My world in the 1970's, up to the mid 1980's was different than it is now. Today I live a quiet life; one that has far fewer people in it. I haven't begun to write about many of the people. Lucia and I had many mutual friends before we became friends. Patrick and Bethany were two that you will read about soon.
It was a world with boundaries or limitations simply because we didn't know what was going to happen next. I'm not a person who regrets my past. I wish that I had been more confident and simply enjoyed my life. But I wasn't.
I keep on coming back to the day that I met Zachary. All afternoon the soon to be owner of the club would come up and tell me that so and so wanted to meet me. I would ignore him and go back to my Perrier and book. So and so's consisted of record company executives, producers, working singer/songwriters, all there to hear Lucinda. I was just an image, nothing more, and too scared to let people know that the person behind the image was very mortal. It took me many more years to understand that being mortal was good. Nobody wants an image that could come crashing down with the first thunder.
He who knew the real me; the quirks and the insecurities. He cared anyway. We had known each other forever. I tell him now that I was his first great PR project; the freshman girl who should have been one of the girls who sat in the dorm every night. My hair was very frizzy then and untameable. But I somehow knew how to use it to my advantage.
Even I realize that I wasn't somebody's PR project. But it felt much less scary to think of myself as one. I knew since I was in college that an older guy was working in the college bookstore and saw me there during August Freshman Orientation. I hadn't seen to many hippie boys in our freshman class yet and remember thinking that though he was a hippie he wasn't a possibility. Not good looking enough. I was incredibly shallow. Oh I enjoyed the myths that spun about me, but I was a fraud. Most of the other girls who hung out with the same boys seemed so self-assured and pulled together. What was I doing in their leagues or ahead of them?
The day I met Zachary I had come to the club without my usual quota of friends to protect me. Though they thought they were getting into a club with good music for free, and the drinks were comped. And, he who, they were triples; it was the only place where one screwdriver would knock me on my ass.
I was good at getting into clubs; I had even worked with Marc, the doorman at Studio 54. My friends loving going out with me. I loved making myself up and getting dressed. Hated most discos, except for Area at times, and a few others at different times.
Which is why I was drinking a Perrier at about six PM, Sunday May 20, 1979.
No I didn't even have the excuse of being tipsy when Zachary came over. This was the joke.
"You want to see the Polish disco?"
"Maybe."
He put his left foot out.
"Dis go here."
Repeated it with his right foot.
"Dis go dere."
Wasn't in the slightest high or tipsy and I almost fell off my seat, I laughed so much. It had to be instant lust. It was the absolute worst joke anybody told me until last year.
I'm sorry but that doesn't happen often. Knew that then, and went with it. He who had the doorman/bouncer bar us from leaving as he went to Lucinda to learn Zachary's life story.
She gave Zachary an impeccable reference; Zachary borrowed ten dollars from he who and we went to Kenny's Castaways on Bleeker which had a half decent punk/folk act, and we sat upstairs and made out for two hours.
Just had to write this. Will really be the last post until Monday or Wednesday; I will be making my grand return to Bring it on! on the 23rd, and have no idea what I will write on. Should be interesting.
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