The Longevity of Women

My late Uncle Carmine theorized that the longevity of women was due to the fact that men wait for women and every minute and hour stolen from a man was stored within a genetic code of a woman's body. In America that advantage of life over death amounted to more than five years and I swore that I have felt the tug of their vampiric vacuum on more than one occasion, but never more than when I made a date with a young model to see a movie in Lincoln Center.

The year was 1981. The girl's name was Julie. Neither of her eyes looked in the same direction. I had a thing for wall-eyed girls.

We had met at the filming of DOWNTOWN 81. The set had been at Danceteria on West 45th Street with Jean-Michel Basquiat as the star of the movie.

I was an extra as was Julie. She should have been more, because the lithe brunette could have passed as a double of Francoise Hardy, the 70s French pop singer and I had a thing for the Yeh-Yeh Girl too.

Between takes Julie said that she was a painter.

I found out that her good friend was Manny's daughter. Manny had a diamond store on Canal Street. I ate lunch there on occasion. His son, Richie Boy, was also an extra. He had a thing for most beautiful women and swooped on Julie like a vulture striking a baby lamb.

Julie wasn't impressed with his Crassanova tactics and sought refuge with me.

Jean-Michel came over to say hello. He had once painted my refrigerator. I told Julie that I forced my hillbilly girlfriend wipe it off. She laughed at my stupidty. Laughter was always a good sign with a woman and even better she agreed to see Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD with me.

"It's a German movie about a conquistador seeking the cities of gold in the Amazon."

"I've heard about it." She was studying art at Parsons.

"There's a Five o'clock show at Lincoln Center."

"I'll meet you at 4:45 after my class." She scribbled a phone number on a napkin and left with Richie Boy's sister. They lived together underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

"You going out with her?" Richie Boy ordered us beers. The bar was offering drinks at half-price.

"5 O'clock Show for AGUIRRE." I was pleased by her saying 'yes'. "Tomorrow."

"Good luck." We clinked glasses and I went home early. Julie didn't seem like the kind of girl who went for men with a hang-over.

The next afternoon I arrived at the theater 30 minutes early and bought two tickets.

Fifteen minutes passed without any sign of Julie. I searched the faces on the sidewalk. No Julie. She had stood me up and I sold my tickets to a couple holding hands.

The two were very grateful, since the show was a sellout.

A friend tended bar farther up Broadway. I had two drinks and told him about my non-date.

"Typical of women in this city. Always saying yes to a back-up plan."

Julie could have had 13 plan Bs. She was that beautiful.

I paid for my drinks and wandered back downtown, thinking I might watch a XXX film at ShowWorld on the Minnesota Strip. The girls on screen weren't real, but they were always punctual.

As I neared the theater in Lincoln Center, I spotted Julie running to the ticket booth.

"Am I late?" Her question swirl as a life-sucking fog around my body.

"Late?"

Her breathing was off pace and her out-of-synch eyes wavered in their gaze between mine, as if she were hypnotizing a cobra.

"Well, am I?"

I didn't know what to say.

Men waited hours for beauty like hers.

If I answered 'yes', those lost two hours would be banked in her longevity account. The first seconds of 5 O'Clock were fleeing my soul and I fought for my life by saying, "No, I just got here too."

"Really?" Her mesmeric stare was transformed by doubt. Disappointment broke her mirror of confidence and the stolen time of the past two hours snapped back into my eternity.

"Sorry, I'm late. You still want to see the movie?"

"Sure." I bought two tickets and we entered the theater. She kissed me during the closing credits. I thought that it was an apology, but later in my life I realized that it was a kiss of surrender and the start of a brief affair.

That summer she left for France to be a model. I drove her to the airport.

Several months later I fled New York for Paris. We saw each other there, though she could only love someone who would give her his time and I wanted to live forever. I guess that she thought me selfish.

As far as I know Julie is alive in Paris. I hope that she lives long. Most women do and it ain't no secret why.

Least not to me.

ps Men outlive women in Afghanistan.

Big surprise.

Black Silver Screen Of Yesteryear

Thomas Beller recently wrote in the New Yorker about the closing of the Lincoln Theater Cinemas.

"There is something disturbing about a blank movie marquee. It’s like a face without a mouth. I don’t mean the brief transitory blankness when the lettering for one movie is taken down at the end of its run to be replaced with lettering for the next movie but, rather, a marquee that remains blank, day after day, week after week. This has been the condition of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas marquee, on Sixty-third Street and Broadway, for the past six months. The theatre closed at the end of January, the lease not renewed. Every time I pass it by, the blankness provokes a feeling that some crime has been committed here. For a while, as though to make the metaphor explicit, some construction equipment beneath the marquee was surrounded by yellow tape. The theatre had been at that location for thirty years, but its legacy dates much further back, to a pair of cinema visionaries and entrepreneurs named Dan and Toby Talbot."

The couple were quintessential New York people, who had run the theater since the 1960s.

It is sad to see another theater close.

For me the closure of the Ziegfield was a mortal blow.

During the 70s my friends and I would hit the theater for 1st day showing of so many movies.

I worked at Hurrah, a punk nightclub, across from the Lincoln Center and once made a date with Julie, a waifish cross-eyed model, to view AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD ( maybe ). It was an early show so I could go to work after THE END. Our appointment was scheduled for 3:45. The movie was at 4.

4:15.

No Julie.

I crossed Broadway and kill time at O'Neal's Saloon with a meal and spoke to the bartender who wisely opined that the reason men die before women was that they are always late and the time they steal from men is put into their eternal time clock.It sounded good to me and I left the bar to catch the new showing.

As I approached the theater, I spotted Julie hurrying up Broadway.

She arrived out of breath and said, "Sorry, I'm late."

In her mind she imagined that I had waited two hours for her and maybe she wasn't wrong.

I think we sat downstairs and we didn't make out.

She was that kind of girl.