CHANDI writes…

A group of us were at the Russian Tea Room. Simon sat down next to me and said,

“I have a proposition for you. Now, it’s no money, no money at all, there’s no budget.
It involves you, me and a camera in a hotel room. Are you interested?”

I said, “Simon, you had me at ‘no money.’”

Today I ventured out in the aftermath of the snowstorm. My entire street is a solid block of ice. I have no practical snow or rain boots. I’m wearing white boots with a 2 inch heel. I went skittering about the west village to drop of t-shirts at my friend’s salon, Seagull. On my way back to the train I slipped on the sidewalk and landed in an awesomely queer Freddie Mercury pose, down on one knee, hand extended. A girl stopped and said,
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
No autographs, please. 

Whenever it snows I think of the frozen cat.

When my Dad was a young boy he had a Siamese cat. Siamese cats are notorious criers and one night it climbed up the oak tree and got stranded. Upon hearing it crying, my Grandfather went outside to try and coax it down. It kept climbing higher and higher until there was no hope of reaching it.

That night a snowstorm blew in. The next morning the cat was gone.

My Dad went sledding in the morning before going to school. After school he went sledding again. This time his sled hit something in the snow. He dug into the snow and found the frozen Siamese cat. He must have run over it a dozen times.

He brought it into the kitchen where my Grandmother placed it in a small box next to the heat vent. She was hoping to thaw it out enough to be able to curl it into the box to bury it. She went back to cooking dinner. Later she heard a cat meowing. She turned around and noticed that the box was empty. Then my Dad walked into the kitchen with the unfrozen Siamese cat rubbing up against his legs and purring.

In 2004 I was in Berlin for Christmas.
I called my father in Maryland on Christmas day.
For some reason, his number was blocked from receiving international calls.
So I tried the number for upstairs, where my aunt lives with her two children.
It just rang and rang and rang.

Finally my Dad answered the phone.

“Why is your line blocked from receiving international calls?” I asked my Dad when he finally picked the receiver, “Who’s calling you internationally?”

“It’s all those mail-order Russian brides,” he answered.

“Why didn’t anyone answer upstairs, isn’t anyone home?” I asked.

“Oh they’re probably all in their rooms. We went shopping for Christmas presents and everyone ended up getting into a fight and they decided to cancel Christmas. When are you coming home?” he asked in the same breath.

“NEVER! I can’t believe you just asked me that after telling me that Christmas is canceled.”

My Dad just laughs.

After I got off the phone with my Dad I wrote him a postcard.
I told him to apply for his passport and that next year we’d spend Christmas together in another country. 

In 2005, when my father turned 50 and I was 30, we spent Christmas in Paris.
It was the first time my father traveled outside the United States.

Let me tell you about the Dead Sea. You do not submerge your head in the Dead Sea. You do not dive into the Dead Sea. You do not swim; you float. The water is so salty that everyone floats. If you get the salt in your eyes it burns, it really burns. It is also very oily, nobody tells you this. Under the sand there is black clay or mud that has a lot of minerals, people rub it on their bodies.  There are also sharp pieces of salt that can cut you if you happen to step on them. I only encountered this in the manufactured Dead Sea, the artificial sea they are making to compensate for the declining water levels of the Dead Sea. The reason the water levels are evaporating so quickly is because part of the water that feeds the Dead Sea has been redirected and repurposed for drinking water.

Why is there a lifeguard at the Dead Sea? He looks like an Israeli Mitch from Baywatch. He has long curly bleached hair and red swim trunks. They must have told him “It’s an easy gig, a lifeguard at the Dead Sea, everyone floats, it’s impossible to drown.” That didn’t stop people from trying.

We hear someone saying, in a plain and calm speaking voice, “Help, help, help, lifeguard, help.” People are looking around to see where the voice was coming from. It belongs to a woman floating peacefully on her back, her face totally out of the water. At first no one, not even the lifeguard reacts. It’s surreal. She doesn’t seem panicked or in obvious danger. Finally a Korean man makes his way towards her, he floats her in the direction of shore. After about a minute, in 2 feet of water, she begins to panic. She pushes herself away from him, kicking hard with her feet, her legs flailing. At the same moment she manages to arch her back, submerging her head underwater as she kicks backwards. The Korean man is startled. The lifeguard runs into the water, stands the woman upright and walks her to the showers to wash the salt out of her eyes.

An obese woman floats on her stomach, finding it hard to balance she proceeds to bob up and down, submerging her face repeatedly into the water. Every time she pushes her face out of the water the rocking momentum dunks it back in.  The lifeguard runs in, stands her up in knee deep water and walks her to the showers.

Over the course of the day we saw five or six near-drownings. Sometimes the lifeguard would yell instructions from the bullhorn “Turn over on your back” and “Get your face out of the water.” Sometimes people on the beach would clap after one of his rescues and he would take the opportunity to puff up his chest and put his hands on his hips as he pose-walked to the shore. Once he even posed for a photograph with a salt-water-blinded victim on his way to take her to the shower.

When I was at the Dead Sea last year I managed to splash water into my eye, it totally burned. This year I managed to do the exact same thing. I walked up to the beach where my friend Einat was laying and said “well, I managed to do it again, I splashed water in my eye.” Without so much as looking up from her book, totally deadpan she replied, “at least you didn’t panic and drown.”

Rocky 3 was filmed in the desert of Israel. Locals warned Sylvester Stallone not to dive or put his face in the water of the Dead Sea. His response, “I’m Rambo.” He dove head first into the water. He spent 4 days in the hospital and they had to suspend shooting for the film while he recovered. What a jackass.

That’s why there is a lifeguard at the Dead Sea. I’ve never seen a busier lifeguard in my life. People from far and wide with no swimming ability, no experience or common sense come in droves to drown at the Dead Sea every year. 

When I was 15 I arrived home from school to find the police waiting there.
Someone had broken into our house.

The police were interviewing my Aunt and my Dad. They asked us to take an inventory of the house and let them know what was missing.

Downstairs they found a bag with a broken watch and junk jewelry from my grandfather’s dresser that had been left behind. My father was missing his baseball cap and an XL jean jacket. Next to my father’s ’41 Chevrolet, parked on the hillside in the backyard, the police found a pair of work gloves.

In my room there was a dollar missing that I had left under a small salt and flour mold of my handprint as a child. I had just done my laundry but I had left a lilac bra in the basket. It was gone. I walked down the hall and asked my aunt if she was missing any bras. She went back to her room to check. She was missing two.

Later the police found the man sitting at the college, a half-mile from our house, wearing my father’s hat and jacket. He was over six feet tall and mentally disabled.

Two weeks later, I was home alone after school when I heard someone come into the house. I said, “hello” as I walked down the hallway just in time to see a shadow disappear out the front door.

We had to start locking our doors.

I was walking down Bedford Avenue in the early afternoon with a coffee. A guy working at a construction site was rolling a dumpster down the sidewalk behind me about half a block. It was making all this noise, giving me the feeling that I was being chased.

He kept trying to get my attention, yelling things at me to get me to turn around. Finally he just started singing “You look like a black girl from the back girl.” I started laughing but I didn’t want to encourage him, so I just turned the corner.

I told my dad that I was working at a metal shop and he said “Call Pratt and tell them you want your money back.”  Pratt is the art school I went to where I majored in painting.

I was grinding all day and not the good kind. Kim says, “I like it because it’s like going to the gym.” My response, “Who goes to the gym for nine and a half hours?”

I spent an entire day at a drill press imagining I was Bjork in Dancer in the Dark. Later, when I got home, I pulled five metal spurs out of the bottom of my foot. Apparently tucking you pants into your boots is an amateur mistake.

Kim calls the project manager B.D.A., Big Dumb Asshole. 

I ran into Arryan on the subway.  He didn’t see me.  He stood directly in front of where I was sitting. I took my foot and ran it up the inside of his leg.  He was surprised and flustered, then looked down and saw it was me.  I said that it probably wasn’t sexy at all because I was wearing Vans and the rubber sole probably just ripped all his leg hair off.  Then we talked about Judy Rosen, how I was selling my tote bags at her store The Good The Bad and The Ugly.  How I saw someone at the Verb wearing her black velvet lederhosen and how I felt the need to stalk people wearing her clothes.  He said I was in love with her.  I said that it was true but as soon as the affection is returned I would become totally disinterested.  Then we were talking about Sweet Action, this porn magazine for girls.  My friend Einat was visiting from Berlin and she was asking me for gift ideas for one of her friends and I suggested Sweet Action.  Then I thought, what is wrong with me, suggesting porn as a souvenir? I knew the dudes that run the bookstore Spoonbill & Sugartown where I was checking for copies.  They didn’t have any but on any occasion I saw them they would announce to me over a crowd of people at the coffee shop, on the street or in the store that “Sweet Action hasn’t arrived yet!” It was hilarious and embarrassing having this information shared with strangers, like I was just some pervert lurking, waiting for porn to arrive.  When the issues finally did come I bought 2 copies, one to send to Einat and one for her friend.  Then they announced “Two copies!” at the register.  I said “yes I’m adding International Porn Distributor to my resume”.  Then Arryan and I were talking about large penises and how they can only become semi-erect.  I said it was because all the blood rushes to it and then they pass out.  Then we realized we had to curb our x-rated conversation as Allysa walked up to us with her kids.