Heart of Stone by the Rolling Stones just popped into my head. It’s a quiet Thursday. I guess a lot of people are still out. Bill is on the road, expected back tonight. Mike was stuck in his crib, his parole officer and four training officers came over a short while ago. 5 people watched him pee. They could have done that by looking at his Twitter page.

The world is a mess. This country is even messier. And don’t get me started about Messi. I don’t know anything about Messi except he’s been in the news the past 48 hours. It might be good or he mmight have done something stupid. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

I am listening to Compay Segundo. Lo Mejor De La Vida. The first Compay Segundo CD I bought back when Julio and I were enthralled by the whole Buena Vista Social Club. That was almost 30 years ago.

It coincided with my suit & tie fetish. I realized if I wanted a good job, I would have to dress the part. For a part of my life I think I tended to dress like the musicians who’s music I had been listening to. There was Punk and New Wave. There was the Indie Underground scene of which Maxwell’s was a landmark. And I worked in the music business and dressed accordingly.

Julio was into Buena Vista Social Club before me and when I got into them, I went whole hog. They were all older Cuban men who dressed in suits and ties. And so I did. Julio and I made it a point to see the various members as they toured in Manhattan and I always went suited up.

And I was able to get a few good jobs where I dressed like an investment banker, more than the investment bankers I was supporting. Braces, OTC TNT socks, pinstriped and chalk striped suits. It was a turn on.

In fact that is how I met Bill, at a Yahoo groups Suit and Tie party. I had gone to a few and always left dejected. In September 2000 I was determined to enjoy myself. Annemarie was very supportive and drove me to the Path train from Weehawken.

I went to a penthouse on Ann Street and mingled, had a few glasses of wine and enjoyed a cigar while out on the veranda. My memory serves, telling me I was the belle of the ball.

Everything I said was so witty and as these suited men chuckled at whatever I had to say, I looked over them to see a brown-eyed handsome man in a mustard colored suit and making eye contact with him.

Soon I was in a PDA with Bill, including a sexual act that I had never done in a ‘public’ setting. Here I am 25 years later, no longer wearing the suits and ties. It used to drive my brother Frank crazy. I think he thought I was a yuppie or trying to be one.

I was still the same iconoclast, just dressed better.