Five years ago I had been on Pattaya's notorious Soi 6 in the Woo Woo Bar listening to Jefferson’s Airplane’s SOMEBODY TO LOVE. The trio of sub-20 Thai girls had invited me to visit an upstairs short-time room.
“You sexy man. How old you. 40?”
Even through beer goggles my mirror doesn’t lie more than 49.
My wife Mam thought that I’m ancient, however Pattaya was a refuge for men not wanting to face their age and to misquote TS Eliot. “As I get old I shall wear my trousers rolled where the women don’t speak about Michelangelo.”
A lot of us wore shorts, morning, noon, and, night, no one in Pattaya had ever mentioned Michelangelo, unless they were a Ninja Turtle fan.
I’ve been old for a long time, but the old age truck never blows its horn backing up over you.
In 1986 I returned to New York from Paris. I had sublet my East Village apartment to a Swede. Sven moonlighted as a bouncer at Danceteria. He liked black chicks. I had no trouble with the male nurse. He had paid the rent on time and helped the super with the plumbing.
When I informed him that I was coming back, Sven moved out three days before my return. Nothing was missing in my flat. Not one of my books or records or clothing. Even the old lady next door, Mrs. Adorno, said good for Sven.
“He good man. He like chocolate ladies.” The old witch was in love with the young Swede. She was only 4-10 with chronic pains from a spinal injury. “He help me with my back. I miss him already.”
“What about me?” I had been gone six years.
“Not miss you long time.” The bruja waved a hex sign. “You old man.”
“Old man.” I was 34.
“I old. I know old. You old.” Senora Adorno slammed shut the door.
I had never thought of myself as old and I asked my friends about this. They were slightly younger and suffered from the Peter Pan syndrome of never wanting to grow up.
"We'll never get old." Richie Boy told me at the Milk Bar, which was my new place of employ.
He was right. In my heart I was 25. In my head I was 15. I planned to be young forever, despite the old bruja’s curse.
My college friends were employed as lawyers, realtors, bankers, and doctors.
Real jobs weren’t me.
Arthur Weinstein got me a spot at the door of the Milk Bar. The club on lower 7th Avenue was decorated like the Malchek Bar in CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Scottie Taylor the owner hid in an egg chair. His manager ran the bar and hired the help. Malinda had good taste in funny people and in late-September she hired a new bargirl. Cheyne came from the UK. Her ambition was to be a pop singer. She wore dreads and had a cute body. I never hit on her and she asked if I had anything against black girls.
“You’re more high yellah than black.” More Chinese than African too.
“So why don’t you take me home?” Cheyne was forward and I couldn’t think of a single reason for not taking up her offer. I was single. She was over 18. We rode on my Yamaha 650 to East 10th Street. As I parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk Cheyne looked up at the building.
“What?”
“I’ve been here before.” The declaration wasn’t based on deja vu.
“Let me guess.” There was only one explanation. “With Sven.”
“Yes.” She followed me upstairs without any danger of her disappearing like Orpheus’ dead wife. I had a joint and she liked smoking weed. All Rasta girls from Nottinghill do. Once inside the apartment Cheyne picked up an LP. The Jefferson Airplane's SURREALISTIC PILLOW. I put it on the stereo.
Hearing COMING BACK TO ME Shane laughed.
“I was here more than once. I looked at the records and wondered who lived here.”
“Who did you think it was?” My apartment a hippie homage to the 1960s. Wood covered the walls like a rural shack. Bathtub was in the kitchen and the water closet was in the back.
“Seeing these LPs I thought it was some old hippie.”
“Hippie?” I had hitchhiked to San Francisco in 1971 three years too late for the Summer of Love.
Mrs. Adorno was right. I was old. It was the first time anyone had said that about me. Maybe it had been long overdue. I didn't make love with Shane. No newly old man could even to resurrect his youth in a young woman’s flesh. I didn’t have such a problem later in life, because old can get very old without the young.
But that afternoon on Soi 6 the fountain of youth flowed with the unabashed compliments of working girls. “You very sexy.”
No one in America has called me sexy since high society interior designer Tony Ingrao bought a 20-carat Burmese blue sapphire from me. At our celebratory dinner he cooed, “You’re very sexy.”
Tony only wanted sex.
Not much different from the Soi 6 girls, who were strictly after money.
As opposed to my wife who wants my heart and soul, despite my age, but during my money-making sojourns to New York I have learned the hard way that “As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten.”
The other day a woman sent a query to my Facebook page.
“Are you who I think you are?”
It was Cheyne. I remembered her well. I wrote back that I had worked at the Milk Bar as the doorman. Her reply came as a surprise.
“I’m sorry. I worked at the Milk Bar too, but I don’t think you’re the person I was thinking…It was all such a long time ago…Take care.”
Not who I thought you were?
Cheyne must have wiped her memory.
‘Old hippie’.
Those two words castrated my pride, then again we never had sex, still her epistle on Facebook revealed she has forgotten about me 100% and the words 'old hippie' too.
She was wrong, for while I might not have long hair, I still listen to Jefferson Airplane and I will never forget SOMEONE TO LOVE even with my life halfway around the world.
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