PeaceBang

Genie In New York

My friend Genie is just one of those touchstone people you’re lucky to have in your life. We’ve been friends since the first days of college when we went on endless rounds of auditions and jokingly referred to each other as “the call-back queens.” We constantly got called back for leading roles and not cast. Not bad for two kids who weren’t even theatre majors in the hyper-competitive Northwestern University theatre scene!
Of course I didn’t see it that way back then; I just saw failure and rejection. Silly kid.
Genie is a beautiful, open-faced corn-fed girl from Libertyville, Illinois. She came to NU with an enormous, authentic smile, the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, and a great set of singing pipes and dancing pins. She is one of those people of whom I have always thought, “But she’s so truly sweet and good; why would she want to be friends with me?”

My first big trip abroad alone was to see Genie in England right after graduation. I had finished my student teaching in December and couldn’t find a teaching job, so I worked as a nanny and saved my pennies for a pilgrimage trip to the U.K. to honor my degree in English Literature. Genie was living in London and working for the BBC at the time, and I wanted to backpack around (using London as a home base) and visit an elderly distant relative — the sole member of my extended European family who had escaped the Nazi persecution.

Back in those days, we didn’t have e-mail (I can’t believe I just said that!) so Genie and I exchanged letters and I planned to show up at about 11 AM after my trans-Atlantic flight, phone her, and get detailed instructions to town. But when I landed and phoned, jet-lagged and painfully congested in the head, no one answered. What to do? I determined to find my way into the city by public transport (a habit I have maintained to this day — I like the mental challenge of navigating my route when I arrive at a foreign destination, as it keeps me from falling asleep on my feet and saves loads of cab fare). Much to my pride, I was able to find my way to her neighborhood, to change some money at a local pub, and to phone her flat again. Still no answer. You can see where this is going.

As it turns out, I was rescued on the street outside the apartment by Genie’s landlord who took pity on me immediately, let me in for a nap and took my passport by way of collateral. Genie showed up a few days later, having forgotten all about my arrival and taken off for the weekEND (British pronunciation) to Scotland with some friends. I have never forgotten that episode and still like to tease her about it, even though she has been impressively responsible during my subsequent visits to see her in Paris.

But it’s more than that. It was during those European travels that I had my first experiences deeply attending to my own inner voice away from the demands and distractions of my ordinary life. I associate Genie with getting to know myself better, facing my own demons, and wandering in the world a pilgrim and sojourner at the mercy of luck, planning, my own savings account, and the hospitality of strangers. I still have journals from that first trip to England when I chronicled my discovery of my relentlessly cruel Inner Critic. During a subsequent trip (1989) from Denmark to Sweden to Germany to Holland to Belgium to France, I fully acknowledged residual grief and depression from my childhood. Those trips helped me enter more deeply into the truth of my life. I could tolerate and even somehow cherish those feelings on my solo travels because I knew I had Genie to meet up with at some point on the itinerary.

During the 1989 tour of European cities, I was supposed to meet up with Genie in Amsterdam, but she sent me a note via the American Express office and told me she couldn’t make it, I’d have to see her next week in Paris. During my stay in A’dam I was groped in the Sex Museum one day and traumatized the same night by a traveling Amnesty International exhibit of medieval torture instruments. Days later in Brussels, Belgium I was sexually harrassed by an amorous (and married) hotel manager (he let himself into my room with his own key in the morning, bearing breakfast on a tray and the expectation that I would let him join me for breakfast in bed — so naive was I! No wonder he had upgraded me to such a nice room!). I endured all these things with fairly good cheer because I knew that they’d make great stories to tell Genie. When I got to Paris we rode the TGV to spend a few days in Geneva, Switzerland where she was promptly groped on the street.

I haven’t seen my buddy in about four years… or is it five? My god, is it SIX? Lord, I think it is six. She has since gotten married and had the baby she always dreamed of having, and they’re going to be in NYC on a short stopover on Nov. 18-19. Look at her now, all grown up and with her own entry on Wikipedia, which describes her as an “animatrice de radio et de television.” It’s been fun watching her go from radio DJ to television personality (on France’s equivalent to “Entertainment Tonight” to culture reporter on “France 24.”

It’s going to be a real rush to jump on the Greyhound next Sunday afternoon after church and to get to NYC for a very brief visit. But unless something comes up at church, I am going to try. I want to see those Libertyville sky-blue eyes again, hear that wonderful laugh and to meet the man she married (lucky guy — she certainly kissed enough frogs before finding her prince!) and her little Jonah. It’s important to keep in touch with our touchstones.