I am up north and in NYC and the migration of some of my possessions begins, starting with renting a truck to transport three paintings.

After a peculiar set of circumstances including being put on the phone with a convicted murderer, but that’s another story as I am wont to say, three paintings belonging to me landed temporarily in the office of the father of a friend’s ex-boyfriend. None of which would’ve mattered at all except coincidently, this office at Times Square, was the same where I had worked as the receptionist many years ago.

After high school I was propelled into the job market. In nearly a year I was on my third job. Receptionist in a pop singer’s office. I was always nervous and I smoked at my desk. I was too shy to ever look the pop singer in the eye when he showed up at the office, to play his white grand piano by the large windows. It didn’t help that anytime he called for his messages I didn’t recognize him on the phone and a tragic Monty Python skit repeatedly ensued.

Because I hadn’t any skills the boss, a gentle lady named Lenore Dove, arranged for me to attend a typing school. I was grateful to be hired at all given my lack of qualifications and I tried my best but after four months I was ready to bust. It was summertime and I had toiled a full year in all. I had severe burns from the radioactive constraints of reality. And then one weekend I was invited out to the beach and I realized I could never return.

I phoned the office and explained I had adventure in my blood and I was gone. My boss said she understood and that most people felt this way. “Your job will be waiting for you!” she assured me.

Here we were 3000 years later and I attempted to demand the return of my job. But no one from the original crew still worked there. All of them were dead. Just the pop singer and a whole new cast. The white grand piano is still in the window.

While one is moving forward one tends also to be going in circles.

The paintings are safely traveling to their new home Upstate, to the hole in the ground and I am headed to the mysterious east.

Just so happens that my friend is in the process of opening an online travel business.

www.WorldTravelerHelp.com

Don’t be a dead former office worker! Get on out there and travel! Let my friend take care of your travel needs!

Image by Amy Badass©

There was much magnificence packed into this last week. Starting with opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. There I saw Le Nozze di Figaro along with the Masters of the Universe, David Koch, John Paulson, Carson from Queer Eye, etc. I tend to think I don’t like opera or Mozart (I prefer Chopin and Beethoven and Schubert) until I witness a brilliant performance and then I remember why it is genius. I love music. It was my good luck that dear friend Ambassador Earle Mack invited me as his guest. Later we dined at Cipriani’s where we saw more Masters of the Universe, Mr. and Mrs. Pepe Fanjul, Peggy Siegel, etc.

One of The Ambassador’s many accomplishments has been to arrange a suitable retirement for race horses. A noble and worthy and sensitive niche. Furthermore the project is intwined with the sufferings of soldiers returning with PTSD. The horses whisper to the soldiers. Fostering healing. I applaud you Ambassador Earle Mack.

On a grubby note, in that same fine dining establishment, I saw a pervert from my past. Someone I had clean forgot. When he came over to say hello to my dinner companion the sound of his voice hurtled me back to a time long ago. Suddenly I saw us behind a slammed closed office door, after he had pretended to be seeing me out, and pressing me against a wall he attacked me. He didn’t get very far, he was middle-aged and feeble and I easily shoved him off. But I was rattled, that much I remember. I couldn’t tell if he recognized me.

Bookending this week of culture I went to Washington DC and met with my Generals. With Serbia in my sights there is much to plan. Amongst many meetings with some very interesting and very smart people a great pleasure was afternoon tea with the legendary Arnaud de Borchgrave whose resume was all over the walls of his office at the CSIS Think Tank in snapshots of him in Vietnam and him with dignitaries interviewing this one and that one. Arnaud has lived an exemplary and inspiring life and continues at 88 years old undefeated in his optimism for hard work. I asked him when he was going to write his memoirs, and he replied, “I am more interested in the future.”

Image by John Martini©
www.JohnMartini.com

AND THE RAIN COMES DOWN.

When I left Key West my jasmine tree was in full bloom, taller than myself with bulbous bells of tiny white delicious smelling buds so that as I packed last night I was drunk on the night bloomer mingling with rainy season laden air.

I only ever travel on one-way tickets so as much as I know is I’ve come north to fetch my miserable possessions strewn over the eastern seaboard. And thank you to whomever it was with the absolute best suggestion -bonfire it shall be.

Now there is the bonus side trip to the Metropolitan Opera, opening-night quite the swell invitation. At 4 AM in the sweltering heat mingled with the sounds of the night birds calling I packed my dark wool tuxedo, my only black-tie costume.

I wonder if I can get away with flip-flops? But no, I shall be respectfully shod. One of the last times I saw the best in this field was Karajan at Salzburg.

Sometimes a childhood as privileged as mine makes regular life look like it’s in black-and-white.

Extremely privileged and yet slowly gradually pockmarked like a perfectly composed creepy story with telltale signs that all was not as I thought. I would learn.

Chances are I’ll be traveling a long while and I don’t expect my jasmine tree to make it, fussy little bitch that she is needing tender watering regularly. I didn’t get a pet, a cat or dog like I would love because I crave to touch the soft fur and have that wondrous friendship, but I deprived myself so as to be free of obligation and responsibility. Insidiously this Jasmine tree has roped me like a stalker girlfriend. I am seduced by her, she’s beautiful, she smells good, she is sensuality nightly blooming but she is needy and dependent and has become something that makes me feel guilty.

After giving away my last cat, a scene from Act III of any Tennessee Williams play -oh the anguish, I have no more heart for the guilt relationship. And yet Jasmine has got to me. And tonight in the cold north the rain is falling and I think of my tree and hope the rain is falling on her too to give her one more day of life.

 For more Christina Oxenberg Visit:

…a true story…

DIRTY BRIAN WAS A WHITE BOY with Irish roots who missed out on the fabled luck. Starting life in the projects of NYC he was raised by his mother, a mean spirited drunk. They shared a one bedroom apartment in a tenement high rise. She hated him, and frequently told him he was the reason his father abandoned them. Brian tried in vain to earn his mother’s attention, affection, dare he long for her love?

For his eighteenth birthday she gathered his possessions and rammed them into a garbage bag and scooted him and the bag out her front door, for the last time.

Dirty Brian moved to a friend’s sofa and took a job stocking parts for a motorcycle dealership.

When he bought a bicycle, on his very first day pedaling around northern Central Park, a band of thugs jumped him roughed him up and took his ride.

When he was waiting on a subway a hollering lunatic came barreling down the platform and slammed into Dirty Brian, knocking him onto the tracks in front of a train. Dirty Brian got a bit mangled but miraculously survived.

He saved his money and eventually bought a used car. He phoned his mother and asked her for lunch. “I’ll be taking you out in my automobile!” he boasted. She didn’t believe a word. On the drive over smoke and flames from under the hood obstructed his view and he crashed into a wall. The car exploded to a fireball. “I’m lucky to be alive!” he told his mother when he phoned to explain the delay, second degree burns stippling his skin. She yawned and hung up on her son.

The first time Dirty Brian met with crack cocaine he fell in love. He went in headfirst and gorged until he hit another wall. OD the police said.

Dirty Brian’s friends arranged his funeral. They invited his mother who declined. The funeral was scheduled for mid-morning mid-September in NYC on a perfect clear bright day with Tiffany blue skies. Such a remarkable day it appeared Dirty Brian’s luck had finally improved. Except no one would get to that funeral.

This was September 11th, 2001.

IMAGE: Amy Badass© 

 For more Christina Oxenberg Visit:

Inspiring athlete Diana Nyad was honored on the beach this past Tuesday morning. Ms Nyad gave a bracing speech and received an award, an iron plaque.

September in the tropics the sun is an open flame searing pale skin to coconut flakes. Thus I am flipped to a nocturnal schedule, meaning, I slept through the ceremony.

Originally there was to be a statue of Diana, in bathing costume, to mark the spot where she first stepped foot after her recent swim from Cuba. But this was nixed due to hurricanes and the danger of a flying Nyad ripping into a person’s home and the project was downscaled to a plaque to be nailed and soldered to the sea wall.

In her speech Ms Nyad revealed her plans to make America beautiful which includes an ‘ass-migration’, a walk across the country. I fully endorse this movement, and I tried to picture participating but I couldn’t see it.

Then, for an instant, fantasy and reality melded.

Late in the day I was padding around town when I looked up to see Diana Nyad bearing down on me, striding fluently and flanked by crew. A squall of ladies in matching baby blue tee shirts that read You Can Do It, or Get Off Your Fat Ass or something like that, I couldn’t tell because they were moving so fast. But so was I you see  I was booking for the lobster basil quiche at the Coconuts Coffee shop at Truman and Duval. 

Half a week slipped away in a haze of lobster pie and it was Friday night in fun Key West. I stepped out and into the Green Parrot. 

The bar was comfortably full and the band was a pride of dudes. With one of them on something like a hockey stick with two fat strings played with thumbs and sounding like a harp. As they strummed and bashed their machines all the musicians joined in the singing making for a velvety resonance. When they sang they closed their eyes and their groove was palpable. I was smiling and dancing, I couldn’t help myself. 

September in the tropics at midnight is delicious and under the brightness of an engorging moon, the night owls boogie. Surely Diana would approve?

Image John Martini©   www.johnmartini.com

For more short stories by Christina Oxenberg (Click Here)

In 1986 I attended something called a ‘Ladies Lunch’ in honor of Joan Rivers. This lunch was hosted by Betsy Bloomingdale at her impressive Bel Aire home. I was the guest of a guest and knew no one. 

Recently married to a starving artist I was sporting a very tiny engagement ring. I was dreading Ms Rivers catching sight of it.

In those days, when you saw Joan Rivers on the Johnny Carson show, she had a routine about engagement rings where she would raucously insult the bauble. All for a laugh. Everyone loved her, including me.

The time came for me to be presented. She grabbed at my hand and loudly crowed, “Show me the ring!”

After briefly examining the ring, with a warm and maternal kindness, she looked me in the eyes and said, “Looks like a family heirloom.” And she thanked me for attending the lunch.

Great manners. Gracious and smart lady. Thank you and bon voyage Ms Rivers!

Image ~ Amy Badass©

A few years ago when a tourist was enjoying breakfast on her beachside hotel balcony she watched a Key West policeman kill a man. The tourist took to social media and shared the sighting. The man was homeless and she clearly saw four policemen sit on him and one in particular shoved his face in the sand. And he died.

The cops in Key West are out of control and particularly nasty to the homeless, who they pick on with an evident savagery. Predictably they denied all wrongdoing of the homicide on the beach and since they are protected by their conch brethren nothing will happen. Largely, tourists only see the glittery sunshine in Eden. Since long before I came to town there has existed an evil that dwells scarcely beneath the surface.

Something all the tourists see is Mr Chapman, a colorful man often around town on a bicycle outfitted like a mobile disco with flashing lights and loud thumping music, a local attraction. A man with a blissful smile, dark skin and a white beard. A conch, as the locals call themselves, albeit of Bahamian descent. The Chapman family have owned their own home for a couple of generations, in a house on Chapman Lane. 

Mr. Chapman is exactly what one would hope to find in Paradise. When he wasn’t on Duval Street pedaling his boom box bike, he could be found outside his home, comfortably reclined and with a cold one in his front yard. Mr Chapman has a grandson and you’ll see them both on Duval Street in the afternoon, the little boy following on his own miniature boom box bike, following his grandpa, charming as a duckling.

Everyone here knows this family. Making it all the more befuddling when local Law Enforcement found it necessary to destroy Mr Chapman’s ancestral home.

Allegedlly there was a perpetrator the police were looking to apprehend and they believed he was hiding out at Mr Chapman’s. They could have knocked on the door. Instead, they smashed their way in.

Twenty-one officers, a fully armed SWAT team, lobbing a couple of flash-bombs despite being notified there were two small children sleeping in the house. The house was partially demolished. The younger of the two children is now deaf.

Human rights abuses need to be addressed. Except it’s a losing battle on this conch-strangled near-lawless island.

I haven’t left my home in two weeks. Depressed after seeing the fangs of the snake.

Image: Amy Badass©

At the police station mother and son were seated side-by-side and shackled and holding hands. Helena plucking earth specks from beneath her son’s fingernails and inadvertently making him bleed.  She breathed calmly, she was invincible, she thought. Meanwhile the young man chewed his lower lip and tried not to cry. “Trust me,” she muttered smoothly.

Helena pinched her son, scratched him through his pants with the tips of her lacquered nails. As she petted him, she passed him a shiny silver coin. Milo pressed it into a cheek.

The coppers smelled rattish behavior and hurried up with processing the socio-cyphers in their midsts and sent them down opposing corridors.

Milo and his tremulous lip was introduced to the men’s quarters at the County Jail. Milo jabbered his circumstances to his tattooed cellmate who hushed him with a finger dragged across his neck, and a sneering, “Shut up, ok, Patsy!” 

Milo quietened and rubbed his single silver coin, obsessing at the incremental tarnish.

Helena, in the ladies wing, was comfortable and surrounded by many mothers separated from their children and aching. Helena was a perfect doll substitute, her willowy frame made her seem fragile, ethereal, like wind chimes, and she elicited a tenderness from even the harshest criminals. Guards who could be brutes treated her respectfully, as if she was there by mistake.

No one was listening when she was at the pay-phone and hammering her lawyer, who was also her brother who despised her but was equally as greedy so when she told him, in code, there was another bag of money buried in the field, the contents of which could be his for just a modicum of help right this instant, they forged a plan. A sterling plan whereby Milo would be fingered as the architect. Helena and her brother shared some inappropriate laughter before they slammed down the receivers.

Dawn the next morning guards attacked Milo and easily discovered that oxidizing coin and pitched him into a dungeon.

Helena was sprung and inmates and guards alike wished her well. When she stepped out into freedom, had she turned her head, she might have seen a lightning bolt from a low window, from a basement grill shot a silvery beam.

Image John Martini© www.JohnMartini.com  

1000 years ago as I was sorting through my first divorce, (second happiest day of my life), I had a rental house full of furniture and objects. It was easy enough to get rid of the rental, especially as it belonged to the ex-husband’s mother, and then I shoved all those ridiculous objects into storage and forgot about them. It had all seemed quite inexpensive at $100 month.

A decade and $12,000 later and still all those objects were moldering in the storage unit.

So when friends of mine decided to get married I figured what better present than the key to my storage unit. I told them everything in this unit is yours. All you have to do is clear it out so that I don’t have to keep paying for it.

He took it very well and said thank you while she decided I must be making preparations to kill myself. She got quite concerned, she said it looked like I was getting all my affairs in order. I said fat chance, I said take this key and save me please from this financial hemorrhaging.

So they did and they filled up their new house with all of my possessions and occasionally through the years I’ve been to visit and it’s always a bit of a shock to pick up a fork I bought or to sleep in a bed I picked out, or to look at the paintings on the walls, all mine! For one thing that first husband was a painter so I had a lot of his paintings, I was even in some of them.

I heard of an excellent moment when my ex-husband visited that house and after a few beats realized he knew everything around him and got quite a surprise. Although this is not nearly as funny as the time the gun-toting guerrillas marched him off our hill in beautiful Colombia but that’s another story.

Well now all of a sudden, after another couple of decades, my married friends are disbanding and dispersing and I got a phone call saying it was time for me to pick up my stuff. So back on an airplane for me in time to rent a truck and move all of the debris to a hole in the ground somewhere, in fact into a beautiful barn on an octagonal rough diamond of an estate close to the Canadian border.

Back on the road again!

Already Serbia seems like a dream, sensations mutating. The only thing I know for certain is I shall return.

But I had to be at a wedding far up the north eastern United States, so everything was temporarily on hold. I am finally returned to Key West, now one week later, and I feel and look like Shackleton, post Pole.

This was the wedding of Bobby Kennedy Jr and actress Cheryl Hines. All about family and friends.

The Kennedys and I have a history too conspiratorial to get into here and now. What I will say is that in the case of Bobby Kennedy Jr, the third child of RFK and Ethel, we have a tradition of attending each other’s weddings.

As a non-breeder myself I long-ago bequeathed my carbon footprint allowance to Bobby Kennedy Jr and he has been prolific. His six children I consider honorary nieces and nephews.

It is natural to try and put a finger on the pulse of where traits come from. According to one tree I am a direct descendent of Genghis Khan to which I’ll say, I come in peace. When I first met some of the Kennedys I saw a lot of myself in them. I am noisy fearless loud funny quick empathetic and fiercely loyal. I saw myself in them, I saw myself in strangers, I even one time met a cat with whom I had a lot in common. But you know what they say, people look like their dogs, so one can find commonality wherever one chooses to look.

Then I went to Serbia and the puzzle fell into place. I discovered my more vivid traits are Serbian, and Serbians are good people. Even the Russians, who are tough as Kryptonite, have a soft spot for Serbs. If you want a Russian to be nice to you tell him you’re Serbian.

I am amused by the unconventional, entertained by pathology and unswayed by Machiavelli, when it comes to loyalty, in my opinion, it is the raw ingredient of friendship and without it nothing means anything.

And speaking of loyalty, back to Serbia, did I mention they have their own breed of dog? A bear-sized long-haired canine only to be found in the Serbian mountains. I’ll bet I look like at least one of them. Sarplaninac