and trying to free himself, but all was in vain. I ran downstairs as fast as I could; the stairs were old, wooden and steep; shaking from a nauseating mix of confusion, fear and empathy, I literally flew down and away, away from “This is what you get for…” discipline of biting and forced constraint and unfathomable, useless high-pitched defense. The flight back to the row of doors each leading into the rooms of one of seven families living in our communal apartment ended at the second door down the hall – my nanny’s room.

"Can't you walk in like normal people?" she asked, “All my dishes are shaking.” She was attempting to sound strict; however I knew that I was now safe from the disturbing events of the kitchen. The screaming was still audible, but I was already quite preoccupied with trying to get up on a chair to reach a jar full of candy that for some reason were called "theatrical." It was hard candy, wrapped in dark green paper, and there was absolutely nothing special about it, except the fact that my parents never had any candy and my nanny always did.
***
I just knew that they did something wrong. Nobody told me what it was, but the suspense was enough. I must have been not more than six, Dimka must have been the same age too, (about a year after the gruesome biting incident we ended up in the same first grade class); Natasha was a few years older. My parents did not let me play with them, but I do not remember them telling me that I could not. I just knew that spending time with the two of them was not something good girls did.
I do not remember where I came from that day, or what I was doing after I ran into my nanny’s room, as every other distant memory this one simply appears out of nowhere and fades without a clear connection to anything that came before or after. But I can easily see Natasha, as though I just saw her come in to borrow some sugar, as she used to. She was big boned as was her mom, with thick dirty blond hair that Russian girls often have, but hers seemed different than most...It seemed dirtier, heavier, and straighter. My thin red curls were probably just as dirty, but the sheer mass of her hair lingers in my memory along with the desire to braid it. And one time I almost got that chance. I remember the buildup of excitement at the thought that I was going to play with that river of hair all by myself. As always, I was in my nanny’s room and when Natasha happened to walk in, instead of completely ignoring me as older girls tend to do with much younger ones, she suggested we play mom and daughter. I happily obliged provided she accommodates one simple request – letting her daughter braid her new found mother’s hair. She agreed, but asked me to feed her – “Mama is very hungry!” – from the tube of special liquid candy that I was holding in my hand that I became completely oblivious in anticipation of being able to brush and braid her hair. What I now know to be the green artificial goo that comes in little tubes is something I would never let my own son put inside his system, was back in the day and place of my childhood highly coveted desert. One could slowly squeeze out of a tube onto a finger or directly in the mouth, either way it was suppose to last for what seemed as a lifetime. As a cynical adult I am well aware of Natasha’s practical motivations. Having been send by her mother on an errand to my nanny’s room (Salt? Sugar? Yesterday’s newspaper?) Natasha saw me with a tube of candy and immediately had her own agenda to rival mine of getting to touch and braid her hair. The latter was never realized, in a loud-hurried swish reminiscent of the popping sound of the last balloon you try so hard to save, the door into my nanny’s room was flung open. My mother and that expression I knew very well. Time to go! In fact, I was not supposed to be there in the first place. I was supposed to be reading in our room waiting for my mother’s return.

As for Natasha, from time to time her mother would chop off most of her hair with what seemed as a kitchen knife, but that is of course my adult cynicism. In that world nobody could afford to cut their childrens hair at SnipIts and there was no SnipIts, the only reminder of the distant America was a poem that most children knew about an aggressive capitalist from United States who owned a bunch of ships and factories but was miserly and lonely. The poet did not care to elaborate whether or not the protagonist was lonely because he did not grow up with twenty five people in one apartment with one kitchen and one bathroom.
***
Natasha was biting Dimka - the son of an alcoholic father and a gentle hard-working mother who had night shifts at the local factory…Everyone predicted that Dimka will end up growing up into a thug ever since he was three years old. During the months Dimka’s dad was out of prison for some drunken fight or a random misdemeanor charge, he would keep busy by drinking, beating his wife and singing on the infamous staircase that lead to the bathroom and the kitchen…the same one where Dimka was being bitten by those he wronged. Before your imagination sketches a pitiful portrait, let me stop you: imagining Dimka’s dad as an abusive husband and a drunk would not serve him justice (justice! HA!) , in fact, his artistic self was certainly dedicated to his marriage, at least while he was on the staircase, for he would only sing one song: an old Russian catchy pop from the seventies – the chorus line began with the very profound statement that a wedding ring was far from a simple piece of jewelry.Getting lost in the memories that are becoming more and more blurry I try to regain my control over them. One second it feels as though I can almost touch them, but just like the possibility of playing with Natasha’s hair it fades into non reality.

The fact that during Soviet times, a lot of Russians lived with a multiple number of unrelated families in one apartment (a room per family) is no longer surprising to anyone, but it does not cease to amaze me how people didn't murder one another, the gruesome killings provoked by the neverceasing wife-beating and drunken singing. I think if fate would put six or seven modern-day American families into a seven bedroom apartment with one stove and one bathroom, nobody would come out alive... It is definite that no one would sing. But here we were families, sharing one stove and one bathroom, with no shower or bathtub..

I ran into my nanny’s room to hide from something my six years old mind could not comprehend, something that I was hoping to leave behind me as I shut the door behind myself and faced my warm, protective caretaker. But every time I see little kids fight in the school yard or a neighborhood playground I realize that regardless of the fact that one had to go to another floor to wash one’s face or boil an egg, I had a happy childhood. If only I knew what Dimka thought.

Banana Esquire

I have gotten into a habit of saying that I do not like women. When I first began to drop that line, it was out of an uncomplicated desire to give the impression of being unruffled and unapproachable; the two uns uniting to make me unique – oh-so-different from the proverbial girly-girl chatterbox and shopaholic. Yet, just as the next girl I love to discuss clothes, ‘who-said-what-and-when-and-why’ and in general I talk crap and wish that I would just shut up and stop being one of them…. The only way to fall out of the loop of realization that I was the most ordinary woman and attempting to flee that newfound insight was to quietly despise all the members of my sex.

I still remember the first time that I saw her. B.B. and I were sitting at one of the ‘Russian’ tables in our high school cafeteria and Banana (then a complete stranger) was listening to a girl whose utter awkwardness alone seemed to guarantee her a spot at Harvard (after all, there had to be a consolation prize for being such an unforgivable dork). Banana did not seem to be bothered by the raconteur’s ill at ease mannerisms; her clothes, frizzy hair that could not conceal the painfully uncomfortable owner from the merciless ogling by her high school classmates. What’s more, Banana seemed more and more engrossed in the girl’s monologue. An unintended witness to Banana’s powerfully committed attention span I became mesmerized by her. At fourteen, few of us wonder why certain people appeal to us as much as they do; we merely introduce ourselves if the situation allows and proceed to either form a bond or realize that the bitch told your other friends that there is something dreadfully wrong with you…

“What are you staring at?” B.B. screamed in a futile attempt to be booming over the lunch hour cacophony of the international section of the cafeteria at Brookline High School. I realized that my loyal friend B.B. has been telling me something of absolute importance, something that I might never find out…”I am sorry,” I give in and plead guilty, “I’ve been ignoring you, because this girl across from us seems familiar!”
“Banana!” – B.B. yells out and Banana runs up to introduce herself, apparently B.B and her went to the same middle school….

Banana was an athletic 14-year-old, with perfect abs and flexibility to match that of an Olympic gymnast. Once we borrowed a video camera from our high school library and under the pretense of doing a school project, locked ourselves in a study room and video taped each other. She was doing a shoulder stand, legs spread wide, blue pants billowing and creaking. “How long have you sat on a stretch before?” asked L. who decided to join our afternoon of goofing off. She was one of the Russian girls who were under the impression that Banana only spoke English, even though she was perfectly bilingual. “Excuse me?” Banana replied. She was upside down but I could see that she was snickering and that the snicker was directed at L’s English grammar and pronunciation. She still gets this look in her eyes when she judges people, but I think she has learned not to snicker. I still have that video tape somewhere, I am afraid to watch it…

It was that day that Banana told me about him for the first time. She was almost home but we kept on turning around and walked back and forth along Harvard Street. Banana promised to show me his pictures. Once, a few month later, she brought an old plastic bag filled with her childhood photographs; most of them were of a bundled up toddler pressing her cheek against the face of a bony young man; tiny Banana and her proud Pap hugging on top of an icy slide. Her mom remarried when she was in kindergarten and before she could blink she had a baby sister and a new dad. She was not allowed to see her biological father (as she referred to him) even before they left her hometown, but after they did he faded from her reality…

I do not like women. I prefer my male friends. I prefer their vulgar comments and one-track mind to the deceivingly lighthearted gossip and hysterical judgment that is so characteristic of women (not excluding myself).
The days of scouting Harvard Street are long gone, a solid number of the stores have gone out of business and many families since have occupied the apartment from which I once heard her cry… Banana signs Esquire after her name, and that heavy word makes the rest of her name disappear. I try to lift the word up and find the girl that has long ago hypnotized me with her empathy, colossal strength and unflinching integrity….ever since that day when she so intently listened to someone that no one else saw.

Boiled Eggs or How Not to be a Chicken

This morning, over yahoo chat, my good friend V. asked me how to boil an egg. Brave survivor of last week's stomach flu and a stranger to bland foods, my thirty-two-year-old pal has conquered the making of white rice; yet it seems that eggs remain a complete mystery! As I pondered my answer; how many minutes does one boil an egg before it cracks? How to check whether or not the egg is ready? ...Vaquely remembered something about spinning it...yet, how does one spin a boiling hot egg?; thoughts unrelated to the gracefully twirling, hopefully uncracked egg began to flutter in my restless yet utterly useless, as of late, brain.

V. lives alone and seems perfectly happy with it, except the time when he needs to boil an egg. I do not live alone. I live with my husband and my son. The former is well aware of how to boil an egg which leaves me, a slothful mother of one, without an immediate need of updating that knowledge. The latter still needs to be convinced that the stove is far from the most exciting place in the three thousand square foot house.

But back to V. and his egg. Besides discussing the aftermath of gastrointestinal problems, we managed to touch upon the subject of marriage...The subject, as it always does, came up suddenly..."Did hell freeze over!?" inquired V.? Since I do not have any windows next to my desk at work, and I did not think that V's inquiry warrantied my burging into my co-worker Andrea's office (given that out of utter boredom I already picked at least fifteen random conversations with her and have clearly reached my limit of random and her limit of tolerance) I could not make sure what was going on in Hell. I could, however, tell you what was going on with R. College where I work. Nothing much. As usual.
Since it was not established that Hell has been covered by ice, it was safe to conclude that V.'s interest in marriage did not change since last time i asked - a day or two ago. Why this opposition to marriage?! Well, in his own words, he does not know himself yet and if he does not know himself how can he share his life with someone? I think that at a rather intimidating six feet and five inches my friend V is one giant chicken! Marriage is not for the weakest of hearts (and neither is the honeymoon. :) Though knowing V., the one part of marriage he would not mind would be the initial getaway. Undoubtebly, (God be gentle with the poor girl's heart!) on the way back, he would demand separate apartments, aka his own space.
I do not dare tell V. that were he not such a big chicken, he would have someone to make him a boiled egg and make sure he eats it. He would have someone to take his temperature and yell at him for not taking care of himself (other than his parents over the phone!) And I definitely keep quiet about the possibility of someone bringing him this egg to bed (particularly if it has not been very long since the honeymoon)... I keep quiet and my thoughts perform their quotidian narcissitic dance and twirl back to myself and A. and thoughts of days long gone; lazy sunday mornings when breakfast was the last thing on our minds...We would stay in bed for what seemed as endless days and talk of baby names, traveling, moving to Europe and then we would not talk for a while..and talk again...I remember that sunlight would stealthly leak into the room and betray our denial that there was in fact a world outside and that not everyone was in bed on weekend mornings/afternoons (something I very well know these days!). If I were to share this memory with him right now, he would tell me that I have an overly active imagination (even if i had a quarter of a penny everytime I heard that, I would not need to live in my mother's house in a wealthy suburn of Boston...) But one does not long for what one has imagined....human mind longs for things that have passed and could have still been if life did not get in the way.