BERGDORF GOODMAN'S

As I was growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, then known as the working class neighborhood of Yorkville, I was subjected to the jumble of rich and poor residing within the width of the island as it existed at that point.  My father, being a German immigrant, came to the country unable to speak English and so put his shoulder to work as a laborer at a variety of jobs ending with the title of Receiving Clerk at the 57^th Street Stouffer’s restaurant.

Often, while I was still in grade school, my mother would bring me downtown and then my father and I would begin our stroll up Fifth Avenue and through Central Park until we got back home to 85^th Street.  We would always stop at FAO Schwartz, the classic kid’s paradise of toys, and spend at least half an hour there while I played.  (Subsequently, at Christmas, I could expect at least one thing I had especially enjoyed.)

But what this is all leading up to, is that on the other side of the Avenue was another store:  Bergdorf Goodman’s.  Every window contained a female manikin with a designer gown, stunning and gorgeous, but also containing a clear message:  this is something you cannot now and will never have.

Much later on in life while living on a sixth story walkup in Greenwich Village, a friend and I, while spending a day together, wound up there.  We accepted the challenge, and fully dressed in lesbian schlep, walked in.  It was a moment Tyler Durden would have savored.  There was nothing as welfare dykes that we could possibly consider purchasing, but I suppose our objective was more along the lines of shocking ourselves into role of guerrilla warriors in even daring to look.  All I remember seriously regarding was a silken scarf of some kind, handling it and turning it over in my hands.  We left without stealing anything, and considering our level of disgust and alienation, I suppose we deserved a subclass medal of some kind.

In reconsidering and reflecting on this as a subject for a blog entry, I came to the realization that there are all kinds of sign posts in our country directing traffic along gender, racial and ethnic and finally, along class lines.  And it’s the strangest thing, whenever I begin a serious reference to my working class roots, it brings up other people’s defenses:  suddenly everyone wants to be working class!  But why?  At the end of the day, being brought up working class means being psychically beaten to a pulp as frequently as is convenient by family, school and society.

Somehow, in the middle of all this, I was inspired by a high school teacher to regard myself as an intellectual.  I took the challenge seriously, but upon arriving in college the other more subterranean agenda took hold, which was to in some way to achieve this goal while being undermined by family dysfunction.  I was far from being a superior student, and it was not until later in life as a returning student that I came into the possession of the skill sets easily inherited by others of more affluent and comfortable backgrounds.  Even today, I am still galled that in having relocated to the Mid Hudson from The City that I thought my way into settlement here was to put my shoulder to the wheel and commit myself to volunteer work in every organization I could identify for myself.  Too, there are people in the arts world who are worker bees, but never achieve the degree of recognition they deserve.  Is all this because some of us have been brought up to believe that this is the only position we can or deserve to occupy in society?

My current circumstances involve living in the City of Newburgh, a crazy quilt pattern of neighborhoods varying in income levels, yet somehow peppered ethnically.  Too, my life has deposited me in the mental health community, a double edged sword of downward mobility but also an oasis of friendship and support.  Today is July 4^th, and the past year has led me to a surprising appreciation of my American citizenship.  As a high schooler, I was something of a hyper patriot, needing something to identify with and hold onto without the benefits of higher education.  Today I realize that we all forge both our identities and agree upon what we have to contribute to the world.