From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel Page 12

  If there was one oddity about the space, it was the cage. The only freestanding structure left behind from the old factory days, the cage was a storage area under lock and key, tucked away in the darkest corner of the loft. I entertained converting it into a bedroom. It wasn’t that much smaller than my studio in Bushwick, and it would give me something of a division between my sleep and work spaces. I went ahead and told Ahmed my idea. He opened the grated door, lowered himself beneath its six-foot ceiling, and ascertained that it was indeed big enough for a queen mattress, but little else. “It’ll be your very own sleeper cell,” he said, amused. We went on for a time referring to it as my sleeper cell. (This type of humor would be used against me prior to the Overwhelming Event, courtesy of Herizon Wireless.)2 But in the end I determined the space too small and used it for storage.

  “So, Boy, what do you think? Is it what you need?”

  I was so enamored of the space—industrial concrete columns holding the turn‑of‑the-century ceiling aloft, newly finished hardwood floors that squeaked and cracked beneath my Nikes, natural light from the bay windows illuminating nearly every square inch, a remodeled bathroom with checkered tiles, and a modern kitchen. What a far cry from my apartment on Evergreen Avenue!

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  1. Medea.

  2. Responsible for handing over Boy’s phone records and transcripts of text messages in compliance with the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.

  Philip Tang 2.0

  Launch me from the cannon! Boom! I say I was a bomb ready to go off on the entire industry. My collection in the works was growing, sprouting in new and unforeseen directions. Its antennae grappled for everything around me. And I stole like a bandit. For color I looked to Catherine Malandrino. For textures I turned to Comme des Garçons. For pure bravado, Galliano and McQueen. Andrew Saks once said of Coco Chanel that she was like a general, obsessed by the desire to win.1 Nothing could better describe where my head was at this moment in time. The new pieces would draw from all of my heroes but with the added chutzpah of my own acutely developed style. And what was that style? I had been asking myself this question my whole life, but only now was it becoming clear to me. It seems that my place in New York, particularly Williamsburg, was the final piece in the maturity of this style.

  The neighborhood proved to be most productive not only for my state of mind but for my state of multiple affairs (big pun coming).

  Williamsburg! The name alone rang out with history and made me think of other exotic cities that also donned the authoritative “burg”: Johannesburg, St. Petersburg. It conjured great men who belonged to even greater cities, like Johan Lindeberg2 of Stockholm, Sweden. Williamsburg was not just a place; it was a heightened state of mind. Though like any good thing—white Ferragamos, uncorked vino, mama’s breast milk—it couldn’t be preserved forever. I hadn’t been settled into the toothpick factory for long before I noticed button-down nincompoops landing on our main strip. One could catch a glimpse of these finance types, the kind known to wear their work shirts untucked on the weekends, speaking into their clunky BlackBerrys, defaming our neighborhood by branding it “Billyburg.”

  With a little help from Ahmed, I had been grandfathered into my building (“grandfathered” being a term Ahmed liked to use for the way things got done in the city), and like a true New Yorker I was possessive of my own ’hood.

  At those khaki financiers, I scoffed.

  My disdain for these impostors swelled to outrage as winter descended. The snowfall, which looked so fresh and clean from inside, created nothing but black puddles of slush that one stepped in when not paying attention. And then the salt that the shopkeepers laid down to defeat the ice ate its way into even the best leather boots. By four o’clock the sun already began its retreat. Darkness by five. Wall Street wankers with their wrinkled shirttails along Bedford Avenue by six.

  Could it be that I missed the humidity of the tropics, that muggy weather I had despised all my life? Was I, in fact, a little homesick for a thin jersey T, a short plane ride to Palawan, a skinny-dip in a salty lukewarm bay, a cigarette in the hot sun? My very first winter in New York and I was contracting what Americans call “seasonal depression.” It is because of their hard winters that so many of them require Zoloft.

  What saved me from this pharmaceutical was my new studio in the toothpick factory, which by January 2003 was fully operational. Ahmed had proved true to his word. I had a sturdy drafting table, a workstation for cutting and sewing, dress forms, racks of new dresses. It was now time to tend to my neglected living quarters, marked by a mere mattress on the floor and a few bar stools. Between traveling up to Bronxville and working, I hadn’t found much time to furnish. Michelle never came down because of her classes and a new play that she was writing for an independent study. When she finally did stay over one gloomy February weekend, the loft was too cold, dry, and sparse for us to get comfortable. So that Sunday after a morning brunch with her nana in Carroll Gardens we boarded a shuttle bus to New Jersey bound for exit 13A, the site of the Swedish furniture warehouse.

  A strong flag has always struck me as the reason for a nation’s prosperity. Look to Japan’s red sun, Korea’s yin yang, America’s red and white bars, Israel’s Jewish hexagram, Russia’s hammer and sickle.3 These are symbols of power. Color coordination, balance in design, distinguished composition. Compare those to the suffering nations. Moons, stars, evergreens—things that can be seen only through total darkness or which cast tall shadows. Put those symbols on palettes of blacks and reds and yellows and whites and you can almost guarantee a disaster. As colors clash, nations clash. The Philippines, Malaysia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan—these have flags that will never fly above flourishing nations. They’ll always come in dead last. You think when Francis Scott Key or whoever unveiled that season’s Old Glory, the president turned to him and said, I love it but does it come in Third World?

  Sir, no sir!

  Perhaps these are the ramblings of a simple man taking a stab at world affairs, but when our shuttle bus pulled up to the grand furniture warehouse draped with the Swedish flag, I was overcome with a feeling of solidarity for that powerful symbol of economic prowess.

  Unfortunately, this titanic pride went flaccid when we began to pace the living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms of Swedish modernity. Sad couples took turns trying out love seats and faux rockers in a maze of domesticity. All of it—the thin walls sliced in half, the strategically lit scenes—a stage! We were walking through sets like actors in one giant play, pretending! Michelle and I, we were pretending too. Could it be that my reluctance to tend to my living area in the toothpick factory loft had stemmed from this fact, buried deep in my subconscious? We were pretend lovers.

  Turning one of the corners, Michelle and I came upon a day care area. A child was bent over, being spanked by his mother. The child whined. Other parents and couples stood around, wondering if they should say anything. But it was the winter, a season of inaction. Everyone watched the young child get his and continued to do nothing. Perhaps it didn’t matter. He was wearing a snowsuit, so I can’t imagine he felt much of anything.

  Nor did I as I let Michelle fill our pushcart with random marketplace articles. A colander, French press, glass jars, rice-paper lamp, bath mat, throw rug, plants, various other knickknacks. At checkout I again saw the child trailing his mother, his tears gone, and he gripped a hot dog in his hand without any sort of bun. How could he have forgotten what had just transpired? Could a little piece of beef frank make everything in his world better?

  I turned to Michelle, who had a vacant look on her face. Under these lights she was no longer beautiful to me. I didn’t want to be playacting anymore. But I was helpless to resist the entropy of our love. At the time I blamed the winter, but another full year would pass before I would manage to put my liberation in motion.

  These were still, after all, my salad days, a time of green judgments, if I may borrow one of Michelle’s stock phrases. (She wa
s always quoting Stanislavski.)4 In 2003 my actions addressed nothing—not Michelle, not my bed frame, which I’d have to order from West Elm. I was not concerned with the world outside of the shiny couture bubble that is the Fashion Industry—capital F, capital I.

  Deep inhale now.

  The industry bubble, first inflated in New York City, stretches out across the Atlantic to Paris, London, then Milan, until it goes pop at the end of a given season. That’s when the designers, investors, publicists, stylists, and models look up as the profits rain down. But once the bubble is dispersed, and before you can catch your breath, there’s already another bubble, a second, being inflated back in New York. Look, there it is, stretching out over Seventh Avenue. Look at all the hot air it’s taking in!

  Now, after months of slaving over my new line, I still wasn’t one of the mouths fattening that bubble up. Who was but Philip Tang, my friend and former classmate. For all the help he’d given me when I first arrived in the city—the equipment, the connections—I was still envious of him. He had been in New York only a few years more than me and was already flirting with the top echelon of the industry. He certainly had his mouth on the bubble, and with his clothing line Philip Tang 2.0, he was giving it all he had.

  Philip, the enfant terrible, was a Taiwanese immigrant who at age six had come to Manila with his family. His parents quickly made a small fortune with their store chain, Lucky Dry Clean Non-Toxic. Lucky? Try blessed. By age nine Philip was sketching couture and could operate a sewing machine all by his lonesome. At eleven he was making dresses for his two older sisters, sending them off to middle school dances like divas. By fifteen he had been admitted into FIM as the youngest student in the college’s history.

  It feels like yesterday that I was watching Philip work in our collective studio. My table was directly behind his. Our dress forms were side by side, outfitted with whatever we were assigned in a given week.

  I sometimes called him over for his opinion in those days, but only when I had come upon something really magnificent. Once I remember finishing a short cocktail dress, what I considered the best piece I had whipped up that semester. I was proud of it, and I wanted his approval. More than anything, I wanted him to tell me I was great too.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  At first he said nothing. Just rubbed that famous mole of his, lodged in the cleft of his chin.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, there’s nothing too new here, is there? I see a tired bow where I should see something simpler. Like a belt. Here,” he said, turning the dress form around. “Try this.” He unraveled my ruffled bow, the piece of cloth that gave the dress its shape, and began to iron it flat on my worktable. “Look,” he said with a pin in his mouth, wrapping the improvised belt around the dress. “What if it was like this? Get a buckle and make it into a belt. It’s stronger. What do you think?” He pinned it into place and stood back.

  “I don’t know. I thought what I had was sort of Dior.”

  “Dior? What you had was totally conventional.”

  “I like conventional.”

  “You don’t know what you like. That’s why you asked me. Avoid convention at all costs. You want to end up doing bridal wear for the rest of your life? I didn’t think so.”

  He was right. My problem as a student was that I relied too heavily on the expected. If I had a space that needed filling, I put a bow around it and called it ready‑to‑wear. I tried my damnedest to be as cutting-edge as Philip, but I always stopped just short of innovation. What Tang created spoke. He was in a dialogue with fashion history. I, on the other hand, merely took things from here and there, borrowed, stole, recycled. Even worse, I was unable to tell my good stuff from my bad. Isn’t that the hardest obstacle we artists have to cope with? Admitting to ourselves when something isn’t any good. Only during the final fashion show of that year, the dreaded contest for a scholarship to Central Saint Martins, London, did I realize what growing up I had to do. The competition for a seat at the famous art college that had spawned John Galliano and Alexander McQueen wasn’t a competition at all but a Philip Tang showcase.

  Models went up and down the runway before a committee of experienced judges: FIM president Gloria Sanchez; our dean of textiles, Romel Reyes; Cecily Cuaron of Pinoy Big Brother (season one); and Leslie T. Wasper, director of international admissions at Central Saint Martins. The judges watched Philip’s collection crush the other competitors, me included, and I had a front-row seat to my own mediocrity.

  When they announced the winner, Cecily C. of Big Brother handed Philip a bouquet of flowers. Not too long after that, he galloped off to England.

  He left a big gap in our program. Draping Proficiency, Apparel Design, Corsetry, Paris versus Milan—none of our classes were the same without Tang leading us, without Tang telling me what I was doing wrong. His vacant work space in our studio was a constant reminder of his absence. His dress form remained just as he had left it, in front of my worktable, naked and alone. One night, slaving away late, I turned the form’s back to me as a reminder of what I was chasing. When I cut myself accidentally with an X‑acto knife, I lost it, crawling over my table and stabbing the damn dress form in its neck. It wouldn’t take the first time, so I held the thing down on Philip’s table and stabbed it until it did. What had I become?

  Shame on me.

  We stayed in touch off and on. He interned for Alexander McQueen at the same time I secretly took a job in bridal wear, though I never told him. I often thought fondly of my friend in England, but still, feelings of jealousy would arise. How I wished him to the bottom of the Thames on so many occasions—though even in these fantasies he’d rise to the top, belly up. I couldn’t kill him off. I’m no murderer. As I’ve said, I could never hurt another soul. Not even in my dreams.

  By the time our paths crossed again in New York, anybody who was anything had made their way through his studio at some point or another. It was Philip who put me in touch with Vivienne Cho my first fashion week. And as you will soon see, it was Philip who introduced me to my publicist, Ben Laden (no relation). Even my career-making involvement with Chloë, the actress-singer-songwriter, I owe partly to Philip.

  Still, the snippety charm on top of his flair for the extravagant could only be taken in small doses. I had built up a tolerance for Philip long ago, but I suspected Michelle would never warm up to him.

  And she didn’t. She said of Philip once, “I can’t see why you put up with him. He’s so artificial. After listening to him go on about marketability and the state of couture, I don’t know how you don’t slug him right then and there. And did you notice that he always has to have the last word. Plus, he thinks he knows everything.”

  “Yes, but he’s a genius,” I said.

  “He’s not a genius.”

  She simply didn’t need him like I did.

  Philips’s studio was in the old superglue factory on Grand Street, just a few short blocks from my new loft on Kent. Michelle and I had recently finished furnishing my living room with a set of pröntö chairs and a low coffee table, a mere half-shin’s length above a lamb’s wool throw rug. Scandinavian modern. After giving up one of her precious Saturdays to help me assemble it all, she made me promise to take her to Philip’s, for she was a fan of his clothes. I’d put off their inevitable personality clash for long enough. I must also confess that a part of me wanted Philip to meet my Michelle. Although he was very gay, I thought I could still make him jealous over her, because she was an affluent American and white.

  “I’m so glad you’re in New York,” Philip announced the moment we walked in the door. “Come here.” We kissed hello. “Do you two want champagne?”

  “This early?” I said. It was ten in the morning in the middle of February. Hardly the conditions for bubbly. And yet how could I know this was the day it would all really begin for me?

  “We’re celebrating. I haven’t told you? I finally sold out. I took a Gap campaign. It’s just a thing on the side
. They want me to reenvision the little black dress. The Gap is trying to revamp their image. Bring a little glamour into suburbia. Infect the malls with a little Philip Tang. Doo Ri Chung5 did it last year. The money is insane. I’m buying everyone turquoise Vespas.”

  Philip called to the other end of the studio, where a few of his assistants were crowded around a fit model, taking Polaroids. “Rudy, bring the champagne from the minifridge. And come meet my friends.”

  Rudy Cohn, a beautiful black Jewess, was a dear friend of Philip’s from their London days interning with Alexander McQueen. She often hung around his studio because he cherished her opinion the way I valued Olya’s, scarce as she’d become since Michelle entered the picture. Now Rudy dabbled as a freelance stylist to the stars in both America and Europe. Of particular relevance to my state of affairs: She was Chloë’s stylist. The actress-singer-songwriter was on track to become the next Madonna faster than the world needed one, and it was Rudy’s job to put her in the right clothes. Chloë wasn’t too big yet. Her second album, Blueballer, the one that garnered a Grammy nod, hadn’t yet “dropped,” as they say. And so her famous ass could still fit into something by an obscure designer such as myself.

  Rudy arrived with the champagne and plastic cups. I was hopelessly attracted to her working-class Manchester accent, complemented this wintry morning by a blouse that showed a tasteful amount of cleavage, just enough for one’s imagination to get lost in the gap between her two mocha breasts. Her fragrance was something by Serge Lutens. Cèdre or Ambre Sultan. No, I remember, it was Sa Majesté la Rose.

  “It’s crazy around here,” Philip said. “I’m working a thousand hours a day. You know, I’m doing the Gap thing, but then I’m pushing forward on this new fall line.”