Strangers of consequence

When I moved to NYC in 1984 I didn't know a single person. Island Records moved me here from L.A. where I worked for years as the sole record company employee out of the Island publishing offices. Island Records was NY-, London- and Jamaica-centric and my job was to do anything and everything creative for the label, using the west coast. I might as well have been halfway across the globe. No one from Island came to L.A.

The L.A. music scene was my life in my early 20s. My first job, at 16, was secretary in the music department at the William Morris Agency, which I landed with a fake driver's license and a stolen typing test. Next I worked for the manager of Kenny Loggins and other soft rock bands, out of his Beverly Hills home, poolside, making his roster of talent more hip. After that it was IRS Records, a new label at that time, where the oldest employee was still under 30. Island hired me away from IRS after the Go-Gos went gold.

It was not until I moved to NYC that I realized the depth of my L.A. roots. I knew many different people in L.A.; not just through business, which is often the case in a car-culture city. Cars isolate people and chance meetings are not as likely. I had many acquaintances; people who I didn't know to, say, go to their home for dinner, but who were a familiar part of my life. When someone interested me I made it a point to talk to them. I even met a boyfriend that way, stopped at a traffic light: Handsome, muscular, tan Joe with the nice teeth -- on his Harley Davidson next to me in my convertible Alfa Romeo. I asked him if he wanted to go to a concert that night. We lasted about a year.

My arrangement with Island Records was that I only worked the music I liked. And when I liked a song or an artist, I had the confidence of youth to believe I could make anyone like them too. From my white stucco office in the pink Spanish-style building on Sunset Blvd., I worked the phones calling djs, music writers, promoters. With a satchel full of records, I went to radio stations, bars, discos, and record stores. I was connected to many people by music. So when I moved to NYC, I was full of big ideas and ready to share them.

But I didn't understand New Yorkers. From the first day at Island NY, I was the west coast outsider to the NYC insiders. When I materialized in the office, all smiles, and cheery "Hi"s, and a carefully chosen outfit, there was no "social" room for me, or as it turned out, any room at all -- I was stationed in the corner of a conference room without a desk. Island did not move me into an apartment either, but into the living room of a neurotic woman from another record label. This was Island Records "irie, mon" logic. Everything was cool.

New Yorkers have a no-bullshit policy with strangers. You have 10-seconds to open with a vapid comment and then you better move on to something substantial. For example, the first week I was in NYC I was waiting for a subway train next to a handsome woman in a nicely tailored business suit. A sax player was across the platform. I wanted to hear the woman speak, get a glimpse of her face, so I commented that the sax player was good. She looked at me, silently, waiting for me to actually say something useful. That also happened to me in Munich when I was a 17 year-old wandering through Europe in old dresses and cowboy boots and I asked a man in a business suit getting into a black car with US plates in front of an embassy, if he was from the United States. What a dumb thing to say. But I wanted to talk to someone. He gave me that same look as the woman on the subway platform.

I like to think that I am an adventurer and moving to a city filled with strangers day in and out is exciting. New beginnings! The world is my oyster! But what's missing from that new experience is the familiarity of "consequential strangers," as my friend Melinda Blau called her book, based on the everyday people who make a difference. Everyone is someone you don't know in a new city. The second time you go to a store you might recognize the cashier, but chances are she does not yet recognize you. At first the newness is novel; then people start to look like people you actually know, only those people are 3,000 miles away. Then the loneliness sets in. Connecting with other humans is a basic need.

It took me about two years to become a New Yorker. From 1984 to 1986 a lot happened. I left Island Records, put all my things in storage, and moved to London for three months with the plan that I would open an L.A. office for Jive Records. That fell through when they landed an L.A. distribution deal. I had a choice to go back to L.A. or NYC. I chose NYC. I came back with no work, no prospects, but a lot of excitement. Right before I left I met a guy -- a sweet, shy, possibly gay, Long Island Italian with an unfortunate jealous streak, but I went apartment hunting with him anyway. My idea was to choose an area and go from store to store asking about apartments for rent. It worked in Little Italy and for about 6 months I lived with him as a "married Italian couple" in a lovely little apartment overlooking the ancient cemetery at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott St. That ended -- badly -- around the time my short-term job in a caterer service did and I got a job teaching aerobics classes at a personal fitness studio opened by a Yugoslavian, when there still was a Yugoslavia, and I met Russell who I married the following year.

By 1986, I knew my neigborhood. I had friends. I knew consequential strangers. I greeted the vendors on Broadway and Houston where I now lived in Russell's loft. I was in love. I made a profession out of whole cloth. And all these things will happen again, especially now that I've already been a New Yorker.