Picture this.
Woman#1.
Drag racing down 7th avenue in a Benz with Miles Davis at the wheel.
Who is his opponent in the Bentley?
Thelonious Monk, of course.
Nice work if you can get it.
Give me the bohemian life.
This of course coming from a woman who is so anal retentive, that she would not get into the drag cars until she carefully inspected all four tires and checked if both musicians were carrying valid driver’s licenses.
Now, picture this.
Woman#2.
She has been in a long term relationship, however she is so full of self doubt about the future of the relationship that after 7 years she has a Plan B or a back-up plan just in case things go south.
And what exactly is Plan B?
The Single Girl’s Starter Kit.
1) one single girl’s bed.
2) one set of flannel sheets.
3) one pillow.
4) her grandmother’s afghan.
5) one each of various kitchen utensils.
6) one tool kit.
7) one ladder.
8) one box of love letters from past admirers.
You may ask, and what is the price of The Single Girl’s Starter Kit?
The kit is a storage locker in Brooklyn and is $189 per month or $2,268 per year
Love in the fast lane.
I found this article in the Modern Love section of The New York Times, and I found it to be both mirthful and poignant.
The author is Julia Ann Miller.
She is in her current relationship for the long haul commenting; giving up a low rent apartment in Park Slope is as serious a commitment, she can make to any human being.
New York, 1947 maybe 1948.
Baroness Pannonica Nica de Koenigswarfter (nee Rothschild) drops into her brother’s apartment and meets her brother’s music teacher; the legendary pianist Teddy Wilson.
Nica is visiting the city, and like her brother, she digs jazz.
She has never heard Thelonious Monk play Round Midnight, she feels it man.
She feels it so much that she plays it 20 times on the record player.
She is hooked, the Baroness is in love.
One minor detail.
The Baroness‘ husband and young children are waiting for her at the airport. The family is set to vacation in Mexico.
The Baroness: The Search For Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild, a book authored by Liesl Schilliger.
Meanwhile, back at the storage locker that holds The Single Girl Starter’s Kit, which you have already realized is the polar opposite of a single girl’s hope chest, Miller is telling us about her love life.
In the span of 30 years of serial monogamy, dodging in and out of one relationship after another, I have always planned for the end from the beginning.
My grandfather left my grandmother to join the circus.
Seriously.
He would drift back into the marriage wherever the circus came back to town. She moved 7 times to leave him, but he would always find her. She hated him the way a woman hates a man she loves.
Nica Rothschild never made that plane to Mexico.
Instead she bedded down at the Stanhope Hotel, purchased a Rolls-Royce, later a Bentley and started squiring jazz musicians to clubs in Manhattan and along the Eastern Seaboard.
If Monk was in Paris, she hopped on a plane.
She was dedicated to her idol, and for the next 30 years dedicated her life to his life and his music.
She was heralded as the bebop baroness.
My Mother’s Single Starter Kit was provided by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. When her furniture was put out on the street, she ran to the church and they provided her with money to secure another apartment. writes, Miller.
In 1984, when the baroness was 70, author Liesl Schillinger flew to meet her in New York.
Come to the club after midnight, instructed the baroness.
Where is the club? asked Schillinger.
Look out for the car, replied Nica.
The large pale blue Bentley was badly parked with two drunks lying on the leather seats.
Modern Love: And so I pay the monthly bill for my romantic shelter.
I know this life cannot be lived without dependencies, micro-webs of ritual and ardor and economics of need that bind us all together.
But how do we stand up to loss?
And love again without holding back?
Descending into a shabby, basement room, the author found Nica in pearls by the piano, smoking a cigarette in a long black filter, her fur coat draped over the back of her spindly chair, drinking whiskey from a chipped china cup.
Remember, she told her niece swaying to the music, there is only one life.
That life ended in 1988.
And as for Julia Ann Miller and her case of Modern Love.
We love and risk at our own risk in our own time.
And that we do.
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