Holly Northrop Blog

Wow, what a weekend. The Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, The Dyke March at Bryant Park, Billy Graham in Queens, The Gay Pride Parade and a massive street fair, one block from my apartment building. I had none of it. Well, I did watch some of the street fair out the window through the binoculars, but even with all that photo worthy stuff, I just could not get my shit together to go outside. Martha and Jazz managed to go shopping for red Pumas and Rose scented perfume in SoHo but not me. It was so absurdly hot again and after what happen in Brooklyn Heights a few weeks ago; I thought it best to simply not. Besides, I recently bought a shit load of music and I had a big, long overdue date with my stereo. I am working on a strange little project that requires me to listen to massive amounts of weird and wonderful stuff while maintaining a rather large list of songs. All things best done, alone...and, uh well...alone. Just me being really, really weird. It's what I do best.

CHILDREN ARE A PRODUCT
My brain has been a little distracted as of late. Surgery is back on the table and Martha and I meet with the surgeon this week to pick a damn date. If all goes right, unlike before, I should have my operation within the next two weeks. This would work just fine because I am sick to death of this tumor and so desperately want to move on with my life. Jasmine had her PET scan Thursday and we are waiting on the results of that test. This time of year always makes me a little crazier then normal and she does not help matters by blurting out crap like, "If is get cancer again, I am NOT going to have chemo. I'm just not Mom." This late breaking news came to me while we were trying to have a nice little sushi dinner.

I could have stabbed her in her baby blue eyeball with my chopstick.

After reading an article about Jasmines' generation being called the Boomerang Generation (we keep kicking her out and she keeps coming back) the fear of her moving forward becomes a fright, especially when I start to think about how fucked up it actually is out there and how ill-prepared she is. In so many ways, she is still a child and a mouthy one at that. I keep telling myself that how she is around the house and around me is different then what she is like in the world but how do I know that? It's like that asshole at work that everyone has to deal with. You know, every office everywhere has the one guy who is just a total dick. (Some offices have more then one.) Well, he has family, friends, and a whole other life support system outside of the office. Do his people know he is the office asshole? Do they care?

Not that Jasmine is an asshole by any means; I know it sounds like I am comparing her to one but this is all more of a general worry about her moving into adulthood. Well, if she is reading this she will be pissed at me but for all the wrong reasons. I am not saying that she is childish - not really, except for that chemo remark. There are so many explanations as to why she is not embracing the whole adult thing. I mean Christ; I have yet to come aboard that ship, although, I at least acknowledge that there is a ship. I really do wish that life were just one big tightly packed bowl of crazy fun.

We are coming up on her 21st birthday here in a few weeks. This one is a strange one because, for this one and only time, she will be exactly half my age. Or I will be twice as old as she is. It's a strange thing and most mothers and daughters are a little older when it happens. You know, 25 & 50 or 30 & 60 or as with my Mom and I, 40 & 80 after which my mom promptly died eleven days before my 41st birthday. But all that math is just math and the strangeness of ageing is never dull.

MEDIA FRENDLY
Martha entered a contest at work, technically, it was a raffle, and she won first prize: a Sharp 13 inch flat panel TV. It is cute as could be and she gave it to me to put in the office. So now, we have a three-room apartment with a TV in every room. There is something so very wrong about that. But it is cute and I'll watch the news on it once we get cable hooked up. However, this has opened a whole new can of worms about if I'm going to get a cable box in the office then I should just go ahead and get a cable modem. See, I am still on dial-up (whatever I have my reasons). One of the many is that dial up keeps that fucking phone line busy for hours and I can only be reached by cell phone and only if I happen to notice it is buzzing. Another is the cost, on demand lifestyles are expensive. Probably the one reason that Martha doesn't understand is that I really do not want to give up an email address that I have had for ten years. It is old and dependant on maintaining a certain account that would become obsolete if we switch to a cable modem. It is like having a 212 area code. Ideally, I would like to get DSL but get this; they do not offer it in my area. I am in a weird 5-block pocket of non-DSL availability. That sounds about right.

HELLO FRIEND
I shot a little pit of product last week for Lynn Yaeger's column, Elements of Style and in doing so; I met possibly the nicest man ever. The place was Charlie's Place (it's closing this week, hence the photo), but Charlie is so sweet and delightful that twenty minutes in his little jewelry shop on Mulberry Street restored my faith in human kindness. Right out of the gate, when I introduced myself he shook my hand with both of his hands and told me I was beautiful. Now, I used to be attractive, but the last four years have taken a big chunk out of me, so I know in my head that this is nothing more then a sweet little old man lie, but it totally worked for me. From that moment on, he was delightful and I was relaxed. Anyone who can calm me down is a gift from God in my book.

So much of New York City is the exact opposite of nice that when someone smiles at you on the subway or holds a door open for you instead of slamming it in your face, it makes you soften for a minute. And when you find a person that is sweet and gentle in a place where everything has slowed down to a more normal pace, you want to just hang out and breath in the calm cool air. Meeting Charlie changed the rest of my day. I carried him with me all throughout work. On the way home I walked slower with my head held upright, managing to catch other folk's eyes before they shifted nervously away from mine. On the subway, I smiled and actually looked around at my fellow passengers. I am sure they thought either I was out of my mind on drugs or a tourist but I didn't care. I wanted to look around me instead of burying my head in a book. I wanted to see if anyone else was out there. And well, okay not on this particular ride home did anyone smile back at me but Charlie's gift of kindness was the best thing ever because my odd behavior gave me a wide berth of seating to stretch out in. Apparently, being nice is a great way to keep people away. So is possessing a foul odor but that is another story.

I woke up from a strange little dream the other morning where I was twirling around wearing a yellow hippy skirt singing repeatedly, "My first one is lasting by my last one never came." I have no idea what the hell it all meant but it was happy in the dream so I was smiling when I woke up. Ah yes, my mind is a dreadfully strange thing, isn't it?

Saturday, Martha and I started out our day at the Lodi New Jersey DMV. Let me repeat that for those of you in the back, the Lodi, New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles.

Now, while all of us have our very own, extra special, extra personal, DMV stories and so far, New Jersey hasn't been the worst in my repertoire, (DC will forever hold that high honor) the best way I can look back on Saturdays trip is to consider myself lucky that the damn thing was open.

Yep, 200 or so of the unwashed masses and I didn't have to lose a day of work, which is very important when you are counting days. And I was very grateful to actually have snagged two chairs, items in high demand, even if the one I was sitting in was right next to the license testing door. A door that, every 5 seconds opened and closed roughly 2 feet from my head.

I seriously needed headphones, a lobotomy or a book, although after they moved me into another room with twenty other folks, it would have been impossible to read because of the bored to death 7 year-old boy sitting next to me who would not shut the fuck up or sit still. His mother, who was sitting on the other side of him, had allergy-altering BO and could not give two shits as to what anyone thought of her little boy.

Here's what I don't get. If mom needs her license renewed (like me) and her partner or friend drives her to the DMV (like Martha) why would I compound the whole DMV nightmare by bringing the equivalent of say, Jasmine, a looser friend of Jasmine's and her step brothers; ages 10 and 6 or 7 or... I can't remember how old they are. Not my kids not my problem. Anyway, why would I want to drag that shit around the DMV with me? I would be looking at a trip to the DMV as an escape from that hell.

A woman actually changed her child's shit filled diaper 10 feet away from me in the middle of the room while her other child stood in front of me licking the outside of her juice cup. It was awesome and I wish to fuck I could have taken my camera inside.

The best thing about the Lodi DMV was the big fat white cop who ran the room and kept us all in line and away from him. He had a gun, nightstick and various cans of mace hidden under his tan polyester covered potbelly. His accent was a thick Jersey with a hint of east Philly. This guy was so classic I swear he had to have been a stand-in of some kind or that we were all on a secret taping of Reno 911. He gave everyone who worked there constant shit, you know, in that scary fun cop way; laugh or I'll detain you and fuck you up, 'cause I am the LAW.

But my favorite moment with Mr. Fat Cop was when he went all Archie Bunker on us and declared, to know one in particular, "...the real problem with the DMV is that those assholes down there in Washington need to pass a law that officially makes English the language of the America. You can't drive in France! You know why? 'Cause the signs aren't in English! You gotta speak the language. That's what should happen here. Speak English or you don't drive."

I looked around at my fellow trapped citizens and did a rough guess as to the origins of us. I would say that we were roughly 70% Cuban, Hispanic or "other" Spanish speaking culture, 10% Asian, 10% Black, 5% White, (me and 2 other people) and 5% miscellaneous. The guy two seats ahead of me was from Russia and the older man behind me needed an Armenian translator. The whole thing was so laughable but I was afraid to crack a smile. Not because I was afraid of Mr. Fat Cop, but because I was more afraid of the chain reaction in my brain that smiling might cause. Smiling leads to laughing, laughing leads to smart-ass remarks, smart-ass remarks lead to conflict and conflict would most certainly not get my drivers' license renewed. Besides, we had a big day ahead of us and it wasn't even noon yet.

In what I consider a blessing, we were out of there in just a little over 2 hours and on our way to Ikea. Hey, you know what, whatever right? We have yet to buy Jasmine's bed but we figured the temporary solution is to buy her a bookcase that she is going to need anyway but now she can use it to hold her clothes instead of using the office/bedroom as one big dresser drawer.

In what I am considering record-breaking time, we made it in and out of Ikea in 30 minutes and that included parking the car. We went in the backdoor, grabbed a cart and dug out the Billy bookcase of choice. I went back through the store, against Saturday afternoon traffic mind you, to the rug area and grabbed two more of those $5.00 red throw rugs that I like. I turned around and ran back to Martha who was waiting to queue up to pay. It was and awesome display of teamwork.

In the quest to find out just how much public horseshit could we take on before we both cracked, we then went to A&P. So, yeah, the DMV, Ikea and the grocery store all within a period of 6 ½ hours. I lived to tell the tale.

THE LADDER
The big hairy news last week was that Miss Martha got a promotion. She is officially middle management. Ta da! We have been crossing our fingers about it for weeks and the Gods smiled upon us. While I still have to keep working (damn) this will ease shit up enormously. We can now afford to live in the apartment that we have been living in for the past 10 months. I am so very proud of her.

A YUPPIE BEHIND THOSE IRISH EYES
Between shooting Brooklyn Heights last weekend and now Battery Park this past Sunday, these two neighborhoods have left me craving the yuppie existence. Battery Park is gorgeous, on the water of course, inland a few streets there is that whole pit of hell, Ground Zero thing, but after a few weeks, I could harden right up to all that. After all, I look at it every day anyway. First every morning, right out any one of our windows and then I get to walk right on through it all twice a day. After almost a year, I am pretty numb to it and now the only thing that grates my nerves are all the tourists bumping around underground on the cement platform. The Path and MTA should move the turnstiles above ground so that only the working drones can play body bumper car. The out-of-towners clog it all up with their gawking and misinformation.

However, yes, Battery Park, with its French Ice-cream, Marina lifestyle, dog parks and extremely stylish playgrounds had me wanting a way of life that I didn't even know I craved. I even had Martha dial a number on the side of a building for Tribecagreen.com just to see what the starting price might be. But, we were in a dead zone, which I found very fitting.

For me, the coolest thing about the whole Battery Park walk thru was the Irish Hunger Memorial. I can't really explain why and from the street it looks like no big deal but once you walk up to it and pass through the hallway...something happens. I'm not sure what, but it's calming and sad at the same time. As I looked out over the transplanted grasses and simulated rolling meadow, complete with Ling Heather and Poppies blowing gently in the breeze, it all made me smile. Right there in the middle of Lower Manhattan, on a tiny half acre plot of raised earth sits a mini Irish oasis.

I shot one of my favorite neighborhoods on Saturday, Brooklyn Heights. Who doesn't love it over there? Everything has to be better if you live near the Promenade. The only real problem with Saturday was the heat. No wait, it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Yeah, right. I think it was both and combined with my blood pressure medicine, all of it made me so dehydrated that I stopped sweating and started to actually get cold.

The only other time that has ever happened to me was in Las Vegas where several other factors were in play. I was 80 pounds heavier and I had a severe head cold, to the point where both of my ears were plugged and had been popping Sudafed Cold medicine in my mouth like Pez for days. It was 107 degrees; I was dressed in black walking up the Vegas strip taking pictures alone at 3:00 in the afternoon. I had already been in town for 4 days on business and had been out of the fucking hotel once so I was determined to 'check out Vegas'. Foolish is not even the right word to describe that but I didn't get very far before I admitted stupidity and crawled up the walkway to the Bellagio. I was so delirious that I didn't even notice the fountain or any of the artwork. Once inside, I sat at a slot machine hallucinating for half an hour drinking water while freakishly beautiful waitresses kept checking on me. Ah yes, that was just five short years ago and I still hate Vegas.

The difference between that and this past Saturday, despite the above mentioned, was it was only 88 degrees in New York with 97% humidity thrown in just for shits and giggles. Jasmine, who has a vested interest in keeping me alive, carried the maps and forced me into air-conditioning when needed. Along with cold water and laughter, she made it not so bad. She even bought an extremely cherry flavored Italian ice and gave me the big chunks of it so I could temporarily freeze my gullet.

Earlier, before things got weird, Jazz and I had been sweating so profusely that I had BO within an hour of showering. Seeing how she and I are blonde/redheads with that Irish/German thing that screams 'stay out of the fucking sun', I figured we had sweated off all of our 35 Plus sunscreen, which I had forgotten to bring. On one of our trips into air-conditioning bliss, we bought sunscreen. Specifically, I bought Hawaiian Tropic 45 Plus all day waterproof crap that cost thirteen dollars. We found a bench outside of the grocery store and lathered up. After about an hour, my face and arms were starting to feel strange. Kind of like burning from the inside out. I asked Jazz if her skin felt funny and she said that her neck and cheeks were tingly. I had never used that type of sunscreen before and now combined with my heat delirium and general insanity I was totally convinced that Jazz and I had been chemically poisoned.

On the street and still working there wasn't too much we could do. I didn't want to wash it off with bottled water and neither one of us were developing any kind of weird rash so it wasn't until we finally got home, 3 hours later, that we both were able to take showers to stop the stinging. Except that didn't really fix the problem. Jasmine, unfazed by the issue and kind of sick of me and my bullshit, proceeded to stretch out on my big fat lesbian bed and watch Against the Ropes. (Meg Ryan needs to stop fucking with her lips. She's starting to look all lippy and strange, kind of like The Joker's sister.) I flipped out and took a Benadryl, believing that I was having an allergic reaction. It worked. Not only did the burning stop, I slept great. Martha is writing a letter to Hawaiian Tropic, but it does say on the bottle, "If irritation occurs, discontinue use".

Hmm, I should make a T-shirt with that exact phrase.

THE ART OF THE DEAL
Thurston Moore's book Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture is very cool and although I can't afford to buy it just yet, I have been reading it on my lunch hour at the bookstore. Anyone who was part of this art form has undoubtedly been waxing nostalgically about great tapes of the past. I have made so many that I honestly have no idea the total amount of Maxell 90 minute cassettes I have invested in.

The very first mix tape I ever made was for me. It was somewhere around 1978 and I had just bought my first component stereo with money I had saved from working a full time job at Frisch's Big Boy and a part-time job selling weed. I was a junior in high school and I tapped my college savings to buy a stereo to replace the piece of shit all-in-one turntable/receiver with tabletop speakers that my parents had given me years before. I bought a Panasonic receiver, a Techniques turntable, a Panasonic tape deck and a pair of Harman Kardon 2 x 4 floor speakers. I bought it all for just under $600.00. I went to a stereo store near downtown Cincinnati and on my first attempt to buy, the sales person would not sell to me. I was 16 and had cash (mostly one-dollar bills) but the asshole said that I either needed to go get my dad or a brother. He wouldn't sell it to me because I was a girl and actually laughed at me for even trying to buy a stereo.

Now, back in the day, Best Buy, Circuit City and all that other huge retail crap was not around. If you wanted stereo equipment, you had to go to a specialty store, or a department store like Sears. I knew what I wanted and the only place to get it was this guy's store. (I wish to Christ I could remember the name of it.) The only way to get it was to drag a walking penis in there with me.

I can't remember who I used, it most certainly wasn't my dad but I do remember the first night I hooked it up in my room and put on an album. The very first record to grace the turntable was The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed. I then made a tape for myself of all my favorite Stones songs on one side and a bunch of Janis songs on the other. The motivation for the tape was so I could I could paint non-stop for 90 minutes without having to get up and change the record.

Years later, Jim replaced my Panasonic tape deck with a black Kenwood double deck that he got on a photo job trade. That deck was amazing. Those tapes still sound awesome and some of them are almost 20 years old. It lasted longer then our marriage, and why yes, I did get the stereo in the divorce, Although, I did loose half of my record collection, which technically was "ours". There is never really ever a win, win when you merge music.

Decade after decade of tape culture still lives on my bookshelves. Despite a few losses here and there and a car break-in in DC where every tape I had ever made for Martha was stolen, I have almost all of my tapes. I tried to remake the stolen tapes (at Martha's request) but because I never kept lists and usually relied on late night stoned inspiration, I could never remember what all was on them. After the break-in is when I started dubbing the tapes I give away. I also have every tape that was ever made for me and will listen to them on a somewhat regular basis. I even, (gasp) still make them. I have tapes from a friend who died a few years ago and tapes from friends I no longer talk to. I still have the tape I made for Jasmine right before she got cancer. I remember once when I was in PA during her chemotherapy, she drove me to the hotel and my tape was in her car stereo. I teased her about it being for show, because she knew I was going to be in her car and she swore that wasn't it. She said she really liked it.

I have to admit, I've got nothing. Well, in theory, every week I have nothing and usually pull something out of my ass but this week I've really got nothing to blather on about. But then again, it isn't as though most or you stop by to read what my brain damaged head can spew out because I say it with an amazing amount of eloquence. No, I'm more like a car accident before the ambulance has arrived. A minor fender bender but traffic is all fucked up and you at least feel you deserve to have to look at the mess as you drive by, just because of the shear inconvenience of it all. No one is hurt but things are definitely twisted.

After a few side detours chasing new medical rabbits, it seems as though I will now be getting back to my tumor, where things move at the normal pace of cold molasses. I had a big brain twisting moment at the doctors' office last week when it was mistakenly interpreted that I was trying to get pregnant instead of the whole adrenal thing. I have a new doctor who has only seen me twice and apparently, I look like another patient of hers who is infertile, and now along with everything else, it appears that I am too.

My new doctor, (who I think looks like Susan Sarandon, and honestly, who doesn't want that in a gynecologist) momentarily became confused during our office visit and said to me;

"We have to take some sperm..."

...and then she looked over at Martha who was sitting on a tiny stool in the corner of the room and concluded her wicked diagnosis by declaring;

"...and it looks like you are going to have to provide the egg. We can fertilize it outside of the womb."

Noticing our confused and contorted faces, she kept going.

"Aren't you trying to get pregnant?" she asked.

All three of us looked at each other with overall horror on our faces before there was a massive snap of communal understanding and we all started speaking at the same time.

I yapped out one of my long sentence rambles, complete with hair flinging and arm waving; "What, no, wait ...um, let's review. I am a 42-year old woman and I have a rare adrenal tumor and we are here because of a pelvic MRI that looked a little funny and I had additional screwed-up tests last week, that YOU personally ordered and we are here to go over the results of those and an abnormal PAP test to see if I have CANCER and...um, I already have a 20-year old that we are trying to put through college and Jesus Christ I don't ever want to have another child - EVER. WE do not want to have children and frankly, on some days, we are not really that pleased with the one we do have. But what can you do? She failed Economics you know."

Martha squirmed around on the little stool, adjusted her pants and said; "I don't understand. When does sperm make anything better? My God, no, no, no we don't want children."

The doctor immediately apologized and now she knows exactly who I am, and while yes, I just happen to look like another patient of hers who is trying to get pregnant, that was no excuse and she was deeply sorry. I look just like someone else. I could say the same thing back at her; that she looks like Susan Sarandon (Martha disagrees) but I'm not acting like an idiot and fawning all over her asking for an autograph.

We all had a good laugh but the whole thing made me feeling strange and freaked out for unexplained reasons.

SMALL TALK
Jasmine seems to be settling in with her new job at the stationary store, also known as Breederville. I stopped by the other day just to check out the shop. It is pretty much a bridal type deal with cards and unique gifts. Jasmine is way deep in straight land but considering that she is boy crazy and unfortunately living with two mommies I suppose she can stomach all the demands of the typical Hoboken bride. I met the owner, playing the Mom role with little fan fare.

Afterwards, the owner told Jazz that she thought I was nice. Good to know I can still work the small talk. I think the key to me is short bits of structured insignificant chatter. None of this rambling gibberish and non-stop giggling that I tend to find myself caught up in. It always appears as though I am on drugs, and while yes, I am on prescription medication it isn't the good stuff. Folks usually walk away from a conversation with me totally convinced that I'm nuts, an amphetamine addict or both. Whenever I replay any first meeting with just about everyone I've ever met, I'm aghast that I have a job or friends. I think the only reason I have Martha is that she happened to think long ago and far away that all my rambling and giggling was kind of cute. These days, it pretty much drives her crazy but after thirteen and a half years and thousands of dollars in dental work, I am an investment that she simply is not willing to walk away from. Plus, she loves me, but I really don't know how that all happened. I think we were drunk and I'm pretty positive that I was on the good stuff.

BEACH DREAMS
Miss Simon and Miss Martha have taken matters into their own hands and have ordered us up a beach house on Top Sail Island. It isn't until the middle of October, but considering that all of us are isolation freaks and cool weather suits us just fine, October appears to work. It should still be warm during the day and the house has a fireplace for those chilly nights. I'll probably have to take the whole week off from work without pay because by then I'll have no days left at all. But I simply don't care. We will make it work and I am glad they went ahead and did it even though technically, right now Martha and I are cash poor. We made a vow to go somewhere every year because it is so important to actually get the fuck away from it all. Two very cool things about the house are that it is a WHOLE house, all four walls are ours and it has a hammock on one of the back porches. Is summer over yet?