Your tongue is filthy.
Clean it.
Now.
Please.
Watch and see.
My favorite car is yellow.
It has a meter up front next to the driver who fills the tank, changes the oil, and parks it.
All I do is step to the edge of traffic and raise my hand like the pop-quiz whiz-kid who has all the answers.
My favortie car is a taxi.
For car owners, the car is king; it transcends ego. It is the uber-self.
I get it.
I descend from Chevy savvy people.
My first ride ever, home from the hospital, was a finned Impala the color of a shiny new penny. One cherry ride followed the next: a butter yellow Malibu, an emerald green Camaro convertible, a silver Monte Carlo with a royal red pinstripe. The Monte Carlo was a big-ass two-door sedan; each door swung as wide as an aiprlane’s wing and looked to tip the chassis or launch it.
But like the self, a car requires care, fuel, fluids, filters, specialists.
Not so the taxi. If a taxi has a problem, it’s not my problem.
I don’t have to think about a taxi.
Unless I want one and then I simply hail.
And I hail because my heels are high, my parcels prodigious or my watch is slow.
A taxi turns my tapered neon nail into a fairy wand and my word into abracadabra.
A taxi appears like a genie from a bottle.
And a taxi, like the elephant-headed god, removes all obstacles.
Once inside I’m as calm as a yogi in a cave.
Liberated from all suffering.
Transported and free.
All hail the king.
Call me unconventional.
I loved school.
Especially Catholic School.
The More House School for Girls.
Girls only.
Plenty of girls.
Being girls.
Bright, brilliant, clever, ever-so-often naughty girls.
The More House School was uniform-free.
A style forum for 11 year olds just down the road from Beauchamp Place and around the corner from Harrods .
The curriculum included Latin, French, Spanish, history, maths, confession, ballroom dancing, fencing and Shakespeare.
In our Shakespeare theatricals girls played all the roles.
Rosalind, Viola, Julia and Portia were juiciest.
Roles that only boys had played we now played; women disguised as men to teach justice, illuminate, and set the world right.
Disguise, doubled-up identities, corsets and capes.
We were intellectual superheroes.
Wondergirls.
In Girls School, we painted on swirly moustaches, swaggered with sabres and dropped our capes over puddles.
We waltzed in petticoats, held séances in cloakrooms and cribbed cheat sheets in several languages.
We donned pirate gear and orchestrated elaborate treasure hunts up then down back and front staircases.
We wore our costume-shop dresses home with Biba platform shoes, hand-crocheted cloche hats and Gary Glitter nail lacquer.
Winter week-ends we hung out at Conran's or the Tate and summers we swam in the Serpentine.
What’s not to like?
At Moore House, our curriculum did not include petty, catty infighting over boys and popularity.
We were born-free.
Lived free.
A recent treasure hunt lead me to modern pirate's booty.
I started out reading Frances Cole Jones' The Wow Factor and soon discovered Brain Barter.
Brain Barter is like going back to Girls School.
Girls School with goblets of wine and platters of Brie.
Girls School relocated to fairy-lit Saks Fifth Avenue.
Girls School where we don’t have to draw on a moustache to be the smartest person in the room.
And then rub it off to be the sexiest.
Now aren't we clever girls!
I’m often asked,
Why don’t more people do yoga?
Buy a mat.
Roll it.
The Black Mat, standing seven feet and weighing in at more than 7lbs!
Shove it in a bag.
Schlepp it.
Negotiate steps, the subway, a bus, a bicycle, concrete.
Day in and day out.
Weeks.
Months
Years.
To wear or not too wear,
your high-ticket yoga togs on the street?
The A side,
you announce to the world, I paid big bucks for shapeless drawstring cropped pants and a t-shirt with some one else’s God on it.
People buy these.
Check me out, the clothes announce,
I do yoga.
My shirt is paying attention, so I don’t have to.
Or, wait.
Is that the B side?
A style option?
Sport tightie lycra gear with patterned insets and colored over-stiching. Romper suits for yummy mummies.
But is it streetwear?
Or don’t street-wear it.
Lug it.
Dry. Wet.
Back. Forth.
Day after day.
Week after week.
Year after year.
There.
That’s why more people don’t do yoga.
The mat, the bag, the clothes.
The days. The years.
Not to mention, all those catty Yoga Queens.
Meeeoowww.
Oooowww!
You’re familiar with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, out in their Sunday best with polite smiles, calm voices, taking time out of a busy day to let you know they’ve been chosen to airlift into the afterlife where pandas play with tigers while children of all colors live in one nation in the sky?
Though certain they’ve been specially selected for eternal happiness, they’d like you to be selected too. And to that end, they freely share the Watchtower.
They’re so nice.
Don’t expect the same step-up from a Yoga Queen.
YQ’s wear a smug mug like they found a font of fat-free chocolate and they ain’t sharing.
They want you to know their life gets better exponentially as yours gets worse.
These queens bought at Lululemon and shopped till they dropped down to perfect splits.
And now, they are spiritually better off .
Than everyone.
This means you!
YQ’s don’t need a soul mate.
They found their soul mat.
It is in that behemoth bag over their shoulder.
When a YQ asks, What’s new?
Avoid divulging anything other than the following showoff-and-tell:
1. Didn’t you hear? I won the lottery!
2. Both my lovers are Versace models.
3. I’m engaged, isn’t this 3 carat diamond just flawless?
4. Check out my new purse, the Namaste Hobo, only $1,680 at Barneys.
In response, a YQ will shake her $400 dollar highlights, take your hand and welcome you to the fold,
Yoga has changed my life so much too. Aren’t we incredible!
But never.
And, I mean never,
answer a YQ, with news of heartache or woe.
Never tell a Yoga Queen:
1. My Mom/Dad has Alzheimers/cancer/Parkinsons.
2. My Grandmother/Uncle just passed away.
3. I’m getting divorced.
4. My son got kicked out of school.
5. My brother’s back in rehab for Oxycodone.
6. The bank took my home.
7. I’ve been laid off.
8. Bernard Madoff stole all my Aunt’s money even after she’d been sleeping with him for years.
To these, Yoga Queen will respond with a far off gaze as she oversees the wheel of karma turn from up, up and away in her karma-free hot air balloon where she sips bubbling kombucha tea from her Sigg eco-jug.
Wow, she’ll say,
without a trace of pity,
YOU really are having a tough year.
And what can you say to that, if even you can speak?
You could try,
1. Princess, your loved ones will get sick and die too.
2. One out of ten marriages end in divorce. Give me hubby’s number and I’ll guarantee yours is next.
3. Id’ like to share this new yoga boost with you. It’s called Adderall, I just bought it off of Craigslist. Here, take a few with your skinny chai latte.
But usually less is more.
Simply,
Place your hands together before your heart,
Bow your head,
And in the seductive tones that charm snakes from slumber say,
Namaste
Bitch
Or if you prefer plain English,
Be Nice.
Kiki in black.
It’s my fault.
I told a friend we’d meet in the Sunglass Department at Century 21.
She was late.
That’s her fault.
I pass the time trying on discounted designer frames.
Slipping high-end handbags over my shoulder.
Totally my fault.
Century 21 – where you look for stuff you don’t need until you just can’t live without it.
Is it dumb luck that I discover a rack full of cocktail rings?
Or just plain dumb?
I get three.
For no good reason.
Except it’s my birthday.
Not the day. The week.
Wallets are for holding money, safeguarding coins and bills from dropping through holes in a pocket.
So why am I looking to buy a wallet?
That’s a lose lose.
Maybe a lose win.
But no way it’s a win win.
My friend texts – getting closer.
My reply – Buying Pucci wallet. Hurry. Save me from myself.
Buying deep-discount, I calculate my savings as cash in hand.
Direct-deposit to a cloud account.
When I buy discount, I expect champagne.
Yeah, I got a luscious grasshopper-green wallet but more than that I earned $250 Monopoly bucks. Birthday or no birthday, that’s something to celebrate.
My friend runs in as I turn away from the register .
She looks thrilled. Full of hope.
“Didja get it?”
“MmmHmmm.”
Hours later, we lunch on fab fries and pumpkin oil drizzled greens at Blaue Gans.
I lend her a cocktail ring.
Lawdy knows I have plenty.
Then we toast a glass of rose.
Her treat.