The tenement bricks glowed red under a cold spring sky.
I climbed the stairs to a small studio showing small paintings of Walter Robinson.
I nodded to Lisa and the artist. They seemed very much in love.
Really.
Walter's painting were not self-portraits, but studies of New York transvestities.
I asked Lisa if she was the muse.
Tony Viramontes had painted her portrait in Paris.
"You really think I look like a transvestite."
"You were androgenous at a younger age."
You're the tenth person to ask me, if I'm Walter's muse."
And I thought I was being original.
"Dream on, you ladyboy killer."
She laughed, because no one was really original anymore. Not with 6 billion people on this Earth, however Walter's paintings transported to another era.
As you get old you forget. as you get older, you are forgotten - anon
I know that I didn't come up with that quote, because I haven't really forget everything yet and the other day I was reminiscing about Lost Boston with a few old-timers at the bar of Jacob Wirth's. A judge, a lawyer, and my yet-to-arrived friend from Maine. We each picked a different beer from the hundreds available. No one had ever drunk all of them them.
"Remember when they didn't let women drink at the bar here?" William hailed from Savin Hill. He was a double eagle same as my oldest friend, Jimmy O'Brien. They had worked together on several senate campaigns for Ted Kennedy. We knew each other from Falmouth Foresides, Maine. 1950s. Jimmy and I had driven Yellow Checker Cabs during university.
"Yes, I used to bring my feminist friends here for a joke. They hated that the bartender would serve them at the bar. I thought it was a good laugh." I was a long-hair college student on the other side of the barricades from the two legal beagles, both fourteen years older than me.
"Maybe the bartender didn't think it was that funny." William had been a Marine.
"No, he loved telling those hairy girls to take a seat in the dining room." I couldn't remember his name, but we both agreed that a woman's place wasn't at the bar of Jacob Wirth's.
"You dirty hippie, and I mean that in the best of all possible terms."
Herbie showed up later and our collective memories toured the city of our past. We extolled the prune rolls at Warmuths, the grilled hot dogs at WT Grants, the strippers at the Two O'Clock Lounge, and relived friend's bachelor party in the Combat Zone. It was a blank in my mind.
"I vaguely recall stumbling out of the Naked I into the Hillbilly Ranch. I think I wanted to hear MAMA TRIED."
"We lost you for about an hour." Herbie ordered another round of beer. Different from the last. Between the four us us we were making our way through the drafts.
"Probably ended up with the drag queens at the Other Side." William laughed with his beer belly juggling like defrosted jello. The beer at Jacob Wirth's was better than good.
"No, I'd remember that. At least I think I would, but something sticks in my mind about getting up on the stage of the Hillbilly Ranch and singing a song." I had seen Sleepy La Beef, John Lincoln Wright, the Bayou Boys, and other southern bands of the 70s at the Park Square dive.
"That was a tough bar owned by Frankie Segalini. You were lucky that you weren't rolled in that place. It was filled with Navy peckerwoods and crackers. They didn't like us Irish."
"You returned to the Naked I intact." Herbie had a head for long ago. He worked in Tech.
"And we made it to the church in time."
"Sherri hated me."
"Still does."
We all nodded in unison and toasted our wives and those times gone by. We thought that they would never end and they don't at Jacob Wirths' or in your heads.
THe Hillbilly Ranch caught fire in 1980 and was re-opened a month later. The incident was memorialized in the song "They Tore Down the Hillbilly Ranch" by John Lincoln Wright. The Hillbilly Ranch finally closed in 1980 after the city took the land through eminent domain and Segalini was unable to secure a liquor license at another location according to Wikipedia.
ps Jacob Wirth closed in 2018. The building was gutted on June 25, 2024 in a large fire. Texas lightning.
Music critics have argued over whether the first disco song was the Hues Corporation's "Rock the Boat", George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby" or"Kung Fu Fighting" by Biddu and Carl Douglas, but incontestably the greatest hit of disco was LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY by Donna Summer. Sadly the Queen of Disco has passed from the Here-Now.
When I first heard the news, I hit youtubes to hear her hits and found myself crying as soon as I heard her voice set on top of that electronic monometric beat. I FEEL LOVE brought me back to 1975 and dancing with my gay friends at Boston's 1270 Club. Her death signaled the end of an era for her fans and my tears were diamonds of love for the Dorchester native and her many fans already lost in the Here-Before.
Here's some of her best songs
SALLY GOES ROUND THE ROSES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCH6jiJ8iyM&feature=related
THE HOSTAGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY5z3IX65Io&feature=related
LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ArZEFwRsY
I didn't realize how much I would miss her until she was gone.
Donna Donna Donna
