Arnold Cummings looked like an eccentric Kris Kringle, with his curly gray locks and toting a quaint black physician’s bag. He was the original mild-mannered small-town doctor, the sort who still made house calls. He dabbled on guitar, had a passion for the blues, and was a giant fan of Rolf’s music. Happy for a bit of company, I invited him in and we chatted the night away. I dazzled him with my youthful prose, knowledge of gospel music, and the story of how I came to be in Inverness. I was so busy nattering away that I hadn’t noticed he’d fallen fast asleep. He was fully standing up but leaning on the door jam. It was the bearlike snore that gave him away. Arnold was the only person I’d ever known who could be dead asleep and still on his feet.
In the morning, as he was putting his suitcase in the car for his flight home, he paused.
“How would you like to come back to Boston and live with my family?”
I wondered about Nicky. He’d been gone for over a week—was he really coming back?
The next thing I knew I was on a jet plane heading East.
Arnold lived with his pretty wife, Sally, and their two young boys in the ritzy suburbs of Watertown, Massachusetts.
Boston had just had an early snow, and their Tudor manor looked like an old-fashioned Christmas card. Besides Arnold’s family practice, the doctor also owned a hopping little coffeehouse in the city called the Turk’s Head where the local talent performed. Arnold gave me a job in the lounge serving hot cider and cappuccinos, so I’d have a little pocket money. Once again I’d landed softly on my feet. The angels were with me, but my head and willful spirit were still full of Greenwich Village and seeing Bob Dylan again.
I’d been with the Cummins family for three weeks when sweet Doctor Arnold, who believed in dreams, confided that he had a friend who was driving down to New York on the weekend. He said if I still wanted to, I could go along for the drive. He gave me an extra twenty dollars to catch the Greyhound back to Boston, and I was on my way.
My ride stopped at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, right smack in the heart of the village.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
There were the Gaslight Café, the Blue Angel, Café What?, all the places I’d heard so much about.
“Yep, I think this is it.”
I’d had a dream and a vision, an unwavering focus, and nothing had stopped me. It was as if a band of angels had spread their wings, spanning a gentle bridge for me to cross. I made it to New York City on the wing of angels.
7
I tried to call Bob in Woodstock, but a female voice answered saying he had just gone on tour. Hmm, what next? I was so naïve I hadn’t really thought of the small details, like where I was going to spend the night. The sun was beginning to set, and for the first time since the beginning of my journey, I was actually feeling frightened. Here I was, completely alone on the streets of a big city where I didn’t know a soul. I wandered into Washington Square Park, where I heard music in the distance. It was one of those magical New York Indian summer evenings, and all these interesting-looking people were stirring around the village fountain like a swarm of fireflies. There were jugglers, holy rollers, artists, lone guitarists, and small gatherings of people playing music. The amusing thing was, most of the boys sounded and appeared just like junior Bob Dylan’s. They all wore their little Dylan caps with Hohner harmonicas clasped around their necks. I struck up a conversation with a handsome, longhaired nineteen-year-old who was the local Casanova and fellow mutineer. Bill Miller was the guitar player of a resident band, the American Dream, and the entire lawless group lived in a six-story walk-up on Eighth Street.
I’d seen some funky places in my travels, but the East Village was a far cry from the sandy beaches and swaying palm trees in California. There was a bathtub in the kitchen that doubled as someone’s bed, and a squalid communal toilet on the landing that didn’t look too happy. Yikes, I’d never seen so many cockroaches!
Everyone was waiting for a guy they called the Chemist. He was bringing some crystal meth, whatever that was.
A shady-looking chap with a pocked complexion skulked in, shrouded in a dark overcoat, toting a black satchel. He poured a heap of sparkling white powder on the table, then scooped a bit into a creased matchbook cover. He sprinkled the exotic dust into a glass of wine, and they passed the swill. Wanting to be cool, I couldn’t very well say, “No thank you,” so I swigged down the bitter brew with the rest of them, and literally couldn’t shut my eyes for the next two days. On the second night I began to fret. I hadn’t a clue what was in that glass. Would I ever be able to sleep again? My heart was thumping like a scared rabbit and my eyes looked like vapid dark moons. At dawn I dashed down the six flights to get a hot chocolate at Smiler’s, the all-night deli, and was stopped in my tracks. There was a man lying as still as a rock on the grimy cold tiles. I thought, “Holy Jesus, a dead man!” I knelt down close to have a better look and almost fainted when he popped up like a jack-in-the-box. I rushed to the deli and bought him some hot coffee and a cherry Danish out of my bus money to help him recover from the blackout. I was worried about the old guy. When I told Bill about the man, he just laughed at my innocence about New York.
“He’s a bum, they all sleep down there.”
I had been in New York less then forty-eight hours and already had a rock-and-roll-boyfriend, was high as the stars on sped, and was making friends with the neighborhood bums—not really what I had in mind.
While checking out my new neighborhood, I stumbled upon a wonderful little café on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal. It was the Café Figaro, a raucous little hot spot with pretty street nymphs, brooding delinquent boys, and curious uptown slummers. At night there was wild dancing in the basement, and someone always seemed to have all the LSD we could swallow.
In that little Pandora’s Box I met some of my lifelong friends. There was fourteen-year-old Liz Argiss, whose mother worked for Revlon. Liz always had paper sacks full of surplus lipsticks and blush-on that she generously passed around so we could all look our prettiest. Then there was the beautiful little Patti D’Arbanville, with the blue eyes of an angel. At thirteen she already owned the hearts of all the boys, and she dreamed of becoming an actress. We were a fraternity of “little women” gone awry.
Liz wound up marrying rock guitarist Rick Derringer, and Patti still graces the silver screen.
I became fast friends with an uptown rich girl who rescued me from the ravages of Eighth Street and desolation row. Eileen Rubinstein was rail thin with perfect jet black, bobbed hair and a Picasso-looking angular face. She’s come dancing down at the Figaro, and always dressed to the nines. She had the latest in Betsey Johnson paraphernalia, and wore the most enviable, expensive shoes from Henri Bendel’s. Eileen was seventeen, three years older than me. She lived with her divorced mother, who she ran riot over, so there was no problem with me moving right in. She also had carte blanche with her dad’s credit cards, and was happy to share the wealth. Miss Rubinstein introduced me to a whole new concept of what New York City had to offer.
Eileen taught me the art of applying false eyelashes and how to bind my blossoming boobs with Ace bandages so we could squeeze into form-fitting Mary Quant dresses. I was becoming glamorous. We’d go dancing till the wee hours at exclusive Arthur’s or trendy Ondine, then on to a 5:00 A.M. breakfast at the Brasserie or the Click. I felt like a vampire seeing the sunrise. People were going to work as we hailed a cab in full glamour girl mod regalia, psychedelic satin skirts up to our teenage butts with vivid purple feather boas wafting in the early morning air. That was my new life: trendy discos and all-night dancing.
I was dancing the night away at Ondine when I met a beautiful boy with long blond curls and extraordinary style. He was dressed in the coolest striped-wool trousers, with an English schoolboy’s jacket and a creamy cashmere scarf softly bundled around his neck.
Eric Emerson was a budding fashion designer and seemed a bit more sophisticated; he shined a little brighter that the other
boys. He was a whimsical rogue with a seductive edge and a big capital T for trouble.
The Doors were onstage, and we danced like savages to Jim Morrison moaning, “Come on baby, light my fire.” Later Eric asked if I wanted to go downtown to the Factory; Andy Warhol was having a big bash. Before we caught a cab, Eric dashed into the men’s room and returned saying,
“I just shot up some acid, you want to do some?”
Wow, shooting up LSD? I didn’t even know you could do that! The last time a doctor had given me a shot I almost fainted, not to mention that injecting acid sounded insane.
“Can I just have a little from the bottle?”
I touched the tip of my tongue to the cap. By the time we got downtown, the cobblestone streets had turned into shimmering rubies, sapphires, and deep green emeralds. I tried but couldn’t extract a single stone.
The Factory was in an inconspicuous dingy warehouse on Forty-Seventh Street, with a rickety service elevator and folding metal gates that opened directly onto the entire top floor, revealing a sea of dazzling, decadent revelers. It looked like a scene out of Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits. Sexy pretty boys who looked like girls danced with women resembling exotic birds. Even the not-so-pretty girls had a beauty and grand style of their own. Andy’s films were flickering on the walls, and I could hear the shattering drone of the Velvet Underground peaking in the distance. This was more than a mere party; it was an ongoing extraordinary lifestyle. I met Cosmopolitan’s cover photographer Francesco Scavullo, who said I should be a model and gave me his card. I danced with Nico, the seductive German singer in the Velvet Underground, and flirted with Lou Reed, the rake from the band. Most interesting of all, Andy himself asked if I’d like to come back. He wanted to take my picture.
So I returned to the Warhol kingdom. I hadn’t noticed the night of the party, but in the daylight the Factory, in all its decadent glory, was entirely decked in silver, from floor to ceiling. Even the funky confined bathroom was papered in shiny aluminum foil and steeped in artful, pornographic graffiti.
Andy and his assistant, Paul Morrissey, were occupied releasing silver helium-filled pillows out of the bay windows into the city air. On the ratty sofa, the only existing piece of furniture in the studio, sat two beauties, the mysterious, blond Nico and the radiant actress Marisa Berenson. An artist, Ronnie Cutrone, was sloshing colors on a fresh canvas, and the painfully handsome playboy Baron, Francois de Menil was playing the Lovin’ Spoonful’s latest hit, “Do You Believe In Magic,” over and over on a portable record player in the corner.
The Factory was pretty wide open. There was no doorman or security. Basically, anyone was welcome, but if you didn’t fit in, you quickly felt the chill.
Andy had an omnipotent presence, he was a sort of phantom, soft-spoken orchestrator who observed from a distance and always had a ready camera. In all the time I spent at the Factory I could never really tell what Andy looked like. He had created a character, an image that always looked curiously out of focus.
I spent most of the winter hanging out at the Factory and doing miscellaneous modeling assignments for the French magazine Paris Match. I’d been dying for the coveted, and regular, position as DJ at the infamous discothèque Ondine. The job pain fifty dollars a week, plus a gratis gourmet feast. When Billie, the regular disk spinner, took a leave, the job was mine.
Ondine was a completely different scene from Warhol’s Factory; it was more rock-and-roll chic. The uptown disco was owned by fashion photographer Jerry Schatzberg, and was always abounding with leggy models, glamour girls, and handsome bad boys to match. Warren Beatty often held court with the ladies in the white leather booth next to the dance floor. You knew if the Stones or the Yardbirds were in town, they’d be at Ondine later in the night.
I ran into my friend Liz there, the little blond girl from the Village. She’s been hanging out with Denny Laine, the twenty-one-year-old singer from the Moody Blues, and she invited me to a little soiree for the band. Denny waltzed in late, clothed in an English-tailored black suit and Spanish-heeled Beatle boots. He looked like John Lennon with Paul McCartney’s bedroom eyes. When he said, “Hello, love,” in his soft English intonation, I was already envisioning us standing at the altar. This was the man who would change my life and give me my only son.
I went to every Moody Blues show and swooned when listening to Denny sing “Go Now” in his soulful timbre.
If sex was love, I’d fallen deep. I was still too inexperienced to gauge things like compatibility. All I knew about Denny was that he looked beautiful, sang in a rock & roll band, and lived in England, and that there was a huge attraction. For a romantic- minded teen, that was enough. In the beginning of our relationship I told Denny that I was almost eighteen, which was my usual stock answer. It was a far cry from a fifteen-year-old runaway delinquent from a pokey in California, not to mention the all points bulletin. When we were staying at his New York hotel I’d get up before dawn, lock myself in the bathroom, and reapply fresh, grown-up-looking makeup, with false eyelashes, sleek black eyeliner, and a touch of blush. Then I’d slip back into bed and pretend I had just woken up. He’d ask what I did so long in the bathroom. But he never questioned my age.
When the Moody Blues finished their New York engagement the band planned to take a holiday in Puerto Rico. Denny and I were in the throes of fresh young romance, and not yet ready to say good-bye. When I showed up on the Puerto Rican shoreline in a bathing suit the other members of the band went quiet. I may have fooled Denny, but in the bright sunlit beach I must have looked like underage veal. There was a Moody Blues meeting that night, something about me being a juvenile and Denny taking my out of the country. I was put on a plane the next day and sent back to New York City. Denny said not to worry, I could come to England, but how was I going to get my fugitive hands on a legal passport? Denny went back and we kept the torch ablaze through wistful letters and expensive transatlantic phone calls. The week I turned sixteen I decided to chance my freedom and applied for a passport. All I needed was a letter of consent to travel alone, which I simply forged. I was on my way to England.
8
I could see Denny waiting just outside the glassed-in customs partition with an armful of flowers. Close to six months had passed, and he looked even more dazzling than I remembered. I felt a little woozy as the customs agent scrutinized my passport and counterfeit letter, and then asked to see my return-trip ticket. What return ticket? I was staying forever. In a sternly British accent, he ordered, “Would you please step over to the side, Miss?”
Oh, my God, I was going to be arrested, and there was no way out of it! Not only would I never see Denny again, but they were also going to call the authorities, locate my mother, and send me back to the tower. When the rest of the passengers filed through, Denny walked up. “What’s the holdup, love?”
The officer cut in. “First off, she’s underage, has no return ticket, and no verifiable residence. She can’t be admitted into the country.”
I was about to faint, when a magical thing happened: The customs agent recognized Denny. It turned out that he was a big fan of the Moody Blues and had just seen him sing “Go Now” on Top of the Pops. Smiling he gave me three months on my visa, and we were off.
We raced through the streets of London in Denny’s little Mini Cooper, over the Putney Bridge to Carlisle Square.
London was a magical place. I loved the embellished architecture, gentle villages, and narrow cobblestone streets. The smells in the chemist’s and small shops were comforting and familiar. I felt like I knew it here, like I’d come home after a long journey.
There was a stretch of King’s Road in Chelsea that was like a wonderfully mysterious private club. It was the street where rock bands shopped, and prancing, long-legged models strutted in velvet mini-skirts and colorful platform boots. There were outdoor cafes where all the boys resembled budding rock stars. My favorite place was the exclusive Chelsea Antique Market, which brimmed with lavish Victorian treasures. U
pstairs a seductive Hungarian, Ulla, revamped faded silk gowns, fanciful French cravats, and embroidered piano shawls into whimsical, prismatic costumes. The top floor was a rooftop garden overlooking King’s Road, where you sipped tea and nibbled on sweet biscuits while watching the ongoing extravaganza. At the end of King’s Road was a shop called Granny Takes a Trip. Its storefront was the real back end of a car that looked like it had just crashed through the window. Granny’s specialized in made-to-order velvet cowboy suits, handmade snakeskin boots, and skin-tight crushed-velvet trousers. Their calling card read, “Granny’s makes clothes to wear before you make love.” Talking ‘bout my generation, this was a whole new era, and it was only the beginning.
Denny’s flat was nothing as I’d imagined; it wasn’t fancy or artsy, just a modern, ordinary apartment, comfortably cozy with a lovely green garden in the back.
The Beatles had just topped the charts with Revolver and we played “Here, There and Everywhere” continually, like an anthem.
I had arrived at the height of the psychedelic, rock-and-roll revolution. It wasn’t unusual to go to a party and see John Lennon or have a puff of pot with Paul McCartney. Denny and I went dancing with Ringo and Maureen, and spent a hallucinogenic night on acid with Brian Jones and his German girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. I doted on Denny, cooking his dinner and pressing his trendy shirts. I thought we were happy, but it wasn’t long before there was big trouble in paradise.
At sixteen I wasn’t the best judge of emotions. I’d confused delirious teenage passion for everlasting love. As long as we were between the sheets, which was most of the time, we were snow-blind, but Denny was becoming increasingly moody (no pun intended), with a volatile, crazy jealousy. “But to love her is to need her everywhere” was more prophetic than I realized. It started off subtly, but I started to feel like a prisoner. I couldn’t even go to the shops without him waiting at the door with jealous insinuations. He’d sometimes grapple me to the floor and trounce me to tears all because of his green-eyed imagination. Later, he’d be repentant, and I so much wanted to believe him.
Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit Page 7
