Last night I was invited to a dinner in the East Village. AP, my landlord/friend was impressed by my energy. It was 8:30. My usual bedtime was a little past 11. This detour from my pillow was at the request of the greatest B-movie actor in the history of punk rock. I bid AP good-night, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
The subway ride over to the Lower East Side took less than a half-hour. This was my old neighborhood. I had lived on East 10th Street for nearly 30 years. The walk from the 2nd Avenue stop to East 3rd Street was very familiar and I rang the doorbell of the actor’s apartment. I was buzzed through the double doors and climbed the stairs to his typically tiny apartment. EM greeted me with a hug and I shook hands with his guest; an aging child actor in his late 40s, the son of a renowned Chilean painter, a young artist from New York, and a art dealer from the Bowery. All of them were good drinkers and I brought two bottles of Cote du Rhone. The more the merrier and we drank several buckets of wine accompanied by a delightful meal of bouef bourgogne. The aging child actor bemoaned the loss of his hair and indulged our ridicule by combing his longish locks over his thinning scalp in a classic Donald Trump sweep-over.
“Only money can grow a bald man hair in the eyes of a beautiful woman,” I misquoted Fredrich Engels, the ignored co-writer of the Communist Manifesto.
We badmouthed absent friends, lambasted pretentious artists,and praised our present paramours, girlfriends, and wives. My son’s mom was the youngest, while our host was dating a 50 year-old. He was happy with the situation and said, “She smells good for a woman her age.”
“All women smell good if you love them.” The art dealer from the Bowery was involved only with his dog.
“And nothing is heavier than the body of a woman you have ceased to love.”
We raised our glasses and drained the last of my wine. The young artist had brought a bottle of champagne. The Moet was evaporated by our rapacious thirst. It was past midnight. I had to open the safe in the diamond exchange in the morning. The other guests were ready for a homeward bound voyage. I thanked our host and recounted a quick story about his defending James Chance, the lead singer of the Contortions, at CBGBs.
“That boy liked trouble.”
“And I like James.”
We would have toasted the wild man of the New Wave, but we had drunk our host dry.
I caught a taxi to Brooklyn. Getting out of the cab I searched my pockets for keys. They were anywhere and I recalled putting them on the table back in the East Village apartment. I cursed myself for losing them. I lost everything all the time. Keys, glasses, telephones et al. It was too far to go back and I looked up at the windows of AP’s townhouse. The windows were dark. I thought about sleeping under the stairs, but the temperature was dropping toward zero. I texted a message to AP.
“Help.”
His response was immediate.
“I’ll be right down.”
I was saved once more by AP and apologized for disturbing him at this late hour.
“Not at all.”
“Really?”
“I’m watching ENTOURAGE. My wife’s asleep. The kids are in bed. Life is good.”
“Thanks then.” I clapped him on the shoulder for being such a good sport and headed to the top floor. My room was warm. I opened a window. The night air felt good. Almost as good as being in bed, but only one thing feels better than that and that’s sleeping with your woman. I hugged the pillow in a drunken embrace. It smelled too much like me to transport me to the other side of the world and I dropped off the face of the Earth into slumber. It was a good place to be.