I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon

Cucumber Patch, Tucson AZ by Felix Pasilis
"I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon"

written Monday 8/22/05

I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon. Yes Sophia was 15 minutes late to pick me up, which is ordinarily nothing, but I had dressed for it. A pretty black velvet skirt with a pattern on it, a gold scooped-neck sleeveless silk top, and a bra. It was sweltering in the house and blazing outside. The outfit was perfect to wear for the air conditioned conference room where the meeting was held, but too hot to wear to wait outside or to lie down on bed in front of a fan. All I could do was stand at the door impatiently.

I had pictured the lunch taking place in the hotel restaurant, I didn't know it would be in a conference room. Hotel restaurants in Tucson are light-filled beautiful places, atriums with plants growing, and skylights, and very fancy. A conference room is a big room with not a single window. When you arrived you line up at the desk to pay the money and get your nametag.

And the whole room was filled with big round tables, and it was filled to the brim. I was starving because I hadn't eaten a thing so I could have a lot of lunch, and I asked “when do they serve the food?” since all that was at the table was iced water and iced tea. She said “usually pretty quickly” and I said “good.” Sophia had forgotten her notebook so I asked the man for pad of paper and pen for Sophia so she could take notes and he brought it to Sophia. I was overjoyed, I was still trying to make it up to her for being crabby in the car.

As soon as we looked into the sea of faces we saw Steve, who leads our writers group. He was at the table to the left, and he waved to both of us, and said “there are two chairs here.” It was very full, maybe those were the only chairs.

When we sat down I recognized one woman and then I recognized the other. One said to me “didn't you go to Steve's writing meeting?” and I said “yes.”

And then I recognized the other. I said “are you Grandma, you wrote the children's book?” And she said “thank you for remembering.”

She is the one who wrote “Stories By Grandma,” and a print-on-demand company had accepted it. And she said she was going to merchandise it by sitting at the mall with her books and a sign saying “Meet Grandma.”

I felt very comfortable being at the table with Steve at the center of it, Grandma on one side, and Grandma's friend from the meeting at the other side. Next to me was a woman who was slender, made up, tad glamorous with lots of make-up, and a whole lot of very fancy jewelry. She said “I am Lala, we just moved to Tucson in June from Denver when it was 110 here.”

My heart went out to her instantly. On June 29th the temp went up to 113 and stayed there for a solid month. By the time the huge heat finally calmed down and went back to 108, it was monsoon season, humidity was added to the heat, that girl must think she moved to hell.

I said “it's not always like this, you will appreciate there is no winter at all, and at least you have the summer over, I moved here in November and each time someone asked 'how do you like Tucson?' and I said 'I love it,' they said 'have you spent a summer here?' and then they would scare me about the summer.”

Then the M.C. went to the mike and the meeting started. And I thought “what about the food, I am starving.” I thought “I am not going to like this one bit, having a meeting when I can't wait to eat.” He opened up with two jokes. “What is the difference between a publisher and a terrorist?” Answer “You can negotiate with a terrorist.” I laughed my head off, and my happiness soared.

Suddenly I realized what this is all about. We are all writers here, and we have all had our ups and downs with publishers, we are in the same boat. Everything I had been thru, they all had been thru, we had a lot in common that I had in common with no one else. Instead of being isolated people beaten down by rejection letters, we were all together having a banquet and celebrating ourselves, making merry about what we had been thru. The second joke was “How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer, “One to write the mystery and one to give it the final twist.” I loved it and I laughed my head off. I was now a perfectly happy girl.

Then he did success stories, "Anyone who has a success story in past month come up to the mike.” There were only 2, one had gotten a story he wrote about an experience he had 25 years ago published in an anthology. Actually I recognized the name of that magazine, it is political. Another man, totally delighted with himself, showed us the book he just had published by print-on-demand. He was thrilled with the book and said now it is up to him to sell it himself and he will, and he hopes a real publisher will take it. I cheered both men wildly for their success. I was 100 per cent on the side of those in my own boat. I had never been with those in my own boat before.

Then the MC asked how many people are here for the first time, Sophia and I raised our hands. I didn't get to see who else did, Lala did. And when the MC said the table of invited speakers gets to line up first for the food, he said our table gets to line up second because we have the most newcomers. I was overjoyed.

On line I asked Lala what she writes. She said “suspense.” She has written 4 books already and it looks like this latest one will get published, she is in negotiations.

I said “what is suspense?”

And she said “a mystery is where you don't know who did the murder, but in suspense everyone knows who did it except the main character.”

I said “that is a very fine distinction.”

And I pointed out “with the mystery novels written nowadays, the mystery seems to be the least of it, someone gets murdered in the first chapter and then for the whole rest of the book it doesn't figure in at all, and then in the last chapter we find out who did it, and it is always some character you didn't even remember being in the book at all, the story works just because it is fun to read.”

I helped myself to salad and dressing, just two small pieces of roast beef, a nice portion of the vegetable lasagna, and six of the tiny roasted potatoes with herbs on it. They had taken away the steam tray of the hot vegetables to return it with a fresh one, so I didn't get to take any of that. I took a dinner roll with a hard crust and put butter on it. At the dessert table I took a lot of fruit. The cakes looked delicious but I thought I would wait.

When I got back to the table the man came around with coffee and I said yes. The food was scrumptious. I didn’t eat my roast beef, I had taken that for the dogs. And when I had finished my food I went back to get more roast beef for the dogs. I had brought a plastic bag in my purse to slip it into. I helped myself to another small portion of the vegetable lasagna, two slices of cantaloupe, and a piece of the lemon cake. I was actually full but the lasagna, the cantaloupe, and cake were so yummy I ate it anyway. The hot coffee was really good, I dipped my roll and butter in that. It was great meal. And then I surreptitiously slipped the roast beef into the plastic bag in my purse.

Sophia and Lala talked while we were eating. Lala told Sophia how she had arrived in June when it was 110, and Sophia said where did you come from and Lala said Denver. And Lala asked Sophia where she is from. “You are not from Tucson” and Sophia said “Poland.” And Sophia told Lala that “in Polish lala means dull.” And Lala said that is not her real name. And then they talked about their children. And Sophia got to tell Lala about her brand new grandson born two weeks ago. And Lala said she can’t wait to have grandchildren but it doesn’t look on the agenda.

And then the meeting started up again. A woman said she is just back from New York City and she is a member of the writers union, and she will fight for us to have health care and fight for us with publishers, and the writers union is all about fighting. I tuned her out. I am not into fighting, and my problem is not fighting with publishers, my problem is I can’t find one for love or money, plus I have my Higher Self, I don’t need a writers’ union lawyer to fight for me. The second woman who spoke was a producer of films and Sophia is a screenwriter, I am sure she took notes, she is looking for a producer.

Then we did new members introduce yourself. Lala told how she arrived when it was 110, and she is suspense writer, and how her new book Sidney Sheldon in Hollywood became her friend and he is pushing it so she thinks this one will get published. And she belonged to a wonderful writers group like this in Denver and she found this one on internet and she is overjoyed to have found it.

I was next. I said I was a writer back in New York City and I did not get published, and when I moved to Tucson 12 years ago my interests changed and I did not write, but I met Sophia at the pool and she took me to Steve’s group at Barnes and Noble, and next day I went back to writing, and Steve told me and Sophia to come here, so now we are here.

Next, a man stood up and said he wanted to write a book on meditation so he made his own book, he stretched out the clothesline all thru the house and made the book. Then he gave it to his friends and relatives and they said it is boring. He showed us the book. So then he did another book, called “How to Make a Book.” He stretched the clothesline in the house even longer and made a lot of books. He showed us the book. So then his wife got excited, and wrote a book, “All About My Life,” and he stretched out the clothesline again, and showed us his wife’s book. And he said “a few months ago we got a computer, that made new things possible, so now I did a book with glossy pages and color.” And he showed that one. And I cheered wildly.

And then a man stood up and said he wrote a book about a young man in the barrio, and since he is spiritual, that is also in the book. At first the young man is immature and then he matured. And I knew the story was autobiography, but the man did not say that. And I was interested to read his book.

And then a woman stood up and said she just did her book, “Illegals, Who needs them, I do.” And she said how she and her husband have a 500 acre avocado farm and they could not get anyone to do the labor and the illegals came and they hired them. And not only did the illegals do the farm work, but the contractor had quit building their house, so the illegals pitched in to building their house. And it was the most glorious house in the world, with trees growing everywhere in the house and skylights. She held up her book, and said the pictures of the house are in the book. And she said how she and her husband became very close to the illegals and their families and they all helped each other.

And I swooned. I was immensely touched. What that woman said went right into my heart, I was grateful beyond measure she wrote that book.

And after that I was ready to leave. We had been there close to two hours. The MC was introducing the guest speaker of the meeting. I’m sure the guest speaker was wonderful. She was going to read from her novel and answer questions. But I had a perfect experience and I felt completed. I went into the hotel lobby to ask if I could call my husband to pick me up.

She was so nice to me. She dialed the phone number for me. Bill picked it up right away. He said “I am watching the Cardinals play.” I said “can you pick me up, I had a great time, but I don’t want to stay, we can go to Robinson May and exchange your hat and I can exchange the skirt which is too big for the size smaller and then we can go swimming.” He said “I am on my way.” “I am sorry about you missing the game” I said. He said “it’s probably rerun from last night but I didn’t know it was on.”

I sat outside and smoked a cigarette while I was waiting for him. And then I went back inside to be in the air conditioning. The woman at the desk said “would you like bottled water” and she brought out a bottle of ice cold bottled water. I said “thank you.” Just then I saw Bill drive up.

“The meeting was great” I said to Bill “it was really great, I had a wonderful time, I want to go back next month.” “Good” he said “good.” He said “I got the coach of the Wildcats to sign my hat at the scrimmage last night so now I want a new Wildcats hat, the Nike hat I bought yesterday is attractive but I want a real Wildcats hat, they are my team.” So we drove to El Con mall.

I know exactly why the Southwest Authors Luncheon was great. Because it was an academy awards lunch. We, who write passionately diligently every day, and meet nothing but rejection when we send our work to publishers, awarded ourselves, we gave ourselves a banquet. Waiters came around and refilled our coffee cups. Iced tea with lemon was served to us. The most delicious chocolate cake I ever saw was set up on the dessert tray. We got to be convivial at our table. And hear from our fellows at the microphone.

This is a miraculous and blessed thing....



"Joan thinking" by HaikuHelen
"I am going to the Southwest Authors buffet lunch at the Plaza Hotel today"

Sunday morning 8/21/05

I had not gone back to my writing for 12 years, the whole time I lived in Tucson, till Sophia took me to the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble this past April and I went back to my writing the next day. Usually by end of month I have fallen into old habits, but each time I show up at the meeting, the next morning I am back at my machine, giving writing serious whirl.

There may not be an apparent reason why showing up at Barnes and Noble at 7 pm on 3rd Wednesday of every month to listen to Steve tell us how to get published, is what got Anne back to her writing, and is what keeps Anne at it, but that is how it worked out for me.

So that is why I am not going to predict what going to the 20 dollar buffet Authors luncheon at Plaza Hotel today will bring into my life. I do not know. All I know is I am going. Steve says this is how we network and we have to network. The whole concept of networking baffles me. "What does networking mean?" I asked at the meeting before this one. "Meeting people" Steve said. I'm fine with meeting people, I like to meet people.

My own experience tho is things which help me come from unexpected people in unexpected ways. It is because Sally talked to me in pool about the books she read all the time, and then would lend me the books. And when Sue arrived in Tucson she joined the conversation. So I lent her the books Sally had lent me. And when I xeroxed the story about swimming in the Adirondacks as a kid for my mom, a story I had written back in NYC, I made two extra copies for Sue and Sally. That wasn't the story Sue fell passionately in love with, it was the other one, and she said 10 times "you have to go back to your writing Anne, I want more stuff to read."

And Sophia overheard it and told me about the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble, and day after that I was back at my writing. It is unexpected in various ways cause Sally whose whole life is reading books and loving them so much, and because of her passion for reading I made the story for her, Sue was just an afterthought. And Sally did not get my writing at all, she was tremendously disappointed when she read it.

It is the oddest experience I ever had to be in the midst of that 3 way conversation where Sally said to Sue "her writing is a big nothing" and Sue said "no it's not, it is genre writing, genre writing is for a small limited audience who likes that kind of writing."

I didn't care what Sue said to Sally about it because she had lent my stories to her friends. Whereas Sally was overjoyed the clutter was out of the house when I said "you can return it to me after you read it, you don't have to be stuck with it in the house."

Sophia wasn't even in any of these conversations so how she learned I was a writer and got the idea to invite me to the Barnes and Noble writers meeting on how to get published I don't know. But that is what happened and is how I got back into writing.

Hahaha I guess it all came from networking at the swimming pool.

Steve’s Great Writers Meeting Last Night

Tucson by Felix Pasilis
Steve’s Great Writers Meeting Last Night
(A breath of spring)
March, 17, 2006

Last night was the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble on how to get published. There hasn’t been one since October. There was supposed to be one last month, and I showed up, but it turned out to be false alarm, no one showed up but me.

This time Steve, the leader, was already there when I arrived and so were two other women. By the time the meeting started there were two more women and one man, and when I looked up there was Sophia.

And by the time we finished introducing ourselves, saying our name and what we write, there was actually a whole crowd of people, mostly men, who had brought up chairs and were sitting behind Steve.

By then Steve had launched into his spiel, so we never got to hear their names and what they write, which is too bad. I was sitting next to Steve at the table and when he took a breath in his spiel I told him there were so many sitting behind him. It was my hint he might want to ask them to introduce themselves too. But instead he said “I am surrounded” and went back to his spiel.

They all left before the meeting broke up so I never got to meet them or hear anything about them, which is too bad since I like hearing what people write.

The woman next to me writes short stories, but none of them are related to each other. When Steve suggested she turn them into a novel, “a novel is just a whole bunch of stories” Steve said, she said “I don’t know how to do it, because they are not related to each other in any way.” I think her name is Ellie. I liked her.

Across from Ellie was Betsy. Betsy said she had been writing a memoir but then a friend of hers committed suicide because he was scared to death. She said it began as a family fight over money and what scared him to death turned out to be a hoax but he didn’t know that. By that time he was no longer in the world. Betsy said she had been a drug counselor and also addicted to drugs herself and her memoir had been about her experiences as a drug counselor, but now she was writing this book instead.

Her big concern is that because it is about someone else’s life not hers, about getting the details right. She said instead of calling it “a true story” she is now going to call it “based on a true story” or “inspired by” then she doesn’t have to worry about being perfectly accurate. Also she said she is so one-sided about it, she is on his side, that she offered a famous author to help her write it, so it would take in both sides. I don’t know if she has heard back from the famous author.

An attractive woman had quizzed Steve before she introduced herself. “Let’s hear about you” she said, “what have you published? Have you been published by a real place or just vanity press?”

Steve said the book he has had published is about his own flying experiences and it was published by a subdivision of Random House.

“O” she said, “I got the impression from the flier you were just published by a vanity press.” She said she has not started to write yet, but she wants to.

The woman next to her said she is a poet and also an artist and a few other things. She has those dismal looks of a poet in a comic book. Thin, bedraggled, long hair which did not look attractive, and an unhappy mien. She was not a walking advertisement for her poetry. She looked like someone who could be cast in a play as an unhappy poet writing unhappy poetry. She is definitely someone who needs to spruce herself up a bit, put her hair up, put on a little lipstick, smile, and wear a pretty dress. And a little jewelry to bring herself some sparkle.

Sophia is a beautician and of course she looked beautiful as always. When Steve talked about the new book he is writing about a menage-a-trois, he said the devastating femme fatale looks just like Sophia. Sophia perked up.

Steve really wanted to write his second book about a particular airplane he is in love with, but all his friends told him “O no not another airplane book, we want to read about people.”

So instead Steve is writing about this menage-a-trois where “the man is totally insensitive to women, sees them as just another notch on his belt,” according to Steve, and the devastating femme fatale looks just like Sophia.

Personally I think Steve should write the book about the airplane he is love with instead of about these people he doesn’t like. But Steve is finding it such an intriguing challenge to write this book, so why not.

He said he began it as a romance novel, there is huge market for romance novels. He said the audience for romance novels is girls between the age of 15 and 17, because after 17 they start to have their own experiences and prefer that to reading about the experiences of others. He was told to put in 3 explicit sex scenes, he wrote two and has to write another. He finds them very hard to write.

Between you and me, I think it would be a more interesting book if Steve wrote his experiences trying to write this book. It all just sounds so far-out to me. Here is Steve working for Hughes Aircraft, trying to write a romance novel which exactly meets the criteria of romance novels for 15 year-olds.

There was also a man at our table. He said he kept a journal when he lived in a Far Eastern country, I forget which country it was now, it is one of those names which are obscure to me, and he would like to turn the journal into a book. He looked like a nice man and I bet his experiences were interesting.

A lot of the advice Steve gave on how to get published is not very usable for me. For instance Steve said he got sick and tired of writing query letters to publishers, and he realized if you take over a wheelbarrow of money you can get someone to do all that for you. They will write the query letters, they will find you an agent, they will edit your book, etc etc. Apparently there are a lot of people in Tucson who will do everything for you to get published if you just bring over a wheelbarrow of money.

Altho who knows, maybe I will win the lottery, and I can do what Steve is doing. Take over the book I wrote back in NYC and wheelbarrow of money, and dump it all in someone else’s lap, for a small fortune they will do it all for me.

Steve did say something which really made me perk up tho. He said the Southwest Authors Society has a workshop for two days once a year, where agents arrive from all over the country and critique your work. I don’t know how much it costs, all of Steve’s suggestions involve money.

He said he watched thru the door while his friend DR was having her work critiqued by the agent. He said “DR had her head in her hands the whole time so I thought it was bad news” but instead the agent took both of DR’s books, he bought them on the spot.

This meant a lot to me, because at my second meeting at Barnes and Noble Steve was absent, and he had sent DR to fill in for him. She told us how she got her first book published but how she cannot get her two new books published for love or money. Each time she sends them out they come right back.

She said “one just came back this morning” but she has to buck up and send it right back out again, but it is wearing her down.

I totally identified with her experience of how it is wearing her down. I had been in that boat and I had given up. I had decided it was all futile. But here a year later, Steve reports that by going to the Southwest Authors workshop a literary agent bought both her books. I would gladly save my pennies for the $250 for the workshop if I thought it would work out that way for me too.

In fact I would be willing to complete a second manuscript by the time the next workshop rolls around in September. Why can’t lightning strike twice, for DR and for Anne.

Steve also said small presses have come into their own during the past recent years. This is news to me. All my experience with trying to get published comes from my years living in NYC. 14 years have now gone by and I am beginning to understand huge changes have taken place in publishing world.

What I learned from my experience back then no longer applies, there have been developments. Steve made it very clear big publishing houses don’t want books, except for how-to books, or mysteries, or romance, but small presses do want books.

A man who was just traveling thru Tucson, he had arrived to help his mom, she is having operation, he travels around in his RV and has just come back from fishing in Mexico, said “Anne, there are small presses in Tucson, why don’t you just go down there and talk to the people.”

He also said “the key thing is just to have something out there published in any way, after that you can talk to people because you have something published.”

He said “even if you publish it yourself, it makes no difference, at least it is out there.”

He also told me that my manuscript from New York City which I had put on the big floppy discs which everyone used back then, I don’t have to retype for smaller disc, there is a place in Tucson which transfers the disc for you. This was an answer to a prayer. As for the whole past year I was wondering how I was going to force myself to face retyping all those New York City stories again. I don’t know who that man is, I don’t remember his name, but he was an angel who showed up at our writers meeting in Barnes and Noble last night, who had a lot of solutions for me.

When the meeting was over the woman next to me, the one who is also a short story writer, said “would it embarrass you Steve if we applauded.”

We all did. It was a great meeting.

And she said “O Steve you are blushing.”

Teaching Sophia email and remembering Alfredo Leonardi

Tucson painting by Felix Pasilis

Friday May 20 2005 Tucson AZ

I had a great time helping Sophia yesterday. We had fun. She picked me up exactly on time and the ride there was enjoyable and fast. Her sweet dog was there to greet us. I sat down in chair in computer room, and Sophia brought in from the car the plastic bag containing the items she had just bought herself at Value Village that morning.

First she tried on the jacket, it was champagne silk and fitted her perfectly. Either it was brand new or had just been dry cleaned, it was exquisite. It was 3 dollars but today is half price day. “$1.50!” she exclaimed with huge glee.

The blue cotton blouse was also lovely. It was the shade of blue of the sky and a very nice cotton. Like what you'd wear on a yacht. This had been two dollars but at half price was one dollar. Sophia was ecstatic about the blouse and the price.

The two white tops were lovely too. One was simple but elegant white cotton pullover sweater. The other was elegant white sweatshirt for walking Seema on winter mornings when it is cold. “50 cents each” Sophia announced with joy. “I will take you to Value Village” she said. “I don't have very much money to live on” Sophia said, “I like Value Village.”

We had talked about money in the car on way over. She said she appreciated me helping her because she doesn't have the $35 or $40 to pay someone to do what I do. When we sat down at the computer Sophia said she has a perfect life but she doesn't have enough money, all she wants is more money.

“Me too” I said, “I want more money. I am playing the lottery.”

Sophia got very excited. “It is 17 million now, I will buy 5 tickets.”

I said “I buy 4 tickets each week.”

She said “if either of us wins let's split it, half for you half for me.”

And I said “Great! Sophia, we double our chances.”

This time Sophia was in charge of the whole lesson which went so well, she knew exactly what she wanted. First we went to email and she said “I will write an email, I will write to Bal.”

This is the guy she is in love with. She remembered perfectly how to do it. She got out her pad and paper and wrote “I was happy to hear your voice this morning, it brought me big joy, I would love to see you now.” Something along these lines, more mushy. It was a love letter. “Love, Sophia.”

After Bal she did not know who to write to. First she said “I will write to Mark,” that is her son, then she changed her mind. Then she said “I know who I will write to” and she looked all over the kitchen for the address and could not find it.

We tried spell-check on her letter to Bal so she could learn spell-check. I was totally shocked at AOL spell-check. This letter only had 18 words in it. But they picked up every time she had left two spaces between a word and also there were a lot of punctuation errors. The only spelling they picked up was the spelling of his name and her name, which of course she spelled right.

So then Sophia decided I should teach her internet. She had used the word internet interchangeably before for everything, which had thrown me off. She used the word internet when she meant computer. “Teach me internet” she had originally said, when she meant teach me the computer. Then “teach me internet” she said when she meant email. But I think this time she actually meant internet.

I couldn't figure out on the AOL browser how to get into internet, so I just had her type google on top of the page we were in, and google showed up. So then I knew my way around. I said “ok Sophia let's pretend we wanted to find out about the Racquet Club.” The Racquet Club is the club Sophia and I both belong to and where we met.

“You type in 'Tucson Racquet Club' and we will see it.” Neither of us knew how to spell racquet. Sophia wrote it down on her pad, and I said “I think there is a 'c' in there, let's try it.”

In the course of doing this Sophia learned how to go forward to next page and back to previous page. We found Racquet Club and she read off all about our club.

Then I said “let's look up the guy I was friends with before I met Bill, he was Italian from Rome who was a film director, if we can find his email on google I can write an email to him asking if he will read your screenplay.”

Sophia was totally into this and so was I. So I wrote down his name on her pad for her to type in, Alfredo Leonardi, and we googled it. There seemed to be a lot of movies directed by Alfredo Leonardi and starring Marco Leonardi, who I figured was the little boy, his son, when his wife came at the end of his visit to NYC and they went back to Rome together. Finally one of the entries was for a film collective in SoHo in Manhattan which lists Alfred Leonardo movies to buy and the film collective had an email.

So I said “OK finally an email address, I will write to them and ask them to forward it to Alfredo Leonardo.” “Great” Sophia said. So she got up and I sat down in her computer chair. And I composed my email outloud as I was writing it. At the top I wrote “will you kindly forward this email to Alfredo Leonardi since we were old friends.”

Then I wrote, “Dear Alfredo, do you remember me” and I wrote my maiden name. And I said how I had stayed in the same apartment in the East Village in Manhattan where he had visited me for very long time till I moved to Tucson Arizona. That I met my husband a year after he returned to Rome. That I remembered the nice times we had, going to the beach together, and when I jumped out of the canoe.

I said how my friend Sophia wrote a screenplay and is he willing to read it. Would he send it to another director if it is not for him. And I gave my own email address cause I said I am on Sophia's computer. And would he write back and say hi to me because it would be fun for us to say hi again. And I sent my love to his wife and son.

Both Sophia and I were delighted with my email. I changed the font to make it prettier and then I did spell-check which picked up one mistake. I had said “I am no longer wild but I am not conventional.” And I had put two “i's” in wild. So spell-check corrected that. I showed Sophia how spell-check takes out the misspelled word and replaces it with the rightly spelled word, she was impressed.

We were both satisfied with my letter. “I hope the gallery sends it to him” Sophia said. “I hope so too” I said. And Sophia was lost in awe at what internet could do. She saw with her own two eyes here was someone I knew in the '60s and because of internet I was able to write an email to him. I even think we might have found his own real email if Sophia had had the patience to press all the different entries for him. But this was a start, even if the email doesn't get to him, Sophia got an idea of what internet can do, which was the point of the lesson.

And of course it was tremendous fun for me to be writing to my old friend Alfredo Leonardi. We had been best friends, I have total warmth for him, and I never would have emailed him except for Sophia wanting someone in the film industry to read her screenplay.

I am curious if Alfredo will write back. I have never kept track of the boys who walked in and out of my life before I met Bill. At the time of course I was involved with the boys I had crushes on, and the boys who were just my best friends I didn't think so much about. But now I don't remember so well the boys I had crushes on and I remember perfectly the ones who were just my best friends, because those are the ones I shared my life with.

Alfredo and I hit it off right from the start because we were so relaxed with each other. He wasn't at all what I expected when Anna from Rome, who I had met the week before in the laundromat and who invited me to a party at her apartment that evening, said she had given my phone number to her friend Alfredo, who was film director from Rome.

This was the time of Marcello Mastroianni, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc. I thought I was being fixed up on a blind date with Marcello Mastroianni. I guess he must have met me at school where I taught and then we walked over to a luncheonette nearby for our date. And he was not one bit like an Italian movie star. He was very diminutive to start off, and he strikes me now as looking English somehow with his rolled-up black umbrella as he waited for me. I guess he wore dapper clothes too.

But since he didn't look like a movie star and I was not attracted to him I relaxed instantly. And for some odd reason that I can't explain we totally hit it off in the luncheonette on Grand Street. It was an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, the neighborhood was like my Jewish neighborhood back in Queens except they were all orthodox. I guess it was a good setting for me to relax in.

And all I can say is from that moment till he left for Rome, or to be more exact when his wife and little boy arrived at the end of his NYC sojourn, Alfredo and I were inseparable.

What I did was take Alfredo with me to everything I did in my life, except go to work. He couldn't come to women's liberation meetings with me because those were all women, but I took him to everything else, and I guess we had our meals together in the restaurant on Avenue A too.

When I went to the beach on long Island on weekends with Helen and my girlfriends I took Alfredo. His bathing suit totally embarrassed me. He wore a teeny weenie white bikini men’s bathing suit. I didn't say a word but Alfredo looked around Jones Beach and said “I see I am the only one wearing a bathing suit like this.” “Yes!” I said pointedly.

When Marilyn called up me and Helen to invite us to the week-end conference for socialist Jews at a bungalow colony in the Catskills, I invited Alfredo. I have no idea what Marilyn's group was all about. We went to the meetings and there were big fights. But I had only wanted to spend a weekend in the country. That is when Helen and me and Alfredo paddled in the canoe and smoked pot and I got stoned, took off my clothes, and swam naked to shore.

I alluded to this in the email I wrote him from Sophia's computer yesterday, since he had told me next morning it had made a big impression on him. I thought what made a big impression on him was my adventurous act of jumping out of canoe and swimming to shore. But when he detailed the big impression, it wasn't about what I had done, it was about me naked. Because we were just best friends and not boyfriend and girlfriend, I had not let him finish telling me how much he had enjoyed that.

But when I was writing a “remember-me” email all those years later, I figured that would reawaken his memory if he forgot me.

The last time I saw Alfredo was at Lynn's party. His wife and little son were there, and his wife was blond and pretty and wore wrap-around skirt and was very interested in women's liberation. She was a very nice girl. Alfredo and I really were two ships which pass in the night. It was easy come, easy go. He waltzed into my life so easily, he waltzed out of it so easily. It never occurred to me to try to hold on to the friendship.

In fact I never gave him a thought after he left till I was writing a story about my days with Helen in women's liberation, and I remembered how Alfredo, me, and Helen had gone to that conference at the bungalow colony, and that brought back my time with Alfredo to my mind.

And I remembered him again when Sophia said she is looking for someone in the film industry. And I thought I know an Italian film director....

Nancy Cantor

GALLERY FLOWERS Layla Edwards

Thursday, Thanksgiving, November 23, 2006

I dreamt about Nancy Cantor all night. She was my first friend after college. I graduated college in August. I had to spend that extra summer studying for the finals I had not taken during finals week in June and doing term papers. It was a wild summer, the “Summer of Love”. And I had sublet an apartment for the summer on the corner of St Marks Place. My friend from college, Francine, roomed with me. I was stoned the whole summer and do not know how I managed to take those finals and write those papers. But by end of summer I did, and I got my degree. And then immediately found a job at The Riverdale Children’s Agency.

I had gone down for that job because the year before Wendy had worked there. Sometimes I would meet her in Central Park during her lunch hour, right by the Agency, it was at 79th and Madison Avenue. Because Wendy worked there I thought it would be a nice place to work. So I interviewed and they hired me. The woman in charge, Mrs. Streeter, liked me in the interview and hired me. Olive Streeter, the name comes back to me now.

The weekend before I was going to start work, a friend I had been a camp counselor with 3 summers before, invited me to go swimming in Rye, New York, where his parents had their home and where he was staying for the summer. He picked me up in his car at St Marks Place and First Avenue, and I must have worn my bikini under my sundress, because I remember taking off my dress in the car to show him my new bikini (it was my first bikini) and he said “will it stay up?”

Ken-- his name was Ken-- Ken Adler. I always felt very close to him because one of the times when he had invited me to his parents’ house in Rye so I could swim in the bay there, we had been swimming and he said “Anne I have a cramp in my leg, I can’t make it back to shore.” And I said “put your hands on my shoulders, I’ll swim under you and swim you back to shore,” which I did. At dinner that night he told his parents, “Anne saved me, she rescued me in the water.” And they said “O really” and the conversation moved on. For all the huge drama which goes on in learning how to be a junior life saver when I was 11 years old, all the huge dramatic rescues I did when we took turns playing the victim, the one actual rescue I did was the quietest simplest thing which ever happened. I swam him to shore, he said “thank you,” he told his parents at dinner, and it was clear nobody believed us, and that was that.

On my previous visits I had stayed in his big sister’s room and it was a beautiful room. Their whole house was a mansion, which made visiting there so much fun for me. I loved swimming in the bay, I liked Ken Adler a lot, and I found it a lot of fun to stay in a mansion, and in the bedroom of this princess sister, it was a bedroom for a princess.

This was the last time I visited there. And on my last day the Princess herself arrived. I finally got to meet her, Margie Adler. And when Ken drove me back to the city, Margie was in the car with us. And when I mentioned I start work the next day at Riverdale Children’s Agency, Margie turned to her brother and said “Isn’t that where Nancy Cantor works?” Apparently a friend of Margie’s named Nancy Cantor worked there and I got so excited.

I was thrilled with the fairy tale princess Margie. I barely knew her, just that car ride back to the city, but I had stayed in her princess bedroom 3 times. In my mind she was Princess Charming. So naturally I saw Nancy Cantor as an extension of her, it was the next best thing to being friends with Margie.

When I arrived the first morning I asked the girl at reception where you check in, “is Nancy Cantor here?” And she said “Nancy is on vacation, she will be back in a week.” And I waited the whole week, and then sat by reception when the week was over, to wait for Nancy. Each woman who arrived, I thought “is that Nancy?” Finally one woman arrived and the woman at reception said “that is Nancy Cantor.” So I followed her up the steps, and said, “I am a friend of Margie Adler's, she told me you work here.” Nancy said “I just got back from Nantucket, I rode my bicycle everywhere, I am lost without my bicycle.” That was our first conversation.

Nancy says now she tried to give me the brush-off because I had said I was friend of Margie Adler’s and she couldn’t stand Margie Adler. But I had waited a whole week to meet Nancy, I wanted to be friends with her, I did not notice her attempts at brush-off. Yes she seemed a little aloof, but I didn’t know her then, whatever aloof things she did I assumed was part of how she was. It never crossed my mind I was being brushed off. I said “let’s have lunch together.”

Nancy took me to the Madison Avenue Pub which I loved. I had never eaten in a place like that before, I felt so sophisticated. The cheeseburger was scrumptious. And Nancy told me she lived a block away. She had a small apartment in a brownstone around the corner from Madison Avenue. Over lunch we totally hit it off. And Nancy and I remain best friends to this day.

Sometimes I had lunch with all the other girls who worked there, which was a lot of fun. I liked the place we all had lunch in, I would order a chocolate egg cream or vanilla egg cream with my lunch, and I loved all the girls, they were great. One of them even turned out to be the big sister of a girl who had been in the clique way back at camp. She was a very pretty girl and very popular girl. Even tho a beautiful Polynesian princess looking girl was the head of the clique, the boys actually chose Phyllis. They were all in love with Phyllis. And Ellen turned out to be Phyllis’ big sister. Altho Phyllis was tall and Ellen was short. Ellen was also very pretty.

Ellen and I must have gone somewhere together at night, and we must have been stoned. Because I remember being in a car with her on 14th Street and I said to her “are you stoned?” And she said “why, am I driving badly?” and I thought, ‘How do I know how someone is driving,’ it never occurred to me to pay attention. I felt close to Ellen because if her sister had been in socialist camp with me it meant her parents were like my parents. Also I felt close to Ellen because she told me her boyfriend used to be Melvyn Margolies. Melvyn Margolies was such a complete and total wild man, that even tho Ellen seemed so lovely so pretty, so elegant, so classy, how could she not be a fun natural girl with a boyfriend like that. It was impossible for me to picture them together. I could not see how any girl would go for Melvyn, he was way too wild.

There was another girl who worked there that I liked a lot. She was a blond. She also lived in the area. And during her lunch hour she would go home to walk and feed and pet her huge German shepherd and I went with her. She was devoted to her dog. She was such a nice girl.

I had a great time when we all went out to lunch together, but as soon as I became best friends with Nancy she and I went to Madison Pub together for cheeseburgers and talked. She liked me very much and invited me to her house around the corner, and soon we had sleepovers. I invited her to my apartment in the East Village and I took her to everything I went to. I took her to an early women’s liberation meeting but that didn’t work for Nancy. But I took her to The Pageant Players loft to watch them perform, and also to go to their workshops on Wednesday evenings. And she loved The Pageant Players.

We’d go back to my apartment after work. I’d take her to B&H, she loved the food. Then I would put on an outfit and get stoned, Nancy didn’t smoke pot. And we’d take the bus to the Pageant Players loft on East Broadway. I remember once getting stoned with Nancy and seeing her with new eyes. “You pretend to be a Jewish social worker” I told her “but really you are Sophia Loren, an Italian actress.” Which was astute of me, Nancy was a beautiful actress, and she is the most dramatic girl I ever met, she is thrilling.

Nancy loved the Pageant Players, and once she brought along her friend from Boston College or from Berkeley, Nancy had gone to both colleges. Her friend critiqued The Pageant Players, “the girls are not good but the boys are great.” I was surprised at the critique because in my mind the Pageant Players were above criticism, they were a glorious amazing experience. Nancy’s friend was like Nancy, and not a little hippie chick like me. She was even more stolid than Nancy. Nancy’s stolidness was just a façade, underneath the girl was wild, just as wild as me, but her friend was not.

The first time I took Nancy to Pageant Players she had not known about the 7 flights you have to climb up to get to the loft, and they are long flights. But the next time she remembered. We stood at the bottom of the steps and she said “I’m not climbing up all those steps.” She refused to budge. I did not know what to do. However I was very stoned. I said “Nancy, they moved down to the loft one flight below, it is not such a long climb.” So she said “OK.” And when we reached the loft she said, “it’s amazing, that one flight makes a big difference.” And I said “they did not move, I made it up.”

Getting Nancy to leave for the Pageant Players wasn’t that easy either. She had her supper at B&H and for dessert she ordered noodle pudding. When it was time to go to East Broadway, Nancy would say “I cannot move! O that noodle pudding!” I was high as a kite and said “that’s OK Nancy, I’ll just ring for the elevator.” Which got her up in a flash, since I lived in a tiny walk-up and there was no elevator.

After we had been friends for a year Nancy said “I have discovered liberation, I stopped wearing my girdle.” And I giggled to myself, because of course by this time I had stopped wearing a bra, I couldn’t imagine Nancy had been wearing a girdle all this time. Who wears a girdle!

I loved sleeping over at Nancy’s house. She would get out negligees for us to sleep in. It was my first negligee, it was so much fun to wear a negligee. And she would make Rice Crispies with milk and sliced bananas for breakfast which I loved. And one time her old boyfriend from college visited and she cooked us roast lamb. I always had delicious food with Nancy. She took me to the Jewish Institute which was a few blocks from where we worked, and we would have delicious lunches there too. And it was Nancy who introduced me to Ideal Coffee Shop, which was a German restaurant on York Avenue, not far from where she lived. I never had German food before, it was so delicious.

The great thing about Nancy is she was always game, and we had great times together. When women’s liberation was invited to a fancy banquet in the art museum in Philadelphia, I went with Jeannie and Ti-Grace Atkinson, and I took Nancy. We met at Grand Central Station and we were late for the train. I charged down the steps and when I turned around to look for Nancy, I was appalled to see her slowly sailing down on the escalator. When she finally reached bottom she said “O Annie you flew! You should have seen your face when you saw me on the escalator.” Nancy had zero interest in women’s liberation but she loved adventure. Jeannie and Ti-Grace talked women’s liberation politics the whole train ride, but Nancy’s comment was about Ti-Grace. “She wears tiger-striped print dress, very low cut, over left breast she wears button ‘Feminism’ and her name is Ti-Grace which sounds like tigress. It is extremely provocative and seductive.”

Eventually Nancy and I switched places. Bill and I got together and we settled down in an East Village apartment, and had a fairly straight life. I was working part-time as Wall Street secretary, he was working as Wall Street messenger and going to school. And Nancy took off for California. Where she joined the “Yea God” group and was on the Yea God love bus. She met Jim Fine on the Yea God love bus. They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and when they got to NYC, they came over to our apartment. And Bill got to meet Nancy and I got to meet Jim Fine.

After that Nancy was rolling stone. She joined another type of Yea God group, which would sit on the pavement on corner of 86th Street and Central Park West with a guru in the middle. And she followed the guru to Ithaca and lived with that group. When she got back to New York City she had a boyfriend from that group, Alan Zeigler, who was also an extremely nice guy. Her boyfriends were all such nice people, I remain friends with Jim Fine and Alan Zeigler to this day.

Then she moved to Puerto Rico and lived with a fisherman there named Edison for a few years. Came back to NYC, went up to Ithaca again to be with that group. That must have been when she returned with Alan. They both dropped out of that group at the same time, and they got an apartment in Brooklyn together. Then Alan moved out and Nancy joined straight life again. She became an artist, she went back to work as a social worker, she adopted her lovely daughter.

I guess Nancy and I just had our ‘60s experiences at different times. Altho she went much further out than I did. All I ever really did was smoke pot, and go to the Pageant Players workshops. I never played volleyball with the Moonies in Berkeley like Nancy did.

The Girl Lifeguard at Randolph Pool

drawing by Helen Kritzler

"Simple Happiness"

Tuesday July 25 2006

It is a sweet early morning. I saw the golden sun peeping over the mountains to the East when I went out to open the windows on the truck (and put a towel over the steering wheel) and the air is soft and pleasant.


Caren’s huge green diesel truck is gone from her driveway, so I guess she has moved to Mexico.

If I knew Caren better I would know what precipitated this move, but I have no idea. All I know is 3 months ago she arrived at our door with huge shopping bag filled with bottles of vitamins and shampoo and conditioner and said “I am moving to Mexico, would you like this stuff?” She told us she would be moving in mid-July, which is exactly what she did. She said San Carlos is on the beach, but it is hot and humid in summer, altho nice the rest of the year. All things considered it is a stunningly adventurous thing she has done.

Caren’s great adventure is in marked contrast to my life now which seems like pure monotony. I am ashamed about the sameness of my days, and think there must be something wrong with me to live this way. And when I wake up in the morning and first open my eyes to new day, I don’t know whether it’s the hot stickiness on my skin or the monotony of my days, which makes me think ‘O no! Another day.’

It scares me this lack of enthusiasm. I think something must be wrong. But really how can I judge my life? I can observe that I am not waking up enthusiastically, but beyond that I don’t know anything. I can say it is the fault of the weather, or the fault of how I spend my time. I do not know. It could come from something else for all I know. But I jump to a lot of harsh judgments and frighten myself. And that changes my mind from lack of enthusiasm about new day to cauldron of all kinds of upset thoughts. Then I think maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all, and it is just mist in my mind which needs to be burned off as day starts up.


Bill went to the workout gym at Randolph Pool and said “after my work-out I want to take a quick dip, so stay in the pool and I will be there in one hour.”

I gamboled in the water for an hour. I don’t know if what I do is called swimming. It is more like dipping into deep water and resurfacing, over and over, from one side of pool to other. I swim deep touch bottom and come up, then go down again come up, half the time my legs are in the air. I like standing on my hands in the water. I did that for almost an hour. When I started to get a little bored I thought about Frank McCourt (I am reading "Angela's Ashes" now). It was interesting to have someone to think about. And I started to pick up my head up a lot and look around for Bill, it was now an hour.


Then I heard the lifeguard on the stand, the beautiful girl blond lifeguard, say in a loud voice to the guy lifeguard in the water, “Go into my wallet open up the zipper and take out all the money.” That was such an odd thing to call out in such a loud voice. I couldn’t imagine what she meant, it seemed unusual to trust someone so much to tell them to go into their wallet and take out all their money.

And then the next thing she called out in a loud voice, “I have nothing anymore, I have no boyfriend, my boyfriend cheated on me, I have no money.” Then she called out “Go into my wallet and take out my card and step on it.” And then I heard something about wanting her money back. I had no idea what went on? Her boyfriend cheated on her and someone took her money ??? Everyone was in the water clustered around her. It was clear she was someone loved. The blond young man lifeguard loved her.


He was the one she was directing her comments to. There was a little girl who loved her too, and another lifeguard with black hair and dark skin. I came close too, I wanted to hear more. But when I arrived the topic had changed.

The little girl asked her “what does P.S. mean,” and the lifeguard said “post script.” And someone said “ASAP means as soon as possible” and the little girl said “I know that.” And the beautiful blond high up in lifeguard chair said “pps means post post script which doesn’t make any sense.” And the little girl said “what does RSVP mean?” And the blond man lifeguard in water called out “respondez s’il vous plait” in an exquisite musical French accent. I was floored. Suddenly beautiful French was spoken around me.


And then the girl lifeguard’s shift was up, and she dived in the water with the blond man lifeguard and they played in the water together and I wondered if he was in love with her, it kept looking like he wanted to put his arms around her.


And then Bill arrived and I said “it is one hour and 25 minutes,” and he said “I didn’t know you were strict about time.” And he floated on his back, and at the other side he said “girl in gym told me Reed Park” (Randolph pool is in Reed Park) “has another pool, it is new pool, it just opened, it has tent over it.” And the man in next lane said “it is the Edith Ball Pool and it has a tent over it for people who don’t want to be out in the sun.” I didn’t know if I wanted to swim in a pool with tent over it, but at least it was outside. Bill said “when I come back on my bicycle to finish my work-out, I will ride over and check it out.” “Good!” I said “and get their schedule, it will be fun to find a new pool.”


I had woken up at very bad odds and ends yesterday morning, much worse than the mere lack of enthusiasm for day today that I woke up with this morning, and a whole hour and 25 minutes swimming underwater and then moving close to hear the beautiful blond lifeguard call out “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, he cheated on me” and “go into my wallet open up the zipper and take out all my money,” and hanging out in pool for another 15 minutes while Bill drifted back and forth on his back. Somehow the whole combination had immensely soothing effect on me. Instead of my life feeling like a puzzle where all the pieces were scattered, all the pieces came back together. I guess this is called simple happiness....

My Wedding and Marianne's Wedding

OCEAN by Layla Edwards

written Tucson AZ Tuesday, April 19, 2005

My whole yard is mesquite trees now. Not really, but their branches extend. So it makes greenery everywhere. They are swaying in the breeze now. Today is a lovely day. It is not as hot as it was. It dropped back down to the 80s and there is lovely breeze swaying the branches of mesquite trees and their boughs.

I lived with Bill long time before I got married. Getting married turned out to not be so easy. We went down to City Hall to get our wedding license. It was good for one month. We had to get married within the month. But I couldn't find anyone to marry us. I went to the synagogue across the street and the rabbi didn't want to do it.

So I walked up to the Catholic Church on Second Avenue and said to the priest “my fiancé is Catholic will you marry us” and he said “no, because you are not a member of the community and some people just want a church wedding so they can have a church in their photographs.”

I did not understand when he said I am not a member of the community because I was a member of the community of the lower east side for long time, but now I realize he meant a member of his church.

I began to get desperate because the month was almost up. I bumped into Leona in the street and told her. She is the mother of the boyfriend I had in high school. She said there is a reverend on WBAI and he has a church in midtown, she bets he would marry us. So I called and spoke to someone.

But he said he would not marry us unless we had counseling for a whole year to see if we were ready to make the big step. I said “we have lived together for 16 years we are ready to make the big step.” So he referred me to someone else who he said might be willing to do it.

This time I knew what I was up against. So when I got on the phone with him, I began right off saying how “Bill and I had lived together for 16 years and we want to marry, we have the marriage license but Bill wants religious wedding, not City Hall, but he doesn't care which religion it is, just that it is under God.”

He said “ordinarily I insist on a year of counseling to see if you are ready to make the big step but in this case I don't think you need it” and he said he would marry us on Monday. And he gave us an address on West 57th Street, “it is near Carnegie Hall” he said.

I assumed it was one of the pretty old churches over there and I was ecstatic. The night before the wedding I set the iron on the washboard sink of my kitchen and I ironed Bill's shirt and my skirt. And Joey dropped by and I chitchatted with Joey as I ironed. I was actually terrified about getting married but I don't know why now. It sounded like entering another world, and I didn't know what the other world would be. I guess that is why I didn't mention to Joey I was going to get married the next day. I liked everything feeling familiar and the same, Joey sitting in my kitchen saying the same stuff he always did, as if nothing had changed at all.

The reverend had said to bring two witnesses, so Helen and Geraldo agreed to be our witnesses and to drive us to the church for the wedding. The next morning they arrived and Helen was carrying a big box, “it is your wedding present.” It turned out to be a beautiful Navajo blanket that Wendy had given her. Bill and I both loved it, and in fact it is one of the few things we took to Tucson. It is up on the wall of our living room now.

Bill and I were both in terror of getting married, altho we both tried to hide it from Helen and Geraldo and from each other, and acted like everything was normal. It was Martin Luther King Day so Bill was off work. Helen had just had 3 weddings to Geraldo over the last few months, so she was old hand at getting married.

She had met Geraldo in Nicaragua the year before, they had married there at a civil wedding, then again at religious wedding because that is what Geraldo's mom wanted, then Helen's mom threw big fancy catered Jewish wedding for Helen and Geraldo in Roslyn Long Island, a fancy suburb of NYC.

Geraldo had only been in USA for one month so I gave directions on how to arrive at Carnegie Hall. The address was a block or two west of that, on the north side of the street.

“OK we are at Carnegie Hall now Geraldo, we just have to keep our eyes peeled for a church now on the other side of the street.”

We arrived at the address but it was not a church. It was just an office building and when we walked in and took elevator to our floor, it turned out it was a center for disturbed adolescents. We went to the desk and I asked for the name of the reverend, and she directed us to his office.

It turned out he was a counselor for the disturbed adolescents there. I was crestfallen. That is not how I pictured my wedding being. But Bill had sat in the chair in the waiting room, reading the brochure about the center, and told me “this is a place where they try to help teenagers.” He was overjoyed about it. The fact that Bill liked it so much reassured me.

I knew we were in a shrink's office and I tried not to say to myself “my wedding is taking place in a shrink's office.” He arrived and enthusiastically greeted Helen and Geraldo, and the three of them had enthusiastic vivid chat. I thought Bill and I are ‘sposed to be the stars at our own wedding, but in fact we were both so nervous neither one of us could open up our mouth.

Then he said “join hands” and I was trembling all over and it helped me to put my hand in Bill's hand, it steadied me.

I was not crazy about the wedding ceremony he wrote. It was not one bit like the movies. There was poem by Tagore, and something from an Apache wedding ceremony. I would have loved it that it was Apache, maybe like everyone I always identified with the Native Americans, but it was all about big spaces in the relationship and big spaces are good.

And Bill and I had just gone thru 3 such stormy years we were not close at all. I didn't want big spaces, I wanted to be close again. Altho I will say, after the 3 tumultuous years of storminess in our relationship it was tremendously meaningful to be standing up there marrying him. For us to be standing there hand-in-hand, being married, in front of witnesses. I experienced the depth and reality of my love for Bill. It had withstood all the storms.

After the wedding we signed the papers. And Helen and Geraldo again chatted it up with our minister, and again Bill and I said nothing. Then Bill and I took Helen and Geraldo out to lunch at small Italian lunch place in our neighborhood.

I changed out of my wedding clothes to be more comfortable. I had forgotten what I wore to my wedding, but when I was cleaning my room this past September I found an envelope on top of the closet which contained the wedding photos Helen had taken. I had worn a white silk blouse with short puffed sleeves, creamy white, a blue cotton ruffled skirt from India, because you're sposed to wear something blue at your wedding.

And for some reason black very sexy stockings that you'd imagine a prostitute wearing, and I assume sexy shoes altho those were not in the photo. I have no idea why I wore those black very sexy stockings. It makes for an unusual wedding pic. There is my black black hair, that white blouse, that robins egg blue long ruffled skirt, and then because I am sitting down and pulled up the skirt to my knees those black stockings.

Helen lent me her wedding ring for the part in the wedding where Bill puts the ring on my finger, so I guess that was the borrowed part. Also there is crimson nailpolish on my finger nails. I look like Snow White.

I put together the outfit the night before. I didn't want to wear my wedding outfit for going out to lunch because it had been such big deal to be married, I was in state of shock, I thought it would help me feel normal again to change into an ordinary dress. Helen brought me a black dress made of cotton, very simple and comfortable, but by a designer so it was pretty and I liked it and I changed into that in the adolescent help center girls bathroom.

It had rained all the way in the car to our wedding, and on the way back to Lower East Side huge and loud hail kept hitting windshield. I loved it because I knew it was Heaven throwing rice at our wedding. I knew it was a blessed wedding.

We went to our favorite Italian lunch place, just simple tables in one small simple room, and Bill went next door to buy a bottle of wine and we all had lunch and I was happy but I was still in shock.

The next day Bill's boss offered him the day off because “you just got married.”

“Take the week off” he said.

Bill said “are you kidding, I am in a state of shock, I want to come back to work to feel normal again.”

So the following year when Marianne called me up to say she and Erik are going to get married I wanted to save her the trouble I went thru.

“Just call the Unitarian Church, they will be willing to marry you without making you wait a year, tell them how long you and Erik have lived together, and don't let them put in the part about huge spaces in your relationship.”

Two weeks later we arrived for the wedding. It was held in the loft of Erik's daughter in the West Village. Instead of my minister there was a woman minister. And all of Marianne and Erik's friends and relatives, from the Dojo were there. From karate school, aikido school, tai chi, and from when Marianne had worked at the print shop. It was before she became a beautician.

Everyone was gathered and the lady minister was there, but there was a hold-up.

“What is the hold-up?” I asked someone.

“Marianne refuses to arrive” I was told.

Erik was already there with the minister with his son standing next to him as best man.

So I went downstairs and there was Marianne. “I refuse to go” she said, “everyone is sitting there staring, it is scaring me.”

I said “nobody is sitting there staring, they are all talking to each other, come on up, no one will even notice you arrive, I have been chatting with Linda F's best friend from the print shop, I am so happy to meet her.”

“Are you sure no one will notice me” she said.

“No one will notice you they are all talking to each other.”

It was big fat lie, but what could I do. Marianne had to show up at her own wedding.

“We'll go up together and I'll go up front with you.”

“Stay with me” she said.

“I will.”

I swear I must be a crackpot. We walked up the stairs, I said to everyone “Marianne is here, no one look” and we walked up to the front together.

Then Marianne put her hand in Erik's and I knew she was fine and I took a seat. Marianne and Erik had worked with the lady minister to say what they wanted her to say so it was a lovely ceremony, and Marianne was happy afterwards.

“You didn't tell me the truth, Anne” Marianne said afterwards.

“I know but what could I do” I said.

I sat with Marianne and her friends from the print shop and we chatted. Then Bill and I walked home across town.

My first summer camp

THE OWL by Layla Edwards

Sunday, September 2, 2006

“My first summer camp”

The night sky above the dark trees is just subtly lighter than the trees, so I guess dawn is about to break sometime soon. I can see the outline of the dark trees.

I got snail mail from my friend Basha back in New York City and when I opened it up, it was an article from the NY Times Book Review about Nora Ephron’s new book of personal essays about her life. It was so much fun to read. I have not read anything in newsprint for so long. It was so much fun that someone had selected out something they thought you would enjoy reading, and to sit at dining table with soda on ice when I got back from swim pool and read it.

Basha and I met when we both had just turned 30. I had just started writing then. I had been writing for almost a year and I remember when we went to the Museum of Modern Art together and had lunch in their sculpture garden, I asked Basha if she wanted to hear one of my stories. I had just written one and I wanted to try it out. I read it to her at our table in the sculpture garden.

It was about the first camp I had gone to when I was 12 years old. And the interesting thing about that camp I discovered when I wrote the story, was it had no rules, no rules at all.

This didn’t seem remarkable to me when I was 12 years old, it seemed utterly natural for me to be in a place with no rules at all. It was my first time away from home, I was there for the month of July. There was even a cattle pond for swimming, the camp took place in a rundown farm in Vermont, and there were no rules about swimming either. Anyone could go to the "lake" and go for a swim by themself whenever they felt like it. There was no lifeguard. There were no activities you had to go to. Activities were available if you wanted to go. A range of them.

The girls in my bunk went to no activities. They stayed in the bunk and played Jacks. But I went to archery, I liked that. I didn’t know why they stayed in the bunk and played Jacks instead of going to activities, but I knew they looked down on me for going to activities.

There was an emotional drama for me at that camp because I had only gone there because I wanted to be with Betsy. My best friend from babyhood, Betsy, went every single summer and raved about it all the time, and told me I had to go, it is so wonderful. And finally the summer I was 12, I asked my parents, and they said you can go for the month of July. And my father sent off the check for 80 dollars, and duffle bag was located, and my mother wrote my name with black indelible ink on strips of fabric and sewed it on all the clothes I was taking to camp. They sent a list, two pairs of shorts, two long pants, bathing suit, two tops, etc.

And then the great day came, and my parents took me to Grand Central Station where everyone was lined up for the train taking them to camp. And we found the line for the train to take me to camp. And there was Betsy. And on the train ride I sat next to her. Altho the seat was turned around so she could sit with her other friends from camp.

So there was 4 of us sitting together. And when we got there I took the top bunk above Betsy. And after that Betsy never spoke to me again for the rest of her life. That train ride up to camp was the last time I sat next to her. The great love of my life since I had been a baby, we had learned how to walk together, ended on that train ride up to camp, where I sat on one side of Betsy and her best friends from camp sat on the other side.

I did not measure up.

I didn’t realize it on the train ride. I was so excited and thrilled and loved every instant of what was happening around me, already I loved camp. And it took a while for it to dawn on me at camp too. Altho as you can imagine Betsy quickly changed her bed. Sairy Anne arrived and I slept above Sairy Ann, Betsy moved as far away from me as she could get. She was totally embarrassed to be associated with me. I don’t know how it dawned on me. I guess I would find myself alone with her, and for first time in my life find myself uncomfortable with her and tongue-tied. She was giving every impression of not liking me and not wanting to be with me. And after a while I stopped trying.

It was a new world to me, this world of the clique, and some were in it, and some were not. And clearly Betsy was one of the top girls in the clique. She wasn’t the leader, but she was totally accepted in it, she was part of it. The bunk had 12 girls, not every girl was in the clique, altho most of them came year after year like Betsy. I’d guess 5 girls were in the clique, everyone else was excluded. But that is what a pecking order is. There is the leader of the clique, the rest of the clique is her accolades. And the rest of us are nothing. I had not made the transformation to teen-ager yet. My mind was still child’s mind. So I found it highly amusing I was nothing and the clique was everything. Not amused so much as interesting. I was in a new world, it was a brand new adventure, and I loved everything about my brand new adventure. That there was a clique and I was nothing, was just another interesting thing about this new adventure.

I was upset about losing Betsy, and I don’t think I accepted it. I accepted it that at camp she would have nothing to do with me, but I would not believe our friendship was over. I think I assumed back in the city it would return. Because I think I began a diary the following year, it only had 3 entries in it, and one of them was about Betsy. I wrote “something is wrong in our friendship.” I was disturbed and trying to understand it. The idea that Betsy had changed her feelings for me was incomprehensible. Because it was my very first experience of anyone changing their feelings towards me. I didn’t know such a thing happened. I just assumed when you love someone you love them forever, that that is the nature of love, that the joy of your heart is always the joy of your heart.

I wasn’t bothered about the clique excluding me, altho I knew it made a difference to Betsy, that this is why she wouldn’t talk to me at camp. I had zero feelings about the clique on my own. The idea of a clique is that they are infinitely desirable and superior to the rest of us. And there were girls in my bunk who saw them that way, and were very upset they were excluded from the clique, but I didn’t get it.

“Why are you so upset?” I said.

“Because they won’t let me in the clique.”

“We'll just form our own clique” I said, trying to be helpful.

There were 4 of them. It was on the stairwell. They were all upset about being excluded from the clique, they were commiserating. There were tears. If they wanted to be in a clique so badly, I thought we should form our own. But of course it upset them when I said that. Because they were so upset they were hanging out with someone who was so out of it, she didn’t even know not being allowed in the clique was fate worse than death. After that even those who were excluded from the clique refused to talk to me. I was bottom of the barrel.

I could have been one with the ones unhappy about not being in the clique if only I had known I was supposed to be unhappy. So the clique stayed in the bunk instead of going to activities and played Jacks. And the ones excluded from the clique hung out on the staircase and cried. And I went to archery, and started to get good at it. I was having a ball at camp.

I even had a ball at social activities. On Friday nights there was dance at the Sugar House. It had been a working farm, that is where the maple syrup used to be made. The Friday night party at the Sugar House meant the girls would all sit on chairs next to each other, and the boys would choose which one they wanted to ask to dance. I thought this was a lot of fun. The boys would walk up and down trying to decide who they wanted to choose. I giggled to the girl next to me “it’s as if we are the candy in the candy store, and they are trying to decide which one they want.”

The girl moved her chair away from me. It bothered the girls not in the clique very much that they were never chosen, only the girls in the clique were chosen. But I just thought it was a new fun game at camp, being the candy in the candy store. I could care less whether I was chosen or not, I just liked being in the game.

Of course there were great games at that camp else I would not have loved it so much. “Capture The White Flag” was an ecstasy, an adventure game in fields and woods, I loved it. And “Nose Bag Dramatics,” which we played in the barn was a lot of fun too. And on “Amateur Talent Night,” I was the only one from my bunk who volunteered. I got up and threw myself all over the stage in my own interpretative modern dance. I made it up. I thought I did great. I had no idea that for “Amateur Talent Night” you were supposed to have talent, and be up there and demonstrate your talent. I thought it was for anyone who wanted to do anything on the stage. The faces on the girls from my bunk when I finished and went back to my place were a sight. You never saw so much disgust in one place. It did not dim my enthusiasm, I overlooked it. “Why don’t you get up and do something, it’s fun” I told them.

When we went huckleberry picking in the field, the counselor let us take off our clothes and pick berries in our underpants. When we went to the stream to wash our clothes we were allowed to wash our clothes naked and swim in the stream. It was a great camp. I had a great time. One night we all waited till we had been in bed, and counselors were coming around on O.D. to check on us, and then we all ran away. And I hid in the baseball field. And it was so exciting when the counselor found me and flashed his flashlight on me. I had lain there breathless in the dark when I saw the flashlight in the distance. I think that was the highest adventure of all.

Altho it was fun putting on a dress and being driven in the truck to Marlboro for a square dance. I loved square dancing.

On Visiting Day in the middle of the summer all the parents drove up from New York, and my parents drove from our summer house in Adirondacks to pick me up and take me back to Old Forge.

“I had a wonderful time at camp; next year I want to go for two months” I said. “As soon as we get back to NYC Daddy,” I said, “you write out the check for two months.”

It was the last summer of my innocence. After that I descended into image. Ego got whole control of my mind. And it took “A Course In Miracles,” when I was in Tucson, to give me back my innocence.

As soon as we got back to NYC my father, per my request, did send off the check for two months. But the owner of the camp, an old man, wrote instead of having camp this summer he and his wife are going on a trip to Mexico and are inviting some of the girls in the oldest bunk to go, and I am one of the ones invited. I remembered the owner of the camp, he seemed like a nice man. His wife didn’t like me. But of course he did not see me thru the eyes of the 12 year old girls in my bunk, all he saw was the joyous happy girl.

I said to my father “I don’t want to go to Mexico, I want to go to camp, find another one then.”

And so another one was found for me. This one was run by two teachers and it was all rules. But I was 13 when I arrived, I was a different person. I knew that all that mattered in life was being popular and having a boyfriend and I turned myself inside out to accomplish it.....