HARLEM, NYC (1983)

Lou Reed, Stevie Wonder, Richard Pryor had painted such a vivid picture you felt like you'd already been there.

I was 22 and had enrolled at NYU to finish my undergrad degree.  During my first semester, a friend from my dorm introduced me to a couple she knew.  She thought we would hit it off.  She brought them by my room one afternoon. 

Charles and Eleanor [not their real names] were dressed in black overcoats.  Charles was unusually good looking and stylishly dressed.  Eleanor was striking in a pale, wane, slightly disheveled way.  She was dressed in an understated, slightly preppie version of the East Village downtown look.

Charles was originally from Utah.  His dad was a former congressman from there.  Eleanor was from the Upper West Side.  Her dad was a doctor.  They both smoked cigarettes.  They were film students at NYU, which is exactly what they looked like.  

They flopped down on my roommates bed (there wasn’t anywhere else to sit in my tiny dorm room).  They lounged there, in their winter coats.  I sat in a chair at my desk.  We talked a little.  Mostly we just looked at each other.  Eleanor had blue eyes, beautiful pale skin, freckles.  Charles had a relaxed, non-comittal kind of vibe. He was gay, I would later learn, so they weren’t a traditional couple.  But they were always together.  Eleanor did the baby talk thing.  Lots of scene people did the baby talk in those days.  Two years later I would meet Courtney Love and she did it constantly.  I did it too, here and there, for many years.  It was a meme of that time, I guess.  Lapsing into a childlike babble.  At least around your friends.

photo Ken Schles

Charles and Eleanor liked to take me places.  We’d go to art openings and night clubs or whatever events were happening.  Eleanor knew a lot of people.  We went to some very cool parties.  I often felt overwhelmed in these situations—surrounded by famous artists or snobby hipsters—so I made a deal with myself:  I would go wherever Charles and Eleanor took me, but I was always allowed to bail out at any time if I reached a panic level of social anxiety.  (Nowadays people call this an “Irish exit”).  On the occasions I bailed, I would go for a long walk or sit on a stoop by myself and drink a beer.  I would think: “It’s okay that I couldn’t handle that.  I’m still learning how to deal with New York.  I’ll get better at this.” 

Then the next time I saw Charles and Eleanor I would apologize for ducking out and they would be like, “whatever.” And then we would be off to the next adventure. 

Photo Ken Schles

Alcohol was omnipresent in the downtown world.  Needless to say.  We spent a lot of time in the dive bars around the East Village.  There were a bunch of them.  The layouts were generally the same.  Three or four booths along one wall.  The bar where people sat smoking on stools.  A window looking out on the street (watching the snow fall in winter).  A jukebox.  A pool table.  An old lady bartender.  After your second draft beer, she would pour you one on the house and you would tip her extra.  There were a lot of NYU kids at these bars.  NYU film students to be exact.  I never ran into any of my fellow History majors in these places.  Nor any Econ or Pre-Med people.

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge was right on St. Marks Place.  It was the meanest of the dive bars.  Really mean girls, dressed in the most exaggerated Weimar Republic styles—severe bob haircuts and vintage dresses—would smoke cigarettes and congregate at the bar.  When you walked in they would look you up and down and pass judgement on you.  Though the legal drinking age was 21, the average age of the Holiday Lounge girls was closer to 17.  I eventually got an NYU film school girlfriend.  She was 18 and she loved the Holiday Lounge.  She would get extra dressed up to go there and liked to arrive by taxi.

I often wondered if Charles and Eleanor liked taking me around because it was fun to watch me flounder and be corrupted by the big city.  Or were they genuinely trying to teach me things.  Probably both.  I was an innocent in their eyes.  Though that might have been a defensive posture on my part.  I wasn’t actually that innocent.  It was just the easiest way to deal with New York as I struggled to adapt:  to act wide-eyed and clueless.