She So Funny

By Helene "I Want A Bean Feast" Gresser

Yay!!! The damn election is over and there is a Nor'easter wreaking havoc in my already weather-weary city of Gotham, so we can moan about the snain and stop hating one another for wearing a red tie or a blue tie or having vaginas or or being poor and suckling on the gubmint TEAT or making scads of money and being the Devil Incarnate, or whatever the hell else we all were screaming about. I am NOT ready for Winter but I will take it like a tough ole Wisconsinite and drink my bourbon and eat cheese and sausages and prepare my cave for hibernation.

I don't have my new cave yet. I did not hear back from the Girl Who Wanted To Be A Submissive Maid So You Only Have To Pay 300 Bucks For The Room As Long As You Tell Me What To Do, so there goes that cheap room and cheap fun. I am currently writing this from my guy's living quarters, and the wind is gusting up to 50 mph, so I dread braving the effed up subway system (thanks Sandy!) to go feed my cats, but my cats need food. So I called the doorman of the place I am squatting in presently and begged him to try to get in the door and feed my kitties. Man, having a doorman is swell, man. Man. No wonder rich folks like it. Though my friend is not rich, she lives in a charming, perfectly designed studio with lovely sunlight and a weird next-door neighbor who GRUNTS LOUDLY when sitting on the terlet - apparently he is vexed with some intestinal issues and prefers the lady tennis-player approach to loosing his bowels. Sorry, gross, I know, but that is New York. Gross and oversharing and neighbors who grunt and doormen buildings and $20,000 purses and mani-pedis and sushi.



I want money. I want sweeet, sweet filthy lucre in my pocket, though it would likely burn a hole in my pocket (as my dad always says), and I would spend it on thrift store finds and pretty shoes. I am a consumer, and addicted to my fantastic finds and sexy footwear. If I was truly thrifty, I would save every damn penny, stop smoking ciggies, and have enough dough to find a good room to call home. But my guy just decided it is actually a cool idea to start a second-hand store in the vacant part of his shop, and my head exploded with the possibilities and thrill of seeking cheap and donated goods (OH MY GOD HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE UPPER EAST SIDE ON FURNITURE PICK-UP EVE??? IT IS A WONDERLAND.) I want to make money by running a thrift shop. In addition to my other three jobs. And being a comic. And an actress. I have no attention span. I just want to do something fun for a living, and I love real estate. And bartending. And yes, I do some private investigation work on the side, which is AWESOME and interesting. But none of the present jorbs I have are bringing in enough sheckels to quench my thirst for high living.


I can live small, and always do. But I dream of the airy aerie, the sun shining on my face in the morn as I sip my French-press on the porch, overlooking the ocean. I want a magenta walk-in dressing-room-closet-vanity area. I want a large kitchen with a couch and marble counter where my friends and family gather and drink Prosecco and snack on bruschetta while I whip up some spaghetti carbonara. I want to wear white linen and have white furniture and carpeting, and get massages. I want health insurance so my migraine pills don't cost ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS A PILL. Which they do. One hundred dollars a pill without an insurance plan. So I save my last Zomig (my headache pill of choice) for that special occasion when I am in blinding pain and near vomiting.

I just called the doorman to see if he was able to get in to the apartment, and yes, he says reassuringly, anything we can do to help. My god, that takes a load off my shoulders. I don't have to go into the blizzard and freeze my hands off while schlepping through the confusing transit pretzel. Privilege has such advantages. No money does not buy happiness, it buys security. Money buys doormen and insurance and pills and white linen. It buys the ticket to the fundraiser that costs a hundred bucks, and then I get to see all my beloved, fancy, and not-so-fancy Elaine's cronies. It buys my mom a sweet cottage and a driver to take her places and flights to Hawaii. It would comfort me to know that my mother had security as she grows older, as she is so very far away, and I cannot check in on her and have her cook me her famous duck and dumplings and sit in front of the crackling fire.

But I have a warm place to stay, if temporary. I have plenty of clothes, and cheap food I can easily find, and I have electricity and running water. After last week's storm, tens of thousands of people here in NYC do not have these things. Hell, millions of people in this world do not have these things. I was just talking to a great guy I met today, a friend of my sweet man, and this guy said "the problem with these rich guys like Romney and Bloomberg is that they are so removed from the reality of being really poor that they don't see what a library in a neighborhood like Far Rockaway does for the kids who need it. I saw kids there being fed the only meal they will get before they go to school the next day. I saw teens doing their homework on the computers, people reading, coloring books and crayons and little chairs for them all. It doesn't occur to you, hell, I was removed from it all, before I actually saw it with my own eyes. Those are kids, man. I'll do anything for the sake of these kids. And they are black, Hispanic, Chinese, Indian, and white, and it doesn't matter: they all need a chance to better themselves and make their lives better and get away from shitty parents or whatever." And this isn't coming from some bleeding-heart Lib. This is a guy who came from good money and upper-middle-class neighborhood and sends his kids to private school. He likely votes Republican, but he didn't vote this election. He doesn't like the status quo, and doesn't like the belief that everyone who is getting Big Government Handouts are a bunch of freeloading assholes who don't care to live any differently.

I want a better life, and nice things, and freedom to choose my clothes and religion and non-religion and I want that for all of us, not just me - and that is the American Way. I am glad I live in a country where I can choose what type of life I want for myself. I need the discipline to make my dreams come true, but it could happen. I am not getting Welfare, but I technically qualify for it, and food stamps, and housing aid, but I am not quite ready to launch into that yet. Yet. I have eaten at soup kitchen more than once, out of sheer hunger and exhaustion, and only quarters in my pocket, but I do not want to live that way. I want more. And that costs more. And it taxes more. Mo money, mo problems, yes. But mo chances at true freedom that way.

 I am a gypsy with the taste for niceties, as is my mama. My parents have been divorced for over forty years. My mama is a bit like the grasshopper in that olde Aesop's fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant, where the Grasshopper sings while the Ant stores and prepares for the winter. My dad is more of an Ant. Lots of hard work and saving, saving, saving.

My mom worked her ass off, but also spent a lot on dinners and drinks and trips and yes, she has nothing left to show for it -- but she had a great time (for the most part) on her adventures. My dad worked, worked, worked, and never traveled much, and spent very little, but has a home and property and no overwhelming debt, and has a pension and savings and his old age is provided for.  So there's that. I did not heed his advice, and I am paying the price now. My mama is fine, still works odd jobs, has her health and her brain, and her dear friends and a family that will house her if she needs it, ever. But security is much more iffy.



As much as I railed against my mama's walking of the tightrope, I am very much following her path. I have a practical, hardworking side - but a taste for foie gras. I am singing while those ants store for the winter. But I hope that I shake loose the sheet music and start saving for that beach house. Okay, maybe a nice studio in a safe building - with a doorman who will feed my cats without expecting a tip - though he will get one, a very generous one. Oh New York, you temptress, you tease, you builder of dreams. I cannot quit you. Sing for the day, sing for the moment, sing for the time of your life.

 By Helene Gresser

I recently came across some slides of my mom in the 1950s. (Slides! Remember those?? Sitting around someones living room and looking at vacation slides from a carousel slide projector, projected onto the blank wall, with a couple slides inevitably upside down?) The pictures were mostly of my grandparents' drive-in restaurant. (Again: drive-ins? Remember driving up to a restaurant and flicking on your lights to alert the car-hop, order food, and sit in your car while you ate and listened to your radio, slurping a root-beer float?) It reminded me, these crystal-clear pictures of a simpler (so we thought) time, of how different my grandparents' and parents' adult lives were from my own.

My grandparents came from the same tiny village in a remote part of Czechoslovakia -- sailing to the United states in their teens with barely any money, not speaking English (at least I think they didn't), and meeting relatives who had paved the way in exotic Racine, Wisconsin. (Why did the Czechs choose, of all places, Racine, Wisconsin?? For some reason, the Czechs gathered there and even started the country's first Czech-language newspaper, had their Catholic churches -like St. John Nepomuk -- and brought more relatives over to experience the freezing-cold, long winters and humid summers by Lake Michigan.) My grandma Helen Kuzela did not meet my grandpa V.J.Konicek until she came to the states -- I think I remember her saying that he was her first kiss. They married and had the requisite four children: George, Mary Jane, Vince, and my mom Rose (Ruze, they called her, pronounced "roo-zshee." My mom is the blonde in the middle of my Aunt Betty and Grandma Konicek:

My grandmother worked as a household domestic for a time, was humiliated when her dark curly hair and tendency to tan easily elicited teasing that she was really part Gypsy, a slur to the proud, hard-working Czechs who viewed Gypsies as many in the states viewed our African-American brethren as "niggers." My grandfather worked as a butcher, among many other things, and he and my grandma toiled at their many non-glamorous jobs, not having the advantage of any college (and perhaps high school) education, taught themselves to speak English, insisted her children speak only English and assimilate, and saved, saved, saved. (My mother Rose will correct my blurry timeline, I am sure, in her kind way. She does this because she knows I want to get it right, and I love her for it.)

My grandparents had brothers and sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews surrounding them in Racine, all from this wee Moravian village called Vlcnov  ("verch-noff"), or relatives born here as new American citizens, and they decided to own their own business. There was one other drive-in in town, and my grandparents thought their was room for another, it being the cusp of the 1950s and that car-centric culture. They were very smart to do so. It was a summer-season business, and the entire family pitched in to make it work. My mom and aunt were "car-hops", my uncles manned the grill and soda fountain (the soda-jerk" was the official term for fixing the beverages), and my grandparents made their own ground beef for the burgers, managed, and worked, and cleaned, and saved, saved, saved. Here's my Uncle Vince grinding beef into delicious hamburger:


They bought several acres and a lovely house, and my grandfather was so proud of the apple orchard he cultivated in the back yard,experimenting with splicing branches and creating new types of apple trees. My grandma nurtured beautiful flower gardens as well as the practical vegetable gardens, and they both landscaped and planted and made a real homestead. They bought a handsome sedan, an extravagant fur coat for my grandma, sent my mom to a fancy private school in Illinois for a time. They embodied the true American Dream: work hard and save, and you will reap rewards and live well - even if you started with nothing, not even speaking the language.

I am their granddaughter. I was raised by college-educated (though she was interrupted by marriage and never finished) mom and a PhD dad (who also came from hard-working folk who never went to college) and  I was lucky enough to live in a wealthy suburb of Milwaukee - though we were far from wealthy - even after my parents divorced. We went through hard times in the '70s when my mom was struggling as a waitress, and my dad was a low-paid math professor, my mother sometimes bringing home leftovers (only the untouched) and hand-me-downs to feed and clothe my older brother John and me. My dad scrimped and used powdered milk and ate a lot of rice and chicken. He worked very hard and saved and saved. My dad, sleeping at his desk:



And now  I look at my life, in my 40s, here in 2012. I went to an excellent public school in a privileged suburb. The world was my oyster. I went to a state university in Ohio tuition-free because my dad was a professor at the school, though I worked several jobs to pay for room and board and books. I went to graduate school, paid for mostly by my teaching assistantships, helped by my mother and some plasma donations for beer money. After seven years of higher education, I have an MFA in Acting. Ahhh. There it is. My choice of career.I wanted  - and still want - to perform for a living. Silly girl. Here is a picture with one of my idols, Hal Prince, the multi-Tony-winning Broadway director:



If my maternal and paternal grandparents were alive today, they would shake their heads in wonder. Here I am, in the 21st century, several months overdue on rent for a 250 square foot apartment in New York City. I owe taxes, supposedly. I owe thousands to friends for personal loans. My grandparents were never in debt. My mother lives in a government-assisted apartment in Seattle, no car, no retirement money left. I have no health insurance and my left knee needs surgery. I have three part-time jobs, and it is still not enough to get by. I take anti-depressants and Adderall and Xanax and see a shrink who does not charge me, out of the kindness of his heart.  I made a choice, based on the comfort and dreams of one who saw that the world was a place big enough for everyone to make their dreams come true. My ancestors did not have that luxury - they did what they had to do, then did what they wanted to do, but it was all hard work and sweat and blood and tears. I sweat and cry and bleed as well, but have little to call my own, no plot of land and trees and money to assure my mother lives out her autumn years in comfort, much less myself.

Where's the punchline, you ask? This is a blog about funny women, not tragic tales, you moan - that is, if you've even read this far - frustrated at the lack of laughs. But I am laughing, still, at this predicament. I do not fear hard work. I am determined and healthy and have no children (okay, cats, but still) to nurture. I am free to do what I choose, to fail spectacularly, to succeed despite the odds mounting against my career choice. I am standing on the backs of my immigrant grandparents and reaching for the nearly impossible dream. What a luxury that is. What a ridiculous, wonderful, heartbreaking, angst-ridden, insane turn of events. The American Dream. I will either make it come true here in New York City, or pack my bags, move to a safer place, and start over again elsewhere. I will not be deterred. The dream will not be deferred. I am a little work horse, pulling my wagon-load, the weight be damned. Strong little pony. Stubborn as a mule.

-Helene