The Secret Worlds....

Sunday Memories: My First Time

How the past new years eves were spent I have no idea. There were no celebrations in our home, no watching our parents dress up for some party and no loud horns blowing at midnight. In our neighborhood, new years was celebrated in the fall and the only horn that blew was the shofar at sunset announcing the new year had begun and the fast of the Day of Atonement could be broken.

Then came high school in another neighborhood with kids from other neighborhoods. It was very exciting. Especially when one classmate announced that her brother who went to another school in still another neighborhood which had even more kids from even more neighborhoods was going to invite his friends and she could invite her friends and it would be a real co-ed new years eve party.

Then it got even better. The brother and sister lived right by Central Park and there was going to be a rock band playing so we would even go dancing. Boys, dancing, new years eve. This all added up to one thing. Kissing.

Other than my insistence that Florence kiss me or my kissing my father good-bye in the morning, kissing-kissing was non-existent in my corner of the Lower East Side. However, Didi, a classmate who was also invited to the party had kissed. She dragged me into the girls bathroom of the 6th Avenue Horn and Hardart.

"Ok! If he [imaginary love of my life boy] goes like this..." and she tilted her head inches away from mine..."then you go like this..." and I tilted my head the other way.

"Now, if he goes like this..." and she moved straight into my face..."Then you tilt like this..."

We practiced. Tilting one way and then the other always stopping inches away from one another. I was 13 years old. I was ready.

The parents were welcoming but the only thing that mattered were the boys. It began to rain as we headed to Central Park. I don't remember anything about the music except that it called all of us to dance and dance and dance in tons of puddles and the cute boy with the sweet smile was great to dance with.

What happened after that belongs to the fog that embraced me for years before and years after, surrounding any event that was overwhelming and too upsetting to me. But some vague details remain. There were some negotiations with the other boys and girls to allow cute boy and me kiss in the bedroom the boys were suppose to sleep in. And that first kiss and the couple we got in after were dazzling and breathtaking and I felt things I had never felt before and was really really enjoying myself when a tall lean and very angry parental figure appeared.

The party was over.

It Was...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...






...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...






...it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...






.,.it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...


It was....

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
English novelist (1812 - 1870)

May the New Year offer us all a time we always dreamed of.
CO Moed

The Art of Undressing

It was a good question.

Standing there, dripping wet from freezing rain, O'Keefe pointed out that with such lousy weather and cold subway platforms and packed subway cars and overheated apartments (but never when you wanted heat), it was hard to know what to keep on and what to take off at any given moment.

Was there ever room in rush hour to hold one's coat on one's lap? Did coats get fatter since we were kids sitting in our polite wool coats on the IND line? The puffed coats we now all seem to wear make us look like packing peanuts in a box.

What about taking shoes off at friend's doorways? I remember taking off boots if the weather was awful, but not other times. Now custom seems to dictate all kinds of footwear taken off in all kinds of weather which also seems to dictate wearing socks or feet not horrendously shabby.

There seemed to be no answer except to overheat or strip.

Sunday Memories: The Road Less Traveled

It's a vague memory from another time and place. But I dimly recall our odd little family - a mother father older sister and me - striking out into the empty city on Christmas Day.

It wasn't our holiday and for weeks we had relinquished the streets to activity only done for our birthdays. Now with everyone tucked into family traditions never done in our home on any day of the year, we walked the streets and traveled the subways relishing a city solely ours until New Years.

Blood On The Tracks

It was so cold and so late and so far uptown, at least so far uptown when it was that cold and that late.

Everyone did the precarious tipping over like a little teapot and staring down the dark tunnel hoping the IRT would zoom into sight because all our eyeballs were magnets and it couldn't resist the pull.

And then I saw the MTA guy walking the tracks, swinging his lantern and flashing his flashlight. He moved slow, scrutinizing every inch of all the metal and concrete and third rail and pools of floating garbage. Nothing broke his slow, steady stride, not even the rat running across his path in an attempt to avoid him. Behind him were three other men, also swinging lanterns and flashing flashlights and walking slow.

I got that sinking feeling of oh shit the way they're walking no train will be coming like forever.

Then in slow motion the first guy waved his lantern. A train had appeared.

The guys casually began to move toward the pillars. The train tooted its horn.

"Hey, what are you looking for?" I asked.

He wasn't even near his pillar. Just stopped and gave me a long look. Then said, "Everything."

At his feet was the body of a dead rat lying in a pool of blood.

"Like that?" I asked

Another long look. The train was practically in the station. "Yeah. A lot of those."

And with that he disappeared into pillars and the blur of a train headed downtown.

It Was Like Grand Central Station In There*

"Where do I get the subway?"
"How do I get to New Haven?"
"Where do I get the subway?"
"Is it on track 42?"
"Where do I get the subway?"
"How do I get to JFK?"
"The subway is where?"


"I'll walk you there."


"Look! Look!"


*the common description of any place crazy busy mischugah