The Asylum by Simon Doonan Page A

Hotel–ish, anything-goes ethos of our sprawling basement studio. She particularly disliked the smelly menagerie which came to occupy some of the empty mannequin bins.
    The no-pets policy which governed the rest of this particular retail establishment meant nothing to us. Two neo-punk-rock chicks called Sheree and Elise raised stick insects in a cracked aquarium. A boy called Priscilla—Monique gave all the boys girls’ names—treated the display studio as a pet day-care facility for his cocker spaniel, hamster, and an aging parakeet.
    And speaking of day care . . .
    Tight as I was with Monique, she scared me somewhat. We maintained a certain distance. My closest pal was an intense young window dresser named Cynthia, Cynders to her coworkers.
    Cynders had a problematic relationship with her boyfriend. When things were bad, she would work out her hostilities by calling a particular New Jersey gun store and conducting loud, mysterious conversations about firearms.
    â€œI need a revolver. How quickly can I get one?” Cynders would ask the person on the other end of the line, waving a cup of coffee in her other hand.
    â€œAnd some bullets. Yeah, lots of bullets,” emphasized Cynders, adding in a chirpy way, “By the way, how much are bullets?”
    Thankfully, Cynders never morphed into Valerie Solanas. She was just a stressed-out single mother letting off steam. Yes, Cynders had a baby boy and, unbeknownst to Human Resources, she brought him to work every day. Who looked after the little fella? While she worked her display magic in the glamorous, twinkling, aboveground emporium of elegance and style, Cynders’s mother tended to the needs of her grandchild in the lunchroom of our dank basement studio. This lady was no ordinary granny: she was a full-blown, saffron-robed, chanting, finger-cymbal-chinging Hare Krishna. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Krishnas were quite ubiquitous back then. Where did they all go? Let’s not get sidetracked.
    Granny Krishna, as we called her, quickly became absorbed into our little Warhol factory of marginalized freaks. We rather liked the idea of having our very own resident mystic.
    Granny Krishna sat for hours next to the microwave, rocking her grandson in an improvised saffron-
schmatta
hammock. She would chant, and
om
and
hare, hare
, and when she got bored, she played cards with Morty.
    On the morning Morty showed me the urine-filled cup and forced me to feel his girdle, neither he nor I had any idea that big changes were coming. The clock was ticking for Morty and his
malades imaginaires
—
and
for all of us.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    LESBIANS ARE GREAT. I count many among my friends and relatives, and am sympathetic to their struggles and familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. I also have a good working knowledge of their likes and dislikes. For example, I know that they loathe sweeping generalizations about lesbians. (Any lesbian reading this paragraph will already have blown her indignation gaskets.)
    In addition to their antipathy toward sweeping generalizations, lesbians also loathe patriarchal organizations and corporations. They are—not without reason—wary of being taken advantage of by “the man.”
    Gay men, on the other hand, rather like the idea of masculine dominance. They think big daddy is hot. Lesbians are jihadists against hetero male power. Their goal is to take down Mr. Big Stuff and they are quite prepared to slog through the fine print in order to do so. As a result, lesbians can be very nitpicky and litigious. If you work alongside a bunch of lesbians (I suggest that the collective noun for lesbians might be a “carpal tunnel” of lesbians), it is only a matter of time before a lesbian lawsuit comes through the door. They call this “taking back the night.”
    The lesbian willingness to read the fine print and unearth hidden inequities and injustices