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.

January is the Cruellest Month

Another bloody year. Literally so, in some countries. Here, besides a few celebratory murders, not much violence marked the transition. Now we are bleeding into day 4, and the same pre-new-year depressed friends are equally post-depressed on my answering-machine.

My son is applying to college which seems to me some kind of virtual occupation. Forms filled out online, the importance suddenly of being earnest on the internet where most teenage profiles are somewhere between fantasy, irony and blatant lies. We read in US news and World Report that due to the herd-nature of the Baby Boomers, there is the largest pool of college applications for fall, 2008. What was going on in 1990 besides Kurt Cobain emerging that prompted these people to behave like adults and reproduce?
I can’t remember. I’m losing pre-natal recall.

No wonder my friends are depressed. If they’re not facing massive college bills, they forgot to have children and the mirror reminds them that at this age their own grandparents were pulling up stakes. Some of them spent long teenage and adult hours learning to play guitar…practicing, playing in thousands of bands, listening to records, studying. Trying to make it, sometimes making it; going to rehab, moving in and out of relationships; failing to succeed, succeeding at failure. Failing at failure. I like that one.

We had no heat last night and for some reason I had the illusion that the TV would provide some kind of warmth. I sat with a blanket too cold to look for the remote and saw some late-night rerun where the host was playing Guitar Hero. The game. Which is realer than real, and maybe gives the gamer the same rush some rockstar gets when he pulls off a massive hot solo onstage. I am afraid to test this out. In fact, for a parent with apparent manual dexterity, I never mastered any version of Nintendo or Playstation. I retired at Space Invaders.

But it makes you think. Not just Guitar Hero…there is the Band of Brothers game now. My old Dad had to drop out of a plane with a parachute, get blasted by shrapnel and gunfire, suffer permanent hip-damage and post-traumatic stress. Now there is the virtual version. I wonder if it pisses him off. I don’t ask, because anything I ask pisses him off. We had it too easy, we post-war children who went to college. We were allowed to use our brains. Some of us write books, wrote for television. I can’t imagine writing lines for a talk-show host who is playing a virtual game on television. I can’t imagine who invents the Band of Brothers game when there are actual veterans still living. But there are terrorist games that allow you to virtually experience driving a plane into one of two populated glass-walled towers.

As my son presses ‘Submit’ for one of the colleges of his choice, I wonder how they are processing his virtual application for a future. He found these colleges on an online list. His girlfriend didn’t even know Indiana was a state, even though there is a minted quarter to prove it. I remember my college choice was based on some blonde boy who fed me peyote in Mexico. I wanted to go where he was.

At this point, war to my son is a movie, music is a computer game, college is the recipient of an online form. Tonight he watched the Knicks rather than the Iowa caucus results. At his age I was working for my candidate, despite the fact that I couldn’t vote for 3 more years. College was the Emerald City, life was Oz.

My son wants to make money. Cramer-money. College is a game with real money as reward. At least I think so. The internet is free, but these applications are pricey. Up to $85 to press ‘Send’. No pictures. This is not only not required but not permissible. Bad people misuse things like this on the internet. Bad people misuse things that are real; they misuse people that dream. This depresses my depressed friends. Not so my son. He watches films like ‘Hostel 2’ without flinching.

I watched Barak Obama speaking in Iowa. My son sent a virtual application to that state. For a minute, I felt as though I was in a time warp, as though the things that came out of this politician’s mouth were not rhetoric but real. As my son dried himself off by the TV, he asked me ’He’s good, isn’t he?’ I think so, I answered. But then I realized he thought this was maybe a film, that Obama was an actor…after all, some of the candidates are actors….some of them were our mayor, who is also a character in the 9/11 simulated virtual game. It is hard to tell the game from life. It’s hard to distinguish gospel from bullshit on the internet; it’s all in hypertext. How these colleges can designate their future class from the virtual pool is beyond my grasp. And how these kids with the right to vote are processing the choice of candidates is also a mystery ..Is it another online game? More SAT-worthy multiple choice? At least they must go to the polls. Or not.

For Christmas this year a friend put our old family-movie footage onto dvd. It was a great gift. ‘Nothing is reel’, the card said. Somewhere, I was. As my son will be or will not be, in Indiana or Iowa or Arizona. As our next president will have been one of these candidates. Or not. I personally believe in Iowa.

The Imperfect Storm

Last night I played one of those forgettable gigs in a sort of converted Chinese restaurant. Come to think of it, it could have been a dry-cleaner’s. Not only was the money pretty marginal, but the owner gave us a hard time about the pretty thin crowd. Like it is our fault she runs a tight operation which is not conducive to chilling and listening to music and she is always breathing down the neck of drinkers, making sure they are paying up for the less-than 2 square feet of bar stool they occupy, and never ever comps even a dumpling, no matter how many people are in the place, no matter how many times we let the cute bartender sing “Proud Mary’ which on the average musician’s priority list is just one place higher than an enema.

And while you are packing up, the designated driver who is maybe one drink behind his passengers and tomorrow will not only not remember having heard music but how he drove home, comes up and says ‘Hey, youse guys are great! D’you have a card?’ And just to relieve him of the burden of having to empty his wallet of unnecessary garbage, you answer ‘No, I don’t.’ And he gives you his, which is undoubtedly that of a mortgage lender, or a used car dealer, with cell numbers crossed out, rewritten, etc. There are 2 kinds of professional New York City musicians: the kind that throw these cards away with the discarded string packs before they leave the club, or the ones that wait until they get home. Because like the boulevard of broken dreams, card exchanging is not only a thing of the past, but filing them away and expecting any future contact is about as realistic as saving monopoly money.

Besides, there is the internet. Anyone can find anyone on the internet. Except maybe my ex-husband who owes 16 years of child support. But that’s another column. And if I were to have a business card, what would it say? I joked with a band member that I would have one printed up with my full name and underneath it, ‘Negro’. I could have another one that says ‘Caucasian’. I will have one done for the restaurant owner which says ‘Cat Killer’. Or ‘Wanted by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Guitarists. ‘

A woman I recognized from my neighborhood Citibank where she is a teller, hands out a card in bars with her name and below it ‘Astrologer’. Does that give her authority to predict your future? To write horoscopes? In my local neighborhood café there used to be this crazy woman who sat all day with a Macintosh laptop, consuming record quantities of caffeine and running her mouth so that you’d have to use headphones just to be able to swallow. Anyway, I’d overhear her telling people she had a column, and she was working. Turns out she, too, was an amateur astrologer, with a column maybe in the local Marcal gazette. But one day this old loudmouth crank who stalked the neighborhood walked right up to her while she was yapping and said ’You’re not an astronomer… the only way you could see Stars is if I whacked you over the head with that stupid machine. You’re a Quack”! I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. She had to move to another neighborhood. Actually by now she’s probably doing the Stars for the Daily News. No fact-checking for horoscopes.

Did you ever look up song lyrics on the internet? There’s anyone’s version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit”, all kinds of variations of Hendrix songs (the famous ‘Kiss This Guy’)--
how many of us admit how many times we slowed down Foxey Lady to decipher that last ‘You make me feel like….???’. And the chord charts—musical transcriptions. They’re so far from accurate you’d think the authors were deliberately trying to mislead hungry young guitar players. Sometimes I think the whole music thing is like a game of telephone where one person plays something cool, then Eric Clapton redoes it, then some 3rd generation guy redoes Clapton, and so on down the line until we wind up in the massive sea of musical mediocrity of today. And for genuine musicians, and I am not counting myself among these—remember, I have no business card, I make no claim--The Perfect Storm. The mega-monstrous tsunami-esque absolute un-navigable monsoon of internet-publishing, computer-generated recording, voracious downloading and unstoppable marketing of musical props that have overwhelmed and swallowed up the tiny little rowboat of what used to pass as genuine music.

So what difference does it make what we put on our cards…we are all the disillusioned and duped losers who happen to not just own guitars but maybe have some experience playing them, and at one point may have had something genuine to say or play. Or not. No fact-checking in the field of musical creativity, either.

Today I was in the subway and some horrific guy was whacking at his brand new badass bass guitar which wasn’t even in tune. One or two people actually put some money in his case. I looked at first for a sign which might have indicated the guy was handicapped or deaf…but no— and he was actually kind of cute. I asked one young guy who threw in a coin—‘are you actually encouraging him?’ And of course he first had to take out his earbuds and ask ‘What?’ because almost every single person on the train platform is now listening to their own ipod and maybe the bass-player realizes it doesn’t matter what he plays because no one is listening anyway. So this guy responds ‘ I just broke up with my girlfriend and I bought this disposable camera and I wanted to get rid of the change’. Good answer. A little more information than I needed, but good answer. So I offered to take his picture in front of the deaf bass-player, with his earbuds in, not listening, to document his very first Kodak moment as a single guy, and he was thrilled. ‘I’ll send you one, he offered…do you have a card?’ Do I have a card! I pulled one from my back pocket which I had forgotten to throw out. It was from the restaurant gig last night, from the last set where people request tunes and we are at that point starving because they are too cheap to give us a foodbreak until the kitchen is actually closed. It was a card with the restaurant's name in Chinese and on the back I had written in my own request to cheer the guitar player up: ‘Anything from column A’, it said.

If my camera-friend is a musician he’ll toss it before the next stop anyway.