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The months of April, May and June are Bra Tender’s busiest, with proms, weddings, graduations, numerous theatrical awards shows and galas.  The fitting rooms are booked from open to close, and we even just changed our shop hours because more folks want to shop after work than before. We accommodate walkins when possible. Today we had a walk in. a tiny wisp of a  woman,  4’10, maybe 80 pounds.  She mentioned that she’s a costumer, and all the folks she works with have been telling her for years to visit Bra Tenders to solve her brablems.  I agreed to help her, if she was OK working in the stock room corner.  She was. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Grace was upbeat and chatty.  She wears, and designs her own vintage style dresses from the 40’s and 50’s, and likes the torpedo tit look of sweater girls like Lana Turner and Kate Hepburn. She wanted the impossible:  a circular stitched, cone shaped cup, in her proper size, that was also smooth and didn’t have seams or texture in the cup.  Well, that is a mouth full of contradictions! First, those bullet bras are shaped that way because of the circular stitching.  It isn’t possible to create such a pronounced forward projection without the circular stitching.  The “sweater girls” of the 1950’s became known as such  because they wore them under sweaters, the fashion of the time. Second, those old fashioned bras weren’t made in a size 28 anything, they started at size 34.  Grace’s best size was 28DD.  She has a very petite frame. Surprisingly, I had 17 different bras in her size.  Many were the one-piece-left at the end of a season that didn’t sell, and 3 were core product for us.  2 actually gave her the forward projection she wanted, and fit her perfectly!  She was happily uplifted. She mentioned she was on tour, and was on a layover in NYC, catching up on many things she wanted to do.   I asked, “what tour are you on?” She said, “Cher.” I said, “The Cher show has a tour already?”   It’s common for a Broadway show to put out a tour, but this seemed early in the run for that step. The Cher Show only opened a few months ago on Broadway, with Bob Mackie designing the costumes. One of my Broadway favorites, the Pirate Queen herself, Stephanie J Block, starred as  one of the 3 Chers.  Every night people jumped out of their seats and danced in the aisles.  I mean c’mon, it’s Cher!  When I was a kid, Cher and Sonny were a pair. I Got You Babe was a huge hit. Grace smiled and said, “No, not the Broadway Cher Show.  Cher Cher, the  actual Cher. Tony nominations this week” Just a snippet from my life behind bras. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Source link

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published it’s as if the whole world is holding its breath. waiting BraTenders needs another reinvention a new iteration for a different generation It’s been too long a while since I had a smile grace my face in the place I created and have carried. Business isn’t about good service or good prices or the latest trends, or good quality, No. Business is now influenced to death and social media content creators are the next generation of Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published unpaid labor hawking products for pennies or likes or views or follows and shares the internet, worldwide web, is an overloaded global marketplace oversaturated with an overabundance of too much of everything i always believed that business is/was about people and relationship and the best compliment I ever got was when someone said, I trust you and that seems to no longer be the case. i miss the community that shopped and schlepped and shared a laugh over tea until an unknown bug caught us off guard and changed everything and everyone forever. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Source link

In August 1999 I decided that I was going to start a business, BraTenders, to supply Broadway, film, and television with undergarments, hosiery and accessories for stage and screen productions. This would be the next iteration of the store I worked at from 1977-1999, S&S. After the 10 ft living room windows in my apartment became blocked by boxes of merchandise, BraTenders moved into its first home at 400 west 42nd in March 2001. On Sept 11, the world stopped and held its collective breath. The theater shut down for one night, on 9/11. I remember the same feeling of surreality I have now, how could this be happening, still, again? Life was very weird for a while. NY was quiet, but the city set about getting back to business. One day when we were dropping off an order at the Music Hall, we heard on the radio about an Anthrax scare in multiple locations. We couldn’t buy bridal bustiers, a popular item for brides, because the military had requisitioned all the hook and eye closures from the few manufacturers who still produced them domestically. So warehouses sat filled with bustiers missing the most essential part, unable to be sold. So what’s a Fairy Bra Mother to do when the next version of The Stepford Wives film wants 30-40 bustiers? Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I am fucking relentless about getting what I want, and helping my customer, so I convinced the vendor to contact the retailers who sold his bustiers, and have them ship their stock to me, and we’d pay them. When we told them it was for a movie with Glenn Close, Nicole Kidman, and Bette Midler, everyone rushed to send theirs. Or that time we collected the trashed hosiery from each show for a few weeks, and sent them, per request, to the soldiers stationed wherever Desert Storm happened. They specifically requested pantyhose to use as filters for the equipment and machinery they used that were getting mucked up by the desert sand. So we put treats and love notes in with the hosiery, “hey, Chita Rivera wore these last night” BraTenders moved into its current location in the Film Center Building in Hell’s Kitchen NYC in 2003. By 2008, we worked with all the shows running on and off Broadway, their union and non union touring companies, and a multitude of performing arts companies, TV shows, and movies. We were busy day and night, 6 days a week, and had a staff of 4, with the need for more help. We maintained a steady upward pace until the mid teens, and then plateaued. The business changed after I divorced Alan, and he left a lingering legacy of damaged relationships and unhappy customers. His narcissism and smug arrogance cost us Radio City and the Rockettes. His early actions put us in hot water with WIL, the costume designer of the moment back then, with multiple smash hits running on the great white way. It’s a chapter in the mammoir I will be writing forever. Business was always a roller coaster. But for a few years, we were able to count on the spring and fall seasons on Broadway, Christmas shows, summer stock, The Delacorte and Public Theater. in between I gave interviews, had guest spots on reality shows, became a Bralebrity. Then I started having physical problems: sciatica, bulging disks, pinched nerves, weak muscles, and every joint eaten and deteriorated by arthritis, and 35 years on my feet for work. Knee replacement. Fractured humerus, not fucking funny. torn labrums, ACLs, menisci. and mental anguish, depression. 2019 was a decent year, though it was then that the trouble with our primary supplier of stage tights became problematic. I usually placed annual orders in January, during the slow time at the hosiery mill in NC. We ordered between 250- 750 dozen tights. All the legs on Broadway wore these as a base layer. sometimes 2 or 3. they came in 6 skintones. and 6 sizes. Blue Heaven hosiery was our bread and butter. When I called in January 2019 to place our order, nobody answered the phone, or responded to email. this continued for a few weeks, I’d call, email, nobody responded. Finally, the owner called and said, yeah, sorry, we’re closed and out of business. it’s not your fault, don’t worry. What an odd thing to say. And holy crap, what now? I embarked on a quest to find a replacement for, or replicate those tights, somehow, some way. Without that most core of core products, we were fucked. After months of phone calls, and referrals, and networking, I found a hosiery factory that could custom make things for a large enough quantity. I invested thousands of dollars testing the colors in various deniers, trying to create a product that this finicky market would like and use. And just as we were about to place our first order for a few hundred dozen, from customers happy to try a replacement, and not have to go through the hassle of starting from scratch with wardrobe staples, Covid made a guest appearance at a Broadway show, and the great white way went dark. BraTenders did too. I thought we were done. Broadway people I was friendly with called, and we said our final farewells, unsure if we’d even live through whatever the hell plague was infecting us. My staff and I parted ways, and began the absolute fucking nightmare of applying for unemployment. everyone was isolated and alone. nobody knew the truth of what was happening. there were freezer trucks storing dead bodies parked a few blocks from where i lived. manhattan was ghostly. We were closed for 21 months. Dawn and I went to the shop a few days a month, Shopify had contacted me and NYC small business resources helped to build an e-commerce store, a shopify website so folks could shop online. Alan had

Robin Bateau, Gregory Hines, Tony Randall, Paul Newman Some of my proudest work, turning these icons into the belles of the fundraising ball for The Hole in the Wall Gang, Paul Newman’s charity c 2001. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. We were asked to donate the tits and ass, which we proudly did. Not bad, right? This was when the business was fun and interesting, before entitled nepo kids started demanding, “yeah, we need a pull, we have 4 women, and we want 3 bras each for them, and we do not have their sizes, so we’ll need a run, and we need them in an hour, and we’ll return them in 3 weeks after we’ve abused the crap out of every bra trying to make it fit the G cups, and I do not have a credit card so don’t ask.” One year the Metrpolitan Opera “borrowed” $90,000 in merch, and only bought $100 from all that. It’s a miracle we didn’t go bankrupt before now. A business that caters to a fickle and finicky clientele, who hate to spend money, and have zero qualms about abusing people and merchandise, is doomed to fail. Granted, it took 25 years, and that is only because of my generous and kind nature and desire to be helpful and useful. And now, I have no desire to be helpful or useful for a while. Give my regards to broadway Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Source link

Bra Tenders 101 WHAT WE DO Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. My pledge to the wardrobe and costume community across every facet of entertainment has always been, “my job is to make your job easier” Let me ask a question- do you know how much effort goes into figuring out which tights work best on which actor for a major Broadway or Hollywood musical production, with dozens of cast members, and twice as many pairs of legs? What you see on stage is the final product, and the result of hundreds of people’s work, sometimes going back years and years. The average retail price of tights is between 8 and 35 bucks a pair. Do you know how much work has to be done to sell 25,000 worth? It’s hundreds of transactions. It’s dozens of phone calls and emails, and hours of B2B browsing. It’s networking, and detective work, all of which demands ferocious tenacity. Which, if I am anything at all, is tenacious. When tech is happening, any show, on any day can call us 7 times an hour- The designer hates the color of the tights under the lights, let’s start from scratch for this actor for that track. At the beginning of a Broadway production, we meet with the costume design team to get an overview of the show, and hear what they will use in terms of our products, and what they will need me to source. Then, we help them wade through the miasma of underwear, which, like legwear, is tricky, because we need to skin match as close as possible, several different skin tones in any given cast. We can get close with tights. With underwear it’s a whole other ball of wax. Part of what has turned into my life work, is finding underwear in more than one shade of “nude”. First, we assemble samples for each actor, usually 2-4 options of each style of hose, so everyone gets a base layer, then their “look” – be it fishnets, sparkles, or some such thing. If there’s a cast of 20, and each pair of legs needs 3 kinds of hose, and 3 options of each, well, that takes a whole lotta work by me, and the entire staff. It takes me hours to source those samples, and I usually have to buy 3 pair to get 1 sample. If that sample isn’t the best of three, I’m stuck with 2 odd pair of money sitting on the shelf. And this pertains to every pair of legs, on almost every stage in NY., tours. Vegas. Disney. Dance. TV, HBO, Netflix, Tyler Perry Studios, Western Costume, yada yada. Fishnets- Mini, Whale net or maxi net? Professional weight or street wear weight? Spider web or crochet? With seams or without? Striped tights, sure, horizontal or vertical? And dozens of different types of hosiery, in 5 skin shades, in 8 sizes, from petite to 7X. Control top, sheer up support, no support, shiny, matte finish, in deniers from 8 to 100. Stockings and thigh highs, lace tops, no lace, with silicone grippers, no grip, plus size, seams, Cuban heels, no heels. The trick for me is to find products that meet all the specs, and is a core staple in the line of the manufacturer. Continuity, as they say in the industry. Unlike department stores, who stock a few basics, and many seasonal trend styles, once a show decides on something, it’s in The Bible. The Bible contains the sum total details of everything used in the show, for every character, every act, scene, etc. Heaven help the poor intern who tells a costume designer that a product has been discontinued once it’s inThe Bible. We keep stock of it for on- demand needs, and don’t much like hearing it’s discontinued either. This is very costly for us, with very fickle customers, who often decide that a “new look is required for the new lead, so we’re not using those anymore.” And that’s how we wound up with a stockroom full of pantyhose that nobody needs. Then there’s the underwear, all the skin pieces, skintimates. Bras, bottoms, shapewear, legwear, whatever period items may be required, whatever else will be worn beneath the clothes, or become part of the costume, whether seen or not. I get a cast list, with every woman wearing the wrong bra size. Three options of each size for each actor, say there’s 6 of them who have been cast, more to come. We ask if the actors can come to the shop so they can be properly fit, but they usually can’t, so we ask for pictures. Instead we get incomplete and incorrect, and outdated measurements. Every 34B, is actually a 32DD. once they find a bra that fits, they’re shocked. They’re titillated. Before we arrive at the correct size, of course, there is much back and forth, many, many exchanges of goods, a lot of busy-ness, often with very small payoff. Sometimes a production will “memo”, or borrow a great deal of goods, and end up with only 1 item. My hope is that Virtual Fittings will allow me to be that proverbial fly on the wall, be able to pull bras that are the right size, the first time. I only need an eyeball on a body to “breastimate” with uncanny accuracy, the correct size, and the bra, that will create the shape the designer desires, for each actor. We carry 81 bra sizes, from around 12 companies, 3-5 styles per, 2 or 3 colors each style. If I buy one bra, in one color, in a complete 81 size range, it’s a minimum of $4000 wholesale order. If I get 2 colors, black and nude, just one unit each… Big Inventory. Big bucks to maintain levels. Each actor gets their choice of bottoms, as part of the initial round of fittings. Thongs or g strings, Boy shorts, or

In 1984, a few days after Sami and I had our fracas in the bathroom, I returned home, tail tucked, to my childhood home, and arch nemesis, Mom. Sami, my EX gay-best-friend turned husband-for a-green card locked me out of our home by changing the locks on the door, withdrew the few thousand dollars from our joint bank account, gave away my possessions, and sued me for alimony. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was return home to the witch, er Mom, but having nothing more than the clothes on my back, I had no other choice. 12 years later, I had to get the hell out of there. Her constant scrutiny, negativity, invasions of privacy, snooping through my things, dictating who I was “allowed” to entertain in the place where I paid the rent, and ever watchful eagle eyes and ears, were driving me nuts. “I don’t know how you do it,” said my sister Joy, shaking her head when I told her I needed to move out of our mother’s apartment and find my own place. “I would’ve killed her already! I don’t know how you could stand her voice, all day and night. She doesn’t ever shut up. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she had something nice to say once in a while” Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “I have valium running through my veins. But I’m out of it now, and have to get the hell away from her.” In January 1997 I moved into a large one bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, in a building that my sister Susan lived in. The apartment on 92nd street had high ceilings, large rooms, and the pre-war charm that I loved. Arched doorways separated the 18×25 foot living room from the 8×20 foot foyer. When we met, Alan put a desk in the foyer, opposite the 9×15 eat in windowed kitchen. The king size bed nestled perfectly between 2 night stands, with two walls flanked by dressers and drawers. My desk sat between 2 of the 3 windows overlooking someone’s backyard, and still had enough room to lay down 2 yoga mats in the center of the room. My bathtub was pink porcelain, and I had to step onto a platform to enter the 4 foot square tub. Original art deco black and white tiles were inlaid to the floor, and I sponge painted the walls with dusty mud colors to give it the feel of a third world throw back to the thirties. I loved my apartment. I loved living alone for the first time in my life. I took a workshop in fiction writing that winter, and started to write a lot. My writing was strong, but fiction was not my thing. I wrote everywhere I went, and filled up notebooks with stories I’d made up about people, in trains, buses, in the streets, about their hair, what they wore, their antics as humans. I wrote clever observations from my rabid people watching in the heart of New York City. I met an interesting collection of other writers in the workshop, and we socialized a bit here and there, and after the class had completed, we didn’t stay in touch. But something happened to me one day, in my apartment, in the spring, and all I can say about it is that I had an epiphany of some sort. A lifetime of anxiety and tension, everything that had been bottled up inside me, silently slipped away, leaving a feeling of lightness never before experienced. At night, without trying, I became very present to my third eye, didn’t have to meditate to see it, it was always there, looking at me, through me, past me into eternity. Looking at life through the lens of that single all-seeing eye, I woke up from the lifelong sleep of the numb. I felt connected to the trees, the sun, all living things. I know it sounds corny, and if I was a religious person, I’d say I found God. Maybe that is exactly what I found – the divine nature of my own being. It’s like someone flipped a switch in me, that had been there all along, but had never once been turned on. Awake is the best way to describe it. I’d always been spiritually aware, and was a detractor of organized religion. I quit hebrew school studies after the teacher told 11 year old me that jews could not be friends with schvartze, black people. My 2 best friends were black. Even as a kid I knew, when one group of hated people starts hating other people, the hypocrites can keep everything they’re selling. I had a different flying dream every night for many months, and even wrote some of the incredible exploits down in journals. When I woke up in the morning, I’d swear that I had actually been out flying in the night. Without a broom. I felt clean and clear for the first time. My mind wasn’t polluted. My heart didn’t yearn. I had peace and gratitude. The noisy racket of my mother’s internal garbage dump, which made its way into the world through an endless stream of bitter words, had prevented me from finding serenity as long as I was exposed to her. I took a sage smudge stick and purified and blessed my new apartment. When I moved in, the poison was not welcomed, and having no home, it left me. I worked in the Rockefeller Center neighborhood, which was, and still is, in close proximity to the Broadway theater district, and the then-about-to-become Disneyfied 42nd street. I rode the r train for 75 minutes twice a day, or travelled between Brooklyn and Manhattan by express bus, which I much preferred. My Bay Ridge neighborhood was typically residential, and a desired area of Brooklyn. My building was within easy walking distance, on tree

I am no longer, though in many ways I will always be, the Fairy Bra Mother. Hung up my bra straps and garters on January 31 2025. That was the last day of BraTenders NYC business, after 25 years. It’s taking time to adjust. I still check my messages at 7:00 a.m to see who’s not coming to work that day. I can’t say I mind not having to commute to midtown, or dealing with dozens of questions from dozens of people all day long. For 50 years, I spent the day asking, How can I help you today? Nobody in my life has ever asked me that question. I got my first job at 15, babysitting for kids in the building, long before anybody elevated it into “nannying” for six figure salaries. I earned between 3-5 bucks an hour, depending how many kids and how long the gig was, and whether or not they were awake or asleep, daytime or nighttime. I enjoyed the Saturday night jobs, which paid the best, and the kids were usually asleep, or in bed, by the time I got there. If I had a special relationship with the kid, I’d let them sit up with me and watch TV if they asked. They would get sleepy and be easily coaxed back into bed. Most families had many choices of snacks, so I’d munch chips, and watch the late night movie, usually a black and white classic like Nick and Nora, or Casablanca. It was a brief respite from the noise of my household, filled with angsty adolescents who’s needs were not being met satisfactorily, and angry parents who drank and argued, made up, rinse, repeat. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. My father dropped dead suddenly on a beautiful May Tuesday, I was 15, he had turned 41 a weeks earlier on April 1. Then I had to find better paying jobs so I could buy necessities my widowed mother couldn’t afford, like underwear. Mom hadn’t been in the workforce since the 1940s-50s, and dreaded the mere idea of having to work. Without any actual job skills, but being blessed with both brains and beauty, (though I didn’t know I was beautiful at the time) I always managed to land a job in retail, at a local bookstore, in the supermarket, doing inventory for big department stores at Kings Plaza, or downtown Brooklyn a few times a year. I tried my hand at the make up counter for Clinique at Macy’s Kings Plaza, but I couldn’t stand wearing a full face of makeup every day. My eyelashes were thick and long and nicely framed my blue eyes sans mascara. I kinda liked the freckles on my nose and cheeks in the summer, and baking in the sun for hours, and didn’t enjoy how makeup felt on my face. I wasn’t the dewy complected, graceful girl on the cover of Glamour. I was messy and clumsy, tomboyish. Men tried to take advantage of me, and on several occasions they approached me while I was shopping or going about the day. They’d follow me around, eventually approach, then offer to pay me a hundred bucks to “model” for them, in a motel room, in my underwear. I was naive, but having grown large breasts at an early age, my education about the ways of horny men, and yes, they were all horny, all the time, regardless of who they were or how I knew them, was extensive. My parents had schooled me young about where to kick boys who did things, or tried to do things, they shouldn’t do, and I wasn’t hesitant to defend myself if approached or touched inappropriately by anyone. My father threw a good friend of his out of our house when he heard Monty ask 9 year old me, with a sly smirk, “do you want to sit on my lap?” My first 9-5 so to speak was in a shoe factory, where my work entailed taking phone orders from road salesmen for the leather goods company Etienne Aigner. Many of the southern reps had thick southern drawls that were difficult for me to understand, it wasn’t a dialect heard in the shtetl of Brighton Beach. But over time, as we got to know each other, and with knowledge and repetition of the lingo of the shoe biz, the job became easier. I got speedier, and mastered using a calculator to tally orders so the sales force could keep track of their commissions, and the company could see where business was booming, and where the line wasn’t doing so well. The merchandise was classic conservative, upper crusty life style, and Lord and Taylor was their biggest account across the country. Sometimes, on slow days, I’d visit the shipping floor, and hang out with the guys who worked there, many of whom barely spoke English. I picked up a few Spanish words here and there, and felt more comfortable with workers than the execs who didn’t shut up for a minute all day. We’d play poker, and they chain smoked until a work order came in. I was the daughter of laborers and union people, and saw first hand how my father’s life changed when he became “management”. How his belly got bigger and his nightmares became more violent. He laughed less, fretted more. He came home less often, and stayed away between visits longer. He didn’t know which of his “friends” to trust anymore. I quit in a fit of rage when I was passed over for a promotion because my slimy boss Ken dragged me to a Shoe Show in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and lied about getting me my own room at the hotel where the show was taking place. He stunk of stale cigarettes and Brut, and tried to fuck me the first night in the only room at the inn. Of course there were no

2 slices well toasted whole wheat bread, mustard on both slices, 2 slices muenster cheese Crunchy Skippy peanut butter and grape jelly on white, or with orange marmalade on English muffin Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. tuna salad on crackers, white bread without crust, bagels, well toasted english muffins whole wheat toast, cream cheese, green olives with pimientos beef salami, sliced thick, mustard on thick rye bread with seeds genoa salami, provolone, mustard and mayo, baguette flounder coated with egg and bread crumbs, fried in vegetable oil used to fry onions, soft roll with mayo tuna salad with celery and shredded carrots egg salad with cucumbers on whole wheat egg salad with bacon on white toast sunny side up eggs on well toasted english muffins whole wheat toast with cream cheese and olives, no pimentos Cup o Soup Dads pizza- english muffins topped with a slice of boiled ham, a slice of wrapped, yellow american cheese, oregano, toaster oven for 3-5 minutes whatever happened to garden vegetable cottage cheese? Durkee potato sticks in cans mashed potatoes with spinach cream cheese and jelly on white bread with no crust, cut in triangles chocolate milk, with Hershey’s syrup Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Source link

After years of agonizing over decisions that are difficult to make, and the struggle to know, understand, and accept that the difficult decision will fundamentally change your life, you surge ahead fueled by adrenaline, and all the telling, and talking to everyone in your life about your decision. Laying off your staff. Breaking the lease. Defaulting on debt. Juggling vendors, and service providers, customers, banks and government agencies, contractors, and every other entity one is involved with in conducting business, being a merchant, a customer service provider, a purveyor of lifestyle goods, illusion, dreams. Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. when all that stops, and things get quiet, you feel a letting go, little by little day by day, until after a month you realize you can breathe again. you longer need to check for messages to see who isn’t coming to work that day or week, and how you must rearrange your schedule to accommodate. The email slows from 200 a day to a dozen. The phone eventually stops ringing. The show must go on. Being a retired old person relegates you to invisibility and irrelevance. You miss the connections with people, the antics that accompany a lifetime spent, quite literally, in underwear. You miss the action. You enjoy the quiet, revel in the sound of birds singing, tweeting, squawking, chirping, cooing, cawing. You maintain a routine, keep the house tidy, spend time with the old cat, your only companion. you wonder when you got old. Seems like yesterday you were 16. Or 21, when everything changed. You have spent a lifetime loving people who do not love you back. They don’t want you and your libtard political beliefs near their babies. They don’t see you, or “get” you, and it’s made you weary to deal with them. Their version of love contains pain from childhood trauma and wounds they will not, or cannot heal. They want your love on demand, but do not offer it at all. When love is no longer served, you remove yourself from the situation. You forget who you are, or don’t know who you are now. your old life is behind you, and the world is upside down, and the future has never been a concern. Life has proven too quirky to put any hope or faith in tomorrow. So the question is, what now ? Thanks for reading Lori’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Source link

Christmas 2009 The Indian food arrived via a yellow slickered delivery man, and the smells of cumin, garlic and ginger,  wafting from the slightly soggy paper bag, within a plastic bag,  titillated my taste buds and made my mouth water. It was already past 8:00 pm and I hadn’t eaten since my 9:00 a.m breakfast of lovelessly scrambled, dry and cold diner eggs and toast. I was famished. I took the bag and, being in a festive holiday spirit, tipped the dude an extra $20 for having to work on Christmas Eve, and ride a bike in the rain so I could dine extravagantly in the comfort of home.  I couldn’t wait to dive into creamy baingan bartha, (roasted, spiced mashed eggplant), tarka dal (lentils) and chicken saag. (Chicken in creamed spinach). I was excited for the multiple foodgasms. Alan had arrived home from work a short while before, so I cleared and cleaned the table before peeling a 2 pound bag of carrots, and cleaning a bunch of celery.  Regardless of what cuisine we ate, Alan’s dinner always included carrots.  Alan ate so many carrots that the palms of his hands were permanently stained orange, a condition known as carotenemia.  He didn’t mind cleaning his own vegetables, and I intensely disliked peeling, but since it was Christmas eve, I decided to do it for him as an act of kindness, one of my love languages..  I brought the bags of food into the kitchen and sat them on the counter, while our cats Twitchy and Kitty meandered in and wound themselves around my legs, as they always did when they heard bags rustling.  Feline’s highly developed and sensitive olfactory systems caused them to salivate at first sniff, even though for these 2, people food was strictly verboten.  I shooed them away gently so I didn’t trip over them as I moved around the narrow room, emptying bags, pulling plates out of the cabinets and flatware from the drawers.  I got out the placemats and napkins, and set the table in the living room, where we usually ate dinner and watched TV.  Living in New York meant having multi-functional furniture, and our coffee table could be instantly converted to a dining table with one simple pull of a spring loaded handle. The table from Ligne Roset was one of my favorite possessions, an elegant and practical solution to limited square footage. When I returned to the kitchen, I opened a bottle of 7 Deadly Zins, a red wine that we’d recently tried, juicy and rich with berries and pepper, and smooth, even tannins.  Al and I drank a lot, and while I enjoyed wine, Alan was no oenophile. He preferred vodka, and called wine “the local” and vodka “the express”.  While the wine breathed. I pulled containers of food out of the bags and spread them across the one narrow kitchen counter we’d been able to fit in the space.    When I reached into one of the bags, sitting on top of yet another brown bag which contained foil wrapped onion Naan, was a small, simply wrapped gold gift box. I thought, what a nice touch, must be some treat for the holiday. Classy. At Christmas many restaurants added such little niceties, which, as a business owner, pleased me to see.  Bra Tenders sent its good customers Christmas cheer every year too: bottles of the favorite adult beverages of the wardrobe crews, lingerie and underwear to those who accepted our offer to come shopping.  we gave dozens of  cash loaded gift cards to our best customers.  I set the box on the window sill, having run out of counter space, and tended to the rest of the dinner, thinking I’d serve the treats at the end of our meal, with tea and dessert. Alan came to the kitchen in his home clothes, a long sleeve black henley and baggy black pajama pants, and poured us each a short vodka in crystal glasses. He raised his and said, “Cheers. Happy Christmas and Merry Chanukah.” I raised mine back and repeated the toast then downed the rocket fuel in one gulp, feeling heat spread through my body. So far, so good.  Express indeed. “Everything’s ready, let me know when you want to eat.” I said, mindful not to rush him.  I spent a lot of time being mindful not to offend or upset Alan in any way, to keep the order and peace, especially at home.  He was highly routinized, and deviations to his routines caused him to unravel.   “Ready now, plate it up,” Al replied as he poured himself another shot.   “What’s in the box?” Al asked, pointing to the small one on the window sill. I was surprised that he’d even noticed -when I changed my hair color from red to brown it had taken him a week before he asked if I did something different. “Came with the food. Probably some Indian confection for dessert. We’ll open it after dinner.”  “So be it.” So be it? What the hell did that mean?  Seemingly satisfied, he ambled into the living room and sat down in his lime green leather recliner on his preferred side of the table, at the farther end of the room,  within arms’ reach of his desk. He flipped through TV channels as I moved back and forth between kitchen and living/dining room, and laid out foil tins of remarkably still hot food.  We had a good year at Bra Tenders and felt celebratory. We had finally hired a key employee who seemed capable, and serious about longevity with the company. We’d gone through a dozen assistants in as many months, and the process had been disheartening and wearying. Angela seemed like good fit for us, and Alan and I looked forward to taking some much needed time off. We even talked about…a vacation. The kids from Brooklyn done good.  Being Christmas Eve, many restaurants were closed. But this being Manhattan, many also remained open. I