April 26, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

FOTO - Capucine and Hiram Keller in Fellini - Satyricon (1969)

Last night in Key West. Hiram and I go to the Monster, a notorious gay disco celebrating the Sexual Revolution. We drink to excess, dance, huff poppers with abandon. I strip to my undies to Sly's TAKE ME HIGHER. No one asks me to go to the toilet. Their radar tells them I'm off-limits, but they relentlessly hit on Hiram. He was the lead in Fellini's SATYRICON. The handsomest man I have ever met.. A movie star after all and a friend who shares all the drugs with me.

We go back to his place. The Bertonis are gone. I shall be gone tomorrow.

Tina, his wife, asks if we had fun.

"Too much," Hiram is a good mood. We both are. They are headed to Hollywood to audition for COUNTRYMAN and I'm going back to New York. I am leaving the same way I came. Hitchhiking.

I shall miss Key West.

The tropical flowers, the pastel colors of buildings, the scent of night jasmine, the pelicans skating on a breeze above the most aqua of waters, the waywardness of a dead-end town like Provincetown or Fire Island.

I've cured myself of my bad habits for now. All my heartaches are gone. I'm ready for more and MORE remain back north.

I will wait for answers.

Below is a postcard of Key West.

An aerial shot.

I would never see that.

I didn't go up in a balloon or fly by seaplane to Dry Tortugas. I will take a bus north to Miami. I saw plenty of subchasers arrive at the Naval Base at sunset. Protecting us some the Cubans and their Black & White TV shows. I really enjoyed to coral isle surrounded by the Gulf Stream. My psyche feels its embrace.

I heard an old-timer say that Key West gets erased every once in a while like the Hurricane of 1935. Everything blown into the sea and they start anew. From scratch. None of the houses have basement only crawl spaces. If you hide something in the Keys, it has to be in the attic. There is only coral stone below. Ah, Key West.

April 27, 1981 - NYC - Key West - NYC - Journal

April 27, 1981 - NYC - Key West - NYC - Journal

Leave the Mudd Club
Bag in hand
A cab ride
To the Holland Tunnel
A warming from a Transit Cop
I ignore him
A ride into Jersey
To the Vince Lombardi rest stop on I-95
Another ride from a trucker
To another truck stop___
Snow___
A ride to a shitty exit.
A ride to a shittier exit The snow turns to rain___
I shelter beneath an overpass
Cold and wet
Jets overhead
I am close to the Philly airport.
I hail a taxi
The driver takes me to the terminal
I
Cold and wet
Buy a one-way ticket
Air Florida
Plan on hitchhike back to New York___
A two-hour plane ride to Miami
Outside
Sunny
I still wet
Not cold___
A bus to the edge of Miami.
A bus to Florida City.
A ride to Key Largo
Another to Marathon
The last to Key West___
Not wet
Only a little damp
A walk to Hilton Haven road
Friends waiting
One week in Key West
Pina Coladas
Weed
Drinking on Duvall Street
Swimming in shallow water
Watching the sunsets
A subchaser descending from the sky
Warm so warm___
Seven days later
Hitchhike to Miami.
Catch a stand-by flight to JFK.
A limo bus to 59th and 3rd
A taxi to the Mudd Club.
A walk home
I crash into my bed

Drunk and tanned
Dreaming on Key West
I will always___
Oh so warm
In my East Village bed___

I think this was during the Mariel Boat Lift and the nearest navy base was visibly packed with ships and boasts piled on top of each other. Sitting at the beach at the eastern end of Duvall a derelict boat hoved into sight and rammed into the beach. A hundred-plus refugee jumped ship and ran into the scenery. The only sign of them after a minute the boat.

The Weight Of Books

Supposedly Karl Lagefeld's library at 7Rue de Lille in Paris contains 33,000 books. Regarding this photo many of them must be art books. The only publication heavier than an art books are fashion magazines due to heavier paper weights, such as 120–170 gsm (80–110 lb text) at least 2 pounds, but can range up to ten pounds. The March 2006 issue with Kate Moss on the cover weighed 1.140 kg, but then the heaviest object is the body of someone you have ceased to love.

Back in 1980 I had left a lovely female publisher from Maryland for a young nightclub waitress from the Upper West side. An acquaintance started dating my ex- and I was happy the two were happy together. One night at Underground on Union Square Doom apologized for stealing my girlfriend.

"It wasn't that way. I was glad you are with Elizaeth. She's too nice for me. Thank you for being with her." And I meant it. Elizabeth and I had met each other's parents. "You're an asshole."

"Maybe you are right, but congratulations anyway." I was in a good mood. The evening was for GQ. Drinks were free and I had received a weighty double-issue as a complimentary gift.

"Like you mean it, you asshole."

Doom was more an acquaintance than a friend, but I warned him, "Do yourself a favor, don't call me an asshole again."

I rolled the magazine in my hand. It was heavy.

"Why not?" Doom was high on blow. He had already tried to kill himself this year by burning himself. I had no interest in helping over the edge and began to walk away. He grabbed my left arm.

"You ass___"

I spun on my heels and swung the rolled magazine connecting with his nose. I hadn't been aiming my blow. I heard a crack and Doom collapssed to his knees, blood streaming from his nostrils. A bouncer helped him up and said, "I saw the whole thing. Go. I know Doom. He might call the police."

"I'm not a rat." Doom was still pissed at me. "You asshole."

I left the club and threw the GQ in the trash. Everyone who heard the story said I had overreacted knowing how fucked up Doom was on blow. They were right. I should have walked away, but I wasn't that kind of guy then.

Doom later successfuly hung himself. Elisabeth blamed my breaking his nose for his suicide. Maybe it was. People still talk about that confrontation, as do I. I don't read GQ anymore. My wardrobe is determined by hand-me-downs from the deceased. I have outlived all the dead.

"Cellphones will never replace a newspaper. You can’t swat a fly with a cellphone. – Pascha Ray – Traveler

ps I still go to anger management courses. or three elephants. I don't have a library anymore, but i do have an elephant's foot. Stumpy, lefto me by Andy Reese, a male hustler, who once accused me of theft to cover his guilt.

pps Lagerfeld's library has to weigh about 50,000 pounds.

Lost Letter 1981

My archives are filled with thousands of photos, hundreds of letters, and about forty journals of which I find only thirty-three. All from the 1970s into 1990s. One was from Teresa.

"You're the only one. All the rest are nothing."

I have no idea who she might be, but I have my suspicions.

This might be her.

On the way to Jones Beach summer of 1989.

On A Boat Pond - October 17, 1981 - Journal

Autumn settles on the boat pond
Central Park trees
Green to Orange to Yellow
On the pond
Two radio-controlled sloops
Race
Driven South
By a crisp Northwesterly
An imitation
America Cup___

Here
Central Park
Not the East Village
Rosy red cheek children
Run around the pond
An arm's reach
From foreign nannies and young mothers___

I remember being young
Change of autumn
Of an October wind
Through the trees
Of the Blue Hills.
Like then
All the colors
So special
The blue of the sky
The white of the clouds, silver and gray too__

Now
Autumn
Transforming the trees' color spectrum
From Green to yellow to orange to red
Under
The strong sunlight of October
Hearing the children's laughter
Remember mine
And my mother's laughter
So long ago in our backyard
In the Blue Hills.
Laughter...

Key West 1981

A few palm trees in sight Wavering in the Key West light. High noon on Key West Even in the shade The blinding brightness All horizons so close Key West.

No sailor fears the edge of the world I know no fear I stand on Key West. 95 miles from Cuba.

Swim out South from Straw Hat Beach A hundred yards. Still no fear Stop swimming My feet rest on sand. The sea chest-deep

My tread careful Not to awaken sea monsters Nor tread on a dead fish Nor the drowned bodies of coke pirates Nor sea monsters Are they there? Lurking beneath the waves Asleep beneath a azure sea.

America’s Godzilla A hundred feet of fire breathing monster. Waiting Awakening Burn Miami to ashes. Spare Key West The queers, The conchs, The snowbirds, Fishermen, Tourists, Drunks at Sloppy Joe's Bar and me. Saved from death From a monsters.

We are safe From Strange monsters at the end of US1. Forever asleep.

April 24, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

Only another three days in Key west. My strength has returned, mostly because I haven't been drinking so heavily and stopped snorting cocaine. Drink and coke were my basic diet while I was working at the Jefferson Theater. Right now I'm sitting on the end of a wharf, watching the sun set into the Gulf Stream . It's flattening as it approaches the horizon. A hippie's flute floats over the distance from Mallory's Pier, where everyone comes to watching the demise of the day's sun like they were extra's in a Thomas McGuane novel.

I shouldn't be so dismissive of the hoi polloi. I am no one and recognize that I am no one.We are all no one's together. The breeze is unbelievably balmy. Wispy clouds are polished silver by the dying rays. Night is coming fast. I am alone. Behind me the stars are popping from the gathering black. I wait for all light to cease, then I go into town.

Last night I ran into Tina and Hiram at the supermarket. I was with Giuliana and Alice. I didn't recognize the star of Fellini's SATYRICON. He looked excessively healthy. He had stopped doing blow. Tina is excessively pregnant. We were mutually surprised to see each other, since we hadn't seen each other since September, when they were living in 256 East 10th Street. One floor above me. They had left to act on a film in Jamaica.

"We were talking about you the other day." The movie star pointed to his wife.

"I was telling how we broke into your apartment with me squeezing under the window gate. I couldn't do that now," she said patting her belly. "Hiram and I are having a baby."

"So I see." I introduced them to Alice and her mother. Guiliana was star struck as would have been any Italian who had met a Fellini star. Alice just thought he was handsome, which was the truth. one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. "How was Jamaica?"

"A war broke out after Seavey won. Manley's gunman from Frenchtown refused to accept the results. "But why don't you come over and we'll talk later."

I went off with my friends to Hilton Haven road. I read a book and planned on meeting Hiram tomorrow. Gianca and I watched TV. He lies on the couch and I rest on the floor with a pillow under my head. Comfortable and sleep came faster than a tropical sunset.

Softer than soft A Key West breeze Carrying the breath of the sea Through the palms To a milk box On which I sit Watching Apollo finish his day's race With the Sun A peace, a crazy peace, touches my soul Creating a Satori state My senses cocaine dead rise from the grave The clouds catch fire Dusk shadows stretch down Duvall From the East Dusk turning to night On the Gulf Stream Soon it will be night.

April 22, 1981 - KEY WEST - JOURNAL ENTRY

Life goes on endelesly on the Key West. I spend my day sunning on the small beach at the end of Duvall Street, ignoring snowbirds' racist conversations and strangers' nasty gossip about distant friends and family. It's the end of Spring Break, so thankfully there are less of them. The color of the Gulfstream cures the senses.

I worry about what I'm going to do upon my return to Manhattan.

No job, no woman, but a million future friends and I'll wander from bar to bar freeloaading vodka and telling everyone that the Jefferson will reopen, although I sincerely doubt it.

Damn, I wish the hick in front of me lathering suntan loition on his tattooed flesh would shut his hole and also that I was deaf, but then I couldn't hear the gentle waves lapping at the beach.

"...you know what I mean, Linda?" he says for the hundredth time.

"Sorry, Billy, but sex is no longer the main drive in my life. If I want to get off, I get myself off. I found masturbation late in life. If I had known about it earlier, I might still be a virgin," said his blonde bikinied companion. The skinny teenager's conversation was why I didn't move down the beach.

"I discover jerking off at 12," the oaf started, until I saw my moment in interject myseslf into their life and interjected, "Hell , it's better than sex and there's no men mess."

"That's right. Only sweet pussy juice." She laughed and the hick scowled at me, asking, "You want to repeat that?"

"I'm not a tape recorder. You heard it the first time," I realized he hadn't understood my words. Dumb as a fence post. Me too, because Linda was so cute. Slightly anorexic, but like Twiggy in a good way, not that I had ever seen a photo of Twiggy in a bikini or in person. I rapped on about being a poet and a drifter and a doper."

Key West used to be home to pirates and smugglers, I don't see any around here."

"There are plenty of smugglers smuggling people and drugs, but they had a big bust here and now everyone is hiding until the DEA go someplace else."

Fuck them and all the Feds," said Billy and I agreed with both of them. This island should have been unindated with cocaine and reefer.

"We're from here and we don't know where to cope," she smiled at me and I thought she might be Peggy Lipton stand-in from THE MOD SQUAD and Billy her Pete. Narcs came in all shapes and colors.

"Probably for the best, becaue i came here to clean up. No drugs, just the sun and the sea." I picked up my things and moved down the beach. Paranoia is a terrible thing to waste.

April 23, 2023 - Key West - Journal Entry

The Bertonis are leaving on Monday and all the flights to New York City are book into the next week. There is always the possibility of a stand-by seat, but the flight is too expensie. School Break prices, so it appears that I will be stuck in Key West $80 in my pocket. Hitchhiking from here through the Deep South is daunting.

Several Hours later.

Giancarlo owed me $100 and bought me a $139 airline ticket. Guiliana, his wife, is pissed at the both of us. I'm a freeloader and the NYU's chief anesthesiologist is a fool to have friends like me.

"Gianca, you earn the money, you should be able to control it," I said brusquely and stormed out of the bungalow, thinking I needed to find a cheap hotel room. Giancarlo followed me and we entered Sloppy Joe's. It was only 10 in the morning, but this was vacation time.

"Sorry about that, but she's angry with my helping James White and Anya," Gianca said after ordering too daiquiris. Pina Coladas are too sweet for this time in the morning.

"How is Anya?" The dominatrix/muse had incurable cancer.

"Stable, but you you pay me that $39 in front of Guiliana. She's angry, because I used the MasterCard without telling her. Women aren't as stupid as we are."

"We are really stupid, I'm sorry." I had taken advantage of Gianca's friendship. I should have taken care of my own downed my Daiquiri and ordered another. It was 10:16. We talked about Hockey. The Boston Bruins had been eliminated by the North Stars in the opening round and the NY Rangers were 3-1 up on the St. Louis Blue. "They're almost good enough to win the Stanley Cup."

"Scatzo, don't say that," Gianca shivered on the stool. He was equally as superstitious as were all fans of a game played on ice. We left after a third Daiquiri.

"One more thing, best you stay away for a while. Guiliana is on her period. If you ever get married, I'll give lessons on how to be diplomatic with women, which is mostly keeping your mouth shut and taking the abuse." "Thanks for the advice." I had lived with two women, but that isn't like marrying one." "You think I'll ever get married?"

"I don't see any threats of that in your future."

"No there doesn't." Lisa and Anne were out of my life.

"I stayed away until well past dark."

"Grazi."

Gianca went back to the bungalow and I walked down to Garrison Bight. A cheap motel leaned into a decrepit marina with a views on a Burger King and US-1. The clerk said the rooms were $20 a night. I chiseled him down to $15.

"I come back tomorrow."

He shrugged his indifference He had heard thousands of down-and-outers say the same words. I was no different.

Last week there was a power outage and the only lights on in Key West were this Burger King shimmering on a black asphalt. The only other lights were the stars, the moon and the distant planet Jupiter

APRIL 19, 1981 - KEY WEST - JOURNAL ENTRY

It's Easter and I search the streets of Key West for a kindred lost soul. The Bertonis have gone on a snorkeling trip to celebrate the Nailed God's rising from the dead. Giuiliana suggested this was a family outing and I stayed ashore.. I see no one like me. Only soulless tourists. I go into the Sands and have a Daiquiri. Double strength and it's not even noon. After another I show up to an early gay tea dance and grind against hard bodied queers and do poppers. I am a sinner on Easter holiday in the Keys. Fucked up into the bright sunlight without sunglasses. I buy a cheap pair for $5 and stager into Sloppy Joes. Another legendary Daiquiri. I wander over to the fenced Naval base. Mariel boats are piled on each other like the dead. The well-dressed Navy family walks in a row. I was once one of them.

I drink more at the tea dance and resist being queer.

It's easy after a few lines of blow.

It's getting late.

I crossed the bridge over the Garrison Bight and watch the sunset away from the conch madness.

Everything is so flat in Key West.

Flat island, flat streets, flat Gulfstream.

I am so fucked.

DIRTY LOVE BOAT - KEY WEST - APRIL 18, 1982 - Journal Entry

The dirty love boat beached at Duvall Street's eastern end. All its voyages everywhere The Final stop. Key West. Castro refugees fled Havana Keeping boats afloat with prayers, curses And a lot of bailing.

Not one didn't abandon ship Once the dirty love boat stuck sand Not one them are here now And where are these pilgrims?

Not here. Key West The southern terminus of US 1 Two thousand miles south of Ft. Kent Just ninety miles north of Havana.

The Mariel Boatlift ended in the autumn. There never is an autumn in Key West. The refugees came by the thousands. Their abandoned boats are piled Atop other boats in the Navy Yard.

The hippies, homos, and tourists ignore the newcomers. They were transported by immigration to parts unknown Free at last To be detained in Arkansas. Deep inside the Land of the Free.

Key West is a hole in time. The town exists in many decades. I wander the flowered streets Flowing through times beyond my senses. Glad to be away from Manhattan And the cold.

My only conversation are with bartenders. They have had enough of tourists I stand at the end of Duvall Street I sit on the stern of the love dirt boat The wooden wreck smells of hope. I gaze beyond the bikinied teenagers On the beach To the oil tankers on the Gulfstream I stay to myself Stranger to all the strangers Ever watchful for an opening.

April 17, 1981 - Key West - Journal Entry

The Bertonis' rental house in Key West is cool. I have my own bedroom and Guiliana and here daughter cook our meals. Giancarlo, the NYU's head anesthesiologist, chills at the beach reading and smoking weed we buy off the street. It's nothing special, but he likes it that way. I devote my early afternoons to drinking at the Green Parrot and Sloppy Joe's before the tourists flood the legendary bar.

After three days I come to a series of conclusions; firstly this end of the road island is filled with hippies drawn to the myth of an end of the road town closer to Cuba than America. Key West has clean air, a metaphysical sea, a welcoming air of transiency, but the long hairs are stuck in 1968-1972 wit the Summer of Love locked in their hearts. There is no punk music on the juke box, plus these hippies are aging as badly as their ragged clothing like they had just been released from Drug rehab in Kansas to recover their battered senses. I wish them luck.

Secondly the women are unattractive. Locals, transients, and tourists.

The gay community are as time -locked into the haydays of the Haight. None of them seem aware of the killer stalking their clan. having seen James Spicer died of an unknown disease in 1978, I filly aware of the future and am scared for my brothers. This will be bad, but why not dance before Sodom burns.

Next A-15s and Phantom Jets rip off the Naval Air Base tarmac to patrol the DMZ straits separating the USA from Communist Cuba. The Cold War full-tilt. Strangely for such a heavy military presence there are no whores walking Duvall Street.

I've drunk at all of Duvall Street's bars and dives. Hemingway's fishing locals work his myth to the bone without a single customer smelling of fish stink, although tens of boats set out every morning with sports fishermen searching a fighting sailfish on the reel. I don't talk with anyone, but the bartender and that's usually just to order a drink.

I came here for relaxation. Swim in the sea, watch the sunset, get drunk, and be with the Bertonis. I sleep like the dead and my body is recovering from the excesses of the Jefferson Theater. No cocaine for a week now.

The only beautiful females are Midwest high school teenagers on holiday with their obese parents. Happy now unaware of their fate.

The police presence is heavy. They regard every tourist as a potential criminal ready to be hauled into the justice process. NO TRESPASSING and NO HITCHHIKING signs are everywhere. I obey them, but if some hick local seeks trouble, I will help him find it. Damned the jails.

Lastly there are hardly any beaches here. The locals tell the tourists of sharks. I haven't seen a single dorsal fin, but the hotel at the end of Duvall Street barracudas rule the flood-lit water at night. Strangely there are no tales of 'cudas attacks from these vicious sea creatures.

APRIL 15, 1981 - HITCHING TO FLORIDA - JOURNAL ENTRY

I walked our of the Mudd Club at dawn. The gray skies promised snow. I had my bag in hand. I headed to the Holland Tunnel and stuck out my thumb. I was hitchhiking to Florida to meet my friends, the Bertonis, in Key West. The first ride took me to Philadelphia. I wasn't on I-95, but a side highway. It was snowing. A wet hard snow. My feet were wet in an instant. The slushy fall wet my clothing. I had not been expecting this. I was fucked. The sky was dropped down lower.

Planes were taking off to the west from Philly's airport. I had enough of hitchhiking and hailed a passing taxi. The driver took me to the airport, complaining about the weather. I bought a one-way ticket to Miami, which was taking off in fifteen minutes. I ran through the provincial airport and made the flight. It was full of young Spring Break revelers.

I had a trio of seats to myself.

Feeling like a wet dog left outside for bad behavior I ate the offered breakfast of processed eggs and ersatz sausage, washed down by bitter OJ. I crashed across the seat, shivering in my damp jeans and leather jacket and stayed asleep till the pilot announced our landing at Miami International.

Without any package to claim I deboarded the Whisper Jet into the air-conditioned terminal. I bought cheap sunglasses and a Florida map to plot my route to the Keys, then exited into the bright sunlight. I hadn't been in Miami since 1975 and was struck on how the sun-bleached flatness extended from was so flat from the parking lot to the horizon. I jumped on a southbound city bus, instead of hitchhiking since Florida cops had it out for any nails sticking out of the conforming public. They made NYPD seem like hippies. The bus traveled through Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and the outer Cuban barrios and black slums.

By the time the bus reached the end of its route, I was the only Caucasian on it and I felt good about being away from my race.

I began to hitchhike on US 1. The interstate was forbidden to me. B+Cuban and Black construction workers drove down the four-laner below Homestead to Florida City. US 1 was surrounded by the Everglades. A Cuban emigre gave me a ride to Islamorada, where I caught a bus to Key West. The old highway ended at Duvall street. It was 10PM on Duvall Street. The twenty-hour trip was no odyssey. I called the Bertonis. They weren't far away. I was in Key West and I was dry and warm. I walked to their rented house, happy to be away from the last lash of winter.

ps the man in the snowy photo is the poet WH Auden. I think.

April 13, 1981 – The Ritz after the Jefferson Raid – Journal Entry

Paul Garcia, Arthur's partner, at the Jefferson, said he was going to be at the Ritz tonight. I walked there at 10 expecting a no-show, but he was speaking with the owner at the downstairs bar. Jerry signaled the barman and said, "Give this man whatever he wants to drink. He had a rough night."

Jerry was one of us, but not Paul, who surprised me by cuffing me money.

$150.

My nightly pay.

I counted it twice.

"It's all there," the model said annoyed by my distrust.

"I'm not good with numbers." I counted the money again and ordered a Stoly Screwdriver. It was Arthur's favorite drink and

"Thanks for the money." Most people would have stiffed an employee after a police raid. Paul hadn't needed to pay anyone. "Have you seen anyone?"

"Scottie's upstairs," answered Paul without asking anything about the raid. The less he knew the better. "We're opening this weekend. Are you in?"

I nodded yes and raised my glass.

"To the Jefferson."

I climbed the back stairs to the rear bar where Scottie was speaking with the bartender, Don, who was now going out with my ex-, Elizabeth. I was happy for the new couple, but not with Scottie looking over my shoulder.

"What? You think I'd snitched you out to the police?"

Last night I had seen him leave the Jefferson without a police escort. His eyes had met mine. He saw no one and I saw no one back.

"Just checking."

I leaned close and said, "They aren't after us. They're after Arthur."

They were Internal Affairs and the criminal element of the 9th Precinct.

"He made it out the back door."

Arthur had said he was the only one they were after.

"I figured as much. Paul paid me my wages. you know I went into the Jefferson this morning."

Scottie didn't have to ask why.

"Conniver the Australian bartender was my lookout and I climb up to the Marquee. I searched the place for money. I found none, but I got more than a few bags of blow. I did them all with Conniver at my place. It wasn't that much."

"Cool, we're opening this weekend."

"I told Paul I'm in."

"Good." He raised his glass and we silently toasted whatever was in our mind.

Nothing. = ncsza a nbbvcccxxz/.,mnmk,kj '

April 12, 1981 - Booking after the Jefferson Raid - Journal Entry

Manhattan's Central Booking
Early Sunday morning

Our crew of ten from the Jefferson
Our crime
Serving alcohol after 4am.

Photos by an old black turnkey.
Empty our pockets.
Keys, wallets et al.
COs pushing us through a metal detector.
Our after-hour crew shoved in a holding cell
The clank of steel doors
Everyone else a black man
Not us.
Someone asks why we are there.
"After-hours club raid."
We are welcome guests.
I have Kools
Matches too.

Out of the holding pen.
Interrogation
I say nothing.
Forms filled out in triplicate Fingerprints.
Photos
Bad coffee
Someone getting a beating down the hallway.
Arrestees in and out.
I see two people I know from a Harlem after-hours

"When we getting out?"

We see the judge.
He cuts us loose.
We are released into the grey dawn.
Sort of free and I want a drink.
Elizabeth, my ex- shows up. We go to her place.
Free to go anywhere outside the concrete wall of jail.

April 12, 1981 - The Jefferson Raid - East Village - Journal Entry

After midnight above Jefferson Theater the exquisite wickedness of Arthur Weinstein's apartment became a home away from home for hell-bent nightlifers raced at full-tilt to utter abandonment. I ran the door and had to refuse several unlikely party-goers. Something was not right about them. They looked like cops and one couple were too friendly, offering me $50 to get in the door. I refused them and went upstairs to warn Arthur about a possible raid.

"Don't worry , we're covered by the 9th Precinct."

Jimmy Fats sat with three ununiformed local cops.

A bottle of champagne on the table. They thought they owned the place. We never argued with them

"And the back door is open. Any sign of trouble, lock the door and get out of here. We'll meet at the Ritz."

I returned to the entrance and let in more people glomming my usual 10% from the entrance fees. I questioned one man. He looked like he had recently shaved a beard, but he mentioned a friend's name and slipped me a $50. An hour passed without any troubles at the door or inside. Two stocky men approached me. I didn't like their look.

"Sorry, this is a private party." Friends and celebrities skated inside. Anyone else had to wait until I said go and they paid $20 for that privilege.

They said nothing and one of them grabbed the door before I could shut it.

"We know it's a private party and it's over." For a second I blocked his entry, thinking this was a hold-up, but someone behind him said, "Cool it, Fuckhead, we're the police."

"You have a search warrant?"

"Fuckhead, this is a raid." The SWAT cops blocked my escape up the stairs. they were dying to throw me a beating. The The biggest cop thrusted a paper in my face. "Get out of the way."

"How? Where?" I had surrendered to the moment. "Where you want me to move. Tell me."

A female cop I had earlier refused entry spat in my face, "You remember us. Now you're not so high and mighty, faggot."

"I don't remember you at all. I see a lot of people. I never look at the face. Only the eyes." Hers were green.

"Fuck you, you move and I'll shoot you." She put her hand of her pistol.

"Like I said I'm not going anywhere, until someone says where." The uniformed cops pig-piled against me. They had all probably been refused entry to a nightclub. No one wants them inside a club. An older cop in a suit pushed them away. "Chill it, he's not any danger, are you?"

"None at all." My uncle's father had been a Boston homicide detective. I knew that if the police have you, they have you, and if they get shit, they will give more shit than you need in your life. It was time to hold your sand."

"Good. Get upstairs," he ordered the raiding party and told me, "You come with me."

We climbed up the stairs and entering the apartment he grabbed the New Zealand busboy and handcuffed me to his wrist.

"I didn't do nothing."

"Everyone here has done something." He stuck us on couch. SWAT cops were letting out guests and stopping any of the staff. There was no sign of Arthur, but his best friend, Scottie walked by me with Chuck Nanny, an artist. Somehow the ex-Studio 54 bartender had snuck under the cops' radar. We exchanged less than a glance. His eyes said he had the money.

The plain-clothed officers were having people turn out their pockets. I stuffed my money. $700 in my sock. Cellophane packets were scattered on the floor. No one claimed ownership. I stuck my free hand into the couch. My fingers touched several packets. I stuffed them deep under the pillows. The rugby-playing busboy was worried about getting deported back to the Antipodes.

"Don't worry, we'll be fine. Just be patient. This is the weekend and we're not the only after-hour club in the city. I'll take care of you. Keep your mouth shut and just say 'not guilty' when you're asked for your plea"

"Do you have a lawyer?"

No, but we'll get arraigned after eight. That's went the judges come in, unless we're hauled in front of night court. Just say nothing." I had no idea about the process only what I had heard from friends.

Uniformed offers sat more Jefferson employees on chairs; Conniver, the Australian model/waitress, Emma, my ex-, the coat check trans, and Hal Lucader, a gay model/bartender. Griffin Shea, a mouthy minor-league coke dealer from DC/DJ was roughly shoved next to me. Unlike the rest of them both his hands were cuffed before him. Undoubtably the DC brat had probably pulled his father being in the CIA on them. Arthur must have made it out the back door into the alley. I saw 'Sal', a 9th Precinct cop, escorted out of the apartment and I thought, "There goes his pension."

The cops ransacked the apartment for drugs and money. I eyed an older officer and he came up to me, "What?"

"Excuse me, but that guy at the end isn't us." I nodded to Andrew, who had overstayed his visa. "Probably some NYU student scared about his permanent record."

"Are you saying you work here?"

"No without getting read my rights, but I'm not saying anything you don't already know." My family came from cops and lawyers. "This kid is just a stupid busboy."

"You don't want to say anything about yourself, but snitch him out."

"Just let him go."

"In the morning, big shot."

He walked away help his uniformed cops dragged Jimmy Fats from a back room. I later learned that the cops had beaten the NYFD bag man with baseball bats. I doubted he had said a word and shrugged to the busboy.

"I tried. Just remember say nothing, because you know nothing."

A fat donut-eater came up to me and ordered, "Empty your pockets, big shot."

I obeyed his threatening request and pulled out $43.

"That's it?"

"I made a drop before the raid."

He confiscated everyone else's money and I asked, "Can we sign for that?"

"Sorry, I don't have a pen, big shot."

After he left, Griffin whispered with a cocaine wheeze, "I'm going to bolt."

"Bolt?"

"I'm going to break for the marquee and climb out of here. I'll get a cab and call my Dad. He's CIA. He'll deal with this. You in?" Griffin had been recently dumped by Emma, the waitress, for a member of the Rockats and was way gone on blow. I tried to reel him back to Earth.

"Your chances of getting to the marquee are okay, but the climbing down the building manacled to someone else is nil. You'll break your leg, then the police will beat the bejesus out of you."

"Not if I make it."

"I'm out."

"Chicken shit."

"Chicken shit? Go fuck yourself. Go now. Otherwise keep your hole shut." I was angry at him, but more that I hadn't seen the raid coming when it came. I could have shut the door and got out the back. Griffin did nothing and the cops told the men to stand. We were heading downtown to Central Booking.

The older cop told us, "You're being charged with violation of State Liquor Laws. It's a misdemeanor, not a felony, although if you have any legal problems, this could make them worse. Time line? You'll be out of booking by noon at the latest." I groaned, knowing from previous arrests in Boston how long time can be in jail, but this wasn't prison. It was a rainy Sunday morning and a cop joked that we were missing church. No one laughed and we were crowded into a large police van. Jimmy Fats sat on the sidewalk. His right leg was most certainly broken. His face was twisted in pain. I was the last in. Someone shouted my name. Across the street RW was hanging out his wondow. We were friends. I raised my fist and shouted, "Attica."

"Shut up, big shot." A cop shoved me into the van. The cops hated any supporter of the Attica Prison Uprising.

The cops brought down the we left a PBA attorney rescued Jimmy Fats. Their EMS wagon sped away to Bellevue.

The doors shut and we began the voyage downtown.

"Can we stop for pizza. None of us have eaten." <\p>"Pizza for us too."

"Yes, I have $40." The two bills had been in my back pocket.

"Okay."

They stopped at St. Marks and got two pies. They weren't hot. We didn't care. I didn't ask for the change. Griffin was going berserk.

"I want a lawyer. I want a telephone. I want him there when I get there. Fucking pigs."

I leaned over to Griffin.

"If you say another word, I will beat the shit of you worse than any cop beating." The longer the police were pissed at him, the longer they would be pissed at us.

"Oh, yeah, another thing, fuck your father and the CIA." The previous year my sister-in-law, who worked for the Director, tried to get me a job at the Agency. They had rejected me.

The cops brought down Emma, Conniver, and Ellen, or at least I thought her name was Ellen, and put them in a newer and better wagon.

Hal leaned over to me. He was dressed like an Adam and the Ants pirate, which was all the rage in the UK.

"Please don't let them separate us. I don't want to be put in a cage with animals."

"This isn't prison. Just a holding pen." The pretty boy was so pretty was lucky this wasn't prison, otherwise he was some con's stick pussy."

"Say nothing and stick by me. The cops are more worried about illegal Haitians and Cubans than a beautiful boy."

I spoke like I knew the score, but my only brush with the Law had been for a high speed chase in the VW Hatchback. This was all new. We ate the cold pizza on the way down the Bowery to the Tombs. We passed the whores on Delancey who shouted out encouragement. The cop driving asked, "You want some of that? We have time."

"No, I value my life." Something deadly was stalking gays and drag queens. My friend James Spicer had died of it two years ago. No one had a name for it.

We got to Central Booking and rejoined the women. As they processed us, the staff of a Harlem after-hour entered the room. I recognized the bartender. Buff laughed with amusement, "Looks like the party ended uptown and downtown.

"Puto, they ain't downtown. We downtown," said a Latino bouncer from Avenue d and 2nd. "The Midtown to us."

And Flacco was right, but I countered, "Midtown begins at 14th Street, but on the other side of 14th Street from the Jefferson."

"Hell, yeah."

We were us and the pigs were them.

Forever.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 2 By Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after Labor Day the Continental opened its door without a liquor license. Limos lined West 25th Street well past dawn, as models, actresses, and strippers danced with abandon to the city's best DJs. Movie stars snorted coke with two-bit dealers and national politicians seduced Amazonian TVs on pop-art sofas.

Few revelers cared about the illegality of an after-hours club. The precinct police were on the take. Sanitation inspectors glommed drinks with big-hair wives, plainclothes cops strong-armed bribes, and Jimmie Fats siphoned the cash cow for the firemen. Greed blinded the bagmen to Arthur's wearing a wire for Internal Affairs and the FBI investigating our Russian investor for counterfeit twenties. I was counting the days until it all went bad and hoped to not be there then, but $100 tips pushed my day of departure back weekend by weekend.

By Halloween I had $5000. By mid November that amount reached $6000.

A week before Thanksgiving Arthur sold half his share in the Continental to three men in black suits.

"You been talking about leaving. It's a good time for you to leave."

Arthur paid me $500 for the week.

"I don't know where to go." My pockets were crammed with cash. It was getting cold, but I still hadn't spoken to Lisa."

"Anyplace, but here." Arthur nodded at his new partners.

Their shoes were FBI issue.

"I'll leave after Christmas." Another month was worth $3000.

"Don't wait too long." He was trying to tell me something only I wasn't listening as long as Lisa's Nordic profile, blonde hair and sculptured shoulders dogged my peripheral vision.

She was a siren and to other men as well.

Vadim’s bodyguards exercised Slavic etiquette to these suitors in the alley. My obsession rejected fear and I cornered Lisa once, when Vadim was out of town.

"All I want is explanation." It was almost Thanksgiving. The anniversary of her leaving.

"Of what?" She had embraced the comfort of amnesia.

"Why you left and never came back." I had thousands of answers. None of them added up to one plus one equaling two.

"If I explained that, then I would have to tell you everything." She looked through me as if I were glass and wearily walked away, saying "Sometimes you don't get answers."

Refused an answer, I slipped my hand into my pocket for a quarter.

Flipping a coin was another way to see the future.

Heads meant yes. Tails no.

"Does she love me?"

It came up tails.

A spike jabbed my heart like a junkie's hotshot.

"Will she come back to me?"

Tails.

I was plunged into darkness.

"Will we have sex again?"

Heads.

My limitless obsession accepted these 50/50 replies as the truth, especially since Lisa's neglect was a game and she chose to exploit a pawn in December.

The winter dawn broke on the club's fire escape. Danny was playing the Members' SOUNDS OF THE SUBURBS. I stood on the rusting steel, watching the stars fade from the night. High heels clicked onto the steel grating. Lisa wore a black sable fur coat. It was open and her silk shirt was unbuttoned to her waist.

"I needed some air."

Her flawless skin was the color of the first snow.

"It's cold this time of year." I started for the door.

"I'm from Buffalo and it's not that cold in this coat." She leaned against the door. "Don't worry. Vadim is too high to care what I do."

"What about his bodyguards?"

"They're drunk too. Russians like their drink." She reached out for me. "Hold me."

I melted into her like a nuclear core going China Syndrome through the Earth.

After a breathless kiss the ashen blonde claimed, "I haven't stopped loving you."

"Me neither." I wished our bodies were wrapped in silk sheets instead of buffeted by an alley wind.

"I can't give you any answers." Her hands spoke with desire and she looked over her shoulder as if her eyes could see through the steel door.

"I don't want words." It was a well-rehearsed line.

"Good." She pulled me closer and we embraced like lovers in a silent movie for a half-minute. Her heart was bare to my hand and her heart beat like a clock ready to sound its alarm.

"I have to go."

"I understand."

"I wish I didn't have to go."

"Then leave with me. I have $6000. We can go anywhere. Europe, LA, Florida. Anywhere."

"$6000 goes fast." The narrowing of her eyes revealed that she was adding up the pros and cons of my proposition.

"We can rent a house in Key West. I'll work at a bar. We'll watch the sunsets from the pier." I loved the sea. It was only one of a million possibilities, if she said 'yes'.

"Vadim says poets go nowhere." She was weighing my worth.

"Only because I've been waiting for you."

Applause from NYU co-eds had rewarded my poems about two days stranded in Garrison Junction, Montana, yet a drifter's code wasn't tattooed on my skin. "I could get a real job. Move into a nice apartment."

A nine-to-five held little glamour to someone who has travelled first-class through Europe and her icy stare announced her final appraisal. Her hand withdrew from mine.

"Sean, it's a nice dream, but life's too short to live a dream."

My one minute of overtime ran to zero.

"Why you never call?" Asking questions was not part of my daydreams.

"Your phone got shut off." An unpaid bill was only partially the truth.

"You could have sent a postcard." This plea cut the scene short.

"The last thing I need in life is someone who lives for breaking the score of CBGB's pinball machine." Pity was not her forte.

"I'm good at pinball." I owned the record for the SLASH machine at CBGBs.

"But your name isn't Tommy." Lisa fled inside the club and joined Vadim and his partner, Viktor Malenski, in the VIP lounge.

Before I broached the velvet ropes, his two Ukrainian bodyguards created an immovable barrier. I possessed other means of touching Lisa and went to the DJ booth with two beers.

"Nice entrance." Danny sported a broken nose and two black eyes. His hailing from Old New York money more than compensated for a crooked beak with the girls at the Continental. They loved him all the more.

"I wasn't trying to be discreet." "I can see you're treading on razors." Danny touched his nose. "I'm not worried about Vadim's thugs." "Really? The big one punched me for speaking with Lisa. I learned my lesson One punch had taught Danny to keep his distance from Lisa. I think you'd get hit a little harder than me." "I've been hit before." I pushed him away from the turntables and picked out an LP. Danny grimaced at my choice of the Romantics' WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU. "That song only has an audience of one." "Two. You're forgetting me." Two years ago the Romantics had played Hurrah. Hundreds of young women packed the uptown rock club to see the Detroit band. I took a break from the door to check out the show. A blonde stood before the speakers. Her beauty belonged in a fashion magazine and I leaned forward to smell hair fragrant as peaches dipped in burnt tar. Mere mortals didn't stand a chance with her, but she backed into me, as the group played their hit song. Her intent was more than flirtation and I should have retreated to the club's entrance.

My hillbilly girlfriend waited at our East Village apartment. She said she loved me. I ignore her declaration of devotion and grabbed the blonde's hand. The encore of their hit accompanied our sex in the stairwell.

Now Lisa laughed, as if the song was for someone else. The dance floor emptied quickly. Arthur frowned at the DJ booth and slashed his hand in the air to cut the song short.

"Sorry, but I get paid to make people dance." Danny didn't need another broken nose.

"Put something else on." I accepted its failure.

Danny segued to Chic's LE FREAK and ransacked the EPs for a floor-filler to his next tracks.

"There are other women out there."

"And I've been with more than a few." Vixens lounged on the club's over-stuffed sofas in a languid mockery of foreplay and braless teenagers danced like they had graduated from stripper training school. I had slept with several. None of the one-nighters succeeded in erasing the ruins in my head. There had to be a magic word. A gesture. Something to change the present into another now.

"You ever hold something in your hands and know it belongs nowhere else?"

"My Little League baseball bat." Danny grasped an imaginary slugger. "Women are mist on the water and no man can hold onto a ghost."

"Lisa's flesh and blood."

"A zombie is the one ghost you can never raise from the dead."

"She told me she loved me." I watched, as she led Vadim onto the dance floor.

"No phone calls, no letters, and a Russian boyfriend don't spell love in any language."

"Not if you're only reading the subtitles." Lisa swayed to the music without looking my way and Vadim moped like a trained bear. I danced better than him and I had read her TS Eliot in the bed of a Niagara Falls Hotel. Poetry under the sheets had to count for something, but cutting in was not an option. The bodyguards glared at me.

"She never said she was going away forever."

"Never can change to forever in a heartbeat. You were a poet a year ago. Your shit was funny. Why you stop?"

"I walked into a bookstore. Thousands of books were on the shelves. At least five hundred said what I felt."

Self-pity delivered a coup de grace to my muse.

"So now you're a thug."

"And Vadim is a gangster." Vadim and Lisa stopped dancing and went to the coat check. They were leaving for the night. My quitting time was dawn.

"If a woman has to choose between the lesser of two evils then she'll always go for the money."

"Love's not about money." Not at the moment of orgasm.

"That coat is worth more than you earned last year." Danny focused a light on Vadim covering her shoulders with a sable fur.

"So?" My memories of Lisa rotted like a Playboy pictorial left in the rain.

"So no matter how much a woman loves you, she'll always seek the safest harbor."

"And my life's too messy to offer a woman shelter." My apartment was in a ghetto, my bank account languished in double figures, and my plans for the future extended no further than breakfast.

"You're a storm at sea." Danny spun TAINTED LOVE and revelers thronged onto the dance floor.

Arthur waved for me to return to the door, as a flat-chested brunette in a slick black leather dominatrix outfit slinked into the DJ booth. Several men on the dance floor recognized Sherri. My cousin had starred in scores of XXX movies. Her most famous role was as a teenage runaway. I had seen the film twice. We had met in a Times Square bar after she tilted my pinball machine. Our mutual affinity for self-destruction determined that we were better off friends than lovers.

"Hi, cous." Sherri greeted me with a kiss on the cheek.

Sherri was more than a hellbound succubus. The porn star was smart and very funny. We had good times together. Claiming a family tie avoided any explanation of our relationship.

"You've really have to give her up. No woman will cross a bridge she’s burned." Sherri followed my eyes to the couple exiting the club.

"What if I walked across water?"

"We're sinners and sinners can only perform sin, not miracles." Sherri's failures in love rivaled my debacles.

"I can change my ways like St. Paul."

"St. Paul was chasing redemption, not another man's woman."

"Your cousin thinks Lisa's and his bodies were created for one another." Danny almost played James Brown's IT'S A MAN'S WORLD and then switched to Sly Stone's TAKE ME HIGHER. "Like Adam and Eve."

"I don't care what is written in the Bible, God created the first woman for himself. Adam had to make do with the animals until God got tired with Eve." Sherri's opinion of men hovered below the ground.

"I'm not saying Lisa was created for me."

"No woman is created for any man." Sherri preferred girls. Her fans felt the same way.

"And worst you think there are only two kinds of women other than your mother."

"Only two." I had thought there were at least five.

"Marlon Brando has his way Blanche in STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and two minutes later is calling out, "Stella." Your ex-girlfriend looks like a virgin, except she’s sleeping with another man. Men can't choose between the virgin and the whore. You have one. You want the other. No woman can be both. Not the Virgin Mary. Not even me."

"Okay, most men are suckers, but all I want is someone to love." I was hoping that she possessed a secret potion, instead Sherri said, "Your first night with Lisa you supposedly 'made love' five times. At least that's what you told me." Danny's eyes widened in admiration.

"My heart was on fire."

"Yes, and that 'five times' has been a yardstick for involvement with a woman. Lust is not love. Lust is lust. See the girl in the boa feathers."

A scantily-clad redhead teased a circle of leering worshippers. Che Chasta was the leading lady in Sherri's films.

"I told her you were good in bed."

"How would you know?" Danny turned up the volume.

"If I'm great, then my cousin has to be at least good." Sherri tapped my cheek.

"Are you two really cousins?" Danny had a thing for Sherri. "You don't look alike." "That's, because I was adopted, but our blood is still thicker than thieves." She dragged me from the DJ booth. The hopes of the redhead's admirers were dashed by Che's kissing my cousin like a boa swallowing its prey.

"Che, I think you should go home with my cousin." The two women were more than on-screen lovers, but Sherri wanted to keep her distance. "He needs some TFC."

"And I'm an expert at 'tender fucking care'." Che's feathery caress scintillated my marrow. "Anything stopping you?"

Lisa had left with another man. The sexual revolution was burning the moral tenets of America. Everything was 'go' and not 'no'.

"Just a second." I went up to Arthur. "I need to go home."

"I can see why." The wily owner glanced over my shoulder at the waiting redhead. "Good luck."

Envy accompanied my departure. The bouncers flicked thumbs up, as we got in the taxi. Che gave the driver a show on the way to a Tribeca loft. In the elevator she stripped naked, singing Rick James' SUPER FREAK, "I'm a Super Freak, Super Freak."

"You're really sexy." Her lingerie smelled of cigarette and Estee Lauder perfume.

"I hear that all the time."

"You have anything else you want to tell me?"

I spoke dirty. She cooed with a little girl voice and caressed herself with a shiver. The elevator door opened and she danced into the loft. Cameras and lights were arranged around a large bed.

"Tomorrow Sherri and I are shooting two sex scenes." She unzipped her boots. "Tonight I need to rehearse."

Che lay on the sheets. Her breasts flattened on her chest. I peeled off my clothes. I knelt between her thighs. Her tongue licked at her lips and hands guided me inside. I shut my eyes. Men across America would have killed for this moment of heaven, except my erection withered under a phantom's stranglehold and I faked a premature ejaculation. "Don't feel so bad, softies happen to a lot of men with me," Che consoled me with an expertise forged by cinematic sex. "Let me fluff you for seconds." Che expertly tried to arouse me, but something was broken. After three minutes she stopped and asked, "You're not gay, are you?" "No, I'm sorry." I didn't want to discuss about my futile fixation and deserted the sex icon, for my East Village apartment, where I scissored women from glossy stroke books to construct a Frankenstein collage of Lisa. Our reunion was the one lie I believed, as December collapsed towards Christmas.

I lived off cocaine bribes from customers and sold the excess to customers. My $6000 rose to $8000, but I wasn't leaving, despite things going downhill fast.

Sherri was arrested by the precinct police for possession. My threat of snitching to Internal Affairs prevented her being the station house’s party favor. Vadim ODed on heroin. My reviving him earned scant thanks from Lisa, although the Russian stopped cease to consider me his enemy. Danny's parents threw him out of the apartment after he stole a family heirloom. He crashed on my couch. We were our own worst enemies. Inexplicably outsiders viewed our lifestyle as glamorous.

A French magazine front-paged my photo and their journalist wrote that I was a legend at 29. Bernard based this title on my urban exploits without any knowledge of my stalking Lisa from her apartment on East 73rd Street to Vadim' Central Park penthouse or tailing the couple's ricochets around Manhattan.

Vadim never spotted my gaze, as he met with Odessa diamond traffickers and his thugs visited gulag violence on complete strangers. Lisa endured the beatings with heartless sighs, but I wasn't the pair's only shadow.

Right before Christmas Vadim's partner was arrested by the FBI. Viktor refused to talk. The precinct police were hauled before Internal Affairs. They maintained a silent wall of blue. These harbingers of the approaching end failed to pierce my narco-ambulation. My wake-up call came on New Year's Eve, when Viktor Malenski was shot dead in front of the club.

This execution bared the Continental to a public frenzy fed by the city's newspapers. I had only heard the shots, yet my name skirted the periphery of the widening scandal of drugs, fame, and beauty with NYPD's Internal Affairs drawing lines between the dots.

Lisa came to my apartment. We stayed in bed for an entire day. She swore that she hadn't pulled the trigger. I believed her every word and pleaded ignorance nothing during a police interrogation.

"Don't leave town." The Internal Affairs sergeant wasn't buying my version.

Nineteen cops were suspended from the force. I knew half their names. Arthur knew them all. A phone call from Paris averted my appointment as state's witness.

Bernard told me that the magazine Actuel wanted for an American to work a nightclub in Paris. Bad French was a prerequisite for the position of physionomiste. A round-trip ticket was waiting at Air France. My passport was up-to-date and I asked Lisa what I should do.

"You have to go. We won't be safe here. Not from the police. Not from Vadim's gang." She lay in my arms naked. Her skin smelled of tar. "I'll meet you in Paris five days from now."

"Notre-Dame." It had to be easy to find.

"At noon." She sealed the pact with a long kiss.

The morning of the flight I felt like Ingrid Bergman's leaving Rick in CASABLANCA.

Lisa walked away from East 10th Street, saying. "Twelve noon."

"In five days." I tried to trap her scent in my lungs, but exhaled as her taxi merged with the traffic on 1st Avenue.

Sherri drove me to the airport. Che was in the front seat. They were heading cross-country to set up a life in LA. I sat on the rear seat with Sherri's parrot, Boo.

"Best thing about this trip is your leaving that blonde bitch." Sherri dodged a truck. She was colorblind and couldn't see brake lights.

"She's meeting me in Paris."

Both women groaned and Boo cackled, "Ha-ha."

"You really think she's going to meet you?" Sherri glanced in the rear-view mirror.

"She says she loves me." That shifted the odds to 50/50.

"You buy her a ticket?" Che swung her head to the back.

"No, she said she would get it from her agency."

"Make that 9 to 1."

"Which are better odds than I had before." Slush on the Grand Central Parkway slowed traffic. I leaned back in the seat. Paris would be our refuge. I would write a book. Lisa would grace the cover of ELLE. We'd practice French in bed, drink espresso in small cafes, and wander along the Seine in the rain.

"Everything will be fine." Sherri turned on the wipers.

"Whenever I'm in her, I feel like she is a glove." Lisa's scent simmered on my skin as burnt fruit. "She has to feel the same way too."

"I’ve been hundreds of men and I've never found one who fits me. On the other hand women are another story." Sherri reached over to Che. Boo screeched her support.

"This will work out."

"Cous, don't bet your heart on a long shot," Sherri was glad to say it about someone else other than herself.

"I promise I won't."

Sherri braked before the Air France terminal. We hugged good-bye. I said she should visit Paris. She told me the same thing about LA and then drove away into a flurry of snow.

I half-expected the police to stop my boarding the Air France flight, but I got on the plane and within in an hour the 747 was banking north over the northern tip on Long Island.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 1 By Peter Nolan Smith

New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it wasn’t in the winter of 1979.

The sun boiled the asphalt. Punk had been replaced by New Wave and somehow the city had escaped bankruptcy. Money flowed on the streets and even the East Village exhibited signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before ashes won’t catch fire.

People had work.

Mine was menial construction on an after-hours club along the Hudson River.

After paying rent, I had enough money for either Chinese take-out or beers at CBGBs. I lost weight and thought about robbing a bank. Whenever I entered one, guards placed their hands on the guns like they were mindreaders. I was no Jesse James.

Daytime employment seemed the solution to my desperate situation. I had a college degree. My record was clean. I’d worked nine-to-fives before and knew they didn’t kill you, however Arthur, the nightclub owner had promised the work crew various jobs once the International opened its doors.

At his previous after-hour club I had coined $500-700 a night. We hoped to open before Labor Day. On August 13th the club was $20,000 short of our goal. Construction lurched to a halt. I started reading the New York Times’ Help Ads.

The International was saved by the arrival of a criminal refugee from Odessa. His money was rumored to come from smuggling Tsarist icons. The source was unimportant. The club was a dead issue without his help.

Arthur said Vadim had a beautiful blonde girlfriend. "Almost cover girl pretty, but too short to succeed on the runways."

"Sounds like your old girlfriend." Danny Gordon, the DJ, had heard that she came from Buffalo.

"No, couldn’t be."

A year ago Lisa had left for a modeling job in Milan. I hadn’t heard from her since. No calls. No letters, although when I spotted her in a French lingerie magazine, I almost flew to Paris, except she could have been in London, Milan, or Munich, so I remained in New York to be haunted by her distant footsteps on cobble-stoned European streets.

“She’s gone for good.”

“No one leaves New York forever.”

Native New Yorkers like Danny considered anywhere else purgatory. “She’ll be back.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Up to now I had been forgetting Lisa piece by piece. The smell of her skin after sex. She laughed, as if I told a bad joke, but I recalled her stilted dancing to the Psychedelic Furs in London, our buying leather jackets together in Camden market. Hers had been white, mine was black. I remembered everything, because some memories had lives of their own. No matter how many drinks and no matter how many years.

“Still it would be funny if it was her.” Danny wasn’t letting go either. He had a thing for her. Any man would if she looked his way.

“Funny, but not ha-ha funny.”

I hoped it wasn’t Lisa, but despair told me it was and I chucked a hammer at his head. The missile missed by a foot and put a dent in an op-art sculpture from the 60s. Arthur noticed the damage a week later. Danny and I denied any knowledge of how it got there.

The Russian’s cash accelerated the final stages of the construction. The walls were painted lilac purple and the sound system was wired through the club. A Labor Day opening appeared realistic and on the hottest day of summer the Russian came to inspect his investment.

We were tearing down a last section of the ceiling. It was a dirty job. Rat dust caked my sweating flesh. Danny and I couldn’t have been lower of the feeding chain of Manhattan.

“Guys, I want you to meet Vadim.” Arthur shouted from the entrance.

The gang on the scaffolding stopped working and sucked on bottles of water before glancing through salt-stung eyes at a muscular man in his late-20s. Vadim wore a pastel linen suit. He was clean. The crew muttered hellos. Mine was silenced by the sight of a slender blonde in snug Versace. Lisa’s b-grade beauty was as haughty as a dethroned princess checking into a Holiday Inn.

“So much for the lack of coincidences.” Danny nudged my ribs.

“It’s a small world.” My throat tightened under a garrote of lost memories. “And a long life.” “Think she recognizes you?” Danny wiped a layer of grime from his face.

“Not unless she looks my way.” My body was black with soot.

Her head turned to our perch. A dice roll of jade green eyes indicated my lack of social progress had not disappointed her low expectations for a punk poet.

“No, she hasn’t forgotten.” Danny laughed at my pained expression, as Vadim, Lisa and Arthur disappeared into the office.

Right before our lunch break, Lisa and Vadim exited from the office. She covered her mouth with a scarf. Vadim did the same with his hand. They left the site without a glance in our direction. After lunch we resumed work at a faster pace. By 4pm the ceiling had been replaced and Arthur called it a day. He was easier to work for than his other partner, a model who was on the cover of Time Magazine as a herpes sufferer.

As the rest of the crew filed from the club, Arthur pulled me aside. “This isn’t going to be a problem?”

“What?” I played dumb.

“You and Vadim’s girlfriend.” He was serious.

“Lisa?” Over the past year her name had floated in my mind a million times. This was the first time I had said it.

“Is it a problem, kid?” Arthur was risking his health by taking on Vadim as an investor. Russian from Odessa were no punks.

“No, she’s nothing to me.”

“Good, then stay away from her.”

“That what I intend to do.”

“Good.” He lifted a finger. “Vadim is a piece of work.”

Obeying his advice wasn’t hard. Lisa ignored me and I couldn’t blame her. I was a failure and not even 28. The Continental might change that status. Three months as the doorman would earn $5000 in tips and salary. That amount could finance a winter in Maine to write my first novel about a free love community in the 1840s.

WATCHIC POND was destined to garner the best-sellers lists. The world would worship my words and Lisa would run back to my arms. Self-delusion rarely offered any options approaching the truth, especially since there is no lies more believable than those you tell yourself.

Riot At The Ritz 1981

In May 1981 PIL, the front band for ex-Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten was approached by the Ritz in the East Village to fill in for Bow Wow Wow. The band wasn't into doing the gig but according to Ed Caraballo, the band's cameraman said to the band, "Wait,they have all this fabulous video equipment there and we could do this really cool performance art thing.' He said 'yeah?' So we went down to check it out."

After seeing the stage the band decided to play behind a screen just to piss off the audience.

The night was bad.

Rain.

A sell-out Bow Wow Wow crowd.

PIL tormented the audience by not letting anyone into the Ritz until the arrival of Johnny Lydon.

The bouncers were my friends. I resold the tickets for SRO shows. Tonight was a one of those nights. We all stood to make several hundred dollars, so they let me in before anyone else, saying, "Make us green."

I don't remember the first band, but after their set I descended to the door and grabbed a stack of tickets from the bouncers. Everyone was in a good mood. Money has that way with us back in the 1980s.

The tickets went fast and I handed the bouncers their share.

50/50 in my favor.

The dance floor was packed and I went to the sound booth.

The audience was shouting, "PIL, PIL, PIL."

I was standing next to Jerry Brandt, the owner, and asked, "What's with the screen?"

"Johnny Lydon wanted it."

"For what?"

The crowd was pissed at the long wait in the rain and the even longer delay in the Ritz. It was almost 1am. The audience was getting nasty, They wanted a show and wanted it thirty minutes ago.

Some woman came out and yelled on a mike, "HI, I'M LISA YAPP! I'M HERE TO TALK ABOUT PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED!"

Beer bottles flew at the stage and I turned to Jerry and said, "Watch this."

"What?"

"A riot. But don't worry, you're with me." I had a reputation back then and $500 in my pocket. Half of it should have gone to the club, but that half was better in my pocket.

The music was trash.

But good trash, however the audience wanted to see the band.

It wasn't happening.

More beer bottles hit the screen.

Then Johnny berated his fans, "Sil-ly fuck-ing aud-ience, sil-ly fuck-ing aud-i-ence..."

"Fuck."Jerry on the phone to security.

It's too late.

PIL sucks and they don't care if they suck.

This is art.

And Johnny's loving the danger.

It's 1981.

I told Jerry, "I'll see you later."

"Fuck you too."

He wasn't happy with any of it.

I wouldn't have been happy either if I was him, but I wasn't and had $500 in my pocket, which was a lot in 1981 and still is today.

PIL PIL PIL

To see the riot online, please go to the following Url

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ru6TuywY-0