The Bag Lady Papers by Alexandra Penney Page B

cold Christmas morning in the late seventies, when my son was in Vermont with his father, I woke up at about seven o’clock with the sun just blinking into a pale gray-blue sky filled with a few dark clouds scudding behind the industrial buildings of what was now called SoHo. I looked from my second-story window onto my frosted cobblestoned street of West Broadway and saw four black-and-white NYPD squad cars lined up in a row. Two were facing downtown, two were facing uptown, and the cops were talking with one another through open windows. “Feliz Navidad” was blaring on their radios.
    I grabbed the bottle of champagne that I kept in my fridge to celebrate good times, flew down to the street in my flannel nightgown and slippers, and handed over thebottle.
    â€œMerry Christmas, officers!” I said. “This is to thank you for being the best cops in the world!” I ran upstairs again, listening to all four sirens punctuate the end of each stanza of “Feliz Navidad” as the cops waved good-bye to me and drove off.
    This would have never happened uptown. I felt happy that I lived in this friendly neighborhood and that I had changed my life. But there were many difficult moments when my son was away on weekends or spending time with his dad. The cops; firemen; Mr. Dappolito, the baker around the corner; and Harry, the paint store owner, all were terrific neighbors to us, but when I wasn’t working and my friends were busy, I often felt lonely and down.
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    I had met several artists at Hunter who lived downtown or in Brooklyn and we exchanged studio visits and sometimes joined up for pizza and a glass of wine, but I saw very little of my old uptown friends, as any hours not spent with my son were taken up by painting, work-for-money, and school. I went on a few dates over those six years that I lived on West Broadway, and often wished I had more. Here and there a friend would set me up or I’d go to a party hoping to meet a smart, funny, kind guy who was involved in some way with the arts, but I never found anyone who seemed right for me.
    My social life was not entirely bleak, however. On summer nights when my son was away for a month at summer camp, some girlfriends and I would shoot uptown to Studio54, which was in its heyday.
    Studio 54 was like an enveloping hallucinogenic drug that could, if you were an addictive type, become central to your existence. The blinding strobe lights razoring through the crowd, the roaring sound of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” crashing straight into you, the writhing sweaty gorgeous naked torsos of beautiful men who were smashed on sex and music and poppers, gave you an incredible contact high. The sensory experience was so extreme that your mind was neutered and your pure physical body took its place. I would sometimes smoke a joint that a friend had stashed in a pocket or purse but no one ever offered me cocaine. A night at Studio with a group of friends was wild and uninhibited fun, and who doesn’t desire that once in a while?
    The roving editor job at Vogue ended after two years, and the FIT appointment was only for two semesters. I continued to churn out copy for Bloomingdale’s and to write freelance articles, but I wanted to be earning enough to put some money away for the proverbial rainy day. Back I went to The New York Times Help Wanted listings. I found an opening for a professional writer who would work with retired teachers from union DC 37. I interviewed for the vacancy and landed the job. Two mornings a week I met with a group of men and women who had been public school teachers for most of their lives. Their union provided classes to update their skills in a variety of areas, and writing was one of them. At the beginning of the course, I asked them if they would be willing to keep diaries of their present lives and also to recount how their past affected what they werethinking and doing now.
    â€œOur lives are