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Soho: The Early Days
- Wesleyan University Press
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SOHO: THE EARLY DAYS "—men, men, men, who will come after them?" O S I P M A N D E L S T A M I miss living downtown. I could have bought a loft in 1977 for $27,000. A thousand a year for every year of my life. Unattainable sum. And the neighborhood was bare and barren except for fashion. Tree houses built atop platforms. The raft of future trust funds. Promise of gulls over green water in spring. I remember the week when the loft was offered because Phil Ochs had only just hanged himself and at the party a redhead named "Jo" beat her fist against the misty windows, thick and round as portholes, keening her lament over his death. It seemed as if every other woman in the room had just broken up with the guy who was giving the party. He was a grip; no, a gaffer; no, a sound man—and he kept yelling that anyone who rode the subway on a daily basis without earplugs was a fool. The loft was soundproof. Had I noticed? I kept losing myself amidst the foliage in this indoorsavannah, this jugular jungle, the macaws and parrots raucous in the rubbertrees. It was hot enough to grow orchids. "$27,000 seems like a lot, but it's nothing. I mean . . . you'll. . . (searching now for the right multiplicand) . . . quadruple your investment in no time." "That's a lot to figure in your head," I wish I'd had the wit to say. Instead I muttered something that led him to add: "You don't need it all up front." I don't mean to put him down. The woman who'd brought us to this place—who was rounding up the cash to finish a documentary on 121 women in prisons (and another "ex" of our host's)—briefed us in the elevator that he'd "done sound-work for ... de Palma and Scorcese." In those days I often went places with my lover and an unattached female friend who went in the hope of "meeting someone" and—let's face it—having a good time and being in our good company was just pretext, convenience; more or less. It was the dawn of a newage in which there weremore available women than therewere men alone. . . Where are the men? A chant would go up. The role of chaperone is one I determinedly shed. Though I did draw pleasurefrom the well of listening to my lover and the other woman evaluate all the relevant males later when we three repaired to more intimate surroundings (northwest of Washington 122 [100.26.35.111] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:06 GMT) Square) to release the eerie strangeness of having been too long among so many strangers, of having imbibed not enough liquor and too much of their anger sadness thwarted ambition and panic as they steadied themselves against the age they were about to become closing in like the narrowing walls of this loft in the winter fog. Why the redhead?. My mother's mother had red hair. The impossible copper of Courbet's "Jo." ("Like everything Venetian one had dreamed of," wrote Whistler, who'd had her before.) Tousled, long and loose, she combed it without end before the mirror. She never cut it. I try not to think about what my mother's life might have been like had her mother lived. The grandmother you never knew. A Jew and a Christian scientist she managed to inhabitthe worst 123 of both worlds; told her daughter not to call a doctor until the poison from her leaking appendix had done its work. Watching her turn green as a Venetian lagoon would not have been fun. Maybe that's why the loft party scared you. 124 ...