Maja Magazine

I hop three subway stops down to Tribeca, and double check the text message enroute to memorize the address.  Sean was my best friend my junior year of college.  He showed up in Ann Arbor a year after I did, and indeed came to the school after meeting me during a visitation weekend.  I rescued the then-high school senior from the other students—guiding him to music libraries and ice cream standsuc1—and proceeded to take him to a full-on theatre party and introduce him to marijuana and myself during one of my crazier periods.  The party we went to may or may not have ended in an orgy, as they occasionally did in those days.
    Over ten years later, after a few year hiatus of friendship, we’ve gotten back in touch, and I am meeting him and boyfriend (now fiancée) at their friend Stefanie’s place that they have been telling me about.  All I know about Stefanie is that she is a model, is “fabulous” and flew them out to Saint Tropez just before I saw them last.
    This must be a sweet pad, I think to myself glancing at the address on Greenwich St., Apt #2.  A hot Tribeca cobblestone block.  No letter following the number.  Not #2G.  Just #2.  Casual chic for Manhattan real estate: just #2.  As in: “there are so few of us in the building, we don’t even need letters, thank you very much.”
    When I get to the building, sure enough, two apartments.  I buzz #2, wait what feels like ages—Jesus, where is he coming from that it’s taking this long?  It’s frickin’ freezing out here—and finally hear Sean in his usual (sometimes too smug) “reared in Connecticut” formality inviting me in.
    Up one flight of stairs he pulls me into a bear hug embrace, eyes glistening with excitement upon my arrival.  Without actually yet seeing what the apartment looks like, the smell of fresh flowers overpowers me, which means there are enough around to be overpowering.  Sean and his boyfriend Nick are both tan, handsome, with perfect bodies and blonde and blonder hair.  I’m sure the gay community is very proud.  I feel Sean’s broad lats and tiny waist underneath his pressed button down as he hugs me.  He has only gotten better looking in the last ten years. 
    As we pull apart, I see Stefanie walking toward me.  “I’ve waited forever to meet you, I’ve been hearing so much about you, I feel like we’re sisters!”  A tall, leggy blonde walks over and pulls me into an embrace.  Her platinum locks are slicked back and is she actually wearing (fuck me) no make up?  Two carat diamonds sparkle in each earlobe and a three-tiered oversized onyx pearl bracelet encircles one dainty wrist.  Classy.  Elegant.  Money, I think.
    I hug Nick, who is always a little proper until the cocktails soak in.  His hug is less enthusiastic, but no less warm.  His suit jacket is exceedingly soft.  Cashmere blend?  Mohair?  I think.
    They offer me a glass of Moet, and I decline for the moment, accepting a glass of water instead.  The glass is poured from a newly opened bottle of Fiji water taken from the sub zero fridge.
    Sean wants to give me a tour of the impressive duplex.  It’s stunning, quite equally matching in beauty and elegance its model inhabitant.  Two floors, two living room areas, exposed brick, beamed ceilings, top of the line kitchen, fireplaces, and every piece of furniture in perfect order.  A dozen three foot, white flowering orchid plants are placed throughout.  The space is impeccably decorated (by Nick, I might add) and lavish without feeling stodgy.  There’s even an outdoor terrace.  My real estate skills are rusty, and I understand it’s a slow market, but my rough estimation would be in the 3 ½ to 4 million dollar range, if I were to put a price tag on it. 
    As we climb the glass walled staircase, Nick calls out over his glass of champagne.  “Now, all of these are pictures of Stefanie, so you can see, there’s a common theme; that’s what we’re trying to do here.” 
    Sure enough, one after another, the wall is lined with a 2X3’ framed portraits of Stefanie in posed styles through the ages.  An art deco look, there’s the WW2 era, and even a mimicking nod to Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.  Each is more glamorous than the next and showcases diamonds, furs, and Stefanie, draped seductively and sophisticatedly over something.  Some are nude.  She’s dazzling.  She’s a fucking model, for crying out loud.  And based on seeing her lush home—a good one. 
    “Remind me to never bring a date by this apartment.”  I tell Sean, not too quietly.  I suddenly feel like the woman made out to be the frumpy best girlfriend on the HBO series “Extras.”  The girl that some might call pretty, but not gorgeous.  The girl who’s just a little too thick waisted and just a little too eccentric. 
    After the tour I accept a smidge of champagne.  When they offer the wine, I also accept.  Without seeing the label, I know it is expensive.  The oversized, thin, delicate crystal stemware (Riedel?  Baccarat?) has only an ounce drifting in the base of its curvature.  The thick legs of the cabernet linger around the edges of the glass, dawdling about with heaviness and clarity the way only fine wine can.  I haven’t had anything to drink in a few weeks and have just completed a liver cleanse (I now see the bottle label from Napa—a small, exclusive proprietor) but if I’m going to break all that sobriety, this is certainly the way to do it.
    Stefanie asks us to take off our shoes.  Fuck me.   I am wearing white sweat socks, to close the gap between my too large high heel boots and my toes.  As I take them off, I explain my stinky footwear, Stefanie brushes it off.  “Oh please, look at me, I’m barefoot!”  I see her $600 four-inch heels lying next to the door.  Later I see her eyeing my gym socks on her velvety periwinkle living room rug. 
    Sean and I catch up, and they all ask me about my recent return from six months in India, et al.  Nick is still quiet, Sean is loud and Stefanie is more thoughtful and intelligent than I anticipated.  We even have what could border on the line of a spiritual conversation as she tells me how Jesus’ words are what ring true to her, and how she’s trying to get her boyfriend interested via a new book by Yogananda.
    When Sean and Nick want to show me a recent coffee table book of photographs in which she is quite simply, the star, Stefanie wriggles protestingly.  “Oh, no!  Don’t bring that out!”
    As the book is lowered to my lap she is at my side in a flash and becomes my tour guide through it.  In this one all the pictures are nude and most are of her.  To say that she has a nice body would be the understatement of the millennium.  I am Mrs. Roper next to her. 
    “In this one, I was 300 feet up into the air, and had a walkie talkie at my side—two assistants are hiding behind that cliff—it took me three hours to hike up there.”  And so on.  She recites these behind the scenes facts with a none-too-shy pride.  Her satisfaction at each posed acheivement is so great, I am obligated to repeat the words “stunning” and “beautiful” over and again, desperately searching the thesaurus of my mind to find alternate synonyms. 
    Next they need to show me all of their pictures of trips to Miami Beach and Saint Tropez, and relay and reënact stories of those adventures.  In every picture they are gorgeous and shit-faced.  “That’s us at dawn—we drank for two days straight!”
    The entire time I am repeating to myself:  Don’t be judgmental Margaret, this was you once.  This would have impressed you once.  This would have been fun once.  This is where they are. 
    They show me a video of her boyfriend’s Malibu oceanfront manse.  “It’s between the Bush estate and Neverland… can you imagine!”  In the amateur film they are laughing and wasted as she calls up to a helicopter arriving—there he is!  (“Oh, he goes everywhere with that damn helicopter.” “Omigod, guys—we should totally put this on youtube,” Nick says with the utmost sincerity.)  Stefanie tells me in a related vomit of information that her boyfriend “pretty much owns all of Sardinia.”  Soon a picture of the boyfriend surfaces.  He is in his 50’s, bald, not conventionally attractive by anyone’s standards, with yellow crooked teeth and more of a smirk than a smile.  I don’t want to think it, but I do: of course.
    After the champagne and the wine are kicked, we head off to our 9pm dinner reservation a couple of blocks up.  Tribeca’s Flor de Sole, a tapas place with live music that night.  The place is sexy, swinging and packed, brimming over with people on a downtown Saturday night and having just returned from the aforementioned six months in India, I remember, oh yes, this is how the beautiful people live.  As we wait for our table, Sean eyes my chest and says, “You know, I like you better this way.”
    I tell him thanks, and Stefanie, reaches to spin me around.  She has put on bright maroon lipstick.  Her four-inch heels cause her to now tower over me.
    “What are you guys talking about?”
    “I had breast implants, and I took them out.”
    “Did that like, leave scarring and all that?”
    “Yup.”  I reply simply.
    She looks down at her two flawless mountains.  “That’s what I thought.  My boyfriend tells me if I lose weight that I’ll have to get them.”
    I want to tell her that A) her boyfriend is an asshole and B) that if she loses any more weight it would be very disturbing indeed, but instead I say, “That’s absurd.  You’re gorgeous… you don’t need to do that to yourself.”
    She pulls down her blouse. 
    “Look.”  Underneath her breasts is silver duct tape, causing them to lift and push together.  Ouch, every heard of a push up bra, Stefanie?
    “See, they’re not really that big.”  
    They are still very much bigger than mine.
     “And if I lose weight, I lose all of them.”
    “That’s ridiculous.  Don’t change a thing.” I tell her quite determinedly, “You don’t need implants.  Don’t do that to yourself.”
    “That’s what I think,” she repeats back to me, for a moment a bit soft spoken.
I really want to tell her her boyfriend is an asshole.  But I don’t know her well enough, so I bite my tongue. 
    We sit and eat.  The food is great, with tons of veggie options.  The music is sick, with a hot ass Spanish dancer tapping beats out with wooden clogs.  The scene is trendy New York: dark, loud, and, once again-- gorgeous. 
    Stefanie spends 70% of the meal texting on her Blackberry.  When Sean asks my advice on how to deal with his future in-laws in an upcoming wedding issue, she speaks over me, infiltrating our conversation with her opinions, and leaving no space for my thoughts.  I let it be.  I think only Sean and I actually eat.  We are definitely the only ones eating bread.  Nick has a side salad and says he is dieting for an upcoming shoot (he also models, by the way... of course.)
    The rest of the conversation is shallow and monotonous at best.  That’s about as polite as I can be about describing it without being too disparaging.  I try to look really interested to be a good friend, but truly, I am bored beyond belief.  The Chilean merlot serves to be a nice, luxurious distraction. 
    “Omigod!  You haven’t been to Cipriani downtown?!  We totally have to go there.  We’ll go next time.”  Stefanie is making plans for our future—two downtown fag hags and their boys.
    When I come back from the bathroom, dinner is being put on Stefanie’s credit card, a generous gesture.  I offer effusive thanks as she waves my proclamations away with a vamp fingernail.  A drop off is happening momentarily at her apartment, and we all have to run out, to meet her “friend.”
    “We don’t even have to do it.”  She is saying as she signs the bill.  “But it’s there.  We can decide later.  It’s good stuff—the purest in the city.  This guy would never send be bad shit, he worries about me.  He wants me to take care of myself.”
    I know what she’s talking about.  Last time I saw Sean and Nick we were up until dawn, and I slept on another Tribeca couch.  We toyed with the idea of dancing earlier in the evening, and they were planning a trip to a gay club in Midtown.  Just yesterday I told my Ex, “I don’t think I ever want to do cocaine again.”  Yet on the two block walk back to her apartment, there I was—seriously considering it.  A supermodel is telling me it’s the best in the city, I don’t have to get it or even pay for it, it’s just going to be there for the taking.
    The dealer looks to be anything but, and is in and out of there in seconds.  Before I can even take my coat off, lines are cut and Stefanie has had her first whiff. 
    “I’ve only done this three times in the last two years, you guys.  This stuff is really good.”  The plate is passed toward my nose, and I’m trying to find an easy escape.  Ex and my puppies are at my apartment after his show, about to settle into watching “Saturday Night Live.”  We finished two bottles of wine with dinner, not to mention the drinks beforehand, and I am sleepy and slightly tipsy.  I actually think, “Well, maybe I’ll just do a small bump.  Alex won’t notice, and it might be fun.”  Then my senses prevail, and I tell Sean “no thanks” and that I need to leave.  I take half a magnolia cupcake that is sitting under a glass cake stand, begging to be eaten.  They’re about to go through two bags of cocaine—no one is going to be eating this cupcake anytime soon.
    They all graciously let me out of the situation, although Stefanie’s recent jolt of exuberance is aimed in my direction for an exit monologue.
    “Oh—wait—you know who you remind me of?  What are the names of those two gorgeous twin models?”
    “Uh…  I really don’t know.”
    “Fuck!  I can’t believe I don’t remember their names!  Wait.  Wait a second… hold on, I’m totally going to remember in a minute.”
    “You know, really, don’t worry about it, I won’t even know who they are anyway.”
    “Yes, you totally will.  What are their names?!  Omigod, you look JUST like them.  You’re beautiful.  And soooo sweet.  You have incredible eyes and a gorgeous face and perfect mouth.”
    “Thanks Stefanie, you really are a sublime hostess.  Sorry I can’t stay—next time around.”
    “Omigod, I like, never do this… oh wait—Bikram is coming into town in a couple of weeks.  He’s a close friend.  You have to come and do the workshop with him.  I bet he would really appreciate having someone like you there, and he’d really be into your insights on India.”
    Yeah, I bet he would.  I tell her of course I’ll come—a blatant lie, but I have got to get out of there.  Bikram, in my opinion, is about the farthest thing from what a true yogi is all about, but I’m not about to sit and explain my theories on the yoga sutras to a coked up posse of pretty people.
    I hop into a cab and in under five minutes I am at my apartment, sitting with my two puppies on the couch, relaying the evening’s details to my sober ex who lauds my abrupt exit.
    The next morning I am up in time to make it to self practice at my Soho shala.  Maybe I shouldn’t practice.  It’s never easy after having a drink the night before.  Just go Margaret.  There is no good practice or bad practice.  It is just practice, I remind myself.
    I bundle up and take the 15-minute walk to the shala.  The first breath in surya namaskara and I am home.  So happy to be there.  So happy the mat has beckoned me there, away from the city’s Saturday nights of needless decadence.  To my astonishment, my limbs elongate further than they ever have before.  The practice that was intended to just keep up the weekly routine becomes 90 minutes of self-discovery, of stretching mind and body to new breakthroughs.  The practice that has changed so much already continues to transform my path, influence my decisions and enhance my life.  My evening out with the beautiful people only reflects back to me how much more beautiful I already have it.
 

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