I always thought a merkin was a pubic wig – I guess maybe Mirkin with an i might be some optometrist’s surname, but I’m not getting my Oliver Peoples here.
I am trying to adjust to this new neighborhood – it’s a lovely place in many ways, but it is downright suburban in nature, and while I’ve lived very happily in spread out places, I always had a car to get around. Crossing large parking lots alone in a windswept desert of cement never quite feels right.
Stop & Shop closes at 10 out here – and nobody is in any of the wide aisles except for those paid to restock. It is so quiet that I can very clearly hear “Here Comes the Rain Again” by Eurythmics come on the Muzak – I think of my dead mother and how much she loved Annie Lennox. She was the last person to call herself a feminist, but she loved this song and this band. I start to cry in the frozen section, missing my only parent, who’s been gone for a while now. I look up with a few tears on my cheek, and it is a fellow customer looking directly at me. I’m the one in his way – I guess you can never really be truly alone anywhere anymore – not in the Rockaways, not in the frozen food aisle.
Here it comes again! I hear those arpeggiated synthesizers building and building, as I push my cart hurriedly to the check out line. At least it’s self checkout – my puffy face will not be noticed by a computer.