I.M. by Isaac Mizrahi

Author:Isaac Mizrahi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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By the time I finished Parsons I was officially out as a gay man—except in the old neighborhood. There, the only people who knew my secret were the two Sarahs and my sisters, whom I came out to in a fit of rebellion. I’m sure my mother would have liked it better had I not told them; I think she was waiting for me to grow out of some phase, for this ugly truth to somehow go away. One evening my sister Marilyn and I were alone in the house, and I blurted it out. She seemed physically jolted, as if by a damaging electrical current. But after a beat she understood. A few days later I told Norma, who had a similar reaction. Like sentries, they guarded my secret from my father and the community at large. But I couldn’t live much longer with a huge part of me tucked away under lock and key. It wasn’t enough for a select few to know. I wanted the world to know.

Everything happened with great speed around that time. Both of my sisters got married within two years. Those weddings became the center of the family story, and I diverted my own drama as the dress designer for all the festivities. (Some of those dresses were quite fabulous. My sister Norma’s engagement dress was a highlight: a strapless lavender-suede bodice embroidered with pearls, attached at the waist to a full, multitier white organza knee-length circle skirt. The wedding dresses were fabulous, too, both the epitome of 1980s wedding dresses, complete with huge white lace leg-o’-mutton sleeves; Cinderella skirts; and big, floppy, satin bows.) Then I graduated from Parsons. And the minute that happened I started looking for a place of my own. It was the deal my father agreed to, and it couldn’t happen soon enough for me, though it took a great while—almost a full year—for me to find a place I could afford. It was a large sunny studio on West End Avenue and Seventy-first Street that cost four hundred dollars a month. It was one spacious room with great views, a two-by-four separate kitchen, and a five-by-seven bathroom with a window. Enough room for what I needed and no room for much else. And it was in my old stomping grounds on the Upper West Side, close to Kevin and Gina and even closer to Lincoln Center.

I had bought a new Sony Trinitron TV a few months earlier in expectation of my new life. My affection for that set was outsize—TV played such a big, weird part in my sleeping disorder—it was more like my best friend than an appliance. I couldn’t trust it to the moving men, so I hand carried it in a taxi the day before my move when I went to paint the place. That night I sat in the apartment, shafts of light slanting in from the street, the scent of fresh paint, the newness of the environment affecting my equilibrium. I was never one to acknowledge joy in the present.

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