Arbitrary Stupid Goal Read online

My mom is the one who said the dish needed lemon juice. My dad added the stock because customers complained there wasn’t enough sauce for the rice. But the rest was Patsy.

  Kate the waitress and Patsy were like sisters. Kate needed a sister. She had run away from home at 16.

  Kate had a new boyfriend that had asked her to move into his place. She was dumbstruck by love, but not so dumb she would give up her apartment. The solution was to sublet her place to Victor from Missouri.

  Victor looked like a troll doll, but with more hair. He was the son of a woman from St. Louis who worked for a journalist named Linda.

  Linda was a Store regular and close friend to my mom and dad. This put Victor in the trustworthy column.

  It didn’t end well, with the boyfriend or Victor.

  Kate came home to a destroyed apartment.

  Victor had stopped paying the landlord rent. In all the months he stayed he had never paid the gas or electric bills, which were in Kate’s name. She was left with a mound of debt and a huge mess.

  Kate soldiered on. The Store blacklisted Victor, and Willy put a curse on him for five dollars with a juju man in Harlem.

  We lost everybody.

  —my dad

  Morton Street saw AIDS early. No one knew what it was, where it came from, how to prevent it, or if there was a cure.

  Perry lived next to The Store. He was in seven or eight times a day, and my dad always wished he came in more. One of the funniest men in the world, Perry was a musical and comedic genius. That’s what he did for a living.

  His boss was talented, but cheap, so he had a side gig. A hobby that turned out to be a cash cow. The side gig involved placing poetic ads in the back pages of The Advocate magazine and installing mirrors on his ceiling.

  The ads were the first of their kind in the magazine. They offered tag team S&M sex for money. Perry and his boyfriend worked almost every night.

  These facts about Perry seem private.

  But there were no secrets with my dad. People come into The Store, and before their drink arrives, my dad has found out they lost their virginity to an aunt.

  “Wonderful.” This is the word my dad says over and over when he describes Perry. It was Perry who first told my dad about AIDS. He called it Kaposi syndrome. I gotta stop fucking everybody or I’m going to die, was how Perry explained it. And Perry stopped cold, but it was too late.

  People who made the Village, people who my parents loved, started to disappear.

  The Village kept going.

  My parents didn’t understand what was happening. AIDS snuck up on them like it did everyone else.

  Murder, tragedy, love, it didn’t matter, my parents got up in the morning and went to work. It wasn’t their nature to worry.

  When it was in full bloom and called AIDS, Patsy would spend all of her free time at the hospital holding babies.

  They were AIDS babies whose parents had died. The babies would die soon, too, but they still needed to be held.

  Less than two blocks from The Store was the shop of a sign painter named Dave. Dave painted in the traditional way with a maulstick, fast brushstrokes, and a talent for gold leaf.

  My dad had him paint the windows of The Store. Wedged between the gilded words DELIVERY * COFFEE * FINE GROCERIES * HOME COOKING * FRESH SALADS was:

  Every time my parents had a kid they would hire Dave to come over and paint the baby’s name around the hearts.

  Lots of people hired Dave. Even people that didn’t really need signs, like Felix.

  Felix lived in the wilderness of Alaska for five weeks out of the year. The rest of his time was spent replacing burnt-out bulbs in New York City streetlamps.

  Around this time there was a Polish joke:

  Three drug addicts go into an alley with one needle. The Chinese addict sterilizes the needle, swabs it with alcohol, and shoots up. He passes it to the Jewish junkie, who sterilizes the needle, swabs it with alcohol, and shoots up. He then passes it to the Polish addict, who sticks the needle straight into his arm.

  “Are you nuts? Aren’t you afraid of AIDS? You’ll get sick, man!” yell the first two junkies.

  “Don’t worry,” says the Polish junkie, “I’m wearing a condom.”

  Felix hired Dave to paint a sign that read, “ALL OUR COOKS WEAR CONDOMS,” and gave it to my dad as a gift.

  Dad put the sign up. After a while it wasn’t funny, so my dad took the sign down.

  Felix walked in one day, saw the sign missing. “I could’ve figured that,” he said, walked out, and never came back.

  “Hey, Pats, did you hear the good news?” my dad said, leaning on our fire hydrant outside The Store.

  “What,” asked Patsy.

  “I heard that shit Victor is back in Missouri, and he’s got AIDS.”

  Patsy didn’t think this was funny.

  She ignored and avoided my dad for two years. Finally Patsy forgot or forgave him. But it wasn’t the same. My dad was afraid he would say something stupid or honest again, and they gently stopped being friends.

  BULLETPROOF CASE

  Jason is late, and I’m early.

  I wait near a Victorian barber’s chair. It still has a butt mark despite that it hasn’t been sat in for a decade. Next to it is a drafting desk with a drawing taped to its center. A white railing protects it all.

  It is a tribute. The desk belonged to the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. The New York Public Library replaces the featured drawing once a month. They will never run out. Hirschfeld did the New York Times theater drawings for seventy-five years.

  Most people know Hirschfeld as the guy who hid his daughter’s name in the hair, sleeves, and feathers of his drawings. This started on the day Nina Hirschfeld was born in 1945. He tried to stop hiding her name once, afraid it was eclipsing his work. Furious letters were sent to The New York Times; people had searched for days. Hirschfeld relented and continued to hide the name till he died. The drawings were used by the Pentagon to train pilots to spot targets.

  I was trained, too, shoved in my dad’s armpit, racing my sister to find all the Ninas.

  Hirschfeld’s desk is now hidden like a Nina underneath a stairway in the Library for the Performing Arts (L.P.A.).

  Drawing by Al Hirschfeld (5 hidden Ninas)

  The old Donnell Library had a tribute as well. It was to Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in the form of the original stuffed animals. The ones that inspired A. A. Milne’s stories. They were displayed on the children’s floor. I didn’t visit them often, but was glad to know Piglet and Eeyore were safe in their bulletproof case above me.

  I remember the Donnell. The teen floor always got control of the library’s windows on Fifty-Third Street, filling them with Popsicle stick skyscrapers and Valentine’s poetry. Signs in the bathroom warned: “No Hair Combing.” But most of all I remember the viewing cubicles in the basement. The Donnell’s basement was where the New York Public Library’s Reserve Film and Video Collection was born.

  The collection is a curated archive of educational, avant-garde, political, industrial, out-of-print, rare, foreign, local, and historic films. The holdings are as diverse as the city of New York. Preserving Marcelo Ramos—The Firework Maker’s Art and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with the same importance. Providing the public equal access to Kustom Kar Kommandos, directed by Kenneth Anger, and The Case of the Elevator Duck, directed by Joan Micklin Silver.

  At least once a week I would set up an appointment to watch films at the Donnell—films I plucked semi-randomly from the database using keywords. Two days’ notice was required so that the librarian had time to pull the films from deep in the subbasement.

  At the appointed time, I’d sit in one of the six small viewing alleys with a pair of headphones. In the beginning the librarian worked the projector. Soon I threaded it and wound the reels myself.

  “Mrs. Shopsin!” Johnny says as we approach the info desk.

  “Mr. Gore,” I say back.

  Johnny used to work at the Donnell.r />
  “Gore” was easy to remember because he liked bloody kung fu films, and when I met him Al Gore was vice president, but his first name escaped me. Johnny not only remembered my whole name, he knew my fourteen-digit library card number by heart. Embarrassed to ask his first name, I called him “Mr. Gore.”

  The Donnell was shut down in 2008. I cried the day I found out; I think a lot of people did.

  It was a short building in a sea of tall buildings. The NYPL sold it to a developer that promised to put a library in the ground floor of their big hotel.

  The film collection is never going back.

  I still refer to the film collection as Donnell, though the collection now lives permanently in the L.P.A.

  Mr. Gore leads us to the viewing alley of the L.P.A. There is just one viewing space now, though a whole class can fit in it.

  We sit in ergonomic office chairs.

  Mr. Gore loads the reels. We put on the supplied headphones. Black-and-white footage of the Lower East Side in 1934 plays. Pushcart vendors sell oysters and silk. Rag pickers wander. Boys jump off piers into the East River. New York is unpaved and dust flies in people’s face.

  The film cuts to footage of the same spot in 1959. It is in color. Men wear hats. Women wear dresses.

  “This whole film is silent, isn’t it?” Jason says.

  I take my headphones off as well.

  How Do They Make Baseballs? (1970)

  Me and Jason’s first date was watching movies at the real Donnell.

  It wasn’t a date.

  Jason was using my boss’s office to check his e-mail. He mentioned skiing or Werner Herzog. I told him about The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, with its slow-motion footage of a ski-flyer flying too far and shots of spectators in the trees.

  The film couldn’t be seen anywhere. It was rare and the Internet was still finite. The Donnell was the only place I knew of to watch it.

  So I made an appointment.

  I tacked on two extra films: How Do They Make Baseballs?, an educational short that involved women wearing horn-rimmed glasses rhythmically sewing red thread through white leather.

  And Incredible Machine, made in 1968 by Bell Labs about their discoveries in computer arts. The film is full of men wearing ties, women in shift dresses, car-sized computers, cathode ray monitors, magnetic tape, and isometric animations. The labs’ advances are laid out one after the other, climaxing with a talking computer repeating the phrase “I like my coffee black” in multiple inflections.

  After the films, Jason walked me home.

  It was fifty-five blocks to my apartment, which was located above what used to be The Store. And by the time I got home, I no longer gave two shits about collecting plastic grapes.

  SHANGRI-LA

  A breed of people hear my last name, twinkle, and say they went to The Store once and then decided they imagined the place, because they were never able to find it again.

  This was the first hurdle to eating at Shopsin’s.

  After you found The Store, you had to obey the rules—rules that were not posted on a sign. Some were common sense: no outside beverages, everyone has to eat. Some were common sense to my dad: no copying the order next to you, don’t ask for the best thing on the menu, no parties larger than four, no allergies, no assholes.

  It was a test. You passed or were kicked out.

  Cheating was allowed—if your friends gave you the answers, that was cool.

  Next, scan the giant menu to find your perfect match of a dish. Careful: if my dad is in earshot you can’t ask what is in the dish.

  So it was a triumph to eat at Shopsin’s.

  For the people that were right, it lived up to the obstacles.

  If you were wrong it likely sucked, even if you got through the gauntlet.

  I am sorry.

  But if it was right my dad could take any problem and make you see it in a new way, finding hidden truths and humor that made the whole store tear up. Meanwhile my mom would set you up with your best friend, soul mate, or close to it.

  But the thing that got people in the door was the food.

  My mom would steal from customers’ plates before the dish got to their table. Little bits just to taste. My dad might never make it that way again. Unless she told him it should always be made like that.

  Granted, it might not have seemed the best place to everyone. We didn’t use homemade mayonnaise—we used Hellman’s. Coffee was self-serve. My dad wore a sweatband rather than a white toque.

  If a customer complained about the meal, my mom would take a big bite of the dish in front of them. Then report back, saying, “You’re crazy,” or “Ew, you’re right, that is disgusting.” Sometimes you would get handed a baby to hold while she took your order.

  If you didn’t tip her, she would chase you down the block. No matter how busy we were. “That dick stiffed me,” she would say, and bolt out the door.

  My mom loved chocolate truffles, especially the ones from Lilac’s on Christopher Street. My brother Danny would always buy them for her as a gift.

  It was sweet, except Danny loved truffles, too. So did Zack. I think we all did. Because my mom’s truffles would disappear so fast. She tried to hide them, but they had to be refrigerated. At one point she started putting them in the freezer; that slowed us all down for maybe three minutes.

  Shoes, the Grateful Dead, garage sales, road trips, drugs (pot and acid), the New York Knicks, local elections, Tina Turner—I could go on for days, my mom loved so many things.

  Every time my dad cooked chicken fajitas, my mom would pick them up with the steam streaming behind her and yell “Yahoooooo!” as she skipped to the table. It was her favorite dish to serve.

  Danny used to think it was an act. It was ridiculous, she was a one-woman fajita ticker-tape parade.

  But now Danny thinks of Mom’s “Yahoooooo!” as true.

  He thinks of it as endearing and a testament of how much Mom loved being a waitress, of how much my mom loved her Store.

  She had sheets of gold star stickers. If everyone at a table cleaned their plate, my mom would put a star on their check and do a kind of dance when she brought the check to the table.

  The item my dad hated most was Thai Steak Salad. At some point he had loved it. A second cook with long hair named Steve had told him about the dish.

  In my dad’s version, everything was made to order. He didn’t have rice vermicelli, so he used angel hair pasta. He didn’t have a fryer, so he used the griddle to crisp the noodles.

  It was a pain in the ass. He had to get the griddle super hot, put the angel hair down, and weight it. If the noodles didn’t get crisp the dish sucked. On an open flame he would roast three colors of peppers. While that was cooking he would chop cashews, make a marinade, and cut up lettuce. When the peppers were done, he skinned them, bits of black glittering the cutting board like a virus. Finally it was time to cook the steak.

  When the dish came out, every customer that hadn’t ordered yet ordered it. My mom made a rule that you couldn’t copy what the person next to you was eating.

  This rule was born because my dad would explode with anger at the thought of making another Thai Steak Salad.

  Long hair Steve’s wife ran a company called MasturBakers. She created cakes sculpted into penises that had the words “Eat my cock” frosted on them. On the side, Tammy also made a few PG desserts. One was a chocolate peanut butter refrigerator pie with a graham cracker crust called Sigh Pie. Every week my dad would ride over on his motorcycle to pick one up for The Store.

  My dad always hoped people didn’t order dessert. To him it was just a half hour extra that took up a table. He didn’t care about selling coffee and cake.

  We always had bread pudding to get rid of the stale bread. For a while my dad made flan. I made pecan pie because it lasted for weeks. Come October, I made pumpkin pie because of the big Libby’s display and sale at the supermarket. My dad had a brief love affair with bootleg crepes made from flour tor
tillas. Somebody gave us a gift once—a special pan with half circles that made pancake balls called Æbelskivers. “Order of apple skivies,” my mom would shout across the yellow-lit restaurant.

  That was it for the desserts, except the Sigh Pie Tammy made. Every time my mom served that pie, she would slice off a little for herself. Sometimes she would cut a piece to sell, taste her little sliver, and say, “I don’t think this is fresh.” Then she would cut into the new pie, serve it, and proceed to eat the rest of the old one.

  We never made money on the Sigh Pies.

  A breed of people hear my last name, flash the opposite of a twinkle, and say they tried to go to The Store once. Then they will allude to the fact that my father is a psycho.

  Most dishes at The Store could be got on a spice scale of one to ten.

  Ten was murder. My dad took it as a penis contest, slicing scotch bonnets in a way that camouflaged what they were, so the customer couldn’t cheat and pick them out.

  If you didn’t belong in The Store, you were kicked out. It was violent and happened as soon as someone wrong tried to put their foot in the door.

  Not physically violent. My father never hit anyone. He didn’t need to. He could do more harm with one sentence than most people could do with a crowbar.

  Wounds heal, but what my dad says will haunt you for the rest of your life.

  The Store’s rules weren’t about being exclusive. They were about keeping the right balance.

  My mom always had trouble with the balance. Her natural tendency was to say “yes.”