In April of 1976 I drove a stolen car from Boston to New York. The Olds 88 wasn’t really stolen, since a Back Bay lawyer paid $300 for the disappearance of gas-guzzler.
Several hours later I abandoned the Detroit clunker by the Christopher Street pier after midnight. I threw the plates into the Hudson and left the keys in the ignition, hoping for joy riders to drive off with the vehicle. On my three previous trips to vanish a car, I went up to the 42nd Street Bus terminal and caught a bus back to Boston. This time was different.
I was in love with an artist from North Carolina. Ro said I looked like a fallen angel on her candle-lit bed. She had to be in love too. I walked to the restaurant at which she worked on Christopher Street. The owner said she had quit.
I rode the subway to Brooklyn Heights and walked to 55 Remsen street. She wasn’t there and her roommate explained that earlier in the day the painter had caught a flight to Paris. She had accepted a grant to study art at the Sorbonne. Ro had not left a forwarding address. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going back to my teaching job at South Boston High School.
From then on I slept at a friend’s apartment on Park Slope. The next day I got a job at Serendipity 3 as a busboy. I moved out of Brooklyn after discovering James Spicer was stealing my tip money. I rented a SRO room on West 10th Street and 5th Avenue. A bed and four walls cost $44/week. I was making about $200 at the restaurant.
After work I took the subway from 60th and Lex to the Astor Place. Usually too wound up to fall asleep I killed a few hours drinking a dive bars before heading back to my miserable room. I wasn’t making any friends fast. One wintry night in 1977 I stumbled home from a derelict bar at the corner of the Bowery and Houston. The icy wind slashed through my thin clothing and I was about to hail a taxi to my SRO tenement on 11th Street, when the thump of a frantic bass emanated from a white stucco building. The accompanying music was rock and roll at its purest and I pushed open the bar’s heavy wooden door.
The leather-jacketed quartet on the stage covered the 45rpm version of The Rivieras’ CALIFORNIA SUN. The audience heave up and down, as if the floor pulsated in time to the 3-chord progression. I stepped forward to join the frenzy.
A huge hand blocked my way.
“$5.” The monstrous bouncer wore a yellow construction hat.
“Who are they?” I handed over the fiver.
“The Ramones. They play punk,” answered the big man.
Everyone in the bar wore leather jackets and the girls had colored hair. CALIFORNIA SUN was replaced by a fast-moving song with a chorus of I WANNA BE SEDATED. I rushed up to the front of the crowd. By the end of the band’s set I was hooked to the music and like that I became a punk.
I have been making small paperback books of the hundreds of short stories I have written over the last forty years. To purchase #17 By Peter Nolan Smith, a tale of tennis featuring Lizzie Mercier-Descloux, Richard Hell, and the master of nobodies the #17 American tennis player in Perpignan 1982, please go venmo @Peter-Smith-18. The cost for a signed copy is $12. As always famous for never.
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