Anthony and I worked Hurrah. The punk disco was packed with young people. I was one of the older at 26. Same as Anthony. The owners called it a night a 3am. Robert and Barbara wanted to go to Studio 54. Alice, Anthony, Alexa, and I decided on CGGBs on the Boweryand exited the club and went to the corner.
Somehow after exiting from Hurrah's a checker taxi stop on West 72nd Street to let out two punkers going to Hurrah. I said nothing about the club being shut. Finding a taxi on New Year's Eve was a miracle. Anthony told the drive, "Downtown." Traffic congested before Madison Square Garden. A skinny blonde man with orange-blonde hair stood bare-chested the traffic. Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys and we shouted the lead guitarist's name in passing.
The four of us got out of the cab on the Bowery. The driver didn't want to go any farther into the Lower East Side. Alice and I stood on the sidewalk. Suburban disco drones on their way to the disco Infinity on Broadway muttered about our punk attire. I stepped forwards and asked, "What are you looking at creeps."
"Why do you have to always be so violent?" Alice came from a city where the tarred roads led to dirt tracks into the Hollows. She know all about violence.
"I wish I knew."
Ship's fog horns from the southern harbor searched the night. I was familiar with the docks. Only a few ships moored on the Westside and none on the swift-moving East River.
A gang of teenage Puerto Ricans whooped drunken shouts. They weren't looking for trouble. They were poor, the neighborhood school were bad, and their only futures were as janitors, city workers, and manual labor other than dealing drugs. All of them dreamed not so much as escaping the East Village as making the neighborhood a better place for 'la familia'.
After seeing Richard Hell & The Voidoids, we wandered over to Eve's Lounge. We ordered drinks. They were weak. I was still straight and hoped to not be sober the first morning of 1979.
"I want to go." I said to Alice.
"Then let's go."
Yesterday I had met Alice at La Guardia. She wore a white pleather coat, black striped skirt, a purple sweater and knee-high white boot. She was the prettiest girl in the air terminal and every man and woman watched her walk to me. I was a lucky man and tried to kiss her. She turned her face to offer her cheek. We hadn't slept together in more than a month. Her show New Wave Vaudeville had seized her soul and Susan, the scrawny closet lesbian co-producer, was a shrew poisoning my love.
"You're a loser," she had said to my face.
I had felt like a loser too. Same way, but needed even this small money from the waiter job at an executive dining room, plus anything I could glom from Hurrah.
"I feel like a loser too," Alice replied and confessed to having trouble sleeping at home in Charleston. "How was your holidays?"
"Good." One visit to family in Boston and a few drunken fetes at the East Village bar. She suspected me of fooling around, except once I've had two drinks I'm only interested in the third, fourth and fifth.
All I could see was a dark black future, but I restrained from revealing that vision to Alice. She has the whole world in front of her.
MAN OF THE YEAR
My teachers at Xaverian Brothers High School told their students, "Never vote for yourself."
I'm only one vote, so I can be Man of the Year in my own mind.
Carter's out for his adherence to Rockefeller's Capitalism and not admonishing Taiwan about their treatment of the people of that Island Nation. Anita Bryant's anti-gay stance ended her Sunkist Orange Juice reign as spokeswitch, despite her backing from the Silent Majority and the Shah of Iran is in danger of being ousted by the Persian populace, because of SAVAK, his torture squad, and their destruction of moderate dissidents. Reza Mohammed Pahlavi's murderous attempts to modernize his country had been met with outcries from liberals and western TV journalists, but dragging peasants into the future has failed for hundreds of rulers. The people understand their narrow-minded lives and are threatened by any change, especially when any threat to religion and the mullahs despise him for supposedly distribute their ancient holdings to the farmers, although the lands go to the friends of the Shah in payment for their support.
Long live the Shah.
I bet the house on his not seeing out the 70s.
Times appointed Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Mainland Premier as Man of the Year.
All hail the Revolution and the end to the Gang of Four.
DISASTER OF THE YEAR
Floods and earthquakes desvatated the earth over the twelve months of 1978.
The Jonestown Massacre In Guyana set the massive suicide pact in the jungle apart from every other catastrophe and hopefully the bloated bodies will not be seen in the future.
CHOKE OF THE YEAR
The AL MVP Jim Rice and the Red Sox' team Captain Yaz popped out for outs in the ninth inning with two men on base to lose to the dreaded Yankees in Fenway in the 163rd game of 1978 and the Yanks won the World Series.
JANUARY 1, 2021 - BROOKLYN
I went nowhere last night. I drank nothing. I did no lines of cocaine. I called my families in Thailand. They had enjoyed their evening eating their favorite foods. I can't even remember what I ate.
2021 was not a nothing year.
But I'm lucky to be alive and that's not a small thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment