MAYBE TOMORROW - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The clouded horizon buried the autumn sun and the moonless gloom smothered the Connecticut Hills. Only the headlights of holiday traffic on the Interstate challenged the darkness. Few travelers noticed the rundown motel hidden in the woods off exit 74. Its neon sign had been out of order since the summer. A red GTO with Maine plates was parked before Room # 21. Its door was locked. Inside a kaleidoscope of TV reds, greens, and blue cascaded over the queen-sized bed. A young man and a teenage girl on the mattress watched THE BIONIC WOMAN with opposing levels of interest. Mike Valle tossed the empty beer can into the corner and the skinny brunette in the red dress asked, "When we leaving?"

"After I'm done with my beers." The tattooed mechanic lifted a can of Narragansett from the cooler. "You want one?"

She had barely sipped hers.

"One's my limit." Tammi West grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the night table. She had never been a drinker, although the thirst ran hard in her family. Both sides.

"All the more for me." Mike cracked the can with a beer key and fantasized about a night with Lindsey Wagner. The female lead of the TV show was almost as beautiful as Farah Fawcett, THE BIONIC MAN's real-life wife and # 1 on every males wish list. The girl on the bed offered no competition to either star.

Tammy's shoulder-length hair was a nonspecific brown in contrast the blonde tresses of THE BIONIC MAN's goddess. Her tomboy body was not destined for the centerfold of Playboy. None of this mattered to Mike. Her reputation as his hometown's slut trumped beauty, fame, and fortune. Mike chugged his beer. He was happy to be here and not Kittery, Maine. Away from family and friends with Tammi.

Semi-trailers on the highway sang ‘let's go'. The rising scree of empties signaled this room as their destination for the night. Tammi sat up in the bed.

"You said we were driving straight to New York."

"New York's a hellhole. What's the rush?"

"The more miles between me and Maine the better." The tobacco rasped into her lungs and harvested a cough. Smoking was a new habit. One day old. She hd found the pack in her sister's leather jacket.

"Are you scared of New York?"

"I'm not scared of anything." He had a .38 under his seat of his GTO.

"What about you?" Mike's hand slipped up Tammi's dress. "You afraid of the cops?"

"Yes, and you should be too. You crossed three state lines with a sixteen year-old girl. Somewhere in this country that's against the law." She squirmed out of his grasp and hoped that the danger of transporting a minor might register in his brain.

"Being an outlaw don't scare me." None of his fellow workers at the Kittery Navy had ever accused him of being a deep thinker and he bragged, "I've been to reform school for breaking and entering. Robbing summer cottages was an easy way to get liquor in the winter."

"I'm not looking to break any laws." Her face didn't match the one on the driver's license, which she had stolen from her stepsister. Any stop by the police meant a direct ride back to Kittery, Maine.

"Wild thing, no one's breaking any laws."

The re-run of THE BIONIC MAN paused for a commercial break. Mike hooked a finger into her strands and lowered his face to her hair. The mixture of Breck shampoo and cigarettes was a turn-on and he shut his eyes.

"We're a team. Anyone ever say you're a dead ringer for Faye Dunaway?"

"All the time."

Tammi fought from laughing out loud. The Hollywood actress dated movie stars and she was an underage runaway stuck with a loser.

"That's us. Bonnie and Clyde on the run." Mike unzipped his jeans. "I saw that movie three times. I really liked the scene of them in bed."

"I like the getaway scenes better." Tammi squirmed to the edge of the mattress,.Mike hauled her closer to him. She wasn't getting away.

"I think the hotel scene came first." His left hand flicked open her bra strap. "Bonnie didn't give Clyde a struggle."

She let him fondle her breasts. She wanted out of here. The faster this was over the better.

"You know I could drive your car, while you drink those beers."

"No teenybopper's drivin' my Goat." Mike had worked a winter of double- shifts at the Navy Yard and paid cash for the muscle machine.

"I learned to shift gears from my older sister. She has her license."

Tammi had taken to driving her stepmother's banged-up Cutlass, while the old lady had been asleep. Solo. It had been an automatic. She always brought it back unscratched, but a neighbor had snitched out joy-riding and her stepmother had tanned Tammi's backside with a belt. "You learn anything else?"

The pipe fitter toyed with her nipples.

"Yeah, never take a ride with a stranger."

"That's real funny, because we're not strangers."

"I never met you before." Kittery wasn't a big town.

"That's right, but I know you. Everyone in town does." His right hand mauled her thigh.

"What you hear?" Tammi stiffened with shame.

"Some stories about this and that."

Mike yanked down his pants without getting them farther than mid-thigh. His cock was a flaccid worm. He had drunk too many beers and two Seconals. He rose to his knees and wavered on the mattress.

"They're not true."

"Maybe not, but this afternoon I saw you walking on Tenney Hill Road in that red dress, black leather jacket, and high heel shoes. I told myself, "That's Tammi West." I stopped and asked where you were going and you said, "New York or the highway."

"I don't remember you saying anything about a motel room in the boondocks."

"This was a pit stop for beer and something else. You know what I mean?"

"Men only want one thing from a girl."

"Same thing you gave up to the football team after the Saco High game." Mike tugged off Tammi's bra.

"That story is a lie." She pushed him away with a strength born from a long- held anger. "I went to the Fort McClury with the quarterback, Brad. His friends showed up. Luckily a police cruiser entered the parking lot. The football players drove off. I walked home. Nothing happened."

"Really, well, I heard you did them all and same as this summer at that rich kid's party in York. That a lie too? You make friendly like that and we'll be leaving soon."

"So you want to meet up with that girl from the party?" Tammi couldn't deny the truth, but no one ever listened to her side of the story. She wished he shut up. He didn't.

"Yes, I do."

"We do it, you think you can get back in the car and drive like the devil to New York?"

"You put it that way and I'm Satan's chauffeur." Mike pried apart her legs.

"Then I'm yours." Tammi shut her eyes expecting a rough entry, except the pipe-fitter passed out onto the bed with a snort. She tapped his face lightly twice and once hard before slithering from under him to whisper, "Sorry Clyde, but Bonnie's moving on to better things."

Cars were on the highway. Half of them in the direction of New York. Neither the police nor her stepmother stood a chance of finding her there and come the summer a Greyhound bus would take her to California, Florida, or New Orleans, where Tammi West disappeared forever.

The teenager crept into the bathroom and gently shut the door. She put on her bra and panties, then pulled down the hem of stepsister's red dress. At least Mike hadn't ripped anything.

Tammi stood before the mirror. A quick smear of lipstick and rouge added a couple of years to her face, not that many drivers cared about the age of a teenage hitchhiker. She slinked into the bedroom and grabbed her stepsister's black leather jacket off the floor. The young girl picked up her high heels, plucked $80 from Mike's wallet, then tiptoed to the front door.

The click of the lock was too loud.

"Where you goin'?" The pipefitter demanded through a firefight of blinks.

"Out for some air." Tammi yanked at the door.

"I didn't blow off my mom's turkey for you to split on me." Mike leapt out of the bed and seized her wrist.

"I'm not splitting. I'm just going out for a smoke."

"Then why was your hand in my pants?" Mike kicked his jeans against the wall.

"I'm looking for cigarettes."

"Bullshit. The cigarettes are on the night table." Mike's fingernails painfully pierced her skin. "You're a little thief."

"No, I'm not." She tried to twist free, but Mike wasn't that drunk. "Let me go." "Not until you give me back what you took."

The naked pipe-fitter slapped Tammi's face. The back of her head slammed against the wall and the teenager shook off the stars swimming in her eyes.

"You bitch. I'm gonna teach you."

"You're not teaching me nothing."

Tammi West was no man's punching bag and she swung her high heels with all her might. The stilettos cracked into Mike's skull and his eyes fluttered like a slot machine twirling round and round to skip the cherries. A second shot dropped him to the floor. She grabbed her bag and cigarettes, then darted out of the room across the parking lot into the woods. The underbrush snatched at her legs and she lost her balance in the cold damp grass. The teenager tumbled down the embankment to the Interstate and lost a shoe in the tumble.

Tammi scrambled to her feet on the breakdown lane. The oncoming headlights overwhelmed her vision. Her stepmother had cut out scores of newspaper articles about runaway girls mutilated by highway weirdos. The local police had conducted yearly seminars warning the girls in her high school the dangers of hitchhiking. Never to the boys. She had no choice. She stuck out her thumb.

A supercharged V-8 engine roared in the motel parking lot. Someone had to stop for her and she didn't care, if her ride was a homicidal maniac as long as she was gone before the GTO got here.

A big white Olds lumbered past by a hundred feet to stop in the breakdown lane. Tammi hobbled on one shoe to the passenger door and jumped inside.

"Go, mister, go."

"Go where?" The long-haired driver examined her, as if she were a danger to herself and him.

"Anywhere, but here." Tammi slammed shut the door.

"You want me take you home?"

"Not home. Anywhere, but there too. Go." Tammi prayed that the driver in the suede jacket wasn't a stoner like most of the heads in her high school. She needed a car jockey like in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. Someone not afraid of fast.

"Okay, I'm going already." The hippie pulled into traffic at a less than urgent speed. "A girl your age shouldn't be out here this time of night."

"I'm 18." The young driver didn't look like a pervert, but Tammi moved closer to the door.

"More like 17."

"17 or 18, I'm old enough to be here or anywhere else as long as it isn't where I was." Tammi rubbed the bruise on her face. "Where you headed, Mister?"

"New York."

"Same as me?" She couldn't believe her luck.

"You have family there?"

"I have no family there, which is why I'm going there." Tammi bit her lower lip and glanced over her shoulder. A hundred headlights filled the highway. Only one of them mattered to her.

"Shit."

The red GTO roared up to the Olds with the horn blowing.

"Who's that?"

"Mistah, I swear to God this guy will kill me, if you stop." Tammi clasped her hands together in a frantic plea. "Go faster."

"You think this piece of shit can outrun a Goat?" The driver looked over at GTO. The Olds 88 had a Rocket V-8. The GTO had a turbocharged 455. The Olds wasn't as fast as the GTO, but it outweighed the muscle car by at least five- hundred pounds. Screams through the passenger window contorted the slick-haired motörhead's face. His words lost on the wind.

"I can't read lips, but your boyfriend doesn't seem too happy about you skipping out on Thanksgiving dinner."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"He's no stranger either."

"Watch out," Tammi shrieked a warning.

The GTO's veered within an inch of driver's side and the hippie steered the Olds 88 clear of a sideswipe.

"This will knock the fight out of that asshole." The hippie reached under the seat to come up with a tire iron.

"Mister, don't stop. I'm serious about him killing me." Tammi begged the driver.

"No one's killing anyone tonight." The hippie juked the steering wheel to the left and the GTO avoided sideswiping the Olds 88. "My father always says a car is the most dangerous weapon in America, especially when the driver doesn't give a shit about his car."

"Mister, he has a gun."

The pistol pointed straight at them.

The long-haired driver slammed on the brakes and the GTO nosed ahead of the Olds. A flash of fire spurted inside the muscle car. No bullet cracked the windows and the hippie dropped the tire iron on the floor.

"You're right. We're not stopping." He clenched the steering wheel with both hands.

"What are you going to do?" She locked her fingers together not to God, but to the driver of the 88.

"Not give him a second chance to kill us." The hippie checked the road ahead and behind of the two cars. The Interstate was strangely empty. "Hold on."

The Olds swung behind the GTO and the driver stepped on the accelerator. The solid steel bumper rear-ended the muscle car and the GTO fishtailed off the highway into a copse of saplings. Tammi clapped her hands with delight. The driver pushed the Olds over 100 mph.

"Keep an eye out for the GTO." The hippie didn't break a smile.

"I don't see it." Tammi's heart beat a long drum roll in her chest.

"Good."

A road sign announced an exit a half-mile ahead. The Olds reached the off-ramp in twenty seconds and swept up the exit onto a country road.

"This isn't the highway to New York."

"We're taking the back roads to avoid your friend. It'll add an hour or more, but better than having someone shoot at us again. That okay by you, Cinderella?"

"Whatcha mean, Cinderella?"

"You're wearing a party dress with one shoe, so I think___"

"Mister, this ain't no pumpkin truck and I'm no Cinderella, but I do have a drunk stepmother and a wicked stepsister at home," Tammi snapped, and then apologized, "Sorry, mister. It's been one of those nights."

"I hope they don't happen all the time." He slowed the Olds down to a safe speed.

"Enough." She rubbed her face, nearly on the verge of tears. "You have matches, mister?"

"There might be a pack by your feet. They're not mine, so I have no idea how long they've been there."

"Old is better than none." Tammi lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, waiting for the hippie to say something. It didn't take him long.

"When I was your age, I never hit a woman." He studied the rising bruise on her cheek.

"Guys hit girls and worse all the time."

"This isn't just about the guy with the GTO. Care to tell me about it?"

"No." she sighed a cloud of smoke, then shrugged with adolescent apathy.

The driver shook his head.

"Jack Kerouac in ON THE ROAD wrote that the worst thing about hitchhiking was having to prove to the driver that it wasn't a mistake."

"You want a story, I'll tell you a story. At the Turkey Day pep rally this football jock bragged about how he and his team fucked me and cheerleaders called me a ‘slut'. I fought with the head cheerleader and won. The dean of discipline sided with the goody-two-shoes and I got suspended for two weeks. At home my stepmother and I got into a shouting match. I ran away. That guy in the GTO gave me a ride. He was wrong about my enjoying a cheap weekend in a dirty hotel and I fought him off and ran to the highway. You stopped and off we went. End of story."

Tammi's cigarette trembled in her fingers

"Fucked up Thanksgiving Day."

"You got that right, mister, one more thing. A favor."

"Such as?" The hippie cracked his window to vent the smoke. The cold air felt cold.

"No more questions." Tammi tugged the miniskirt over her knees.

"Sure, if you do me one." The driver shrugged his answer. He had heard enough.

"What?" She expected the worse. "Stop calling me mister."

"You have a problem with ‘mister'? What's wrong with that?" Tammi called every ‘mister' over twenty-one that to prevent their thinking that they were her age, because juvenile fantasies died long deaths in men.

"Mister makes me feel a thousand years old. I'm only twenty-four. You're not Cinderella and I'm not Mister. The name's Sean."

"Mine's Tammi. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to catch some sleep, Sean?"

Tammi laid her head against the cold glass. Maybe the hippie was a killer, but at this point dead sounded better than alive.

"I'll wake you in New York."

"Thanks, Sean." Tammi shut her eyes.

A few minutes later she fell asleep and the Olds 88 cruised along the dark country back roads at the legal limit of 55 MPH.

The hippie turned the radio dial without finding a station. He shut off the staticand glanced over to the girl on the front seat. She should have been home in bed, but her business was none of his and he stepped on the gas.

Ten seconds later the Olds disappeared into the shadowless night. A dog barked at its passing and then the hound went back to sleep. New York was less than a hundred miles away.

Edwige Belmore RIP

Edwige Belmore arrived on the Paris scene in 1978 to become the doorperson at La Palace.

Blonde, punky, and lesbian her haughty demeanor put the Parisiennes in their place and served as Jean-Paul Gaultier's muse in that age of chaos. I met her in 1982 when I worked the door at the Rex for Actuel Magazine. Her friends; Paquita, Krootchey, Fharida, Claude, Tristan et al were my friends. Our worlds intertwined in New York. Sadly she passed from this world on Septerber 15, 2015.

That moment comes to us all.

But never yesterday.

To hear HISTORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE by Edwige and Hayley Moss

Tappez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjtF9e4_DUE

Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

Much more to come.

Punk Rock Thailand - 2008

Back in the last decade when i was living in Thailand I received an email from Willem Dafoe mentioning his having read Legs McNeil's punk opus PLEASE KILL ME.

"Just finished kind of fun- kind of junky- no pun intended PLEASE KILL ME- An Uncensored History of Punk. All interview excerpts-a lot of bragging about drugs and who fucks who. Some people and places I knew- most I didn't."

I reported to my old friend that I was always surprised by the number of Sid Vicious tee-shirts worn by young Thai kids and that they actually know Sid was the Sex Pistols' bass player, who killed his girlfriend.

"Bhang-tee."

Maybe, right?

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

Punk rock is one of few phrases in Thai that is the same in English.

Thailand has the right combination of negative aspects to instill a small segment of the youth with the feeling of 'no future'.

Punk 101 BOWLING FOR DOLLARS, COBC's ULTIMATE PUNK LOVE SONG and Nicole Theriault's MAI CHAI MAI CHAI are more natural heirs to the Ramones than Big Ass who were originally pop rock fame and fortune seekers like ex-Mouseketeer Avril Lavigne.

My delinquent niece living outside of Boston said of Avril, "She's a poseur."

I threw her CD into the trash.

I love punk rock, having spent 1976-78 at CBGBs and Max's Kansas City. Of the nearly 3000 bands the best show was by the Whorelords.

A one-night wonder with Bobby Steele on guitar who wrote the following; "My first experience at CBGB's was a Patti Smith concert, probably late 1976/early 1977, but it was my second time there, to see The Ramones and Cramps, when I began to meet new friends - like Deb O'Naire, who went on to greatness with the Fuzztones, and Bobby Ebs, who went on to... well, we don't like to talk about those things."

"It was also the night that I first met the members of the Cramps, who, onstage, bore the most intimidating personas I'd ever seen; but offstage turned out to be the nicest people. On my third or fourth time there, for the DICKIES/B52s, I met Xcessive and we ended getting booted out of CBGBs for smoking weed in the Ladies Room by Karen Krystal, Hilly's wife. Once we were outside, Hilly came out, told us to lay low for awhile and then we could sneak back in as long as Karen didn't see us. Hilly was cool.

My first 'gig' at CB's was when I was playing guitar in the Whorelords. Someone had stashed beers in one of the drum cases, and got caught, and our set was cancelled. We tried to argue, and plead to be allowed to play, but once the Hells Angels arrived - we knew it was time to leave.

Then, I joined The Misfits - a Max's Kansas City band - and I had a new home, at least for awhile, as I weathered my exile from CBGB's. Over time, I was exiled from almost every established NYC club that was worth going to, and that was it until I re-emerged with The Undead and, out of necessity, started a new scene a few blocks east of CBGB's in the no-man's land then known as Alphabet City. Once The Undead's name had been established, and while the booking people at CBGBs were still unaware of my new band, I had a friend put us into both of these clubs. I returned to CBGB's and played for my very first time - in November 1981. From then on my relationship with CBGB's...and especially Hilly, was solid.

I'd heard the constant rumors that Hilly ripped off bands, and all the other cliches of disgruntled bands, so I devised a method of keeping track at the door myself...either by handing the doorman 300 Undead pins to hand out to paying customers, and then counting how many were left at the end of the night; or by having a rotating "counter" watch the door, and click a button on the pocket counter. Each time, we were paid for more people than we counted; and the one time we played to a packed room and walked away with a mere $150, I returned the next day and confronted Hilly. He politely pulled out a book, showed me the numbers for the night, and a list of all the "comped guests" - musicians that always get in free. It was a huge list, but I could recall seeing each person the night before... There was no discrepancy, nor dishonesty, and I've defended Hilly on that count, religiously, ever since. This incident was what solidified a mutual relationship between Hilly and myself for the last 25 years.

To me, Hilly was that 'cool uncle' everyone wishes they had. He's owned the coolest dive in the world for how long? When I was hospitalized, he took the time to cross town and visit me. When someone he entrusted to handle the booking got nasty with me - and I stopped playing CBGB’s, Hilly finally asked me why, and I told him. He instructed me to meet him that very next Tuesday at CBGB's, and when I got there he made it clear that I was to get a Friday or Saturday headline slot. No other club owner would ever do that.

When I learned that CBGB's was being evicted - after being the catalyst that led to the improvement of the Lower East Side - I was no less than broken-hearted. When I sought out an apartment, I wanted it to be within walking distance of CBGB's. Now, with my 'home away from home' closing its doors for good - and seeing how the East Village has become Ethnically Cleansed by a lily-white, Liberal populace that would rather not have to look at such unsightly reminders of days past as CBGB's, Bowery bums, homeless - and any darker-skinned races - I can't be more pissed. For all CBGBs has done for NYC, the Lower East Side, the East Village - and for the world of rock and roll... none of the newcomers give a rat's ass. I'm sure that, by this time next year, a new club will have opened at 315 Bowery, and it'll be just one more snooty Jazz establishment, frequented by people who will insist that 'Republicans will eradicate all rock and roll music', as their Liberal Democrat friends continue to rape a once vital and ethnically diverse neighborhood.

Bobby Steele was thrown out of the Misfits and formed the Undead with my friend Patrick Blanck on drums.

Patrick died an early death.

Lots of punks followed the old line, "Live fast, die young."

I luckily survived through no fault of my own to tell about the Whorelords' legendary show at CBGBs with 15 year-old runaways as go-go dancers in torn dresses. Their lead singer attracted that type of crowd, unfortunately the band lead a Johnny Thundersesque existence.

Band History

Bobby Snotz formed this band in 1978 with Tarik Schapli. Because Tarik hadn't been playing guitar for long, Barry (and later Bobby Steele) joined the band as second guitarist. The Whorelords performed live several times while Bobby Steele was in the band; he left when he was asked to join The Misfits. Along with The Whorelords came a group of Whorettes (Charlotte Harlotte, Diedre, Carry Hamilton, and Rachel Rage) who did background vocals. Some members of The Whorelords went on to form Hell Sent, who opened for The Misfits in September 1979. A Whorelords reunion show took place that weekend when Bobby Snotz showed up and replaced Hell Sent's singer Kate K-Mart to perform a set of Whorelords songs. After spending a few years in jail, Snotz reformed the band in 1982. At some point during this time, they recorded a demo tape (with Pete Marshall on guitar) that has never been released. Bobby Snotz and Tarik also recorded as The Fiends on the New York Thrash compilation. Snotz was beaten to death in 1992.

Beaten to death?

Punk rock lives in Thailand and everywhere in the world.

Journal Entry - January 1, 1978

Death to 1977

Onto a year of 78 RPM.

It's snowing and I'm watching the Broncos beat the Raiders. 20-17.

Last night at 27th Street was weird. I hit on Alta. We made up and dry-humped in a dark corner. She begged off fucking. I accepted her no, got drunk, puked outside, and sobered up enough to last the rest of the night. Death to disco.

I've always said, "All I need is food and shelter."

Here in New York I eat foreign foods, mostly pizza and falafel sandwiches and live at a SRO hotel on West 11th Street off 5th Avenue. My 10' by 10' by 8' room has linoleum floors, a small bed, a sink, and white walls. $40/week. An imperfect cube located in a good neighborhood. What else can I do, except work as a busboy and rock out at CBGBs, where youth is eternal, the nights run long, and "Do anything you want to do."

My job at Serendipity sucks, but I love my fellow queer waiters and busboys. It also provide constant cash for a punk lifestyle in a blown-out city. The 60s were a time of no limits, while the 70s have borders on people like us, who fled the rest of America, and I foresee the 80s as a time of increasing corporate fascism with fear stealing people of their identity as humans. Most Americans think, "Who cares as long as I can eat potato chips?" "But there are two more years left in the 70s. Romantically I deal with illusions and hope for fantasies to become real, but Ro left to Paris the day I came here in May, although I recently overheard Andy Reese say to his fellow hustler Frank Holiday, "Ro is in Greensboro. I really like her." "Are she and Kirk going to get married," Frank asked, while I shivered silently with shock.

"They are pretty heavy." Andy answered, looking for a reaction from me.

I showed none, but earlier I called Andy Kornfeld, who had read my unmailed letters to her and laughed, "You can throw away those letters. She probably has thousands from other failed lovers. You just have to understand she hates men, because of an ex-lover, who wasn't you. She was like that when I met her long ago."

Our affair meant nothing to her and left me with scar tissue on my heart. I was nothing to her other than a body in a bed, and my hopes were an exaggeration of my desires.

On other fronts Fran Malin remains in Brooklyn. I haven't been avoiding her, but she lives across the East River and she is a little insane. She might have feelings for me, but can't leave her boyfriend for good. Once when we were having sex, he knocked on the door.

"Fran, I know you're in there."

"Say nothing and don't stop fucking me," she whispered locking her legs around my knees.

I stayed hard as she moaned breathlessly, humping in synch with her boyfriend's knocking.

Libby has disappeared into New York. I wonder where she is.

Two days ago Tim Dunleavy told me, "Ann gave me a present for you. and it looks like a good one."

What could it be?

Will Alice come to New York again after finishing her college in Ohio?

We met at a birthday party for Janet Stephenson, who I was seeing at the time. I left with Ann and her friend and had sex with both of them in a Upper East Side townhouse's unheated pool. I think of her more as a companion than a consort and when she left to go back to college, "I always feel physically responsibly to anyone who spends money on me."

I had only paid the taxi.

Was that the sole reason for fucking me?

A LITTLE LATER

Today I went to Jimmy Day's, Blimpie's, Solo's on 52nd Street, Cowwboy's on 53rd, The Plaza Cafe, Dazzel on the West Side, back to Jimmy Days, to a closed Max's Kansas City, over to Broadway Charlies, CBGBs, and One-Fifth and finally to crash at my SRO room

A wasted evening.

No women or friends.

I even called Ann long distance from a phone booth.

No answer.

Alice's gift was a sarcastic note and William Goldman's MAGIC, which has too much dialogue to be a novel, but not a movie script.

1977 is over for good.

It's 1978 minus one.

Dead Boys Who? 2015

This Halloween weekend I traveled to Cleveland for my nephew's wedding.

I arrived on Friday afternoon with my departure planned for Sunday at noon.

On the afternoon before the rehearsal dinner I checked into the Rennaissance Hotel and then conducted a walking tour of downtown; down to the Sttlers Land trolley stop and along the famed Cuyahoga River. At various bars I asked scores of Cleveland natives, if they had ever heard of The Dead Boys, the fiery rebellious punk band from the shores of Lake Eire.

"Nope."

"Sonic Reducer" According to Wikipedia their tradmark song is considered a punk anthem and has been covered by bands as varied as Guns N' Roses, Overkill, Pearl Jam, Foetus, Dozer, Leeway, Die Toten Hosen, Bad Religion, and Saves the Day. The song appeared on the UK compilation album New Wave, produced by UK actor and mystic, Pete Knobbler

"Nope."

Once more Wikipedia The album Young, Loud and Snotty, which features the song, peaked at #189 on the Billboard 200 in 1977.

Throughout 1977 to 1979 I saw them often at CBGBs.

They deserved better, but Sire Records mismanaged the band into its present obscurity and the band were demons onto themselves.

Here's to Stiv Bators (Steve Bator) – vocals Cheetah Chrome (Gene O'Connor) – lead guitar Jimmy Zero (William Wilden) – rhythm guitar Jeff Magnum (Jeff Halmagy) – bass Johnny Blitz (John Madansky) – drums

The Dead Boys remain alive for me and thousands of other punks.

Loud and Snotty.

To hear HEY LITTLE GIRL, please go to the following URL;

MAYBE TOMORROW - A NOVEL

CHAPTER 1

The November sun flashed off a West Village window and the wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The blonde twenty year-old broke into a sly smile, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo.
Nearly every mother and father in America would have ordered their children to avoid this aberration of the Bicentennial Spirit, for his skin pallor rivaled the paleness of the rising moon and no suburban mall stocked his black leather jacket, torn T-shirt, or heavy engineer boots. Most teenagers would have obeyed their parents’ command, but not all of them.
The heavenly mirage disappeared with a windmill slash against the steel strings of his Les Paul and Johnny Darling shut his eyes to envision a small stage, whose overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player.
A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground’s Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears and the audience might have materialized within his eyelids, if a young boy’s voice hadn’t shattered Johnny’s trance.
“Hey, man.”
This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict docks and the guitarist waited for the last chords to fade beneath the subsonic range before turning to address the intruder.
The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted the taint of Chinese blood.
Some Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the scars crisscrossing his seventeen year-old body.
“Thanks for letting me finish?”
“I been waiting thirty minutes.” A gust blew a shank of greased hair across Frankie’s eyes. “That a new song?”
“Just three chords strung together.” Johnny’s thumb rubbed his calloused fingertips.
“Doesn’t get more basic than that.” Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks.
“Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max’s Kansas City last night.”
“How were the Heartbreakers?” Johnny had skipped the last night’s show to entertain a customer.
“Great and the crowd loved them.” Frankie hunched his shoulders with a shiver.
“They got paid a $100 each. When we gonna have a band?”
“Now I have my guitar back, we can audition for the other members.”
“Great.” Frankie stepped from side to side to relieve the damp seeping through his sneakers’ paper-thin soles and stammered, “Johnny, you got ten dollars?”
“The pawnshop took my last fifty.” Johnny slapped his guitar.
“Damn, I wish we could get out of here.” Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone Mom for a bus ticket home.
“To go where?”
“What about Florida?” Frankie glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. “How far away is it? Five hours?”
“More like twenty–four if you drive straight.”
“What about by plane?” The young Puerto Rican’s teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.
“Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?”
“We could hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?” Frankie had seen that movie five times on 42nd Street and pumped his fist in the air. “Attica, Attica.”
“Aren’t you forgetting how the cops shoot Pacino’s friend in the head?”
“Movies aren’t real.” Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street.
“DOG DAY AFTERNOON was based on a real bank robbery.”
“It was?”
“Yeah, it didn’t have a happy ending either.” The guitarist grabbed the young boy’s thin arm.
“Your parents live in Florida. That sounds like a ‘happy ever’ after to me. If you called them, they could wire you money to come home?”
“Yes, and tomorrow night we’d be eating my Mom’s homemade apple pie.”
“I love apple pie.” Frankie licked his lips.
“Only one problem.” Johnny gestured toward Manhattan.
“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”
“I’m not leaving this behind.”
“Fuck this city?” Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. “All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man’s hands on my skin, and you don’t have it much better.”
Johnny placed the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway.
“I ran away from Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York.”
“I hope this isn’t an intro to the gypsy lady story.”
“Why not? The first day I arrived here, this fortune teller in the Village read my palm. She said my name was destined to be up in lights.” Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street and turned to Frankie. “Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars.”
“But not tonight.” Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the gutter.
“No, not tonight.” Johnny couldn’t lie to Frankie. “Tomorrow Max’s will put on a turkey feast for us orphans.”
“What about tonight?” Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.
“Tonight we go to work.” The uptown light on West Street was changing to green and suburb-bound cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronized signals.
“53rd and 3rd?” Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.
“We’re not competing with midnight cowboys tonight.”
Across the street men prowled the sidewalks in search of nameless sex. There was success for all in the shadows. A few lurked between the trucks parked underneath the elevated highway. It was no mystery how they were celebrating the night before Thanksgiving.
“Times Square then?” Frankie sighed with resignation.
“Times Square is about luck.”
“Luck being heads I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break.”
“You’re learn fast.”
“I try.”
“How I look?”Johnny slung the case’s strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his torn leather jacket.
“Like a prince.” Frankie blew on his numb hands.
“Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?”
“My grandmother read me fairy tales. They really have princes and princesses?”
“Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace.” The chilled air scrapped over Johnny’s right lung like a boat striking a reef and he touched his chest wishing his fingers could probe beneath his ribs.
“You meet one?” Frankie was oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.
“Not this side of the silver screen.” Johnny fought off the shakes, figuring his ‘jones’ was knocking on the door. “Princes and princesses are like any suckers. We meet one and what we do?”
“We take them for everything.” Frankie snapped his fingers.
“And leave them begging for more.” The ache faded from Johnny’s chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. “Just one more thing.”
“I know what you’re going to say.” Their conversation were scripted rituals on these occasion.
“You’re going to tell me not to trust anyone.”
“Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York.” Times Square killed people who broke that rule and he turned to Frankie. “That means me too.”
“I’m a big boy.” Frankie accepted the warning, for his childhood had revealed the worst of what the New York had to offer the young.
“Then let’s head to Times Square.” Johnny dashed onto West Street.
“Watch out, Johnny.”
Two taxis swerved to avoid hitting the guitarist.
“For what? I’m going to live forever,” Johnny shouted from the other side of the street, for believing in anything other than his immortality would have been a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were only twenty.

I wrote MAYBE TOMORROW IN 2000. I had been living in Thailand and send the manuscript to various publsihing houses and literary agents via the Thai mail. Probably twenty at $30 a shot. Manuscript, synopsis, and letter of intent. Never a reply and I stopped the process. Twenty-five yeasr later I've decided to challenge the process once more. First thre chapeter, synopsis, bio. A trimmed process. Since July I've sent MAYBE TOMORROW to more than thirty agents in the US and UK and have received two rejections and one request for the full manuscript. Keep your fingers crossed.

Dolls Lookalike

Post David Johansen' death this summer my friend Dakota send an email was sifting through photos of Johansen and thought, he looks like Peter. Not surprised I’m not the only person who has made the comparison. 

Enjoy those beaches and little sights in life. Often while withdrawing, one of the worst moments was seeing a beautiful sight and being unable to fully appreciate it because of the condition I was in. Makes you understand why Buzz Aldrin became a total drunk after returning from Space.

I replied

I was once at Max's 1978 and the lanky singer from the Student Teachers approached our table and said, "We're covering Personality Crisis in our set." 

"Thanks. Key of G please."

A strange look. Then I realized he thought I was David Johanson.

The lead singer of the New York Dolls and I shared the same hair and big head and a savage face. Later in that decade in London at night on the King's Road someone asked, "Are you Gary Numan?"

My blonde girlfriend thereafter called me 'suedehead', since the pop star had a smooth coif. Lisa and I lasted to the end of 1979. I've never seen her after running into her in Paris at Albert de Paname's Nouvelle Eve in Pigalle. 1985.

The world will exist with or without us. I've had a good life. On the beach at Ditch Plains. Mist covering a gray sea. A light easterly wind . A waist high swell. A score of seal skinned surfers on the break. On the beach tourists. Talking. I wander down the beach. Not to silence, but the sound of the waves.

I plan on living forever for ever how long that is. At least longer than David Johansen. I doubt anyone ever accuse him of looking like me.

Maybe Tomorrow Hudson River 1976

After hours at Cisco’s Disco on 15th Street Sean had stripped off her shirt and banged a tambourine over his head. Men writhed with Babylonian excess next to the Giant Cisco Can. Men danced with Babylonian excess. Anything went in the crowded club. Caroline and he had sex in the bathroom. Men peered over the stall’s walls, urging to fuck her like a mercenary and Caroline demonstrated her versatility with a natural scorn directed at the voyeurs. It had been their night to shine amongst the stars and now the winter dawn was withering the velvet blue from a purgatorial sky and the World Trade Towers cast a lengthy shadow on the two bodies lying atop a man-made sand dune on the landfill.

A rumble of powerful engines stirred Sean from his slumber on a pile of cardboard boxes. Her fur coat shielded their body from the cold. A powerful rumble of engines coursed along the Hudson and Sean nudged the blonde heiress.

”We better leave.” They were the only people in sight.

”What for?” She embraced him with a feline whimper.

"Anyone in those buildings across the street might mistake us for murder victims.” Thousands of windows overlooked the landfill.

“And they’d be dead wrong.” Caroline closed the fur coat to provide them a warm cocoon. She seemed imprevious to the cold, as if no blood ran in her veins.

“The police might arrest us for trespassing.”

"The police are asleep this time of the morning, besides I was waiting for the slack tide. Look.” She nodded to the river.

A great ocean liner was steaming down the Hudson, flanked by two tugboats.

"One day all this will be covered by apartment buildings and you won't see this sight, unless you’re living in a luxury duplex. Have you ever been on a ocean liner?”

To read more go to this url

https://maybetomorrow1976.blogspot.com/2011/02/maybe-tomorrow-novel-by-peter-nolan_1070.html

FIGHTING FOR WHAT by Peter Nolan Smith

Everything happened quick in CBGB's subterranean toilets. The release of body waste was rivaled by magic-markering a band's name atop the thousands of previous honorees in the toilet's hall of fame and while the inhalation of cocaine or shooting heroin in the stalls was ever popular, although sex within the battered stalls was a cherished memory for anyone who remembered the moment.

The ladies room was only slightly cleaner than the men's room, reflecting Hilly's belief in sexual equality, because the club's owner thought that his clientele deserved nothing worst than the very worst and that basement's grungy atmosphere suit us just fine.

After all we were punks.

One night in 1977 I was at the bar. The Cramps were on stage.

A red-haired girl in torn fishnet stocking and black plastic mini-dress ordered a JD and coke. She wasn't wearing a bra over her billowy 38C breasts. Her wind-tousled hair and tear-ruined mascara betrayed her wanton desires, which were easily answered in CBGBs.

She moved to the beat of HUMAN FLY with a seductive ease.

After a minute she asked, "What are you looking at?"

"Not what. Who." I stared her in the eyes.

"And who are you?" Her trampish voice slurried with a slur of 'ludes.

I told her, "No one."

"I love no ones. They never stayed around long enough to make trouble.”

"And other people do?"

"Not other people. Other men." The redhead looked over her shoulder. "But not tonight."

Our dialogue was heading in one direction and after two more minutes she downed her drink.

"Let’s go to the Ladies Room."

"Ladies room?"

"Yes, I hate the men’s room. It's so squalid."

"Okay." I signaled to BG behind the bar to watch my beer.

"Good." She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd.

Luxe sang SURFING BIRD. The voluptuous redhead waved to the ash-skinned bass player. He gave a sardonic grimace to indicate that he had been with her before.

As we passed the dressing room, the opening band called out her name.

"Brenda."

The redhead was popular with musicians.

We descended to the basement and the redhead led me into the ladies room, locking the door behind us.

"I want a little privacy. Not for long, but long enough." She dropped to her knees with the grace of a ballerina auditioning for SWAN LAKE.

I was single, 25, and a punk.

We lived for sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The upcoming scene answered the sex part of the equation. Brenda was no angel, but a guide to earthly paradise.

After a minute on her knees she pulled down her dress.

"When you're ready, cum on these."

"Your wish is my command."

I was good at following orders.

A man pounded on the stall's door.

"Brenda, you in there?"

Only a boyfriend sounded that angry.

Brenda lifted a fingernail to her lips and stood to pull up her dress.

"Another time."

More hell was not to be mine this evening.

"When?"

"Not tonight."

She kissed me and opened the door.

The man was my size and wore a leather jacket and engineer boots. His eyes narrowed with jealous fury.

"Brenda."

She laughed in his face.

"Calm down, Guadalcanal."

"But___"

"We were only doing drugs." She held up a packet of cocaine.

He wasn't buying her lie and turned to me.

“Brenda’s my girlfriend.”

Something about sex in a bathroom brought out my cockiness and I said, "Then that means you're next."

I thought that the remark was funny and returned to the bar. The Cramps had finished their set. The bass player winked at me. BeeGee the bartender asked if I had a good time.

"Good enough."

A hand tapped my right shoulder.

The gesture was a classic lead-in to a sucker punch. Scrappers from South Boston loved to Jap the unaware, but I had learned my lesson from Old Colony project boys as a teenager.

I ducked and a fist swung over my head.

It was the boyfriend.

I was too close for a counter-punch and my hands snapped out to clutch his throat. He responded with the same tactic. Within seconds we were choking each other. 'Guadacanal' was losing consciousness. I couldn't breathe. He was in the same boat.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Brenda exiting CBGBs with the drummer of the opening band. Her boyfriend noticed her leaving as well.

"Brenda," he croaked in my death grip.

"Beer," I warbled to call for a truce and released his throat.

"You had enough?" He leaned on the bar regaining his breath.

"Sure." I signaled BeeGee for two beers. Our fighting was a thing of the past, so we drank till closing, after which the waitress play JOLEEN on the jukebox. It was a good song with which to end the night.

After that night Guadalcanal and I became friends. We never mentioned Brenda. She became a cabaret singer with too much style to visit the bathroom with men, but at one time she wasn’t bad enough.

Guadalcanal and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Like I said.

We were punks.

ps I'm still friends with Guadacanal

And Brenda was everyone's dream even as a blonde.

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.

NEW ROSE - The Damned 1979

The Damned played Hurrah in September 1979. New York's Misfits opened the show. The 62nd Street club was packed with punks. I was working security and my job was to lead the band up to the stage. Several minutes before the show I asked them if they needed anything and one of them said, "4 Bottles of Vodka."

I went to the bar and returned with the requested 4 bottles. They twisted off the caps and poured the vodka straight into their mouths like hungry baby birds feeding on their mother's spew. Most of it ended up on the floor.

The show was classic. Fast and Loud.

Punk rock at its best and I love NEW ROSE

Go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaOraUh1AyM&feature=PlayList&p=81EF7096C0EE514C&index=1

The Death Of Disco

Punks prayed for the death of disco in the 1970s. Few were ready for Blondie's dive into the dance genre with HEART OF GLASS and RAPTURE. Disco thrived into the 80s. Rap attempted to assassinate disco only to become another sub-species of the zombie dance music. Michael Jackson's THRILLER LP sold 65 million copies, beating out the Eagles for the biggest hit of 1982. People danced to BILLIE JEAN everywhere in the world.

Paris.

Jakarata.

Russia.

Only discotheques die.

Disco is unkillable and will live forever.

DANCE DANCE DANCE.

Good Girl Trixie Treat Bad Girl

Boys and girls in trouble gravitated to CBGBs in the 1970s. No one had to be good and bad was a virtue. Few were more trouble than Trixie Treat. Like most of us she was her own worst enemy. I didn't know her, but she handled personal mayhem with great dispatch. Sadly not much has been written about this vixen of vice.

She accompanied the Plunger Girls from LA to New York.

I think she worked at Revenge on St. Marks Place.

Wherever she is was or will be I wish her well.

SONIC REDUCER by the Dead Boys

Every Memorial Day Weekend the radio stations spins the top 1000 hits of rock and roll. The #1 song for decades was Zeppelin’s STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN or else the Beatles HEY JUDE. SATISFACTION came close to reaching # 1, but Led Zeppelin's rip-off of Spirit's TAURUS has proven too strong to be knocked off the throne.

rockpedia.com lists the top 10 rock songs as follows

1. Led Zeppelin / Stairway To Heaven / 1971
2. The Rolling Stones / (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction / 1965
3. Eagles / Hotel California / 1976
4. Queen / Bohemian Rhapsody / 1975
5. John Lennon / Imagine / 1971
6. The Doors / Light My Fire / 1967
7. Derek & The Dominos / Layla / 1970
8. Bob Dylan / Like A Rolling Stone / 1965
9. Steppenwolf / Born To Be Wild / 1968
10. Don McLean / American Pie / 1971

HEY JUDE has slipped to # 12.

I'm good with BORN TO BE WILD, LIGHT MY FIRE, SATISFACTION, and IMAGINE, but the compilers of these lists never included rockers like the Dead Boys' SONIC REDUCER.

Cheetah Chrome blistered the guitar on the intro of this punk paean to nihilism. Jeff Magnum set a breakneck pace on bass accompanied by Jimmy Zero on rhythm guitar, while Johnny Blitz drove the band over the speed limit with his drums.

Live the Cleveland band scorned the norm of the 70s.

Stiv Bators twitched across the stage like cockroach with bleeding feet and regularly swung the microphone over a low pipe. The scrawny lead singer wrapped the cord around his neck, while the band scorched through its tight set, then Stiv would haul himself into the air until his feet left the ground.

Normally he let go of the cord after a few seconds but one time at CBGB's theater, the wire knotted on the pipe and Stiv’s face started turning blue. Finally Cheetah noticed the lead singer kicking his feet and rescued him from the theatrical auto-asphyxiation. After a short rest Stiv regained his breath and bounced to his feet ready for more. Everyone at the show cheered them. They were the Dead Boys.

Now and forever.

To listen to SONIC REDUCER, please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30bv915bDtY

It's always # 1 for me.

No Guns For Me

When I first arrived in New York, a gay jazz pianist friend of James Spicer, offered me a .38 on Christopher.

"No, thanks."

"No, thanks?" CT was small. He carried a piece for protection. New York in 1977 was very dangerous for man, woman, and in-between. "Someone like you needs a gun."

CT thought of me as rough trade, but I was planning on being a poet.

"If I had a gun, I would shoot every skell on the street." I lived in Park Slope. Thieves outnumbered citizens after dark. They were violent, but I came from the West of Ireland and every young thug in Boston was taught to fight. Running was never an option. "I've never broken the 5th Commandment and I don't plan on doing so in this city."

"Suit yourself." CT slipped the pistol into his leather jacket and walked off toward the river. The bars along West Street had a bad reputation. Sex was hard-core and a .38 wouldn't make anyone kiss and hug. I headed off to the Bowery. The Ramones were playing at CBGBs. Merv checked everyone for guns. The punk club was as safe a dive as you would get on the Lower East Side and no one shot anyone there.

And that was a good thing.

Hurrah Hot Foot

Back in the late 70s I was working at Hurrah as security. A good number of the punk disco's male clientele came from the bridge and tunnel suburbs of New Jersey and Long Island. The gay owner thought that they were cute and these tough boys were easy pickings for the pudgy Texan after these boys dropped a few 'ludes.

Once the poor things collapsed in a stupor, I ordered the bouncers to arrange the 714 'Lude zombies on the banquettes holding hands and linking arms like live sculptures. At the end of the night I woke the sleeping beauties with a hot foot i.e. sticking wooden matches into their sneakers and then light then.

Nikes burned fast, as anything made out of plastic and the boys' feet stamped the floor, as the flames worked their magic.

None of them got hurt and we had a good laugh.

Times were so simple back then.

TOMMY RAMONE RIP

There are no more Ramones on Earth.

Tommy Ramones joined his three brothers.

I was lucky enough to catch them in 1976.

On a winter night I was walking up the Bowery. I heard CALIFORNIA SUN from a bar. I walked inside. My life was changed forever.

They were our band.

Here is an excerpt from my punk novel THE END OF MAYBE about that evening.

Gabba Gabba Hey.

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 had nothing to do with what’s inside. This is punk’s opera house.”

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 halted 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 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.

Once more GABBA GABBA HEY

Lisa Takes A Bath 1978

My apartment at 256 East 10th Street was a relic of tenement living. There were no electrical outlets in the bedroom. A water closet had a pull chain for the overhead tank. Warped wooden floors spread to crumbling plaster walls traveled by tribes of cockroaches. Girls didn't like the insects, but they loved the bathtub in the kitchen. The porcelain tub was the perfect size for a soak, especially for a blonde as beautiful as Lisa Johnson.

She walked barefoot through the Village.

Some thought her crazy.

Vinnie Gallo was one of them.

I didn't care what he thought.

He had a jaw made for land excavation and Lisa was a goddess in her madness.

I watched her like she was a remake of DARLING.

She played me for a fool, but what man isn't a fool when love in on the line.

MAYBE TOMORROW a punk novel by Peter Nolan Smith on KINDLE

CHAPTER 1

The November sun flashed off a West Village window. The wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The twenty year-old in a battered leather jacket broke into a sly smile, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the blonde leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo.

This heavenly mirage disappeared with a windmill slash against the steel strings of his Les Paul and Johnny Darling shut his eyes to envision a small stage. The overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player. A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground’s Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears and the audience almost materialized within his eyelids.

“Hey, man.”

A young boy’s voice shattered Johnny’s trance.

This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict docks. The guitarist waited for the last chords to fade beneath the subsonic range before turning to address the intruder.

It was Frankie.

The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted the taint of Chinese blood.

Some Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the scars crisscrossing his seventeen year-old body.

“Thanks for letting me finish?”

“I been waiting thirty minutes.”

A gust of wind blew a shank of greased hair across Frankie’s face.

“That a new song?”

“Just three chords strung together.” Johnny thumbed his calloused fingertips.

“Doesn’t get more basic than that.” Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks. “Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max’s Kansas City last night.”

“How were the Heartbreakers?” Johnny had skipped the last night’s show to entertain a customer.

“Great and the crowd loved them.” Frankie hunched his shoulders with a shiver.

“They got paid a $100 each. When we gonna have a band?”
“Now I have my guitar back, we can audition for the other members.”

“Great.” Frankie stepped from side to side. A cold damp seeped through his sneakers’ paper-thin soles and he stammered, “Johnny, you got ten dollars?”

“The pawnshop took my last fifty.” Johnny slapped his guitar.

“Damn, I wish we could get out of here.” Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone home.

“To go where?”

“What about Florida?” Frankie glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. “How far away is it? Five hours?”

“More like twenty–four by car.”

“What about by plane?” The young Puerto Rican’s teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.

“Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?”

“We could hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?”

Frankie had seen that movie five times on 42nd Street and pumped his fist in the air.

“Attica, Attica.”

“Aren’t you forgetting how the cops shot Pacino’s friend in the head?”

“Movies aren’t real.” Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street.

“DOG DAY AFTERNOON was based on a real bank robbery.”


“It was?”

“Yeah, it didn’t have a happy ending either.” The guitarist grabbed the young boy’s thin arm.

“Your parents live in Florida. That sounds like a ‘happy ever’ after to me. If you called them, they might wire you money to come home?”

“Yes, and tomorrow night we’d be eating my Mom’s homemade apple pie.”

“I love apple pie.” Frankie licked his lips.


“Only one problem.” Johnny gestured toward Manhattan.


“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”

“I’m not leaving this behind.”

“Fuck this city?” Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. “All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man’s hands on my skin, and you don’t have it much better.”

Johnny placed the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway.

“I ran away from Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York.” Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street and turned to Frankie. “Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars.”

“But not tonight.” Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the gutter.

“No, not tonight.” Johnny couldn’t lie to Frankie. “Tomorrow Max’s will put on a turkey feast for us orphans.”

“What about tonight?” Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.

“Tonight we go to work.” The uptown light on West Street was changing to green and suburb-bound cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronized signals.

“53rd and 3rd?” Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.

“We’re not competing with the Midnight Cowboys.”

Across the street men prowled the sidewalks in search of nameless sex. A few lurked between the trucks parked underneath the elevated highway. How they were celebrating the night before Thanksgiving was no mystery.

“Times Square then?” Frankie sighed with resignation.

“It’s all about luck.”

“Luck being heads I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break.”

“You’re learning fast.”

“I try.”

“How I look?” Johnny slung the case’s strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his leather jacket.

“Like a prince.” Frankie blew on his numb hands.

“Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?”

“My grandmother read me fairy tales. They really have princes and princesses?”

“Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace.” The chilled air scrapped over Johnny’s right lung like a boat striking a reef.

“You meet one?” Frankie was oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.

“Not this side of the silver screen.” Johnny fought off the shakes, figuring his ‘jones’ was knocking on the door. “Princes and princesses are like any other suckers. We meet one and what we do?”

“We take them for everything.” Frankie snapped his fingers.

“And leave them begging for more.” The ache faded from Johnny’s chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. “Just one more thing.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“You’re going to tell me not to trust anyone.”

“Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York.” Times Square killed people who broke that rule and he turned to Frankie. “That means me too.”

“I’m a big boy.” Frankie accepted the warning, for his childhood had revealed the worst of what the New York had to offer the young.

“Then let’s head uptown.” Johnny dashed onto West Street. “Watch out, Johnny.”

Two taxis swerved to avoid hitting the guitarist.

“For what? I’m going to live forever,” Johnny shouted from the other side of the street, for believing in anything other than his immortality would have been a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were only twenty.

TO READ MORE OF MAYBE TOMORROW ON KINDLE PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING URL

http://www.amazon.com/MAYBE-TOMORROW-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00HYEMNM8

MAYBE TOMORROW is my novel set in 1976 about a gay hustler, a teenage runaway, and a car thief, who form a punk band to rip off a rich kid, only to fail because they succeed musically for one night.

Several years ago I went to a Nan Goldin show at the Whitney Museum with a Park Avenue divorcee. Claudia came from a good famiily in Philadelphia and the black and white photos were a shock to her sensibilities.

"These people look so tragic."

Her assessment of Nan Goldin's subjects was true, but I knew many of them and said, "It wasn't like that. Back then."

And like that I wrote MAYBE TOMORROW to show how we lived in that era of errors.

There are few novels about punk and MAYBE TOMORROW is based on true stories from my life and those of my friends from CBGBs, Max's, and the Lower East Side.

They live on in MAYBE TOMORROW.