In The 1980's...In The City That Never Slept...You Could Dance The Night Away...

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Relaunch: First Day At E Speakeasy




First Day... at E Speakeasy...


Yep...what can I do for you young lady?  Do you have ID?  I need to confirm that you're 18 or older in order to sit down in this establishment.  Hand me your ID.  Hmm.  Yep that's you.  Well welcome to E Speakeasy.  Why don't you just sit down and have a seat?

Now what can I get you young lady?  What's that?  You just stopped in for directions?  Okay, well the teenie booper place is down the street.  The weirdo place is down the other way.  If you came here for that stuff, you came to the wrong place.

Here at E Speakeasy, the only rules is when someone says no, or you infringe on someone else's rights - you must stop.  If you do not stop, then you have to leave for the night.  If you come back and do it again, you're gone for a month.  If you come back and do it a third time you're gone for forever.  And all my regulars here have a long memory.  So if any guy in here comes up to you in a manner that bothers you, you just let me know.  My name is Gus.  I'm the bartender...and the owner of this place...E Speakeasy.

Excuse me?  What does the E stand for?  Stick around and keep coming back...and you'll find out.  If you take a careful look around...all of my customers are dressed in spring and summer clothes...and it's presently 45 degrees out here in the middle of New York City.  Yet not one person is cold coming in here...or going out of here.

Give me your coat, I'll put behind in my closet behind the bar, next to mine.  Where do you live?  On the Upper East?  I just need to know so that our cab service will be sure to get you home.  Nope, since you're not a member yet, don't worry, your fare is on me tonight.  See, I don't want anything bad to happen to you tonight or any other night.  I want you to keep coming back.  Next time you come back...you'll bring a friend, and then she will bring a friend that next time.  And so on, and so on.

Where are you from?  Boston?  Nice.  Phark the khar, by the bhar Boston huh?  Funny I don't hear any accent in your voice.  Ohh...you're from outside Boston.   It only comes out after you had a few beers huh?  Well the stories you're about to hear tonight and the things you'll see going on in this place...well...they don't do this up in Boston.  I've been there.

Sit back hunny.  You're with Uncle Gus.  Drinks and cab are on me tonight....

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Stay Tuned...ESpeakeasy Will Be Reopening Again Very Soon...

Hi folks!  For those who have been following ESpeakeasy...I promise you the doors will be reopening again soon.  The tremendous and intense responses in the past for this story continually demand that I bring nothing but my best to the table for your entertainment.  In the meantime, please feel free to subscribe and take a peek at some of my other blogs.  Like all good bars and entertainment lounges, the need for renovations always comes up.
:-)

Sunday, November 25, 2012

The '80's...No Church In The Wild...




In 1965, the year that I was born in, the state of New York had a population roughly around 18 million plus and it's overall number of murders for the state of New York was about 836.  By the summer of 1983, with a population a little more than 17 million, the state of New York's murder rate had surged to about 1,958.  Well over three times the number of murders from the the day I was born.  Ironically this high number was actually lower than the previous four years ('79 - '82) in which the murder rate average was well over 2,000 a year.  It was not too hard to guess that the overwhelming majority of those murders were committed in New York City area.

Today we commonly refer to unrelated weather conditions occurring at the same time to form the "perfect storm" that might cause much more significant and life changing damage if those conditions had not occurred at the same time.  Well in the early 1980's, New York City was experiencing a perfect storm of a different kind.  It was a storm of money making hustles.  From Wall Street to 125 street, everyone was doing the "hustle" and these hustles had nothing to do with dancing.  They had everything to do with making money.  Lots of it.

In the early '80's, Wall Street saw the birth and boom of corruption filled leverage buyouts, junk bond and insider trading scandals secretly taking lives of their own. Hundreds of millions of dollars exchanged the hands of people who already had made a lot of money.  Wall Street's "Masters of the Universe" who had names like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken had their financial schemes in full swing.  By the close of the decade, Boesky and Milken had become the poster boys for financial greed on Wall Street.  Two convicted criminals who could afford to pay their respective fines of $100 and $500 million dollar fines, and do little to no jail time.  This was in spite of the monumental collateral damage that they caused on Wall Street and for tens of thousands of investors.  But they were only a few of the top heads in a tall totem pole, and there were quite a few totem poles.  This greed wasn't good.  It was down right criminal.

Meanwhile on the average street corner, drug sales were becoming common place from the poorest to even the best of neighborhoods.  For years cocaine had been considered a rich man's drug sold in bad neighborhoods.  But now everyone wanted in on the game.  You could now buy it in Greenwich Village, Park Avenue or Houston street. Cocaine had always had a status symbol attached to it. It wasn't considered addictive or all consuming drug like heroine and other drugs.  So more and more casual users openly took to snorting cocaine in the bathrooms of clubs, their workplace or homes as a "pick me ups" to clear their heads and stimulate them.

To make matters even worse, the early '80's, saw a supply glut in the major cocaine producing countries such as the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Columbia. This caused a sudden drop in the price of cocaine and increased violence in the competition to make sales.  Drug gangs fought openly to maintain, establish or procure new territory.  Once the drug dealers decided to convert that cocaine to a smokeable form of rock or crystals or "crack" to help increase users addictive "highs" (and dealers profits), the formation of the "perfect storm" was complete.  Soon casual cocaine users became the highly addicted crack users.  They were guaranteed to come back for another purchases...not within days - but within hours.  "Creakheads" as these newer addicts were now called, increased like zombies on the streets.  All bets for peaceful territory settlements between rival drug gangs were now off.  There was too much money to be made.

In the '80's it had become chic to show off how much money you made even though you lived in a city that was suffering urban blight and recovering from its financial bankruptcy of the mid '70's.  To add to that America was recovering from inflation and a national jobless rate that had reached all time highs.  The city had literally been ripped into two different worlds, separated by only a few streets and avenues.  It was a world of the haves and the have nots.  The only common ground for bank robbers, drug dealers, nurses, ordinary people and people who made fortunes were the dance clubs.  Everyone wanted to go to a club and just disappear into the moment of having fun and letting go of whatever tensions or taboos they had built up inside themselves.   On the dance floor everyone was one mind and one voice.  There was no black or white, or rich or poor.  No one better, no one worse.  You just got on the floor for a few hours and let yourself go.

I remember watching President Carter on TV when he visited the then dilapidated South Bronx in 1977 and declared that he was going to initiate programs to end urban blight.  Then in 1980 I watched, President Reagan visit the same area of the South Bronx and pour some salt into wounds by pointing out how President Carter and the Democrats had failed to improve anything in three years.  Reagan believed in the trickle down theory where financial success in the private sector would help spur secondary economies and jobs throughout the city and the country.  Unfortunately over the next decade, the only trickle down monies that the South Bronx or the Lower Eastside was seeing was when middle class and wealthy people drove in from the Upper Eastside, New Jersey or Connecticut to buy drugs.  For us, the only job growth we saw was the drug dealers.  Now the neighborhood drug dealers had become Masters of the Universe by virtue of their constant "tax free" cash flow.

The living to drug and alcohol excess played out in most of the club scenes.  But, Gus Johnson wouldn't allow such open use of cocaine or any drugs at E Speakeasy.  We made our money by being the low key social, dance club that had a nice bar and sometimes featured a live band.  When you grew weary of all the pizazz and glitter of the others, and wanted to get involved with real connections with everyone from celebrities to ordinary people, you came to E Speakeasy.  But if you wanted the flash and glitter, you went to the other clubs.  And there was plenty of other clubs...




Drugs and alcohol use was only the beginning of the excesses in some of the other clubs.  Studio 54 founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were found guilty of skimming money from their own club for tax evasion reasons, as well as funding and "party favors" (drugs).  In 1980 the club was shutdown.  This may have signified the end of the classic discotheque era, but it was only the beginning of the dance club craze of the 1980's. There were of course the older ones, "The Copacabana", "Paradise Garage", "Danceteria", and "The Limelight".  Then there were the newer clubs that attracted the younger, hip hop, break dancing crowd.  To name a few, "The Funhouse", "The Roxy", and "Dance Fever", aka "The Fever" up in the Bronx.

Newer dance clubs kept popping up all over the place, that they began outpacing alternative clubs like "Max's Kansas City" and "CB GB's" - clubs that had ushered in punk rock artists during the mid 70's.  Surviving punk rock artists had now morphed into "new wave" music, a more commercial and "pop" musical rift, rather than their original loud, energized and distinctive sound from just a few years ago.  Disco may have been dead, but everyone still wanted to dance the night away.

The money to be made in the dance club business was so enticing that even after serving time for tax evasion, Rubell and Schrager returned to the club scene as advisers and helped reopen Studio 54 under a new name "The Ritz" and then later, "The  'New' Studio 54" by the early 80's.  The new club lacked the magic that it had captured in the mid '70's during the height of the discotheque era.  Still, the original Studio 54 had established the modern formula on how to successfully market a "hot" dance club in New York City, albeit a short lived life span.  First, you create a celebrity clientele.  Second, you allow twice the amount of women inside to men.  Third, you have live upcoming performers, lots of lights, glitz, food, alcohol and access to drugs...their own...or...subsidized.  Lastly...you keep your club exclusive.  Only a select few can get in.

My friends Crush Washington and Junito Rivera weren't allowed to visit me when I worked at E Speakeasy anymore.  In addition, Gus and Mr. Cooper would throw me in a suit to work promotions with the sales rep for E Speakeasy along the midtown hotel circuit to keep me busy on the weekends.  My friends reputations for dealing drugs had began to proceed them.  Gus and Mr. Cooper only allowed Tony Conti to visit me that since he wasn't officially in or even known for being in a gang of any type.  Even my family was trying to keep me from hanging out with them.  My father offered me to live with him and his girlfriend on the Upper Westside where he worked as the building's maintenance foreman.

I didn't appreciate their concerted efforts that whole year, that was until August '83.  That was the night that I promised to get together with Crush, Junito and Tony over at The Funhouse as a sort of reunion.  We had not all been together for many months.  We were going to have a boys night out, even left our girlfriends behind that night.  The plan was to meet at the Funhouse at a certain time.  Tony played as the go between me and Crush and Junito.  Tony himself had been shuffling between down town at Maserik Towers on the Lower East side, where his mother lived with his grandmother for a few years and their new place in Bayside, Queens, where he was making plans to attend Queens College after we graduated next June.

When me and the gang started out in 7th grade together in Fall 1977, there was about 25 of us who were all good friends.  By the middle of Spring '83 there were only about 10 of us still walking around and not in jail.  Of that 10 now I was only hanging mostly with just one of them.  A block party near Masaryk towers set off a chain reaction of events that seemed to get sucked up in the vacuum of violence, greed and machismo that was prevailing in the streets.  Crush Johnson and Junito crew were feeling the pinch of increasing Dominican gangs taking over their corners.  At a block party hosted by the then FM 92, WKTU a street fight erupted just as the party was coming to an end.  The party was thrown to ease tensions among the rival gangs, instead some chose to use this moment of people's guards being dropped to stab a members of Crush's crew.  Two days later, one members of the Dominican gang was shot in the leg as a warning.

There were no reprisals for a little while after that.  But that wouldn't last too long.  Crush, Junito, Tony and myself met a few weeks later at The Funhouse.  My decision that night would haunt me the next 12 months.  Tony and I weren't even inside The Funhouse 5 minutes before we heard that four lead members of the rival Dominican drug gang had somehow been allowed inside the club.  Once the Dominican crew ran into Crush and his crew, the people in the club began clearing out of the way like towns people scattering at the OK Corral.  Crush was surrounded by the four Dominicans, and the rest of his crew was surrounding the four Dominicans.  Guns were not supposed to be allowed inside the club.  Unfortunately...when security is on the take...shit happens.  And this shit was seconds away from being blown all around the club once it hit the fan.

Most guys in Crush's situation, would have just been shot on the spot, even if his shooters were surrounded by rivals.  But it was then that I realized how big Crush had gotten in the drug world.  The four Dominicans were less afraid of retaliation by Crush's crew, and more concerned about him killing them first.  All four Dominicans were wearing big gold crucifix chains around their necks.  Without mincing many words, Crush told them that when they were ready to draw, he too was ready to draw too - there at the club or any street corner.  They spoke to him about his disrespect of them and that his gang was weak and would be moved off the streets like garbage.  Crush steeled his faced and looked into the eyes of the leader of the four Dominicans and told them to move him now if they wanted to.  Or to go have a dance and enjoy the club.  They wouldn't budge either way.  He then looked down at their crosses and said to them in Spanish,

"Las balas no creen en Dios.  Ellos le ayudan a encontrarse con El."  [Bullets do not believe in God.  They help you meet him.]

The four Dominicans eventually did back down, but then they continued to stalk us from the perimeter of the club.  Unfortunately, what we didn't immediately realize was that they had one of their guys put a mark on me and Tony.  Yep.  Even though Tony and I weren't even in the drug gang business, we were being singled out as targets to be shot, before the end of the night, as a retaliation to Crush.  For the next hour, we observed how certain faces in the club were watching us and stayed close to members of Crush's crew, guys who were actually carrying guns.  We figured it out and knew this wasn't a good thing.  Crush wanted Tony and I out of the mess.  He told us that when the coast was clear to exit the club via a certain emergency exit door, manned by a bouncer who was on his payroll.  He had two girls in his crew start a fake, but loud, girl on girl screaming fight near the bar, to cause a distraction.  While all the macho guys watched, Tony and I slipped out the specified emergency door.

I would never seen Crush alive again.  The Dominicans put out a contract on him and he was shot and killed the first week of September, my senior year in high school.  Junito ran the gang for a little while longer that year and exercised retaliation on two of the four Dominicans from the club.  Now the bodies in the streets began to pile up from both drug use and from gun and knife assaults.  Even though I wasn't even in any gang...for the next 12 months, I was still a marked man by the Dominicans...

It got so bad for me, I had to transfer to the high school up by my father on the Upper Westside.  That made me ineligible to play my senior year in high school, which then caused Syracuse to drop me from their scholarship interests and made me a virtual leper to all other interested colleges.  I had been black listed as a drug dealing street thug.

So there I was, stuck in the middle of nowhere.  There were hustles at every corner of the city, from Wall Street to the Mean Streets, and I couldn't capitalize on any one of them.  Yet I could see all of them.  It was all unfair.  I blamed everyone and everything, including God.  There was no God out here I said to Him.  There is no church or love and respect of your fellow man in people's hearts out here anymore.  This was just every man for himself.  Now I too had to look out for number one.

Took me a while to realize that surviving that gun toting confrontation at the Funhouse wasn't the end of my life, but the beginning process of God resurrecting my life from my own 17 1/2 years of stupidity.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Seeds To An Apple Empire...Not All Gold Is Golden...





Summer 1983...was a hot summer.

I will never forget it.  When you grow up hanging around the streets, you do pick up and adapt not only to the some of the good things, but to some of the bad things.  Although my mother had a strong and influential hand in teaching me to do the right thing, sometimes I didn't always make the best choice for myself.

Summer 1983 was the summer that I would experience just about every side of the rainbow of life, and thought I was on top.  I thought that I knew it all.  Little did I know that I still had a lot to learn.  Working at the newspaper I would meet and greet the public relations persons for nearly every politician or celebrity who wanted to set up an interview for their client. Sometimes this got me access to inside information to things long before the general public would know.  Once again my basketball play and association with underground clubs and now the more private and swanky, E Speakeasy gave me a sort of hush the whole room celebrity.  The trade conversation for insider gossip or access to other celebrity parties would always start with them saying to me, "Oh you work at E Speakeasy?  Wow.  Do you think you could get me in?"

Three of my best male buddies at the time were Anthony (Tony) Conti, Oscar (Junito) Rivera and Darren (Crush) Washington.  We had all been friends since the 7th grade.  Even though our lives had taken different paths, we still could always get together at different times and have some fun.  Tony and Junito were cousins.  However, Junito and Crush were both straight up drug dealers and belonged to a drug dealing gang.  Herc had become the kingpin of the gang.  I limited my hangouts with them to establishments north of Houston street, since most of their street corner battles had taken place south of Houston, over by Allen and Pitt Streets, as well as up and down the Bowery.

When we were younger we all witnessed and attended some of the original outdoor park and underground rap DJ rap parties.  With the help of our older siblings and relatives we had up in the South Bronx, we were able to attend and witnessed the birth of rap and hiphop in the mid 1970's.  The outdoor park parties were called "Jams" back then.  Anyone could attend.  The DJ's would plug their equipment into a street light pole, have his two turntables and just let the party start.  As long as trouble makers didn't attend the venue, everyone would have a good time.  We were just youngsters and attending a party or two thrown by the originals like DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Grand Wizard Theodore, to name a few, was like an adventure.

Unfortunately, although these outdoor events generally attracted the overwhelming number of fun loving and good natured people, they also attracted some of the bad elements in the neighborhood.  Bad elements like thieves and drug dealers would show up and sour the park parties.  Therefore outdoor parties, soon turned into more indoor events for increased safety and monetary reasons.  Sometimes even those additional indoor safety precautions indoors fell apart and trouble kept following the music, the crowds...and the money.  For the next 10 to 15 years that shadow of these dark elements would continue to follow rap music, as it evolved.  But during that period, from it's beginning and into the 1990's, it was still taboo to "like" or "listen" to for mainstream America.  Little did people realize that the essence of rap had already seeped inside the souls of people throughout America, white, black, rich, poor and the world.  It may have still been considered taboo for the mainstream, but it was still selling records and CD's by the millions.

You see once the genie had been let out of the bottle, with Sugarhill's "Rapper Delight" hit in 1979, there would be no way of putting it back in.

So from 1979 to the early 1980's everyone knew names like the Sugarhill Gang and even Grandmaster Flash and his Furious Five.  However, by 1983 newer names began popping up like Run DMC, The Treacherous Three, Doug E Fresh , as the record deals offerings, aka - the money - began to increase.  These newer guys were really 3rd and 4th generation rappers, one just building off the innovation or breakthrough of the other from just a few years earlier.  What started out as a outdoor street event to have fun, and maybe earn a little money and noteriety, had now began evolve into an enterprise to earn a quick blast of thousands, maybe millions dollars - if you really knew the record business and could avoid the pitfalls of street life or bad contracts.

For work I dressed up in a shirt, tie and sport jacket.  For basketball training I was sporting my then still popular Adiddas sweatsuit, short basketball shorts (not considered short at the time, just upon looking back) and of course my Adiddas high tops.  For my casual wear, well, I wore what was popular in my neck of the woods at the time.  I had a gold "plated" Seiko watch, a gold medium sized rope chain, mock neck shirt, and had made the switch over from Lee bellbottom jeans to Sassoon straight legged, designer jeans...and of course my Adiddas.

One day George Cooper invited me to his penthouse apartment on Lexington avenue to have a sit down talk with me.  Being that he was a man who mixed in all sorts of worlds, legal and illegal.  Good and bad.  However, this one day in June he laid out some knowledge to me that I initially took as him being too parental, when I already began to think of him as like an older brother, taking me around the high and the mighty in NYC, showing me the ropes.  I wouldn't understand until later on that the good in him was just trying to save my life, and that he was doing the right thing by imparting his wisdom to me.

"Trever," he said to me, "Not all gold things in this world are golden.  You come here to my penthouse wearing that dopey gold plated rope chain and watch, thinking you're showing some form of financial and social success that you've obtained in just 17 years of living.  Actually, living on the Lower East Side, you're just opening yourself up an early death because someone else might want that chain off your neck more than you wish having it.  They might even kill you to get that chain and watch.  I heard you got the scholarship to Syracuse University for basketball.  I know you're going to be up there playing with that Pearl Washington and that 7ft freshman Rony Seikaly.  Them guys are going pro Trev.  You're good, but you're not going to go pro.  You should have taken that scholarship offer from New York University, stayed close to home where me and Gus can help ya, and just stay away from those friends you call buddies who aren't going to go anywhere.  They'll all be dead before you even graduate college."

I didn't want to hear his words.  But it was the same words my mother and father had said to me, even though they were separated.  No matter what circles I traveled, I always found time for me and my boys.  So at that moment, I didn't want to hear what Mr. Cooper was saying either.

Then the next couple of things he said to me would prove to be monumental things that would affect my life for forever.  "Trever," he continued, "See that watch over there.  Put it on."  I looked at it.  It was a square faced silver watch with the name Tissot on it.  The watch didn't look "hip" it looked whacked or not very stylish.  "Trever that watch is worth 100 times more than that fake gold watch you're wearing, plus it's a great conversational piece and will probably get you more ass than your fake gold watch.  You might even make the 500 club one day.  It's a $2000.00 watch.  Wear it every time you work at E Speakeasy, and when you hang out with me.  The company that makes it is over 130 years old."

The watch was sitting on the table next to his personal computer, an Apple SE, which was basically a 9 inch monitor and attached keyboard.  It was state of the art at the time.

"No, you can't have that computer, but that envelope is for you.  I had my lawyer draw it up.  I'm giving you some stock in that Apple company.  I got it when it was at $2.75 a share.  I'm giving you 5,000 shares of the 45,000 I bought.  It's a custodial account, which is being held by my lawyers office.  The contract stipulates that you must have a college degree, be over the age of 21, and have a full time, tax paying, legitimate job before you can take ownership of that stock.  Otherwise within 15 years, the earnings will go to a charity.  That could be worth ten of thousands of dollars to you when you graduate, or you let it mature a little - say another 10 years - and it could be worth more than that.  Maybe a million.  All that gold on a white piece of paper.  Either way, I want you to graduate college and do something positive with your life, not sit on your ass bartending and hanging out all night with drug dealers.  You can do this.  One more year of high school and then four years of college.  You can do this."

I thought my summer was had started out as crazy as can be with Mr. Cooper hitting me left and right with knowledge, a watch and some silly computer stocks.  I really didn't think much about it.  But, by the end of that summer, things had gotten really crazy and my life really turned upside down.  I would not only be running from reality, I also would be running from myself...

Friday, November 16, 2012

She Came from Boston...By Way of Maine...




My mom's maiden last name was Esposito.  My father's last name was Mitchell, but his mother was 2nd generation Italian and his father was half Italian, half Scottish.  That made me three quarters Italian with the petite facial features of a Scottish girl.  My first name was Stephanie.  My father studied business at Boston University and ended up working at a small accounting firm up in Maine, where he met my mother.  They married, had three kids and as the list of prominent names grew on his portfolio, so did his wealth and position.  It wasn't long before his company waged a deal and was merged with a bigger firm based in Boston.  Which is where we then moved to.  We moved into a house in the suburbs just outside of Boston in the late 1970's.

By the summer of 1983, the end of my junior year in high school, my father knew that he was going to have to make another move within the next 12 months, as yet another merger was looming.  He was also entertaining an offer to leave for one of the big accounting firms down in New York.  They were known back then as "The Big Eight".  The talk of moving once again, put a strain on my mother and father's marriage.  Both of my older brothers were already attending Boston University.  I had my eye on bucking the family tradition and attending New York University's Business school.

My father and mother decided to separate due to the pressure of his career and the time they lost as a couple.  He then jumped over to the Wall Steets', Arthur Anderson accounting firm and took his exclusive clientale with him to New York.  His career move to New York and my desire to explore the bright lights of New York City became my grand arm twist to get him to allow me to break "tradition" and attend NYU.  He owed me a lot for breaking up with my mother, just as I was pursing my higher education.  He was now worth a lot of money and he begrudgingly not only took me with him, but allowed me to live with him on the Upper East Side.  He had a company paid for, two bedroom high rise overlooking the East River.  The man had gone from a smart poor kid from Lowell, Massachusetts, to a divorced, "Master of the Universe" at one of the Big Eight accounting firms in New York City.

I wanted to do the same, but on his expense.  I didn't want to become a clone of him like my brothers had become up in Boston.  All they could talk about was money, making more money and dealing with the little people.  At 5'5 I was one of the little people, like my mother as compared to them who stood over 6 feet like our father.  When I was younger my father used to be a kind man, who could talk to anyone from any walk of life.  Color, ethnicity, how much money they made, whether they were dressed nice or homeless didn't matter to him.  That's the way he was before he got his promotions in Boston and began hanging out with people who belonged to yacht clubs, golf clubs and never made less than a million dollars a year.  Once he hit that plateau, and I hit my teens, we sort of lived in opposite worlds.

I had no problem hanging out on the bad sides of Boston and mixing it up at clubs where mostly lily white girls wouldn't hang out at.  I had a couple friends back then, who looked out for me and I played the role of being just an average, city of Boston white girl.  Yeah, I had a couple of rolls with some smart mouth girls.  Got my ass kicked the first time for being nice.  After that, I kicked the next smart mouth girl's ass, got my street credibility and moved on.  I dallied in weed a little bit.  Nothing else.  Drugs just didn't fascinate me.  Nor did sexing it up.  I had two boyfriends in my life.  One white, one black.  I drop kicked both of them when I moved to New York and both of them wanted to still just hang out on the streets like as if the streets was going to employ them with a legitimate form of income.

I never hung out with thugs or trash, but I did hang out with people of all colors.  I wasn't into the hang out at Martha's Vineyard and deal with only wealthy, upper class white folks.  Nope, I wanted to be like my dad used to be.  I wanted to be part of the real world.  The world that had all sorts of color and life in it.

My freshman year at NYU was going great.  Living with my dad wasn't too bad.  He was always too busy to even check up on me, my hangouts or my friends.  I began to know how my mother felt.  He and I lived in the same apartment, but I was lucky to see him four times a week.  Whatever, you know?  I was in college.  I was weaned from him a long time ago.

I got into my NYU hangout crowd rather quickly.  Some of my friends there was nice and real.  Some were shallow.  All of us were filled with dreams of becoming Masters of the Universe in our own different fields of study.  A lot of kids there came from families with a lot of money.  The school was expensive and students there felt like they "owned" the city, even though we didn't.  Some of our dormitories at the time were located just a block away from not so nice, run down areas.  So you either hung out by your dorm, a popular club, or with your exclusive set of wealthy, wannabe Ivy League type, jet setters who got to get into places like Studio 54 without ever standing in line.

I hung out with the in crowd that was friendly with the locals in the area.  They were a little on the artsy side, or the goth side sometimes.  I liked hanging out with the club going side.  However, the one night I decided to hang out with a guy from the wealthy, jet setter crowd, the asshole stood me up for some prissy white girl who's father had a summer house on Martha's Vineyard.  Martha's Vineyard?  Been there, did that every summer since I was 9 years old.  Jerk!

That was the night that I stumbled into E Speakeasy out of desperation.  Actually just to get away from being so angry for being stood up.  I wanted to kill the bastard after the fact.  And I was dressed up so nice in my skintight Gloria Vanderbilt, designer jeans and blouse and "fuck me" pumps. I was dressed to kill!  I wanted to make every guy around wish I was with him, and every girl around wish she was me with this guy - and the bastard stood me up.  Anyway that night at E Speakeasy was the night that would change my life for forever.

Friday, November 9, 2012