Monday October 5 2026 My mother would have turned 100 years old yesterday. She was 36 when I came around. She also had a heart attack while carrying me. I remember nothing.
I am back in the belly of the fruit stand, once again. I think I am better acclimated to it but it is a Monday and things are quiet. There was the Monday morning meeting that I usually do not attend since I am usually at my desk blocks away, but being in the belly of the fruit stand it was mandatory.
And it wasn’t that bad. There were six of us and some of the talk was about the expired pretzels. I do hope that it doesn’t bite me on the ass. The potential is there since they are an assistant to a bearded big name in the belly of the fruit stand.
There was a plan for Mike to come over on Sunday. He’s stressed since his government check hasn’t arrived yet. It could all be taken care of if he would settle his score with his bank but instead of paying whatever penalties he might have, he prefers to be stressed out each month looking out for the postal worker who sometimes misdelivers the mail.
On Saturday, Bill and I saw the Roger Guenveur Smith one man show about Jean Michel Basquiat and their friendship. I was hesitant to see it again but the second viewing was better than the first and we had better seats. And the seats were better because we were right in front of Roger Guenveur Smith, not watching at an angle like last time.
Once again Bill and I had a good walk walking from the West Village to the East Village, me having a cigar and chatting with my darling. We decided not to stay for the salon scheduled for after the performance, and walked back across town through Washington Square Park whic was bustling on an autumn night in October.
And again we had pizza at Grimaldi’s which was nice. I think we were home by 10:00 pm and Bill was in bed and I joined him an hour later. Slept well and was anxious about a possible bike ride. Bill and I had gone to the supermarket on Saturday and I forgot some items so a revisit was in order.
I vacillated between cycling and staying home. It looked like rain and the it didn’t. I decided to take a chance. If it got too bad I could just turn around and go home. It wasn’t too bad as I pedaled but realized that as I was rolling through the mist, eventually I would be soaked.
I was about 2 blocks in when I decided to pack it in. I rode to the supermarket and bought the items I had forgotten and so doing lost a wrist mirror that I use for bike riding. It was from the 20th century and had sentimental value but was probably lost in the supermarket. I guess Velcro doesn’t last forever.
Bill napped and Mike was incommunicado. Eventually Bill woke up and Mike sent a text stating he was too depressed to come over, even though it would have been the right thing to do. Now it’s a day later and he might be in a more precarious position today than he was yesterday.
I watched some livestreams from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass yesterday. Annemarie was attending. I was looking forward to seeing Robert Plant and the latest band he is fronting. I didn’t know until I saw but Jesse Welles was also on the bill. He’s a young guitar player in the mold of Bob Dylan. He had a band and covered War Pigs by Black Sabbath. Quite good actually.
One of my dreams last night involved meeting Jesse Welles. In the dream, he was with his band in New York just setting up or taking down equipment. I asked him if he was just in San Francisco in the afternoon and he took me aside as if to tell me a secret. There was a homoerotic vibe to that part of the dream but it went no further than me being told by Jesse Welles to keep it quiet.
Google Gemini rewrite as a Fran Lebowitz essay
My mother would have been one hundred years old yesterday. She was thirty-six when I was born, an age at which most women today are still deciding whether they prefer to raise a child or a small dog in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment. Mid-pregnancy, she suffered a heart attack. I was, naturally, present for this event, though I remember absolutely nothing about it—a rare instance of me being in a room where something catastrophic occurred and having no opinion to offer afterward.
It is Monday, and I find myself once again trapped in the bowels of what I can only describe as a corporate fruit stand. Usually, I am situated several blocks away, blissfully insulated from the internal machinery, but today attendance at the morning meeting was mandatory. Six people gathered to discuss, among other weightier matters, a batch of expired pretzels. One of the attendees—an assistant to a bearded, self-important figurehead in our immediate ecosystem—seemed particularly aggrieved by the state of these pretzels. I can only hope this petty infraction does not eventually return to ruin my afternoon, though in New York, the trivial grievances of minor functionaries have a way of doing precisely that.
My friend Mike was supposed to visit on Sunday, but he spent the weekend in his customary state of manufactured crisis. His government check has not arrived. Mike’s entire financial existence is a monument to stubbornness: rather than settle a modest, long-standing dispute with his bank, he prefers to endure a monthly, high-stakes drama that involves standing at his window, obsessing over the erratic habits of the United States Postal Service. On Sunday night, he sent a text message stating he was simply “too depressed” to come over. Staying home alone to brood over a late check is, of course, the worst possible remedy for depression, but people insist on treating misery as a solitary hobby. By now, his situation is undoubtedly worse, which is the natural tax one pays for preferring self-pity to a subway ride.
On Saturday, Bill and I went to see Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show about Jean-Michel Basquiat. I had my doubts about seeing it a second time—repetition is rarely an improvement—but I was wrong. The performance was infinitely better, mostly because our seats were directly in front of the stage, sparing us the diagonal neck strain that passes for theater seating in this town.
Afterward, Bill and I walked from the West Village to the East Village. I smoked a cigar, he listened, and together we bypassed the post-show “salon”—a word that once implied brilliant conversation over drinks but now inevitably means standing in a fluorescent-lit lobby while someone explains their process. Instead, we strolled back across town through Washington Square Park. It was a cool October night, bustling with the usual assortment of students, tourists, and people who have nowhere else to go at eight o’clock on a weekend. We ate pizza at Grimaldi’s, which was entirely satisfactory, and were home by ten. Bill was in bed almost immediately; I joined him an hour later, having accomplished the rare feat of a pleasant evening without a single regrettable interaction.
Sunday morning brought the agonizing specter of outdoor physical exertion. I vacillated for an hour over whether to ride my bicycle to the supermarket to retrieve the items I had carelessly forgotten the day before. The sky looked like rain, then it didn’t, then it did again. I took a chance, reasoning that if the weather turned truly offensive, I could simply turn back. Two blocks into the trip, rolling through an increasingly aggressive mist, I realized I was about to be drenched.
I cut my losses, pedaled to the store, bought the groceries, and in the process managed to lose a small, wrist-mounted rear-view mirror I have owned since the late twentieth century. It had sentimental value, but Velcro, much like romantic affection, loses its grip after twenty-five years.
Back inside, avoiding the wet weather entirely, I spent part of the afternoon watching a livestream of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. A friend of ours, Annemarie, was there in person, standing in the mud while I watched from the comfort of a dry room—which is, frankly, the only way anyone over forty should ever attend a music festival. I tuned in to see Robert Plant and whatever band he is currently touring with, but caught a set by a young musician named Jesse Welles. He plays the guitar in the style of early Bob Dylan and had the audacity to cover Black Sabbath’s *War Pigs*. Against all reasonable expectations, it was exceptionally good.
Naturally, my subconscious refused to let the matter rest. Last night, I dreamed I met Jesse Welles in New York while he was loading equipment into a van. In the dream, I approached him and asked how on earth he had gotten from San Francisco to Manhattan in a matter of hours. He pulled me aside, lowered his voice, and whispered a secret to me with an unmistakable, slightly conspiratorial erotic charge. His only instruction was that I keep the entire affair quiet.
I woke up entirely inclined to comply. After all, if one cannot keep a secret for a stranger in a dream, there is really very little hope left for civilization.