I am a blue blood and was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. There is a
wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art donated by a member of my family.
At the time of this story I was a mild
mannered 45-year-old with a wife of twenty years and a daughter finishing high
school. I was a square, monogamous, clean-shaven guy with a 4,500 square foot
house in Pennsylvania and four cars.
Then I got a contract to work as a consultant at a hospital in
New York City.
After work I used to wander around the city. I felt like a guest in the world
until I wandered into the East Village. Suddenly I realized that this was home.
So I
began to sublet places in the neighborhood and would stay there while I was in
town on business. I was trying to break out of my childhood of super achievement
and this seemed like the place to do it. The bloom was off the rose in my marriage. I
felt like I had found my people in the East Village and had started painting my finger
nails and toe nails and had pierced my ear. This new side of me scared my wife and
we had a traumatic break up.
One day I was looking for a place to work on my laptop and wandered into a
bar that had the unusual (for the time) combination of power outlets and free WiFi. I started
hanging out there regularly, learning through the music they played, the tequila they
drank, the stories they told. This bar and the bartenders who worked there became
a family and a home for me as I broke up with my wife. And that’s where I met her.
She was a beautiful bartender in her mid 20s with dirty blonde hair and gorgeous
eyes. She was the girl I always wanted to sleep with in high school. She was a
cheerleader, a California hippie and a ghetto street hustler from New Orleans. She
was a ball player. I wrote my PhD thesis with three Nobel Laureates and they are no
match for her. She was a pro and I didn’t know what I was in for, but I sure as hell wanted in.
I sat at the bar during her shifts and slowly fell in love with her. One rainy
afternoon she played Electric Ladyland. The entire album. I loved it and sang every song to her. After that day I
always called her the Electric Lady. I gave other people at the bar nick names too and it wasn’t long before they gave me one, Hippie Lou. I started using this nick name and it
was like trying on a new persona.
I wanted to take my old self, put it all on a barge
and cut the rope.
One day Electric Lady invited me to a party. I was new to this world so didn’t
fully understand the significance of crossing this line, of seeing a bartender socially.
We met at a bar beforehand and she bought me a drink, then we went to the party
together. We left together. And everyone thought we were together.
Electric Lady
was a risk taker. I studied evolutionary biology and I believe that women are
smarter and more evolved than men. They can sense and smell things. They have
the satellite dish and we men have a bent coat hanger. They have bridge building skills,
they can barter. The one thing they are perhaps a little short on is the risk taking. They have to take care of
the kids so they don’t bet everything on red in Vegas.
But there is a shift happening in the new generation of women and the Electric Lady knew how to take a risk. She was hitting me over the head
with a club and was going to take me back to her cave.
When I realized that she
wanted to get it on with me I went into turtle mode. I’m a romantic, I’m old
fashioned. I was afraid that she was a Siren, in the sense of the Odyssey, and if I slept with her she would sail me
into the rocks. So I didn't close the deal. In fact, I was so petrified, I didn't even open the deal.
There was no room for fear in Electric Lady's world. She put me in a car service and before
the door had even closed she was dialing her boyfriend. She had already moved on.
We did this dance for many years. I loved her, she dangled the carrot, I got
shy and ran away.
It looked like this: I started dating another girl, got
divorced and had to sell everything for spousal support, she broke up with her
boyfriend, I broke up with my girlfriend, she got married to someone else, I got
locked up in the psych ward, she didn’t visit me, I got angry and was kicked out of
the bar, she had a kid, I was diagnosed with manic depression, burned some bridges,
had my house foreclosed on, moved out of the city, she moved out of the city, I
worked my way back in again, she asked me to visit, I got arrested, we made
amends.
We’re still in touch and I’m still in love with her. It’s written in the stars that
we will connect. I know it’s going to happen. I think we’re going to get it on and the
day it does happen I will probably turn into a light beam and ascend into the galaxy.
Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland?
