He let go of my hand and offered a theatrical salute.
I looked up, smiled, and staggered away.
It was all so confusing. Only five months earlier, I was being congratulated—“It is my great pleasure to present the Class of 2000!” I’d stood up to a round of applause.
I floated among the crowd of applicants, their conversations merging into a boisterous hum. I looked around, visited a few more booths, and filled the free laminated folder I got from Scholastic with pencil erasers and tiny Kit Kats. Heavy with “gifts,” I decided to head home.
3
Where do ideas come from? The ancient Greeks believed inspiration to be divine, that one of nine muses whispered into the ear of the artist, who was not himself a genius but a conduit. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end,” Homer begins The Odyssey.
I was almost home when I realized I didn’t want to be. My roommate May and her boyfriend Felix would be there—they were always there—and I wanted to be alone. So when I saw the subway entrance on Fifty-third and Seventh, I decided to head downtown.
I got out at West Fourth and walked toward NYU but veered south when I came upon Washington Square. I’d spent so much time in the park during college; to go there now would mean a retreat. I continued around it, past NYU’s administrative buildings, where I imagined committees busily deciding whom to admit next year, whom to give my freshly vacant spot.
I walked down into Soho, past bars I’d frequented as a freshman, past plain, unmarked doors, which at midnight opened onto chic nightclubs, past phone booths decorated with ads for the upcoming season of Sex and the City—a glamorous photo of Carrie Bradshaw in a black T-shirt covered with rhinestones spelling her name.
I headed east toward Broadway and then down again, bobbing along the rushing river of shoppers, past windows behind which mannequins stood silently, posed in body-hugging T-shirts—“Hottie,” “Fabulous,” “Sexy,” written across the bust.
I turned east again wandering deeper into the Lower East Side, looking in at the displays of small designer boutiques along the way. A $150 T-shirt with the words, “Gold Digger,” hung in one window. Another, “Page Six Six Six.” Another, “Thank You Thank You Thank You,” written three times vertically the way it appears on plastic shopping bags.
I walked on, past a walled-up construction site plastered with ads for new albums, new movies, new stores, and past a newsstand where I paused, recognizing the faces of Justin, Shawn, and Richie staring out from the cover of New York Magazine.
I went in. A bell rang as I entered. A middle-aged Pakistani, with three long hairs combed across the top of his head, looked up. He followed me with his eyes as I walked the length of the store, which was covered floor to ceiling with new issues of popular glossies. Giving up, I returned to the front and asked about the magazine in the window.
He hopped down from his perch behind the register and, cutting in front, beckoned me to follow. Scanning the wall quickly, he handed me a different issue.
“No. The one in the window,” I repeated.
“Is old. This one you want,” he said, pressing it into my hand.
“No,” I said, handing it back. “That one. I know the guys on the cover!”
He sighed and went outside to have a look, then came back in and knelt down to untape it from the display.
“Two dollar,” he said, as he handed it to me.
The three had been profiled for “Models Suck,” the logo decorating their popular line of T-shirts. I hadn’t known about their fashion venture. I flipped back to the cover to see the date. August 24, 1998, a year before I met them in Atlantic City with Lex.
“This is not a library,” the clerk announced.
I paid for the magazine and left.
I walked a few more blocks—aimless, adrift—when, looking into another window, I was startled by my own image reflected back. The late-afternoon light had cast a mirror-like glare, so I could not see in but only myself trying to. There I was, the whole of me, paused in a Depression-era suit—a woman lost in time.
What do you know about PowerPoint? About Excel spreadsheets? About answering the phone? I interviewed my reflection. And what do you care? I went on, as a song in my head started up, grew louder, and was backed by a beat to which I could dance. The song my muse was singing was clear:
Forget corporate America, Iris! Selling T-shirts! That’s your game! Why worry over all the things you don’t know, when there are obviously so many more important things that you do? That a T-shirt with the words, “Second Base” would be capital! That underwear featuring the words, “Bad Ass” could go with it! And the great thing about T-shirts is you don’t even need to know how to sew! The really great thing is you don’t need to know anything! All you need is one good idea.... Staring into the window, at a T-shirt just visible behind my own reflection, I discovered I had many.
4
T-shirts were just the beginning. Justin, Shawn, and Richie wanted to do music, film, to build a hip-hop empire! “It’s all about who you know,” they had told the reporter in the New York Magazine article, which I read half of later that night, after I finally arrived home.
May and Felix were there when I walked in. Felix was on the couch, using my copy of This Side of Paradise to roll a joint, while May was at the stereo, turning up the volume and yelling over it. I sat down on the other end of the sofa and took out my magazine, but after a few pages, I gave in to the sway of them. Accepting the joint from Felix, I stuck the magazine, most of it unread, under the cushion of our collapsing couch. I took a long drag. Who you know, who you know . . . How I knew Justin, Shawn, and Richie, as Rudyard Kipling might say, is another story....
I confess I haven’t actually read any Rudyard Kipling, but I did read this book of Edwardian erotica by Anonymous, which featured a narrator—a perverted “uncle”—who invited two curious schoolgirls he’d met onboard a transatlantic steamer to a French brothel where he was a regular, who used this phrase to great effect. But what has Rudyard Kipling or the prolific Anonymous to do with me? Absolutely nothing! Which is why I’m going to tell my story, with all its twists and turns, right now.
II
1
Some say New York in summer is a wonderful town and cite the many free activities available all season. Film festivals in Bryant Park! Opera on the Great Lawn!
“There’s also a truck in the East Village that gives free food to the homeless every Sunday. Maybe we should go there for brunch,” Lex said over the hum of the air conditioner.
“What about Tuesday? They’re showing La Traviata in Central Park,” I said, looking up from The Voice.
“If I want to see the opera, I’ll buy a ticket. Summer Stage is for poor people. It’s the rich man’s concession to the worker who can’t afford to leave town. They think if they distract us with free shit, we’re less