| august
23
|
It's probably a lot like thinking of the color
orange, then only being able to see shades of la naranja everywhere
you lay the eye ... but having considered that possibility, I'm going to
put this one down to a very ... odd ... coincidence.
There are such things, after all. When I was just a young lass, a mere pup of, say, my early twentysomething years, I was, shall we say, a late developer. That was, I hadn't actually had sex. (Wouldn't as it turns out for a while afterward, but that's not relevant here exactly.) It was one of those things I went back and forth between thinking a) who gives a shit? and b) it kind of scares me shitless which led to a lot of overthinking and overanalyzing which no doubt slowed down the whole process even further. Then, as obliquely referenced before, I was also going through a strange period of my life where the possibilities were open left and right to just go ahead and take care of things -- since for reasons I've yet to figure out since I was hardly the rock-star-girlfriend-type, even if I did like to hang out after shows and yak things up over beers -- I got hit on by quite a few of the troubadours passing through the Boston area. "Hit on" ranged from getting cornered in the back of the bus to getting walked home the mile and a half from the venue to the chaste sharing-of-the-bed without anything untoward going on. Hey! It can happen. I swear. It did (or didn't! as the case may be). I'm proof. And perhaps in a longer entry, I'll go into the non-details and name some names. In the meantime, I was terribly, terribly stuck on the heretofore mentioned John. He was a rhythm guitarist and not all that attractive but had a fabulous Scottish burr and a gentle innocence that was charming every time I ran into it. We'd met up a year or so earlier and nothing had come of it but some letters and postcards and then a lot of silence. Then they came back to my part of the world, and I made it down to New York to figure things out and, I figured, if I was lucky, uh, I'd Get Lucky. I had a real thing for this guy, did I mention that? Well. I was thinking of the events of that pursuant evening a few days ago, apropos of nothing in particular, just kind of being amused at how silly, yet daring, yet rocknroll, yet Smiths song it was that we were for a few hours that evening ... and then I moved on in my thoughts and such went life. Until that night, before the news, when I heard the teaser: "Couple arrested for indecency in major landmark. News at 11." Or some such thing. And I thought ... shit! Now I get to know what could have happened! Here's what happened this past week:
Couple Arrested for Sex in Cathedral
Here's my contribution to the sexual prowess of the greatest cathedral in the city: Post show, John (who was delighted beyond all expectation to see me) and I somehow got "separated" from the rest of the group, which was being taken out by the record company owner for drinks. We wandered around the neighborhood a bit ostensibly looking for them, but not looking too hard, and ended up going back to (I'm shocked) his hotel, which was the (then) Helmsley Palace. A really beautiful place on Madison Avenue in Midtown -- back then it had a sweeping red staircase and truth be told, both of us were still too nervous with each other to do the obvious thing, which was go to his room and, uh ... well, yeah -- so we were looking for a place to talk. But if you're not familiar with the city, and then I wasn't, those places are hard to find around 2 in the morning (or later, which it was by then) so we ended up in his room. Sitting on the floor. Talking, drinking, and various other things with our clothes on. Then the singer came in (he's another story) with some blonde chick they knew from some other place, some other time. John and this guy were obviously sharing the room for the night, but clearly the singer and his girl wanted some ... privacy. We gave it to them. Went to the elevators. Got caught by some arriving band members in a ... clutch outside said elevators. Ran outside of the hotel looking for a private place. Did I mention that the Helmsley was right across the street -- literally -- from St. Patrick's Cathedral? This time of night (morning) it was, of course, not open. So the going into the pew part of things was not possible. But the Cathedral takes up a whole city block, and if you enter from Madison Avenue, there's a small staircase that leads to a catty cornered, semi-private patio area that's wide open. And was empty. And so we retreated for various clenchings and so forth that went nowhere because that was when he decided to give me the whole scoop on his (gack) "betrothed." So here was the Jew and the Presbyterian boy being rather naughty one minute on the steps of a Cathedral while he fought off his natural urges for this ninny back at home and that's about where it all went. It'd be really rocknroll to say I'd lost it on the steps of St. Pat's. But such was not to be. Instead, all four of us (five, if you count the misplaced wife-to-be-that-ultimately-never-was-I'm-stunned) ended up in his/the singer's room sleeping it off until the next morning when everything went strange and awkward ... and never back to normal. I think St. Pat's put a curse on us. I've seen him since, but it's never been quite the same. The shithead. But boy, when this broke, I was so tempted to mail him a copy of the story. Just to see. Because you don't forget about a blasphemy that never was, or an unconsummated love affair. At least, I don't. |
