Mitford Sisters in a Previous Life

Had a fabulous Sunday. Just fabulous. Met up with Ronnie at a trendy little bruncherie close to the Museum. Sipped Bloody Marys, nibbled carrot/raisen bread, chatted about things we'd already chatted about two weeks ago but that Ronnie didn't remember chatting about.

Went to the Museum of Natural History. As it turns out, Ronnie and I were both shy, geeky kids and so, growing up, spent an incredible number of our free afternoons wandering through the Museum of Natural History.

And, of course, he volunteers there so he's an excellent guide. As a matter of fact, Ronnie has appraised a goodly number of the gems in the Museum's permanent collection, so he was able to tell me interesting stories about them. "If you commissioned me to find ten perfectly matched diamonds, it would take me about a week. If you commissioned me to find two perfectly matched emeralds, it might take me a decade."

This is only in part because emeralds are so much rarer in nature than diamonds. It's also because emeralds are relatively soft, and are mostly found as inclusions inside other rocks, so they're easily fractured during the extraction process.

I find little factoids like this endlessly fascinating. I could listen to someone talk about this stuff for hours.

Thing about Ronnie is that I don't think he actually observes me too closely. As for example: After we were finished with the Museum, we went off in search of the Russian mobster's Monster Yacht, which is berthed somewhere in a Manhattan yacht harbor. Since the Manhattan yacht harbor when I was growing up was somewhere in the West 80s off Riverside Park, and since I naturally believe that Manhattan is still exactly the way it was when I was growing up – which is to say frozen in the mythical landscape of the Royal Tannenbaums – I naturally assumed it was there.

It was a freezing cold day. Just freezing. An Arctic front moving in through Canada. The wind was angry about being trapped in all those urban corridors of brownstones and renovated pre-War apartment complexes, and punished us relentlessly. Finally we gave up on the expedition and retired to the lobby of the Ansonia, which has a small coffee bar – not very chic itself, but inhabited by very chic customers.

I'd already told Ronnie I was poor. I feel this is necessary information to give to potential dates: You may like me, but I need to tell you that there is a considerable difference between our earning capacities at present. It may not be that way forever, but it's that way now. Full disclosure! Necessary because he will be taking me out to dinner, but I won't be taking him out to dinner – not unless Burger King is his idea of a fine dining experience.

"You know what you'd be good at?" he asked in between feeding me bites of a scrumptious almond croissant.

"Line producing for the Shahs of Sunset," I replied. "Developing a gourmet hot sauce line."

"Sales," he said. "You would do really well in sales at a high end women's clothing store."

"I would?" I said dubiously.

"Absolutely. You know how to talk to strangers. You're very charming. You're very attractive. You know a lot about fashion –"

How has it escaped his notice that I dress exactly like a bag woman? I wondered.

But it is quite true that I know how to talk to strangers. In fact, I often prefer talking to strangers to talking with people with whom I have history and so to whom I can only be an enormous disappointment.

Still. High-end sales in an expensive women's clothing store would be one of the worst ways in the world for me to make money. The moment the sale presented itself to me begging to be closed, the moment the woman asked breathlessly, "Does this high end couture gown make my ass look fat?" and all it would take is one emphatic, "No!" or the arguably more subtle, "Oh my God, it makes you look like a goddess," I would just shrug and say, "There's a mirror over there. Judge for yourself."

This is because I am constitutionally incapable of telling other people what to do.

That Ronnie thought I would make an excellent salesperson bemused me no end.

He doesn't see me at all.

What he sees is an attractive woman who enjoys his company and laughs at his jokes.

And that's okay, by the way. I am not really looking for intimacy at this point. I am only looking for a companion with whom to have fun and share fabulous times.

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After I said goodbye to Ronnie, I met up with ___________ and __________. We ducked into a nearby Starbucks to keep warm, and annoyed all the other caffeine junkies with our endless chatter about the sociological implications of Girls and Bravo TV reality programming, and eventually ended up in a diner where they began to tell me the true story of the Trip To Mexico – which was even more horrifying than I had previously thought.

Mexico is not plagued with a serious drug problem. Mexico is in the midst of a civil war. The drug cartels are insurgents milking the underground economy for funds that keep the conflict going. I think the difference between this Mexican Civil War and, say, the American Civil War a century and a half ago is that Mexicans don't fuck around with high moral posturing. Mexicans understand that the fight for power is exactly that – a fight for power. A fight for the ability to bend highly breakable people to their own inflexible wills.

Anyway, I loved spending time with them. ___________ is brilliant and handsome and fascinating. __________, equally brilliant and fascinating, is a whimsy princess from a fairytale who, one suspects, will grow up to rule the planet. There is real steel in that girl.

They rode with me to the Columbus Circle subway stop where I had to make my transfer. I've given upon the Long Island Railroad. These days I take the bus to Jamaica Center and hop the subway there. Takes a little longer, true, but it's not as though I don't have a million iBooks and hours of music on my trusty little electronic devices to while away the time. And I like looking at other people on the more pedestrian forms of transportation. I play my Mental Telepathy game; try to find that wavelength inhabited by one other sensitive soul who will actually be able to hear my thoughts. This is what comes from reading too much John Wyndham at an impressionable age.

I missed my bus at the other end of the subway ride and so was forced to wait out in the cold for 45 minutes for the next N22. It was so frigid by this point that even all my layers of bag lady clothes provided little protection. I shivered and jumped up and down to keep myself warm.

The far end of Hillside Avenue is a very macabre landscape late at night, with its locked and battered stores, all spray-painted with graffiti, and its strange subterranean inhabitants wandering by, muttering to themselves. You have to be nuts to be out in the cold at this time of night, right? Nuts or homicidal. At some point it dawned on me that I would probably make a very easy mugging target. That should have alarmed me more than it did, I suppose. But I didn't really care. I was enjoying the view. Can't really explain it better than that, and anyway, the next moment the bus came, and the bus driver leaned over solicitously, "You poor thing! How long have you been waiting? Come on inside where it's warm."

Next day __________ and I texted: Loved spending time with you. Maybe we were Mitfords in a previous existence.

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I'm in the process of reworking my resume. I need all the help I can get on this one. Max said he would help. So have a couple of other pals. Anyone reading this, who wants to volunteer, please do.

Cassandra was in D.C. last weekend where she described my plight to a friend of hers (an acquaintance of mine.) It may be that I can find more gainful employment through him. He is in public policy.

As it happens, I have a very strong public policy background. Have a master's degree in the field from U.C. Berkeley, one of the top-ranked schools in the nation. Worked for the state of California for a few years as an analyst. Left that job to become part of the team that first put People Magazine on the Internet. Have not done public policy for $$$ since then, although I have retained a very strong interest in public policy and can bore people at dinner parties with the best of them droning on about the tax implications of the Affordable Care Act.

Problemo is that my last paying job in the field was in 1992. I'm not sure how being People Magazine's Interactive Entertainment Editor between 1992 and 1998, or working for ICM between 1999 and 2001, or owning a retail hot sauce business between 2001 and 2009 really qualifies me for a public policy job. So I am going to have to do some major resume tweakage on that account to meet the criteria on paper.

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Finally, Max called me yesterday for advice on his love life. I was really touched and gratified. Apparently the kid really loves his crazy, eccentric, bag lady maman and values her input. We talked on the phone for an hour and a half. My adult relationship with my adult son is really one of the most important things in my life.