How is it that sometimes all it takes to transport you back to a particular place in time is just to hear a song?... and then it's like you're right back there all over again?
Well that's the case with "With You" from the Broadway show "Pippin." It was the very first show I saw in New York and that song (along with the whole album) would subsequently become the soundtrack of my life during that long and lonely month of March.
Except it was a tape...
And this was my best friend!
My routine consisted of coming home from work, changing into comfy clothes, settling down on my foam mattress, pressing "play" and then writing endless tomes of letters to Doug, Thom, Lorna, my family, and old friends from college and d'land. I had such fancy stationary back then too! Sometimes I SO miss the days of penning out thoughts, sealing, adressing and stamping the envelope and then actually mailing it. The same goes for waiting endlessly for and then FINALLY receiving a letter back in my mailbox! Which, if someone were to have filmed it, would have probably been the screenplay.
But other than that, sometimes I'd just wander down to Times Square in the evening to walk around... or on weekends walk through Central Park and maybe check out an antique shop... or just stare out the window at the snow, which seemed to never end.
But whatever, sometimes when I think about it I wish I could just go back there for a few minutes and experience it all over again, even as lonely as I remember feeling at the time.
If I had only known how very temporary that brief little moment of time in the scheme of things would be, and how short that time would last.
But then there are also those moments that I'd never want to re-live ever again, like the time I got that letter from mom saying that if she were in New York I'd probably find her at the bottom of the Empire State Building, and she wasn't referring to Bonds! (which was where Bonds was...) This in response to Lee and her parents reporting back that I was out in New York living in sin!
That was such a crazy night if I remember correctly. Talk about feeling mammoth portions of guilt! Even though nothing I'd done had been much to write home about (for the most part)... I understand now how it must have been much more than mom was probably able to handle at the time. But mine and Doug's relationship mostly consisted of going out to a Broadway show, a movie or a dance concert, him shopping for clothes at Macy's (yawn), listening to music in his apartment... (I'll admit he was a VERY good kisser!) And maybe only a couple of times (ok, ALOT) did he ever take me out to Le Jardin (the premiere and most exclusive gay bar in town...) where we would dance the night away...
Visitors!
But then suddenly all was forgiven and forgotten... and mom somehow procured plane tickets for herself and my sister to come for a visit to the Big Bad Apple!
And it was wonderful having them there those few days! It was like all of a sudden my apartment had been blessed... somehow making it feel like home.
I remember giving them SUCH explicit instructions on how to find their way down to 35th Street from my apartment on 72nd and how I felt so proud of myself for being such a native!
We had dinner that night at the very famous, yet now sadly closed, Mama Leone's.
I think this was the dress I purchased from "Bonds"...
During their stay my childhood babysitter, Montez Brown, and her dear family came up to visit us from Philly.
Dave Brown had baptized and confirmed me as a child, so we'd had a pretty long history! (I'd end up going down to visit them often in the coming years and have such great memories of those times! Ten years later they even came up for Whitney's blessing. Montez ended up passing away at much too early an age, but our families still remain in touch.)
Here's another shot of my "dining room table" without the KFC.
It was actually an old door that I'd hauled off the street and placed on top of a cardboard box which I'd covered in contact paper. *classy!*
Anyway, the night before my family left we all took in the show and a movie at Radio City Music Hall. Then Doug left us curbside grabbing a cab home to pack for his latest tour (or maybe it was Hawaii) which he'd be boarding a plane for in the morning, and I sobbed on my foam mattress all night! Of course mom thought I was crying because she was leaving, bless her heart! Though I'll agree that MAY have had something to do with my state of mind. But she was so dear. She just sat there and rubbed my forehead forever... the way she'd do when I was a little girl.
Thom came to visit me as well that month and we painted the town!... or at least ate hot dogs at Nathan's in Times Square and rode the Circle Line around Manhattan (on a freezing day!) But it was great!
Here are a couple of pictures he took while he was there. (Oops, I think the only one I have of Thom is from our Circle Line day, which is on my TMB post)...
Me, along side the only decoration in my apartment, which I'd picked it up at one of those antique shops on one of those Saturdays (which wasn't REALLY an antique... but just very Doug-ish...)
Off to work maybe?
A special delivery pineapple from Hawaii...
A Funny Coincidence
I'd always been sort of jealous of this one girl in High School, Sandra Z. Because she was a true blue ballet dancer who took professional classes in L.A. every night. I remember her telling stories during Home Ec about how she'd taken class with Juliet Prowse the night before. You know the type... Anyway, I knew that she had moved to New York and been accepted into the New York City Ballet Company and all that... but I never really quite expected to see a mailbox with her name on it right next to mine (being 3,000 miles away from High School!)
I saw her in the elevator once but kept a very low profile. I wasn't exactly that comfortable at the time introducing myself and saying "Hi there, remember me? I just recently moved to New York!... and have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing here!" Know what I mean? So I just sort of remained "aware" of her from a distance. Years later I would at least be able to redeem that self esteem a bit, but that's another story.
Reality
And so there I was... living on pretty much nothing and not sure where to turn. But a guardian angle, aka Patty P., who was also the head of Personel at Bonds (no, not Human Resources because it was still called "Personel" back in those days) told me that she and her roommate were looking for a third person to share their apartment on the upper east side for $150 each. I don't really remember whether she interviewed me first before asking me to move in, or not...
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