The Year Of Living Dangerously

1980  New York City, Danceteria.  Wow, New York hangs out in the after midnight, way more intensely than Akron Ohio.  Everything going on around me seems to be the result of a city injected with steroids.  Lights, Life, Music, Food, nothing is closed and it's past 2AM. I remember walking to a little corner store, still open and buying a Dr. Browns celery soda at approx. 4 in the morning.  The DJ at Danceteria is pretty cool, he has had Unit 5 on the playlist for a while, that's a big deal to get songs on the playlist at clubs in New York City, especially this club (I hear he is dating Madonna but he's pretty flirty for a boyfriend who gives a shit). So people who frequent this club have been listening to Unit 5 on the playlist for a month so everyone here thinks we are more important than we think we are.  One of the guys from the band Television is here with my friend Patty Donahue (The Waitresses), they came backstage and hung out after our set which was a huge success, a lot of record execs here to see us, they are begining to hover in the dressing room as well. I think Liam Sternberg is here, but maybe not it's a rumor at this point.  Liam wrote "Walk Like An Egyptian" and produces The Bangles. I never saw him that evening but he later came to Akron to see us (that was his hometown anyway).  Capitol Records is here, everyone is introducing themselves and all I am hearing is bla bla bla.  I can't get my mind off of the new boyfriend I left in Akron while all these people are talking about my future, it just makes me feel like I am being ripped away from everything that I consider important, home, family, Tony and I'm all of the sudden, not sure if I want to be a rock star at all. Someone said Pete Townshend is in the club, I thought that was him but the waitress said "na" just some guy that looks like him.  He said hi to me, I thought he was a doppelganger but I guess it was him.  One of the guys from Hall and Oates is out there, not the ethnic guy the very pale other guy, I don't even go out to say hello to him, because I think I am to cool, to urban, to hip and dark to say hi to Hall and Oates guy, basically I am a little bitch and let's face it he wrote some stupid crap.  I hit the pay phone (remember those) to call Tony because I am caught up in a world that seems alien to me, I am most certainly reacting to something someone in this club put in my drink, this can't be "real", record label reps in my dressing room, celebrities, drugs, alcohol, playlists and people...many many people planning my life, I love New York, I just wish everyone would go away and give me some personal space, but they don't and they won't and I want to go home and thanks but NO I don't want to do a line of cocaine, the drug someone slipped in my drink is quite enough for now.  Tonight some odd guy will ask to spend the night in our hotel room, my drugged and drunk band will say sure (Mike won't because Mike doesn't do drugs but oh wait....yeah, Mike is the guy that invited him).  I remember sleeping on the floor between Bob and Mark so he couldn't "touch me" or anything, he took pictures, lots of pictures, at the club, during the set, while I was fake sleeping. He eventually sent me one of the photos, framed, as a gift, he sent us all one, everyone got a really cool photo of themselves and it was pretty nice actually.  The one he sent me became the cover of my first solo CD "Standing Alone" I love that picture it always reminds me of New York and all of the other planets in the galaxy I was just discovering, and of the night I decided I was not cut out for this.