Fred Astaire's Double-Breasted Lemon-Yellow Suit

Dreamed I’d been invited to some sort of academic conference in Manhattan.

Manhattan Island slanted in my dream—like you could get on a skateboard at Broadway and 220nd Street and roll gently all the way down to East 1st Street.

Also, the academic conference was an absolute disaster, a bunch of women sitting around a picnic table, and every single one of them except for me was having some sort of profound emotional breakdown.

The professor in charge had handed out this indecipherable agenda of the conference’s events, gibberish, really. But I felt sorry for her. I figured whatever university employed her had given her a budget for putting on these types of events, and she had completely wasted that budget.

So, I kept trying to get a one-on-one meeting with her. Even five minutes! I was going to offer to write her a paper about the conference, a deliverable she could take back to her university and wag in their face: See? There was value in what I was attempting.

We were supposed to be delivering oral summations.

But I figured a paper would be more tangible. I would phrase my offer as though she was the one doing me a favor: See, I write far more eloquently than I speak—

(/dream) for a moment here: That, by the way, is not true. In fact, I write almost exactly the way I speak, bizarre neologisms, big words (many of which I mispronounce) and all.

(dream again) But the professor was too distracted by the complete chaos erupting around her. She totally ignored me.

The woman who was having the most profound emotional breakdown was Black, and I wondered if her breakdown was related to the fact that she was feeling marginalized, so I went up to her and asked, When today’s session is over, I’m going to go for a walk down to Columbus Circle through the Park. Would you like to come with me?

But she totally ignored me, too.

And then I remembered that Columbus Circle was no longer the shoddy, cozy, ramshackle warren of diners and bookstores and dilapidated towers it had been when I was growing up; no, now it’s all gleaming, Trumpified skyscrapers and Rodeo Drive luxury franchises.

And I woke up.

###

I think the racial relations part of the dream must have been inspired by a conversation I had yesterday with Neighbor Ed.

“Honestly,” I said to Neighbor Ed yesterday, “I’m an old-school Martin Luthor King-style white liberal. I don’t see color. Robin DiAngelo hates me! Ichabod’s last two girlfriends were women of color, and I was over the moon thinking of my mixed-race unborn grandchildren. Surely, you must feel something like that, too—” because Neighbor Ed’s daughter is married to the son of immigrants from mainland China.

Neighbor Ed snorted. “If Ray”—his son-in-law—“makes one more nasty crack about white people, I’m going to punch him in the face. I worry about my grandchildren growing up in an environment like that.”

An aha! moment for me, for sure.

I hadn’t realized Ed felt that way.

Ray and Sarah, Ed’s daughter, are both high-achieving doctors, pulling down close to $500,000 a year.

I think this must be the reason why when Mrs. Neighbor Ed is making her biweekly visits to Providence, Rhode Island, where the grandchildren and their progenitors live, Neighbor Ed elects to stay home.

###

What else?

The only lipstick I’ve ever loved is Kat Von D’s Gothica Studded Kiss.

I cannot describe how much I love that lipstick—which they discontinued making some years back and which is no longer available in any outlet whatsoever. God knows, I’ve looked! On the Internet, in every drugstore in every backwater I’ve ever made a roadtrip to.

This lipstick…. I have olive skin. Most lipsticks make my skin look absolutely green unless I’m wearing foundation, which I don’t like to do unless I’m dressing up. Gothica Studded Kiss made me look like a pouty-lipped goddess!!!

Anyway, I finally broke down and ordered two other Kat Von D lipsticks from the world’s dwindling supply of Kat Von D lipsticks—because apparently, Kat Von D has moved on to worthier endeavors than supplying the world with fabulous lipsticks.

Those two lipsticks are scheduled to arrive today!

I am so excited.

Also, while I was half-assedly Remunerating yesterday, I amused myself by watching one of those ancient compilation movies they were so fond of making during the 1980s, something called That’s Dancing. In one dancing sequence, Fred Astaire wears this double-breasted lemon-yellow suit—



And I realized, OmyGAWD. I will never be happy on this planet until I own something that looks just like Fred Astaire’s double-breasted lemon-yellow suit!!!! And I want those oxfords, too!

So, it looks like I will be spending what’s left of my life in misery.