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