breaking the silence

Wow writing can really feel like a burden! I’ve been putting it off for two weeks, procrastinating to the point that I actually went out and bought books ABOUT writing rather than writing. To add to which injustice, even though I’m wracked with guilt about not writing, I have nothing to write about! Good lord. I want to come back normal next time around. None of this fancy pants artsy shit, I want to work in an air conditioner plant, or a Detroit auto assembly line and drink beer after work, fall asleep without brushing my teeth and marry a homely blonde who wears sweatpants, lots of eyeshadow, and curses like the owner/operators that both her parents were. I guess I’m comin’ back as a man. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Hey, that’s not a bad opener! Maybe this writing thing isn’t so bad! Anyway, these last two weeks have been great and not great simultaneously. Mahdis moved out and I miss her. Work and moving been HECTIC for both of us, so we haven’t been able to spend much time together. Since we were like an old married couple for the first month and a half that I was here, it’s a little weird. I’ve been record-breakingly anxious for no real reason except that I’m far as hell from home, miss my old life and haven’t been able to get to a dance class in the last three weeks. LAME! Plus I’m on the train an easy two hours a day, which is long, rank and gives a girl opportunity for an intensive immersion in lives of the mentally ill and less fortunate. I haven’t been in touch with my Seattle people as much as I was, and I can feel relationships shifting. Not that its all bad, its just a little scary and anxiety producing. On the other side of the coin, I’m making some new friends, some really cool women who I met through my friend Asa in LA. Last week we hung out in Harlem, ate fried fish and waffles. Yesterday we went out dancing in the E Village, drank several too many Caiperinhas and went to eat grilled cheese sandwiches and fries at a swanky 24 hour diner (swanky + diner = ?) One of the girls goes to a free dance class up at 114th between freddy d and adam clayton powell. I’m going to go check it out next Thursday. Yesterday, I finally got my ass back to class at Djoniba. It was the best dance class I’ve had since I got here. Really refreshing and fun, even the dressing room wasn’t that bad. The class wasn’t crowded and Ousmane SALL is one of my favorite dance teachers. His Sabar is light and birdy, funky and spirited. I feel about 100 percent better than I did yesterday, despite a burning urethra from all the lime juice in those stupid drinks. Work is fine, the new receptionist that they just hired had the nerve to ask about overtime and was fired for being “late” two days later. You do the math. The one receptionist from Kentucky who helped train me and was the only other person who worked over the time that Aleksandra (the Slovakian chick) was gone, never showed up to work the day after we threw a launch party for a small bath and body product line. She called a few days later, and said that she thought someone at the party had slipped something into her drink and she had been blacked out for like two days. It was inferred that she felt it was one of the ManeSh’mafia guys, all of Judah and Chaim’s friends and cousins who come in, and sit and drink espresso in their beautiful, outrageously stylish tailored clothes and flirt overtly with women young enough to be their children. Mane Sh’ma means “what’s up” in Hebrew and since they not only look Mafioso, have the strangely attractive, dark charisma and bravado of the old school family organizations, but are also in the wholesale diamond district, I call them the ManeSh’mafia, you’ve got to see these guys. That said, I really don’t think they slipped her anything. She gets wasted enough to black out all the time anyway, and the shmafiosos get enough ass on their own accord without having to roofie anyone let alone a 20 year old kentuckyite who drinks beer and thinks expensive jeans are dressy. She just didn’t want to work there anymore and didn’t have the cojones to quit. In further remarkably efficient efforts to make all the other assistants hate me, I’m helping Chaim and Judah write an employee manual. They are breaking ground for several massage/facial rooms downstairs and their existing business is so disorganized that if it weren’t for the wealth of their clientele they would be up shit creek without a paddle. I gently suggested that now may be a good time to start thinking of things like mission statements and business plans. They know its true, when it comes to making money, its time to get American. So they’re having me help with the writing and formulation of policy. Not the most thrilling but nice change of pace, and nice to be appreciated. I finally have a bedroom, with a bed in it, and a dresser, courtesy of Craigslist in conjuction with Yehudini the magic mover. I met him in Rego Park, Queens and we drove to Long Island to pick it up. He was SURE that the people we were getting the thing from were black, cause of the neighborhood I guess, but I told him I didn’t think so from talking to them. I can tell an old white guy on the phone. Sure enough the guy with the dresser looked like Mickey Rooney, in his depressing post glory days. His son was a house DJ, and he had a small yippy dog that looked even tinier when he held it against has sizable paunch. A word about the driving between LI and QNS, you are really, really taking your life into your own hands on those freeways. Numerous parkways, expressways and other euphemisms for concrete death river merge and morph into each other with little or no notice. People drive at breakneck speeds so you cant even slow down to exit, which is bad enough without some of the exits being blocked off with metal bars and no warning until you’re speeding towards a barricade with no way to re-enter traffic. As we listened to French newsradio detailing the horrors of youth race riots in Paris which, according to Yehudini, are another perfect example of how “Blacks” refuse to get with the program and become law abiding members of society, that if I lived through it that I would do no more online furniture shopping. So far I’ve kept my promise. Funny story: I told Yehudini to make sure and bring his son to come help us, mostly cause I wanted to see him but in part cause I thought we could use the help. When he picked me up, the kid wasn’t there. I asked where he was and Yehudini said he was too into his computer to be torn away. I told him to tell the baby I was mad and that he better call me and apologize. You know, just to tease him a little and let him know we wanted him there. Kid stuff. So Yehudini says to me “ Do you want to date my son?” You could have knocked me over with a feather! No, Jesus No! Not at all! I just like the kid; he has a sweet spirit! My god, I’m almost 30! (as an aside, I accidentally typed “I’m almost 23” there by accident and genuinely laughed aloud when I saw it written. Almost 23! Ahahahah! ) “Hey, I don’t know, maybe you like him! I’m a cool guy! I know how life is! These weird things happen, Ashton and Demi are very happy together.” I stressed that I didn’t in any way think that it was appropriate for him to feel comfortable with a 30 year old woman dating his 17 year old son, and were I truly interested he should chastise me thoroughly. I had to stifle laughter the rest of the ride home. Mahdis’ friend, who fled Iran for reasons of persecution and has since biked and run from like Ethiopia to Senegal and Alaska to Brazil for peace (just look at all the good its done! Bless his heart. He’s going to run the perimeter of the states next though, so that oughta do it) helped Yehudini move the dresser up the stairs. I didn’t know his athleticism when he was doing it and kept worrying that it was too heavy or that he’d hurt himself. He didn’t. I had some great learning days at the salon, did a lot of color this last couple of weeks. Everyone is getting ready to winter in Florida and the Cays and getting their highlights in shape. That’s the accessory of choice for the UES set. Everyone has a condo on the East Side, a house in the Hamptons and a beach house in florida which is just so much work with the upkeep especially with these damn storms! One strange woman with very short hair came in and spent a good three and a half hours in the shop to get three inches of hair perfectly platinum. It’ll be totally grown out in two months. What a monster waste of time. Learned how to help someone who has dyed their hair far too dark back to a normal dark shade of brown. It’s an ugly process, with some very bad in-between stages, during which Chaim in his typical hilarious and mellow fashion turned the chair away from the mirror and told the lady not to be scared if she saw the halfway stage. Basically, you use bleach, 20 vol, all over the cold shaft of the hair, then go back to the roots with it after you see the tint lifting. Bleach the roots, hopefully not getting them too light, and rinse the whole thing. Then deposit whatever level you need, taking into account the underlying pigment, just to the roots, let process 20 min, then apply to the rest of the hair shaft and keep an eye on it, cause it will deposit pretty quickly and you don’t want it to get too dark all over again. Ta da! You look the same as you did before you started the whole process except now your hair feels like horse tail and will be brassy in three weeks! Enjoy! Then, speaking of horses, I helped one of the stylists with her client who decided that she needed to be much blonder for the winter. Which would have been unremarkable except that the week before she had been thrown from her (giant expensive) horse and broken 11 ribs (out of the 12 possible) and her collarbone. What with the sling and the percodan, it was probably not the best week to be in and out of the shampoo bowl with a full head of highlights for a bleach and tone process that takes 2+ hours on a good day. She was truly miserable by the time she left. She couldn’t even sit to have her hair dried. Vanity; it’s a hurter