“But it’s fun to picnic in Bryant Park. They’re showing His Girl Friday next week!”
“You know who else picnics? Homeless people. They love picnics. During the Depression, people picnicked in the park all year round; they called it Tent City.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “What do you want to do then?”
It was June of 1999, the summer before my senior year. Classes had ended in late May and within a week all my friends disappeared, leaving the city suddenly quiet. Quiet in that noisy way, when you look around and see crowds of people talking, just none of them to you.
Up until then, I’d enjoyed a full schedule of dates and parties; college was turning out to be an education more sentimental than academic. Lectures and seminars were few and far between, leaving plenty of time to go out. And I did, constantly, working at my social life the way others worked at their résumés. To leave Manhattan then, to trade in my hard-won glamour for over a month in the suburbs, was out of the question.
“You Can’t Go Home Again,” I’d said, during my father’s birthday dinner weeks earlier. We were at our favorite Red Lobster in Long Island, where I’m from. My parents looked at me quizzically. “It’s a novel by Thomas Wolfe,” I explained, as a means of broaching the subject.
And so, with my parents’ permission, instead of returning home that June, I signed up for drawing classes at the School of Visual Arts. Since my classes only met once a week, however, I had little to do.
I took a lot of walks in the beginning. I lingered in bookstores, read novels in the park, and went frequently to the movies. I’d walk to Lincoln Center, which wasn’t far from my apartment, or else, if it were a Saturday, I’d walk the fifty or so blocks down to Angelika on Houston. On the street again after, alone in the warm summer night, I’d stroll the whole way back up to my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, past lively restaurants and bars with crowds of young people spilling out, hoping that by the time I got home I’d be tired enough to sleep.
I looked forward to the free film every Monday in Bryant Park. I’d spend the whole afternoon flipping through magazines in the Mid-Manhattan Library and then at dusk, wander over. Though the park always filled up hours ahead of time—people would come early and spread blankets to reserve space for friends—I went just at the last minute. The great thing about going alone, I considered, watching Psycho between groups of screaming friends, was how easy it was to find a single seat.
I worked on my drawing a lot, too. At the end of every session of animation class, the teacher would gather everyone around for a critique. When it was my turn, I showed a fifteen-second cartoon adapted from my comic strip, “The Naked Woman,” about the boozy misadventures of its title character, The Naked Woman: Against a flat expanse of white, a naked woman runs, trips, and falls every fifth step. Above her head, a thought bubble reads, “Open bar!” I looped it to go on forever. In silence, we watched her run, trip, fall, get up . . . run, trip, fall, get up. . . . The other students in the class, mostly middle-aged men interested in superhero comics, called it “odd.”
I didn’t go out much. I didn’t have anyone to go out much with. There was Caroline, whom I’d met that winter when my party life was in full swing. We went out occasionally—to the karaoke night where we’d met and were both regulars, or the Tikki Room at Niagara where we’d put our cigarettes on the bar and I’d say, “Let’s smoke cigarettes and act cool,” before lighting up. But since she didn’t drink and had an actual job to go to in the morning, she often went home early.
Mostly, I looked forward to Thursdays, to Lex’s ’80s party. I’d met Lex at the same karaoke party where I’d met Caroline. He was part of the celebrity set—musicians who covered their own songs, B-actors and indie-darlings who pretended they didn’t want to be recognized but bristled when they weren’t—that had made the party famous. “I liked your song,” I told him one night. “It reminded me of my youth,” I said earnestly. This made him laugh and he began inviting me to all his parties—“Soul Sucka!” a ’70s night at Twilo that served chicken wings and forties, “Soft Sundays,” an evening of easy listening upstairs at Moomba. I always dressed up with a nod to the era or style he was referencing. He liked that about me, he said.
Thursday would arrive. I’d compose a fresh eighties outfit—acid washed jeans maybe and a T-shirt cut to fall off one shoulder—and suck down a few beers while I got ready. Then, with my courage duly fortified, I’d make my way downtown. Usually, I’d bring something with me—a funny article I’d cut out from the Weekly World News (“Oldest Man in the World’s Secret to a Long Life Is Drinking a Quart of Whiskey and Smoking Two Packs a Day!”), or a vintage Garbage Pail Kid I’d found at the Salvation Army (“Messy Tessy”)—and turning up beside the DJ booth, I’d shyly stick out my hand. “For you.”
Lex would receive my gift with a laugh and welcome me with a kiss on the cheek, while pressing a few drink tickets discreetly into my palm. Then he’d pull back to get a good look at me. “I love the acid wash.” After that, I’d go to the bar and try to make friends, returning to him throughout the night to request songs.
“Do you have ‘Word Up’?” “‘Self Control’ by Laura Branigan?” “‘All Night Passion’ by Alisha?” My requests were a code: I’m wiser than my years and I know what you know, Lex. All the songs from the 1980s that are closest to your heart; they are close to mine, too.
From the outset, we’d bonded over eighties music and trivia; this had been his heyday and it had been mine, too. As a kid in Greece, I’d tagged along to discos with my older cousin, who was just a few years younger than Lex; I’d danced to the same music at nine that he’d danced to at twenty-five. Couldn’t he see? I was not like these other girls who came to his party ready to dance to whatever he happened to play. They didn’t know what I knew, what we knew together.
By July, I was spending less time alone and more time with Lex, who’d also been left behind for the summer. The way people without family feel about the winter holidays, Lex told me, New Yorkers without summer homes feel about July and August. I commiserated, leaving out the fact that it had been my choice to stay, that I was as thrilled by our condition as he was unhappy, that I loved the terrible heat, and that I always feel lonely no matter who I’m with or what the season, and that I felt lucky to be lonely in New York City with him.
We’d meet up for brunch, for a movie, for a birthday party his friend was throwing on his roof. Lex would call and say, “I hate parties. Wanna come?” Or I’d hang out with him in the DJ booth at Lot 61 or Life or Veruka. And then, Thursday again. I’d say hello before setting up at the bar, dance by myself to Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” and then when I got tired, rest by sitting in the coin-operated toy car machine in the corner of the club.
There, practicing loneliness, I’d watch the crowd until Lex came to fetch me, pulling me up to dance with him until the song ended and the record cut off. Everyone looked around, waiting for Lex to set up the next one. Lex had to work, so I’d return to the bar alone to pick up guys, which is an art as much as bullfighting. This was my Hemingway moment:
They’d buy me good drinks, and with dignity we’d lean on the bar of this dirty, poorly lighted place, before a song came on, a song I could not resist, and I’d run to the dance floor to perform my high-kicks dance.
Certain songs were anthems that brought everyone to their feet. The beat would find you chatting, sipping a beer, worrying, and you’d rise up, as if called. There, dancing under the swirling multi-colored lights, the song lyrics echoing in your ears like a Greek chorus, it felt as if you were part of something, as if youth were a revolution, and your drinking, your dancing, your laughing, even your tears, were a sacred duty.
I’d get fantastically drunk and smoke cigarette after cigarette and talk and talk until I had no voice left, until the lights came on and it was 4:00 AM.
The staff would start to close up, and I’d help Lex gather his records into the trunk of his vintage