May 10, 2008
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1979 Sat, Sept. 16: The hardcore party types & a handful of art lovers gaggled on the sidewalk outside Holly Solomon’s (392 W Bway) to mark the season’s official opening. Hal Bromm’s was technically the first show. Tuesday after Labor Day, but somebody said that was too early to count. Just about everybody was at Holly’s, except Marcia Resnick & one or two others. You know who you are. As for the art, giant clocks by Christopher Knowles…okay if you like kiddy paintings. Vernita Nemec’s brother, who works for Polaroid, took Rose Hartman’s picture with a new model. “A bit green” somebody remarked, but Rose thought it was fine. All the talk concerned the parties ahead & I mused once again on why I have so little to do all the time but go on this dumb round of festivities. Then I remembered how boring it was not to even have parties to go to & felt a lot better. The evening party turned out to be a benefit for migrant farm workers who were being lauded in speech & song for the first hour or two. At the stroke of midnight, disco music burst forth and the flashing strobe lights drew my attention to a wild lady in leopard-skin dress who told me her name was Susan Socialist. With her rock group The Program, she said. She was trying to integrate music and theater more intimately. She had once worked in this loft along with the score of other video freaks who had provided most of the radical coverage of the 1976 Democratic Convention. Many of the guests looked like they might have been sent by Central Casting and Joyce Greller drew my attention to that guy who looks like Mr. Broadway with his dinner jacket, oversized eyebrows & soft felt hat over his eyes. “Friends of mine are planning a new magazine” she reported. “It’s all about celebrities being healthy—a sort of cross between Kelp and People. It’s going to be called Fit ”. Yes, I thought, it certainly is a healthy time for new publications. And the newspaper strike was a fortuitous stroke that had saved some publications years of potential striving. The Soho Weekly News, for example, looked likely to end up within striking distance of the Voice by the time it was all over, and the progress of the Moonies’ New World had been even more dramatic: 50,000 circulation when the strike began as against a claimed 300,000 every day now. Surprisingly, it’s the best daily in town, as well as the cheapest, and half of those readers are likely to stay with it even when the old-fashioned alternative return. There’s even a new tabloid down in Tribeca: the Washington Market Review, named apparently after the old name for the area before the realtors foisted the Tribeca abortion upon us. The WMR is neat. Is focused where it ought to be, on rip-off landlords who have been encouraging tenants to invest large sums fixing up lofts. and then reneging on promises to renew the lease. Tues, September 19: It’s obvious that the art scene is going steadily further and further downtown. The charming Art on the Beach series is evidence of that. There are already galleries opening up around there and it’s been a long time since Chambers Street was Soho’s southern boundary. Odd that Mickey Ruskin is moving north again with is new bar opening on University Place. Maybe the true solution is to rediscover Staten Island, in the footsteps of Cynthia Mailman who parked her minibus outside the Pleiades gallery earlier in the week. Many of the other heavy ladies were at that opening; Hannah Wilke, in big white hat; Sharon Wynbrandts; Cassia, who used to leap up and change Charlemagne Palestine’s cigaret as it burned perilously closed to his lips during his nonstop piano marathons. It seemed like an appropriate time to recycle Richard Dynek’s joke: Why does it take five feminists to change a light bulb? After the opening, I walked down thru Soho and ran into Miss X, a lively lady for whom I’ve yearned since meeting her a week or two ago. She was en route to see Truffauts’ Shoot the Piano Player, and while I can never understand why people bother to go to old movies that they can more easily see on television, I elected to accompany her. As it happened we ended up sitting outside the Figaro discussing—what else?—relationships. I remarked that nobody I knew ever talked about being in love any more and, romantic that I am, I wished those days would come back. (In my heart, I know that outside New York & America, they’ve never gone away. But, like everybody else, I’m hooked on the adrenalin of this place, so I seem to have sacrificed love for a sort of amorphous, amiable camaraderie. The art scene is like a lot of young puppies frisking and jumping and nuzzling each other without ever getting it up). Delighted to discover that my companion shared some of these views I delicately inquired if the prospect of a romance “of some sort” might be feasible between us. Can one plan a romance? It could be a fascinating voyage of discovery, especially if both could agree on the rules in advance. I’ve always thought it might be stimulating to step into somebody else’s life for a while, go along with whatever they happened to be doing for a day or two (as Michelle had done with me) instead of making formal, or even informal dates. Maybe I should advertise in the back pages of the New York Review of Books Amiable editor seeks imaginative adventure with witty lady, Tel: xxx Miss X didn’t totally reject the notion of a romance, allowing that there was a certain ‘affinity’ between us. We walked to Sheridan Square together, where her last words were “He didn’t fall in love with her right away, did he?”—a reference to the plot of Shogun, which I had outlined for her earlier. So patience, it seems, is the word for now. Recalling the advice my friend Betty Pepper used to proffer: “With cats and women, wait for them to come to you”. Of course, one could wait forever. Tues, Sept 26: Blood-covered babies emerging from wombs to the accompaniment of slapstick antics by a student nurse not being my idea of humor, I left the screening of the festival's Czech film to pass away the time until 6pm. Then it was time to crash Houghton Miflin's party for Arthur Schlesinger's new book about the Kennedys. Lauren Bacall, Jules Feiffer, Norman Mailer and Theodore White thronged around AS in one room while in the other Allard (the loser) Lowenstein exchanged chit chat with John Lindsay. Somebody pointed out "the richest woman in the world" (otherwise unidentified) and I watched her closely for any money-saving tips. Eventually I was rewarded when she picked up the Schlesinger tome, a hefty 10-pounder, and announced to her friend in shocked tones: "Hey, this book costs twenty bucks". Wed, Sept 27: At the Indian Consulate art opening (yummy food!) 3E64, a lovely jazz musician named Lisa Dean had just declined to give me her number but told me of her next gig (Empire Diner, Oct 8, midnite) when Tito arrived. He bore news of the Rolling Stone party at the MOMA and as our arrival coincided with that of Gerald Ford it was easy to crash in the consequent hubbub. "Bess and Harry must be here too--and maybe Judge Crater" observed Danny (Ramones) Fields satirically. He added that somebody named David Johanssen was also present. "He's the only rock star they'll let in because they know he won't piss into the pool". A slender figure in pinstriped suit and artfully tilted hat identified herself as Esther farfan-Oldham from Colombia, star of Warhol's Cocaine Cowboys currently being edited. Michael O'Donoghue, also in white hat, didn't remind me of our 1970 Xmas in Martinique with the Screw gang, but Bruce Jay Friedman recalled the 1967 day when he rented a yacht from his Cap D'Antibes summer home so we could all visit San Tropez. "I was hot then", he sighed. Stuffing themselves with food and prowling like dingo dogs were scores of photographers--a ratio of about one to every ten starving Chinese--and most of them zeroed in on the woman with the backless an d almost frontless blue dress. "Can you remember my name without looking at my card?" a florid exec was asking her. Mon, Oct. 23: A day of trauma. Amber, my ex-wife on vacation from her home in Western Australia, escorted me upstate in a rented car to Peekskill to the home of her uncle where we had stored cartons of our effects before leaving the U.S. six years ago. It was another three years before we split up in 1975 and here we were delving again into our past life: photos, reels of film, posters, books, letters. So many snapshots of the mind. "Here's the miniskirt I wore on our wedding day in Tokyo" Amber exclaimed. But that, together with most of our memories, had to go. We drove away leaving the remnants of our ten years together sagging out of battered cardboard boxes on a suburban sidewalk. Many tears were shed today.
Exploring India ... ================================= |
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