by David Hajdu
I bought a ticket over the phone. It was open to the public, wasn’t it? Don’t answer that, if you’re just going to ask me another goddamn question.
Try to follow me. Okay—I was basically pissed off at the world. I was pissed at myself for missing that other concert at Juilliard that we talked about. I was pissed at my shit-for-brains father—shit for brains and shittier shit for balls, that guy—for the way he took my car away from me. I was pissed at my own self for not using my own brains, which are not made of shit, if you don’t know, and I should have figured out a way to get to New York anyway. I knew Adry would be hurt and mad at me for not being there, and I was mad about that. I was mad in a whole lot of ways, and the more I thought about it all, the madder I got.
But I missed her. You know . . . I missed her. So I wrote her a letter, to the address of the building I moved her into when she started at Juilliard, and the letter came back as undeliverable. So I wrote her again, care of the school, but I never heard back. Eventually, after Adry and I reconnected and talked about things, we put two and two together and realized they added up to the name Zervakis. We figured he must’ve been intercepting the letters and keeping them from her. But I didn’t know that when it was happening. I was writing to her and not hearing back, that’s what I knew. Adry said she wrote to me, too, and Zervakis was taking her mail and telling her he was bringing it to the post office and chucking it or rolling cigars with it and smoking it or whatever the fuck he did for the sicko pleasure he got from taking advantage of Adry.
After a while, I presumed she must have gotten all caught up in her new life in New York and forgot about me. It was a hard time, but I kept myself occupied. I got a new job—an actual job, after [having been employed at] Denny’s, working for some builders in the county called Kev-Rew Construction. It was named for the owners, Kevin and Andrew. I called both the guys “Kev-Rew,” to annoy them, and they would just stare at me, because they didn’t know what to make of a girl like me, and I learned a lot about carpentry from them. I was doing pretty nicely, got my own car, a used ’79 Chevy Chevette, in green and rust—not rust the color, rust the condition of the shitty Chevy tin-foil body. There was an article about Adry from one of the New York papers picked up in the Harrisburg Patriot-News. My mom showed it to me. I read that and saw about the concert coming up in the city, and I said to myself, Well, fuckety-fuck . . . I’m going.
Biran Zervakis:
As my attorneys have spelled out in their correspondence to you, which I presume you have shared with your own attorneys—you do have attorneys, I presume . . . If you don’t, I highly recommend you retain one before you attempt to have your book published, if you’re at all serious about quoting me. No author or writer with any credibility could ever write about my Adry without quoting me. That goes without saying. In other words, there’s no need for me to even say it. Accordingly, as I’ve explained, I hope you’ve retained a lawyer, if you’re financially equipped to do that. If you’re not, I understand. An oral historian must make very little money.
To recap, as my attorneys have laid out plainly, there are certain subjects I have been advised against discussing for publication. Barbara Lucher is foremost among them. I can safely say this: Barbara Lucher stole my Adry from me. I mean that not in any business sense. Matters of that nature, I can’t and shan’t discuss.
[Zervakis is prompted to elaborate on the matters not pertaining to business.]
She literally stole her, just as literally as anyone has ever stolen anything that ever belonged to anyone else. Let’s leave it at that. There’s no need to say any more. The woman drove me out of my own home! The very first time I ever met her, which by mercy should have been the last, I came home to the apartment my Adry and I both called home—the property on East 3rd Street made famous internationally from the exquisite depiction of it on the cover of the first album I produced for Adry—and the two of them were already there, in our home, alone.
[Zervakis is asked if he is referring to the night of the Merkin Hall concert.]
Yes, of course. There’s no need to rub it in. I entered the apartment, exactly as I always did every time I walked in, and Adry and that woman were sitting at the kitchen table drinking wine and talking. Adry must have known I was weary from the stress of the evening. She suggested I get some rest in my room. Lucher, without so much as a proper greeting, chimed in, “Listen to the girl now. Go to your room!”
I was exhausted and decided on my own accord—take note, decided on my own accord—to retire alone. I closed the door to my room and went to bed, but I was barely able to get a moment’s rest all night. I could hear the two of them at the kitchen table, talking and laughing, talking and laughing . . . After hours on end of this, they finally stopped, and I heard the door to Adry’s room close. I went out to get a drink of water and couldn’t help but notice that Lucher’s handbag was still on the table, with her wallet and an oval-shaped hairbrush and a few odds and ends in it, and I heard a variety of sounds coming from Adry’s room. For the sake of discretion, I won’t go into detail. You’ll have to imagine for yourself what it’s like to hear two young women having sex for hours. I couldn’t sleep with that going on, not even after I went back to bed.
In the morning, when I came out of my room, the two of them were back at the kitchen table, talking and laughing again. It was revolting. Adry introduced us, but made an odd slip and referred to me as “Brian.” Lucher looked over at me and said, “Brian—what will you be making us for breakfast?” I was furious. The audacity of calling me “Brian”! Did she think she was my mother? My mother never had sex with Adry. I stormed out the door and didn’t come back till late that night. Adry moved out of the apartment that day, while I was gone, but I’m under advisement not to discuss that.
Ann Athema:
You remember, I first met Geffel at the Neurological Institute? We were the closest of friends from that point on. I still think of her as my closest friend—even now, when I can’t call her or go for walks around the Lower East Side with her. Geffel is still the sublimest, to me. Even so, I feel like I didn’t quite know her until I saw her with Barb Lucher. I think Geffel was truly at her happiest when she was with Barb. She was always sublime. But sublimity and happiness aren’t the same.
I didn’t realize who Barb was when I first saw her, yelling out from her seat at Merkin Hall, and I didn’t know how important she was to Geffel until the day after, when Geffel called me. She even sounded different on the phone. She was talking, but almost singing. She said she wanted me to meet her and Barb at Dimicci’s. It was early in the day, and Jeffy was over. Geffel said to bring him along, and we all squeezed around one of the tiny round tables the size of a dinner plate at Dimicci’s. I got biscotti. Barb picked it up off my napkin, turned it all around and examined it, and said, “Does this look like a dick? I can’t tell—I haven’t seen a lot of dicks.” Adry started laughing that funny laugh of hers, and we all cracked up, and Adry picked up the biscotti and put it in Barb’s mouth.
We stayed at Dimicci’s for hours, talking and drinking espresso and cappuccino and fellating biscotti. By the time we left, we had hatched a plan together for Adry to move out of the apartment on 3rd Street. We had it all figured out. It was like playing a party game with New York real estate, which, I’ve heard, some people uptown do for a living. We all went to 3rd Street and packed Adry up, and she and Barb went to my place on Ludlow Street to stay for a while. I went with Jeffy to his apartment on Ninth Avenue. This was temporary, to give Barb time to move her things in from Pennsylvania. At the end of the month, which was two or three weeks away, Adry and Barb would take over Jeffy’s place, and Jeffy would move in with me. It didn’t quite sink in to any of us that we had just made a set of major decisions about our relationship statuses—or stati, if that’s a word. I hope it’s not.
Jeffrey Knudsen:
Adry and Barb took over my apartment, and I moved in with Ann. I was happy to get out of there. It was on 17th and Ninth, a
little bit north of the Meatpacking District. My uncle got it for me. He was connected to the butcher’s union. The apartment belonged to a guy who was part of the union, and he died or something, and my uncle set me up with the place. It was not what you’d call a luxury apartment. It was more what you’d call a dump, but it was rent-controlled, and it was cheap. I just had to pay the rent by money order, because the lease was in the dead guy’s name. I had to sign his name. His name was Carmine Trembler, and I had to sign his name the way he’d sign it, which I just guessed. I practiced up a signature, so the handwriting didn’t look like mine. I can still do the signature, actually, if you want to see.
It smelled like meat all day and night. As dumps go, this one was disgusting.
The businesses around there were things like auto-body shops and different industry-supply stores, plate-glass companies, and a liquor store on every block for the workers at break time. There was an elevated railroad that was originally for moving cargo that would come from the piers directly into the factories and businesses that were around there. The elevated track was still standing, but it hadn’t been used in years. It was totally abandoned—rusty, all beat up. So at night there were a lot of hookers working in the shadows under the elevated tracks, and horny men from the [Holland and Lincoln] tunnels driving over to avail themselves of the hookers. It was a totally industrial area—car parts sales and service and that kind of thing in the daytime, and the sex business at night. There wasn’t a person with an artistic temperament in sight, other than the drag queens turning tricks.
It wasn’t a great area, but Adry and Barb were fine with it. Barb was a really good carpenter and damn near gutted the place and rebuilt it. Ann and I went back a couple of months after Barb got her hands on it, and we couldn’t believe it was the same place. She built a loft bed and a closet, and in the main room, by the kitchen area, she made an island for cooking. It was really nice and homey. You were in there, and the meat smell from outside was suddenly alright—it felt like somebody was making dinner.
Ray Octavio (superintendent, 112–126 Ninth Avenue, retired):
Thank you for the opportunity to talk to me. My wife said you wrote a very nice letter. She remembers the ladies in the letter. I also remember these ladies. The short-haired one of them, I know better. There was nothing wrong with her—nothing wrong with both these ladies. I can vouch for them. The short-haired one did some work for me in the building sometimes. She was a good lady carpenter.
I was the super for those buildings for thirty-two years. Now I am disabled. This is legal by the State of New York. My wife did all the papers just like they make you do it.
[Octavio is prompted to describe his interactions with Geffel and Lucher.]
When they moved in, I don’t remember. What I saw was the short-haired lady carrying big piles of lumber into the building. I had to know what she was doing. It was my responsibility. She told me she was making a fancy bed in her apartment, and she showed me the plans—professional plans, like a professional job, she did by herself. I could tell from my experience in this work that the lady knew what she was doing. I let her do her work. I didn’t bother her. I looked at the job when it was over, and it was very professional. I told her, “Do you want to do some work in this building?” and she said, “Yes, Mr. Octavio, I would very much like to work for you,” and I gave her jobs to do and gave her a little something from the money I was paid.
Barb Lucher:
Jeffy’s place was a shithole in a big shitty shit-ass of an area. But man, fuck, it was a bargain. All we had to do was pretend to be Jeffy pretending to be some man named Carmine Trembler, and sign his name once a month, and we were sitting pretty fuckin’ pretty. I have to tell you, we were sitting in a truly pretty place when I got done with it. I built a loft bed, so there would be room underneath to put a piano for Adry. I got the idea from the abandoned elevated railroad outside, and copied the design of that. The railroad structure was just going to waste, so I put it to use as my design. Somebody may as well use it for something. Then I called a piano mover and had the piano in the 3rd Street apartment trucked across town, and I had the bill sent to Zervakis. He flipped his little hair-gelled wig. I told him to deduct the cost from the money he still owed me for my share of the payout from Sony for their stealing the idea of the Walkman from me.
We made a beautiful little life. Neither one of us could cook a damn thing, but we figured out enough to get by and sometimes actually by accident made something good. I liked to chop stuff—it’s almost like hammering—so I did that, and Adry fried it up. Adry—no surprise—liked to experiment with weird combinations of ingredients. There was a grimy old bodega a block and a half from us, the closest thing to a grocery store in the area. They carried shit like Pop Tarts, canned red beans, pineapple soda, and plantain chips, all with expiration dates in the 1970s. That was their whole stock in its entirety. One time, Adry got the inspiration to make a dinner out of that—Pop Tarts with red beans, garnished with plantain chips and served with a can of pineapple soda. She was better at music.
Adry, you know, was a big reader. I told you that, from high school. We liked to walk around the Village, and we saw a crowd of women gathered in front of a bookstore on Waverly Place. A writer died, and someone was standing on the sidewalk reading from one of her books. [Editor’s note: Feminist author Djuna Barnes died in Greenwich Village on June 18, 1983. On the first anniversary of her death, a reading in her honor was held at the bookstore Three Lives and Company, which had previously gone by the name Djuna Books, in tribute to Barnes.]
Adry went back to the store a lot after that and loved it there. I’d drop her off, go run some errands, and come back hours later, and she’d be sitting there, reading and humming a happy tune or wrapped up in conversation with one of the women there. It was a big lesbian hangout. But so was the hardware store where I got supplies, Garber Hardware. Half the fucking Village was a lesbian hangout. The other half was for the gay boys. It was very different from the area where we actually lived, on 17th Street—nobody was there, straight or gay or undetermined. But we liked it, because it was quiet, and it was all ours.
We were happy together. I got pretty busy with carpentry work. I had business cards printed up with my own logo, Barb the Builder, and Adry dove into her music with a whole new kind of enthusiasm. The apartment was a big-ass project for me. I could handle the carpentry, but I wasn’t a plumber, and the toilet had a hairline crack and seeped toilet water onto the floor every time you flushed. Good thing Adry knew a guy in music who did plumbing, Philip Glass. He came over and replaced the toilet for us, and when he saw the carpentry I had done in the place, he was so impressed he hooked me up with a New York contractor he used to work for, and they gave me a lot of work. I heard that he got a kickback for the referral, but that’s totally legit, and I don’t want to disparage Philip Glass for that. He was a good guy and a damn good plumber.
I needed a place to do my carpentry, where I wouldn’t get sawdust all over the apartment. I got the super, Ray, to give me a key to the roof, so I could work up there. I set up a workshop on the roof. I’d work up there while Adry played piano or read books at home.
One night in the summer, the first year we were there, Adry and I were in the apartment, and I said, “Come with me—I want to show you something.” I brought her up the service stairway to the roof and unlocked the door. During the day, I had framed out a platform bed with some lumber, and snuck up some bedding and pillows. Adry plopped right down on the bed, and said, “It’s nice to know a gal who’s good with tools.”
I locked the service door behind us, and Adry and I laid there together on our backs. We looked up at the sky and saw a couple of stars poking through the mucky New York haze, and listened to the sounds of the West Side Highway traffic in the distance.
The sun came up, and I was awoken by the sound of a morning bird chirping a happy tune. I looked around to see where the bird was, and I realized it was Adry. Fast asleep, she was m
aking the prettiest sounds I’ve ever heard.
Jon Geldman:
You can read all about that strange period in Adrianne Geffel’s career in my book, Geldman on Geffel, when it’s published. [Editor’s note: In correspondence following this interview, Geldman requested that any reference to the prospective title Geldman on Geffel be accompanied by a clarification that Geldman’s book in progress might be published under the title Geffel by Geldman.] The book will include my review of the Merkin Hall concert, which was not published in the SoHo News when I wrote it. The book will be the first time the review will be available to the reading public. It should be a big selling point for the book.
The decision not to print the review at the time of the concert was certainly not mine. It was the editor’s call, and I thought it was misguided. She wanted me to add text to the review, even though I had written it to the assigned word count of eight hundred words. She asked me to cut part of what I written and add a whole new paragraph describing the second half of the show. I had no intention of doing that, because I considered myself committed to Adrianne Geffel and had no interest in publishing something negative about her. I only wrote negatively about her when I absolutely had to—I had no choice, in the shows after Merkin. It pained me dearly to be the one to criticize Geffel so strongly, but it had to be done, and I knew other critics would be doing it. I didn’t want to look like a follower.
I could tell something was wrong with Geffel when she came back onstage after the intermission at Merkin, but I thought it might be temporary—I hoped it would be—until I saw her at The Kitchen several weeks later. That’s when she went all the way off the cliff, musically speaking. That was such a disaster that I had to write about that. So I did, and the piece was published right away in the SoHo News—on the front cover, as everybody knows, under the famous headline, “Sweet Smells Despoil The Kitchen.”