For years, it's been my opinion that the video for "Freedom '90" by George Michael is the greatest music video of all time:



The song itself is unfuckwithable—it's one of those ridiculous tracks where every single element is a hook—and the video is little more than supermodels lip-syncing the song in a low-lit sex-dream world full of shadows, steam, fire, rain and sheets. (Remember, in 1990, Cindy Crawford was the shit.) I was nine years old when I first saw this video, and I can't think of a moment that was more responsible for my sexual awakening. I mean, it's campy as fuck—any savvy adult could have told you that this would appeal to the gays as much as the straights—but to the nine-year-old me, there was no hotter video in the world. That shot of Linda Evangelista singing in her sweater? And when the jukebox exploded into lips? Good Lord.

A few months ago I discovered "Slave to Love" by Bryan Ferry. Give it a look:



So that's where George stole the "female models standing in for the male vocalist" trick. But besides being the first to utilize that particular gimmick, "Slave to Love" has an emotional aspect that "Freedom '90" lacks, not to mention a compelling narrative—at the end, the paparazzi discover that Bryan is actually singing the song to his daughter, so they back off (out of kindness or disinterest?) and then (this is so brilliant) they start taking pictures of themselves. Of course, the video is sexy as hell in its own right—unsurprisingly, the song was used to soundtrack a montage in 9 1/2 Weeks—and it's shot in a very slick, cinematic way.

I can't stop watching this video lately, so I thought I'd share. But the big question, is—which song/video is better?

1. THE LARGE

On Saturday, he got a haircut, went to the gym, did his laundry, bought groceries, watched a movie he'd been meaning to see, and paid some bills so that his schedule on Sunday would be clear and he could go shopping. He would take the subway downtown to 8th Street, walk south until Grand, making stops as he saw fit, then walk back north to Prince and catch the uptown train. He didn't expect to deviate from this plan.

He left his apartment around 1:15, after giving brunch some time to settle, and made it to 8th just before 2. He hit Club Monaco, Armani Exchange, Banana Republic, H&M, Steve Madden, two different David Zs, and Bloomingdale's. He bought a black corduroy blazer, a light-blue button-down shirt with black vertical stripes, a white polo shirt with green horizontal stripes, and a pair of tan loafers that tapered forward into a rather severe flat edge. So it was a fairly satisfying trip, and he was thinking about calling it quits as he approached Broome Street, when he spotted a boutique he had never seen before, just across the intersection. He told himself stop now, give the plastic a chance to cool down, but he pushed on.

The name Dundee West was artfully stenciled on the glass doors. The display window featured six mannequins, three female and three male. One of the males caught his eye immediately. Over some rather pedestrian boots and distressed jeans was a gray-and-black cowboy-type shirt with snaps that looked like they were made out of pearl, though they were probably plastic. And interlaced into the intentionally worn-looking cotton at random intervals were gold threads that shone when they caught the light. He loved it. He could put it under his new blazer, or just wear it on its own. The mannequin had no discernible face, but it had detailed collarbones that jutted forward, exposed. He went inside, walked past a security guard and a floor associate who both greeted him, and found the shirt on a rack in his size.

Even though the lighting in the fitting room was aggravatingly dim, he could tell there was a problem almost immediately. He rolled the sleeves up. He buttoned a button, then unbuttoned two. He straightened the collar. He turned to the side. It was all wrong. It was the size, first of all. The sizes in this store were inaccurate. He was a large. No matter where he shopped, this was true. And yet this shirt hung off of him. It was a goddamned tent. But he wasn't going back out to the sales floor to find a medium because more importantly, those gold threads were ridiculous. Even in the fitting room's non-light, they shined like bike reflectors. They shouted for attention. His personal style was much more subdued. It was culturally aware but classic, he thought, noticeable for its natural grace but never flamboyant. He didn't like using that word, or even hearing it. So that was that. And just as he was about to take the awful cowboy shirt off, there was an enormous PUM! sound and the ground hopped underneath him and the store went dark.

He found himself on his hands and knees. His ears were ringing. It was absolute blackness in the fitting room and he couldn't find his clothes. He had come in wearing a sky blue cashmere blend v-neck sweater over a white button-down shirt. He thought he smelled smoke. He reached up for the door handle and pulled it down. He crawled out of the fitting room. Dundee West's display window had shattered. The mannequins had fallen all over themselves. The security guard was holding the side of his face, which was bleeding. The floor associate was holding her cell phone, but she wasn't calling anybody. They were both leaving the store and he followed them.

Outside, the sun was setting and there was no power on Broadway for at least three blocks in both directions. The street was fractured down its center, pushed together in broken plates. People left their buildings in varying degrees of panic. He thought he could hear pleas for help underneath him. There were flames to the south that might have been coming from the Canal Street subway entrance.

Soon the police came, the ambulances, the fire trucks. The police told everyone on the street to evacuate the area. Via loudspeaker they said: Remain calm, stay north of Houston Street for the remainder of the evening, all subway service has been shut down until further notice.

As he began to walk, among dazed men and women who whispered about the rumors of imminent attacks that had been circulating around the city for months, he realized he was still wearing the gray-and-black cowboy shirt with the gold threads. He turned around and began walking back towards Dundee West. A police officer stopped him.

"Sir, you have to leave this area immediately," the officer said.

"I left my shirt in a store. This shirt I'm wearing isn't mine."

"You can come back tomorrow and get your shirt," the officer said.

"It'll take two seconds. The store is right there."

"I'm sorry, but you have to leave now, it isn't safe," the officer said.

"Look, see this? The tag is still attached."

"Don't tell me you're looting already," the officer said.

"I was shopping."

"Sir, this is the last time I'll say this. Turn around and start walking with everybody else. If you don't cooperate, I will arrest you."

His shoulders slumped under the hideous shirt. He pointed himself in the direction of his apartment, which was nearly three miles away, and walked. The streets and sidewalks were thick with evacuees. He crossed his arms. He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept his eyes on the ground. He let his arms hang naturally and looked up at the buildings in the distance that still had their lights on. Nothing helped.

This shirt doesn't reflect who I am, he thought. In two hours I'll be home, and in that time I'll pass by thousands of people I'll never see again. They will only know me from this moment. They will remember an uncomfortable and sweating man who doesn't seem to realize that his clothes don't fit, who's going for a look that is clearly wrong for him, who left his apartment wanting to show off his new cowboy shirt, and it blew up in his face. They'll wonder if I have a poor sense of aesthetics in general. They'll speculate about my apartment — the furniture is too big for the space, the décor is ugly and it cost too much. Or maybe it's not ugly, but it's flamboyant, and it doesn't fit someone as obviously bland as me. They'll try to determine if I'm gay or straight. Either way, most will assume I'm single, because who would want to be with such a fucking loser, but some will consider the possibility that I'm dating someone with a crooked nose or a grating voice. They'll use me as punchlines to jokes they'll tell their friends. They'll take pictures of me with their cell phones and send them to websites. They will go to sleep tonight giving thanks that they aren't me.

He saw all of this in their eyes. Their faces may have been distracted with fear, but in the eyes, it was there.



2. RASPUTIN

For their first wedding anniversary, Jeff and Laura planned a three-and-a-half-day trip to a coastal resort. They booked their flight and reserved their room months in advance, and as the date drew nearer their excitement grew. Meanwhile, in the Gulf, Rasputin lurked.

According to most meteorological reports, Hurricane Rasputin formed near the Franklin Islands on April 22nd, a raggedy-assed tropical depression with aspirations of greatness. By April 27th, the day Jeff and Laura arrived at the resort, Rasputin had puffed out its chest enough to rate as a Category 1 and was drifting west. The warnings hadn't begun yet, but it was casually mentioned in every local newscast, mainly in the context of, "How will Rasputin affect our weather?" Thunderstorms later in the week was the consensus. On April 29th, Rasputin defied all predictions and jitterbugged north, heading directly for the mainland at an abnormal rate of speed. Jeff and Laura were lying on the beach when the clouds turned dark.

"Oh, for Christ," Jeff said.

"It wasn't supposed to rain today, was it?" Laura asked.

"No. Eighty-eight and sunny, they said. It's supposed to rain after we leave."

"Well, it might be good to take a break. I'm pretty cooked from yesterday."

"Yeah, you are. Aw fuck, I just felt a drop."

Jeff and Laura moped back to their room, had sex, got dressed, and headed to the resort's restaurant for lunch. By the time their meals came, the rain was coming down in sheets. Laura noticed their waiter stealing glances out the windows and asked him, "Do you think it'll stop anytime soon?"

"I don't know, I've never seen anything like this," he said.

After finishing lunch, Jeff and Laura jogged back to their room through a torrent that had reduced visibility to thirty feet. They scrambled through the door, stripped, and sprawled out on the bed.

"Well, now what?" Jeff asked.

"This would probably be a good time to take the shuttle into town and check out some of the shops," Laura said. "We'll pick up some umbrellas at the front desk."

"So walk around in the rain and look at oak chests. This is our plan."

"You know what? You can totally stay here if you want. I'll go by myself."

"No, come on. I'm just bummed about the rain. I'm definitely up for heading into town. Just give me a second."

They ended up falling asleep. About twenty minutes later, they were awoken by a pounding at the door. Laura pulled the covers over herself, while Jeff got up and found a dry pair of shorts to put on.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Sir, I'm an employee of the resort, can you open the door?"

Jeff did. Standing outside was a man in a yellow rain poncho with a hood that obscured the top half of his face. Behind him was a wet, roaring hell. Trees shook at sharp angles. Rivers flowed in the streets. Jeff got chills.

"Sir, there's no need to panic, but a hurricane is heading in our direction and we've been ordered to evacuate."

"Holy shit," Jeff said.

"Don't worry, you aren't in any danger. But we do ask that you please gather your things as quickly as possible and go to the line of vans in the parking lot." The man turned and pointed. Jeff couldn't see any vans, only faint orange smudges in the rain that might have been headlights. "We've booked a room for you at a hotel thirty miles inland. It's a La Quinta. I'm sorry we couldn't do better."

Jeff thanked him, closed the door, and turned to face his wife.

"I will make this up to you," he said.

"Oh stop," she said. She was already packing.

They shared a van with a middle-aged married couple and a mother who was at the resort with her eight-year-old daughter. The girl was quiet, shivering and rubbing her thumb.

"We're here from Scottsdale," her mother announced. "Poor thing barely sees rain at all, let alone a tropical storm. But it's gonna be okay, darlin', I promise."

"I just hope the hotel has a pool," the middle-aged wife said. The adults in the car laughed.

"La Quintas always have pools," her husband said. "That much I know."

"We came down here to get away from La Quintas. Gary's company sends him all over the country, and where do they always put you, hon?"

"La Quinta."

"Isn't that awful? I mean, sure, it's a step up from the Super 8, but it's a step down from anywhere you'd actually want to be. And now this. He can't win."

"Well, it's not all bad," her husband said. "They do allow pets." His wife laughed and put her arm around his shoulders. Her free hand was holding one of his. Jeff and Laura looked at each other and smiled.

Because of the road conditions and the fact that the windshield wipers were badly outgunned by the downpour, it took two hours to make the thirty-mile trip to the hotel. When they were checking in, the front desk clerk told Jeff and Laura that the resort would be covering their hotel stay, and that he would call their room as soon as the airport re-opened and arrange for transportation.

"Any chance that'll happen tomorrow?" Laura asked. "That's when our flight is."

"Well, no, probably not, unfortunately," the clerk said, giving Jeff a pair of keycards. "But hopefully the next day."

They went to their room, switched the air conditioner from "high" to "off," and turned on the television. The next channel after the hotel services menu was showing an old episode of Frasier. There was a red scrolling ticker on the bottom that warned of Rasputin's approach, advising coastal residents to leave their homes immediately and move inland. The channel after that had live images of Rasputin, still positioned over the gray, frenzied Gulf but leaning towards the land, picking up strength with each counter-clockwise revolution. It had reached Category 3 status at 3:51 p.m., while the van convoy was crawling away from the resort.

Like all hurricanes, Rasputin had a latent suicidal urge. As long as they stay over warm water, hurricanes continue to grow, pulling moisture from the surface and assimilating it into their vast bodies. When they cross land, they lose their source of power and spin themselves out. But the only way they can tear roofs off houses, throw trees on top of cars, throw cars on top of trees, drown people in their own streets, and be remembered in any lasting way is if they cross land. So there's that paradox.

Jeff opened their suitcase, dug inside for a moment and said, "Fuck, Laura?"

"Did we forget something at the resort?"

"No, I wanted to put my pajama pants on, but they're soaked. Everything's wet in here."

"Well, we tossed our wet clothes on top when we had to evacuate."

Jeff exhaled slowly. "Damn it. Because now it all smells like mold."

"What? Really?"

"I don't know. I might have caught a whiff of it."

"That's not good. Maybe they have laundry facilities here that we can use."

"I don't think they do," Jeff said.

"We can ask them tomorrow," Laura said. They hung the wettest of their wet clothes over the shower rod, ordered room service and afterwards a movie on Pay Per View. Jeff fell asleep almost immediately after it started, Laura fell asleep somewhere around the middle.

The next day, April 30th, was one of great adversity. Their clothes were still damp, and the smell of mold had become undeniable. Since they went through two changes of clothes the day before, they had reached the end of their inventory. Laura had brought along an extra shirt in case something like this happened—a heather-gray American Apparel polo that she'd picked up before the trip—but it was a casualty of the suitcase, pressed up against Jeff's wet jeans and socks long enough to catch mold, and was now hanging on the rod. So, the next outfit in the rotation was what they had been wearing on the plane three days earlier. These were outfits chosen primarily for comfort. Jeans and a dark olive t-shirt on him, jeans and an orange tank top on her. Before he put the t-shirt on, Jeff sniffed it, and smelled the stale funk of airline travel.

After a depressing breakfast of stale croissants, mealy bananas and orange juice from concentrate, during which they didn't say much or make eye contact, Jeff and Laura walked to the front desk, where Laura asked the clerk (not the same one as the day before), "Excuse me, are there any washing machines here that we can use?"

"You know what, there aren't, I'm afraid," the clerk said, frowning.

"None?" Laura asked. "Where do you guys wash your sheets and towels?"

"There's a facility across town?" the clerk said, nodding. "A truck takes our laundry back and forth like three times a week. It would come today, but it's not going to because most of the roads are closed. Anyway, that's not really…I don't really deal with that."

"Gotcha," Laura said.

"Is there a laundromat in walking distance?" Jeff asked.

"Maybe like four miles away?" the clerk said. "But I wouldn't recommend going there, even if it was closer. It's not supposed to stop raining today, and it could be dangerous with all the lightning."

"Right," Jeff said.

"And no cabs are coming here because, like I said, the roads."

"Right," Jeff said. "Okay, then. Thanks."

Later, they were sitting in a pair of deck chairs by the indoor pool, where they planned to spend the day. Only half the fluorescent lights were on above them, and the water's warmth gave the air a swampy humidity. Beyond the windows, the storm strobed and shouted. The married couple who rode to the hotel with Jeff and Laura sat in deck chairs on the other side of the pool, chatting and smiling, and might have waved to them once. Laura was reading an issue of Cosmopolitan with Reese Witherspoon on the cover. Jeff was reading a book about African child soldiers.

"Didn't you finish reading that magazine on the plane?" Jeff asked.

"Yeah," Laura said.

"Oh man, come on. I have another book in the room, I was gonna start it after I finished this one."

"What's it about?"

"The origins of militant Islamic fundamentalism."

"Is it any good?"

"I don't know yet. I've heard good things."

"Do you have anything that's not totally depressing?" Laura asked.

"Uh, not with me."

"I'm good, thanks."

"So you'd rather sit here and re-read an issue of Cosmo than learn something new about the world. Awesome. Are you taking the 'What's Your Passion Personality?' quiz again? Because I thought we'd already established that you're—"

"You know, I was fine just sitting here. Jesus Christ, could you please leave me alone?"

For a while they just stared at whatever page they were on. Eventually they started reading again, but there was no more conversation. Between articles, Laura thought about Jeff's taste in books, and how perfectly it reflected his personality, which could so often be grim, and pessimistic and joyless. Is this what I got married for? Laura thought. To live under a permanent dark cloud with a judgmental downer prick? To fight for every moment of contentment? To recreate my parents' marriage?

Does she stimulate me mentally, Jeff thought. Like, ever? Does she stimulate herself mentally? What goes on in there? When was the last time we talked about something other than ourselves, our families, our friends, or work? Will I be able to sustain this or will I die of boredom?

Laura thought, He's a dull man with a mean streak. I wanted excitement, I settled for stability. So it's partly my fault. At the very least I should have waited. I should have experienced more without him. I shouldn't have gotten locked into a life without variety.

Jeff thought, We used to able to entertain each other in an empty room.

At 5:35 p.m., 15 minutes after Jeff and Laura's flight back home was originally supposed to depart, Rasputin decided that it would pursue immortality, even at the cost of its own life. After hovering in a holding pattern off the coast for the entire day, it set a course dead north and made its landfall within the hour. For this brief period of time, until it leveled its first stretch of beachfront property, Rasputin was a Category 5, the king of all hurricanes, with winds estimated at 175 miles per hour.

When they couldn't stand sitting by the pool any longer, Jeff and Laura went to the hotel's business center to e-mail their bosses that they were stranded and wouldn't be back at work until Tuesday at the earliest, and then returned to their room. When Jeff inserted the keycard and opened the door, he was greeted by a wave of odor so forceful and demoralizing that he nearly started crying. "God damn it!" he yelled.

The suitcase seemed to be the epicenter. Everything inside of it was surely lost, at least until a run through a washing machine's hot cycle, maybe even two. The wet clothes they'd hung on the shower rod were putrid. Laura took them down and tossed them by the sink so she could take a shower. Jeff showered after her. They both slept naked, without touching.

The morning came. Bitterly, Jeff put on the clothes he wore the day before. "What do you want to do today?" he asked his wife.

She gave him a look.

"Do you want to go somewhere?" he asked.

"Like where," she said.

"I don't know," he said. "Back to the pool?"

Laura looked at the TV.

"You're going to stay here all day?"

"I don't have any clothes, Jeff. I can't go anywhere."

Jeff had neither the strength, nor the interest, to argue. He left their room, went downstairs to the lobby. There was a girl working the desk this time. Pretty young blond thing.

"Hey," Jeff said.

"Hey," the clerk said, smiling. "Good morning."

"Yeah, good morning to you. My name's Jeff, I'm in 215. I was just wondering if you heard anything from the airport? About when flights will start up again?"

"Well, the storm is still pretty bad, so it won't happen today. We're hoping for tomorrow. That's what they're saying."

Jeff did that thing where you exhale through your nose, shake your head and smile all at the same time. Resigned, weary disappointment.

"But we'll call you when we have more news," the clerk said,

"You promise?" Jeff said.

"Of course," the clerk said. She might have winked at him. One of her eyes was a grayer blue than the other. Her eyeliner suggested that after work, she enjoyed hanging out with boys in hooded sweatshirts and metal band t-shirts, in convenience store parking lots, sitting on the hoods of cars with stickers on the back windows, passing around bottles of something, Mad Dog maybe, or whatever it is kids drink these days.

"Maybe I should leave my cell phone number, just in case you can't reach me in my room," Jeff said.

"Okay," the clerk said, "let me find a pen." She did and Jeff gave her the number. "Got it," she said.

"So yeah," Jeff said. "I guess I'll go back to my room. Not much else to do. Unless you want to join me for a cup of coffee, over there by the muffins."

"Oh," the clerk said, pushing some hair out of her face. "I totally would, but it's not my break yet."

"Right."

"I don't even know when my next one will be, actually. Most of the people who work here can't make it out, because of the roads, so it's just me and a couple other guys working the desk all week, and I'm doing, like, a double shift."

"Bummer. Maybe later, then. Have a good one."

Jeff returned to his moldy room, sat in one of the chairs and silently endured whatever Laura chose to watch on television—talk shows, music videos, syndicated reruns of teen dramas. She had, at some point, put her orange tank top back on. They ordered room service a couple of times and eventually it was nighttime again. Lying in bed, Laura thought about the foul-smelling man in the dark olive t-shirt who had fallen asleep in the chair. She wondered what had possessed her to stay with a man who didn't excite her. She had been dissatisfied—for how long? years?—but she chose to suppress her emotions and her better judgment. It was the wrong move, and she was paying for it, and would continue to pay for it.

Sometime during the middle of the night, after nine deaths and $13 million in damages, Rasputin realized it had been spinning over land for quite some time, and like the cartoon loser who mistakenly runs off a cliff but doesn't realize it until he looks down, then desperately tries to scramble back the way he came, defying physics for a brief moment until gravity eventually kicks in, or accepting his fate and turning toward the young viewers to wave goodbye, comically and pathetically—this is how it was for Rasputin, slinking off into the darkness towards the ocean, dying, never to be seen again.

In the morning, Jeff went to the breakfast room for some cereal and sat at a table with the same married couple from the van and from the pool, who were eating bagels, whose names he never learned.

"Where's your wife?" the husband asked.

"Still sleeping," Jeff said.

"I have a good feeling about today," the wife said. "I think we're all going home."

"I hope so," Jeff said.

"The alternative is unthinkable," the man said.

"Mmm," Jeff said, and just then he began to smell the odor coming from his shirt. He had taken a shower that morning, put on more deodorant, but the shirt's default smell was the stronger force. What horrors had been seeping out of his pores? Had the mold walked across the hotel room and set up shop in his armpits? At that moment, Jeff felt utterly broken, and as he noticed the polite married couple subtly leaning away from him as they made their cheerful breakfast small talk, he wanted nothing more than to disappear, to leave this awful place and reappear anywhere else in the world. He finished his cereal quickly, hunched into himself.

There was nothing to do after breakfast except pace up and down the halls. The idea of going back to the room, to face his wife again, sent blades through Jeff's stomach. He thought about what he would say when he finally returned. Something about being unsatisfied with the way things were, and that the status quo could not be tolerated much longer. If the conversation didn't go well, the word "divorce" would be used. Jeff was ready for it. He was not afraid.

Jeff had been preparing his arguments and rebuttals for two hours by the time the cheering began to sweep through the hotel. He heard it explode in clusters, down the hall, by the pool, in the guest rooms upstairs. His cell phone rang. It was Laura. "Airport's open," she said. "I'm bringing our stuff down to the lobby."

Another van convoy took the resort refugees back to the airport. Jeff and Laura's flight was scheduled to depart ten and a half hours after they got there. They set up camp by their gate, and took turns wandering around the terminal. They tried to sleep. They bought fast food in three-hour intervals. Laura tried to remember the start of their trip, five days earlier. They were wearing the same clothes then, but they were completely different people. They were happy and in love. The thought of him touching her didn't make her want to rip her skin off. The sight of him walking towards her, as he was doing now, returning from his latest attempt to kill time, didn't make her want to scream until everyone in the airport was dead. And the smell of his dark olive t-shirt as he sat down next to her, at one time, long, long ago, didn't make her want to vomit until every organ and ounce of blood was outside of her body.

"Jesus Christ," Laura said. "What have you done?"

"Gypsy shower. I just made it up. You go to the duty free shop and spray some cologne onto your wrist like you're trying it out. Then, when the cashier isn't looking, you rub it into your armpits."

"You say this like you're proud of yourself."

"I am," Jeff said, "I thought it was pretty clever."

"You smell awful," Laura said. "We're about to board a plane. You smell like a fucking cab driver."

Jeff thought, Is this really the person I agreed to spend the rest of my life with? Every minute of every day of every year, this miserable bitch? No. Unacceptable.

Laura thought, My life needs to change immediately.

They didn't speak during the entire flight. They filled their washing machine as soon as they got home. They showered and got dressed. They transferred their laundry from the washer to the dryer. They had a pizza delivered and ate. They took their clean clothes out of the dryer, folded them and put them away. They fucked for two full hours, and in the morning it was like nothing had happened.



3. SHOAH

You've all heard the story about the boy whose mother often sent him to school wearing girls' clothes. Well, that boy grew up to be my father.

The forced cross-dressing went on for three months, on and off. The school eventually contacted Child Protective Services, who came to my grandmother's house and threatened her, and out of fear of losing her son she began dressing him exclusively in boys' clothing, which she got free from hospitals, churches and morgues. But she also forbid my father to wear underwear, and that was something his teachers never found out about, and of course he was too ashamed to tell anyone. She once caught him wearing briefs he had stolen from a department store. For that, she scalded his penis with a cup of tea. When he misbehaved, she made him sleep naked in the backyard. She was an alcoholic schizophrenic. She was born in Austria, she came to the United States with her parents when she was a teenager, and my father's father left her when she became pregnant. She died four years before I was born. That's everything I know about my grandmother.

My father turned out quite normal, considering. He married young and had two children, myself and my younger sister. He enjoyed hunting deer and watching boxing. And he spent most of his money on clothing, both for himself and for the rest of his family. Whenever we left the house, we looked sharp, my father would make sure of that. Even if it was just to go to a movie, I had to wear a sport coat and slacks, my mother and sister had to wear dresses, and my father was the centerpiece in his perfectly tailored three-piece suits. He had the largest collection of cufflinks I'd ever seen. Sometimes he wore a necktie to sleep, knotted over his silk pajamas.

During grade school, I was picked on for being a dandy. One day, some kids from the neighborhood surrounded me as I was walking home and started smacking me around and calling me a queer. Eventually, they allowed me to run away, but I had a bloody lip and a torn shirt by that point. When I got home, my father demanded to know what had happened, and I told him. I also told him that I wanted to dress like the other kids at school, and not like a businessman. He laughed and said that everybody gets picked on at one time or another, and that it gives a person character and perspective. He said that the kids who taunted me were simply jealous. They should be pitied, because they were stupid and they came from poor families. He also said that I could stand to be a little more grateful for the things I had. That weekend, he took me to Brooks Brothers and bought me three new shirts.

My mother seemed to enjoy being the best-dressed woman in town—she went to the grocery store a lot, even when she didn't need to buy anything—but my father's obsession with clothing upset her. He'd frequently wake up in the middle of the night, open the closet door, switch on the light, and stand there transfixed, trying to decide what to wear the next day. This could go on for an hour or more, and sometimes my mother couldn't sleep through it. In the morning, she'd make breakfast for my sister and I with dark circles under her eyes, and when my father came downstairs to make his coffee she pretended he wasn't there. I overheard arguments over money, where my mother would yell at him for spending everything he earned.

"We're projecting wealth," he'd say. "We're respected in this town, and looked up to, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Projecting wealth?" my mother would say. "We've had the same car for eight years."

She had a point. Despite my father's respectable income as a mid-level advertising executive, we were basically broke. My sister and I wouldn't have been able to go to college without the student loans that we're still paying off to this day. And when my father got sick, it wiped him out. I tried to help as much as I could with the money I'd managed to save on my own—painfully, I might add, while my friends were partying and eating well and racking up credit card debt—and he did his best to refuse me. He only asked me for one thing, the night before the last surgery of his life.

I was alone with him in the hospital room. My mother had come down with a cold, and she didn't want to compromise his immune system before the surgery, so she was at home. My sister had to drive back to Chicago, because she was afraid she'd lose her job if she missed more work. My father was floating in and out of consciousness. Every time his eyes drifted open I started talking to him, and he seemed to understand, though he was never fully present.

I was nodding off in my chair when he reached out and grabbed my hand, jolting me awake. He was staring at me, lucidity in his eyes for the first time in a week.

In a small, hoarse voice he said, "Where are my clothes?"

"At home," I said. "Don't worry."

"What is this I'm wearing?" he asked.

"It's a hospital gown," I said.

"No," he said. He looked down at himself. I could hear his breathing, the air scraping around in his ruined lungs. "No, this isn't right. It's not decent. I can't let the nurses see me like this."

"They're the ones who gave you this to wear," I said.

"What? That doesn't make sense, Isaac. It's not even…I'm not wearing… "

"It's okay, nobody cares about that," I said.

He began to tremble. "Isaac? Could you please go to the house and get my clothes?"

"Dad, they're not going to let you wear your own clothes right now. You're having surgery tomorrow morning, you can't wear your clothes, and I can't do anything about that."

"You have to!" he shouted. The effort hurt him. He clenched his teeth, put his hand to his chest, and crumpled a handful of hospital gown in a shaking fist. "You can do something! You can talk to them! You can get my clothes! Please, bring me some things from my closet. I can make you a list, if you find a pen for me. Or you could just grab anything, anything you find that you think would look nice."

"Dad, I can't. Get some rest, you need your strength for tomorrow."

"No. This is terrible. This can't happen. Please, Isaac, I'm scared. Please get my clothes."

"Stop it."

"One shirt. One pair of pants."

"Stop it."

"Isaac? Help me."

That was the last thing I ever heard him say. He couldn't get any more words out. He was crying. I had never seen my father cry until that moment, and I began to cry as well. We cried together in that hospital room. We cried and we cried and we cried and we cried.



CODA: MISSED CONNECTIONS

Looking for my hero
Tall, strong fireman who pulled me out of the burning R train near the Canal Street station on Sunday night. It was too smoky to see your face, but maybe you remember me? Petite redhead, wearing a green shirt and a tan jacket. Would love to thank you again in person.

Wonderful symmetry
Me: Nebbishy WM with glasses, wearing jeans and a black sweater. You: stunning WF with glasses, also wearing jeans and a black sweater. We were both walking north on Broadway after Sunday's incident. The crowd pushed us next to each other at one point and we shared some eye contact and a brief smile. Then you turned right at Houston and, like an idiot, I didn't follow you. Forgive me and I won't make that mistake again.

It's not safe without you, JL
After hearing the news I grabbed the dark blue t-shirt that you left at my apartment when you walked out of my life. It still smells like your body and I wish you were with me. Love always, SC.

Cop seeking cowboy
You were wearing a gray/black cowboy shirt with shiny gold threads, which you were trying to return to some store directly after the bomb went off. I was the bearish police officer who wouldn't let you. Sound familiar? Not sure if you were throwing vibe at me (you didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave the area), but it just wasn't the time or place. If you see this, I'd love another opportunity to bust you…

Get well soon
NYU hospital, Sunday night. I was there picking up a friend, and as we were leaving, you were being pushed in our direction on a stretcher. Your hand dropped over the side and brushed against mine. Did I imagine a connection? Write back and tell me what I was wearing. The rest of your face may have been covered in bandages, but in your eyes there was beauty.

As some of you know by now, I'm a Monotheist. It's a religion I defined myself. Except it's not really a religion at all. Let me explain.

Lowercase-m monotheism is the belief in the existence of a single deity or God. Well, that's what I believe. I think the universe was formed by one omnipotent, omniscient deity, who created the human race with a specific purpose; we are important to Him, and He wants us to do good. I have a feeling that He is pleased when we help/love one another. I believe in evolution, but I also believe that God wanted us to be here eventually. Something I've been thinking about recently is the absolute singularity of the homo sapiens sapiens. In every ecosystem, there's a spectrum of development. Think of an ocean: There are one-celled amoebas, then simple flora, starfish, small vertebrate fish, larger fish, and then you have whales, dolphins, who have advanced communication systems and by all accounts are supposed to be highly intelligent. You have all the life forms in a jungle leading up to chimpanzees, who can create simple tools and use sex for political gain. Very simple to quite advanced, in other words. And then there's us, the only species on Earth who have ever built vehicles, made clothing, cooked food. Whales make music, but only humans have recorded music (and pay for it, for that matter). The development gulf between the Earth's most advanced species and its next-most advanced species is enormous, but there's very little gap between #2 and #3, between #3 and #4, and so on. It's very suspect, when you think about it. The point is, we were clearly created with some sort of intelligent design in play.

The God I believe in is same God that Christians, Catholics, Jews and Muslims believe in. But I wholeheartedly reject all religion. See, the other part of my Monotheist belief system (big M here, now) is that all religion is manmade, and therefore false. All of the religions mentioned above, and all other God-based religions in the world, really, are simply interpretations of the Supernatural by men who existed thousands of years before science. It's sad to think that Native Americans were considered savages by American settlers, because they believed that the sun was a god and the moon was a god. Meanwhile, the Christians who took their land out of "manifest destiny" thought that once upon a time there was a tower called Babel that the people built up together, and they built it so high that it mocked God, so God became angry (!) and smashed it down, and that's why everybody in the world speaks different languages now (?!). Oh man. How is this any more legitimate than the belief that the Earth is really just the back of a giant turtle?

If you lived in Alaska 2,000 years ago, and you saw the Aurora Borealis, what would you think? How would you interpret that, without the aid of science?

This is probably a good time to interject that I don't claim to know the nature of God. I don't think anybody can. That's also a tenet of Monotheism. (If this is sounding similar to Agnosticism, let me restate that I strongly believe in the existence of God.) Atheists have pointed to the Holocaust as supporting their outlook, because how could He allow such suffering to happen to people he supposedly loves? Well, if you buy into the idea that God interjects when evil people do evil things and creates miracles to get good people out of jams, you will be disappointed time and time again. Tragedies don't prove that there is no God, they just prove that the God we have is not the one imagined by a bunch of hut-dwellers 3,000 years ago. They suggest that God is pretty much a hands-off kind of deity.

It has always been the urge of mankind to understand his surroundings, and religion seems to me like the way a lot of people do that. We are placed on this planet, and we don't know the meaning of any of it, and we don't know what happens to us after we die, and we have no idea what existed before that tremendous explosion, billions and billions of years ago. What would you do, in the absence of all explanation? Would you maybe say that the sun is a sentient being, and we must please him or one day he might stop rising in the morning? If you killed one virgin and the world didn't end, might you do it again? Would you establish a set of rules so that people don't kill you and steal your wife? Would you hope that assholes who create chaos for other people will somehow receive punishment after they die? How would you describe this place of punishment? If an incredibly charismatic man came into town, preaching a message of love and radiating peace even as they were tearing off his flesh for being a charlatan, would you write about him after he was executed? If everybody "sins," shouldn't there be a method to escape damnation, and shouldn't this method be fairly convenient?

When people say religion has done (and continues to do) more harm than good (and it absolutely has), it's not a knock on God—they're referring to the details. There's a civil war in Iraq now, being fought by three different sects of Muslims whose differing interpretations of the Koran have produced three distinct cultures. All these people believe in the same God, but that's not good enough for them. [If you don't worship the same way I do, you deserve death, and it goes without saying that the people who follow God the way I follow God are the ones that should hold dominion over this land.] Some of the people fighting this war would not hesitate to kill you or I, because we believe in "God," not "Allah"—holy fuck, don't get me started on this idiocy. It goes both ways, of course. Christian missionaries literally believe that if they don't spread the message of Christ around the world, souls will be lost. The natives in Paupau, New Guinea? Hellbound. It doesn't matter if they already believe in God--they must call Him "Christ," and they must put on some clothes, for Heaven's sake. How does God feel about all of this? I have no idea. Ask a religious person--they'll be sure to tell you.

Does any of this make sense so far? Anybody want to tell me I'm talking shit? Anybody want to join my Monotheism movement?

Sue Me I'm Jewish


If anybody wants to make these T-shirts for me, I'll gladly pay for parts and labor. Plus tip!

*Some* Fat Chicks

So picture this. The office of a record executive; daytime. A rock band has just finished playing their new album (or demo) for the exec. When the last song ends, the lead singer says, "Well, what do you think?"

The record exec leans back in his chair, folds his hands and says:

"Guys, not only do I not hear a *single*..."

For some reason, I can't think of a hilarious/insulting way to end this setup. A riff session with Paul "Cockroach" Knegten was fruitless. (He was trying to follow the "what's less than a 'single'?" logic, but to no avail.) Anyway, please help me with this. Best suggestion wins a record contract.

"Was the tip of his penis sensitive? Let me put it this way, it wrote poetry and cried during Sandra Bullock movies."