My New York Minutes - Chapter 7

The Final Chapter

This is my last chapter of 'New York Minutes'. And it's a loooong one. I can't thank everyone enough for reading any of this stuff and for posting such supportive comments! It is the final chapter because I seem to be running out of steam for writing. And because I left New York for Los Angeles at the end of 1979. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I gave up my little apartment on 83rd Street and First Avenue and moved into the Weinstein Center for Student Living on 8th Street just off of Washington Square. It felt so good to be in a situation that was more typical of my age, which was 19. I had traveled so much, seen so much, done so much and loved it all. But the whole time I had to be more grown-up than I really felt. So it was with a sense of relief that I moved into a dorm room and took up typical college life.

Brenda and I drifted apart. She went back to Japan the following summer. Her parents encouraged this because they adored Charlie and were hoping Brenda would come around to value him as the good guy he was. I have a letter from her dated July 17, 1978:


Dearest Becky,

Your cute letter really brightened up this hot, muggy Tokyo day. My mother has been here for almost 3 weeks and plans to leave in a couple of days. I have two roommates (Boy I wish you were one of them). Cindy - a nice Jewish girl who is more of a Shiksa than you, at least you know the laws of Kosher and Shabbos! And Sue, a girl of nineteen who has a 4-year old boy back in New York. Right now, she's upset and is brooding over Valium and plum wine to the tune of blasting rock-n-roll emanating from your old room. Why? Because I finally reported to the agency that I simply couldn't take it anymore as she was eating me out of house and home. She ate up my whole kosher salami, a few packages of cheese, coffee (which costs $15 for a jar here), cookies, crackers, cigarettes, etc. Each night as I slept she feasted on my unobtainable-in-Tokyo kosher supplies, knowing they were mine, kosher, and that I could not replace them!

I was given the name and # of a religious guy studying Japanese history here in Tokyo so I called him when I first arrived, to see if he had supplies to furnish my dwindling stock of kosher cheese nips (Sue ate them). I have been going out with him (and my mother) ever since. He's funny and intelligent and we really like each other! He feels bad 'cause he says my Mom is being tempted by the S. [Charlie's last name] treatment - Rolls Royce - country club - dinner at Maxim's scene, while all he can offer me is Sushi!

Mr. S. loves me, we danced at Castels while my Mom and Chuck [Charlie] eyed us enviously. Chuck and Ray [Charlie's brother] are fine - same except they both shaved off their moustaches and look 10 times better.

I'm glad you're seeing Bruce and I think you'll make a fine Jewish bride. I don't like your living situation, though and as your Rabbi I must ask you to discontinue it immediately!

Write! You know how much it means here. Jungko, Mrs. Tanaka and Tak are all dijaboo [fine]. My Japanese is getting pretty decent, they say. Take care.

Love,
Brenda

I barely recall who Bruce was. A guy I went out with about twice I think. Brenda didn't like my living situation because by that time - summer of 1978 - I had moved out of the dorm for the summer and was sharing an apartment on Bank Street in the West Village with a fellow student, my friend Brad. She didn't approve of living with a man, even if he was gay. Under the influence of my NYU classmates, I seemed to have abandoned the laws of 'Kosher and Shabbos'. She came home from Japan and was soon engaged to Charlie. During the course of her stay there, she had fallen in love with him. I was in their wedding. I hadn't seen Brenda in a while by that time and she was much changed. Her little sister - the one with the talking Barbie - died of a sudden and unexpected brain hemorrhage at the age of ten. Brenda seemed more grown-up and quite connected to Charlie. Any girlish reservations about his looks were gone. She moved to Japan after that and I lost touch with her. Here is a wedding photo - the last time I saw her. She was - and still is in my memory - a dazzling girl.



The drama department at New York University has partner agreements with several of the well-known acting studios around New York. Each student takes acting classes at the studio and their academic classes at NYU. I was assigned to the Lee Strasberg Institute, where we were taught the Stanislavski Method, otherwise known as 'Method Acting'. In Method Acting, you are taught to emote by calling up memories - the more traumatic the better - from your past. If you find this difficult because you can't remember much of your childhood or your childhood wasn't traumatic, the instructors will help you by either traumatizing you themselves via abusive 'critiques' or convincing you that you truly do have deep-seated issues and if you can't remember them then you are in total denial and will never be Marlon Brando. We were taught various physical techniques to achieve a state of sobbing distress. On any given day, the class could be observed bellowing, howling, writhing and/or twitching. Sometimes the residents of the neighboring buildings would do some bellowing of their own. I met a fellow student in the library at NYU, where I had a part-time job, who described very nearly dying of an appendicitis on the floor of the women's restroom at the Strasburg Institute. Feeling terribly sick, she went up to the bathroom where she fainted. Not able to stand due to the pain in her stomach, she lay on the floor in a semi-conscious state, alternately moaning and writhing. At one point a janitor came in to clean and told her, "Oh I'll be out of your way in a minute" and proceeded to sweep the floor around where she lay. Ultimately a friend who knew she was feeling ill came to find her and recognized that she was not simply having a 'full exercise'.

I made friends quickly. My fellow drama students were such a lively bunch and I immediately bonded with a few students in my Strasberg classes. The first was a woman with the most amazing head of red curls. Her name, appropriately, was Aurora and she was called Aurora Borealis by all the instructors at the Institute. Aurora grew up over a beauty parlor in Cincinnati, Ohio. My other close friend was Brad, who was a self-described anti-semitic nice Jewish boy. He changed his last name so no one would know he was Jewish. Brad and Aurora and I hung out a lot together. We were a trio. Also, my freshman roommate, Tina, an English major who was studying Chaucer and could speak in fluent Middle English. It didn't sound like English, it sounded more like Swedish. We used to have 'Smash Night', which involved all of us getting high and watching 'M.A.S.H.' on television in someone's dorm room. I had never smoked pot when I got to NYU and I was scared, but Aurora' boyfriend, Ian, helped me to overcome this by using an enormous water-bong which made the smoke much less harsh. 'Smash Night' was fun but I never really took to the pot like I did to French wine. One night, we got the munchies and I had some Gouda cheese in the little fridge that Tina and I kept in our room. In a famished frenzy we tore into the cheese, making many sounds of enjoyment. I still remember watching the faces around me change from bliss to confusion as we tried to chew this strangely tough cheese. We had neglected to take the wax off. Here is a picture of Aurora and I dressed up as grapes for Halloween:


For the first time, I had friends to introduce me to all the delights of New York City. I ate in little Italy and drank at a real speakasy called Chumley's. You had to know someone to find Chumley's - there was no sign. You went into a nondescript brownstone and out the back door to a courtyard. Then across the courtyard and in through an unmarked door, where you found a whole group of people laughing and drinking. Chumley's appears to still exist and is a fun place to visit if you are ever in New York. I loved Greenwich Village. Certain moments stand out. Once I was coming home late with Aurora and Ian. We were walking home from the subway through Cooper Square where there is a sculpture of an enormous square in an island in the middle of the street. More accurately, it's a cube and it's mounted on a post so you can turn it. There was an empty shopping cart in the street. Ian told me to get in so I did. Then he and Aurora pushed me, running, through the ice-cold night. Past the big cube, which I grabbed and turned as I flew past. Wheels rattling we ran through the deserted streets in the middle of the night. I squealed with joy as the artic cold blew my hair behind me.

One strange note: Many people hated the twin towers. They thought they were ugly and too modern. They were completed only a few years before I got to New York. I continued to go on go-sees and used the occasional modeling money to help defray my expenses. During that first year at NYU, I left Stewart's for the more prestigious Wilhelmina Modeling Agency. My primary reason was that Wilhelmina had a talent division that represented actors. They sent me on many auditions during that time. Really, I think I auditioned for every major movie that was released in the late 70's that had parts for teenagers. I always played younger than my true age. I would see famous actresses at these auditions, mostly several years younger than I, such as Diane Lane. Once my agent called me after an audition where I had gotten called back several times. She sounded excited. She said that they had narrowed the list down to 5 and I was one of them. I didn't get the part. But I kept getting so close that in hindsight I feel it was a huge mistake to leave New York. Whatever chance I had, I left it there at the end of 1979. But many things happened before that.

My first acting job was for a television commercial. I played a teenage girl from the 1950's in a poodle skirt and ponytail. The commercial was one of those cheap ones you see on local stations advertising a release of the greatest hits of Al Alberts and the Four Aces. What I mainly remember is that we shot it on Roosevelt Island at night. The skyline of New York took my breath away. Everyone else was a seasoned New Yorker and barely seemed to notice. I stood transfixed by the swoop and points of a million-starred wonder. No one who professed to dislike the World Trade Center could have been unmoved by the grace of that skyline - a living sculpture perhaps unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Ultimately I did several TV commercials, for Datsun, for Taco Bell and some pizza chain in Arizona. They make you eat the food over and over and they paint it with grease from a bucket to make it look fresh.

I had dates, but not many. People thought that I had lots of dates because I was a model but it wasn't true, I had very few. I hadn't had any really serious relationship and I didn't until I was 20. It was my sophomore year and I met him working at the library. His name was Enrique. I ignored him at first. He looked to be from the wrong side of the tracks. He won me over, coming to talk to me while I worked shelving books and later in the front office. It turned out his mother was from Colombia and his father was Italian-American and a minor mafioso, according to Enrique. His dad was the super of an apartment building in Pelham Park and so Enrique had a tiny apartment in the basement for free. He was going to NYU on some sort of scholarship program for people from the wrong side of the tracks. He was some kind of literature major and read the weightiest tomes, even for a college student. He had scars on his back like Kunta Kinte, horrible ropes of scar tissue covering most of his back, which he steadfastly refused to discuss. He had a motorcycle. I used to take the subway to Pelham Park and Enrique would meet me and take me riding on his motorcycle. Once we stopped at a corner store under an elevated section of subway tracks. As we came out with our sodas, a train went by and a sneaker suddenly fell on the sidewalk in front of us. I didn't have time to react or even think. Enrique started the bike in a hurry and said 'Come on', insistently. I jumped on and off we went. I never found out what he saw, if anything.

We were doomed, Enrique and I, because we were from such different tribes and we both knew it. I met someone else. Billy. I moved to California with him. He was a film major and he had this group of friends he called 'The Gang'. It was from the old Archie comics. I think Billy was the one that was sort of bad - what was his name? Reggie. He always wooed Veronica. I was probably Betty but they all called me 'The American Girl' because Billy had seen this picture from the cover of American Girl magazine and thought it very apropos. Some of the gang later became enormously successful in the movie industry - really titans of Hollywood. And I think Billy has done well too - I hear his name now and then. They were a fabulously talented bunch. I dropped out of NYU to go with Billy to Hollywood and seek our fortune. I wish I could say that fortune is what I found, but it was not to be. I ended up working for 2 years in a Mexican Cantina on Sunset and La Brea called "La Villa Taxco". It's not there anymore. I had to wear a peasant wench costume. Then I went back to college at Cal State Northridge and majored in Business. I was just so desperate to get out of that cantina. So I graduated in 1984, moved back East, crawled into a cubicle and died. For twenty years. Now I'm crawling out.

Epilogue

It is because of Enrique that I wrote the 'New York Minutes'. Because one day recently I was listening to Bruce Springsteen's song, 'New York City Serenade' about all the characters, Vibes Man and Fish Lady and Billy with the cleats on his boots and the Mad Dog Promenade. And I thought of all this, all the characters, the people of New York - this city that felt so hard but gave me the best years of my life. And of one night coming home from Pelham Park. It was 4:00 in the morning and Enrique rode with me even though he then had to turn around and ride all the way home. We rode in on the #6 and changed to the Times Square Shuttle. In the Times Square station, Enrique suddenly grabbed my hand and pulled me off the train and towards the exit.

"Wait", I protested, thinking only that we'd have to pay again.

"Come on", Enrique insisted.

We climbed the stairs and stepped out into Times Square. Most of the lights were out. Only a few windows in offices were lit, the silhouettes of the buildings looming against the pre-dawn sky. I cannot explain it. This sleeping Leviathon was like nothing I'd ever seen.

"Wow", I said.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Enrique asked.

Beautiful was not a word that a girl from Delaware would ever have used to describe that desolate and empty and quiet lunar landscape. But I wasn't that girl anymore.

"Yes", I breathed, "It's beautiful".

The End