A Real Artist

"I love this," she murmured. A second later: "Oh, I just love this!" Another moment passed. "Uh! This is just so great! Isn't that clever! That's so clever. Mm! mm! mm!" She continued around the store picking up objects and putting them back. "You have wonderful taste... if you're the buyer," she called to me.
"No, I'm not the buyer, but I'm glad you're enjoying yourself!" I said.
"Oh," she sniffed, and I realized I was no longer worthy of attention. "The buyer is a designer herself, so she has a terrific eye," I continued. I pointed out the locally designed products and artworks.
"Do you do anything in here?" she sneered. Her tan made her pale blue eyes look almost white.
"Yes," I said and she looked disappointed. "Those drawings on the wall there."
"Huh." She said, barely glancing at the three drawings that collectively represented almost six solid months of my life: black and white narratives painstakingly drawn with ultra fine pens, a magnifying glass and the sacrificial blood and tears most people reserve for their children. "Well, I guess I'll take these things." She said happily dropping a few kitschy knick knacks on the counter.
"Would you like to wear the ring?" I asked pointing to the giant novelty ring she had gushed over.
"Oh, god, no! I'm meeting a client!" she exclaimed and even I was unsure how I could have been so stupid.
"And what do you do, if I can be nosy?" I asked.
"I'm a financial planner," she said. "But I'm actually an artist... on the side." Ah. Now I understood.
"Really?" I said. "How cool."
"Yes," she ran her chicken feet fingers through her short dark hair. "I work with fine crystals... real Swarovsky crystals." She sniffed again. I wondered if she might need a tissue "I also work in shells as a medium. I make picture frames and, you know, little mirrors." She paused again as I nodded and let the gravity of this information process in my pea brain. "I made this bracelet for example." She held out her thin wrist adorned with a greenish brass bangle with rhinestone medallions hot-glued all around it.
"Oh! Yes, I see!" I said. "And did you make your necklace as well?"
"Oh, yes! This is one of my pieces. I loved it so much I just had to keep it for myself, even though so many people wanted it." She fingered the blue, genuine Swarovsky crystals at her throat. "You can see the color is really unique."
I nodded.
"Well," she said. "These are certainly impulse buys!" She beamed at her purchases, the novelty ring and an ice tray that made ice cubes shaped like jewels. I smiled.
"Well enjoy your impulses," I said. She didn't respond. "Thanks for stopping in." She didn't even look at me. "Have a great day!" She walked out the door without saying thank you or goodbye.

Reflections on the word "True(ish)"

Let me start by saying this: I stammer when I'm flustered.

So for those handful of you who read these entries, understand that when I say "I said" what I really mean is: "after stammering and sweating, and maybe saying a few things that I've ommited here for the sake of brevity (and there's not much of that on this blog) and a story that doesn't drown in "ums","ands", and "uhs", I finally squeezed these words out, in more or less this order." I don't have a history of levelheadedness, and if I sound cool, calm, and collected in these stories, which do come from my semi-distant past, it is totally because I want you to think I was, even if I wasn't.

I also compress multiple interactions into one or two key encounters. Again, this is so I don't have to bog everyone down with "and then the next day... and then the day after that... and after the 16th time.." This makes it seem like I can just intuit motives and attitudes in other people after just one or two casual meetings. I usually can't. Though I will say this: you can tell a LOT about people by how they dress. Don't tell me that isn't true, because it is. Maybe that's especially true in New York, but trust me. People want to be known and if they don't you can tell that by how they dress.

So when I say "true(ish)" what I mean is this: these people exist, I worked in these places for the reasons I give, the observations of the settings are true to my memory and what I don't remember, I do a little research to make sure it's true. The encounters are real, but they probably didn't go as smoothly as I make it out and the endings were not the neat little packages I turn them into. And also, I sweat a lot when I'm nervous, so if it feels more honest to you to imagine me sweating when I tell someone off, go right ahead.

Just thought I'd give folks a heads up, in case you were thinking "that can't possibly be true, I know Jess and she is NOT that articulate." I am if you cut out the fat.

It's Not Asking Too Much

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The Barista. An often maligned creature: too hipster, too snotty, too cool, a fashion victim at a fashion show, inattentive, rude, slow, money grubbing, plays the music too loud, gets the order wrong, forgets the order altogether, gossips loudly about other customers, looks pained when you ask for extra foam, tells you "this is what a cappuccino looks like" as if you don't know what a cappuccino looks like which you do and what s/he has just handed you is not it, sneers at Starbucks and lectures you about going vegan, handles food without gloves, sneezes in your coffee and does not say thank you when you leave a perfectly reasonable tip.

Hating baristas, for some people, is a sport. Luckily for me and the legions of college-educated, broke twenty and now thirty-somethings who meant to follow their passions and somehow ended up working in a coffee shop, there are more people who love their local baristas. I would like to put in a kind word for the barista, and a few nasty ones for the cafe customers who suck at being customers as much as any barista has ever sucked at being a servant. Pardon me, I mean "a member of the service industry."

If you work the morning shift in a small cafe, that means you get up between 4 and 5 am so you can travel to work, and you work hard. Don't let anyone tell you different. It's not highly skilled labor- except the actual espresso making part, but even that, once you get the hang of it, becomes routine- but it is definitely labor. Usually your customers are what make the day fun, and a good number of my friends are former cafe customers.

The deluge begins with a dribble around dawn: one or two perky, early risers in their gym gear, pulling out an ear bud to talk to you about the prospective weather; other members of the service industry- city workers, construction workers, home healthcare aides- come in the first hour as well. I called the hour between 6:30 and 7:30 the blue collar hour. Mostly pleasant folks, tired and god fearing. They don't tip more than a nickle, but I never blamed them: they're a hard working lot with families to support on meager incomes. Coffee is one of those rare items that gets classified as a luxury (because of such things as frappuccinos and caramel ventis) and financial planners always tell people to cut expensive coffee drinks out of their routines, but I think that's unfair. The combination of coffee, sugar and froth really is a necessity for most of the people who keep things running smoothly for the rest of us.

At about 7:45 the flood begins with the teachers. They arrive bitching about every goddamn thing under the sun. The principal is a cunt, the math department thinks the english department doesn't need books more than the math department needs calculators, the board of ed is out of touch and totally corrupt, and the kids... well, those teachers are no racists, but it's hard not to be when x, y or z just happened... and have you heard how they talk? They're like animals! Just kidding! And, oh my god, did you hear that student accused that teacher of misconduct?! Unbelievable! I mean, it's probably true, but, well, the kid probably deserved to be punched in the face. Ha ha. They don't acknowledge the existence of the people around them and even worse, they never know what they want, even though they all get the same thing every day. This one is paying for both, no, all three of those guys... oh. Wait. She forgot her wallet, can I ring them all separately? Did I get the order for the bagel with cream cheese? No? Sheesh. What kind of bagel? What kind do you have? Well, do you have blueberry bagels? No? Wait, what kind of bagels do you have again? I'll have an everything. Not cream cheese! Butter! I said butter! Yes I did. You should get blueberry bagels. Toasted. Is the coffee ready yet? No? What are you guys doing back there? Sleeping? Ha ha. And so on.

On the heels of the teachers come the business people. Folks who stick out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood full of hipsters and Teach for America do-gooders-turned-bitter. But I like these people as customers: on the weekends they will happily lounge around talking about Blade Runner and paintball before going to the office for some overtime. They tip well, are pleasant and brusque and never think to use a reusable cup. They just don't have time for such things.

Behind the yuppies, in the line that is now snaking out the door, are the art yuppies: designers, architects, commercial artists, game developers, animators, tv and film producers. These are the worst of what hipsterism has to offer: they make lots of money and come from lots of money, but claim to be broke all the time which explains jeans that cost $160, artfully worn sweaters worth $200, shoes in the neighborhood of $500, a $4 iced latte and a tip of 25 cents. They are obsessed with "professionalism" having recently discovered it, and constantly say things like "that client was sounprofessional!" They drop the names of their alma maters- RISD, Parsons, SVA, the New School- as often as they do celebrity designers and arty-farty design magazines that have a circulation of exactly three people and cost $25 per issue. And these people are so passive agressive it's hard to believe Jane Austen didn't model her characters on a bunch of Williamsburg art yuppies. They want to be gritty and they think the people behind the counter are just like them, but even though we're usually white (if more than one of us wasn't they probably wouldn't come in) and mostly artists of one kind or another, we are nothing alike...at least not as a labor force. A barista makes between $2-9 an hour, they make between $20-90 an hour. Baristas do not get overtime, sick days, vacation days or benefits of any kind. They do. Most baristas are paid off the books and are lead to believe this is for our own benefit so we won't have taxes taken out of our paychecks, but we are left without recourse if we get laid off, hurt on the job, or treated unfairly. They have private accountants to handle their paperwork and taxes. Baristas regularly work 12 hour shifts on our feet. Art yuppies work long hours too, but in ergonomic chairs in carefully calibrated temperatures. And they have onsite yoga classes. Baristas haul trash, boxes, and slop-filled buckets, we wash dishes, clean bathrooms, cook food, clean spills, get scalded, do laundry, sweep and mop floors, hose the encrusted dirt and food off heavy rubber mats even in the middle of winter, empty the humane (if I'm working there) and inhumane (if I'm not) mouse traps of bodies, lug back stock up and down basement steps, scrub refrigerators, scrape grills, wash windows, unclog drains, scrub coffee stained urns, handle unruly customers, and, oh yeah, make fancy coffee drinks. Of course a barista does way more than that but that's just the stuff that requires a bit of muscle and a strong stomach. Art yuppies... don't do any of that. And a barista must be friendly and cheerful all the time. Irritability in an art yuppie is considered an asset.

I hate art yuppies as much as I sometimes aspire to be one.

So these are my sweeping generalizations of a typical Brooklyn coffee shop. Of course there are exceptions to every case listed above- and I haven't mentioned the young parents, the burlesque dancers, the bank tellers, the art tourists, the students, the homeless junkies, the parents of students grateful for a normal looking coffee shop in the midst of the 99 cent stores and botanicas, the owners of those stores, and the old timers who look absolutely shell shocked by the yuppie diaspora that has settled in their once poverty stricken neighborhood- but I'm setting a scene. Imagine- against the backdrop of little sleep, many customers- each with their own sigh and caffeine headache, complaints about clients, students, boyfriends, weather, the hour- and a seething class war that no one acknowledges, the following scene unfolds.

Two black women who seem friendly enough, walk in and try, at first to cut the line by asking, "this the line for coffee?" No, it's the line for my book signing. One looks like a bank teller, chubby and wearing the cheap black slacks and chunky jewelry of TJ Maxx. The other is short and built. She has long salt and pepper dreads and she is dressed in a linen suit, tailored like a Don Johnson special. She has sunglasses perched on her head and she's a pretty good looking woman. When they're turn finally comes, Miami Vice comes up to the counter, pushes her sport coat back and puts her hands in her pockets. Very suave.
"Hiya! What can I get you?" I ask, all smiles.
Bank Teller asks for a caramel latte. I nod and look at Miami Vice, ready to take her order. She smiles all cool like and says "It's okay. Go ahead and make her drink, I'm gonna decide." So I make the latte. I do latte art, and I make a little rosetta leaf in the foam. This makes Bank Teller giggle and Miami Vice looks impressed. All is going swimmingly.
"Let me ask you something," she says. "You got a bacon and egg sandwhich?"
She had been studying the menu the whole time I'd been making the latte and somehow had not noticed that there is no bacon and egg sandwich listed. No, I apologize, we do not have any bacon and egg sandwiches.
"Can't you just make me one? With the ingredients you have?"
The line is long, people are restless and my coworker is frantically making cappuccinos.
"We don't have bacon or eggs," I say getting annoyed in double time.
"You don't have bacon and eggs?! What kind of place serves breakfast but doesn't have eggs?" She speaks in an even tone, more like she is reciting a set up for a joke.
"This place," I snap with a smile. "Can I get you something else. Something that's on the menu, perhaps?"
"Hmmm..." she says. "How about you make me a ham and cheese on the health bread."
"The prosciutto sandwich comes on the ciabatta-"
"I know, but I just want the ham and some cheddar cheese on the health bread. How about you just make that for me. With mayo on one side. Butter on the other. And lettuce. And tomato." She's leaning against the counter and has assumed the air of a person casually waiting.
"No. I can't make that for you. I have a line out the door, and no time to make you a sandwich we don't have pre-made. But I do have a ham and cheese croissant. Would you like me to heat one of those up for you?"
"Naw, just go ahead and make the sandwhich. Thanks."
Is my mouth not saying what I think it is saying?
"I can't make you a sandwhich right now. The place next door makes breakfast sandwhiches. You can get what you want there. Is there anything else I can get you?"
"I don't want anything else-"
"Okay, then," I cut her off. "Next!"
The people behind her are about to revolt and my coworker is in a state of abject fury.
"Now hold on!" She says, and her suave calm cracking.
"What?" I glare at her as I began an iced americano for the next person.
"Why did you take his order over mine?"
"Because you weren't ordering and he had been waiting a long time while you didn't order."
"But I did order."
"You didn't order anything we have or are able to make at this moment. I offered you an alternative and you- $4.25 please, thanks Mike- said no. Next!"
"It'll take you two seconds! It's just a couple slices of ham, a couple slices of cheese, mayo, butter, lettuce, tomato. Done!"
"Medium coffee, black" huffs the next person in line, an unfriendly fellow who comes in every day.
"Medium coffee, black" I hand him his cup, take his dollar and quarter and note that he doesn't leave a tip like he usually does.
"It won't take two seconds, I don't have meat, cheese or tomatos sliced. And we don't have lettuce at all. Go next door to get what you want or come back in two hours when this line has disappeared. Next, please!"
"I have been waiting forever!" sneers Designer Bitch, as though this were my fault and an act of insubordination on my part. "Oh, I know it's not your fault, hon, it's just that this is so unprofessional. I'll have cappuccino, extra foam. And please make sure it's hot. Last time it was, like, only luke warm. Tha-anks!" she singsongs. I want to leap across the counter and smack her head into Miami Vice's face, but I make a cappucino instead. I burn the milk, but that's what Designer Bitch wants, what can I do? The customer is always right, no matter how wrong they are.
She too, does not leave a tip. And Miami Vice is still standing there.
"Next, please!"
"I'll have a ham and cheese on health bread, mayo on one side, butter on the other. And lettuce. And tomato. Toasted." That's new.
"Sir, what can I get for you sir?" The tall kid in the Ramones shirt looks baffled.
"Uh, she was here before me," he says, apparently oblivious to everything that isn't on his iPhone.
"Don't worry about, what would you like?" I say.
"Um," he looks terribly uncomfortable and hesitates, as if I'm pressuring him to swipe a pack of cigarettes from sweet old lady Stinson's pharmacy. What is going on? I briefly fantasize that maybe this is some kind of performance art designed to make a barista's head explode? I imagine this exact same scenario playing out at coffee shops all across the city at this exact same moment. I indulge in a small hope that, in the next moment, everyone might suddenly burst into song and we can all have a good laugh. Alas.
"I'll have an iced mocha?" says Ramones, hesitantly. Iced mochas are my specialty. I make them super sweet (which some people don't like as much as they should) but they always look beautiful and I take care to make them just right. His order comes as a minor relief.
"And when you're done with that, I'll just have a ham and cheese sandwhich on health bread. Mayo on one side-"
"Get out," my co-worker says and I smile. Why hadn't I thought of that?
"Excuse me?" Miami Vice says with a dangerous note in her voice.
"Get out," he says it so casually he actually shrugs as he says it. "We can't help you. Leave."
All this time, Bank Teller has been happily dissociating, sipping her caramel latte, snorting and chortling in a sugary, milky joy trance. But when she hears my co-worker tell Miami Vice to get out, a switch is flipped.
"Excuse me? Are you telling us to get out?"
My co-worker rolls his eyes and sighs loudly. "Yes, we don't have time for this. We have people waiting and your friend is causing trouble after my co-worker has been polite and honest."
"What do you mean by 'you people'? You mean black people?" says Miami Vice.
Oh no she did not.
"What the hell are you talking about?" I say, astounded at this intentional mis-hearing.
"And now you're cussin at me?" she sputters. Hell is a curse word? On what planet?
"Just get out" I say.
"You heard what this white boy said to me?" Miami Vice appeals to Ramones.
"Uh, I don't think he-"
"He said 'you people' and then she cussed me out."
That's it. I've had it. I lean across the counter and look Miami Vice in the eye.
"I don't know what the hell you think you're doing, but let me just tell you, you're talking to a gay white boy and a Jewish white girl and you're surrounded by our regular customers who know us and know we don't even think that way. I don't think you want to play this game because once you get that ball rolling, you do not know where it will stop. So shut your mouth, and get the fuck out of this cafe, since you clearly hate it so much." I'm shaking and my co-worker's jaw is on the floor. But Miami Vice just smiles.
"You know what I do?" She asks.
"Get. Out."
"I'm a detective."
"Fantastic. Get out."
"You can't talk to me like that."
"You don't get special privleges because you're a detective, Detective." That last word is an expletive as far as I am concerned.
"Just make me the sandwich."
"You're batshit."
"Make me the sandwich."
"I heard what you said," Bank Teller chimes in.
Our regulars, the fucking cowards that they are, remain silent. No one stands up for us. No one says, "he didn't say any such thing." No one says anything. No one wants to touch this with a ten foot pole.
"It's not asking too much. Just make me a sandwich. No one here minds waiting, do you?" She looks around at the cowed and guilty gentrifyers. No one says a word.
What can I do? I cave. I have to. It's a test of wills with potentially nasty repercussions. My co-worker makes all the drinks while I make the fucking sandwich. And goddamn if she doesn't watch me the whole time and when I put on the butter say "could you put a little more on please? Thanks, sweetie." I leave off the lettuce, because we don't have any, but she doesn't complain. All the customers are curiously calm, no impatiently craning necks. I hate every one of them as I hand the greasy wrapper to Miami Vice.
"How much do I owe you," she asks.
"Ten, no, make it twelve dollars" I say. The most expensive item on our menu is $7.25.
"Okay then." She hands me a $20. I gave her back four singles and 16 quarters. She stuffs $2 in the tip jar. I pull it back out and throw it on the counter.
"I want you to know that neither I or my co-worker is a racist. But I'll tell you something: I fucking hate cops, and you are exactly the reason why. Keep your fucking tip and don't come back here."

.....

But of course she comes back. She comes back to complain to our bosses. And you know what happens? They throw her out too.

Mental Health

Among the many pervy and kinky people who came into Object (the sex shop I worked at in Baltimore in the late 90's) none were so stealthily maladjusted as Tina.
Tina was a white woman in her late forties, with a messy, dark bob, dark eyes and thin lips. She looked like an academic which is exactly what she was: just a few months shy of her doctorate in psychology she happily prattled on about her burgeoning sex therapy practice and all the latest studies debunking ideas of what is normal and abnormal in the full spectrum of human sexuality.

As a customer, Tina was fun. She was bawdy and joyful, extremely complimentary to the point of flattery. She loved Object as an aesthetic and as a place where both the employees and the customers were friendly and open. She adored gay men and often declared that she wished she had been born a gay man, because, she said, then she could just be open about her sex life and instead of people being incensed they would just laugh and say "you go girl!". She made the usual outraged claim that a double standard exists in sexual expression: men are applauded for their sexual lives, but women are supposed to be innocent of their own desires. Nothing new and nothing to find fault with there. So why write about Tina? What's so special about a sex positive therapist frequenting a classy shop with folks who generally share her views? Well, Tina was an exhibitionist who was doing a bang up job of screwing up her kid.

Tina idolized Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker turned performance artist, turned angry-sex-worker-performance-artist, who specialized in water sports. Annie Sprinkle's shows are heartbreaking and revolting and if you've never seen her perform, prepare yourself to see youth and joy and romance nearly obliterated. Tina was working up an extremely kinky burlesque show around corsets, golden showers and live sex, wishing to put back some of the mystery and charm that Annie Sprinkle metaphorically clobbers to death with a rancid fish carcass. Whatever, as Dan Savage would say, lifts your luggage. But not long after Tina first discovered Object, she did something strange: she brought her twelve year old daughter, Zoe, into the store. Tina had no qualms with either exposing Zoe to the weird items and odd people found in such a place and encouraged Zoe to talk to people about their kinks and lifestyle choices. Amazingly, some obliged, but most just stared at Tina as if she were insane, which she was. Some just fled at the mere sight of the young girl. But Tina clucked her tongue at these people and hoped that Zoe would never be so ashamed.

As if this were not enough, Tina enthusiastically talked about her show and her kinks in front of Zoe. She also discussed her limp-dick ex husband, her own sexual abuse at the hands of her brothers and father, her inability to have an orgasm until she was 39, and finally she tried to give Zoe a lesson in Sex Toys 101.

Now, it is, of course, illegal for a minor, even accompanied by a guardian, to be in a sex shop, and we made that clear to Tina. When we first told her that Zoe was not allowed in the store, she was incredulous.
"But I'm with her! " Tina said.
"Doesn't matter," I said. "No one under 18 is allowed in a sex shop. You know that." As I said this, a stripper, herself barely 18 strolled in with an infant in a snuggly. Tina raised an eyebrow and I sighed.
"This is absurd! This is the kind of puritanical bullshit that a repressed society comes up with! Ridiculous to tell a human being that she is too young to know about her own body! There's nothing on display here that is unnatural or that she won't someday encounter!" I shot a glance at the wall of porn videos and my eyes rested on a video called "Anal Alice: White Trash Slut" that had a picture of a bleached blond looking pretty worn and spreading her ass cheeks in the general direction of a Natty Bo tall boy. I thought it was a pretty unlikely that Zoe would ever have a chance encounter with that, but it's true that, really, you never know.
"Tina, there's a difference. This place is for people who are already fucked in the head" Tina couldn't help smiling at this. "Zoe will go bonkers in her own good time and she won't need your help to do it."
"Jess, you're forgetting I'm a shrink," Tina said as if this would settle the issue.
"No, Tina, I am not. You people are notorious for screwing up your kids."
I thought then that we'd reached an amicable understanding, but instead, Tina dug in her heels. I don't know what battle exactly she thought she was fighting, but Tina started arriving at the store with Zoe and then making a big show of having her stand outside while she shopped and kibbitzed. Baltimore, at that time was not a safe place anywhere, at any time of day, for a 12 year old white girl to just be hanging out on a stoop, particularly one in front of a sex shop. So, of course, we let Zoe. We made her hang out with one of the employees at the cash register, which, in spite of the display of lubes, thongs for men and poppers, we thought was somewhat less bizarre to a preteen than other areas in the store. We would try to make small talk with her, but her mother would butt in and give us a rundown of Zoe's social life and when the girl looked like she would melt into tears, we all made sure to point out that her mother was crazy and to ignore her. Stupid advice, but we weren't in the business of counseling 12 year olds. Her mother was.

Eventually, my boss put his foot down. He told Tina she was a nutcase who was putting her shit on her daughter and putting his business at risk. One snowy afternoon, they started shouting at each other. Tina was banned and she stormed out hollering "I've never been treated so disrespectfully in my life!" which was so patently false I imagine she must have grimaced after saying it, but I couldn't know for sure because she was already out the door.

For what it's worth, Tina wasn't doing what she was doing to Zoe because she was sadistic or compulsive. Just the opposite. She was trying to spare her daughter the horrors of her own life. And I can't say I blamed Tina for wanting Zoe to be knowledgeable. Most kids who are sexually abused are the victims of someone they know and trust, and don't even know that what's happening is wrong- if you're a kid and a grownup tells you to do something, you do it and just assume that this is how people behave. By giving Zoe an early and semi levelheaded introduction to sex she was showing her what consenting adults do and that there are many ways to behave...as a consenting adult. The other thing that she was showing Zoe, and what might be more to the point, is that sex is meant to be pleasurable! I mean, what a rip off sex has been to so many women for so long, and particularly for Tina. After 35 years of joyless sex Tina eventually found that she could enjoy it and moreover, she enjoyed kinks! I imagine her first orgasm must have been so full of... anger! To suddenly know that it was supposed to be enjoyable must have made all the other experiences that much worse. Tina, understandably and not unlike most parents, wanted her daughter's life to be better than her own.

I write all this as if I could just look at her and have these wonderful insights, but I'm not that intuitive. My guesses come from the long conversations Tina and I had before she was banned from the store. In her early 40s she had got (sexy) Jesus and now she was a proselytizer, a missionary of anything but missionary. I'm pretty sure a lot of what she told me was part of her show, and though she invited me to see it multiple times, I had no interest in watching Tina do... anything. Ultimately, I didn't like Tina, because for all her good will and intentions, she was damaging Zoe, at least judging by the girl's pained looks and general air of silence and misery. It wasn't fair to Zoe to have a mother who was an exhibitionist. Tina was working out her childhood through her child, which is the sign of a narcissist and an unhealthy psyche. And since, at the time, I identified with Zoe way more than I identified with Tina, I hated Tina.

At one point, I briefly considered calling child services. I thought what Tina was doing might amount to emotional abuse, but then I thought of Zoe in foster care in Baltimore and decided that was far worse than whatever poor judgement Tina might have. But I relished visions of the police storming in on one of Tina's shows. I imagined a basement cabaret, a dusty red curtain fringed with gold, smokey tables obscuring furtive onlookers, Tina in the spotlight wearing one of the leather corsets she liked so much, and pissing into the mouth of a willing member of the audience when the agents burst in. They would stand there, in their cheap suits, forms and documents in hand. I imagined their surprise, their jaws dropping, and then quickly closing again.