Steak and Potatoes

I know.

After the massive brain/heart data dumps that I was doing a little while ago, where the heck have I been?

Now, it's not that I'm sitting here thinking my double fistful of readers is out there fretting over my whereabouts, but having a private blog that hasn't been updated in a really long time is sort of like inviting people over for cocktails, then ignoring them while you go off to watch television.

So I apologize, dear guests. Usually I'm a MUCH better hostess than this.

Canape? Freshen your drink?

Work has been absolutely breathtakingly, mind-bottlingly crazy, first of all. I've been cross-country three times in as many weeks, which put a serious kibosh on my socializing for most of the month of August, not to mention I had a ton of underwear to wash when it was all said and done.

I've been so busy this season that I wasn't able to take a single one of my Summer Fridays until last week, when I ganged up three of them and made a vacation week out of it. Usually I save them up and take long weekends in August, but -- well, the fuck? What happened to August? Already it's mid-September, it's turned chilly and rainy (the weather suspiciously like LA was in August, almost as if it got hooked on the tail of one of my eastbound 757's and dragged into New York, sorry, everyone!)

My complexion went into some sort of time zone/no sleep/doesn't know what to make of the strange water in whatever city freakout and for a little while, I looked like a thirteen-year-old having her first period.

It's a good thing I like working for the Major American Designer and that I'm friends with all my vendors, because frankly, they were getting all the good Aileen stuff, not my friends here in the city.

Well, until recently.

Remember when I talked about the Beautiful Thing a while back? Well, it's still a Thing, and it's still Beautiful, and I'm still really enjoying the fact that the Universe threw us a bone. Well, no, I take that back. 

The Universe threw us a steak. Medium rare, a little bloody. With mashed potatoes and creamed spinach on the side.

And so far, it's freakin'-A delicious.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

So, I actually own this Blue Dog serigraph. Paid a pretty penny for it, too. It's in my friend's garage right now. I miss it, especially now that it's tripled in value, according to the art websites. Wow, something I did that DIDN'T turn to shit.

Who Was That Guy?

Playing the black guitar on the Sixth Avenue L platform at nine o'clock on Saturday night?

Up to that moment I was feeling fussy and resentful, because I was spanked by the MTA so many times that day that my ass had handprints. All I wanted was to come home, and when the F train I was on suddenly went express, and I missed the announcement, and bypassed 14th Street and sped on to 34th Street, I nearly cried.

I think I might be winding myself up a little bit, for I will be entertaining a gentleman caller who arrives tomorrow. I have *things* I need to do and I wanted to be doing them Right Now.

Black guy in a black t-shirt, medium length afro, sloe-eyed and soulful and sad looking, until he smiled, and his face became the sun. Sitting low to the ground, slouched against the wall as if he was waiting for the next L train and had decided to simply plop down, take out his guitar and start playing, there on the platform.

Just your basic singer-songwriter major chord stuff. Bada bing bada boom. No big, right?

Then he started to sing. I spun around as if I had been poked, and just stood there, openmouthed, and suddenly every cell of my being felt, I don't know, replenished. It was a tenor voice, so raspy and scratchy, but so honest and real. My throat filled, and my vision got swimmy.

Beauty does that to me sometimes. (Remember "The White Roses.")

I didn't even wait for the train to come along or for him to finish his song. Eight bars in and I had thrown money into his bag. He looked me in the eye, smiled that smile, and nodded his thank you. I wanted to ask him what's your name and where are you playing out next and that girl you're singing about? She doesn't know what she lost. She's a fool.

The train came while he was playing, so I never did find out his name. But my spirits had done one of those minor shifts, and the night was different.

I sat down and pulled out my blackberry to write this, and was so intent on what I was doing that I didn't surface until I heard the automated train lady voice say, "The next stop is Montrose Avenue," and I looked up as we glided out of my station.

I had to backtrack to get home, but I didn't mind one bit.

The Voice, or, The Story of My Life as Currently Lived, as Told By James Kaplan about Frank Sinatra

The Voice -- might as well start capitalizing it here -- was simply working its spooky subliminal magic. Did it help that the singer was clearly in need of a good meal, that his mouth was voluptuously beautiful, that his electric-blue eyes were attractively wide with fear and excitement, that he knowingly threw a little catch, a vulnerable vocal stutter, into his voice on the slow ballads? It helped. It whipped into a frenzy the visceral excitement that his sound had started. But the sound came first. There was simply nothing like it.

Don is Back!

Yay!  Don is back!

We missed you, Don.

Love,
The Don-ettes