Ghost of a man

Henry spends more time here, I like the idea of having him close to his daffodils and the letter I wrote but never sent. I sometimes dream of him waking up before me and finding it in the night stand drawer. He sits there on the edge of the bed in the early morning light and reads it while I'm still asleep, his face turned away so that no one can tell what he's thinking.

He knows so much about me but I never ask him anything. If he wanted me to know he would tell me but the dreams I keep having are more than enough. I can fill in the blanks myself, make up stories about him in my head and write them down on little pieces or paper, just like with that letter.

In 24 days he's leaving and when he comes back I will have written so much more. The idea that under the influence of too much absinthe I might put it all in an envelope and send it to him in Paris (he will be there all summer and a couple of months into the fall) haunts and incites me. Europe is beautiful in autumn colors, he tells me, and in my imagination he's already there.

God save McQueen

Chloe has developed a maniacal interest in hipsters and takes me to The Standard Grill in the Meatpacking District on Friday. On the plus side it's close to the Alexander McQueen store and their coffee drinks are hypnotizing.

Out of the darkness and the mist, around midnight, comes a 30 something mustached man in a striped T-shirt and wooden clogs (no socks). He asks about us, I convince him I'm in advertising. Chloe starts telling her favorite story about how she's a militant feminist working undercover as a runway model trying to fight the industry's obsession with anorectic teenagers.

He asks polite questions and refers to articles in The New Yorker but the remains of his South Dakota accent give him away: he's this city's equivalent to Los Angeles' "waiter/actor". When I reach for his hand underneath the table it's for a single reason only: the hope that it will somehow get back to Henry so that he'll know how easily I could come to belong to someone else.

Fear of the dark

After last Tuesday's post someone wrote to me asking what my mother did to become rich. The truth is I don't know, I asked her once but like with so many of my questions she wouldn't answer. "Talking about money is vulgar" she said and I never asked again.

What I know is I've never seen her work a day in her life. I know that she escaped from Russia as a teenager and that she only went back once, with my father after they had met in New York. She kept a diary on that trip and when I read it there were a few pages missing. I was never supposed to find it but I did and it made her very upset.

She's a master in the art of the adapting to social contexts and therefore an enigma, at least for those who know her well enough. My father was very different. "If you speak your mind", he said, "a lot of people are going to resent you. It's a price worth paying because in the end at least you'll know you stood for something".

From dusk till dawn

Whenever I wake up to the sound of rain I feel as if he's still alive. The silk sheets are cold against my skin, the room spinning from last night's alcohol and my hair smells distinctly of cigarette smoke. Next to me is Henry, peacefully asleep, I have to touch his lips to see if he's breathing and he is.

He wakes up. "Why are you always so cold" he asks me. I tell him it's because my soul is cold, but deep down I don't believe there is such a thing. He puts his warm left hand between my thighs and goes back to sleep, I'm awake until the sun comes up and it's still raining.

Over breakfast we talk about dreams. I always remember mine but he doesn't, he says he sometimes wakes up with a certain feeling that won't go away and I know exactly what he means. It so often starts with a dream.

Varnishes

Most people confuse having money with being rich, I've been around mother long enough to know the difference. Those who think "my parents have a house in the Hamptons" is a pick-up line have money, they attend Sotheby's exhibitions for the white wine and wear their children as accessories. They are also the only people that are never unhappy, simply because they're one-dimensional, a pretty surface with nothing underneath.

The first thing you need to know about the rich is they never talk about money. They will never say things like "money can't buy you happiness" because they know better than to lie. What makes them really interesting is the perfect imperfections, the spotless façades and the way they effortlessly hide their anxieties under layers of Chanel and sand colored make-up.

I wouldn't be happier if mother wasn't rich, if I didn't have her wardrobe wonderland to dive into whenever the heart threatens to implode from the weight of my panic. It calms me down and makes me forget the outside for a while, which is all I could ever ask for.