Made on the 1

“This song is for the white lady with the sunglasses.” 

Briefly I considered whether the busker who’d boarded at 96th Street was crooning about me. Plenty of other women had sunglasses—it was sunny on the street—but I couldn’t rule it out.

“This song is for the white lady with the sunglasses and the green slippers.” 

Ah, see: I had on leather flip flops, and although they were a pale jade, he couldn’t possibly see them across the crowded car. 

I held onto the bar above my head for balance and turned slightly to glance at him again. He was squat and graying and about my age, and he’d lugged an amplifier onto the 1 Train along with his electric guitar, which he didn’t play so much as strum now and then. He grinned at me through the bodies of a half dozen riders.

“This one is for the white lady with the sunglasses and the green slippers who looks like Martha Stewart.” 

I get that sometimes.

I looked around the car. Summer interns with fresh haircuts and pressed shirts smiled into their chests. A red-capped little boy whispered to his sister while peering at me sideways. An older woman shrugged playfully as if to say “go with it.” The entire car, thick with riders, had made me.

I blushed into my sleeve as he put new words to a tune I recognized though couldn’t name: “This song is for the white woman with the sunglasses and the college brain.” 

My tote read “Columbia”.

He finished with a flourish and just below 60th Street told his audience, “I’ll kiss that white woman if anyone can tell me who wrote this song.”

I could feel the blood rising to my face. He sang with relish: “One love, one heart. Let’s get together and feel all right.” 

Oh, god.

“Marley!” A dozen people hollered.

I’m a tentative subway rider. It embarrasses me to admit that despite my longtime proximity to the Big Apple, I don’t have a comfortable relationship with the New York underground. Even when I was young and a regular commuter, I walked to my office or took cabs. Now, on those rare occasions I ride the train, I swivel the stone of my wedding ring to the palm side of my hand and wedge my purse under my armpit as though I’m carrying a million dollars. I try to look casual, like I ride the subway every day, but from the time I descend those grimy steps to the platform till the moment I board my safe New Jersey commuter bus at Port Authority, my aim is be invisible. 

Which is why, on this particular day, when an amplifier ensures that I am the focal point of a subway car jammed with passengers, it’s odd that I’m not mortified. It occurs to me I am actually a little pleased. It occurs to me that maybe I’ve been a little too successful at sliding into the scenery.

His guitar quiet, the little man sidestepped through the car, collecting his receipts. Very soon he was beside me with a shy expression. As he moved past, I tapped my face, and he placed a gentle peck on my cheek.

#whyidontwrite

Recently, my friend Erin Ehsani, who when she isn’t working on her exquisite memoir promotes the work of the New York Writers Coalition, asked me to help the organization’s current cause: to make writing—more specifically #whyidontwrite—a trending topic on Twitter for a day. (Here’s Erin’s piece on both this effort and the NY Writers’ upcoming fundraiser.) 


I’m in, I told Erin—not really understanding the point. I mean, it’s counterintuitive, until you consider that writing about not writing is still writing.


Anyway, the day is here. Between Facebook, Twitter, a doctor’s appointment, welcoming Daughter #2 back from Bonnaroo, hounding Daughter #3 to clean her room, paying bills, caffeinating, planning a graduation party, keeping a secret, and listening to movie soundtracks (instead of old house rumblings), I give you the more current activities that have allowed me to muffle the call of the keyboard:


• Alphabetizing the books in my three office cases (Ikea Billys, of course)
• Breakfasting with Daughter #1 prior to her return to school and following our eggs Benedict with a trip to the Verizon store for a BlackBerry repair (and, as it turned out, replacement iPhone) 
• Erging, lately my preferred form of exercise. The machine, a Concept 2 model D, was purchased to entice #1 and #2 to join the high school crew team, which both did although they learned to despise erging in the process. There are months when the contraption sits untouched, but for now it spares my knees from running. 

• Spectating a soccer friendly between Daughter #3’s squad and a local boys’ team and enjoying how middle school flirtation can take the form of neat tackles and sweaty handshakes

• Combing the shelves of the Montclair Public Library for goodies. My latest haul included Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction—and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner & Alfred Fortunato (thank you, Elizabeth Redden for the tip) and A Field Guide to the North American Family (an illustrated fiction) by Garth Risk Hallberg, which was Erin’s suggestion.
• Re-watching The West Wing (any episode) and adding the new HBO series The Newsroom to iCal #lovethataaronsorkin 
• Prioritizing feelings of guilt over shoulds I may never get to, such as sending thank yous for recent kind gestures and minding the wild thatch of rosebushes attacking my garage

• Otherwise throwing not unimportant (but nor are they usually immobile) objects and tasks in the path of pages. 

Here’s hoping the act of fessing up puts me in a writing frame of mind. Would love to say the decks are clear for desk time tomorrow. They aren’t, but I’ll figure something out. 

My Susan Cheever Interview

I want to convince you to read (or reread) Home Before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever By His Daughter. But maybe the place to start is at this interview with its author, Susan Cheever. The interview was published today on the blog, The Days of Yore, a great site where artists reveal their journeys to becoming established. 

I took a master class at Columbia that Susan Cheever created and taught. The focus was on writing one’s family members into fictional characters, but she covered a lot of other literary ground, and frankly I was happy to learn anything Susan Cheever wanted to teach me. I suppose I thought I’d made a small connection with her and so felt quasi-comfortable asking for an interview. She was obliging and generous and candid—and I hope she likes how it turned out. 

Here goes:

Click here for my Susan Cheever Interview on thedaysofyore.com.