Night Manager

In the 1970's, New York City was a very different place.  It was dangerous and sleazy; anything could happen.  You'd walk down a side-street at night with a sense of shadows, with your heart beating.  Muggings were common; crime was woven into the fabric and you expected to be threatened.  In a way it was like the dare of the city-- are you tough enough, are your dreams compelling enough to lie down with rabid dogs, spar with the urban devil himself?  There was a certain underlying surf we had to ride out-- a dark fire we were expected to navigate.  The noir permeated our art-- our music and poetry-- our clothes, our choices.

On the other hand, there was a wild freedom in our private sex lives.  We were walking an edge-- trying out things.  There was no internet or linked-in.  You'd meet someone and take a risk.  There were no personal phones-- only a door or a window to crawl out if you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I was young and all-connected.  I was straddling worlds-- downtown, uptown-- the art world and the music underground.  It was thrilling and new.  Every day I'd get introduced into someone's world that rocked my own.  I'd walk into a club at night and hear something new-- see someone trying to change things.  Sometimes you'd exchange ideas; sometimes you exchanged bodies.

One afternoon I was studying at the Figaro on Bleecker Street, and this actor sat down at my table… he wasn't super famous but I recognized him.  He was slightly older… and he was smart; we spoke about theatre and Proust.  We made a date to meet the next night at a west-side bar.  I went to the library that evening and looked him up; he'd written a couple of books, and his publisher was well-known.  Everything in those days ended up in bed, and we had a few nights of passion.  I was dating a guitar player at the same time who came back to town and I wasn't home much to answer calls.  I don't think I even had an answering machine.  Anyway, one day I was getting into a car with the guitar player and the actor passed me… I looked the other way.   He called me a few nights later, sounded drunk and insecure about his sexual performance… it was a stupid conversation and I was 22 or 23 and didn't feel like getting into a whole psychological tunnel…

Two days later, someone broke into my little apartment on the first floor.  It was a vulnerable place and I probably never even drew the curtains when I stayed out all night… but they took everything.  In those days everything fit into a couple of suitcases-- but it was all I had, and when I came home on a Sunday evening to find my window smashed, the mattress stripped and the place ransacked, I was spooked.  The cops assured me it was no Kojak episode but most likely a desperate junkie looking for cash and things to sell for dope.  My guitar player was going on the road; I stayed with a friend at the Chelsea Hotel for a few days while they put in a new window and locks on the door.

At the Chelsea I inhaled the quintessence of 1970's New York.  Sid and Nancy were there; Viva and I shared a cigarette on the stairs.  My friend was working with John Cale; he'd been robbed too and he processed the dare of the city with a certain bitter mistrust.  It was a cool hang, but I needed to face my independence without a support system.  I moved back to my little place, bought new sheets and a cheap little TV, was at last drifting off to sleep with Johnny Carson on the black and white 12-inch… when the phone rang.  I'd been gone for a week and thought it was my guitar player-- whispering… but then I heard the actor's voice, indisputably, asking me if I knew what he was doing… I jumped out of bed in a cold sweat, and ran up the stairwell to the next floor-- banged on a random door.  Some guy answered-- I begged him to let me in… I'm sure he thought I was crazy; thinking back, he had no pants on--  I stuttered something about someone stalking me…  anyway, he went into his bedroom and I curled up on his dirty carpet.  He had a small dog and it had new puppies… I lay there like a dog myself until the sun came up and I had the nerve to go downstairs.

I hadn't thought about this for so many years, but it was maybe the first coming-of-age reality check of the city.  In a way I'd been lucky; no one had really hurt me… and thinking back, it was undoubtedly a total coincidence that the actor phoned at that moment.  I'm sure he had no knowledge that I'd been robbed, that I'd been away… or did he?  It was the first time I felt genuinely unsafe-- a little terrified-- and had thoughts about finding a more secure apartment, about making wiser and less random choices, about becoming part of a couple as opposed to being the wild and free girl.  In a way I changed my vision that night; in a way I accepted there would be a kind of dependence on men in my life.  The end of innocence, which for girls is so often some threat or unmanageable fear which changes us and forces us to make a slightly desperate choice.  It's not 'live free or die', but  'live'.  It's a form of terrorism, but that's another discussion.

Like most things in life, we give up one thing for another; nothing stays the same, no one retains their innocence unless someone else arranges this for us.  Of course life in the city today feels much safer; people have phones for emergencies, everyone's marital and employment status is pretty much general knowledge, as is their age and address, their political affiliations and criminal record-- their net worth.  People sort through hundreds of prospects on dating sites-- they hook up, they regroup, they text and sext and move on.  I seldom walk into a club these days and encounter something that changes my world.  I no longer fall in love and rarely walk the dark streets with a sense of danger and excitement.  I miss those times; I've had a good and a rich life here, but I do miss myself when I was still brave enough or maybe dumb enough to take a nightly walk on the wild side.  When there was a viable and findable wild side.

Under Cover

More than 30 years ago, I made my first demo-tape.  A keyboard player who worked with some rockstar really liked it-- took a copy, gave it to his boss.  A year later, my song was on the radio.  A little changed, rearranged, but it was definitely the song.  Funny--- no one had contacted me; I hadn't signed any papers.  I called a friend; he recognized it-- then we called the keyboard player.  He stammered and stuttered, apologized… apparently it had been 'adopted' or folded into some recipe which someone else seemed to think he'd invented.  But the hook-- even the lyric, the theme--- it was there…

My friend consulted a lawyer.  You are going to be a rich girl, the lawyer said to me.  But what was the meaning of this?  That I would sue some huge record company-- me, a small-time new artist with a 4-track demo?  We had meetings, we had papers… and I pulled out.  It wasn't about the money, it was the shameless version of apology I received from the producer--- about how maybe you hear something, and it stays in your subconscious, or it re-emerges with an idea-- it may or may not be mine.  What-ever.   It was the first music-business lesson.

Later, I was asked to co-write with a pop-star.  This meant she would cover my song and we would split royalties.  When I protested, they said they'd rewrite the song and I'd get zero.  Second lesson.
Besides, if my music was so eminently adaptable, maybe it was generic and not good enough.  Back to the drawing room.

So the Pharrell/Marvin Gaye thing registered as something of a 'Huh?' moment for me. I mean, there is little I hear these days that is not traceable to something else.  The production may be updated or changed--- the beats, the sounds-- but the melodies are so non-memorable.  I'll bet after the Grammies this year, the only person who really saw a spike in sales was whoever manufactured John Mayer's glasses.  The visual seems to have eclipsed the song.  The spectacle, not the soundtrack.  I'll bet Stevie Wonder has noticed this.  And then there is Angus Young--- in the same clothes he was in the first time I saw him, almost 40 years ago.

I'm about to publish a small book of poetry and have been obsessing about the cover.  The Bo Diddley song has been going over and over in my head.  It's odd-- in old times, books looked pretty much the same-- leather bindings--- occasional hand-tooling and gilt trim for the very rich.  But what was important and valued--- was the text.  A book was its contents.  Now?  So many are so under-read.  The classics are recycled, reprinted-- covers evolve, books are 'styled' to sell as objects.  Sometimes, in 'new' books,  good writing is hidden beneath the plot; like a metal guitar shredder, the 'notes' obscure the absence of core melody.

When I was younger I did a Sunday afternoon solo gig on Bleecker St.  Don't you know any covers, the owner used to complain? No, I answered, priding myself on my principles.  I actually wrote a song called 'Cover' so I could finally answer 'yes'.  And one called 'Undercover'.  That one felt right.   I am neither a borrower or a lender.

So now it is the first day of spring, and we in New York City are about to get a dusting of snow.  Our sidewalks and streets have just been stripped of the last of the winter 'cover' which revealed underneath a vast layer of soaked and pressed litter-- like fossils of Christmas and Valentine's Day and thousands of candy wrappers and flattened Starbucks cups everywhere.  Walking down Madison Ave… to my right were the clean shop windows filled with all the bling a rockstar's wallet can buy… and to the left, is the gutter spread of trash, of objects covered with the grey-black film of melted dirty snow.  Jewelry, garbage, leather bags, garbage, porcelain, garbage… art galleries…garbage… until I began to reverse the order and really everything lost its meaning, its 'cover'.  Later today this will change… like a new coat of paint, the sweat and spit and dog-shit and the papers-- everything will be magical again for a few hours.

There is another author with the same name as mine.  Her book is about incest--- about her father raping her, her childhood trauma.  I don't know what the cover looks like.  My own father thinks I wrote this book.  He hasn't spoken to me for years, but he really hadn't spoken to me before, so the mistaken identity thing was a kind of icing on his paternal bitter cake.  It's useless for me to explain that this is another person, because having a reason to excommunicate me-- it suits him.  As I was contemplating my cover today-- maybe a moment where I'd hand my finished book over to my father and receive exoneration-- I began to think.. .well, this never happened to me… but other things happened.  The fact is there is shame in my family history and cause for shame.  Cover-ups and substance abuse… and my own father never harmed me, not physically-- but his absence and lack of sobriety caused childhood trauma that shouldn't have happened.   The irony is, I am the one that spent years trying to apologize--- trying to atone for his sins, trying to appease his anger.  So maybe, in a way, that other girl is me, has uncovered things that are not so far from the ones that should not have happened in our house, even thought the 'cast' is different.

Making up my bed this morning, I thought of all the things that happened, inside these covers, and other covers--- the intimacies, the passion, the nights of refusing intimacies, the hours of sickness, of feverish children who feel entitled to pass nights of illness in their mother's sheets, of nights of grief and desolation, of nightmares and beautiful dreams of our missing loves that cruelly disintegrate as we wake. The way my son and his girlfriend spent hours picking the quilt that dresses the bed in their new apartment.  Because so much of their life will take place there, and it is important.

In truth, my father, like most people,  will never read my book.  He won't listen to the songs I've recorded, and that is fine.  But he just may see the cover.  Or not.