Today,
I clean the kitchen.
I get a haircut.
I buy groceries.
I feel better. Hopeful.
When I walk in for my haircut today at West 23rd and 10th,
all four of the barbers smile and nod to me. (recognizing my loyal patronage)
This causes me some consternation. I know I should be glad for their kind respect, but i kind of wonder if it's not proof of my unchanging, static life.
I am loyal because I never make any changes.
I wait almost thirty minutes for Max, the same barber I've had for 10 years.
Max is from Moscow but now he lives in a neighborhood in Brooklyn (or Queens?) in a Russian community. He's tall, boyishly handsome and could easily be a model. Today he sports a flawless tan and his hair is cropped just so.
Afters he wraps a smock around me and we follow the ritual of Max asking my preferences (clippers or scissors, straight or natural back, parted on the right, short on the sides?) I ask Max about his kids. He tells me about their recent trip to Disney World. That's why he is so polished and tan today.
Max speaks with a delicate international accent. It could be French, it could be polish, it could be Hungarian.
"It's very cheap to vacation in Florida in May. After spring break, before the summer crowds. We stayed near Sea World and spent most of the time at a water park, close by. It was sunny and 94 degrees every day and ... it was fine with me."
His in-laws had planned a trip to Mexico but had to cancel at the last minute because of the Swine Flu.
"I think the media created the panic, not the flu, you know?"
I'm tempted to tell Max about my friends in Utah who had their school shut down because of multiple cases of the swine flu, but it would be too much work. To tell, to explain, to articulate. And what exactly do I know or want to say about the Swine flu?
Not much, not anything, really.
As Max describes the rides at Universal Studios, I am supine in his chair. I speak and nod and confirm, but my eyes are shut. Glued shut. Deliciously glued shut. Today I began taking my medication twice a day (before bed and now at noon) the pill creates a reckless drowsiness.
I can hear everything clearly in the barbershop but physically, I am neighborhoods away.
Through my haircut coma I ask Max if his kids liked Disney World.
"Did they behave?"
"My youngest boy broke down and cried on our last day and begged me to move the family to Orlando. Can you imagine me, supporting a family in Florida? S' Ridiculous...
This makes me think about how kids are at the mercy of their parent's actions. The beauty and freshness of Florida must be so enthralling to a nine year old. Why would any rational person want to live in the dirty confusion of New York? It must be so clear and obvious to Max's little boy. it's kind of heartbreaking. (in a way)
Max tells me how proud he was that he could give his kids this trip to Disney World.
"Something that they'll never forget. A memory that might inspire them to try a little harder in school " he tells me.
Somewhere in my sleepy consciousness, I'm jealous of Max's fatherly pride.
Being able to provide something memorable for your children. I want that. Wanted to experience that. But my envy is easily subdued by my own drama, by my own disease TV movie of the week.
As he leans in to trim my eyebrows, I think about Max.
I used to feel superior to Max because he's a recent immigrant and a barber. While I? Me? I'm an old timey American with a glamorous creative career or at least pieces of a glamorous creative career.
But when I see Max today, I don't feel superior at all. I feel like an English immigrant who got here sooner than my Russian barber but now my Russian barber is doing really well and I? well, I am down on my English luck.
We are all just part of the ragtime (or ragtag?) American machinery.
At the end of each haircut, you get a hot scented towel wrapped around your face and a short rubdown on the back of your neck.
I live for this hot towel. It alters my chemistry. I feel like I can actually SEE better after the hot scented towel rubdown.
I give Max his customary $5 dollar tip and think about lunch.
I bike to S'nice in the West Village (Hudson and the 13th?) I order coffee and a cheese, tomato, basil sandwich for $10. I call Christian from the cafe and we discuss his staying at my apartment. No need for him to come over (I offer), I'll leave him a key and notes of instruction taped to the kitchen counter!
This inspires me to bike to my obscenely overpriced grocery store on 42nd Street and buy staples. My kitchen is depressingly vacant. I circle the aisles for an hour and fill my cart like I'm planning a party. Why I can't I always shop like this? (I wonder)
I have $175 worth of groceries delivered. Mostly non-perishables, so that when Christian arrives to my apartment, he'll see that I am a responsible, capable, New Yorker with 2 boxes of baking soda, several jars of salsa, a twelve pack of diet coke and a various kinds of bottled water to finish the effect.
Peddling home, I stop at a fruit stand and buy six apples for $3.
I feel better. Hopeful.
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