Champagne At High Noon

In 1970 Xaverian-Westwood High School was all-boy. Still is. I was a math major. My foreign languages were Latin and German. Typing 101 was for football players. Our team was Massachusetts State Champs. 9-0 in the Catholic Conference. I ran track.

Typing 101 class was taught by a woman, instead of a black robed brother. The only female in the school. Mrs. Pepper. A zaftig thirty yeear-old divorcee from the suburbs beyond 128. Every student was male. Many of her class were on the football team. I took Creative Writing instead of Typing 101. I never fathomed the effect of this teacher not taking this class. I wrote by hand. My mother typed out my poems.

In 1976 I moved to New York. I showed up at 55 Remsen Street in Brooklyn bag in hand, expecting a warm greeting from Ro. The soft-skinned artist from the Hillbilly coalfields was the reason that I left Boston in a stolen car. We had been having sex every weekend for a month.

"You look like an angel under candlelight, she had said the night we met at David's Potbelly on Christopher

Lyrical. Love. Sex. New York. A magic formula.

A month later I knocked on the door. Her ex-boyfriend answered the knock.

"Ro's not here."

"Where is she?"

"She left to study art in Paris.

I recognized this scene from PETRIFIED FOREST. Bette Davis' character leaves the desert after a failed writer sacrificed himself, so his insurance paid her studies at the Sorbonne. I had no car and returning to Boston was not in the cards, so I moved into an apartment with a gay impresario from the Riviera Cafe. James Spicer had an extra bedroom in Park Slope. He had a typewriter. I wrote a screenplay about a hang glider thief.

D....Descending.

My typing was shit.No help from Creative Writing. My grammar was even worse. I should have paid attention in English 101 or taken Typing 101 with Mrs. Pepper. She wore mini-skirts. The football team went 9-0 three seasons in a row.

Back in Park Slope my fingers sought letters on the keyboard like an elephant attempting to play Chopin. I typed with beauty without precision. My instrument was an Olivetti A series. I wrote the Detective Poems on this machine.

In 1982 I deserted Reagan America for France. Ro had returned to the States. We had another affair. She never kissed me. Another woman broke my heart. She was in Europe. Where. No idea, My job in Paris - physionomiste at the Rex Club on the Grand Boulevard. The boite du nuit had been financed by Actuel, a counter-culture magazine backed by an aristocrat ne'er-do-well. His New York writer Bernard Zekri liked my detective poetry. My broken meter was very very punk five years after the ANARCHY IN THE UK. Violent Femmes, Toure Kunda, the Slits, the Bush Tetras and numerous other bands performed at the Rex.

At the door and inside the club I met the underbelly of Paris. Models, drug dealers, artists, undercover flics, writers, poets, dancers et al. They came from everywhere. Paris was the center of the world outside of the USA and London.

A German from Hamburg asked, if I could transcribe his girlfriend's interview of Bryan Ferry for Vogue. Vivaca was a top model from Georgia. A girl that beautiful never had to take Typing 101. Jurgen was a handsome tall playboy. Three years older than me. He offered 1000 French Francs for the job. Almost $200US. I said yes and took the Metro from the Marais to 16th Arrondisement. I arrived at noon. Jurgen lived in a small house on Rue de la Tour.

Stark modern decor. He sat me in the white-walled living room with my typewriter. A tape recorder lay on the table.

"Do you need anything?"

No one knew what he did for money, but he drove a 1967 T-Bird and flew around Europe. His clothing caeme from the best designer's in PAris, Milan , and London. A jet-setter of questionable means. Same as Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders' AMERICAN FRIEND. One of my favorite Wim Wenders' movies. Jurgen knew him of course. He knew everyone.

"Some champagne and a glass. Crystal, if possible."

Jurgen smiled and left the room. He returned with a bottle of Cristal-Louis Roederer and a single crystal flute. He thought that I was cool. I thought the same of him and we became friends to the end, despite my shitty typing and today I opened a bottle of Prosecco with my good friend, Andy Pollock in Fort Greene. It was before noon. I drank my fill before 2pm.

Here's to you, Jurgen and Mrs. Pepper and all the bad typists in the world.

It's Post Time.

ps I don't drink anymore.