ON THE SOUTH SHORE: From Neponset to Nantasket Kindle Edition

I was lucky enough to live through the 1960s as a teenager on the South Shore of Boston.

Home was still home to us.

My friends and I led charmed lives at the Quincy Quarries, Surf Nantasket, and Wollaston Beach

ON THE SOUTH SHORE recounts those lives.

The time was short, but retelling these tales brings back those years, if only for a moment.

They were good ones on the South Shore.

EXCERPT from GAY BOY

That next fall my parents were happy and my mother gained weight like she was storing fat for a harsh winter. As her belly grew beyond belief I wondered if she was ever going to stop eating, since Frank and I usually received any leftover cake.

The leaves changed color in October and in November JFK beat Richard Nixon to become the first Catholic president. The cold weather arrived in December and Pearl Harbor Day 1960 dawned with a hoary frost topping the fields south of the Neponset River.

During lunch my 3rd Grade class stared out the windows at sullen northern clouds. We ate our sandwiches in silence. The nuns believed that Jesus barely spoke during his Agony on the Cross and their students were expected to follow his example in thought and deed.

A shrill bell signaled recess and the classes boiled from the school into the sub-freezing temperature. Standing still on the icy asphalt meant frozen feet, so the girls skipped tattered ropes, while the boys kicked misshapen balls around the rear parking lot.

Right before the end of the play period our station wagon rolled down the school’s driveway and Chuckie joked, “Here comes the jail truck from Billerica Reform School.”

Having endured endless ribbing about the metal bars across the windows of the station wagon from family and friends, neither my brother nor I laughed with our classmates. Funny was for other people, but my father got out of the car with a broad smile.

Mother Superior demanded with a sense of command backed by the Church, “What are you doing here?”

In her mind a man’s place at this hour was at his job, because at this hour we belonged to her.

“I want to speak to my boys.” He waved for us to come closer.

“Impossible” Mother Superior expected obedience from adults as well as children. “No.” My father had been brought up in Maine and he confirmed that his authority superseded the Church by telling us, “You mother had a baby boy.”

“We have a baby brother?” Frunk was confused and so was I.

“You didn’t know your mother was having a baby?”

“I thought Mom was getting fat.” Any woman would have gained weight from her recent feeding frenzy.

“She was fat with your baby brother. We’re going to see him.”

“You can’t disrupt the school day like this.” Steam fumed from Mother Superior’s dragon beak.

“They’ll make it up at Church this Sunday.”

As a convert to the faith he was immune to the nun’s wrath, but my brother asked timidly, “What about our books?”

“No one does homework on Baby Day.” My father waved to my sisters and they ran over to us.

“They’re going to the hospital to see their mother.”

“Is Mom okay?” I asked with concern.

“She’s fine. Let’s go.”

We piled in the car and he drove to Beth Israel Hospital, humming IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK ALOT LIKE CHRISTMAS.

“This is not a playground,” my father said entering the hospital. The lobby smelled cleaner than our house.

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect you to be on your best behavior.”

“Yes, sir.” Our submission to our elders was complete.

We filed one by one into the private room in Richardson House.

My mother lay on a bed with a small baby on her chest. My Nana held our now second youngest brother, Padraic. A white uniformed nurse sat on a chair reading the Record-American. We stood around the bed. Our new brother was very pink.

“He weighs seven pounds.” My father touched the small body and his little fingers squirmed like spring worms rising from the earth. We were a bigger family by one and each of us smiled with a shared happiness.

My parents named their sixth child after my grandmother’s uncle. The young priest had met the fourteen year-old girl off the boat from Ireland and placed Nana in a Salem household staff. My grandmother had danced with our grandfather at a church outing in Marblehead.

In my mother’s mind our next two generations owed their existence to Uncle Mike and she prayed that at least one of us might take up the Cloth to return the favor. I didn’t have the heart to confess my atheism.

Those first months Michael was a miracle and I rushed home from school to feed, bathe, and rock the tiny creature in a cradle from my grandmother’s house in Maine. After having six kids in eight years my mother was grateful for my assistance, however this peaceful period ended with his first bout of infantile teething.

My mother and I sang him GOLDMINE IN THE SKY a thousand times. His bawling destroyed our attempts at harmony. One day Michael fell asleep and we sat on the bed in relief. The support struts creaked under our weight and his unearthly howl filled the bedroom. He seemed shocked for a second, then smiled before drifting into a blessed slumber.

That was as bad as it got.

Michael was very special.

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A time machine to the past.

ADDI LUXEMBOURG on Kindle

In the autumn of 2011 and winter of 2012 I was appointed the writer-in-residence to a foreign embassy in Luxembourg. The small duchy was in the center of Europe. I had lived on the continent during the 1980s. It was good to be back there again.

Here's a small sample of this booklet.

On a murky November evening I attended the opening of the "Dream' exhibition at Luxembourg's Mudam Museum. Madame l'Ambassador bailed early for a formal dinner. I was not invited for supper.

"It's a diplomatic thingee." Madame l'Ambassador explained, as we walked through a thickening fog to the waiting Jaguar.

"I understand." A writer-in-residence has to accept his place in the scheme of things.

Francois the driver opened the right-hand rear door for Madame l'Ambassador. It was the safest seat in the car. He asked if I needed a lift back to the city. The museum was located on the opposite side of the gorge running through the city. I had traversed it several times on foot and refused his offer.

"You go with Madame. I'll be fine." After all I am simply the guest writer.

I lingered at the soiree for another half hour. The crowd was young and artistic. The curator waved to me. The amiable Italian was chatting to an aristocratic couple in their 70s. Patrons of the museum were much more important than a well-unknown writer and I ordered a Duvel.

The bartender poured the triple-strengh beer into a special glass with reverence. Mittel Europe worshipped its beers.

I leaned at the bar and studied the passing faces. The queue at the bar seemed contently unconcerned by the chaos of the Euro. Their luxurious clothing cloned the bare threads of down-and-out artists, then again Luxembourg has the highest individual income in Europe and even the poor are rich in comparison to America.

The first beer had gone down quick and I ordered a second. No one commented on the speed of my drinking. The grand duchy marked the highest beer consumption per capita in 1993 with an unbeatable score of seventeen beers for each man, woman, and child in the tiny country.

A light-weight in my late-50s I called it a night after my third beer.

I had a good walk ahead to the upper city across the canyon of the Petrusse.

The I.M. Pei structure was shrouded by a spectral fog and I remembered my High School German teacher's translating fog for our German class.

"Nebel." Bruder Karl at Xaverian High School had spoken the word with the muted thunder of someone whose wrist bore the tattoo of the camps.

Nebel coupled with Nacht became night and mirrors, a mystical combination for the intrigues of the Gestapo.

I heard no jackboots and descended into the reconstructed fortifications with the night's cold touch on my skin.

The Mudam disappeared into the gray murk. I followed the switchbacking trail like a man going blind. A train sounded its whistle on the tracks below. It was the 7:43 from Troisvierges.

During its reign as Gibraltar of theNorth Luxembourg had housed thousands of soldiers and his path from Fort Thungen would have been travelled by hussars, dragoons, and mercenaries back in the 17th Century. Tonight my footsteps ricocheted unanswered against the stone ramparts.

The slurry of leaves crossed my path and I thought about a movie that an actor friend had made here several years ago. Bill had played a blood-lusting Nosteradu. The city's medievalism had lent the exterior scenes an unexpected aura of horror and this evening I glanced around me with a rising apprehension.

I was all alone.

The city was old.

While I no longer believed in God, I had seen enough vampire movies to know that I offered a fairly easy target for a bloodsucker. Were-wolves were not a worry, because the earth was in the middle of the synodic month.

A twig cracked in the surrounding woods. Something was out there in the forbidding shadows. I wished for a sword in my bare hand.

A single pinpoint of light broke through the swirling overcast.

Venus.

I salvaged a little confidence with the sighting of a familiar object in the night sky, then a lisping wind scrapped the bare branches to chant an incantation from a time before the invention of electricity.

Meeting a woman under a light was too much to ask from this evening.

This was Luxembourg and not Paris' Rue St. Denis.

My pace accelerated through the tunnel underneath the outer bastion. A shiver scrapped a dull razor against the skin of my spine. My cellphone dimly illuminated the black passage of stone. Running would have been a sign of fright to creatures of the night preying on the weak.

I crossed the tracks before the 7:45 train to Wiltz raced beneath the steep embankment. The smooth cobblestones gave way to gravel and the trail bore the ruts of wagons.

A rusting grate blocked the tunnel under the railroad tracks. Something inhuman was in the trees. I hopped over the metal fence and bushwhacked through the underbrush to the tracks. I looked both ways and clambered across the double set of steel rails to the other side.

I reached the street ten seconds later.

A streetlight glowed overhead.

The fortifications along the Petruche were in sight.

My cell phone rang.

It was Francois the driver.

He asked if I was all right.

I had reached the safety of the old city.

"Okay." The word meant the same in English as in French.

"Sure?" Madame l'Ambassador was concerned that something bad might have happened to me. She was a longtime friend. We shared mutual acquaintances. Neither of us wanted anything bad to happen to me on her watch.

“Fine, I'll be back at the residence within fifteen minutes. Thank the ambassador for asking."

It was a nice feeling to know someone cared and also that a good scare made a man feel alive, which is 100% better than being killed by a vampire any night of the week.

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Villmols merci

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TRASH FIORUCCI by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-70s the windows of Fiorucci on East 60th Street featured the latest flash fashion from Italy. These trendy threads guaranteed almost immediate entrance into Studio 54 or any exclusive disco in Manhattan.

The manager was a swishy part-time singer on the downtown scene. Joey ran the store with an iron glove. One afternoon I came to him with a simple question.

“How much for the suit?” A gold lame Elvis suit adorned the front window. I wanted it bad.

“You can’t afford it.” Joey sneered at my question. His store catered to the rich. This was the Upper East Side.

“I know that.” The price tag read $300, which was about twice my wages at Serendipity 3 where I worked as a busboy. “What about 50% off?”

“And why would I do that?” The haughty manager earned a healthy commission on every sale.

“Maybe I could get you a gig at CBGB’s.” I hung out at the Bowery bar every night.

“You’re not the booker.” Joey wasn’t falling for my spiel and walked off to get an espresso.

“I might be able to help you.” Joey’s assistant manager caressed my shoulder and eyed the changing rooms. “I like boys from Boston. You’re so so so tough.”

“No thanks, I’m no hustler on the corner of 53rd and 3rd.”

“No?” I was testing my nerve.

“I have a girlfriend.” Clara was a beautiful actress from Georgia.

“She wouldn’t have to know and I could get the suit for an employee price.”

“I don’t play that game.” She wasn’t really a girlfriend, but we slept together more than once a week.

“That’s what all you boys say, but my side know different.” Matt smiled, for that Serendipity 3’s waiter staff was pronouncedly gay.

“Forget it.” I resigned myself to torn jeans and a black t-shirt, then left the store and cut through Bloomingdales to 60th Street. The July afternoon was sullenly hot and the sun was melting the pavement to a sticky goo.

The owners of the precious ice cream parlor offered me ice tea. It was a quenching treat and I had the day off. Liza Minnelli was sitting underneath a Tiffany Lamp. She laughed with her friends.

“Good luck with your acting class.” The mustached owner knew everyone’s business.

“I’ll sprain an ankle.” Clara and I studied acting improvising at Hunter College.

I climbed the stairs to the apartment of my friends living above Serendipity 3. The two southerners laughed upon hearing about Joey’s refusal to discount the Elvis suit.

“That queen is so mean.” Andy danced with the ballet. His older boyfriend liked him in nice clothing. Fiorucci was the handsome Virginian’s Chanel.

“He’s just doing his job.” I wasn’t saying what I felt, because Andy and his roommate were loose-lipped with gossip.

“And why would you want to be Elvis anyway?” Tim was stumped by this desire. “He’s so declasse.”

“It’s not that I want to be Elvis, but I just like the way it looks.” Elvis was the King.

“Straight men. I can’t figure you out.” Tim returned to pinning together the dress.

“You should have stolen it.” Tim quipped from the corner. The graduate of North Carolina School of Fashion was cutting a dress for his autumn collection.

“And go to jail.” I passed a lit joint to the elegant designer.

“Jail.” Tim shivered at the thought. He liked sleeping in his own bed. “Heavens forbid.”

“Not to worry. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

“Except for a little weed.” Andy took the joint. “And other things like adultery.”

“My affair with Carla isn’t adultery. I’m not married.”

“But she is.” Tim sniped at my sin. “But no one is going to throw you in jail for breaking that Commandment.”

“Not this far north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

I hung around listening to the boys talked about their love lives.

At 6:30pm I left the apartment to head up to Hunter College at which I was taking acting classes.

The early evening sky was thick with moist clouds. Lighting and thunder were scheduled for tonight, but it was too hot for any relief from rain. I reached Hunter on time and climbing the stairs to the fourth-floor classroom.

Sweat dripped from my every pore.

The windows were open for an errant breeze and fans stirred the humid air. Eric, the overweight experimental drama teacher, wiped his face with a towel. Carla was sitting at a table with her estranged husband Chuck. The other students were across the room, almost as if they were an audience for the couple’s reunion.

“Glad everyone could make it.” Eric put down the towel and resumed his instructions for A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Thunder rippled over the Hudson like tin sheets falling down stairs.

“Carla, you’ll be Stella, Chuck will be Stanley, and you’ll be Mitch, except we’re going to detour from the usual course of the play and have it so both Stanley and Mitch are after Stella.”

“Wasn’t that implied by Tennessee Williams?” Carla asked from her seat. The attractive brunette displayed no signs of discomfort from the heat or the proximity of her husband, the heir to a Wisconsin butter fortune.

“This will be overt.” The teacher handed out copies of the new scene to the class. “Forget everything. Read this, act this, be this.”

Eric was renowned for his distortion of plays. He was gambling on the inner tension between Carla, Chuck, and me to dredge a new meaning to the classic theater piece. She and I had spend the previous night together at her studio flat on East 23rd Street.

Flashes of sheet lightening stripped the dusky sky, as we reciting the lines word for word. Sunset passed with our struggle to find the new direction. Night fell on our failure to connect the characters. I was planning on taking Clara to the Plaza Hotel for drinks. The bartender at the Oak Room was a friend.

“No, no, no, I want fire. Read the words, but speak your own. There’s no copyright on creativity.”

I became a punk rock Mitch, Chuck revived Stanley as a man of the people, and Carla sold Stella as a woman whose madness was in the wrong time.

“That’s it, people.” Eric clapped his hand together and out went the lights, as if the Tennessee Williams’ future ghost had cancelled our mutation of his famous work.

The room went pitch black. The windows of the school were dark and the evening sky was devoid of city’s glow.

“Is everyone okay?” Eric asked, lighting a match.

“Yes, what happened?” One of our fellow student lit his lighter.

“We might have had a blackout.” Chuck suggested, as if he didn’t want it to be the truth.

“I think you might be right.” It was the first time he and I had ever agreed on anything.

“Then we had better leave the building. You with the lighter. Lead the way.” Eric was good at giving orders. He wanted to be a director.

Escaping the darkened building took the better part of a half-hour. The chaos of Lexington Avenue revealed the extent of the outage. Cars were stalled at the traffic lights. Several people were directing traffic.

“You think the lights will go on soon?” the student with the lighter lived in Brooklyn.

“No one knows.” I was glad to be living in a SRO hotel on East 11th Street. No electricity meant no trains and I asked Carla, “You want to come home with me?”

“No.” She wasn’t walking to Park Slope and looked over to her good-looking husband. “Chuck’s place is closer.”

They linked arms and strolled toward Central Park. He had a penthouse on West End Avenue. She had told me about the view from the terrace many times. They were a couple again.

“Win some, lose some,” Eric commented on the sidewalk.

“Mitch knows all about losing some.” I shook his hand and walked back toward Serendipity 3.

I found my friends upstairs at their apartment. They had run out of ice for their vodka tonics.

“There’s no ice anywhere,” Tim complained bitterly with crossed arms. He was already drunk. “I want ice.”

“Stop bitching, bitch.” Andy had been keeping pace with his tipsy roommate, Frank.

“Maybe the Plaza has some.” I suggested since the hotel was the epitome of elegance. It had to have an emergency generator. Ice was less than five blocks away.

“Let’s go.” Andy, Frank, a young boy from North Carolina, Kurt, and I hurried through the darkened streets.

Passers-by spoke about looting in Harlem. They looked to the North. A radio reported that Flatbush was under siege. There were no police in sight. City dwellers were marching home. Some said they had been in the subway for hours. The light canyon of Park Avenue was without illumination and Andy pointed to the sky.

“I can see stars.”

“Orion.” I spotted the constellation most nights.

“Also the Big Dipper and the Bear.” Andy drew the lines between the points of Ursa Major.

“Looks more like a pig to me.”

“It’s a bear.” Frank had gone to art school.

We stopped arguing soon as we turned the corner at 59th and 5th.

The three of us stopped in shock.

“It’s the end of the world.” Andy stared at Plaza Hotel without lights.

“Or we’re back in the Stone Age.” Frank was excited by the chaos.

“When ice only came in season.” Andy shook his fists at the Plaza, angered by its failure to preserve civilization.

For some reason this new truth angered me and I said to Andy, “Let’s go to Fiorucci.”

“They won’t have ice.”

“No, but they do have a gold Elvis suit.”

That

“No one will be working there now.” It was past 11.

“Exactly.” Kurt picked up a cinder block from a work site. “I’m shopping the old-fashioned way.”

“That’s looting.” Andy was wild, but never violent.

“Just like the Huns. Go for it.” I had Pictish blood in me. We were an old tribe well before the 10th Commandments were etched in stone by a bearded god.

We strode up to Fiorucci.

The gold lame suit shone even in the blackness of the surrounding anarchy. Studio 54 was at my fingertips. I would win back Clara. I wouldn’t be Mitch in the next acting class. I’d be a star.

“Stand back.” Kurt warned Andy and Frank and then heaved the cinder block at the window. The missile struck the plate glass and bounced right back, narrowly missing Frank's and my skull.

Several guards pointed at us. I hadn’t seen them in the murk. We ran fast. Kurt not so fast. Frank, Andy and I hid in a doorway. We watched Kurt hobble past us. Andy lifted his finger to his lips.

Ssssh."

The guards and Kurt faced into the murk. Andy, Frank, and I stepped out of the alcove chased us past Bloomingdales.

"Where should we go?"

“In here.” Andy dragged us into the Subway Inn.

The dive was packed with stranded workers. The bar didn’t have any ice, but there were cold beers. Andy, Frank, and I blended into the sweaty crowd

“God bless Mickey Mantle.” Andy raised his glass and nudged me in the side. “Join the toast.”

“Fucking Yankees.”

Several beers later we arrived to the apartment above Serendipity 3. The radio was telling tales of the black-out. It was city-wide and Andy recounted a breathless telling of our attempted theft at Fiorucci.

"You could have gone to jail."

"Not a chance," said Andy. "Kurt was slow as shit and I won the gold medal."

"I took the silver," crowed Frank.

"And Kurt?" I asked wondering why he wasn't here, knowing fully well why.

A gold lame Elvis suit.

“Anyone can run faster than Kurt.”

“But I didn’t get the suit.” I was slightly shamed by my exploit, especially for not having helped Kurt.

“Yes, but we did get away and not going to jail is a good thing.” Frank liked the comfort of his own bed.

“Especially tonight.” The Tombs in Lower Manhattan would be packed with looters according to the radio.

“But you tried to answer the call of the wild and that deserves a shot of lukewarm vodka.”

Tim handed me a shot glass filled to the brim.

“To outlaws.” I downed the shot. It was one of many. I fell asleep on the floor and woke up in the monring with Kurt.

"are you okay?"

"The police caught me, but I cried."

"Tears work when lies fail."

"Sorry about the suit."

"No worries> You did a good job." I kissed him on the forehead and we went to sleep.

Later that afternoon I tried to enter Fiorucci, but Joey blocked me entry at the door.

“We don’t need thieves as customers.” The sometimes singer snapped his fingers three times. The guards stepped closer to me.

“At these prices I don’t know who’s the real thief.” It was the best riposte I could come up with hung-over.

I didn’t have to be told to leave by them and strode out of Fiorucci, knowing that the boys above Serendipity 3 had snitched out my failed trashing of Fiorucci’s window. They did have big mouths. Clara went back to her husband. The teacher suggested that I study acting at a different school.

“I think I’ll try something else.”

“Hopefully not more burning and looting.”

“No, not anymore of that.” That night have given me a reputation. It lasted a long time.
Fiorucci closed several years later.

I bought the dusty Elvis suit through Matt. I tried it on at home.

“That really doesn’t fit you.” My girlfriend at the time was a tall model from Baltimore.

“No, maybe it never did.” It was a size L.

“What are you talking about?” Laura was about my height without the extra weight.

“It’s a long story. If it fits, it's yours."

Laura tried on the suit, which clung her lanky body like a dream.

The gold lame suit got her into everywhere. I was not so lucky, but I only went places where I knew the door. That was everywhere too, but I really wished I could have been wearing the Elvis suit, but some things just aren’t meant to be, especially Elvis Suits for men who are not Elvis.

A DAY FAR REMOVED FROM NORMAL by Peter Nolan Smith ( on KINDLE )

9/11 took us by surprise and shock the world. Two planes striking skyscrapers in New York.

Amazing and horrifying.

I stood on my roof in the East Village and saw the people jumping. I saw the approach of the second plane and heard the collective groans from the throats of thousands watching the horror.

I will never forget that day and this small book contains the truth and lies about that day.

And the days and years that have followed 9/11

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The landfill from the World Trade Center excavation 1978.

A HERO FOR THE OPEN ROAD by Peter Nolan Smith

My father loved road trips. The Westbrook native would load our family in the station wagon and drive from the coast of Maine to distant destinations throughout New England. He bestowed his wanderlust to his second son and as a young man I took to the road on a motorcycle in emulation of biker heroes such as Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONES and Peter Fonda in EASY RIDER.

Upon moving to New York City in 1976 I ran into a real road warrior.

Dmitri Turin, a exile for the USSR, was running a British bike shop with his Scottish partner in the wildlands of the Lower East Side. He rode a black Triumph with his furry dog Wilber resting on the gas tank. They were good days and A HERO FOR THE OPEN ROAD tells of my love for motorcycles, the road, and my friends from the era of errors.

They live on forever.

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Get your motor running.

HANDS OF BRICK by Peter Nolan Smith

Hockey and baseball have long been New England's two favorite sports, since they offered outdoor entertainment to young boys in the seasons of good sledding and bad sledding. Our gods played in Fenway Park and the Boston Garden, but one night a radio announcer's raspy voice introduced the world of basketball and Johnny Most sunk his hook deep.

I loved the Celtics, but my lack of offense skill prevented my playing even on the schoolyard, until I hit New York City to discover that my defense was my forte. After that revelation I became a fixture in Tompkins Square Park. My teammates called me 'The Brick' for my horrid shooting and ferocious defense against taller player.

I played all the time and on the court forgot everything about the world other than playing ball.

I still shoot at the DeKalb playground and the ball feels good in my hands, although its hitting the rim like a brick outnumbers my 'all-net' shots by an incalculable number.

Three stories about my basketball jones and the people with whom I played hoops.

They are my friends forever.

Same goes for the game.

When I was happy, I played basketball. When I was sad, I played basketball. When I was hung-over, I played basketball. When I was broken-hearted, I played basketball. When I was alone, I played basketball. It was a game for all occasions.

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CASSE-TOI BRIGITTE by Peter Nolan Smith

Working at a nightclubs I met a lot of people; famous, infamous, and nobodies. Sometimes I had no idea who was who. One night at Hurrah I stopped a skinny bearded man from entering the club for free. His massive bodyguard steered me right.

"It's Mick Jagger."

"That's him." The rock star was with a blonde model. She knew who he was.

"My bad."

A year later at the Mudd Club Steve Mass called down from his apartment, as Meryl Streep approached the ropes. The quirky owner had seen the actress on his CCTV and shouted over the intercom, “Don’t let her in?”

“Why not?” The blonde actress had won an Oscar for KRAMER VS. KRAMER in 1979.

“Why? Because I hate THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN.”

“Me too.” Especially her scene where she turns her head on the quai and I said to the Hollywood star, “Sorry, but you can’t come in.”

“Don’t you know who I am?” Her voice threatened me with contempt.

“Yes, but tonight’s not your night.” I didn’t have to explained why, for in the 1970s doormen ruled the night and that privilege followed me to Paris in 1982.

“Here you are not a doorman, but a physionomiste.” The manager of the Rex was a socialist. He wanted an eclectic crowd based on fun.

“No, problem, but I don’t know how to speak French.” Two years of grammar school French from a nun with a lisp had taught me how to ask, “Ou est le Bibliotechque?”

“Pas de problem,” Olivier shrugged with ease and said, “You only have to say two words. ‘Ouais’ or ‘Non.'”

“Okay” I had learned that trick at CBGBs, Hurrah, and Studio 54. “But I don’t know anyone in Paris. Not the famous people. Not the people who go to nightclubs.”

“Pas de problem.” His partner and he were tired of everyone getting in for free. “Make everyone pay and I don’t care if it’s Brigitte Bardot.”

“But how shall I treat them?”

“Comme le merde.”

“Like shit?” I didn’t think that I had heard him right.

“Exactement.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Treating Parisians like shit was a dream job for an American and I obeyed Olivier to a tee and favored my friends with glory. I built a new clientele of rockers, punks, models, gangsters, pop stars, and normal people for the basement club under the famed movie theater on the Grand Boulevard.

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