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[ad_1] 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

[ad_1] 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. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] 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. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] 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.