I recommend reading “How to become a Birthmother Chapter 1” first
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There was a second lunch. It rode on the innocent coat tails of the first.

You know, “That was nice. Let’s do it again”

I am a sucker for great food. Growing up, my Uncle Mike would think nothing of spending eighty or ninety dollars at the specialty Italian deli on imported prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella that we would dine on with fresh semolina bread. It’s a family tradition to anticipate the arrival of the Christmas Harrington Ham that he still sends every year. To send me this ham, Fed Exed from Vermont, wipes him out approximately one hundred and fifty dollars and it’s one of my most treasured gifts. So maybe it was the thought of the great wine and succulent veal that tempted me again. I can admit that I probably just as greatly anticipated the attention and conversation with him, but I could not have seen that then.

This time the restaurant was ethnically Spanish in flavor which made sense knowing his love and business attachments to Spain and the South Americas. I believe, it is considered one of the best of its kind in New York. Whether it is Portuguese or South American I can’t recall. But I had been there before he took me that day. I actually couldn’t remember the details of this lunch until I started writing this and then it hit me, much like the way I hadn’t remembered being in that restaurant until I walked in with him.

I had gone there before with my parents. I want to say to celebrate a promotion of my father’s in the police force. It could have been when he made Sergeant, though I was three at the time and I think I would not have had such a recollection, so I will guess that it was when he had made Lieutenant. I must have been about eleven or twelve?

You would think I would remember such an important event in my parent’s lives. It must have been the highest point of my father’s career in the NYPD, and though never a cheerleader type, my mother would have applauded the rise and monetary benefits, yet I am completely in the dark. What is it about childhood that makes it all so warped?

I was not ever an oblivious kid. I took great pride at knowing everything. I knew where all things were kept in the house. I knew all my Christmas presents every year. I knew where my father stashed his porn. I knew what the arguments were about. I eavesdropped. I spied. I listened to the adults talk over Sunday dinner and the whispers from my parent’s bedroom late at night. To this day, I am not the one to ask questions, but I strain for answers and one of the worst things someone can do to me is withhold information. And yet, I find myself left with big black holes in my youth where I yearn for the truth and I have no one left to ask. Maybe it is a matter of perspective, but my adult mind struggles for the adult versions now and all that I have is the view from my childhood eyes and mind.

I find it so frustrating. The place was extremely unique in decor and that is what triggered the memory, yet I didn’t know then what I had been there for. I think my grandparents were there too? Oh, who knows! You had to go upstairs to the main dining room and the stair case was all mosaic tiles and obviously quite unforgettable. I have never been good with names, so I am not going to attempt to pull that from my brain. I know both times I ate paella. The first time I ever had paella was there and then Sondra and Marina made it one Christmas Eve and then I ate it there again. Hard to believe I have such a good memory for the food, but as I said, I am a sucker for good food. Luckily, I have also learned to be a good cook and I can make my own paella now and I do a darn good job if I don’t say so myself.

I can’t, however, begin to reconstruct the conversation and, again, looking back, I am hard pressed to even imagine how I could have pulled it off. I guess this is where my acting abilities come into play for I must have been somewhat entertaining. I know that I was an extremely shy and fearful child, but I forcibly shed that skin when I donned my teenage black persona years earlier. I had one therapist who called it a “grandiose mask” as if it was something negative, but if my true self was so very shy and fearful..well I would not want to be my real self again as it makes it very hard to function in real life. I know I can still control my outward self and come across with great confidence and self assurance. What is that saying? “Fake it till you make it” I must have faked it then for there is no way I could have let on to him what was really in my heart.

The date book again provides the painful truth of what my daily life was like.

It reads like a social whirlwind and I believe that was my intentions. Constantly on the go: parties and concerts, talking to names that I cannot phantom a face to now, roving from one bar to the next, shopping and spending, into the city and back to the island, staying at one friends, crashing at another’s, hooking up with this guy, seeing that one for drinks, and pining over a third. It doesn’t seem that I ever slept in my own bed in whatever place I called home. I had a ring of places in the city to stay at: Anna’s, Laura’s, Ian’s, Bethany’s, Christopher’s, Ashmi’s, Guy’s, Pammy’s. Always sore from sleeping on a hard floor and needing a good shower.

I feel so disassociated from that life now. Like it something that I saw once in a movie or read in a novel. It is hard to remember that it is me and I did live it. It is very hard to remember the true feelings that I had then. It all hurts. It looks and sound’s exciting, but the essence is sadness. I get the sense I was running, running away from my life and trying desperately to find some other life to live. My writings at the time, aside from being horribly adolescent, are overwhelmingly bleak. Constantly questioning why was I not good enough for anyone. I go from great excitement when facing anything new, an abundance of hope and exuberance at the thought of a chance and then quickly and repeatedly betrayed, the despair at that being an reoccurring theme. I am obviously depressed and frequently suicidal. The words are written in haste and running from tears. I am saddened to recognize it in myself, yet angered when I remember that no one else seemed to notice and I was left alone to war with myself.

Perhaps I was too good of an actress.

As I said, I lied to my poor therapist for a year and they are supposed to see through these kinds of things. At lunch, I must have put on the good, amusing front for him. Spun the stories in an exciting web while leaving out the tears of shame and scars of self mutilation. I could speak of the wonderful concerts I attended and my fabulous friends in cutting edge bands. We went to movies and to museums, I dined and danced. My sarcasm and wit could make the uncomfortable humorous and I could edit the rest. Yes, I can imagine doing just that. And perhaps the sorrow behind the anecdotes made me all the more mysterious.

Somehow, I managed to pull off innocent lunch number two. The line in the proverbial sand was not yet crossed and had I just thanked him for the fine food and went back to my dejecting life then I would have little story to tell. But once again, it was so lovely to feel good about something. It was so nice to have someone, and such an accomplished someone, to think fine thoughts about me. Maybe it was as plain as day and anyone observing us would have seen where we were headed. But I left the restaurant that day feeling upbeat and happy, feeling special and thankful and all the more vulnerable for the next invitation.

The memories begin to become much sharper here.

I know the date. It was January 16th. It was my brother’s 6th birthday and it was a Friday. The Long Island Railroad was threatening a strike that night at midnight and that would have been a concern in my world. I took the train from the Massapequa Park station every morning for the hour long ride into the city. Always tired and constantly late, my mother would rush me to the 7:55 in town. I hated the times in the car with her as that was a time when I was trapped in her presence. She could bombard me with her strident voice, whether complaining about my life or my father’s antics or some new insult or annoyance from my grandfather. It was not a good way to start one’s mornings.

Of the day itself, there was nothing of note. I worked my position as receptionist. By now I was pretty much there full time having the scheduling confines of art school removed by my distasteful withdrawal from school. I did enjoy the work, which I have always had the tendency to do. I enjoyed the weekly paycheck which seemed to make me rich when compared to my friends. Everyone else was in school of some kind and few had jobs as well. I think Laura lived for her two years at F.I.T on forty dollars a week spending money. I still don’t know how she managed, but I guess my generosity was helpful. I know I would buy us all drinks when we were out and often sprung for the taxi when it was time to stumble home. I would buy food and hair dye and shopping flings including the treasure black and pink mohair sweater and the rubber skirt. I would not stand for the excuse of having no money if I was up for an adventure. And we have already established that I did not sit still for long.

I think I was wearing my black suite that day. I’d like to think so as it was an attractive outfit that my mother had purchased for me for my high school graduation that spring. Black, of course, it had a longish tight skirt and a fitted jacket. I think I might have been trying to pull off a professional look that day and wore my hair in a French twist. If this is so, then I most likely had on black pumps and black stockings though I sometimes would be daringly punk rock and wear my fishnets to the office. It could have been the fishnets that did it, for I would later notice a correlation between the fishnets and his attentions and use them often to entice a rendezvous, but I’m not sure of that day.

I know it was about four in the afternoon and the office was quiet when he approached me alone and asked if I’d like to go out for drinks after work.

I think he had precipitated the question with enquiring as to how late I was staying to work. I had planned on working to sixish (since most days I ended up arrived closer to ten rather than the traditional nine) and told him so. Did he respond , “Great! Wait for me to finish up and then we’ll go”? It feels probable.

I knew that this time it was different. That this time there could be no pretending of innocence. I was completely aware of the consequences of this outing, but only felt disbelief and excitement. Disbelief that it was really true and excitement that it was really going to happen.

I know that I knew it to be at least questionably wrong due to the nature of our relationship as boss and employee and due to the huge difference in age, but felt that I must go through with the adventure.

I had to see it through and see where it would take me. Long a reader of trashy Cosmopolitan, I felt I owed it to myself to do whatever good Cosmo girl would do. And years of Cosmo, had conditioned me to see and glorify this moment as a moment of triumph. I had the city job, I worked on my city look, I pretended to have the exciting life, of course, I would go out with the boss. I had this innate desire know all to live all. I use to say that I would rather have lived through something, whether good or bad, and really knew what it was about rather than read about it in a book or see it in a movie and frightenly enough, I believed it.

I wrote in that time,

“Life is weird. I want to experience everything and when I’m done and I’m bored then I want to die”

Unfortunately, this did little for heeded one’s sixth sense or survival mechanisms, or listening to the little voice in one’s head saying, ”Are you sure this is a good idea?” The little voice still sounded too much like my mother and I still had too much distain for her to hear any wisdom in anything she might have uttered. In fact, my tendency was probably to do exactly what I knew I shouldn’t. That it was my brother’s birthday and I would miss his cake was of little consequence. That I had to be on a train by midnight or risk getting stuck in the city only added excitement to the mix. He didn’t have to tell me not to tell anyone for I knew it to be an unspoken secret.

I knew it to be forbidden and that only made me more excited to say yes.

Of course, I went

Continued on: Seduction of a Birthmother: part 3

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Ah, the beauty of Google maps. Here I can find without question my old office building. Moving my little google man up the street until I see the familer view. It looks so much like any other building in Midtown NYC, but I know the truth. I know what happened there.

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