Leather Coat Paris

London 1978

In 1978 I had left NYC to join my model/girlfriend, Lisa. We lived in West London Studio, A two-story post modern complex on Fulham Road. Right at the entrance to the Chelsea football pitch. Game days we didn't leave the apartment. As the opposing crews waged war outside the pubs.

I had nothing to wear that declared I was from the South Shore of Boston and not Strafford Bridge or Westham. I bought a leather coat from a second-hand store on Kensington High Street. A little roughed up yet elegant

Lisa and I returned to America. She left again for Europe in the summer of 1979. She came back in 1981 with a Russian gangster. I liked Vadim. I worked for him at the Continental on West 25th Street. I left when I clocked FBI agents at the after-hours club. I’m wasn’t Vadim.

In 1982 I fled a joint police-FBI investigation to work as a physionomiste or doorman at Le Rex Club for the magazine Actuel on the Grand Boulevard in Paris. Opening night was with Toure Kinda. The basement was packed for the African superstar. A froggie longhair kept bugging me to come in. I told the babacool to wait his turn. Hectoring me with indecipherable French swears resulted in a nightlong ban.

"Twa oncule!" He strode to a dented double-parked Citroen Deux-Cheveaux. I thought nothing more of him, until he ran through the crowd and threw a bag at me. Yellow sprayed from it and I thought it was les frites or French Fries from the pseudo Mickey Ds next door.

Wrong It was yellow paint. Splat!

I stood stunned.

The hippie ran back to his voiture des peasants. The two cylinder engine would not start. Le choc of the attack triggered a rage. I ran the sidewalk, jumped atop a car hood and launched a kick through the hippie's driver side window. I leapt on the roof. Jumping up and down and up and down. Black steel toed combat boots smashed front windscreen. Shattered the passenger door window. The hippie cringed at the steering wheel. The boulevard sidewalks was crowded with club goers. I saw no one.

The car still refused to start. My boots took their toll.

The car coughed to life. The hippie shoved the shift into First and steered into the oncoming traffic. I tumbled to the street. He drove straight into a passing taxi. Crash. I wanted more and scrambled my feet. My security held me back.

Corinne my squeeze gave me a towel. I wiped off the paint. The ghost of it haunted the coat forever. Jean-Francois the publisher gave me 3000 francs. “Go out of town for a week."

I acted on his advice and took a train to London. With the coat. I stood in front of the West London Studio a few times. No sign of Lisa. Only the trace of yellow on the leather coat.

ps Upon my return my bouncers said that I had totaled the hippie’s car. They weren’t impressed. After all it was just a Deux Cheveaux.