Betsy's Beanery

In my second year of art school I found myself at a loft party with the conspicuously arty crown from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My hair was quite short and my lips very, very red. I smoked cigarettes using a quill in order to preserve my lipstick. A pair of silver, art nouveau-style earrings, a gift from my sister who lived in Paris, dangled from my exposed earlobes, nearly grazing the silky nap of the mink collar on my black, cashmere cardigan (with rhinestone buttons!). The sweater had been given to me by a fellow deli waitress who recognized that “…it’s more YOU than me” --- and it was. Tight blue jeans completed the look.

Igars, a.k.a. “Ike” had a gorgeous, Nordic face and a nearly waist length blond ponytail. I knew who he was, a fellow art student of some notoriety, so I was surprised when he approached and invited me, a nobody, to dance. By way of making my acquaintance Ike asked, “You’re from New York, right?” Hell no, I thought. For at the tender age of 21 I could not have pointed to NYC on a map. “Uh, no. I’m from Milwaukee --- 90 miles north.” The relationship never developed into much, but a seed was planted that night and about seven years later I moved to the East Village in Manhattan.

It was the punk rock early ‘80’s and though there were still sparkling shards of the collapsed disco days all around --- Disco Donut, Disco Dry-Cleaning, Disco Five & Dime ---the look and to some extent the mood in lower Manhattan was decidedly black. Black leather, black sunglasses, black CBGB t-shirts ripped and sometimes pinned, everywhere you looked. Black silhouettes of bombs, puppies and generic rock stars were stenciled on sidewalks, walls and stop signs. Keith Haring was working exclusively in black in those days too. Tight black jeans, dyed black hair, heavy eyeliner and filthy Doc Martens --- all of it so slimming that even overfed teenagers from New Jersey looked homeless and drug addled.

One night, hoping, of course, to meet men and possibly find true love, I went out with a girlfriend for drinks. We sat at the bar in a restaurant called “1/5” located at 1 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. The men we were interested in and whom we’d be most likely to encounter at this upscale venue were more likely to be wearing pastel shirts and suits from Brooks Brothers than vinyl pants from “Trash & Vaudeville.” I had dressed to please that crowd in a summery blue floral ensemble, my unruly hair lacquered into a demure French twist. The flowery, flowing rayon skirt caressed my long legs seductively as I strolled back towards my First Avenue walk-up at an early morning hour. I was trying to channel the young woman in Ruth Orkin’s famous photograph, taken the year I was born, of an American girl nonchalantly running the gauntlet of leering Italian men. My confident stride would not betray the disappointment I’d felt in having to walk home --- alone. There was no gallant young escort in a 3-piece suit to protect me from harm. The fact is, I never felt endangered in that part of the city. For even with its strange inhabitants, including drunks, junkies and vagrants it was my neighborhood and I belonged there. It was my home. However, it was very late and the streets seemed unusually deserted. I was the sole figure crossing Second Avenue at St. Mark’s Place when out of a dark doorway stumbled a tall, skinny creature. I probably smelled him before I could make him out to be human under the hazy streetlight. “Excuse me, “ he said as he staggered towards me. I ignored him, but he persisted. “EXCUSE ME.” God, what does he want? Is he going to rob me? Rape me? Mess up my hair? I stopped and planted my feet (shod in the palest lilac colored ballet flats) with a scowl on my face and my arms akimbo I demanded, “What? What do you want?”

“I just wanted to thank you,” he explained, “for not wearing black.”

Betsy's Beanery

Serving up food for thought in Portland, Oregon

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09/07/2009

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