Puritan Drinking in France

Back in 1982 I was driving on the Autoroute du Sud toward Perpignan. I stopped at a Cafe de Relais to a coffee. At the bar several southbound routiers or truck drivers were quaffing afternoon aperitifs. In this case Calvados. Coming from the States I was slightly surprised that the Etat du France sanctioned the consumption of alcohol on the roadways, but while in France I decided to do what the French do and had myself a glass of the potent applejack.

Times have changed for France.

In 1981 authorities raised the drinking age in schools from 16 to 18.

Years later the Elysees enacted a complete ban on drunk driving and in 2016 the government ended happy-hours as well as a restriction on bottle sales at clubs and bars. Authorities consider this rituals to be an incentive for teenage binge drinking and the inherrently bad behavior attributed to chronic drunkenness throughout the nation. According to their reports one in four French teenagers got ivre mort or drunk at least 3 times in the last year. I would have thought it more than 3 times.

Banning happy hours will only force teens to drink 40s in parks or streets.

Better to couple the happy hours with drunk driving hours, so the public is forewarned about the soused drivers ahead of time. Say midnight to dawn. No reason for anyone sober to be on the road after those hours anyway.

Not if they know what is good for them.

By the way France leads the world in per capita drinking.

Finland comes in second and until recently I was a strong #3.

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/richard-is-a-forkhead-by-peter-nolan-smith.htm

April 21, 1978 - Journal - East Village

Last night Richard Hell played at CBGBs and his performance was less than extraordinary. I had to sneak by the doorperson Roxy to get in for free. Lisa the cashier waved me inside. The club was packed with assholes drawn there by good press or the Voidoids. Xcessive from the Ghosts kept shouting, "Richard is a forkhead."

hell's numerous female fans yelled back at sixteen year-old guitarist.

His lead singer Markey joined in and we all had a good laugh.

This morning I am running late to make my job at Rector Street.

I'm always late.

I couldn't care less.

This waiting tables for nuclear engineering executives is meangingless, especially since it pays so little.

$80 a week.

I need money fast.

More money than I can get selling blood.

Ann wasn't home when I called this morning.

Her theater gig is eating up her time.

11am to midnight.

She isn't getting paid.

I've seen a number of films about the theater.

The boyfriends and husbands wait at home.

The actresses stay out all night pretending that art is life.

I say nothing about this, because Ann is in her glory.

LATER

At work I overheard another conversation in the executive dining toom about shoot-to-kill policies at the nuclear power plants in foreign countries and wondered whether the ones in the USA had the same orders in defending the plants against protestors. They never speak about atomic bombs, even though they think I'm Spanish like the rest of the waiting staff.

Our country should change its Cold War attack strategy. The USSR is huge, spanning two continents. It's factory cities are scattered over its vastness. Any attack on the Soviet industrial capacity would have to be intense.

So where to strike?

The farmlands of the Ukraine, the steppes.

Carpet nuke their underbelly.

The inhabitants of the Soviet factory cities will starve, but the price for the USA would certainly be the loss of Detroit and New York. This afternoon I ran into Klaus. The gaunt German opera singer said, "I have no emotion."

His mother's ill-timed vist from Essen has shocked him into a state of apathy.

"I don't care in the USSR and the USA bomb each other. Or even if I am here. I grew up in a bombed out city. Ruins everywhere."

"Like the East Village?"

"Worst. You want to come over to my apartment and have some strudel?"

Klaus has been cooking cakes since quitting Serendipity 3. According to joey Arias, the manager of FiorucciI appreciate his generosity and said, "I love your strudel."

"I know you do." Klaus is very German, but he fights his Teutonic traits in New York. I bet they would be very strong in Essen or Berlin. Klaus doesn't drink anymore. He has been sickly as of late and eats a special diet to regain his health.

"I hate feeling tired all the time. And more I hate watching American TV. Such schiesse."

MAYBE TOMORROW Chapter 5 by Peter Nolan Smith

Nightlife on Bleecker Street panned out after the Village Vanguard. Sean gazed out the taxi's window at the forlorn sidewalk grilled yellow by cruel chrome streetlights. This was how New York looked unprotected by the eyes of love and he turned to Johnny.

"Are we there yet?"

"Almost." Johnny slapped on the plastic divider. "Stop on Mulberry."

The taxi driver braked next to a scrawny tree and his two passengers got out of the Checker. Three derelicts stood around an oily fire and Sean asked suspiciously, "Why we getting out here?"

"I thought a walk would help you get a feel for the city."

Johnny paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk.

"It looks more like purgatory."

"You'll get used to it." Johnny secretively shifted the knife in the small of his back, as they passed a cluster of cardboard shacks sheltering shivering bodies.

"I won't be here long enough." Sean envied the derelicts' sleep and toyed with walking back to the hotel. It might be haunted by Cheri, but at least the bed was warm. "You said CBGBs was close."

"I was telling the truth. This is other end of Bleecker Street from where Bob Dylan performed in the Sixties and it wasn't cool then and it isn't now."

An old man in rags lurched from a shallow doorway to verify Johnny's statement and stuck out a palm roadmapped with crevices and scars.

"Got a dime to spare an old wino?"

"Sure, Pops." Johnny seered the lines of the old drunk's lost past and short future. $5 shocked the red-faced alcoholic, who gasped, "God bless you, young man."

"Have a good drunk on me."

"Bless you, young man."

The old man wobbled across the silent street into the abyss of shadows. The derelict bar on the corner of Houston and the Bowery charged twenty-five cents for a shot of bottom shelf whiskey. Its closing hours were determined by the last dollar left in the bar.

"That was a generous donation." Sean gave bums his spare change.

"I hope someone might do the same for me, if I ever that low." Johnny motioned for them to continue walking down the sidewalk.

"You have a long way before you reach the bottom."

"A car hits me and I'm an old man before my time." Johnny had witnessed the city’s mercilessness too many times to believe in the survival of the fittest.

"I’m lucky with cars."

Sean reflected on the old superstition that bad luck comes in threes. The car chase had been the first, Cheri's desertion had to be # 2 number one and meeting Johnny could well be number three.

"That's a plus for a car thief." Johnny stopped at a wide avenue. "I've been here before.” Sean declared to his own surprise.

"You been to the Bowery before?" No one accidentally visited on a boulevard renowned for its flophouses, drunks, and broken dreams.

"I came with my family to New York in the early Sixties."

"Families don't come to the Bowery."

"We were coming from the Statue of Liberty."

His father had also taken them to the Empire State Building, the Rockettes, a steak dinner at Tad's, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. "We were driving back to the hotel and I saw a man lying in the street and asked my father, if he was dead. He said that the man was a Bowery drunk."

"Those old boozers are tougher than an old dog's paws and so are punks."

Johnny nodded across the avenue to the leather-jacketed crowd underneath a white awning emblazoned with the letters CBGBs. The Palace Hotel next door was a close relative to the Terminal Hotel and Sean glared at his new acquaintance with a twinge of disappointment.

"This is it?"

"What's outside has nothing to do with what's inside. This is punk's opera house."

"Like La Scala."

"You ever been to Milan?" Its opera house was world-famous."

"I've never been to Europe, but so what?"

The hippie's disapproval intensified Johnny's impatience to rip him off and he leapt off the curb to dart through a surge of speeding cars and taxis.

"Last one across the street buys the first round."

A rattling Checker bore down on Johnny and Sean braced for the soft crunch of steel into a body, except the thin blonde gracefully vaulted across the hood onto the traffic island and dodged two newspaper trucks to safely reach the opposite sidewalk, where he shouted, "I'll take a Wild Turkey."

Johnny had challenged death twice in two seconds, but Sean's mother had cautioned him to walk the other way from any menace to life and limb. He would still be living in the suburbs, if he had followed her instructions, so crossed the Bowery to find Johnny arguing with two men carrying guitars.

"You use the drugs, you have to pay."

"I owe you nuttin'," sniveled a crow-haired guitarist, resembling Keith Richard, if the lead guitarist had died instead of Brian Jones.

His pointy rat boots, straight-legged black Levi's, a stained tuxedo jacket, and a skinny tie knotted loosely on the collar of a rumpled shirt were the fashionable antithesis to Sean's Frye boots and plaid shirt. The loiterers on the sidewalk were similarly attired in leather jackets or narrow lapel jackets. Sean felt out of place and even more so after Johnny seized the zombie's guitar.

"Where's my $50."

"Hey, I gotta be at Max's in thirty minutes." The rocker feebly wrestled for the guitar and Johnny shoved him into a pile of garbage.

"Give me the money and I'll give you the guitar."

The onlookers hooted, as if this was a long-running sit-com, and the rocker offered shrilly, "I'll give you the fifty at Max's."

"Wait in line with the other twenty junkies you stiffed today? Fifty or no guitar."

"Okay, okay." The skeletal musician forfeited a crumble of bills. "Now gimme my guitar."

"Been a pleasure doing business." Johnny released the guitar and the junkie rocker rambled up the Bowery. The thin blonde pocketed the cash and turned to Sean. "This ain't Kansas or the Emerald City. Trusting no one's the first rule of this city and the second is always obey the first."

A taxi stopped at the curb and the back door opened for a bleached blonde in a miniskirt, ripped fishnet stockings, and gleaming black high heels straight out of fetish stroke book.

Glowering on the sidewalk the milk-white dominatrix sneered with crooked teeth, "You have a problem with your eyes, caveman?"

Sean stammered, "I haven't seen anyone dress like you before."

"You sayin' I'm a whore?" She flashed sharp fingernails at Sean’s face.

"Sheila, this is my country bumpkin cousin, so cut him some slack." Johnny stepped between them.

"This is really related to you?" The blonde's laugh sounded like her first of the night.

"Can't you see the resemblance, Sheila?" Johnny leaned over to Sean’s face.

"I get it. You're country cousins." The blonde dominatrix blew the bewildered hippie a kiss and entered the club with a sadistic swagger. When the door shut, Sean asked, "Why she dress so slutty, if she isn't asking me to look?"

"The girls at CBGBs wear trampy clothing, because they are whores or strippers, who might break your teeth or ask you home for a fuck. I'll let find out for yourself which is worse." Johnny opened the thick door and Sean's eardrums buckled under a subsonic boom. The last band he had heard this loud was Blue Cheer and his guide shouted, "Now hold onto your wig. No more Abba. No more Bread. No more Boz Scaggs. This is the world of tomorrow today."

The pure power on the stage drew Sean forward and a stringy-haired giant in a yellow construction helmet halted his progress with a meaty hand. "Five dollars."

Sean dropped $5 before the bearded man at a desk and beelined for the front of the club, where four men in black leather jackets, torn blue jeans, sneakers, and scraggly hair performed a blindingly fast version of CALIFORNIA SUN.

The singer resembling a wigged mantis yelled indecipherable lyrics to the frenzied audience. Each song raced to its end in less than two minutes and Sean unconditionally joined the crowd's bopping worship of the hard-driving quartet. When the band had exhausted the audience's energy, the longhaired gnome announced their encore, "PT boat on the way to Havana."

The heaving mob surged forward and he asked a mulatto teenager with a safety pin stuck in his cheek,

"What's the name of this band?"

"The Ramones." The pimply kid rolled his eyes at Sean's ignorance.

He had never heard of them, but judging from the number of people emulating the band's get-up, this band had existed for several years.

A minute later the Ramones finished their encore and the jukebox blared a song about Chinese Rocks. Most of the audience surged to a narrow hallway behind the stage and Sean fought his way to the bar, where Johnny handed him a long-necked Bud. He drained the bottle in three gulps and ordered a Wild Turkey from a redheaded bartender wearing a skimpy tube top. After downing the shot he called for another round.

"So how great is this place?" Johnny was pleased by the wad of bills in the hippie’s hand.

"I don't know about the place, but the Ramones reminded me of these bands; the Remains, and the Ramrods." Sean had always been puzzled by the Surf Nantasket bands' failure, while Three Dog Night crammed the Top Ten with covers. "They were sort of like the Ramones."

"I know the Rockin' Ramrods. They had this great song about the wind." Johnny preferred MR. WIND to their modest hit BRIGHT LIT BLUE SKIES. "Punk is the bastard son of Garage Rock."

"The Ramones play here much?" The alcohol boiled in his empty stomach.

"Ever since this band Television convinced the owner to change the format from country and bluegrass on Sunday nights. They lied about performing original Bluegrass music, but drew about fifty people paying a buck and this record producer named Marty Thau talked the owner into letting other local bands playing at the bar. Soon you had Patti Smith, the Heartbreakers, Richard Hell, the Dictators, the Shirts, dBs, and Mink DeVille. Max's Kansas City joined the act and over in England there's the Damned, Clash, Stranglers, and Sex Pistols. LA and Frisco are starting scenes. France has Plastic Bertrand. Course the radio won't air punk, because the record companies force the kids to listen to shit."

"Like Foreigner and Yes." The Ramrods had failed for the same reason. "On the way here the radio played only one real song."

"No, ROADRUNNER."

"The Modern Lovers?" Johnny nodded to a chubby bearded man from Satellite Records. Nick Arcc was a piece of work, but was also well connected with a number of record labels.

"I saw them play on the Cambridge Commons."

"Who else you see?"

Two teenage girls in pink polyester dresses interrupted his reply by kissing Johnny and the younger squealed with delight "We loved you in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. Can we have your autograph?"

"Sure, darling." Johnny faked an English accent and scrawled a name on a paper napkin. The two girls swooned away and he explained, "They mistook me for David Bowie and who am I to destroy the illusion? You've heard of David Bowie, right?"

"Sure."

"So you still in a hurry to leave town?" Johnny sipped at his whiskey.

"I might hang around a little longer." Sean's eyes followed the sashay of a wild-maned blonde in a rubber dress and Johnny warned, "Heel, boy, that's Dove tonight. Tomorrow morning he's Dave."

"She walks like a woman and talks like a man, Lola, La-La-La-Lola." Sean quoted the infamous Kinks song, rubbing his forehead. The graffiti-marred mural on the opposite wall was wavering into a fuzzy abstract painting and his tongue had been thickened with glue.

"Are you alright?" Johnny asked with a grin, for the two Quaaludes in the hippie's first drinks were hitting home.

"I'm fine." Sean couldn't feel his fingers. "The MC5 played at my high school and so did the Stooges. I saw the New York Dolls in Cambridge. They were junkies.”

"Something wrong with that?"

"They tend to fall off the stage." Sean wavered against the bar and Johnny asked with mock interest,

"You play in a band before?"

"Me and my friends had a band." The Hung had three gigs in the summer of 1968. Their final show had touched off a riot and his subsequent arrest had terminated his rock star career. "I was the bass."

"Really?" The hippie was filled with surprises.

"I'm as good as anyone on that stage tonight." Sean's hands clustered into a Joe Cocker cramp over an imaginary bass and several girls in beehives giggled at the drunken hippie fingering the air bass. "Man, I'm feeling a little weird."

"You need air." Johnny steered him from the club, as giant doorman in a yellow work helmet shouted, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

"What'd you do to me?" His brain was disintegrating into cold mush and Sean staggered through the front door.

"Nothing."

"You drugged me." Sean reached for the lapels of the leather jacket. A sharp point punctured his index finger and he yelped in pain.

"Stay still." Johnny warned, gingerly extricating a hook from the hippie's skin.

"Damn." Sean sucked at the pinpoint puncture.

"An English trick. You sew fishing hooks under your collar to prevent anyone grabbing you for a head butt." Johnny peeled down his collar. "You should be thankful I filed off the barbs."

"Try any other secret weapons and I'll kill you." The threat sloshed out of Sean.

"Calm down, I have nothing up my sleeve." The alley behind CBGB's was the ideal setting to rob the hippie. Johnny started for 1st Street, but was blocked by the junkie guitarist and three New Jersey bikers, who rarely visited CBGBs in compliance with the 3rd Street Hell's Angels unwritten ban on competing gangs entering their auxiliary clubhouse.

"Where you headed, queer boy?" The biggest biker with clenched fist blocked the sidewalk.

"I haven't the time for this crap." Johnny tried to sidestep him and the biker shoved him. "Why not, fairy boy? Got a hot date?"

"With someone a little more handsome than you." Johnny's hand sought his shank. Sean stepped in front of him and shouted at the bikers, "Piss off?"

"Piss off?" the smaller biker demanded in disbelief.

"You deaf or stupid?" Blank anger was clearing the fog in his head. "Or both?"

"Listen to this granola hippie." The biggest biker poked Sean’s chest, figuring his size and weight lopsided any altercation in his favor. "You should have stayed on the commune. You people______"

"You people?" Sean belonged to no group.

"Go suck yogurt, hippie boy." The biker shoved Sean against the wall, "What are you going to do, you piece of shit?"

Sean had fought the Boston Police at anti-war demonstrations. Billyclubs versus baseball bats and he responded to the biker's challenge with a left jab squarely to the nose, shattering the cartilage.

The biker cupped his nostrils to stem the bleeding.

Sean followed up with a knee to the groin.

The biker collapsed onto the sidewalk and Sean confronted his startled friends, "You also asking for it, cause I'm dealing it out."

"We're leaving."

The bikers lifted their fallen friend to his feet. The junkie guitarist had disappeared into the night.

The fight was over for Sean, until the biker mumbled, "I'll be getting you for this."
p>Red Halley lived in his hometown’s dump. The Korea war veteran had boxed in the ring and fought on every street in Boston. Sean sometimes gave him money for Thunderbird.

Red Halley paid back the donations with pugilistic advice and had one time said that if a man says he's out for revenge, you might as well hit them before he gets a chance to come back and get you, so Sean buried his foot into the bigger man's stomach.

"Enough is enough." Johnny restrained Sean from sending the biker to Bellevue Hospital. As the bikers vanished onto 2nd Street, Johnny clapped the hippie's back. "You're more a fighter than a lover."

"You drugged me." Sean slapped away his hand.

"It's just the drink," Johnny protested to deaf ears, as the Quaaludes toppled the hippie against a pole. He hailed a passing Checker and poured his defenseless victim in the back, telling the driver their destination. "West Street."

On the ride over to the West Village he rummaged through the unconscious hippie's pockets, twice counting the money, twice putting it back. Frustrated by his conscience"s untimely arrival, Johnny punched Sean's arm. "Arise and shine, flower boy."

"Huh."

The hippie had to improve on that response, since the conclusion of his evening depended on his answering three questions and Johnny asked, "Beatles or Rolling Stones?"

"The Stones." The Lynn Police had stopped the 1966 Rolling Stones concert at Manning Bowl with teargas. The horde of screaming girls had scared the riot squad and the Beatles were too cute for be trouble, plus his mother loved ELEANOR RIGBY.

"Doors or Velvet Underground?"

"And it was allllllright?" Sean recalled Tammi's comment about the Doors and sang off-key.

The hippie was bound to fail the clincher and Johnny asked, "David Bowie or T-Rex?"

"Bang a gong." The dead were easier to deify than the living and Johnny sighed, "Was that a guess?"

There was no answer, because Sean's gaze was fixed on a distant blankness and his head lopped forward like someone had slice his spinal cord. He wasn't a pretty sight, but then it never was when the final destination for the night was oblivion.

To read the rest of MAYBE TOMORROW, please purchase on Kindle Amazon for $6.99 at the following URL http://www.amazon.com/MAYBE-TOMORROW-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00HYEMNM8 I promise you a good ride.

# 17 by Peter Nolan Smith

in April of 1976 I drove a stolen car from Boston to New York. The Olds 88 wasn't really stolen, since a Back Bay lawyer paid $300 for the disappearance of gas guzzler.

Several hours later I abandoned the Detroit clunker by the Christopher Street pier after midnight. I switched the plates and left the keys in the ignition. Within minutes joy-riders drove off with the vehicle. On my three previous trips to vanish a car, I went up to the 42nd Street Bus terminal and caught a bus back to Boston. This time was different.

I was in love with an artist from North Carolina. Ro said I looked like a fallen angel on her candle-lit bed. She had to be in love too. I walked to her Brooklyn Heights apartment building. She wasn't there and her roommate explained the painter had caught a flight to Paris. Ro had not left a forwarding address. It didn't matter. I was broke and not going anywhere fast.

I slept at a friend's apartment on Park Slope. The next day I got a job at Serendipity 3 as a busboy. I moved out of Brooklyn after discovering James Spicer was stealing my tip money. I rented a SRO room on West 10th Street and 5th Avenue. A bed and four walls cost $44/week. I was making about $200 at the restaurant.

After work I took the subway from 60th and Lex to the Astor Place. Usually too wound up to fall asleep I killed a few hours drinking a dive bars before heading back to my miserable room. I wasn't making any friends fast.

One wintry December night in 1976 I stumbled home from a derelict bar at the corner of the Bowery and Houston. The icy wind slashed through my thin clothing and I was about to hail a taxi to my SRO tenement on 11th Street, when the thump of a frantic bass emanated from a white stucco building. The accompanying music was rock and roll at its purest and I pushed open the bar's heavy wooden door.

The leather-jacketed quartet on the stage were covering the 45rpm version of The Rivieras' CALIFORNIA SUN. The audience was heaving up and down, as if the floor was pulsating in time to the 3-chord progression. I stepped forward to join the frenzy.

A huge hand blocked my way.

"$5." The monstrous bouncer wore a yellow construction hat.

"Who are they?" I handed over the fiver.

"The Ramones. They play punk," answered the big man.

Everyone in the bar wore leather jackets and the girls had colored hair.

CALIFORNIA SUN was replaced by a fast-moving song with a chorus of I WANNA BE SEDATED. I rushed up to the front of the crowd. By the end of the band's set I was hooked to the music and like that I became a punk.

The next day I bought a leather jacket on St. Mark's Place and later had my cut my hair at Manic Panic. Those girls were punk from the points of their stilettos to the tops of their teased black hair.

Every night I hung out at CBGBs. None of the stars of the scene were my friends. They played music and my one talent was playing pinball, so I was a nobody, which was okay, since being a punk was all about not caring about being nobody.

Not everyone felt the same way.

Blondie was getting noticed by major record labels, the Talking Heads toured coast to coast to bigger and bigger crowds, and almost every girl loved Richard Hell for his song BLANK GENERATION and his nihilistic good looks. None of us knew how to be different, but we had a good idea about how not to be 'me' anymore thanks to Richard.

Our devotion to this faith failed to translate into record sales and the Voidoids' forays into the Top 40 were mocked by an unknown power-pop trio's song RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD. My own personal lack of success gained me nothing and in 1981 I left New York to work as a bouncer at a Paris nightclub on the Grand Boulevard.

One night a New Wave girl band from the East Village appeared as the Rex's headliner. The lead singer had a crooked nose and bedraggled hair, but once the ugly duckling hit the stage, Claudia shone with a savaged beauty meant for a dark room and her lanky body encircled the mike stand like a boa crushing a stick. In some ways she was a female version of Richard.

After the show I introduced myself and offered her a drink. We spoke about CBGBs. New York was as close as her body. Claudia's husband played with Richard Hell. She laughed upon hearing about the song RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD. After closing the club, we ate at an African restaurant in Les Halles.

"What do you miss about New York?"

"Nothing really. I come from Boston."

I spoke about my hometown. I was a big Bruins fan, although I admitted, "I can't play hockey for shit." "Really?"

"My father was teaching me how to skate backwards and fell, cracking his skull on the pond ice. There was blood everywhere. II never learned how to skate backwards."

Claudia laughed and said, "Richard is a good tennis player."

"I'm not good at that either."

"Are you good at anything?"

"Some things."

"I'm sure." She touched my hands.

At dawn I walked Claudia to her hotel in La Marais. The rest of the band was waiting by a van and, she said, "I have to go to Lille."

"Like Cinderella?"

"I don't think Cinderella ever went to Lille."

"I guess not, but the fairy tale never mentioned the name of Cinderella's hometown."

"No, but it wasn't Lille." She kissed me on the cheek and entered the van. No glass slipper marked her departure, then again I wasn't Prince Charming.

That summer I visited Perpignan with a friend. Roland Garros was on the TV. His father asked if I was interested in tennis. My father had taught me tennis. I had him by thirty years. I couldn't ever beat him, but my friend convinced the doctor that I had one time been the 17th ranked tennis player in the USA. I protested the obvious lie, but sometimes people prefer to believe something less than the truth.

Upon my return to Paris a music industry friend introduced me to a tousled-hair French singer. Lizzie was promoting her new record and the African influenced single was climbing the charts.

"I know you." Her eyes swam with recognition. "I lived in New York and you once threw me out of an after-hours club on 14th Street."

"I don't really remember that," I answered, although a crazy French girl tumbling down the stairs of the Jefferson Theater wandered in the shadows of my memory. The infamous after-hours club was renown for confusion. "But why did I ask you to leave?"

"You didn't ask. I was having a fight with my boyfriend. You tried to break it up. My boyfriend punched you. You tossed him down the stairs. I fell with him."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It was our fault."

"It was?"

"Ouais." Lizzie didn't hold the forceful eviction against me and later that evening in bed at my hotel in La Marais the wild-haired medusa told me about her affair with a spike-haired singer in the East Village. "Richard?" Forkhead had a long reach.

"Yes, Richard." She lit a cigarette and the tobacco turned her kisses into ashtrays. "Don't be jealous. Richard and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend."

"And what about us?"

"Nous sommes un stand de nuit or one-night stand."

"Those are the best kind of affairs."

In the morning I watched her leave like another Cinderella, thinking she was gone for good, but the next evening she showed up at the Rex with her Fender Jazzmaster guitar.

"TV?"

"Yes, I am famous in France."

French stars fared better without the other people in their life and I kept our affair a secret. We had a good time throughout the fall, although our affair ended on a Christmas vacation on the Isle of Wight. My good friend Vonelli was in love with her. Lizzie was in love with him. My saying 'bonne chance' was my Christmas present to them and on Boxing Day I took the ferry to France from Southhampton to Dieppe. It was a stormy passage and I was glad to stand on dry land. Three hours later I was back at the hotel in La Marais.

I remained in Paris another two years before returning to the USA to write screenplays for porno films in North Hollywood. Within a month the quasi-mafia producer fired me for being too intellectual. I never thought that I was that smart.

Back in New York I rode motorcycles and worked at the Milk Bar. I watched the Bruins on TV. They went nowhere, but everyone came to the Milk Bar. It was the place to be from 1am to 4am.

One night Richard came to the door. I had never spoken to him before, but he said, "I think we have a mutual friend."

"Who?" I knew exactly who.

"Lizzie in Paris says hello."

"She's a great girl."

"She is at that." I offered him a drink and was surprised by how friendly he was. After the second drink he said, "Lizzie told me about some American in Paris calling me Forkhead."

"I said it, but the first person to call you that was Marky, the lead guitarist of the Ghosts."

"I know their song too." Richard no longer sported spikes. "By the way she called you 'suedehead', which is funny coming from someone with a hair like a crow's nest."

"More a bird's nest."

"Depends on your perspective." Richard was taller than me. He tipped the bartender $5 before leaving the bar. She smiled at him in recognition of his legend. Punk wouldn't be punk without him.

"I'll see you around."

We lived in the East Village and ran into each other on the street. He invited me to poetry readings at the St. Mark's Church. Someone said that he edited several alternative magazines. I submitted short stories to each one. He never mentioned them afterwards. I didn't blame him. My typing, grammar, and spelling were atrocious.

I returned to France in 1989.

Lizzie was dating an art dealer. Vonelli was going out with my old roommate. Paris was a small world. The singer and I played squash in Les Halles. She beat me without mercy, despite wheezing after every shot. I spoke about Richard during a break.

"Richard is so funny. I think he was jealous of you."

"Jealous for you being with me."

"You told him about that?" Our affair remained a secret on my end.

"Maybe, it isn't important anymore."

"No." I had been in love several times in the interim. None of my romances had been a success.

"Then let's not worry about the past." Lizzie served the ball against the wall for an ace. After her victory we had dinner in the Marais and she said, "Loser pays."

"That wasn't much of a game, considering I heard you once were the 17th-ranked tennis player in the USA."

"I never was, but a friend of mine from Perpignan lied to his father about my ranking. He believed his son."

"Do I look like I could have ever been the 17th ranked tennis player in America," I said it, so she wouldn't believe me and added, "Plus I let you win fair and square."

I'm not sure."

"Up to you."

We said good-bye in Les Halles. Neither of us suggested a nightcap. We had become just friends.

Nothing more, but friendship lasted longer than love in our world.

In the 90s I began taking around-the-world trips.

I ran into Richard at a gallery opening. He was fascinated by my tales of opium dens on the Burmese border. I thought about writing a down-and-out travel book. I gave several chapters to a literary agent. He hated my typing and I worked selling diamonds on 47th Street. It was a 9-6 job. I wore a suit and tie. The money was good. I went out at night, but not late.

One autumn night at a reading of Richard's poetry at the St. Mark's Church I spotted Claudia at the bar. I hadn't seen the singer since Paris. Richard kept looking at Claudia and I asked, "Are you two a thing?"

"Richard's no one's thing. You have a girlfriend?"

"I was living with a Spanish girlfriend last summer, but she more than a little unfaithful, so I threw her out. The problem was that Elena was good friends with the old Puerto Rican woman living next to me. A bruja."

Claudia didn't understand the Spanish term for sorceress.

"A witch."

"Witch?"

"Yes, Santeria." The magic was practiced by the Caribs throughout the Lower East Side." Senora loved her and the old woman cursed me by saying I would never love again and I haven't since Elena."

"Really?"

"100%." There was no other explanation for my celibacy.

"Maybe I can help you change that."

We left for my place. Her divorced husband was taking care of their son. We spent the night together and she left before dawn. and she spent the night. "Like Cinderella?" I joked with a towel around my waist.

"Cinderella didn't have a kid."

In the morning Claudia kissed my lips and walked down the hallway to the stairs. Mrs. Adorno opened the door. The old bruja had witnessed more than a few women come and go in and out of my life. Her one good eye squinted in my direction and spat something in Spanish before mumbling, "Sex not love. Siempre." and she spent the night.

"Not always," I said, because I wanted more from a woman than sex. Claudia and I went to the movies, made love twice a week, took hiking holidays with her son. She fellated me during the NHL playoffs. I wore my Bruins shirt. They went nowhere, but I wasn't prepared for her saying after they were ousted from the playoffs, "This isn't working out."

"What isn't?"

"You and me. I want something more from a relationship than this and someone wants to give it to me."

"Who?" I had to ask.

"Richard."

"Forkhead."

"Yes."

"Oh." I was growing to used to finishing in second place.

"He called to say he really wanted to be with me. I have to give it a chance."

"I understand." I stood no chance against a rock god, especially since Mrs. Adorno's curse was stronger than me.

I gave Claudia my blessing and started a course of hard-drinking. Drunkenness wouldn't lift the curse, but I stopped my thinking of Claudia. Of course an affair with Richard wasn't destined to last forever and a month later Claudia phoned to say it was over.

"Can I come over?"

"The answer is yes, but I'm leaving for Thailand within a week." I had sold a 5-carat diamond and bought a round-the-world ticket with my commission.

"All you men are alike. You leave when the going gets tough."

Claudia hung up before I could defend myself. She never came over to my apartment. Mrs Adorno was triumphant.

Six months later I returned from Asia to sell diamonds on West 47th Street during the Christmas season and bumped into Richard on East 11th Street. Neither of us spoke about Claudia, but he said, "We should play tennis sometime."

"Tennis?"

"Lizzie said you were good at squash. You must be able to play tennis. I belong to the club over on the East River. We can play whenever you want."

"I haven't been on a tennis court since 1975."

"The cold scare you?" This was a challenge.

"Not in the least." I was from Maine. We had two seasons. Winter and preparing for winter. "Name the day."

"Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny in the high 40s. Say noon."

"Noon it is."

The next morning I called in sick. My boss Manny let his employees have 'drunk days' and I slept for another hour.

By noon the temperature warmed up to almost 50. Richard was waiting by the riverside court. He had brought an extra racket.

"Your choice."

I selected the one more tightly strung without knowing if that was better or not. I was no Arthur Ashe and lost two sets in record time. "You don't play often, do you?" Richard smashed an ace to my left.

"Not for years."

"Lizzie said you were once the 17th-ranked tennis player in America."

"That was a joke. I was once down in the South of France during the Roland-Garros tournament in Paris. I was watching Yannick Noah's set and my friend told his father that I was the 17th-ranked tennis player. I denied the claim, but his father thought I was being humble and scheduled an exhibition at the local tennis club. I was presented to the town's mayor and the club president. My friend whispered that they expected me to play the provincial champion."

"And did you?"

"No way. I said that I was under contract and couldn't play anywhere without signed agreements. A little later his father found out the truth. He didn't think it was funny at first, but everyone else in Perpignan got a good laugh. I didn't think it was funny either. You never do when you?re the punchline of a joke."

"Now, I feel the same way. I really thought you a good player." The way he said that revealed that this was not about Claudia, but Lizzie.

"Maybe I am. Maybe I was taking it easy on you." I knew the truth.

What about another match?" He wanted to know it too.

"Sorry, I'm under contract." I handed back the racket and walked away from the court with a smile on my lips.

After that day Richard and I didn't see each other for several years. I was either working or away in Asia writing novels no one wanted to publish. At least my typing was getting better. Finally I left the States to live in Thailand. I had a baby with my wife In Pattaya.

In April 2004 I returned to New York. My Israeli subleasee had squealed to my landlord in hopes of getting my apartment. An eviction notice was issued in both our names. I threw my tenant out on the street.

Mrs. Adorno said nothing this time. My landlord paid $8000 to speed up my departure from the flat. I was 50 and New York was a tough city for the old. The day before my flight to Bangkok, I spotted Richard on 1st Avenue.

He smiled upon seeing me, then frowned, "I got bad news. Lizzie died this week."

"No."

"It was the cigarettes."

"Shit." I really liked Lizzie.

"They had the memorial in the South of France. Her ashes floated out to sea with the flowers." He shuffled several folders of manuscripts between hands. "That leaves only you and me."

"And Claudia."

We had nothing else in common than these two women, but his words burned like a fire left unwatched.

I told him that I was leaving the city for good.

"No one leaves the city for good." He had been living there for over 30 years.

"I just got rid of my apartment."

"That doesn't mean anything. You'll be back, if only to prove you're the 17th ranked tennis player."

"Yeah, there's always that. See you around, Forkhead."

"You too, Suedehead."

I waved good-bye.

Richard was right.

I did come back to New York.

We still see each other another time, because none of us were leaving New York. Not even our ghosts, for the dead lived forever in the past for those stuck in the present.

Even the 17th-ranked player in the USA.

First Night At CBGBs