THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

I  speak to my mom every day When we connect the fragrance of memory arrives  like prairie storm clouds filled with A dab of Chanel and finger-painted lotions which were applied to the taut skin canvas of pale white legs and shy ankles. And there are sounds which are light years away: the rapture of records the duet of parakeets the side show of television the unbreakable code of Yiddish. Just a word or two  and I am back in our tiny apartment castle where the Queen wore a thorny crown of rollers and the armor of a girdle while the King pulled his dreams like a plow horse in the field of the family. We talk my mom and I covering the vast territory  of nothing and everything I ask her about dad, how he’s doing because I know that he’s listening from  behind the citadel of  a snap-opened newspaper where he spent most of his life hiding behind the headlines. And in the end,  when it’s time to go which always feels like the sadness of the late afternoon playground I always say that I miss

In the days of  the perfectly fitted waistcoat silk top hat and casually dangled kid glove when spring arrived  by invitation only endangered orchids  and blooms from Sri Lanka  were collected  like stamps and butterflies and put on display  in Yongsheng vases on sun weary table tops and doily covered sinks. For the pocket empty  artist however to be in the presence of the perfect floret a pilgrimage had to be made hauling easels like crosses to the far flung fields of impossible bloom where armed with the gardening tools  of hog bristle brush palette knife  and seeds of paint  flowers were conceived  and birthed into the miracle of life by the ones who saw them clearly long before they met And raised them  to become Klimt’s sunflowers Cassett’s lilacs in the dark aubergine vase Redon’s Grand Bouquet de fleurs des Champ and Van Gough’s irises of Saint-Remy-de-Provence which today, all these years later, hang on private walls like stamps and butterflies: a collection of ghosts in still

  DRYER SEX At 16 we had dryer sex. Briefs shirts panties bras lingerie and blouses flew in the every direction madness of adolesence as we went from  low heat to medium to high. We tumbled  non stop permanently pressed    as arms flailed and legs flapped tangled up in sheets and pillow cases and downy comforters. We were delicate too in between cycles when we were still damp and not quite done which signaled that another tumble was required which was easy thanks to the ecoboost of    hormones The timer had to be carefully watched because at any minute our parents could come home and walk in on us and just like that the buzzer would go off in our heads and in seconds we would have to  spin rinse and separate until it was dryer time again unless we were fighting for a change and airing our dirty laundry.

When I leave I will miss walking barefoot on a rolling tide of Central Park meadow  like Jesus himself high atop a very green Galilee  I will miss moseying  like a cane twirling bow-legged  Chaplin  past the silent screen cyclorama   of Eastside shops I will miss being swept off my feet by the invisible scent waves of that temptress pizza  like a rubbery Dagwood Bumpstead  into the waiting  parmesan painted arms of Ray I will miss greeting  every dog I pass like a returning war hero   thanking them for their service with a formal salute I will miss the currency exchange of a seconds-long smile  with a passing  looker who will disappear  into the crowd of swells like a film noir dame armed with a shimmy and a smirk I will miss the meditative stroll  through the cornfield maze of Strands in search of meaning or for someone who simply understands me But most of all I will miss the companionship of impulses which in normal times, sent me on adventures of enlightenment  to towering cathedra

It’s my first birthday since you left which feels like evaporated centuries now. Even though you were plunging into the tar pit of sorrow you called me last year from the area code of fading memory  trying hard to sound like sing-songy-you before your vocal cords became as withered as ancient parchment And pain became your metronome. For a few spare seconds we were toddlers again daffy and defiant spinning in circles in party clothes driven by the kind of bliss that is the provenance of daffy dogs and the courtship dance of flamingos as we celebrated with a fallen comrade slice of cake and a pyramid of presents  That had wiggly ribbons like  The ones in your hair. When you said goodbye it felt like a solemn ritual like we were signing an armistice that spelled out the conditions of your surrender. I could not let it end like that.  So I imagined you on the deck of the Mauretania in clever tweeds, long gloves, and hat waving with merriment to me on the moors as I watched you disappear i

I wonder when I’m not home if my furniture which always appears on the surface as soft-hearted and suppotive gathers to talk about me and wonder why I never take them to the park for a walk or sneak them snacks other than the occasional rogue popcorn kernals that parachute into the enermy territory of cushion cracks where they will go  ignored and undigested for centuries to come. Perhaps radio voices will emerge like Brian Lehrer and take listener phone calls to discuss their opinions of me like Luis who is calling from the Bronx who thinks I’m an asshole and P.S. Go Yankees! or Karen from Park Slope whose pronoun is they who thinks I’m really sweet because I always cry like I’m the lead in Dear Even Hansen when I watch  Tik Tok videos of  returning soldiers getting hugged like they’re on hiemlich maneuvers or when children wail like the front row at the Eras tour when mommy and dad give them a puppy even it’s a chihauhau which you know, just keep that thing in your purse. Maybe Siri