The Club

She’s getting dressed at our hotel, whereas I’ve decided to visit my old social club, which has arranged all of my dry cleaning for me, and so I shower, shave, and get dressed there, before the concert.

I step out of the sauna, walking through the grey marble shower area, towards a white tiled room, filled with sinks.

There are aluminum racks mounted onto the walls, filled with fresh, white towels, of various sizes, and I grab a small wash cloth, that I plan to use while shaving.

My old routine comes back to me:

The sensations, and smells, of having spent about an hour in a sauna and steam room, working out, playing squash, my skin a bit numb, prime for a shave, I grab a disposable plastic razor.

Using only unscented bar soap and water to moisten my skin beforehand, I trim the hairs that go beyond the intended perimeter of my beard:

The ones that grow too high along my cheekbone, or too low below my neck.

I use a pair of scissors, and a plastic comb, and get work, trimming the beard itself, using the comb to first lift the hairs up, by brushing up against the grain, and then using the scissors to clip the beard to a roughly uniform length.

I also trim my hair itself, eyeing for any anomalously long hairs that have grown out of sync with the rest.

This takes significant time, but I’ve set aside a few hours to enjoy myself at The Club, which I haven’t been to in about a year.

The Club is a proper, New York social club, centuries old, with deep, longstanding ties to the U.S. Government, set in a repurposed mansion, complete with paintings of U.S. Presidents, generals, and an old wood bar, with a fireplace, a stated code of conduct, and art from the Revolutionary War, and Civil War, that hangs above.

All of this brings back memories of my elementary school:

The blue blazers, khaki pants, my school motto and crest, turtlenecks, and Nicole Miller ties:

The Upper East Side in the 80’s –

I remember the sting of this joy being taken from me, after only a few years of childhood, leaving me totally crazed as a young adult, relentless in my ambition to return to the station at which I felt most at home, that I was completely convinced someone had stolen from me.

Later walking outside the Metropolitan Club as a broke teenager, seeing clouds painted into the colossal wooden ceilings, knowing now that I can walk in whenever I want, and order a drink, because I belong to a small circle of people allowed to walk into these types of buildings, all over the world.

The Club reminds me of who I am –

An American, that fell from grace, desperate to rebuild.

When I’m finished shaving, I enter the shower room, throw a fresh towel over the frosted glass door of one of the available stalls, turn the water on, spending a minute simply relaxing under the oversized showerhead, letting the water remove any soap, or hairs, that I may have missed during my shave.

I again use only the same unscented soap, not washing my hair, which I do at most once a week.

Once I feel ready, I turn off the water, grab the towel from above the glass door, and exit toward the lounge, where my dry cleaning and shoes are waiting for me, hanging in one of the dozen or so wooden changing areas that line the walls of the lounge.

A TV mounted on one of the walls is playing a hockey game, and there’s an old man in a bathrobe, seated on the leather couch, opposite the TV, staring into it, with a plate of deviled eggs in front of him, and what appears to be a sizable glass of straight vodka, with some olives in it.

I reach in, tearing the plastic wrapping off of my dry cleaning, to see my dark blue, Hugo Boss suit, which looks crisp, my white cotton Valentino shirt behind it, stains gone, and the cuffs look excellent.

My tie was already in great condition, a light blue, sort of shiny, also Hugo Boss, and so that’s rolled up in my gym bag, along with my belt, socks, and boxers.

I slip my boxers on first –

Ralph Lauren, cotton, spacious, with a comfortable waistband, solid blue denim in color, with a single tiny red horse on the bottom seam of the left leg.

Then I put my socks on, also Ralph Lauren, simple, black, no additional coloring, or unnecessary structure –

Just somewhat elastic, and tight, pulling them up, as high as they can go, up my calf muscle.

I pull my suit pants out the plastic, slip them on, and I can already feel they fit well, having been recently tailored to account for a sight dip in weight, I leave them open.

I then grab my shirt, slip my arms into the sleeves, begin tucking the shirt into the back of my pants, then pulling my pants up a bit, and button up my shirt.

Once complete, I close the clasps on my pants, zip them up, grab my belt, and loop it through, eventually running the right side of the belt through the gold buckle, and secure the leftover brown leather into the first loop to the left of the buckle.

My jacket still hanging, I reach into my gym bag, and pull out a pair of Paul Smith cuff links, gold, with the classic rainbow print that matches the trim on the interior of my wallet, and slip them both in, looking at them the way you would check the time on a watch, I can see the deep contrast between the white of my shirt, and the painted gold face of my cuff links.

I sit down on the bench inside the changing area, and examine my shoes, which look great, and I can smell that they’ve just been polished –

Sliding my right foot in, I get the sensation of the frictionless entry that occurs with a freshly polished pair of shoes.

I see the faded gold remnants of a Bruno Magli logo disappear as my left foot slides in, giving me a sense of completeness.

Carnegie Hall

We plan to meet outside the main entrance at 19:30, so I get there at 19:15, since it’s a concert, and being late could leave you shut out.

At 19:25, I see Ida begin to exit a black car a few feet away from me, through the crowd outside the concert hall.

I walk over to her, rather quickly, partly to make sure that she that sees me, but also because I’m excited to see her.

Once she’s exited, I lean in to thank the driver, close the door, taking her right hand with my left, and we head into the concert hall, together.

I’ve printed out our tickets, which are folded in the inner pocket of my suit jacket, which I present to the attendee at the base of the stairs, just beyond the main entrance.

The attendee tells us where to go, but I already know, as these are my favorite seats in Carnegie Hall:

Tier 1, Box 33.

We walk up the main stairs, and given that we have some time, we grab a drink.

The place is completely packed, the line for drinks unreasonable as a result, but we have time, so we stand, and we wait.

She tells me about the last concert she saw, at Oslo’s new concert hall, and I recount walking outside, with Norwegian friends of mine, a few years ago.

I tell her about my college professor, who would always talk about seeing Horowitz play at Carnegie, and her eyes light up, both of us mutually enchanted by these stories, and I feel a bit sad, realizing how rare it is for people our age to actually enjoy these things –

Most people wouldn’t even understand what I’m talking about, let alone enjoy the conversation.

We get our drinks, and eat some snacks they’ve laid out, for free, given the scale of tonight’s event.

The attendees show up, ringing the chimes, a few minutes before we’re supposed to head to our seats, and so we both finish our drinks, as we begin walking –

Tracing the hallway that surrounds the main concert hall itself, following the numbers along the way, ultimately arriving at the door to our section, which I open, and step back, as she enters.

We’re the first to arrive, and carefully make our way through the miniature maze of eight seats, on our way to the front row, having booked the center and righthand seat.

Just before she sits down, she removes her jacket, and I see that she’s wearing a beaded, black dress, effectively opaque, with straps over her shoulders, and a low-cut back, displaying the breadth of her shoulders, as she turns away from me, revealing the muscles in her back, placing her jacket on the back of her seat –

She’s not wearing a bra, since the dress seems to have internal support, causing it to be snug around her ribs, and under her breasts, lifting them.

This causes the weight of the dress to hang mostly from her ribs, rather than the shoulder straps, which appear decorative, not load-bearing.

The dress falls freely, not form fitting, but slowly floating away from her body as you approach the bottom seam, though it’s tight enough that you can nonetheless see the structure of her body as she moves.

The dress rises up under her breasts, and though it’s nonetheless modest from the front, you can see the outlines of her cleavage, with additional, small grey and mother of pearl beading, woven into the dress, beginning near the upper portion of her ribs, increasing in density as you approach the bust of the dress, accentuating the lift of the dress under her breasts, and the seams around the front of her dress, near her skin.

The bottom of the dress has fluted pleats, and is asymmetrical, higher on the left leg than the right, ending about six inches above her right ankle, with the same beading around her breast, increasing in density as you approach the bottom seam from all sides of the dress.

She’s wearing simple, black leather flats, with the leather a bit scrunched around the center of her feet, suggesting perhaps an elastic lining, creating tension, keeping them snug, as there are no laces.

Her purse is small, the size and shape of an envelope, completely covered in large, white sequins, that look like feathers, under which is a steel mesh that the sequins are sewn into, with the sequins and mesh almost totally obscuring a blue fabric under the steel that makes up the outer body of the purse itself.

The inside of the purse has a decorative silk lining, like a classic ascot, or tie, with an overall blueish hue –

I look in to see that she’s brought only her phone, lip gloss, credit cards, and keys, as she quickly applies a bit of lip gloss just after sitting down.

She’s wearing hardly any makeup, just mascara, and what is ultimately a subtle, almost colorless lip gloss, with no earrings.

She smells like Heaven when finally settled into the seat next to mine.

Evgeny

Evgeny Kissin walks on to the stage, which is itself littered with seats, the piano surrounded, because the show is totally overbooked –

Everyone rises, the entire house bursts into an uproarious applause, with some even shouting in their excitement, as he approaches the piano.

He’s wearing a simple, black tuxedo, white shirt, black shoes, his confidence remarkable, walking directly into a sea of people, celebrating him, desperate, for him to deliver them somewhere better.

Unfazed, this is exactly what he does:

He opens with, “Lieberstraum”, by Franz Liszt, which begins with a delicate opening line, modestly accompanied by arpeggios in the upper registers, that is of course later full of the dramatic, impossibly busy work that Liszt is know for, and that Kissin is famous for interpreting.

The acoustics are wonderful –

I can almost the feel low register of the left hand, the high register, clean, lucid, resonance sustaining, without a noise in the house.

Ida and I are transfixed, as Kissin begins to hammer the bass notes, as the piece modulates from E major, back to A flat major, eventually dissolving into the midpoint:

An initially busy, but ultimately sparse, chromatic line, that reintroduces the opening theme, this time in a higher register.

I point to the program, which lists the song title, taking a pen out of my suit jacket pocket, drawing a line below the title:

“Lieberstraum, S. 541, No. 3.”

I then write below the characters,

“541, No.”,

The message,

“Eda, Norway.”,

She looks at me, concerned, as if she’s slipping into something, but she understands.

…

Kissin is notorious for extended encores, that would otherwise border on abusive, except no one wants him to stop, with people sometimes seated for an hour after the scheduled closing –

Ida and I are more than happy to simply sit there, until he’s said what he needs to, astonished, every moment passing, appreciative –

The tireless, relentless, human effort, and love, that go into reaching these levels of performance.

Both of us know how lucky we are to simply participate, however meagerly, alive, knowing there’s a pile of bodies that blindly and relentlessly dedicated themselves to nothing other that what we are experiencing.

The unending nonsense of heartache and death, disease and pointless loss, misfortune and injustice –

Whatever, we will make art,

For we know this is not a world made for us, but we will make it ours, anyhow, take what we can get, while we can, most importantly, each other.

…

After about thirty five minutes of unscheduled performances, of Fauré, Chopin, Bach, Mozart, The Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2, shocking me with, “Je te Veux”, by Erik Satie, he finally closes with, “The Lark”, by Mikhail Glinka:

The piece briefly modulates to C sharp major (using the mode on the five), but then, the opening theme is reintroduced, again in A sharp minor, but now with the addition of an independent chromatic line, in the upper register, as if Liszt showed up, lending a hand, but she still sees only one man on stage, doing all of this work –

I hear Ida say, “My God”, under her breath, almost in tears.

I look over at her again, during a lull, just before the closing phrase, now to find that she’s actually crying, her bottom lip quivering, and I lose it –

I feel tears start to well up in my eyes.

She sees this, takes my right hand, and with a bit of desperation, places it below hers, on top of her left leg, and I can feel the beads of her dress press into the palm of my hand, under the weight of hers, the tip of my fingers briefly brushing against the red velvet of the seat below, feeling the warmth of her hand above mine, and her leg below, as the closing phrase of the piece finally begins, echoing the opening, but with the introduction of a major third, still holding onto the minor sixth –

Bitterness, the simultaneously irreconcilable tones, when separated by time, making the joy of the major third, feel like relief, holding Ida’s hand, after only a moment of separation.