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The summer of 1974 was the start of my Disco years in New York City.<\/p>\n
I had just completed my MFA thesis at Brooklyn College and was now on my own. I was staying temporarily with my good friend Dennis who was the set designer for my graduate production. He lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn before the lesbians, yuppies, chic shops and million dollar brownstones – the Park Slope of Irish Bars, Chinese Laundries, Food Coops and middle class teen rednecks.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoodbye Yellow Brick Road\u201d<\/p>\n
Dennis was a tall and lanky, very bohemian, sensitive artiste \u2013 straight. He was very generous and open to let me room with him in his tiny studio until I figured out my life. We shared a pullout sofa bed in a tenement walkup on Seventh Avenue and First Street, facing a noisy public school yard. It was a platonic relationship even though I wouldn\u2019t have minded a bit of \u201cgee was I drunk\u201d one night since he was handsome Pole with a kielbasa to prove it<\/p>\n
\u201cAh Memories, Light the Corners of My Mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armed with my recently acquired MFA in directing from Brooklyn College, I was ready to take New York by storm and become a famous Broadway stage director.\u00a0 For the summer interim however, I received a scholarship to study directing at the Shakespeare Institute in conjunction with the Stratford Theatre Festival in Connecticut.<\/p>\n
Lodging and classes were at the University of Connecticut at Bridgeport. Evenings and seminars with the cast were held at the theatre in Stratford.\u00a0 Bridgeport was an iconic 1960\u2019s urban renewal mess of a city. One side faced the then polluted Long Island Sound, one side faced the PT Barnum Museum, and the other side faced ghetto squalor.<\/p>\n
\u201cLivin\u2019 Just Enough for the City\u201d<\/p>\n
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Loretta<\/p>\n
I Discovered Disco and Loretta in the summer of 1974. Loretta was also attending the \u201cinstitute,\u201d as we mockingly call it to this very day. Loretta was a 22-year-old English Major from the hollers of West Virginia, a girl destined to escape her Mennonite ancestry and blossom into a then unknown Hilary Clinton-like dynamic woman.\u00a0 She was a demure high school English teacher in the one-stoplight town of Romney who fell in love with New York City and soon fell in love with me. We became the Disco version of Scott and Zelda as we escaped the \u201cinstitute\u201d every weekend for madcap escapades in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Can\u2019t Help It, If I Am Still in Love with You\u201d<\/p>\n
Our favorite hangout was The 82 Club in the East Village on E. 4th Street. The pre- \u201cRent\u201d East Village and The 82 Club were the height of depravity. This hideaway was as close to a cabaret of the Weimer Republic as one can imagine with drag queens, chanteuses, superstars and us.<\/p>\n Like Sally Bowles and Christopher Isherwood we played on Saturday nights at being totally decadent and in love. Early Sundays mornings, we would crash on Dennis\u2019s pull out sofa, all three of us exhausted in drunken abandon. Dennis was usually the first to rise, and he would get up and moan, \u201cI need my coffee\u201d and make us the first cappuccinos we ever tasted. On Sunday night, Loretta and I would sleep in each other\u2019s arms all the way back up to Bridgeport on the local Metro North train, waking up at every stop to chant with the conductor: Stamford!\u00a0 Darien!\u00a0 Westport!<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re My First, My Last My Everything\u201d<\/p>\n The beat, the drive, the rhythm of Disco turned me into a dancing fool. I never was the teenager who watched Dick Clark\u2019s American Bandstand dancing around the living room or went to the school dance. I don\u2019t remember the exact song or moment it possessed me but suddenly at 26, the music swept over me and took control of me like the ballerina in Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s fairy tale, The Red Shoes or like a manic Sicilian girl with twirling skirts, dancing herself into a trance to the Tarantella trying to ward off the malocchio.<\/p>\n \u201cRock the Boat Baby\u201d<\/p>\n I bought a portable record player (the boom box of the day,) and became a proselytizer of dance, a young Pan, a Disco Dionysus. I spent money I did not have n 48\u2019s and LPs. I had to have the latest extended DJ version of a song, which you could only buy at a store on Carmine Street in the Village.<\/p>\n I had Disco parties in the UConn cafeteria after our studies or after we retuned late from an evening performance at Stratford. We danced at Club 82, on the beach of the Sound, in the scene shop at Strafford and on the hardwood floors of Dennis\u2019s apartment. Loretta and I even danced to our own inner beat on the empty D train as it crossed Manhattan Bridge high above the East River.<\/p>\n \u201cDancin\u201d in the Street\u201d<\/p>\n The Disco beat was steady and pulsing. It\u2019s trance like mantra released my inhibitions. It was if I took an elixir and turned me into an impish Puck\/Donkey of Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream or a devilish, grinning Mr. Hyde. You didn\u2019t need to know dance steps and the movement was sexy and fluid. You could be dancing with anyone in the swirling crowd around you. I sometimes pretended Dennis was my partner as I danced around an unsuspecting Loretta as we all spun around her \u201cDisco bag\u201d she had recklessly thrown down on the dance floor of Le Jardin, ourr own Arden Forest.<\/p>\n \u201cGet Dancin\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n We studied Shakespeare all summer and we all had to present a project for accreditation. In retrospect I must have been unconsciously inspired by my dancing craze and summer love.\u00a0 I directed a choreographed\/acted version of Shakespeare\u2019s Venus and Adonis. The poem was accompanied by the music of Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s Transfigured Night \u2013 a very Anthony Tudor\/Agnes DeMille dance\/drama piece<\/p>\n Venus<\/span><\/a> and Adonis<\/span><\/a> comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses<\/span><\/a>. Ovid told of how Venus took the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with the goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale of Atalanta<\/span><\/a> and\u00a0 Hippomenes<\/span><\/a> to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals, he disregards the warning, and is killed by a boar.<\/p>\n \u201cMust Be the Night Fever\u201d<\/p>\n I also fell \u201ca little bit in love\u201d with the director Michael Kahn, while assisting at Strafford. This was the season of his \u201cCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u201d with Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea and Fred Gwynne. He also directed a beautiful production of \u201cRomeo and Juliette\u201d set during the Risorgimento in Italy. I dreamed of becoming Michael\u2019s assistant and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and lover. He never did and I never told him.<\/p>\n \u201cIf You Love Me, Let Me Know,\u201d<\/p>\n The dancing stopped one night in August. After our cafeteria dinner, as we listened to \u201cDon\u2019t Let the Sun Go Down on Me\u201d from Elton John\u2019s new album.\u00a0 Someone turned the TV on and we froze like figures in a game of \u201cStatues\u201d as we gathered around to hear the rumored news.<\/p>\n \u201cGood evening.<\/p>\n This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest. I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.<\/p>\n Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShame Shame Shame\u201d<\/p>\n We all listened in silence as President Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974. And the sun did go down over the Long Island Sound.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say August 8th is the \u201cday the music died.\u201d\u00a0 Even though it was the last days of the \u201cinstitute my inner beat and Disco were about to explode.<\/p>\n We danced and danced all though that hot summer nights in Manhattan, Stratford and Bridgeport. Loretta and I became beloved friends and soul mates. A woman I could love without fear or responsibility and expectation \u2013 a masquerade, a pas de deux, and shadow play of Romeo of Juliette. How fitting we were studying in the hometown of PT Barnum, appearing in our own Midway Freak Show with acts of curiosity and sideshow romance.<\/p>\n Sam, Barry and me<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t Let the Sun Go Down on Me\u201d<\/p>\n Loretta returned to Romney, West Virginia only to move in with me the following year with a her friend Fran. I returned to Park Slope and started to notice an influx of women in overall and flannels. Thirty years later, straight Dennis came out. Timing is all. He now has a lover who looks curiously like me. Ahem.<\/p>\n Garfield Place<\/p>\n \u201cRock the Boat Baby\u201d<\/p>\n The Disco Years had just begun with nights at Studio 54, Peppermint Lounge and the Sanctuary. The era of liberation and sex was dawning – poppers, pot, polyester shirts, and potluck Disco parties in my first apartment on Garfield Place. I rented it with Dennis\u2019s younger brother, Robert and \u201cgee we did get drunk\u201d.<\/p>\n \u00a0I was the \u201cnew boy was in town\u201d \u2013 not Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever strutting down 86th Street but Tony Napoli strutting down Broadway like a character in Fame. \u00a0I was dancing down the street and catching the night fever, dressed in platform shoes, white tight pants, Nik Nik shirt with gold chain bracelet or Puka Bead necklace and blow-dried styled hair. I was ready to take NYC by storm.<\/p>\n \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive\u201d<\/p>\n Loretta, Fran and me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The summer of 1974 was the start of my Disco years in New York City. I had just completed my MFA thesis at Brooklyn College and was now on my own. I was staying temporarily with my good friend Dennis … Continue reading
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