My BFF is Bill. He is like a scary, funny Gremlin who’s been fed after midnight. His mother recently passed away after a long illness, and though my friend is tough, this was significantly tougher. For a while, anyway.
The family mausoleum is in the historic and very beautiful Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn.
Symbols abound in our lives. If you got a bouquet of yellow roses from a dude in 1880, it meant “We’re pals and that’s it.”. You see a stick figure of a guy on a door and you can probably pee standing up if you cross the threshold. Victorian ladies would snap their lacy hand-held fans at you if you pissed them off. These days, women don’t usually carry fans. But I don’t know one who can’t give you the side-eye. We use these things to communicate when speech is either not needed or welcome. Let’s see how that went for me and a friend yesterday.
This cemetery has massive trees, rolling hills, an amazing view of lower Manhattan, and more high-end sculpture devoted to honoring the departed than any museum. Boss Tweed, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Leonard Bernstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat all repose in Green-Wood. It’s quite the Social Register of the departed. We’ve done a tour, because we’re ghoulish that way, and we learned a lot about symbolism in Victorian sculpture. I’ve decided that obelisks are nice, weeping angels are maudlin, and busts of oneself looking smug symbolize that you are a jackass even 120 years after you last said something like “Christ, Hortense, stop being a boring coquette and lower your pantalettes already!” My personal favorite are the numerous “Jersey Shore” angels. They are clad in flowing marble robes, square chins pointed skyward, wings outstretched and one hand holding a spear or torch aloft. These are the guys and gals whom you want leading your personal charge to the Other Side. Some of them are posed a bit more peacefully but have adamant expressions, with one finger pointed skyward as if to say. “He’s going up here now. Not over there, not down there.”
We’ve paid numerous visits there since the very vibrant Sylvia passed away in July, arranging for copies of the weird mausoleum door key from 1878, and conferring with the local funeral home for the inscription on the marble plaque inside the mausoleum (Beloved mother of Dale, Laurel and William. You will live forever in our hearts, for it was you who taught us of life’s beauty.)
Bill has contracted with a stained glass repair company to restore the original window and skylight in the tomb, so Christ’s Ascension To Heaven (Piety – which in at least one case was wishful thinking) and some very cool seagulls (Freedom) and doves (Peace) will once again be shiny. He’s got me drawing up a landscaping plan. I’ll leave the symbolic plants alone. The ancient dogwood (Christianity), and the English Yew (Eternal Life) stay. I’ll just add some ferns, forget-me-nots, violets and other woodland things that his Mom loved.
Once this was planned, I left Bill inside the tomb to say his goodbyes while I pretended to pick at an azalea. As he locked up, I noted that the lower panels of the doors had torches, but they were upside down. So were the sculpted wreaths attached to the upper glass panels. Curious, we noticed that neighboring mausoleums had all their doors installed the same way. What does this mean? (“Lights out”? Drunk installer?) We will find out.
On to life’s symbols…
I suggested Grimaldi’s pizza under the Brooklyn Bridge. This met with enthusiasm. We got there, parked illegally, and… what happened to the neighborhood? Once-crumbling tenements, sandblasted clean and filled with yuppies. Tourists from Atlanta strolling the sidewalks. A swampy, littered riverfront was now an immaculate park. This was great! But when we got our pizza, there was no place to sit and eat it without abandoning the car. We decided to explore along the rapidly developing riverfront to see if we could find a spot. We pulled in at One Brooklyn Bridge, a condo complex near Pier 6, which was in stage one of development.
It looked perfect at first. Friendly cops directed us to a legal spot. This led to a bench overlooking downtown, with ferries in the harbor and traffic copters in the sky. There was a sand volleyball court with gays. Children played and screamed in a weird, heavily landscaped water park that made them look more like wee monkeys in a zoo enclosure. Joggers and cyclists passed. “This is going to be beautiful when it’s done. It’s so nice now!”, I told Bill. Ever vigilant, Bill said, “We need a Gay Crash Pad. Let’s check it out.” The idea of a Gay Crash Pad is not a good one. It encourages the sort of behavior that Nice Old Married Gays don’t engage in, like ads on Craigslist reading “Burly Calendar Firemen Needed For Photo Shoot” and parties like John Hughes and Holly Golightly only dreamed of. When we finished our pizza I tagged along.
The converted warehouse structure now resembled a huge, gray cruise ship, with roof decks galore and massive “cabin” windows. The nautical theme was carried through with lighting and trim-work. Rather than a festive Disney Magic, she’s more a Helen Mirren – polished, dignified, and fun.
But it got hilarious, really fast. The marketing department has engaged a painter to paint the inside of all the ground floor perimeter windows to show coming amenities and the sort of people who will live there. The vignettes were unintentionally, riotously tone-deaf. It was like some college student who had never left Ames, Iowa read some O. Henry and saw Sex And The City and picked up a paintbrush to Paint New York Life.
Next to a middle-aged couple, in simple print: Marcus loves Sophie’s tapenade. Sophie loves the gourmet market at One. Bill snorted – “The only thing Marcus loves about Sophie is her tapenade.” Me – “Yeah, he definitely needs an aid to be tappin’ that.”
A Sookie from True Blood lookalike: Alice loved the green hills of the park. Almost as much as she loved the little red dress she bought on the way home. Me – “And not as much as she loved the sugar daddy putting her up in this joint.”
Dude in a three piece suit: Jay plays rugby. Then he stops for a caramel macchiato on the way home. Jay looked pretty fey. Bill – “If Jay plays rugby, he’s definitely the hooker.”
Woman with a dog: Thalia loves walks with Lola. Lola loves stopping for treats at the Puppy Shoppe. Me – “…And squeezing them out on the bluestone promenade along the river so that Alice can step in them.”
And then: Tad can’t catch a ball. But his restaurant picks at One are always a home run. Tad was wearing a sky blue suit, pink socks, a jaunty trilby, and sipping a cocktail with a red umbrella. Wait, wut? Ok, pander to us, people, but this was truly too much. And we noticed not ONE black or Asian person in the whole city-block length of this window display. What’s THAT supposed to symbolize? Hmm?
It was apparently time to make up our own obliviously offensive dysfunctional windows.
Me – Vinny stood outside the lobby door while cold sleet ran down the back of his track suit. Vinny was lost.
Bill – Vainiqua paced the lovely lobby at One while waiting for her CL “date”. Todd was upstairs in his Eames chair, dead from coke.
Me – Lai Ming lives here too, since she’s a model and can afford it. But she hates you and wishes you would leap from the roof deck with your clothes on fire.
Bill – Jaron used to work the front desk. Now he lives here and his new name is “Mandingo”.
We couldn’t stop. Breathless giggles that only two gay guys mocking the absurdity of life can giggle are a symbol of friendship.
Me – Neither of the women who live with the Sheik have been seen for months. Maybe they really ARE in the pool.
Bill – Helga loves babysitting in One Daycare. Especially the spanking part.
Me – Archie went for a long walk one night to get Mallomars. Sometimes you can still hear him scream “Help! Police!”.
They’re lucky we didn’t have paint. Hire a local artist, real estate people!
It means something when you do, and quite another when you don’t.