This is Timothy J. Finnerty

On September 11, 2001, Timothy Finnerty was 33 years old, a time when the real possibilities of life are just opening up. His New York Times obituary reads like the kind of resume you just know must be padded:

He was employed as a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald, WTC, NY, NY. A member of the Glen Rock Jaycees, he graduated from the University of Scranton in 1990 where he was a member of the Mens Varsity Basketball Team. Mr. Finnerty earned an MBA degree from Wagner College in 1994 and was an assistant coach of the Mens Varsity Basketball Team from 1991-1994. He also coached the St. Catharine RC Church 7th & 8th Grade Boys CYO Basketball, Glen Rock, NJ where he was a parishioner.

As real people go, he sounds like a dream. He left behind a wife Theresa, his father Peter, his grandmother Alice Bannon and a brother Kevin. As I read about Timothy, I found myself wishing I knew if he would want to be called Tim or if he had favorite jokes. Did he like movies? What kind of future did he imagine? His face bespeaks commitment and humor, and it looks so, so young.

Because I didn’t know him and don’t wish to offend anyone, I offer this tribute. The song makes me weep. And yet, the video made me laugh just a little. It is the very best I can do.

This post is a humble part of the 2,996 Project.

Technorati tags: Timothy Finnerty, 2,996 Project, 9/11, New York City, Cantor Fitzgerald, War on Terror, Ground Zero, Neville Brothers.

Anya reminds me of what my family was doing on September 11th: taking a terrified roll call. I had forgotten that after the first plane hit the Trade Center, nobody knew anything, and until the second plane hit, it all seemed like a crazy accident. It had happened years ago with a small plane and the Empire State Building. And when the second plane hit, my extended family panicked. Miss Sasha called me at work and asked if I’d heard from her father about his brother and sister-in-law, and where was Anya’s husband? I didn’t know. Nobody knew. Hours passed before it turned out the Fabulous Ex-Husband’s brother Jacob had dismissed his department in the unaffected tower after the first plane and despite advice that they should remain in place, and this probably saved their lives; his wife had stayed home from work that day. Even with this unbelievable good fortune, Jacob was so traumatized he didn’t speak for a month. Anya is a little philosophical.

Anya: I lost my husband for one day. We had a fight that morning and he was late, but I didn’t know that then. He went every day to the World Trade Center station, that much I knew. His was the first train they didn’t let in. If he’d been on the train before, he’d be dead now. As it was, he saw the people jumping.
Tata: Jumping?
Anya: The people jumped.

Anya could have been there, too, but she wasn’t. In the days that followed, I heard that same story over and over again, theme and variation: I was supposed to be there but I wasn’t. A guy I bartended with slept late and missed an appointment. Trout’s cousin took the day off from Windows On the World to celebrate his wedding anniversary. My former sister-in-law stayed home. My friend Audrey was in Brooklyn, monitoring the election; her best friend was there but unharmed. My former partner in ten years of art crimes was there, but unharmed. People I knew and knew of died, yes, but if it’d happened twenty-four hours later – even an hour later – the death toll would have been far, far worse. Paulie Gonzalez lost a bunch of friends that day. I don’t think he’d be ashamed if I mentioned one night months later I found him standing over his bathroom sink, counting them off on his fingers, tears running down his face.

My family did not lose anyone. We were very fortunate.

I have no rights, no ownership, no leverage; in fact, I refused to set foot in the Trade Center. I was always frightened, just looking at the towers, however irrational that admission might seem. I’ve mentioned this before: my friends and I drove by one Sunday morning to pick up something one of us had left in her office. They went in. I stayed in the car and stared upward, paralyzed by the words of Genesis 11:

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

As I said, my feelings weren’t rational. I still have dreams about this moment of flat refusal. What I am saying is that I have no authority to ask this but I’m asking anyway. In fact, I’m begging:

Please, please, stop using those photographs of the towers burning and falling. What you are posting, when you post those phtographs, are burning buildings, as we all know. What other people see are their friends and loved ones being burned alive, over and over, endlessly. Fathers, mothers, lovers, husbands, wives, children, buddies, girlfriends, boyfriends, that kid I sat with in third grade, my friend’s friend, your friends’ cousins: crushed, burned, torn to pieces. Stop posting these pictures and concentrating on the horror.

Please, I’m begging you: move past morbid fascination and concentrate on life. If you believe in spirit, then those spirits will do what spirits do. Release them. Do not keep them here. If you do not believe in spirit, then quit torturing survivors. I was walking down a street in New Brunswick and saw photo essay of burning buildings and was grateful I wasn’t walking with a friend whose girlfriend died in Tower 2. If you read the transcripts of phone calls from the top floors, you know those people were still hoping in vain to be rescued when in fact there was never a plan in place for what to do if fire ever cut them off from escape. If your husband, wife or child was up there, do you want that terrible knowledge to overwhelm you annually, and cut you off from the joy you take in your loved one’s life?

Please. Stop posting those pictures. Go tell someone you love him or her. Life is fucking short.

It seems like years ago, but only Monday I got off a train in New York Penn Station to help a friend. I’d warned him I can get lost on the way to the kitchen. Directions to his place went to a part of town I haven’t spent much time in, so I asked him to meet me at Penn Station. He said sure, then said to make certain I got on the Downtown A train. You know, you can’t convince people you tell the truth the first time, so I asked six people in Penn Station where the Downtown A was, and only one of them was right. I almost got on an Uptown A, but was saved from taking that train by the absolute certainty that if I thought I was right I must be headed in the wrong direction. Eventually, I found two tiny women who said, “Downtown. Brooklyn. Aqui.” At this point, I thought my friend would meet me at the Canal Street subway stop. Why? Because I am sometimes pretty stupid, that’s why.

I got off the subway at Canal Street and didn’t see my friend. My friend was not on the stairs to the street, and not on the street. I looked around for a person to recognize, a face. When I didn’t see one, I felt a blind and choking terror. I walked to a spot where I could put my back against a plywood wall and stood there a long time, unable to see where I was and unable to think. As anyone who has ever been in a car with me can attest, I grow distinctly more hysterical with every minute I am lost. Time passed. If I were you, dear reader, I’d get some popcorn and wait for the chase.

Slowly, the panic cleared, and I do mean slowly. When I could read the street signs, I could see Canal, Varick, a couple more, and West Broadway. My friend’s place, I was reasonably sure, was on Broadway – or Fifth. Suddenly, I was less sure. The thing to do – because I don’t carry a cell – was to find a working pay phone. Two booths down on West Broadway, I found one, called my friend and ot voicemail. Sighing, I described my location and said, “I don’t know what to do.” I hung up and walked back to the corner, feeling desperate and a little frightened. Now that I’d said, “I’m at the corner of Canal and West Broadway” I was stuck there. And I stood there for some time, telling European tourists I was lost, too.

Logical thinking returned slowly, and I mean slowly. I was standing on West Broadway, right? If you don’t know any better, you think, ‘If I can figure out which way is east, I’ll know which direction to walk in and I’ll just start off.’ I looked up and it was of course just about noon, so that was no help. I went back to the payphone and dialed my friend’s cell again, and got voicemail again. I said I was going to start walking, and I told him what my intended destination was. Then I asked a shopkeeper which way was Broadway, thinking he’d point either right or left. He pointed over my shoulder and straight behind me, so I thought he was crazy. I thanked him and went left outside his store.

Blocks later, when West Broadway was suddenly LaGuardia, I turned and walked in the direction the shopkeeper had pointed. Two lights later, I came to a corner on Broadway, looked at the numbers and turned right. Broadway and West Broadway run parallel to one another, they’re not the same road. Finally, I came to the correct address and asked the guy in the foyer where I’d find my friend. Twice, the gentleman told me no. I went to read the names on the directory. Still somewhat panicked and now tired, I didn’t immediately see his name. Then, there it was, with a number. I told the man at the desk, “Here, this person.” He pointed me toward the elevator. When the elevator door opened, there stood my friend. Still shaking and upset, I didn’t respond well to, “How was your trip, dear?”

Tata: Go Cheney yourself, you bastard! Next time I tell you something, believe me the first time. Try this out. What is your response if I say, “It’s raining outside”?
Friend: “I’ll get an umbrella.”
Tata: And if I say, “I’ve never faked an orgasm” and responding with laughter will cost you your life, what is it?!
Friend: “Intriguing. I believe you.”
Tata: You are making excellent goddamn improvement. And if I say, “Please meet me at Penn Station because I could get lost on the way to my kitchen,” what is your response?!
Friend: “Your wish is my command, princess.”
Tata: Thank you! Fucker! Let’s get to work and don’t speak to me until I return to my human form. Damn it!

On the one hand, it was an ordeal I would not care to repeat. I considered turning around and taking the train back to New Brunswick but I didn’t, and I was really pissed when it turned out he was waiting for me at Penn Station after all. Where? I have no idea. I never saw him. He never saw me. Penn Station is like that: there are few landmarks like the clock at Grand Central Station where two people could meet. So the plan was doomed from the beginning.

On the other, the ordeal offered a hard lesson I needed to learn, during a hard week in which I felt small and covered with fur. To wit: once panic subsides, I can think my way out of a tough situation. That is important knowledge to have about oneself.

Also: we had really delicious sandwiches for lunch. That might’ve been totally worth the trip.

I return from court unevicted, though the only proof of this is that I am not curled up under my desk and sobbing. Fortunately, Ted the lawyer was there and witnessed the whole thing, including the part where I didn’t understand what was happening and thought I was supposed to leave. Ted came running down a crowded hallway, shouting my name, telling me to go back and sit down. Poor people are being evicted like crazy – like you wouldn’t believe if you didn’t see it yourself. After I realized that nothing really would happen to me I was horrified by the number of people around me who couldn’t say the same. I’ve been upset and fearful for weeks. How must they feel?

Thank you to everyone who wished me well and assured me I would be fine. I appreciate your confidence. It’s time to get back to the business of peace, love, understanding, melted cheese and kitten heels, in a Jersey Chick accent. I am wearing lipstick.

Kiss me, you fool.

As a last resort, I call Daria.

Tata: Come with me to the hearing tomorrow. You look like a normal person!
Daria: What? Is that thing tomorrow?
Tata: As you know, I need a translator between me and the rest of the world.
Daria: …And I look respectable?
Tata: Even with all that hair, yup. Are you free at 11?
Daria: Wednesday…11? I can’t, orientation at Sandro’s preschool at 10:30.
Tata: Drat.
Daria: What about Sharkey? He looks respectable!
Tata: Everyone works. He might be in North Carolina, I’m not sure. Paulie’s out saving the world. Siobhan’s in Mahwah. Scout’s teaching. I could make you a list.
Daria: What did Ted say?
Tata: He said he’d see me there. He’s got cases tomorrow.
Daria: Okay, so stand next to him and tell him to hold a briefcase. He barely knows you and still thinks you’re nice.
Tata: That’s always a shocker, huh?

Ted is a family friend and a tenant’s rights lawyer. Whenever he sees me, he says nothing is going to happen to me, then tells me a horror story about one of his clients. The crap that people do to one another is absolutely unbelievable to me. Sunday, he told me about a landlord that took the rent from two federal agencies and locked out a tenant while she was in the hospital. You can practically smell the sulphur. I mention this to Siobhan.

Tata: I’m going to that hearing alone. I’m very nervous!
Siobhan: Sorry to hear it. Let us remember that you totally kick ass.
Tata: …I totally…kick ass…
Siobhan: Remember?
Tata: …I do remember. Huh! Thank you for that timely reminder.

As Daria, tireless mixer of pop culture metaphors would say: Holy Ruby Slippers, Batman! I haven’t slept in weeks and my face looks awful. This morning, I had dreams about children breaking into my house and stealing my things. I’ve postponed errands and conversations until after this hearing because I have felt helpless and out of my element. Well, that’s enough of that. No matter what happens tomorrow, it is not the worst thing I’ve ever faced alone. I am not weak. This morning, when I felt timid, I compared this unnerving experience to court hearings throughout history, wherein millions of people faced terrifying judgment with a great deal more to lose, and I was embarrassed to be so upset by my landlord’s manipulation. No one is going to chain me up and burn me slowly if I answer questions the wrong way. And I am a Force of Nature. I forgot that for a few weeks, but I remember that now. When I am nearby, everyone knows it’s Windy.

With perspective once again restored, let us consider how a normal life can go from zero to horrific in one little paragraph:

“We must exterminate these people (homosexuals) root and branch…We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be entirely eliminated.”

With these chilling words, the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, set out the Nazi master plan for the sexual cleansing of the Aryan race.

Heinz F, now 96, was a care-free young gay man living in Munich in the early 1930s. He had no idea of what was about to happen. “I didn’t fully understand the situation,” he admits with pained regret. One morning, out of the blue, the police knocked on his door. “You are suspected of being a homosexual,” they told him. “You are hereby under arrest.” “What could I do?” he asks, struggling to hold back the tears. “Off I went to Dachau, without a trial.”

I knew all this had happened, and because all my life we have talked about the Third Reich in honest terms I believed I’d read or heard everything I needed to read or hear to remain appropriately horrified and respectful until the end of my days. Apparently, there’s plenty more horror where all the previous horror came from.

Before the nightmare years of Nazism, Berlin was the queer capital of the world. Jewish lesbian, Annette Eick, who escaped to Britain shortly before the outbreak of war, recalls with fond nostalgia: “In Berlin, you were free. You could do what you wanted.”

The city boasted dozens of gay organisations and magazines; plus over 80 gay bars, restaurants and night clubs. In his narration, Rupert Everett describes it as “a homosexual eden.”

Although homosexuality was illegal under paragraph 175 of the criminal code, prior to the Third Reich it was rarely enforced. In the Reichstag, MPs were on the verge of securing its repeal. A new era of freedom seemed to be dawning. Then came Nazism.

Within a month of assuming power in 1933, Hitler outlawed homosexual organisations and publications. Gay bars and clubs were closed down soon afterwards. Storm troopers ransacked the headquarters of the gay rights movement, the Institute of Sexual Science, and publicly burned its vast library of “degenerate” books. Before the end of the year, the first homosexuals were deported to concentration camps.

Reminds me of the reason I have no interest in visiting Kansas.

At the age of 17, Frenchman Pierre Seel was detained by the invading Germans, who rifled local police files on homosexuals. “They saw our names of these lists,” he says. “I ended up at the camp in Schirmeck.”

“There was a hierarchy from weakest to strongest. The weakest in the camps were the homosexuals. All the way at the bottom.”

“I was tortured, beaten…sodomised and raped!” Seel screams in anguish. “The Nazis stuck 25cm of wood up my arse…(it) still bleeds, even today.”

His lover Jo suffered a worse fate. “He was condemned to die, eaten by dogs. German dogs! German Shepherds!” Seel shouts with rage. “That I can never forget.”

The Nazis again intensified the war against “abnormal existence” in 1935, broadening the definition of homosexual behaviour and the grounds for arrest. Gossip and innuendo became evidence. A man could be incarcerated on the basis of a mere touch, gesture or look.

I don’t know that I have the courage to sit through a documentary of these men’s real lives, and that frightens me. It gets worse.

But [seventy-eight year old Gad] Beck survived, although nearly everyone around him perished. Two of his lovers were seized by the Nazis. “I met this beautiful blonde Jew. He invited me to spend the night. In the morning the Gestapo came…I showed my ID – not on the list. They took him to Auschwitz. It had a different value then, a night of love.”

Later, Beck tried to free another lover, Manfred, from a Gestapo transfer camp by posing as a Hitler Youth member. This incredibly dangerous deception was successful, but as they walked to freedom, Manfred told Gad he could not abandon his family in the camp. Beck watched helplessly as his lover returned to be with them. He never saw Manfred again.

Never in my life have I had to demonstrate a degree of bravery putting on a rescue effort like that would require. And I don’t know what to make of this.

Heinz Dormer, now a very frail 89 year-old, spent nearly ten years in prisons and concentration camps. In a quivering, barely audible voice he remembers the haunting, agonised cries from “the singing forest,” a row of tall poles on which condemned men were hung: “Everyone who was sentenced to death would be lifted up onto the hook. The howling and screaming were inhuman…Beyond human comprehension.”

This “homocaust” was an integral part of the holocaust. Contrary to false histories that claim the persecution of Jewish people was distinct and separate from the victimisation of other minorities, the genocide against Jews and queers was part of the same grand design for the racial purification of the German volk. The Nazis set out to eradicate all racial and genetic “inferiors” – not just Jews, but also gay, disabled, black, Slav, Roma and Sinti people.

Even after the Nazi defeat in 1945, gay survivors continued to be persecuted. Men liberated from the concentration camps who had not completed their sentences were re-imprisoned by the victorious Allies. Since they were regarded as criminals, all were denied compensation for their suffering. The German government still refuses to pay reparations. As a further insult, the former SS guards are awarded better pensions. Their work in the concentration camps counts toward their pension entitlement, whereas the time spent in the camps by gay inmates doesn’t.

I don’t know what that means – or worse, I’m afraid I might.

In all humility, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Beautiful stuff.

Feel the love!

At the store today, sultry Latin lounge music plays as a sweet breeze drifts through and tickles the wind chimes. I am wearing a pair of pants I couldn’t zip last week and a very flattering sweater. For the last twenty minutes or so, I’ve finished a few more blankets for shelter cats. In contrast to yesterday’s depressing and isolating torrential rain, today’s sunshine makes me feel blissfully buzzed. On a day like this, a free-thinking person could fall in love.

I can’t say why, because everything about today has been disruptive and peculiar, but I feel joyful. The store is having a good day. I am having a good day.

I hope you get outside and fall in love, yourself, whoever you are, and wherever.

Outside, wind drives the rain sideways in dramatic sheets and tugs open the family store’s front door. Miles Davis’ trumpet, the very sound of ache and longing, offers the room a glittering wishfulness, as if each glass ornament, each hanging paper star, each smooth bamboo plate hopes to be loved. My sister Corinne womans the till in the toy store next door, where I found two new lunchboxes to adore. I seldom carry purses. I carry lunchboxes. One lists the planets. Corinne warned me about Pluto. I scoffed.

Tata: Semantics, darling. My solar system didn’t lose a planet – it gained three dwarf planets. Everyone knows that means more moons for me!
Corinne: You make it sound like a reason to go shopping.
Tata: Yes, and wherever will we seat them at Thanksgiving dinner? Are high chairs an insult? Hospitality is no laughing matter!

When I first typed that, I transposed letters, but I’m wearing new reading glasses picked out for me by that fashion maven, my pharmacist. That sounds dreadful, but a gal on her own has to use her resources wisely. During one of my weekly excursions to the drugstore to pick up medicine for Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, I found that cardboard rack of reading glasses one finds everywhere, and this was fortune worth celebrating. My other reading glasses lost that little pad-thingy that keeps the frame from digging into the bridge of my nose like a backyard fence post, so I asked the pharmacist, an older man and the father of a high school acquaintance, if there were other styles besides the Lisa Lubner models on display. He promised to order some. Yesterday, I found a rack full of new reading glasses he’d plainly chosen to coordinate with my hair color, which is red and visible from space. Yes, it is. I tried them on but with no mirror handy I resorted to the only quality control available to me.

Tata: Do these look terrible?
Pharmacist: They work with your hair and the shape contrasts with the arch of your eyebrows.
Tata: Sold!

Naturally, the first thing I did was try them out on 50% of my sisters.

Tata: New glasses: opinion!
Anya: Ooh, cool!
Corinne: I can’t.
Tata: Why?
Corinne: I need new glasses.

Yeah, whatever. Sometimes life throws you groaners. Sometimes you get headliner material. Yesterday, a student worker I rather like, who usually dresses like a schlub, walked past me wearing an ensemble and heels. On her way back, I barked at her.

Tata: Why are you dressed like that?
Her: Lost a bet.

No kidding! I couldn’t have asked for anything so great. I now love her.

Tata: Really? Who hates you this much?
Her: My best friend.

Oh. My. God. I am so happy.

General Hospital is working my very last nerve – not in the way you’d think, either. (If you’re not a soap fan, stick with me for a minute; you will be rewarded with yummy, candy-like logic.) I have two problems you could call wimmin trouble.

Alexis
Alexis the District Attorney gave up a baby when she was 16 and discovered mere months ago that Port Charles’ favorite gun moll Sam is her long-lost daughter, which required Alexis to decide fully grown Sam shouldn’t form a new monogram with unbearably hot mobster Jason. If you flip past your ABC affiliate during the day, you can see these three characters reciting the day’s dialogue sestina, the one constant being the list of words <a href="http://www.nj.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-17/115697666671200.xml&storylist=international&thispage=2
“>recycled five episodes a week: safe, protect, danger, daughter, and stay away. Granted, I have controlling-Mommy issues to beat the band, but Alexis’ controlling-Mommy behavior was unbearable from the beginning. After Alexis developed cancer, her urge to order the lives of others makes me want to incite mob violence. There is just something creepy about the Mommy who cuts you off from the object of your desire, no matter what nonsense she’s spouting. Soap opera mommies do it all the time but in this case, the added creep-factor is that tasty Jason agrees and acquiesces to Alexis’ wishes. Eeeeeeeewwww.

Lulu’s Pregnant
Luke and Laura’s unwanted 18-year-old daughter turned up preggers, half the town knows and you can bet your boots everyone will shout the words options, baby, choices, adoption and abortion but no one gets an abortion on the soaps. Soap fans are generally a very conservative bunch, which you can tell like the time in Times Square because other than the 18-year-old, nobody says the word abortion without curling a lip. I was just about at the end of my rope with this bullshit when Lulu’s older brother Lucky, hopped up on hillbilly heroin, grabbed a phone out of her hand and told her she wasn’t getting an abortion. This paternalistic treatment of another adult character, sibling relationship or no, is so far beyond the bounds of decency I considered turning off GH for good.

This is not harmless. The only one who understands an abortion is a safe, legal, private medical procedure is the teenager, while the characters around Lulu spout crap about injunctions and forcing her to have a baby. Do you know what tolerating this leads to?

Douchebaggery, Of the Strictly Figurative Kind
…this guy, a complete stranger, deciding what medical care you can receive. Not you, you adult, you. Not your doctor, who presumably went to medical school for a long time and has an ethical obligation to help you. No. This friendly little article describes a man who will decide whether your medical needs should and will cause you shame. You don’t have to be a woman to find this concept threatening. Go ahead. Give it a good think.

The reason this paternalistic crackpot gets to treat you this way in 2006 is that since 1980, our reproductive and privacy rights have been eroding steadily. The public discourse is euphemistic crap because nothing is more dangerous than saying the words I’ve had an abortion, and under the same circumstances I’d do it again. Women can’t discuss abortion seriously in mainstream politics in the twenty-first century, which gives license to crackpots, who think their opinions about someone else somehow matter.

Most people have simple desires where pharmacists are concerned:
1. Must be able to count.
2. Must notice when chemicals will interact badly.
3. Must mind own business.

If you can’t manage any one of those things, applicants to pharmacy school should consider a field where you can’t fuck up the lives of people for miles around. I hear Home Depot is hiring.

All of this is important – especially my soap opera pet peeves – but pales by comparison with this. Please just read it, because if it stands, there is nothing left of America but dust and crumbs, and waiting for it to be your turn. I can’t add anything to what either of them says. It can happen here. It is.

Telegiornale RAI is on in my living room. This is humbling fun for my brain, since I don’t speak Italian. I can eavesdrop a little, which is what I’m doing with the news. The carabinieri are very busy all over the peninsula, some parents locked up children in Palermo, and the soccer players are unfailingly hot. I hear words I recognize but it takes me too long to remember what they mean. Those exciting moving pictures in the background offer exciting context clues, as in: Oh. The soccer players are unfailingly hot. Italy’s endless supply of hot soccer players is one of its most endearing natural resources – that, and delightful places a girl can stow her boning knife.

Today, I found a copy of the eviction complaint – whatever you call it – taped to my front door. When this is all over, I’m going back to the yoga studio to work the venom out of my Chi before I bite someone. Not in a good way.

On Monday, Siobhan picked me up and we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, around the park and down Park Avenue to the Neue Gallery. Because we live in New Jersey and cultivate very different personal space desires than people who take subways everywhere, we parked across the street and found ourselves mildly in conflict with the gallery’s narrow hallways and people on line to get into the four-star cafe. Far fewer were interested in seeing art than being seen with biscotti, which struck us as a huge waste of time. We found the elevator and went to the second floor.

We’d come to see Gustav Klimt’s Adele.

It’s a popular exhibit, and we arrived on a Monday, when other galleries are closed. There were people standing around art out of habit, which is sad in a city full of bright ideas. I was particularly excited by inventive German flatware, though I can’t remember from which school. I didn’t have the presence of mind to pick up a pamphlet. Ah well. But there are still things to say, and two paintings of Adele, each of which is about the same size as me. One is mesmerizing and confusing and churns up the emotions. The other is made of gold, doesn’t photograph well and stops your heart. In both cases, the paintings themselves could give you a headache from all the thoughts you’re trying to think at once. In both cases, a whole separate study of how exhibit attendees behave seeing these paintings might be interesting. I expected people to get down on their knees. I swear I checked for drool. In the next room, Siobhan and I found benches and sat down back to back. Then we shifted in quarter turns. On one wall: sketches of Adele. Immediately adjacent: erotic sketches by another artist. On the far wall: sketches and paintings by Egon Schiele, whose madness and passion I love – though I’d never seen his work before. He was an abstraction before, a lesson, a rumor. I have begun to miss him.

Upstairs, we found rooms devoted to Bauhaus, German Expressionist and another school I can’t remember, and I should. One small Kandinsky made me feel warm all over, and it seemed especially charming to find a portrait of Kandinsky two frames over. Siobhan’s favorite room featured a few of Mies van der Rohe’s spare, airy furniture designs. I liked that people had obviously lived with and used them. The thing about seeing them now is they’ve been endlessly imitated, and it takes effort to consider the designs in their times and places when I could force myself into any craptacular Route 22 furniture retailer and see fifth-generation bastard children of the originals.

After a few hours, climbing in the car and driving home was a great idea.

Update: I always feel like Robert Stack narrating Unsolved Mysteries when I type that. Perhaps I’m developing a trenchocoat fetish. Anyway: Siobhan informs me that I misjudged.

Siobhan: Just read PIC – you’re wrong. My favorite room was the one with the disturbing nudes by Otto Dix. More to think about, there.
Tata: Yeah, like how many times you turn down a drink at Otto’s house before he whacks you with something. Ooh! I forgot about that tiny photographic portrait gallery with the weird half-lighting. We thought someone left a closet unlocked, remember?
Siobhan: You thought all the artists were wearing ties until we saw Klimt in a dashiki he probably painted himself. It matched the gold Adele.
Tata: Adele kind of blended into the chair she was sitting on. Maybe we were looking at truly innovative reupholstery.
Siobhan: They were wearing throw pillows with sleeves?
Tata: You’re absolutely panting for me to make a frisky design joke about Gropius, aren’t you?