Daisy
Bruce Genaro
I am waiting for Daisy in the cocktail lounge of the hotel Nikko, a 32 storey glass, concrete and steel monument to capitalism in the middle of San Francisco. My fingers are rap-tap-tapping nervously on the black marbled bar of this overly designed room. It is noon and the room is ominously dark, almost foreboding. The bartender, a tall, slender blonde man with an air of superiority, eyes me suspiciously as I nurse a very tall, very dry martini. His one raised eyebrow suggests that it’s a little too early in the day for straight alcohol. He must be new on the job. And he hasn’t met Daisy, the woman who has driven, drives me, to drink. Thirty minutes ago I rang Daisys’ room from the white courtesy telephone in the lobby. She’d assured me she would be down in five minutes. By Daisy Standard Time, I’ve still have another twenty minutes of waiting. I have no doubt that Daisy could delay the second coming of Christ. Billions of people standing around wondering what the hold-up is. Christ looking at his watch, performing minor miracles to keep the crowd under control while Daisy puts the finishing touches on her makeup and wardrobe.
Daisy has always had the annoying capacity to push my patience and my bar tab to the limit. While the anticipation of seeing her is as heady for me as any drug (complete with pupils dilated), the reality of our rendezvous is more like withdrawal (vomiting optional). Daisy and I haven’t seen each other in a year and a half and I’m beginning to wonder il we’re going to see each other today. At least while I’m sober. I rom my seat at the bar I have a clear view of the bank of elevators that disperses people to and from the hotel tower. A bell rings and a Lucite triangle illuminates, announcing it is ready to make it’s return trip to the top floor. Each time the doors open the cabin disgorges an assortment of tacky tourists in matching jogging suits and sneakers or cookie-cutter businessmen in grey and black pin-stripe suites with white shirts and club ties. “When did San Francisco become so conservative?” I ask myself. Any day now I expect to be so influenced by the Republican right that I’ll go out and arm myself with an uzi on my way to an anti-abortion rally, stopping on route at a book store to pick-up a copy of “To Renew America”.
My heart leaps into my throat each time the bell rings, thinking this is it. It’s going to be her. But it isn’t. Considering what I am about to do, I can use the free time to reconsider. I had bought it only yesterday, surprising myself with a complete lack of deliberation. A two and a half carat yellow stone set in a platinum and eighteen carat gold band. I push the little green velvet box back and forth between my hands like a miniature game of hockey. I make hushed little noises in the back of my throat to imitate the sound of a roaring crowd. Rah! Rah! I catch myself being caught up in this little game and look around the room to see if I’m embarrassing myself, but the only other person in this alcoholic mausoleum is blondy. Anyway, all of the Sharks’ best men are in the penalty box and there’s no hope for a win, so I put the “puck” back into my coat pocket without opening it and I order another martini, double, no olives. I think about my fortieth birthday which is fast approaching and wonder if Daisy will be around to celebrate it with me.
When she finally does appear, Frosted blond hair, teased and spiked, moused and gelled, black Leather jacket and “Laura Petri” Capri pants, we embrace. She says how great it is to see me. I clench my jaw over her shoulder just barely able to reply “um-hum,” through my grinding teeth. She sits down on the red leather stool and orders a scotch and soda but not before sampling my martini. She does this every time. The woman can recite chapter and verse from 5 year old issues of Vogue, but can’t remember that she doesn’t like Vodka. As usual with Daisy, my anger, or rather frustration (which she is infuriatingly oblivious to) lasts for about thirty seconds and we are quickly catching up on all the latest gossip. We are almost finished with our cocktails so I ask her, “What would you like to do now that your lubricated?”. “Well, do you know any neat little boutiques where we can go shopping?” “ That’s all San Francisco is,’ I reply. “That and restaurants.” “Great,” she says “let’s go.” She jumps off the stool, and before I know it we were arm in arm, heading for the car.
Daisy is a burst of energy - a five foot four inch walking carnival. In a matter of minutes she has the capacity to make a complete stranger feel as if he is the most important person on the planet . She is evervescent, amusing and smart and she has lit up my lire for twenty years, although sometimes rather dimly. For fourteen of the past twenty we have lived on opposite coasts, our only contact being an occasional phone call, a brief weekend, or a quick cocktail in an airport lounge as one of us was waiting for a connecting flight to a vacation spot or a business convention. I have the pleasure (I think that’s the right word) of Daisy’s company today because she is in town t or a telecommunications convention. When she is not shopping or traveling she works as a sales rep for a Ma Bell spin-off headquartered in Burlington, Vermont.
Daisy and I met at a small private college in central Vermont. It was the summer of Œ75 and we were both acting in a repertory theatre called the Montpelier Players which was basically a woman’s group that raised money for local charities. She was Puck in “A Midsummer Nights Dream”. I was Murray in “A Thousand Clowns.” Our friendship evolved gradually, slowly over the course of a year. I have often wondered how we got together (and why) as we had very little in common. She was brought up in a poor working class suburb just outside of Detroit. She was a vegetarian, practiced yoga and wore earth shoes. My family was lower middle class (back when that distinction meant something) but raised me with the attitude that we were upper middle class, bordering on royalty. We lived in Boston, went sailing on the week-ends and wore Topsiders without socks year-round. I think what attracted us to each other was something more spiritual. Karmic. Or possibly it was a shared vision of the world veiled in guilt, her’s Catholic, mine Jewish. Our relationship has spanned two decades as best friends, brother and sister, lovers and sometimes adversaries. At times being everything to the other person. At times, not speaking for months.
Happy for any opportunity to show off this city I drive down Lombard street (the most crooked street in the world), out past the Marina, under the Golden Gate Bridge and finally up to Pacific Heights for a panoramic view of the bay and a glimpse of the building exterior used in filming “Mrs. Doubtfire”. It is a weird weather day, more Florida than California, warm and raining while the sun shines. After a Few more detours I turn on to Union Street (the straightest street in the world) and park the car in front of Starbucks Coffee shop. I grab an umbrella from the trunk, and once again we were arm in arm heading off into the world of high-fashion. I have been shopping with Daisy in the past and though I knew what was coming, I was helpless to stop it. I’m not sure wether I’m her shopping co-dependent or her clothing pimp, but it didn’t take long. Two jewelry stores and a bakery, and there we were in Lulu’s, surrounded by women’s fashions, flattering lights and over-attentive sales-girls.
Maybe she’s changed I thought to myself. Perhaps this time will be different. Maybe she’s finally learned the fine art of browsing. We are both older and hopefully wiser. Between the two of us, several well known psychiatrists will be able to send their children to the best schools and probably retire early. I haven’t we learned anything from all this self evaluation, Daisy? Are we going to continue to look outside of ourselves for happiness? Are we going to continue to look outside this relationship for some-one to make us complete? And while maybe we are not “in love” with each other, I know that we do love each other. More than that, I believe that for whatever reason, we need each other. “Why don’t we grab some lunch first?” I ask. “There are still some things things I’d like to talk to you about before you have to get back to the conference’’. “We have plenty of time!” she replies, “Besides, this is exactly the kind of clothing I was looking for.”
I stand in the doorway impatiently tapping the umbrella on the tile floor, but she takes no notice. I see her reach up and pull an article of clothing off a wall rack and her eyes glaze over as she utters the words I feared most, “Do you have this in a small?” Daisy is holding up a cream colored satin hanger with a halter top limply draped over it. She holds it up for me to see, her eyes sparkling as il she has just found a gram of cocaine in her back pocket that she has forgotten was there. “ this is so cute’’ she says, bubbling with excitement, “I just love the back.” “It doesn’t have a back,” I say deadpan, annoyed. “I know, that’s what I love about it.” the sales clerk, Tish, is now pulling every article of clothing she can find, size small, from the carousels and piling them into the fitting room that will bc Daisy’s home for the next three or four hours.
I plop myself down into a very uncomfortable but fashionable chair and start leafing through the ragged pages of ancient issues of Vogue and Glamour. Where do they keep the supply of Sports Illustrated and Esquire, for people like myself. Tag-alongs. Guarders of the purse. At least give me the Chronicle to read while I’m waiting. But maybe that’s part of the game. The humiliation of the entire male species. World domination through shopping. Trust me ladies, few things are more embarrassing to a male than to have to sit through a fashion parade, listening to “girl talk” and having nothing to occupy your mind except how long this is taking. But we do it. At least I do it. At least I do it every time I’m with Daisy.
Sitting here, I begin to have serious feelings of deja-vu. For some odd reason I act as some sort of spending aphrodisiac for Daisy. Maybe it’s the cologne I wear or the aura that my body emits that encourages these shopping frenzies. I have spent hours and hours watching her shop and I have never enjoyed it. Leather skirts in Soho. Bikinis in Fort Lauderdale. Jeans and tee shirts in Seattle. If she wore three different outfits every day for the rest of my life, she would still have clothing in her closets that she’d never have the time to wear. One would have to assume that she was incredibly wealthy. But I knew differently. Daisy is woefully insecure and suffers from low self-esteem. She goes shopping to alleviate the pain she still feels from a father who never quite gave her the attention she desired (deserved), and dresses merely to gain the approval and get the acceptance she never got as a child. I can only assume that on some subconscious level I realize this and so I tolerate it. I assume that this vulnerable, hidden side of her is one of the reasons I love her. I think that I could be the one to help ease the pain if only she’d let me.
Daisy bursts through the fitting room doors dressed in the white cotton halter top and a flowing white skirt. “You look like Marilyn Monroe’ I tell her, “except for the spiked hair. I half expect to see gusts of air billowing up through the floor boards, her skirt ballooning about her waist, the roar of a train passing by. She takes this as a compliment. I try to tell her it isn’t. “What’s wrong with looking like Marilyn Monroe?” she asks, confused. “Nothing,” I reply, “If you don’t mind walking around the streets of Vermont looking like a Hollywood icon that’s been dead for thirty years. You’ll scare the farmers.” Her response is to turn to Tish and ask, “Do you have this in black?” and disappears again, the dressing room doors swaying back and forth behind her.
Clothing drops to the floor. Hangers clack together. The sound of a zipper. A gasp. Daisy reemerges from the fitting room this time in a lace sleeveless turtleneck and a pair of crushed velvet bell bottoms that appear to be two sizes too small for her. She walks over to the mirror and spends five minutes viewing the outfit from every possible angle and vantage point. She looks great. She has obviously been taking very good care of herself. Exercising, eating right, tanning salons. 13ut I know she needs to hear it. Who doesn’t. So I tell her, by way of saying “Women aren’t supposed to get better looking with age, men are.” She tells me that she has started weightlifting and flexes her triceps to prove it. She is particularly proud of these. “Isn’t this great?” she says several times, pointing to her rippling muscles. “Yeah Daisy, great, just don’t hurt me.”
The rest of the afternoon is a blur of fabrics in the latest trend of muted colors and sound bytes from me. “That looks great.” “I liked the black one better.” “Too long.” “Too short.” Somewhere around the seventy-fifth outfit change I begin to loose consciousness. I have taken the day off from my job as a securities broker to spend it with Daisy. I am losing money and I’m bored. I keep thinking that I should bc at my desk, phoning clients, trying to sell them shares of stock in blue chips, mutual funds and limited partnerships. As I sit here nodding my head “Yeah” or “Nay” to Daisy’s parade of sweater ensembles, I start calculating in my head what this day is costing me in terms of dollars and cents. Not only in today’s market, but using the time value of money, what this afternoons tryst is costing me ten years From now. Twenty years from now and adding in the cost of the ring. Boredom has turned to hysteria. I tolerate it out of habit and because I know that she will only bc in town for two days and what little free time she does have she is spending with me. Too bad we are spending it separated by the swinging doors of a dressing room and the constant interruptions of Tish, who never runs out of compliments or garments in Daisys’ size. Having maxed out Daisys’ Visa card we leave Lulu’s with boxes of bodices, bags of blouses, sacks of slacks and Tish’s undying gratitude. It looks like Christmas!
We walk back to the c ar in silence. Daisy trying to regain her composure from her frenetic shopping spree, and me trying to make some sense of this on again off again bi-coastal relationship. I have come to the sad realization that Daisy is unable to comprehend the true value of things, be they clothes, money or friends. I have Spent hours torturing myself, trying to figure out what this hold is that she has on me. Half hating and half loving the uncontrollability of it all. Whenever she’s away, I miss her terribly. But when she’s here I’m even more miserable. I turn into the insecure nineteen year old that I was when this relationship started, fawning over her, trying to impress her. trying to gain the elusive love and acceptance that I never got as a child either.
I drive her back to the hotel and kiss her good-bye, thinking it might be for the last time. My hand reaches into my coat pocket and I feel the fuzzy box. I rub my thumb back and forth over the top of it as if it has the ability to grant me a wish. She stands on the curb looking back at me quizzically as if she knows that I have something to ask her but am holding back. This was not something I was going to do on the spur of the moment. But if I didn’t ask her now I never would. How is it possible to love some-one as much as you hate them? I couldn’t tell if I was angry at her for not giving me what I wanted in this relationship or if I was angry at myself for not demanding it. But standing on this street corner, an ominous dark cloud threatening more rain, it is painfully clear to mc that I will never know.
