Authors: Kristi Lynn Davis
Other than peeping Toms and the occasional free peep show, Astoria wasn’t much of a happening night spot. So on the rare evenings when we weren’t too tired, Jenny and I made our way back to Manhattan for after-hours alcoholic adventures. Jenny often preferred to patronize either the discreet, dark and shady Russian bar whose name I’ve long since forgotten where, like clandestine spies, we’d watch for high-class drug deals going down and Russian mafia swapping messages; or, when feeling less detective-y and more festive, a colorful Mexican joint, Tortilla Flats, for margaritas and free chips and salsa.
The downside to venturing into Manhattan was that Jenny wouldn’t always return to Queens with me afterwards. I dreaded having to take a subway home alone in the wee hours, so I was forced to spend a fortune for a cab. Late one such evening, my driver was an Evil Knievel wannabe who gave me the taxi ride of death. I nervously rattled off directions, so he would know I knew the way home. My NYC friends had warned me of drivers who’d scam you by taking you the long way to hike up the fare. Unfortunately, he spoke no discernible English, or he pretended not to speak much English. When he started whizzing to Queens at speeds that would break the sound barrier, I wondered if I should demand to be let out. But I was drunk, tired, and anxious to get home, so I decided that I would either die or get home really fast. Fate was kind that night.
Just learning how to catch a taxi was tricky. There should be a school that teaches people not only how to hail one, but also how to give directions in grunts and hand signals to all the non-English speaking cabbies. You really had to be bold, wave your hand high in the air, and claim your space when the other, more experienced New Yorkers were standing alongside you competing for the next taxi. Unlike at the deli counter, on the street you couldn’t take a number and be waited on in turn. It was survival of the fittest. I stood on my tiptoes to create the illusion of being larger, waved my arm wildly like everyone else, leaned out into oncoming traffic (always maintaining readiness to pull back when a raging semi was about to decapitate me), and prayed that some taxi would stop.
And the fight didn’t finish when the cab stopped in front of you. Everyone within a ten-foot radius would madly dash to the cab as if it were theirs and compete for the opportunity to fling open the door and sit down. Truly, I think the rule is that whoever’s butt meets that dirty, black, cracked leather first wins the cab ride. Squatter’s rights. After doing the mad taxi dance for several cabs off duty or already full of passengers, I realized that only the cabs with the light on the top were available. And don’t be fooled by those fancy ladies in full-length minks and high heels. They are the best and most fearless taxi hailers of all. I lost out to them every time.
While I found flagging down a taxi to be distressingly difficult, it was easy for my city-slicker friend, Jenny. Jenny grew up in a multimillion-dollar “loft” (another new term for me) on 5th Avenue and 15th Street within walking distance of New York University where her eccentric British father was a computer professor. Around the corner from their home, a mob of dark-haired men with Indian accents stood on the sidewalk in front of their stores hawking electronic appliances and knock-off designer bags and watches. Jenny’s building had eleven floors, and her family’s loft, which was the entire top floor, had its own stop on the elevator. Being on the top floor, they had put in sunroofs and a roof garden making their space that much more valuable. The loft’s 3600 square feet included three bedrooms and a small ballroom that housed a pipe organ and other unusual musical instruments. Famous actress Uma Thurman lived in the loft below them.
I, on the other hand, grew up in a suburban Midwestern neighborhood as white as Wonder Bread. My father was a physicist at Ford Motor Company. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Old, widowed, not-famous-in-any-way Mrs. Barnett lived next door to us.
Our dissimilarities didn’t end there. Unlike me, Jenny was an outspoken feminist. She flat out refused to allow guys to hold doors open for her or pay for her meals. But that didn’t stop her from appreciating men in the bedroom. “You know, Kristi, you’d be a better dancer if you had sex,” Jenny said in all honesty one day. She laughed at the absence of a working male organ in my life. Her parents permitted her to have her boyfriends spend the night. In their home. In her room. With her. My parental training in sex came from a book about a boy and his puppy who grew up to be a man and his dog, and a girl and her kitty who grew up to be a woman and her cat. The man and woman ended up in the same bed and, magically, a baby appeared. I don’t know what happened between the dog and the cat. Jenny learned about sex from field experience in her own home.
Jenny also constantly made fun of me, because I had been a cheerleader in high school and a sorority girl in college, two institutions she absolutely abhorred. She was stunned that I had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Had I been homeless, black, handicapped, gay, Jewish, or Latino, she would have accepted me wholeheartedly. Having attended a multiculturally mixed high school, she was proud of her non-prejudicial attitude. But she couldn’t see past the stereotype of cheerleader and sorority girl.
Maybe she saw our differences as a challenge, but she took me under her wing, like the city mouse to the country mouse. As a native New Yorker, she had an attitude of superiority and was eager to teach me about the Best City in the World, the correct way to live, and the proper way to eat pizza. “Kristi, this is
real
pizza,” Jenny exclaimed leading me into a take-out pizza joint in Manhattan. “It’s got thin crust, not that thick crap you get in the Midwest.” She showed me how New Yorkers eat it on the run by folding it in half and nibbling from the tip up to the crust. That was the only genuine pizza and the only way to eat it. Practicing her principles, I professed that the pie was pretty tasty. Pretty tasty, indeed.
*******
While I missed living in Manhattan, because everything was so close and convenient, I loved being able to ride into town with Jenny. Every morning we would meet and walk past the Roy Rogers hamburger joint to the newsstand to pick up a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk and, every Wednesday, a copy of the newest
Backstage
. Then we’d continue the few blocks to the subway station to wait for the N or the R train into Manhattan, allowing approximately forty-five minutes for the ride into The City. We performed this routine about five days a week, because although The Works workshop was over, Mirmdance rehearsals were still in progress.
For the time being, we were rehearsing for free, with promise of rehearsal pay when the official funding came through. But one day, Miriam announced to me, “I want to make sure you can pay your rent, so I got you a job as a receptionist at Joy of Movement where I work.” She was trying her best to assure that I didn’t bail out of Mirmdance, due to lack of funds. Joy of Movement was a high-stress, highly trafficked fitness club in a building across from Tower Records near East 4th Street and Broadway. I desperately needed the cash and also got free dance and aerobics classes. Madonna and a couple of the Village People were members, so it seemed like the place to be.
The job was high profile and I found myself attracting dates, but not good ones. First there was the massive Puerto Rican body builder on staff who asked if I wanted to go out for sushi sometime. “I don’t know; I’ve never had it,” I said, trying to weasel my way out of a date without offending Mr. Muscles. Taking matters into his own hands, he brought me a huge sampler tray of about twenty different kinds of sushi. I actually liked some of it. We never did date, but I felt safer with him and his big biceps on my side.
Next there was the fast-talking lawyer from Long Island who, I swear under oath, addressed his mother as “Babe” when talking to her on the phone. He took me to drink kir royales at a trendy bar where giant tapestries hung from high ceilings and transvestites traipsed about. I can attest to the fact that I had never before sipped a kir royale, or witnessed a transvestite in person, or heard someone refer to his mother as “Babe.” To that disparaging designation, I duly objected. It was an eye-opening evening, but evidently he was too slick for me. Date adjourned.
Lastly, there was the self-absorbed soap opera star from
Loving
who couldn’t stop talking about himself and took me on the subway to get to our date. “Seriously? Slumming it on the subway? A soap opera star can’t afford a cab?” I couldn’t say I would have been heartbroken had his TV character gotten killed off the show in a freak accident that coincidentally snuffed out his previously unknown evil twin in the process. Perhaps it was best to postpone dating for the time being. Too much drama even for me.
I found little joy in working at Joy of Movement. The clientele were aggressive and demanding, even downright nasty, and I was terrified of taking the subway late at night by myself. I’d run down the dark, deserted street to the subway at Astor Place when I finished work at ten p.m., hoping no one was following me. At the subway, I didn’t feel much safer, as I was always one of only a couple people waiting to catch a train. There was nothing and no one to protect me if some villain viewed me as victim. I always glanced about nervously, scanning the deserted tunnel for lurking danger.
One day at work there was a skirmish between the Joy of Movement security guard and a man with a gun who was trying to get into the building. No doubt he was one of those insidious psycho-killers who plagued New York and scaled high rises surprising unsuspecting Midwesterners. That scare was enough to make me want to find another job ASAP.
Thankfully, Miriam’s funding finally came in: a whopping $5 an hour for rehearsal and $25 for each of our three performances. A strong hunch told me that the primary contributor was Miriam’s father. The IRS would officially classify me as living in poverty, but I could finally call myself a professional dancer! I was elated.
Even so, my $5 hourly rate was admittedly small potatoes, and Miriam wanted Jenny and me to stick with her through the shows. “I thought you two might need some extra cash, so I arranged an audition on Saturday for you with Celebration Magnifico. It’s a party entertainment company I choreograph for. Several of the other dancers already work for them. I’m sure you’ll get in, no problem,” Miriam declared. “You just have to dance at one party for free so they can check you out.” Miriam was the boss, and more money sounded good to both of us, so Jenny and I agreed to audition.
On Saturday, we made our way to the party location, a moderately nice banquet hall, where we’d be entertaining a large Jewish contingency at a bar mitzvah, my first ever. We found the back room where the other dancers were noisily chatting, putting on makeup, and searching through the myriad costumes strewn about the room. Jenny and I stood, wide-eyed and unsure, holding our bags filled with an assortment of dance accoutrements.
Celebration Magnifico was an interactive audience-participation group, which meant we’d have to coerce people to dance with us. It was owned by Bart and Danny, swanky, Jewish, forty-something brothers from Long Island (pronounced “Lon Guy Lind”). They started out with a mobile T-shirt-making cart for bar mitzvahs and added a few guys dressed in costumes such as a gorilla or Richard Nixon. Now they had this impressive party entertainment company and fancied themselves Broadway producers.
For our opening set, we dressed as train cars for
Starlight Express
, the famous Broadway roller-skating show. I was the dining car; my costume consisted of a silver table, complete with dishes and lamp, fastened around my waist over a red, black, and silver spandex bodysuit. “These costumes are pretty cool,” I remarked to Jenny, who didn’t appear quite as enthused about playing a choo-choo.
Once everyone was dressed, Bart assembled all the train cars for our grand entrance. “Listen up, people! I want everyone to chug in to the ballroom to the beat of the music. Adam, show them how we chug.” Adam (from Mirmdance) did a robotic train move. “Right! Exactly like that. Then form two lines. Watch Bobby, the D.J., for the signal, and then face each other and freeze in a pose while the bar mitzvah boy enters the room. Got it?”
He pointed at Jenny and me and continued, “You two, just follow whatever the other dancers are doing.” He seemed nervous about making sure everything was going to go right. I was nervous, too, and certainly didn’t want to be the cause of a train wreck.
We did as instructed and “Wow!” It was surprisingly dramatic, especially when the lights dimmed and a machine spit puffs of smoke in a field of flashing strobe lights. The crowd cheered as little Mr. Schwarzbein did a Rocky Balboa-esque victory lap between the trains, fists pumping in the air. The party started off in Grand Central Station style.
Oh, but that was just the beginning. With the help of the D.J., we fired up the crowd by teaching them simple moves to popular, high-energy songs such as “Shout,” “YMCA,” and “Money, Money.” We formed conga lines and party trains to “Locomotion,” led the limbo, and demonstrated the hand jive, the twist, and the electric slide. All activities were used strategically to keep people boogieing on the dance floor. Jenny and I never knew what was coming next, but we kept smiling and improvising until we caught on. When we weren’t leading the songs with preplanned moves, we were supposed to be dancing with the patrons. Basically, it was our job to be the life of the party. And if, God forbid, the party was dying, it was up to us to pick it up and nurse it back to health.
Celebration Magnifico kept the entertainment value high by offering five different dance sets per party, the themes for which were chosen by the party givers. Theme choices ranged from musicals or movies such as
Grease, Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express
and
A Chorus Line
to general categories like “The Fifties,” “Conga,” “New York, New York,” “American Band Stand,” “Fantasy,” “Hip-Hop,” or whatever one could imagine. For each set, we changed into different, elaborate costumes corresponding to the chosen theme and often performed a partially improvised/pseudo-choreographed dance number to begin the set. Between the dancing and the quick costume-changes, it was a frenzy of activity on and off the dance floor. Given that one of our themes that day was
Dirty Dancing
, the 1987 film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, a good portion of the afternoon found us dirty dancing (a G-rated version, anyway) with prepubescent thirteen-year-olds in yarmulkes (who kept pushing for the R-rated version).