Stacy Horn

Spring Cleaning, in case you weren’t aware, is a precisely timed operation. For instance, it takes two weeks to clean my carpet. So I had them pick it up today in order for it to return all fresh and clean on the last day of my yearly Spring Cleaning.

The bulk of the cleaning will take place between 5/14 and 5/18, but there are a lot of pre-cleaning tasks, like going through all my boxes and files to see if I’m hanging onto anything I can get rid of. You’re supposed to save your research for future researchers, so I continue to store all my files for each book, but these growing towers of boxes bug me. Is there anything, anything at all I can get rid of?? I’ve started asking other writers what they save and I’m learning that not everyone holds on to their records. The thing is, I don’t have the heart to just chuck everything—I know how often I’ve accessed the archives of long gone writers and researchers. But maybe I can pare it all down a little more.

For some reason, even though I love wood floors, a completely bare floor depresses me, so I put a blanket down. It kinda works. That’s Finney over there on the couch. Finney loves a freshly cleaned comforter … to hork up a hairball on.

Taped to my kitchen cabinet are instructions for taking care of my cats. Across the top are big bold letters that say: In Case I Die. I had two diabetic cats at the time, and it occurred to me that if anything happened to me, even if someone was nice enough to take my cats the cats wouldn’t make it because the person caring for them wouldn’t know all their insulin schedules, etc.

When I wrote Waiting For My Cats to Die I made a blank version to give away as a promotional thing. I renamed it In Case You Croak because I thought for some people that was funnier and less upsetting than the idea of death. You can fill in information about your pets, what to do, who to call, etc.

I scanned and made downloadable pdfs. Front. Back.

A picture of a door on 11th Street. I took this picture because I loved the super high gloss of the paint, which this picture doesn’t quite capture. That reminds me, Nora turned me on to Humans of New York. I can’t thank her enough, I love this site, the guy who takes the pictures, his pictures. It made me realize, I need to take more shots of people. I’m too shy to take the kind of pictures this guy takes though.

Because apparently cockroaches have feelings, and they get lonely. I think I’ve mentioned how if I find a bug or a spider in the apartment I’ll coax it onto a piece of paper and escort it out into the hall or out the window. I can’t bear to kill anything. The exceptions are those giant flying cockroach things, which terrify me.

I don’t know why, but I start crying the minute I see them. If they fly right at me, which they seem to love to do, I feel this awful, primal, fear and dread. It’s all I can do to not to start screaming. Whenever they show up, regardless of the hour, I have to get one of the neighbors to kill them for me. Once, I got Howard to come all the way crosstown to kill one for me.

Last year I went around the apartment and found various ways they might be getting in and I plugged up all those holes and haven’t seen one since. Thank God. Because after reading that article I’d feel bad now. They’re nice. Their favorite thing is to talk about food! How can I kill them now, knowing that they sit behind the walls in groups, chatting about food??

Note to Nadine: Thank you for the review on Amazon for Waiting For My Cats to Die!

A music stand sitting out on the street. I wanted to take it home to paint and use, but what if belonged to a homeless street musician or something?

Yesterday, One World Trade Center became the tallest building in New York City. I wish my “before” shot was better, and I wish I had centered it, but from now on I’m going to be centering it in all my shots. In any case, you can see the progress they’re making. The before shot was from last November, only five months ago.

Before

Look rather gloomy, I admit.

After

A much prettier day! You can see how as they add those shiny panel things, they have also been adding height. It’s going to be glorious. I just read they expect to finish it this summer. Wow. (Here is the same view seven months later.)

When I was in my twenties I used to go to a bar on 84th Street called the Oke Doke. The name was technically the Oke Doke Restaurant, but it wasn’t a restaurant, it was a tiny bar with no tables, (that I remember) a jukebox and a shuffle bowl game. Elsie, the owner, wouldn’t open the door for everyone. You’d knock, she looked you over, and maybe she’d let you in.

Sometime after I turned forty, I went back to the Oke Doke with my friend Chris. Elsie was like the Miss Havisham of bar owners, it turned out. I wrote about the visit in my book, Waiting For My Cats to Die. An abridged version:

“The place was practically unchanged. The same singers were on the jukebox: Frank Sinatra, who is the most represented, Al Jolson, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, Marion Lanza, The Ink Spots, and Peggy Lee. I recognized the few knick-knacks behind the bar, like a cheap brandy snifter filled with 20 year old, now smell-less pot-pourri, as well as the shuffle bowl game on the way to the bathroom. Nothing has moved in eighteen years, nothing has been spruced up, nothing has been renovated. It was dingier and less cheerful …

“Elsie was smaller than I remembered, and grayer. “I’ve been running this place since 1950,” she tells me. The guys I used to come in here with—who weren’t exactly the nicest guys in the world—still come around, she told me. She clearly adored them. She called them “my boys” and told me what they are all up to.

“The three of us talked about men and children until she buzzed in a group of six young Eastern European men who, recognizing the honor they had been given, thanked her very politely, and took the stools to our right. A little while later she buzzed in a handsome man roughly my age who walked in with a very lovely young woman in her twenties. They sat to my left. “This is my third time in here this week,” he announced to the room. I liked him at once. Elsie pulled out a guestbook. “Someone gave this to me in 1986,” she said. It listed the dates, names, addresses and, best part, it had a space for comments.

“I scanned for familiar names. I found one of Elsie’s boys, someone I used to come here with. “I will always love you … Your Tallboy.” (He was gigantic, I remember.) I found his brother’s name. He’d written, “When will I be known only for my own good deeds?” A touching question …”

I would do anything to read that guestbook now, slowly and carefully. I couldn’t at the time. It’s just the kind of thing I live for whenever I research and write. The comments created such a perfect picture of the place and the people who used to drink there. The Tallboy was a guy named Ray who I’d dated a few times. Ray had, like, a billion brothers, and I don’t remember which one wrote “When will I be known only for my own good deeds?” but I still think it’s a touching question. I wonder if he ever went on to perform any good deeds.

Sometime after, I went back to the Oke Doke, and there was a sign on the door saying that it was closed and Elsie was in a nursing home. I went to visit her. The place wasn’t bad at all, but it was a terrible visit. Elsie was miserable and angry to be there, and she just fumed the whole time, it was awful. She told me her boys visited her and I believed her. Like I said, they weren’t the nicest people I’ve ever known, but as far as I could tell they had genuine affection for Elsie, so I could see them visiting her.

The site of the former Elsie’s Oke Doke, from Google maps. The orange awning is where Elsie’s used to be. I wished I’d taken a picture at the time. I couldn’t find a picture of it online. She ran it for roughly forty years, there must be a picture somewhere.

Update: Scroll down for a picture of Elsie, sent to me by Kevin Connell. Thank you, Kevin!