This Would Not Have Happened To Barbara Epstein

 It was one of those glorious June mornings when you think you are about to leave on the train that will take you to happiness central.

I am standing, naked, sipping on my latte about to get dressed.

“Don’t ever get fat”, he says to me.

I make a mental note of that comment as I slip into my size 8 jeans.

“Diane got fat and I can’t be with a fat woman”

I hold my tummy in.

The aforementioned man is now with an overweight woman.

I am looking for an apartment on one of those hot and humid September days. You know, where the heat is making you nauseous and the humidity is doing a really good number on  your hair.

I find an apartment.

I feel as though I am about to faint.

“The apartment is too close to where I live, I am sorry you cannot rent it”.

I wipe my brow and I cannot stop schvitzing.

I find an apartment within an appropriate distance.

The new woman’s house is directly across from that very apartment building.

Yes, in the building in which I could not live.

I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say.

“She’s had a crush on you since 1959, she and her friends have destroyed my name in the fashion business in this town, please do not be friendly with her.” I beg of him as I watch the snow swirl outside the coffee shop.

“Don’t be crazy, I have no reason to speak to her.”

Last Thursday, I drop by his studio and he hands me a bunch of “New Yorker” magazines, one of the editions has a glorious fashion cover which I have coveted since I saw it online a couple of weeks ago.

I leave.

I am tucked in my bed on a stormy May night when I pick up “The New Yorker” and a name pops out at me where the subscription is on the bottom of the left hand corner.

It bears the name of the woman who tried to destroy me.

And who is Barbara Epstein?

I don’t know.

I saw her in a photo online that came through my Facebook feed about 45 minutes ago.

She was standing beside Gore Vidal.

She just looked like the kind of a woman who would not have put up with all the shit that I just told you about in this little story.

Bye For Now.

Dirty Laundry is calling my name.

Gentle Readers: Why didn’t I just “google” Ms. Epstein during the writing of this post and find out exactly who that woman was in that old photograph standing next to Gore Vidal?
Heaven knows!

Barbara Epstein (August 30, 1928 – June 16, 2006) was a literary editor and founding co-editor of the New York Review of Books.