The Blow-Job That Saved Brooklyn
(The Blow-Job that Saved Brooklyn was published by Penguin Random House Australia, Airmail: Women of Letters, 2015. First performed in 2014 at The Bell House for Women of Letters. Women of Letters shows are structured along a theme; for this particular evening, it was “A Letter to the Night I’d Rather Forget.” Among the performers were Martha Wainwright, Edie Falco, Amelia Lester, Yael Stone and Mary Jane Gibson. )
*
A Letter to the Night I’d Rather Forget
Dear N.I.R.F,
It’s been six years. You’d think I’d have forgotten you. But you’re stuck in my memory like an embarrassing little splinter causing outsized sensation, a reminder of what I am made of: weak convictions, and sluttiness of spirit.
And you happened all because one April lo these dozen years ago, when I was still single, my ex-boss Elise called me and asked if I was into being set up on a date. Now, Elise is the kind of woman who updates her status daily by saying “Triceps sore from reverse pull-ups! Off to spin class!” So we have nothing in common, so I shouldn’t have let her set me up with anything, let alone with a man.
But she tells me she knows this guy, handsome, divorced. She goes, “He’s harmless, he has lots of money” -- and I don’t care about that, I really don’t -- “he’s just looking to meet someone NICE, and you are a nice Jewish girl. And he is the CEO for the NJ Nets[1],” to which I replied, “I don’t watch football.”
And she said, “Basketball, darling. Just let him take you out and stop being a brat.”
At this point, NIRF, I realized she was talking about the very team going into the new stadium in the Atlantic Yards in Fort Greene, developed by Forest City Ratner, who were using eminent domain to buy people out of their homes. I told Elise, “The NETS? I can’t go to dinner with this guy. I’ve signed petitions protesting him.”
And Elise says, “Well, I can see that you feel strongly about this, and so I strongly suggest that you just let him take you to dinner and don’t talk about the stadium. Really, Kyra, you’re lonely, right? Beggars can’t be choosers,” which is pretty much how the non-single world feels about anyone single.
And really, NIRF, you and I are not strangers; do you think you’re the only night I’d rather forget? There have been others, all undertaken in the name of hope.
*
I googled him. Let’s call him “Brian.” That winter, he’d given an interview to a sports magazine talking about how “passionate” he was about building a new Brooklyn.
I happen to have grown up in the old Brooklyn, but I guess it’s nice that’s he’s passionate about my hometown.
One sunny Sunday two months later, I picked up a call from an unfamiliar 201[2] number.
“Hel- hello, is that Kyra?” He pronounced it KYE-ra.
I say, “This is Kyra,” which is pronounced KEE-ra, “who’s this?”
And he goes, “This is Brian! Elise’s friend? She said she called you about me?”
And I say, “Ooooohhhh, yes, back in April. Right!...happy Father’s Day[3].”
And he says, “Oh, is it Father’s Day? Heh,” and I am silent because I know he has children and it seems odd that he isn’t spending this day with them.
But we chat a bit.
And then he goes, “So, KYE-ra, did Elise tell you what it is I do?”
And I say, “She did indeed. So, uh… you guys have a big project brewing.”
And he says, “Yes, we’re almost ready to break ground. We’ve won 19 of 21 eminent domain cases.”
I say…nothing.
He goes, “So, uh, before this goes any further, I have to ask you a question….how do you feel about eminent domain?”
I took to heart Elise’s admonition not to talk about it. I – single, lonely, childless, 34 years old -- tell him, “Well….actually, my dad thinks the whole project is going to be great for development in Brooklyn.”
Dear, dear NIRF. You only happened because I didn’t say to Brian that my father and I don’t talk about the Atlantic Yards anymore, because those “discussions” only devolve into huge arguments about the moral implications of moving people out of their homes just for the sake of a sports arena. My father tells me I have no idea how blighted and useless that area was; I tell him people live there. He tells me Forest City Ratner has promised to build affordable housing as part of the project; I tell him it is naïve to believe that they’re going to keep that end of the bargain…. I don’t say any of this to Brian.
Meanwhile, astute Brian says, “Yes, but how do YOU feel. About eminent domain.”
And here, rather than being forthright and risking rejection (remember my loneliness?) let all my convictions die. I say, “…um, well, -- you know? Fort Greene is actually my favorite neighborhood in Brooklyn?”
And I guess he thought I sounded nice. And sufficiently Jewish. We made plans for the following Wednesday night. I suggested the Stone Rose at the top of the Time-Warner Center, because if I was going to go on a date with this member of the corporate species, I thought I should meet him in his natural habitat.
On this -- on you, Night I’d Rather Forget -- I was coming from an audition, so I was wearing a skirt and heels and my hair had been blown straight, so I looked decidedly un-like myself. (NIRF, even you know that most of the time I resemble Carole King in her “Tapestry” days.) I order a $25 cocktail, and he gets a cranberry juice, as if we are having a business lunch.
And he kicks it off by saying, “So, you’re a singer? Do you know how many careers we’ve launched by having people sing the National Anthem before a game? You should send me your stuff. Really. You don’t have an mp3 of you singing the National Anthem? You should really make one.”
I smile without saying anything. This dude from New Jersey, the shoulders in his suit a little too sharp, his shoes a little too shiny, he is thinking (I am certain) of a chick with a good tight good pop-belt mix with lots of melisma, and I – well, I’m a classical soprano. No one wants to hear my melisma.
And then he asks me what it’s like to have grown up in Brooklyn. While I sip my drink made of gold, he goes, “I’m asking you because actually, I’m thinking of buying an apartment in One Hanson Place, you know it? It’s right near the construction site.”
I know those apartments are going for upwards of a million dollars for a 1BR and I say, “I remember when it was the Williamsburg Savings Bank building. My dentist had his office there when I was growing up.” The lobby had old mosaic tiles and a glass revolving door. We would go to the dentist and then to a Paper Bag Players matinee at BAM.
And he laughs and goes, “Gosh, amazing, I mean…I can’t even imagine living there, let alone raising kids in Brooklyn. I mean, I’ve never even been to that neighborhood.”
And I stop -- because I literally don’t know how to carry on the conversation. This Brian, this “harmless” CEO, four years into a massive construction project, wants to kick people out of their homes so he can completely change the character of a neighborhood he’s NEVER EVEN BEEN TO?
NIRF, I knew that I should have said something right then. Ended it.
Instead, I drained my glass and asked him how long he’d been divorced.
He said, “Oh…you know? Technically I’m not really divorced yet. But it’s definitely over, my marriage. I mean, I love my kids, totally devoted father, but my wife and I—just no passion, maybe even from the beginning. I felt bad, she was pretty blindsided. But dating…. Gosh, it’s just so hard to meet anyone NICE. I’ve been meeting these women who act really mean and bitter, it’s all about what they can get from you.”
Which I thought was pretty funny coming from a carpetbagger.
Oh, NIRF. I wish you had let me explain to him in no uncertain terms that women in this city are just sick of being treated like they’re expendable. That lots of women are in New York for the same reasons the men are here: because they have a huge, ambitious vision for their life. And that very ambitious people, men and women both, often excuse themselves from very poor behavior in the name of going after what they want. Surely he could understand that.
Instead, I only managed to say, “Brian. Everyone is just looking to protect themselves. And to find true love.”
And then he looks at me a little more closely and says, “Huh. Would you….maybe like to get dinner in Fort Greene some time? I’ll bet you’d know where to go.”
And I said, “Yes, I do, I know exactly where to go.” I was thinking of my favorite Italian place, up Vanderbilt Avenue, near the stadium’s construction site, the “footprint,” as we in Brooklyn have been calling it. This restaurant had eight tables, and it was run by a couple who served Umbrian food, the kind of place I feared the stadium would put right out of business. A place that has indeed closed in the intervening few years.
We made tentative plans to go there in two weeks. Just before we parted, he said, “Don’t forget. MP3. The American Anthem. I can help you.”
And I confess, NIRF, that you made me begin to fantasize: I would take this handsome, clueless douchebag to eat Umbrian food in Brooklyn — and he would love it — and he would realize that maybe a development as large and ugly as that stadium didn’t belong there — and that if he really wanted to help build the local economy with his basketball team, that there were better ways to do it.
I would seduce him with every charming bit of brownstone goodness I could muster. I realized that if it would do the trick, if I could get him to stop the building of that stadium, I would even sleep with him, or maybe just fool around with him. I would give the blow-job that would save Brooklyn.
*
But what I’d really, really like to forget about you, NIRF, is this: after my date with Brian, I went home to my studio apartment and, sitting on my lonely bed I downloaded the recording app Garage Band, and spent the evening singing the National Anthem to my computer. I tried it in four different keys. I did twenty takes. I did another because a truck roared by.
And then, there was a knock on my door. It was James, bleary eyed, from apartment 5J. James, with whom I shared a wall. He said, “What’s with the National Anthem? Do you have an audition tomorrow?” I looked at the clock. It was 11:30 on a school night. I apologized and closed the door.
And really, NIRF, I should be thanking you, because you showed me that I had to check myself: I was also all too ready to take advantage of this ugly, behemoth corporate situation, as soon as someone dangled a cherry. I was just as much of an exploiter as Brian, the gentrifying jerk from New Jersey. Both of us out for ourselves, out to take everything we could get.
I deleted all twenty-one takes, and I deleted the email I was about to send to Brian with an MP3 attachment. Then I called him to say something had come up and I couldn’t make our date. He said that was ok, he couldn’t make it either -- he’d forgotten that was the night of his son’s birthday (ahem, devoted father…). We agreed we’d get back to each other to reschedule, and that was a lie, too.
I couldn’t save Brooklyn. Not with dinner, not with a BJ.
It would have been another NIRF if I had tried, because it wouldn’t have worked, anyway. I know this from other nights I’d rather forget: Men break promises made under the influence, all the time.
But I’ll never really know, NIRF, because that stadium – without any affordable housing in sight – now sits there in Fort Greene like a permanent, rusty turtle-saurus. Everyone loves it. Myself, I still have never been inside it. I never shall be.
And you – you are a memorial to my own carpet-bagging ambition. I will never forget you.
Yours in gratitude,
Kyra
footnotes:[1] The New Jersey Nets are now the Brooklyn Nets, a professional basketball team owned by a bunch of people including Jay Z and a Russian oligarch, who play at the Barclays Center, site of the formerly-known Atlantic Yards and the “footprint” mentioned herein.
[2] 201 is the area code for New Jersey, which – for a Brooklynite, but really for anyone living in the five boroughs of NYC (212, 718, 347 or 646, if you please) -- is something you look down upon as hopelessly suburban and/or a little tacky.
[3] American Father’s Day, usually celebrated by going to brunch with your father and giving him a watering can or a coffee-table book, and regarded as a “Hallmark holiday” invented to stimulate the economy, but observed pretty universally.