Looking at the boot-tucked straight jeans, long sweaters, dolman sleeves, platform shoes, and disco ball I recently saw in a store, I knew the saleswoman, who looked 25, had no idea what the store looked like. lifetime. here in New York City in the late 70’s and 80’s. A young taxi driver treated me like royalty because I told him that he had seen “Queen” in concert and I couldn’t bring myself to recite everyone the rock concerts he’d been to, or tell her that afterward, he’d spent every Friday night dancing in the clubs: Studio 54, Xenon, Ice Palace. I have happy memories of my girlfriend and I getting ready and getting ready for Friday night, THE night, OUR night. It took days to figure out what we would wear, find the perfect belt, shoes, or figure out what we were doing with our hair; we bought Paul Mitchell “SCHPRITZ” (which was actually glue in a plastic pump bottle) by the gallon, so we could go dancing.
When I walk up to the stair climber in the gym, my iPod is my teacher and Donna Summer’s “Enough is Enough” is styleEnough to get the blood pumping through me… If you see me up there, swaying and spinning with movements that would challenge the balance of the average person (my age)… I promise I won’t fall. I can dance, step and read at the same time.
In the early ’80s, I was an aerobics lackey, and I’m not a runner. I’m more of a pile driver when I run… I even tried pole dancing, but I was like Lucille Ball on pot when I got close. I reached the pole gracefully, climbed on it and quickly fell, hurting my arm and leg on the way down. I am, to say the least, bored with loop walking, so the treadmill is not for me. Forget turning anywhere…it can’t be done. But when I’m “stepping” that low center of gravity is very helpful. Some mornings you can find me at the gym, quite early, spinning on the treadmill, reading glasses dangling from my nose, and a day’s worth of email, business documents, and other stuff to dump piled on the floor next to me. Throwing the papers from my haughty mount I make piles of musts and disposables. Along with everything that floods my morning mind, it never occurs to me that I care what anyone who sees this routine might think. From time to time I let out the sounds of song pieces and elicited a few “SHUT UP” from my fellow exercisers. But I don’t care. I’m not ashamed.
Every now and then I look in the mirror and think it’s really pathetic or funny or maybe both, as I wait for my butt to defy gravity for another year and notice that my arms still look pretty good to me. considering that I am a Jewish woman of a certain age. I can’t afford to do what Demi Moore did: I’m stuck on my elbows and knees for life.
The only images I have of myself dancing as a child come from my father’s 8mm film footage. There I was in ballet class, the whole class moving to the right and me moving to the left, with my finger up my nose. My sister became a dancer and I took piano lessons, guitar lessons, art lessons, anything that kept me from dancing. There was a reason for that. Recently, at my company Christmas party, as soon as the young disco tunes, and I want to say very young dance partner whispered “I don’t know how to dance like that” (Even though I did…) and I whispered back, “I’m prom queen, I won’t let you down…” Nine dances later, we were called John (Travolta) and Olivia (Newton John –) there’s something to be said for that, considering I was absolutely born in a year that I could have been my partner’s mother. All the women I worked with thought she needed a young guy, so I fulfilled her fantasy.
In 1977 I came to New York to attend New York University. It was a time that she has never left me. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 gave license to a generation of dreamers and schemers to do our thing… The anger and the fighting were over… The clothes, the makeup, the hair, the music, the drugs, The promiscuity before AIDS, the Jane Fonda videos, all lent a certain appeal and importance to the new freedom of the time. Dancing sanctified him… When I came to New York I was really a hybrid, part Jewish American princess wannabe, part activist, part hippie/bohemian artist, writer. It was here, through my love of clothes and makeup and my love of dancing that my true identity was born. I’ve been to Bond’s, The Underground, The Limelight, Max’ Kansas City, and of course Studio and Xenon. If I’m totally cool, I am. totally great for that. (Okay, maybe not all that great) This information certainly makes me old by many people’s standards. And yes, Rent and Chorus Line were my favorite works.
Those clubs created a platform for Madonna, Cher, Donna Summer and a new kind of socializing that no matter where you went, it was all about how sexy you could look, and how many drugs you could do, and at least get home. for the following afternoon… The man in the white suit was “the man…” no strings attached, lots of chests, chains and even tattoos. Unlike today’s techno, we had moves and moves were everything. My girlfriend and I practiced the best moves on each other, and our weekend attire: gold lamé, leopard skin, sequined bandeau tops, wide belts, tight halterneck jumpsuits, and lots of white and wispy glitter that it shone under the lights.
The gate guarding policies of the time added that last element of excitement: being turned away at the gate would be the total failure of a week’s worth of work. Better to be a pretty and well-dressed model. Disco clothing was NEVER EVER acceptable for the day, but for the night it was the only possible way to be part of the action, and the more cheerful, crazy, busty and shiny, the better. A man’s white satin jacket and medallion resting on a leathery chest with an open-necked shirt and the collar turned up, now vile and de rigueur, was considered hot.
In those days, “Starbuck” was still just a figment of Charles Dickens’s imagination, an ATM was probably a sex toy, the concept of the “internet” probably lived in the bowels of some underground government cavern. An “i-pod” would have been the definition of something botanical, “Twitter” would certainly be something describing post-orgasm movements, “Facebook” would have been a magazine, and research was still being done in a library. (I had to learn the Dewey Decimal System-WHAT?) If we wanted to “connect” we had to call our friends on a landline and even wait until the phone wasn’t “busy.” Payphones were actually a great convenience and not the obsolete relics they are today.
Barnes and Noble had a store in Greenwich Village. Crazy Eddie on Greenwich Avenue. It was the best place to buy a TV in New York City. And the idea of a big box store like Circuit City, or Best Buy or Comp USA (two of which have now failed) were all mall conveniences; if you had asked any of us, we would have bet money that you would never have seen one of those in New York City. The subways were dirty and slow, their windows smashed, the walls covered in graffiti and filled with the stench of homeless people (come to think of it, where did all those homeless people go?)
For those of us who grew up loving the Monkees and Mike Connor at Mannix and thought Isaac Hayes had the sexiest voice on the planet, we cut our long, layered hair and blew it into neatly pulled coifs with that perfect twist back to give it the look. by Farah Fawcett. Charlie’s Angels was hot, Brooke Sheilds made her beautiful entrance as nothing came between her and her “Calvins” of hers. Cher was still the “slickest” thing (when was the last time you heard that word?) with her Bob Macky dresses, Washington Square Park (where she lived) was the center of the drug world and the entire world until where I was worried. Soho was cool and where the artists hung out and where we went browsing the shops and eating at the fancy restaurants.
Sam Shepard was the new cutting-edge young playwright. Stephen Sondheim was doing his thing… Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall and Sophie’s Choice were all up for Oscars and a young actress named Meryl Streep was being discovered. We didn’t have seven screens in a home, we had one, and even if our TVs were big and bulky and black and white, we all knew where we were when President Kennedy was shot… and we all made sure we had a TV the day he MTV was launched. The first cable systems were transmitted through large antennas: there were no satellites or satellite radio. A walkie talkie was the closest thing to a cell phone any of us would own and they were reserved for skiers or children. If someone had been sitting next to me in a bar in the mid-seventies and had described my life connected to a Blackberry, I would have asked what drugs were in his drink, how could a piece of fruit have given me instant connectivity on every aspect of life. my life? When I graduated from college, Jennifer Beals was the hottest woman on the planet in Flashdance, in those cut-off shoulder sweatshirts and her leg warmers…and then, she was a grown-up lesbian in the L-word…go figure.. . types …
I remember my first Sushi date, and my friend talking to me while trying the Wasabi, a trip that would change my life…
Blondie was the hot entry into the punk scene with Max’s Kansas City waitress Debra Harry considered one of the sexiest women on the music scene. Debra Harry is now 64 years old. Betsy Johnson is 68 and all about mainstream and Patricia Feld dressed the girls in Sex in The City.
Even if I was drinking and doing drugs and having sex… I came to work every day and still have a decent work ethic. I can still see how Jane Fonda’s burnout contributed to my greater good, like she did in those classic exercise videos. And so, when Dancing Queen here, gets on those machines, the disco ball could have crashed long ago, but I know, even though I obsess and fantasize about all the body changes that could make any plastic surgeon rich. , my generation is the richest, the healthiest, and the most capable of changing the world… we donated over $100 billion to charity last year, and that even with all the “threatening” and provoking things anxiety in the world, I am Apart from all the good. I have NO complaints, and although I look ridiculous in the gym, I love my i-pod, I love life and my neighbors who can see me through their windows will tell you: I’m still dancing.