Iris Has Free Time (2 page)

Donald, the boy I had loved all through college. Donald—my Beatrice!—about whom I’d written so many of my free-verse poems. Donald, whom I still always hoped I’d run into somewhere—he’d see me first, across the room; I’d be drinking a martini and chatting with a handsome man in my thrall....

By the time the back of my wrist hit the table, I was all but convinced that I was arm-wrestling the then love-of-my-life Donald and that those were his all-seeing eyes staring out at me from behind the mask. And what disturbed me most about this revelation was that I couldn’t decide for whom the situation was more humiliating. I cringed thinking Donald had just witnessed my interview, but then, if he had, he’d done so covered in red and blue lycra. Of course, he at least had a job, which was more than I could say. Though it wasn’t quite the job in publishing he’d bragged about last I saw him.

He let go of my hand and offered a theatrical salute.

I looked up, smiled, and staggered away.

It was all so confusing. Only five months earlier, I was being congratulated—“It is my great pleasure to present the Class of 2000!” I’d stood up to a round of applause.

I floated among the crowd of applicants, their conversations merging into a boisterous hum. I looked around, visited a few more booths, and filled the free laminated folder I got from
Scholastic
with pencil erasers and tiny Kit Kats. Heavy with “gifts,” I decided to head home.

Where do ideas come from? The ancient Greeks believed inspiration to be divine, that one of nine muses whispered into the ear of the artist, who was not himself a genius but a conduit. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end,” Homer begins
The Odyssey
.

I was almost home when I realized I didn’t want to be. My roommate May and her boyfriend Felix would be there—they were always there—and I wanted to be alone. So when I saw the subway entrance on Fifty-third and Seventh, I decided to head downtown.

I got out at West Fourth and walked toward NYU but veered south when I came upon Washington Square. I’d spent so much time in the park during college; to go there now would mean a retreat. I continued around it, past NYU’s administrative buildings, where I imagined committees busily deciding whom to admit next year, whom to give my freshly vacant spot.

I walked down into Soho, past bars I’d frequented as a freshman, past plain, unmarked doors, which at midnight opened onto chic nightclubs, past phone booths decorated with ads for the upcoming season of
Sex and the City
—a glamorous photo of Carrie Bradshaw in a black T-shirt covered with rhinestones spelling her name.

I headed east toward Broadway and then down again, bobbing along the rushing river of shoppers, past windows behind which mannequins stood silently, posed in body-hugging T-shirts—“Hottie,” “Fabulous,” “Sexy,” written across the bust.

I turned east again wandering deeper into the Lower East Side, looking in at the displays of small designer boutiques along the way. A $150 T-shirt with the words, “Gold Digger,” hung in one window. Another, “Page Six Six Six.” Another, “Thank You Thank You Thank You,” written three times vertically the way it appears on plastic shopping bags.

I walked on, past a walled-up construction site plastered with ads for new albums, new movies, new stores, and past a newsstand where I paused, recognizing the faces of Justin, Shawn, and Richie staring out from the cover of
New York Magazine
.

I went in. A bell rang as I entered. A middle-aged Pakistani, with three long hairs combed across the top of his head, looked up. He followed me with his eyes as I walked the length of the store, which was covered floor to ceiling with new issues of popular glossies. Giving up, I returned to the front and asked about the magazine in the window.

He hopped down from his perch behind the register and, cutting in front, beckoned me to follow. Scanning the wall quickly, he handed me a different issue.

“No. The one in the window,” I repeated.

“Is old. This one you want,” he said, pressing it into my hand.

“No,” I said, handing it back. “That one. I know the guys on the cover!”

He sighed and went outside to have a look, then came back in and knelt down to untape it from the display.

“Two dollar,” he said, as he handed it to me.

The three had been profiled for “Models Suck,” the logo decorating their popular line of T-shirts. I hadn’t known about their fashion venture. I flipped back to the cover to see the date. August 24, 1998, a year before I met them in Atlantic City with Lex.

“This is not a library,” the clerk announced.

I paid for the magazine and left.

I walked a few more blocks—aimless, adrift—when, looking into another window, I was startled by my own image reflected back. The late-afternoon light had cast a mirror-like glare, so I could not see in but only myself trying to. There I was, the whole of me, paused in a Depression-era suit—a woman lost in time.

What do you know about PowerPoint? About Excel spreadsheets? About answering the phone? I interviewed my reflection. And what do you care? I went on, as a song in my head started up, grew louder, and was backed by a beat to which I could dance. The song my muse was singing was clear:

Forget corporate America, Iris! Selling T-shirts! That’s your game! Why worry over all the things you don’t know, when there are obviously so many more important things that you do? That a T-shirt with the words, “Second Base” would be capital! That underwear featuring the words, “Bad Ass” could go with it! And the great thing about T-shirts is you don’t even need to know how to sew! The really great thing is you don’t need to know anything! All you need is one good idea.... Staring into the window, at a T-shirt just visible behind my own reflection, I discovered I had many.

T-shirts were just the beginning. Justin, Shawn, and Richie wanted to do music, film, to build a hip-hop empire! “It’s all about who you know,” they had told the reporter in the
New York Magazine
article, which I read half of later that night, after I finally arrived home.

May and Felix were there when I walked in. Felix was on the couch, using my copy of
This Side of Paradise
to roll a joint, while May was at the stereo, turning up the volume and yelling over it. I sat down on the other end of the sofa and took out my magazine, but after a few pages, I gave in to the sway of them. Accepting the joint from Felix, I stuck the magazine, most of it unread, under the cushion of our collapsing couch. I took a long drag.
Who you know, who you know
. . . How I knew Justin, Shawn, and Richie, as Rudyard Kipling might say, is another story....

I confess I haven’t actually read any Rudyard Kipling, but I did read this book of Edwardian erotica by Anonymous, which featured a narrator—a perverted “uncle”—who invited two curious schoolgirls he’d met onboard a transatlantic steamer to a French brothel where he was a regular, who used this phrase to great effect. But what has Rudyard Kipling or the prolific Anonymous to do with me? Absolutely nothing! Which is why I’m going to tell
my
story, with all its twists and turns, right now.

Some say New York in summer is a wonderful town and cite the many free activities available all season. Film festivals in Bryant Park! Opera on the Great Lawn!

“There’s also a truck in the East Village that gives free food to the homeless every Sunday. Maybe we should go there for brunch,” Lex said over the hum of the air conditioner.

“What about Tuesday? They’re showing
La Traviata
in Central Park,” I said, looking up from
The Voice
.

“If I want to see the opera, I’ll buy a ticket. Summer Stage is for poor people. It’s the rich man’s concession to the worker who can’t afford to leave town. They think if they distract us with free shit, we’re less likely to rob them while they’re away. Direct the poor man’s attention toward the stage, so he doesn’t notice the darkened windows of the apartments lining Central Park. Give us opera so we don’t go mad, throw a brick through the window, and haul off with their tea settings. It’s insulting.”

“But it’s fun to picnic in Bryant Park. They’re showing
His Girl Friday
next week!”

“You know who else picnics? Homeless people. They love picnics. During the Depression, people picnicked in the park all year round; they called it Tent City.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “What do you want to do then?”

 

It was June of 1999, the summer before my senior year. Classes had ended in late May and within a week all my friends disappeared, leaving the city suddenly quiet. Quiet in that noisy way, when you look around and see crowds of people talking, just none of them to you.

Up until then, I’d enjoyed a full schedule of dates and parties; college was turning out to be an education more sentimental than academic. Lectures and seminars were few and far between, leaving plenty of time to go out. And I did, constantly, working at my social life the way others worked at their résumés. To leave Manhattan then, to trade in my hard-won glamour for over a month in the suburbs, was out of the question.

“
You Can’t Go Home Again
,” I’d said, during my father’s birthday dinner weeks earlier. We were at our favorite Red Lobster in Long Island, where I’m from. My parents looked at me quizzically. “It’s a novel by Thomas Wolfe,” I explained, as a means of broaching the subject.

And so, with my parents’ permission, instead of returning home that June, I signed up for drawing classes at the School of Visual Arts. Since my classes only met once a week, however, I had little to do.

I took a lot of walks in the beginning. I lingered in bookstores, read novels in the park, and went frequently to the movies. I’d walk to Lincoln Center, which wasn’t far from my apartment, or else, if it were a Saturday, I’d walk the fifty or so blocks down to Angelika on Houston. On the street again after, alone in the warm summer night, I’d stroll the whole way back up to my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, past lively restaurants and bars with crowds of young people spilling out, hoping that by the time I got home I’d be tired enough to sleep.

I looked forward to the free film every Monday in Bryant Park. I’d spend the whole afternoon flipping through magazines in the Mid-Manhattan Library and then at dusk, wander over. Though the park always filled up hours ahead of time—people would come early and spread blankets to reserve space for friends—I went just at the last minute. The great thing about going alone, I considered, watching
Psycho
between groups of screaming friends, was how easy it was to find a single seat.

I worked on my drawing a lot, too. At the end of every session of animation class, the teacher would gather everyone around for a critique. When it was my turn, I showed a fifteen-second cartoon adapted from my comic strip, “The Naked Woman,” about the boozy misadventures of its title character, The Naked Woman: Against a flat expanse of white, a naked woman runs, trips, and falls every fifth step. Above her head, a thought bubble reads, “Open bar!” I looped it to go on forever. In silence, we watched her run, trip, fall, get up . . . run, trip, fall, get up. . . . The other students in the class, mostly middle-aged men interested in superhero comics, called it “odd.”

I didn’t go out much. I didn’t have anyone to go out much with. There was Caroline, whom I’d met that winter when my party life was in full swing. We went out occasionally—to the karaoke night where we’d met and were both regulars, or the Tikki Room at Niagara where we’d put our cigarettes on the bar and I’d say, “Let’s smoke cigarettes and act cool,” before lighting up. But since she didn’t drink and had an actual job to go to in the morning, she often went home early.

Mostly, I looked forward to Thursdays, to Lex’s ’80s party. I’d met Lex at the same karaoke party where I’d met Caroline. He was part of the celebrity set—musicians who covered their own songs, B-actors and indie-darlings who pretended they didn’t want to be recognized but bristled when they weren’t—that had made the party famous. “I liked your song,” I told him one night. “It reminded me of my youth,” I said earnestly. This made him laugh and he began inviting me to all his parties—“Soul Sucka!” a ’70s night at Twilo that served chicken wings and forties, “Soft Sundays,” an evening of easy listening upstairs at Moomba. I always dressed up with a nod to the era or style he was referencing. He liked that about me, he said.

Thursday would arrive. I’d compose a fresh eighties outfit—acid washed jeans maybe and a T-shirt cut to fall off one shoulder—and suck down a few beers while I got ready. Then, with my courage duly fortified, I’d make my way downtown. Usually, I’d bring something with me—a funny article I’d cut out from the
Weekly World News
(“Oldest Man in the World’s Secret to a Long Life Is Drinking a Quart of Whiskey and Smoking Two Packs a Day!”), or a vintage Garbage Pail Kid I’d found at the Salvation Army (“Messy Tessy”)—and turning up beside the DJ booth, I’d shyly stick out my hand. “For you.”

Lex would receive my gift with a laugh and welcome me with a kiss on the cheek, while pressing a few drink tickets discreetly into my palm. Then he’d pull back to get a good look at me. “I love the acid wash.” After that, I’d go to the bar and try to make friends, returning to him throughout the night to request songs.

“Do you have ‘Word Up’?” “‘Self Control’ by Laura Branigan?” “‘All Night Passion’ by Alisha?” My requests were a code: I’m wiser than my years and I know what you know, Lex. All the songs from the 1980s that are closest to your heart; they are close to mine, too.

From the outset, we’d bonded over eighties music and trivia; this had been his heyday and it had been mine, too. As a kid in Greece, I’d tagged along to discos with my older cousin, who was just a few years younger than Lex; I’d danced to the same music at nine that he’d danced to at twenty-five. Couldn’t he see? I was not like these other girls who came to his party ready to dance to whatever he happened to play. They didn’t know what I knew, what we knew together.