​#52essays2017/#3
 
In the 90’s Under The Stairs was an Upper West Side Bar & Grill that served as nightlife to all the neighborhood drug dealers. It wasn’t your usual bar employed with aspiring actors and dancers but rather was filled with old time career bartenders, friends of the boss, and South Americans new to NYC.

I somehow managed to get hired for a waitressing stint.

It was owned by a short, pinstriped- suit–wearing, flirty Ecuadorian man named Miguel who had an annual pool party for the employees in his New Jersey home every summer. My uniform consisted of a white tuxedo shirt, black pants and a royal blue bow tie. The men ordered bottles of Moet, rum and cokes, and Johnny Walker Black straight up. The women ordered Amaretto Sours, White Russians, Orgasm shots and Sex On The Beach. The restaurant bathroom was a constant in and out of coke sniffing patrons, while on Sundays the place transformed into an after church lobster spot. 

Miguel was ambitious.

We were in the middle of the Gulf War. The television a constant stream of tanks and missiles. The jukebox favorites were Madonna’s “Justify My Love”, Lisa Stanfield’s “Been around the world”, Sinead O’Conner’s  “Nothing Compares To You,” and my favorite, Earth Wind and Fire’s” Reasons”, which I played at the beginning of every shift.

The employee- friendly policy at Under The Stairs  was; if someone walked out on your check you were responsible for the money, making us waitress/ security guard. My first week I emerged from the kitchen with extra blue cheese dressing ramekins to find an empty table, empty Moet bucket, and strewn napkins on my five top that seven rowdy guys had been sitting at. I went home with no tips; even with a discount Miguel had given me on the Moet. 

The next day this big fat guy they called Cabeza, (who did have a particularly big head) came up to me “You went to P.S. 166 right? Yeah, I think my little brother Tone was in your class.” I remembered Tone. We sat next to each other in 3rd grade. He was a lefty and I was a righty and we’d get annoyed because our elbows always bumped. “I heard you got mad jerked last night. I’m real sorry preciosa, some guys don’t know how to act. You let me know if anyone fucks with you again. Aiight?”

Word.

With Cabeza as my newfound bodyguard I didn’t have any more knuckleheads walking out on my checks, but the scandalous vibe at Under The Stairs demanded more than just getting by.

​ I had to get my hustle on.

I don’t even remember how it actually began, but I somehow befriended  Diana a friend of Cabeza’s. I think it was because I always remembered she liked extra cherries in her Amaretto sour. Without a reminder, I’d bring them to her on a tiny bread plate. Diana was older than me, wore strappy high heels and short dresses, ordered baked clams and smoked Virginia Slims. She lived in the projects on 93rd street dubbed  “Nam”, (short for Vietnam.)
Diana had really amazing legs and pretty narrow feet, but no ass or waist. I had a waist and an ass but thick legs and flat feet.   As the story always goes, Diana wanted an ass and a waist and I wanted amazing legs. She would tell Cabeza “look at that, she’s got an nice ass for a white girl.” And then she’d twirl me around in my stupid little tuxedo outfit.  I’d always be wearing the tightest jeans I could sausage myself into, cause as all waitresses know, if you have to wear a uniform, you WILL find SOMEWAY to hype that shit up.

Diana worked those gams of hers like nobody’s business.  Clicking her way into “The Stairs” every Friday night. I admired the way she walked in heels, and was fascinated with the way she managed to flirt and put all the guys in their place at the same time. She was probably only 24 but at that time it seemed a lot older to me. She had a son Brandon, which she showed me a picture of in a little plastic cylinder on a Great Adventure keychain that you squinted your eye to look through.  When I went to her house I also saw she also had a photo of him on a huge button that said  #1 MOM propped up on her mirror. She introduced me to Brandon as “Titi Vanessa “and I never felt so special.

Diana and I never discussed the hustle. it just happened. I would bring her and her girls rounds of Amaretto sours, not charge them and they gave me a phat tip at the end of the night. This was before all bars had computer systems so we just called out our drinks and hand wrote the tally on a bill that the bartender Ricky would then ring up on an old clunky register. It didn’t take long before Ricky figured out my scam and then (again all unspoken) I was forced to tip him extra as well. Diana’s table began to multiply weekly until there was a whole little crew that requested to sit in my section.
 
I was running shit.

​Diana had one friend Lucy that seemed annoyed that Diana  liked me so much.  I understood enough Spanish to translate, “Why you always hanging with this white girl?“  But then one night I got stoned with them after my shift and made her pee in her pants laughing  when I did my Yoda and Charo imitation.














































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From then on she fuckin loved me.

​Aside from Under The Stairs and Copa, another bar Diana liked to hang at was a bar uptown in the heights; Coogans. Eventually she invited me to come up with her and Cabeza, and the rest of the crew. Coogans, was a local bar known for being a favorite among cops. It was there that I sampled my first and last coolie. A cigarette laced with cocaine.

I   started seeing a cop Manny until one day I got a message on my home answering machine from a girl telling me, “I don’t who the fuck you are Va-nes-sa, but you better back the fuck up off my man, Va-nes-sa.” She kept breaking up my name into syllables as if was it were an alias.
So as you can see it was a charming little scene, but that didn’t deter Diana, Lucy and I from consistently going up to Coogans, getting wasted, then calling La Familia Car service to get back down to the Upper West Side.

Diana was like me; a heavyweight drinking champion.  Lucy was one of those girls who couldn’t handle her liquor. And even worse was that Lucy was one of those girls who seemed to always forget this important fact. Always trying to keep up with the champions, she’d do shots and end up in the bathroom over the toilet, Diana and I taking turns holding her hair back.But there was always that one golden hour before Lucy got sick that we’d all be in that perfect fucked up zone dancing, the ways girls do with each other when they want men to notice them, but also want act like they don’t need guys to have a good time. 

One steamy Thursday night I was chillin at Coogans with Diana & Lucy, We were sitting at the bar enjoying free lemon shots when all of a sudden Diana jumped up from her stool. “Oh no, he’s got to be fuckin buggin. That motherfucker thinks he’s gonna come to my spot with some fuckin hoe.” That motherfucker turned out to be Leo, her son’s dad. I had seen pics of Leo before but had never met him cause he had moved to Miami a year ago.  “Oh shit, its on,” said Lucy as I watched Leo and a skinny blond with big tits walk into Coogans and sit at a table. The skinny blond was clearly not a New Yorker and looked out of place among the curvy, dark haired  world she had entered. Everything from that moment on went very quickly. I remember feeling that pit in my stomach that one has right before some shit is about to go down. That slow motion moment of " I’m going into to survival mode” as I suddenly saw Diana pounce onto Leo. For some reason I had expected her to pounce the blond chick, but Diana lunged for him, which in turn had the blond chick pounce on Diana, which then had Lucy and I pulling on the girl. I remember seeing Diana’s beautiful face looking wild and that the blond chick was wearing a red bra that Lucy yanked at. I remember being impressed that my instinct was to defend. I remember being impressed that Lucy sobered up and she managed to get the blond chick off Diana. Then the bouncer got to us and broke the whole thing up. Leo started screaming at Diana and then argued with the bouncer who was making them leave. The blond chick adjusted her big fake Miami titties in her red bra and tried to regain her exposure.

The craziest part was when they left we all sat our asses right back in our seats, smoothed our hair, applied lipstick and went on with our evening while Diana recounted the drama. “Did you see that stringy white girl’s face? Ill smack that bitch right back to the trailer park she came from.” Did they have trailer parks in Miami? Who cared, We all laughed holding high court as the bouncer had clearly chosen us as the Coogan’s Queens. I could tell Diana was upset but she comforted herself in entertaining us, her eager audience, dissing Leo and the girl, sayin how they looked like fools being kicked out. And as she dissed that stringy haired trailer park white girl, somehow my being a white girl never came up. In its natural journey my identity was more importantly; New Yorker, a brunette with real little  titties, Diana’s girl who had her back, A Coogan’s queen, and definitely not a trailer park bitch.
 
In the Fall I quit Under The Stairs telling Miguel I needed to focus more on school. This was total bullshit of course, but when windy October came, Under The Stairs was getting really lame. I was thinking about getting a job in the village, maybe near 8th street. As a professional hang out girl I felt it important to work on my social resume.

​So as the quickly as my hot and heavy friendship with Diana and Lucy began, it then trailed out. I think Brenda and I called each other once or twice, but without Under The Stairs our friendship dissolved.  Not in a bad way, but in that young way, that New Yorker way, that party girl way, that get lost in the shuffle of the big city way, with new adventures, new guys, new jobs.

It’s the natural course of social evolution in these parts.

I bumped into Diana once years later with her son at Sal’s pizza on 94th and Broadway. She was still sporting those heels and hot legs and we laughed about old times. Her son was now tall and gangly, in that awkward, sullen pre-teen stage where he chewed on a soda straw and looked away while we bugged out. She smacked his arm, “Papi, you remember Vanessa?”  She used to come over when you were real little.” He shrugged, and I felt sad that Diana and I lost touch and I had missed so many years. He probably had met tons of her friends, friends that had given him birthday presents and come by year after year. Friends he now called “titi.”

As we parted I told Diana I was going to start taking acting classes in the village. She said considering my Yoda and Charo imitations, she thought I’d be real good at that.
 
 
 

​#52essays2017/#2
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Growing up there were two times I was inexplicitly told to not disturb my mother. When Masterpiece Theatre was on, and when she hosted group therapy sessions in our living room. I was instructed to stay in my bedroom until these events were over. The only time I disobeyed was when I felt it imperative to inform her that I had chicken pox in my vagina. I had seen the scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair pees on the floor in front of the dinner guests, and I felt this was a close dramatic second.
 
My mother told me group therapy sessions were where grownups discussed their feelings and got “support.” Hiding by the staircase I strained to hear people’s “feelings.” Men and women on folding chairs, circled around our glass coffee table talking  in flat tones. Every once in a while there would be a sniffle, and a box of tissues would get passed around like the hot potato game. Occasionally there would be a big hearty group laugh, which I found very disconcerting.
 “Mommy, why were people laughing at someone’s feelings?? That’s so mean! “
 “Sometimes we have to create humor in the face of grief”, quipped my mother clearing away the coffee urn.
 
It was then and there I learned I was a Jew.
 
My mother believed in expressing feelings. My father did not. At the age of eight my parents sat my sister and I down to announce my father was leaving us for a woman he taught with. Folklore says I broke into a full fledged Oscar worthy performance. “You are breaking up our perfect family,” I screamed. I didn’t think we had a perfect family but I had watched a lot of television and this seemed like the appropriate thing to say. My father never forgave me for that night. For years after he muttered, “You are just like your mother. Overdramatic”.
 
After my father left I fell into deep bouts of sadness and considered asking my mother if I could join the therapy group. Some days I would get so overwhelmed with rage that my mother would give me stacks of newspaper to rip up to get out my “feelings”. The ink turned my hands black and blue and I felt better.
 
I was sensitive. After watching the scene in The Lord of the Flies where Piggy gets killed by a boulder, I had a complete meltdown. My mother sat me down and explained to me that Piggy was played by an actor, and that right now he was most likely at Burger King eating a Whopper. The image of Piggy eating a Whopper at Burger King was so comforting  that I used it every time I couldn’t separate reality from make believe.
 
My father had no idea what to do with me and my sister when his court assigned dates came up. He took us to grownup movies he wanted to see like “Silent Partner”, in which the opening scene depicts a decapitated head in a fish tank. Next he took us to “Kramer vs. Kramer” the saddest fuckin film on divorce ever made. My mother was livid. She set me up with more newspaper and put on the “Free To Be You and Me” album. I loved Free to Be You And Me. It talked a lot about feelings.
 
By fifth grade I took to sitting on my windowsill, closing the wooden shutters around me listening to Lionel Richie.  I would write the names of boys I liked in hearts in pencil, and erase them after my crying sessions.
 
My father stopped taking us to the movies and married his mistress.
 
At fourteen I wrote a poetry book in English class titled “My Talkative Pen.” 

​Heres an uplifting entry:

My father read  “My Talkative Pen” and was  disturbed. My mother and teacher thought it was fantastic. He called my mother and complained about me as if he he wanted a refund. My mother held her ground. “Harold. Vanessa is expressing her feelings!”
​Truth is, I was completely aware of what I was doing. If he had bothered to read the preface he might of understood.
 






































​In my early 20’s I went to see my first therapist. I got accepted to a NYU program where I was to work with a therapist in training. Participants paid a cheap sliding scale fee, but the catch was I had to go to sessions three times a week. I hated it. An older man in khakis and orthopedic shoes wanted me to lie down on the couch and talk about my father. I wanted to talk about why boys I liked always disappeared. My therapist and every therapist after assured me this was connected. I remained stubborn and spent numerous sessions refusing to talk. This was not what I expected.
 
When the NYU program was over I was more fucked up then when I started. I hated my therapist and my father. I dated boys who were unreliable and cocky. My adolescent crying sessions turned into heavy blankets of sadness that my future therapists labeled “depression.”
 
My depression hit its high point when I moved to Rhode Island to get my MFA at an acting conservatory. Every presentation or assignment that was criticized sent me under the heavy depression blanket. Competition gave me anxiety. Soon I had chronic insomnia and stopped getting my period.
 
I found a new therapist in Rhode Island named Debbie D’Agostino. Like the supermarket chain. I really liked Debbie. She offered dieting tips and convinced me walking was great exercise if you clenched your butt muscles and pumped your arms. She asked me if ever considered taking anti-depressants. I remembered my mother had once had a  boyfriend from group therapy that had taken Prozac and claimed it saved his life. I was game. Debbie was so un-Jewey and upbeat that she could convince me of anything.
 
Debbie had to send me to the kind of therapist that could legally prescribe medication. A psychiatrist. Soon I learned the drill. The therapist you talked to about all your shit, and the psychiatrist you checked in with every few months to convince them you were still fucked up enough to get your refill but not fucked up enough to jump off a bridge under their care.
 
My first month on anti- depressants I called my mother and asked her if this is how “normal” people feel all the time? I couldn’t get over how light I felt without the blanket. How I was able to deal with daily tasks without getting overwhelmed and crawling into bed. I felt like my brain had turned from a garden of weeds into a budding zucchini patch. My sadness for the first time felt bearable.
 
I spent the next 10 years on medication.
 
I never discussed my medication with anyone except my family. Even my grandmother took something to keep the edge off. One time I made the mistake of confiding in a girlfriend who didn’t even believe in taking Advil. She looked at me like I’d been duped. “Anti-Depressants are a conspiracy from the pharmaceutical companies to keep you addicted. It’s a crutch! You just need to meditate”.
 
I convinced my therapist and psychiatrist that I needed a medication break. I was a great actress and it worked.
When the heavy blanket came back I mediated. When the weeds cropped up I told myself I needed to be stronger.
I tried to rip newspapers and think of Piggy eating the Whopper. Nothing worked. I was drowning. 
 
I reluctantly went back on my medication and never told my friend. Or anyone ever again. It scared the shit out of me that I felt better. It felt like the medication fixed a busted fuse. I stopped fighting my brain even when Tom Cruise told the world people like me should take vitamins instead. 
 
Up until the week my father passed away, he accused me of me being overdramatic. I visited him more in the hospital, then I did when he was healthy. When I tried to say goodbye to him on his deathbed, he shushed me and told me I was getting myself  all worked up for nothing. I didn’t flinch.
 
I must have looked like my mother sitting there so full of feelings.
 
My father was so scared of feelings.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

#52essays2017 / #1
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When I was 38 I ran away from home.
 
I was done with New York men and their lack of passion and mystery. I wanted to ride on the back of a Vespa in a hiked up maxi dress. I wanted to chain smoke cigarettes at an outdoor café with slow service. I wanted to fall in love with a boy with stubble and an accent in my ancestor’s homeland.
 
So I did what American Jewish girls do at 16..
I booked a trip to Israel.
 
A friend of mine connected me with his friend Lior, who had a spare bedroom. I stalked Lior on Facebook prior to my trip and decided we would make a fantastic couple. He was Moroccan, a writer, spoke 3 languages, and loved Hip Hop. The first humid night I dragged my luggage into his basement apartment, we made out after smoking hookah. I never spent a night in the spare bedroom. Lior had a Vespa, a cute little dog and wrapped Teffilin around his arm in prayer every morning. My plan was falling into place exactly as I had imagined.
 
I was on my way to becoming a Sephardic bride.
 
Things first began to fall apart on my first Shabbat. I got lost on my way back from the market to get groceries for dinner. I have a very poor sense of direction no matter how many times I take a route. I had tried to make visual breadcrumbs for myself on the way, blue car on my right, playground on my left, but got confused because there were no street numbers. The streets were deserted and it was starting to get late. I had to make it back in time for food to be prepared prior to sundown. This is what Sephardic Brides do. My finger creases burned from the weight of the plastic grocery bags, sweat poured down my brow.
 
I thought of my father. How when I was nine he scrawled a map and a compass on a napkin to teach me the avenues of the Upper West Side. I was going to visit a friend on 96th and Broadway and he insisted I was old enough to go alone. I made it as far as 96th and Amsterdam before crying and calling my mother from a payphone.
My father was irritated  “For crying out loud, you were almost there. You just needed to go one more block west! ” 
 
Since then I always let men read maps for me.
 
I called Lior from my cell phone and he came to find me on the Vespa. He was annoyed. I was a mere 2 blocks away.
 
That night at dinner his sister asked me how old I was. I lied and told her I was 35.
Lior’s friends stopped by and he told them how I got lost in Hebrew. Everyone laughed. So fuckin American. It was then discovered I had bought the Pareve Nutella instead of the dairy version that I was instructed to, because I couldn't read the label.
 
The next day we went to he beach to meet more friends. We bumped into a gaggle of girls and Lior didn’t introduce me. My thighs flabby and pale, we planted a blanket smack in the middle of the scorching beach. I disappeared to the bar.  No one noticed.  I met a soldier and told him I wrote poetry in New York City. He was impressed. I got lost again trying to find my way back to Lior and the blanket.
 
When we got back to house it became evident I had gotten a terrible sunburn. Large red splotches covered my stomach and back. Lior told me I was the “whitest Sephardic girl he was ever with. “
“Half –Sephardic” he corrected himself. It was true. My sister had gotten our Syrian side’s olive skin and black wavy hair, while I inherited the Russian peachy hue with a mysteriously gentile nose.
 
My plan was slowly crumbling.
 
The following Shabbat I ate a picnic floor dinner with a friend from New York who subletted an apt near the beach. I talked about Lior excessively. When I came back from the kitchen with another bottle of Kosher wine, she looked weary. “I mean… even if he was all into you, what would you do, drop your whole career at 38 and move to Israel?? And you aren’t religious. I mean you wrote a poem titled He Fucked Me Like Brooklyn?? “
 
“Don’t tell him about that” I snapped. I didn’t care about New York and my career. I wanted to be a nice, fertile Jewish girl who made Shakshuka and didn’t get lost on Shabbat. I wanted an elder to stain henna on my hands and to bake in the sun with my people. I wanted a rabbi to bless my head under a Chuppa and make my father proud.
My poems, my wild performances, my one-night stands, seemed so insignificant. So wasteful.
 
I did not know myself the last few weeks in Israel. Trying to make someone love you is the most unattractive of actions, and trying to make yourself something you aren’t is the saddest. I lost ten pounds trying to shrink into something pure. I risked traveling to occupied territory in Bethlehem to pray for a husband. I got lost in the fruit market and had a mere child guide me back to a McDonalds.
 
It was just too fuckin late for me to be a Sephardic bride.
 
Back in New York, I resumed to what I do best. My gay husband gave me a makeover and I threw myself into performing. I painted henna on my own hand because I was a Sephardic goddess. I gained back my curves and broke the Yom Kippur fast early.
 
I was back.
 
I met a man who didn’t even know what Sephardic was. We talked about old New York and cable news. Lior came to visit and looked pale. He got lost on the D train and ended up on Tremont Ave. He rewrote history and remembered that summer as a “blast.” I cringed to remember myself the emotional peasant. I sharpened my fangs and told him I hope finds a good Sephardic bride. I wasn’t angry anymore, now content in my blasphemy.
 
His last day on Shabbat I swiftly guided him to synagogue with a subway map that I read him, right off the top of my head.
 
 

* Sephardic Jews are the Jews of Spain, Portugal, North Africa and The Middle East and their descendants.