I was jaded. When I had first moved to 63rd Street I was very young and ashamed of living in the richest zip code in the country. It seems so strange now, but then people didn't parade money or riches around.
The world was changing. Soon Rupert Murdoch would buy The New York Post; People Magazine would be first published--or maybe it already had been. (Have to say that I love People, and seem to have a lifetime subscription. Also think that nothing beats the Post's horoscope.)
I was a downtown girl living uptown, and my life took place downtown. But I soon realized that other people liked knowing a girl who lived at my address, and it gave me a certain edge.
I lived very close to Regines, a club that was very hot then. I was a non-club person trapped in a club life. My memories of Regine's aren't very vivid. Like most people then, (not that's an excuse) I drank and drugged too much. Yes it was an excuse.
Regines was supposed to be very glamourous. I didn't think so. For somebody who didn't like the club life, I had very high standards. Most people who went to Regines were older than me, and while I should have exploited my youth I felt funny.
Other people enjoyed my stand-offish behavior. They thought it was Pia playing Ice Princess. Shelby, my best friend then, who had been one of the two most beautiful girls in college; the other being my other best friend, encouraged me to be icey in public, and in private would lecture me about it.
Shelby never had a shy day in her life, though she pretended to be modest about her looks. An editor during the day and a club person at night most of her men were married. She hated my no married men rule; and was always slightly angry that I had real boyfriends, and had already been married. That last item supposedly enhanced my status in the world.
I would spend winter and spring breaks at Shelby's parents house during college as they lived in Miami. One Passover her mother served a half cooked ham that nobody ate. That was the year her mother called Shelby in hysterics and told her that we were supposed to be very nice to Janey, Shelby's younger sister, boyfriend.
Mike was a convicted felon who had just gotten out of some Florida state prison. Shelby and I thought no problem, we knew many guys who had been in jail. They were fresh faced and just like all the other boys we knew.
Mike wasn't. He had long, stringy hair. While most boys had long hair, they washed their hair more than once a month. His skin was bad and he had a prison pallor. Even his jeans and tee seemed less than...but the second worst part were all his tatoos. We didn't know people who had them then.
The worst part was his speech. He mumbled and couldn't or wouldn't speak in sentences of more than three word. He also had horrible table manners.
That was the the Passover I first confronted my inner snob. I had never realized that I was one before. It was a big revelation. I didn't like it.
Shelby and I ran from her parents house to meet some friends at the Polo Club, a club that was hot in Miami then.
It was so familiar; I knew I belonged in this world.
Hating that I went to Coconut Crove where I picked up a really hot guy and spent three days with him; I pretended that I didn't have a boyfriend at home. It was an easy pretense as we were constantly breaking up.
The guy I picked up was a record producer. I only had things with guys in music. Sort of limited the category to half the straight males in New York and Miami. They were the only places in America I knew well.
He was older and owned his own home. The garden was lush with fruit bearing trees. When we weren't in a club or in bed, I pretended that I lived there. It was a nice fantasy, but when Shelby and I went back to Florida again, I found too many things wrong with him.
As people were always telling me, I was my own worse enemy.
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