Back at work on a cloudy Monday morning, the 13th day of April. Slept OK last night, one or two interruptions. I intend to do better this evening. AT my little old fruit stand today and tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. Sitting at my desk, listening to the B-52s playlist I made a few years ago.
I remember back in the day, 1979, I think, I was doing my record buying, walking up Rochelle Avenue from Lodi to Paramus. I bought their first album, with the yellow cover, and was in the underground concourse, sitting on the floor and going over my purchases.
A guy, perhaps a few years older than me, commented on the B-52’s, and I showed the LP I had just purchased and made an encouraging remark, which I cannot remember 47 years later. Their first album came out in July 1979, and it must have been August of that year when I bought the album.
I was 16 and working, which is how I had the cash. Not driving though.
Hard to see nowadays how the B-52’s were considered a punk threat. The only place where they were getting airplay was WPIX FM in the NYC area. And I have to admit I was not too crazy about Rock Lobster initially. I think the encouragement from the young guy in the Garden State Plaza concourse sealed the deal. I was cool by association.
I saw the B52s in 1980 with my brother Frank, they were touring behind the not yet released Wild Planet album. Pylon opened up for the B-52’s and sadly I was just not into Pylon at that time. I was there to see the B-52’s and though a year or two later I finally connected with Pylon, August 25, 1980 was not the night. Their sound was swallowed up in the humid summer night.
It was a year or two later when I bought Chomp! By Pylon at Free Being on Second Avenue in the East Village off St. Mark’s Place.
Now I am playing Donna Summer, Bad Girls & Hot Stuff. If I recall correctly, the first time I heard these songs was with Henry Venegas and his girlfriend Lisa, and we were going to see the Cosmos soccer team at Giants Stadium. Donna Summer was a big deal back then and I was starting to have a crush on Henry. Henry was always grabbing his dick through his pants, and that always got my attention. We would hang out and smoke cigarettes at his father’s Texaco gas station at the corner of Riverview Ave and Essex Street.
I acted on my crush for Henry and told him I wanted to blow him. He was horrified by my suggestion and effectively ended our friendship. Not like today’s kids, where one boy might offer oral sex to another boy, who was not into it but thanked him nonetheless and was flattered by the offer. No, back in the 1970s it killed friendships.
Both the B-52’s and Donna Summer releases were from 1979, an innocent year edging into sexual pandemonium. I was in my beginning stages of participating in the sexual revolution that I had heard so much about.
Reckless, dangerous, young, dumb and full of cum.
I am participating in an LGBT panel discussion online regarding the 1993 March on Washington. I
The Google Gemini rewrite as a Dorothy Parker essay
## **A Note on the Thirteenth**
Another Monday has crawled across the windowsill, bringing with it all the enthusiasm of a damp funeral. It is the thirteenth of April, a date that suggests the universe has finally abandoned the pretense of good manners. I am back at my desk—my “little old fruit stand,” as I call it, though the only things ripening here are my grievances and a slight sense of spiritual decay.
I slept well enough last night, if one counts a slumber punctuated by those brief, midnight realizations that one is, in fact, mortal. I intend to do better this evening; perhaps I shall try a glass of warm milk, or a cold gallon of gin. I shall be here today, and tomorrow, and for the duration of the week, anchored to this mahogany raft while the B-52s play on a loop I constructed years ago. It is a playlist of ghosts.
I find myself thinking of 1979. It was a year made of polyester and optimism, and I was sixteen, possessed of that peculiar adolescent wealth that comes from actual labor. I recall walking up Rochelle Avenue—a stretch of pavement that lacked even the common decency of a breeze—traveling from Lodi to Paramus to worship at the altar of the record crate. I bought their first album, the one with the yellow cover that looked like a warning sign, and retreated to the underground concourse of the Garden State Plaza to gloat over my spoils.
A young man, perhaps five minutes my senior, paused to comment on the record. I offered an encouraging remark, the specifics of which have been bleached from my brain by forty-seven years of subsequent nonsense. He approved; therefore, I was anointed. At sixteen, one does not require a driver’s license so long as one has the correct vinyl under one’s arm and the fleeting validation of a stranger.
It is a triumph of the imagination to recall when the B-52s were considered a “punk threat.” They were about as dangerous as a spiked punch at a debutante ball, yet WPIX was the only station with the fortitude to play them. I confess, I found “Rock Lobster” quite tiresome at first. But after that encounter in the concourse, I was cool by association, and one must never let personal taste interfere with a good reputation.
I saw them in the summer of 1980 with my brother, Frank. They were touring behind *Wild Planet*, which had yet to be released to a largely unsuspecting public. A group called Pylon opened the show. I am told they were magnificent, but that night their sound was simply swallowed by the thick, New York Dr. Pepper Festival humidity. It took me two years and a trip to a shop on Second Avenue to realize my error. One is so often wrong at seventeen; it is practically a vocation.
The music has shifted now. Donna Summer is wailing about “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff.” These songs smell of gasoline and the terrifying heat of a first crush. I remember hearing them in the company of one Henry Venegas and his girlfriend, Lisa, en route to see the Cosmos play soccer. Donna was a goddess then, and Henry… well, Henry had a habit of adjusting himself through his trousers with a frequency that commanded one’s undivided attention.
I was young, I was bold, and I was dangerously misinformed by the rumors of a Sexual Revolution. I acted on my impulses. I suggested to Henry a certain… oral intimacy.
Henry, alas, did not share my spirit of adventure. He was horrified. In those days, a rejected proposition didn’t earn you a polite “no, thank you”; it earned you an immediate excommunication. Today’s youth are much more civil; they treat an unwanted advance like a misplaced delivery order. In the seventies, it simply killed the friendship dead.
1979 was a curious pivot—a last gasp of innocence before the pandemonium truly began. I was reckless, poorly behaved, and brimming with the sort of vitality that looks so much better in a rearview mirror. And now, I sit here, preparing for an online panel regarding the 1993 March on Washington. One spends the first half of one’s life making a magnificent mess, it seems, and the second half explaining it to a committee.