Life Without Bras

March 2020. Plague

I’ve been working since I was 15 years old. First jobs were the usual mothers’ helper/babysitter jobs, progressing to selling snacks on the beach in summer while school was out, to grocery store cashier and retail clerk, and incremental steps up the food chain over time, to where I am now, the owner and still operator of a New York based small business that has had its 15 minutes of fame, and who’s future is entirely uncertain.

We never really recovered from Covid, having lost over 50% of the business, as Broadway has gone the Amazon shopping route, and is struggling itself with its antiquated business model, finding their audience, and ridiculous costs to mount any production. It’s rumored that a small play without big casts, sets or costumes cost 5 million to stage.

BraTenders was born as a resource for the costume industry for Broadway, film and television. Before Google, I was the one they turned to for a balconette bra in 38F, or an open bottomed girdle. We still got the “I can’t find it anywhere” calls, and by this point, I was tired of accommodating a clientele of people who only wanted to borrow items, and who rarely purchased. I couldn’t have predicted that between 2019 and 2024, the quality of people working in the costume industry would change so drastically, to become filled with rude, entitled people who literally did not know the difference between socks and stockings, and who would argue with us about how they were right, rather than give us information to help them get what they were after.

In February 2020 we knew things were getting bad. I worked on a photo shoot with the shoe designer LaDuca, featuring an upcoming Broadway star, who would appear in the new remake of West Side Story, directed by Spielberg. My friend Zinda Williams, the stylist and fashion maven, and also a wardrobe head for Ailey, brought some items for the shoot. While carrying an armful of clothing to a fitting room, I slipped when my foot landed on a beaded gown, against a slippery tile floor, and my legs flew out from under me in opposite directions. I jammed on the breaks so to speak, and dug my heels into the floor. At that point I felt a pop, and flash of pain & knew my hamstring was torn. As soon as I stopped seeing stars, I limped onward, the show must go on. I never received medical attention, because 2 weeks later, it was impossible to get an appointment with any doctor, and I was not inclined to go to a hospital emergency room, giving that they were seeing a lot of Covid action. So I hobbled around, hoping that in time I would heal.

Around this time too, Maggie, my nieces’ Bathsheba and Erika’s mom, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Her treatment was delayed because of Covid, and sadly, that proved to be fatal. My brother and his daughter cared for Maggie at home, moving her into Erika’s old room in Ford’s apartment in Queens. They had to be especially careful where they went and who they saw because Maggie was now an exceptionally high risk patient. Anyone who had a weakened immune system was what the CDC called high risk, as Covid ravaged the organs, and shut down the body’s ability to protect and defend itself. I felt helpless that I couldn’t help.

BraTenders closed its doors on March 12, 2020, the day Broadway shut down in response to the surging Covid virus. Since the beginning of the year we’d been paying close attention to the stories coming out of China, and Italy, and already saw blips in the supply chain with goods and services from Asia and Europe.

But when one of the ushers at a Broadway theater got sick, and had been at a packed house, it became clear that until anyone was sure about what this new airborn illness was, it definitely wasn’t a good idea to pack 1500 people sitting tit to tit into an old relic of a poorly ventilated theater. Researchers were testing how far droplets in breath traveled, and told people to stay 6 feet apart for each other to be extra safe. Broadway went dark and so did BraTenders.

I truly thought the world was ending. Plague was not on the bingo card of ways to perish. Nukes was at the top of the list. Being shot was high on the list, because Murica loves its guns more than its citizens, especially its female ones. And because I live in NYC, dying from a gargoyle falling off a building onto my head was also a possible scenario for demise. But plague wasn’t a concern. Hell, I lived through the 80s and survived using the bathroom at CBGB.

This felt unlike anything I’d ever experienced, the uncertainty all but crippled me with anxiety.

We saw one last bride on Saturday the 14th, and one last costume designer, the gregarious genius Gregg Barnes who needed something, maybe, for a personal project, a costume for a small show, that may, or may not have been going on. We reminisced that it was crazy to think we’d known each other for over 25 years. So many shows. So much underwear! Now, nobody knew anything. We thought it would be a few weeks, and back to biz as usual. Nobody anticipated what would follow. We hadn’t started wearing masks yet.

I called some customers with whom I had friendly relationships to wish them well and say toodle loo. I didn’t expect to see them again. Lee Austin, the wardrobe head at Jersey Boys, stopped by my apartment to return a bag of goods from the show that he’d borrowed. He was leaving town until something, anything changed. We hugged, for what we both believed was the last time.

I became a TikToker then, was enthralled by the citizen videos showing deserted shopping malls in China, and frazzled doctors in Italy, crying over the deaths, so many deaths. And then the freezer trucks started showing up in New York, the hospitals couldn’t manage the dead bodies that had begun piling up in hallways and closets, and the trucks were brought in as temporary morgues. Medical Tents were set up in Central Park to treat the sick and dying.

I hardly left the house. Spent hours on the phone trying to get through to Unemployment, this was my first time being unemployed since the in between time from leaving S&S to starting BraTenders. While I hoped, wished and prayed that this was a global reckoning, and landlords, banks, and creditors would be forgiving and lenient about payments, money still ruled the world. The city, state and federal government agencies upon which a frightened populace depended, were flooded with calls, and because the sickness affected every business and its workers, they were woefully understaffed and ill equipped to handle the desperate outcries. After 8 weeks, I called my local congress representative for help. It took another 8 weeks before everything was resolved.

I was alone and isolated and scared. Everyone was. I didn’t know what to do or who to ask for help. The shop sat empty, and I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t do with regard to it.

I tried to arrange family video calls, looking for reassurance and comfort in familiar faces, but the nephews and nieces I was so devoted to had little interest in their old Auntie Lori. I was shocked, but remembered that even pre pandemic they never “had” time to visit or chat, made no effort to maintain our bonds. I realized that the people I loved most in the world did not reciprocate the feeling, and that having or being in relationship was only important to me.

This rejection crushed me. I spent weeks sobbing, mourning, grieving. I spontaneously burst into tears at unlikely times, unprovoked by any one thing, just an overall, bone deep sadness. In the midst of global chaos, when people were perishing in the thousands everyday, I questioned the point of living. I made myself feel better by tearing up and trashing thousands of photos of the children I once adored. They had become adults I no longer knew. I would miss being involved in the lives of the grand nieces and nephews.

I reached out to people who called themselves friends, but everyone was content in their own private bubble, and connections withered and died. Women with whom I had been involved in an ‘empowerment circle’ for 11 years, couldn’t be bothered to return my calls. When I finally reached one of the women after days of phone tag, she had originally initiated the call, she told me that I had interrupted her TV watching. I said good bye, and knew it was farewell. Another woman who had fled the city to her ski home in Utah, called to ask me to stay on the phone with her while she applied for a Paycheck Protection Loan, because I was the only woman business owner she knew besides herself. I haven’t heard from her since.

I was blessed to have my faithful feline companions Jack and Kitty, and worried about the damned virus making them sick, since cats seemed be susceptible to it. A pair of big cats at the Bronx Zoo contracted the virus from their handlers, and one or 2 news stories made headlines about house cats who had gotten sick. My pair stuck close to me, blissfully unaware of the dangers lurking all around us. They were my only source of affection and love.

I made occasional trips to the Westerly Natural Market around the corner from my home on W 55. I wore double masks and goggles over my eyes, lest one droplet of Covid-19 enter my body. I now possessed an impressive assortment of protective gear, including a collection of handmade masks, created by people in the theater community who donated their time to stitch the masks, in an effort to alleviate boredom, and maybe make a buck here or there, or perhaps save a life. Someone invented a “singers mask,” with an odd, duckbill like shape which gave more room for the mouth to open while singing. There was hope that the masks provided a way to get theater on stage again without it becoming a super spreader event.

People were surprised to learn that you should wash your hands after using the bathroom, or after coming indoors from outside, and before handling food. Hand sanitizer became everyone’s best friend, and shortages ensued. I scrubbed packages bought into the house from the market, and left my outside clothes at the front door in plastic bags until I could wash them. Disinfection became the game, and it made me feel hopeless. Was this how life would be now? an endless cycle of solitary waking, cleaning, scrubbing, and sleeping?

Sometimes I met Marilyn and walked around the block with her and her dog Charlie. We lived in Hell’s Kitchen, near Columbus Circle, Times Square, Central Park. The streets were deserted. silent. eerie. We didn’t want to sit down anywhere because rumors persisted that the virus lived on surfaces. One day, we decided to go to DeWitt Clinton park on 10th and 52, and I brought a roll of Lysol Disinfecting wipes to sanitize the bench we wanted to sit on. The playing fields, usually filled with softball players, and the handball courts, sat silent. Once in a while the sound of a siren pierced the air, and we knew that was bad news for someone.

People hoarded toilet paper. Hospital workers wore plastic bags over their uniforms because there was a shortage of protective gear for them. Our lunatic president suggested people inject themselves with bleach. As if dealing with a global pandemic wasn't bad enough, we had the fool of the century in charge of the country. An evil, vile man.

What would life be without work, without the business that was born after a lifetime of labor on behalf of others? Would there be a life? Covid came out of nowhere and upended civilization. Was this it, 8 billion people on a planet floating in space, each isolated and alone, fearful that any stranger could kill you with one breath? I had nightmares of violence, and food and water shortages, and armed to the teeth thugs climbing over piles of bodies in deserted cities, filled only with the remains of life.

It was hard to break the ennui, hard to move forward, hard to even think of moving forward until a vaccine, or cure was found. Humanity was stuck, at a dead stop.

I felt myself changing, my insides were in turmoil. i felt the need to flee, to purge everything I owned. Suddenly good old American conspicuous consumption seemed really stupid.

I came to a decision after the 6th month of lock down- One way or another, whether BraTenders lived to make an encore, or it was the final curtain, I would move out of Manhattan.