Detroit

My roommate quit school, and left. I was lonely - she was my only friend in school. We played The Cars and Bad Company and the J. Geils Band and Joe Jackson at loud decibel levels. We got two kittens, Devo and Johannesburg. But Bev went back to New Jersey and I had to stick it out alone.

I put up a flyer about the vacancy. I got a new roommate, a grad student from Boston. She played the clarinet. She seemed to have come to New York to be wild. I was already tired of being wild. We had some conflict.

My roommate was in a woodwind quintet. I went to see them play at a church on Columbus Avenue north of 100th street. When we got there to set up, Mass was over but someone had stopped by for some Santeria; there were two pigeons on the altar with their throats cut. Man, I thought, that blood is never coming out of those altar cloths. Someone cleaned up the mess and the concert went on. The bassoonist was Greg.

Greg played classical bassoon and punk rock saxophone. People called him Greg Detroit. I started to sing with the band.

Greg had a girlfriend, and they lived on the East Side. She was a lawyer. He taught at an upper-crust French school. But on the last day of school, it was a casual day, he went to school in his punk rock leather clothes and that was it, he was fired. So he and I were both free in the daytimes, after my classes were done. We walked around and ate Ray's Pizza.

Greg and his girlfriend had a party at their apartment. A guy named Chuck put a tape recorder under the couch and recorded the party conversation. He transcribed it and wrote a play. The play was produced at the St. Mark's Theatre, and they asked Greg and his girlfriend to play themselves. He wanted to do it; she didn't. So they had auditions for Greg's girlfriend in the play. The woman who got the part was Ellen. She was a professional actress. Ellen got cast in the national touring company of "Annie" and went to Chicago. So Greg and I decided to go to Chicago too.

We asked Greg's girlfriend's father for the money to go to Chicago. He gave it to us, and we got on a plane. We had the plane tickets plus $100 between us. When we landed in Chicago, we took a bus for $7.00 each to the north side, between the Loop and the Gold Coast. It was a skidrow area then, in 1979. We went to the Ohio East Hotel. We got a room, two twin beds, for $50 a week. That was golden. We went out to dance at O'Banion's, the dance club, that night. People said to me "How long have you lived in Chicago?" and I said "Four hours."