Green Ice

As a way to keep in touch with my two best friends from childhood, during summer breaks in college, we would all spend a few days together at my friend’s parents’ beach house.  The days there typically passed in the everyday easiness that comes with staying within walking distance of a gorgeous & nicely weathered beach.  There is one tragic story from those beachy days that I will tell you another time.  This time, however, I want to tell you about the time I stole a 12 ounce bottle of Panama Jack Green Ice Aloe Vera Gel.  At the time of the theft, I was about 20, and had been on a rather long dry spell from petit larceny.  I basically hadn’t stolen anything since I was in 2^nd grade.  In 2^nd grade, however, I was the queen of thieving.  My best friend, Katie, and I masterminded a genius scheme which led to an unlimited supply of fruit rollups. 

At the age of 7, we had very little income.  Our main source was the buck twenty-five our parents provided us for daily lunches, and this was stored on a debit card which we could only swipe once when checking out our lunch.  It probably wouldn’t have mattered too much if we could swipe it more, because there was only enough money on there to cover just your basic four squares of servings on the thick plastic serving plate.  Any revenue we were able to generate, through chores or, in my case, good behavior (as money pretty much guaranteed that my brother and I would refrain from strangling each other for a while; my parents willingly gave up money for periods of peace) was all tied up in meaningless things like savings accounts and college funds. 

So, like two Spartan children left on the mountain side to die, it was up to Katie and me to fend for ourselves in the wilderness of the elementary school cafeteria.  After a few premature attempts at stealing, which led to me grasping the fact at an embarrassingly late age that playing pretend to disappear the food under a napkin only worked with relatives, Katie noticed that the shape of a fruit rollup was quite slender and malleable.  She thought we may be able to use this to our benefit.  After a few trials in which we squashed, stretched and slammed the fruit rollup we were pretty satisfied that their durability under fire made them pretty much the perfect snack to steal.  In fact, smushing the fruit rollup underneath our lunch tray had no effect on the tastiness of the fruit rollup at all, and so was borne our master plan. 

After waiting in line, we grabbed clean, washed-out-pastel colored plastic trays like all the other good little boys and girls preparing to have their 4 servings of chopped slop served to them; but, we would skitter quickly to the ‘a la cart’ isle, tray in hand.  With nimble hands, we quickly plucked a fruit rollup up and hid it in the divot under the tray between the silverware compartment and the food compartments.  It was just large enough to hide one rollup securely and still slide smoothly along the tray line.  This was before the time when false advertising laws made it less possible to name something ‘fruit’ yet harbor no fruit whatsoever; so, thanks to this excess supply of "fruit" rollups, I would ride a sugar high from lunch till bed all through 2^nd grade, much to the chagrin of my confused parents, who were seriously considering medication alternatives for their unnaturally exuberant daughter.  Fortunately for them, after 2^nd grade, I left Katie and the whole fruit rollup racket to transfer to a different elementary school, where there was no fruit rollup a la cart paradise within reaching distance of greedy little hands. 

Flash forward a decade plus and here you find me, scouring the boardwalk shops for aloe vera.  While my friends were busily searching for catchphrase t-shirts and ear, nose and belly rings, I was on a mission for aloe vera.  I hadn’t been sun burned yet, but years of dealing with the hypochondriasis and münchausen by proxy that enveloped my childhood had taught me to be prepared for medical disasters, especially medical disasters whose manifestations were improbable at best, and that meant stocking up on something to soothe the third degree burns I would undoubtedly be a victim of after exposing my body to the ferocious powers of the sun.


So it was that I found myself seized with an inexplicable desire to steal aloe vera gel whilst standing between the "Tang Made My Stalk Shrivel" t-shirts and the tragus piercing rings.  I strained to see past the hanging towels and found, to my increasing unease mixed with jubilation, the sun protection isle.  I reached far back to my second grade year to rekindle my deft thieving ability.  Struggling to contain my excitement at the thought of taking something without paying for it, I conspicuously glanced around,  ensuring that everyone in the store would see the 'oh so sly' grin contorting my features.  My eyes flickered back and forth, from the sunscreen to the spray tanners, desperately seeking the aloe. 

After a moment of panic at the thought that there were no bottles left, in which my mind giggled at the irony that there would be no aloe vera in a shop that was directly on a beach, I spotted it.  There it was, the last bottle, located on a shelf about a foot below my waist.  It was economy sized, a good 10 inches long and four wide, and glowing a brilliant green through the clear plastic bottle walls.  Like most of my plots, I had not thought this through and cringed when I suddenly realized that a bathing suit top and jean shorts left very little to the imagination, especially if you were imagining a girl walking out of a store with a stolen mega bottle of aloe vera gel.  But, luckily, I had remembered to bring my towel to the beach that day, and it was still hanging from around my neck.  Quickly, I whipped the towel from neck and bundled the Green Ice bottle up like it was a trembling baby on a cold day.  Then, without looking back, I lifted my head high, as though I were beyond reproach, clutched my precious cargo and trucked it towards the exit. 

Five feet from the front door, I heard a loud ‘thwack!’ as the economy sized bottle slipped from the donut hole made in the towel and landed hard on the shop’s tiled floor.  I felt its presence as a flourescent radioactive beacon and inwardly cringed.  Everyone in the store, including the teenaged floor sales boy who appeared to be the only person working that night and my friends, who, until this moment, had been deeply immersed in passionate discourse about the benefits of letting people recognize how legit you are by reading Tupac Lyrics on your shirt, stopped to stare at me. Like a baby raccoon that is halfway across the road and sees head lights coming, I knew I was too far in now to make it out alive.  The floor boy called to me, clearly and loudly.  When this didn’t work, he repeated himself, each time his voice getting louder, his steps closer behind me.  His determination to get my attention only sufficed to pique my panic, so, I made the completely adult decision to pretend I was suddenly struck dumb. 

Couldn't he see that I obviously no longer had the capacity to hear or see anything around me that would lead me to think that someone was trying to get my attention especially if that attention would place in motion a stream of events that would quite probably lead to my arrest.  My heart was in my throat, I felt like I was being chased by a zombie, albeit a very polite and insistent one.  Against my will, I caved to the mild voice of authority, all quivers and cold sweat, I turned around.  ‘Ms.’ He said in a plaintive voice, ‘Ms. I’m sorry, but I believe you dropped this?’  While handing me back the stolen oversized bottle of aloe vera, the store attendant smiled sheepishly at me, ‘You don’t want to be left without anything for that sunburn!’ he said, as he handed the bottle to me, and with that I was out the door, homefree.  My relief was tangible as I leaned into the night air; I breathed a ragged sigh of relief at my escape from assured disaster, and hugged my bottle of Green Ice.  I relished in my lucky escape as I silently acknowledged an end to my thieving days.

Ps. those burns never came to pass that beach week, nor have they manifested to this day, but I am still prepared!  That economy sized bottle of Green Ice is the only over the counter item to have made it with me to New York from my undergrad years.  It may just stay with me forever.    

Tornado

This poem was written in the aftermath of a tornado that touched down pretty much on top of me while I was walking to meet friends at a bar in Queens.  I remember the sky turning a deep, surreal green color.  Suddenly, the clouds split open and I was hit by a torrential downpour.  I remember being literally lifted off my feet and slammed in to a brick wall as the 80 mile/hour winds hit me.  Thats right, as if walking in NYC wasn't crazy enough, now I have to worry about tornados. 

After watching a tree being literally uprooted in front of me, I found refuge in a nearby bank.  I remember being nearly as taken aback by the bank employees' niceness, (they allowed me as well as a few other people that were caught outside to hover, soaking wet, in their lobby) as I was by the carnage we were witnessing outside.  It was one of the most freakish experiences of my life.  If you want to know more about it  click below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/nyregion/17storm.html?_r=1

I look for my friends

In the faces of strangers

That hurriedly pass me,

Huddled in on themselves,

Wrenching through the city streets.

The storm, it follows me,

I can sense its metallic taste

On the labia of my tongue,

Just as I see the swift rain

Torrent itself in a windfall

Before me...

When will the beast,

That moves within it

Finally be satisfied,

I wonder,

When will I be permitted

To find my bit of peace.

Gym

Manhattan may be the only place in the world where going to the gym can take more energy than actually working out there.  Imagine a storm, with rain, no, make that hail, not the size of golf balls, but still, hail, which, at its best, is a hard frozen water bullet.  Imagine thousands of these, shooting down at you from the sky.  Your umbrella was caught in one of the ‘forces of nature’ windtunnels that sky scrapers create when you shove them on top of each other and has done an inside out maneuver on you.   Now, your soft little body is completely exposed to hail storm.

You want to get in to your car, go inside, seek shelter, but you have no car, the normal people here don’t even own cars, so you have no friends (assuming your friends are normal) that you could catch a ride with.  There is no inside, unless you want to stand in line at the nearest Starbucks, using the guise of ‘caffeine addict’ to suck up the warmth and dryness their tall latte lines offer.  There is no shelter, you left your apartment back blocks ago, and, unless you are thinking of making a quick friend in the most unfriendly city in the world, you are out of luck.  There is the subway…there is always the subway.  But you have fallen in one of those ‘no man zones’ where you are actually closer to your destination than to where the nearest subway train stop would drop you off at.   

This is when you start to lose it.  You chastise yourself for your lack of preparedness, thinking you should have bought a better umbrella.  What were you thinking when you bought an umbrella from a street vender, you know that sort of $10.00 quality would not hold up under the weather here.  But it is too late now.  You have promised yourself you would make it to the gym today and that is what you are going to do.  Those chili  cheese fries are sloshing around in your stomach with every step, reminding you just how badly you need this gym visit.  That slice of cheesecake that you were supposed to split with your friend and ended up gobbling down while he was in the bathroom, yea, that is in there too.  Every step becomes a whining guilty conscience, simultaneously creating a bizarrely mother-like alter ego and giving you the energy to battle onwards.  

Your eyes start to dart around, seeking out a store that is in the business of selling ultra-amazing umbrellas that are freezing-water repellent.  Meanwhile, your legs continue their painful march across the sleeted avenues.  You don't notice the deep rutted puddles full of dog urine and smog water and at once their prevalence makes them almost unavoidable.  It is as though they are leaping up to grab you... and while concentrating on your umbrella search and trying to avoid the press of tourists around you, your tennis-shoed foot slips in to one.  Usually, you would have your rain boots on.  You actually did shell out the $70 to buy the one step up from the worst quality rain boots.  But today you promised yourself you would make it to the gym, so it’s the tennis shoes and soaked feet instead.  At around 24 degrees outside, your feet have almost instantly frozen.  This is a good thing, as the throng of people that surrounds you has doubled in the past half block; the less your feet feel being stepped on, the better. 

You wonder how many people you have brushed shoulders with the past few blocks and guess it has been about average for an overcast day, only 80 or 90 people.  You laugh at how, at one point in your life, you wouldn’t dream of meeting 100 new people while unshowered and in your gym clothes.  But this life that you have chosen does not lend itself to vanity.  You promised yourself you would make it to the gym today and by damn you are going to MAKE IT.  You are tempted at every corner by street venders selling their $10 and $15 umbrellas.  You develop a quick pros and cons list in your head considering the benefit of having an umbrella for the last 3 blocks to the gym and the waste of your lunch money for tomorrow.  A less than fully soaked body to present at the gym vs. pb & j for lunch again tomorrow.  Moderately soaked persons usually glean somewhat more respect than completely soaked persons, tempting.  After another block, you realize that this line of thinking is exactly how you ended up with your broken sub-par umbrella in the first place.  

You begin to get desperate.  You start to edge closer to those people around you with their super ice-pain-cold repellent umbrellas with the double and triple layers of thick clear plastic walls and pure mahogany handles.  When these higher evolved people notice your hovering presence, they jerk away after casting you a dirty look, at best.  At worst, they try to umbrella-dagger you in an attempt to assert their territory.  You’re constantly walking a fine line between dryness and eyelessness.  It is in this fragile condition that you spot an oasis in the crowded frozen tundra, a bus stop…with a bus riding up to it.  This is one of the rarest animals in the concrete jungle.  You forget your frozen, piss soaked feet.  You forget that you are surrounded by unequivocally attractive men and women in business suits who are oozing grace.  You forget your worthless labor camp made umbrella, and you run.   

You run, dodging traffic like you were in a game of 3-d frogger.  After paying the bus man exactly $2.50 in quarters (the only form of currency the Bus Driver recognizes) you have warmth.  There are perhaps 40-45 people on this bus, and 20 seats, but in your newly found state of security you are happy to stand.  You even glance at the hunched man sitting two inches in front of you and smile, as if to say ‘Isn’t this a wonderful place where we all can share such warmth and light!’  He, in turn, lifts his head to reveal a rotted smile and promptly begins to cough on your coat.  Ten stops, and about 3 anti-bacterial uses later (you know that this kind of soap can create super bugs, but sometimes your duty to humanity to stop the creation of super bugs just doesn’t take precedent to tuberculosis exposure) you step off the bus and in to your gym.  You made it, now it is time to start your work out.

Ps. (Ok, so maybe I am including emotional and intellectual as well as physical energy in that initial assessment of energy expenditure). 

Disclaimer: there are probably grammatical and/or spelling errors in this post, this probably means that either I have a 5th grade education or that I was born with a genetic defect that prohibits me from editing my own writing, (don't worry, I'll probably live).