by Goldie Hawn
“Pick a table,” he says, waving a hand expansively.
“A table?”
Looking around, I try to find one that is less rickety or at least less filthy than the others. Using a chair to get up, I place my leg on a few to test their sturdiness. Several fail the test, and I move on until I find a square, three-legged table that will just about take my weight.
“That’s Amore” finishes playing and is followed by “Volare.” Then “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” comes on. It seems to be on a loop. Great, the only man in the bar who can be bothered to put a quarter in the jukebox is a Dean Martin freak. Perfect. How in the world am I supposed to dance to this? I improvise as best I can. Thirty bucks is thirty bucks, after all. Whenever I take a break, someone yells from the bar, “Hey, put another quarter in and make her dance!”
At last, a regular guy walks in wearing a suit. Relief floods me. I smile across at him and he smiles back. Once he has a beer, he turns around and really stares at me. Being the consummate performer, I really do my stuff for him, despite the appalling soundtrack.
The guy takes a seat at one of the tables and looks up at me with sympathetic eyes. I glance back at him and half smile. I twirl around and do a little move, but when I turn again he has pulled out his penis and is jerking off right in front of me.
Letting out a small cry, my knees buckle from under me. I collapse to the tabletop. This is about all my body and spirit can take. I sit there staring at him incredulously. You too? I want to scream. I can’t take any more. Nobody else notices or even cares.
Seeing my reaction, the man quickly puts himself away and scurries out like a weasel. I remain slumped on the table, quivering miserably. Beyond tears, I crawl off, every ounce of air knocked out of me. Grabbing a towel and draping it over my shoulders, I stagger to the bar. Where’s Herman? He should be here by now.
“What time is it?” I ask the bartender.
Looking at her watch, she replies, “Almost one.”
“One? But I’m waiting for my go-go agent. Oh, shoot! I guess he’s not coming. Okay, so now I guess I need to get home. Where’s my money?”
“I dunno.” She swigs from a beer bottle.
“Well, where’s the owner?”
“He passed out hours ago.”
“But I haven’t been paid!”
She shrugs her shoulders.
I sigh. “Just tell me when the next Greyhound bus is so I can go home.”
The woman laughs in my face—a big, wide-open laugh. “There’s no Greyhound bus at this time of night, honey.”
“No bus? But how will I get home?”
“Take your pick,” she says, waving her arm at the handful of truck drivers left in the bar. “Or,” she says, leaning over the bar conspiratorially, “if you want to go party, I could close this joint and you could come home with me.”
My heart can’t sink any lower. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes, I think, recoiling physically. “No thanks,” I say. “I’ll take my chances with this lot. I just want to go home.”
Too afraid to think what might happen to me if I don’t get a ride, I walk slowly around the bar, starting my search. Sizing up the unsavory characters propping up the bar, I spot a few who look slightly less like rapists than the others.
“Could you please take me home?” I ask them. “I need to get back to Fifty-second and Eighth Avenue.”
Most of them shake their heads, but two drivers, who share the driving, agree. “We’ll finish our beer,” they grunt, “and then we’ll give you a ride.”
My heart in my mouth, I pick my way to the restroom and change back into my ordinary clothes, no longer caring how filthy the place is. Sitting back down at the table I was dancing on, my head in my hands, I wait for a signal, half afraid they might change their minds.
“I hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Goldie Jeanne,” I whisper to myself.
In no time at all, these two big men nod at me and I follow them outside. My blood is pumping so hard around my veins it is making me breathless. Looking around the parking lot, there is one vehicle that dominates it, an eighteen-wheeler Mack truck that is bigger than the Peppermint Box.
“Is that it?” I ask, my mouth open.
“Jump on in.”
Before I know it, I’m sitting high up in its enormous cab, bouncing back to Manhattan between these two big men in complete silence. As our giant truck trundles along the highway, we cross the bridge to Manhattan and see New York in all its glory, lit like a stage set. It is the same skyline I entered not so long ago, full of all my hopes and dreams. Now it fills me with a strange sense of foreboding and fear.
You know, Goldie, maybe it’s time to chuck in the towel, I tell myself. Go back home. Open a dance school. Get married and be happy. There is no future for you here.
The following morning, a chilly day in November, I am picking up my go-go outfit at the dry cleaner’s. As usual, I am chatting away with Eddie, who runs it, Maria from across the street and to a couple of unknown customers. I guess Mom was right—I’ve never known a stranger.
Waving good-bye to Eddie and backing my way out of the store, I literally run into two people walking by on the sidewalk. I drop my bag, and, after I pick it up, I come face-to-face with two adorable-looking young men.
“Oh, excuse me, I’m sorry,” I say.
“That’s okay,” they reply with a smile, looking me up and down. “What you got in the bag?”
“Oh, some yogurt and my cleaning.”
“Well, can we help you carry it?”
“Oh, no thank you. I just live across the street. Right over there. I live on the third floor right up there on 888 Eighth Avenue,” I say proudly. “It’s a brand-new building. That’s my bedroom window.”
“Cool.”
“So, where are you boys from?” I blush, chattering on.
“Poughkeepsie.”
“How long are you staying in town?”
“Not long. We’re on a road trip. You know, like Jack Kerouac in On the Road. We’re starting here and ending up on the West Coast, to find those California girls.”
“Very cool.”
“Anyway, nice to meet you,” they say, smiling and moving on.
I say good-bye and cross the street. Halfway across, I turn. “By the way,” I yell, “my name is Goldie. Oh, and don’t forget to go up the Empire State Building while you’re here. It’s much better at night.”
“Great. Thanks, Goldie. Bye.”
Talking to my mother on the telephone later that night, I am in my kitchen making a piece of toast. “I dunno, Mom,” I say, pulling a plate from the cupboard as I rest the telephone in the crook of my neck, “maybe I should just come home. I mean, New York is great and everything, and I love my new apartment, but I think maybe it’s time to come home.”
Watching the toaster to make sure it doesn’t burn the bread, all of a sudden the lights go out and the line goes dead. The toaster glows red but then fades. “Mom? Mom? Mom? Are you there? What happened?”
It is pitch-black. Putting down the telephone, I peer out the window and gasp when I see not a single light in any of the windows across the street. Only the car headlights illuminate the street. Feeling my way to the cupboard under the sink, I retrieve a flashlight and wander through my apartment and into the hallway. All my neighbors are standing around.
“What happened? Why did all the lights go out?”
“We dunno. Do you have lights?”
“No. Is there a fire? Did something happen?”
“Looks like the whole block’s out. I can’t see a light on anywhere.”
“Oh my God, the elevator! Is someone stuck in there? I can hear shouting.”
I run downstairs to the lobby and find Ernie the doorman lighting a candle.
“Ernie, what happened?”
“Looks like a blackout. The whole of New York is out. It’s inky out there.”
“I think someone’s stuck in the elevator,” I tell him.
“I know. I just called the fire department.”
I walk out into the street and look around in wonder. I have never been in a blackout before. Looking up, I realize that the Empire State Building is in darkness, something I have never seen before.
Wandering back into the lobby, I see Ernie has been joined by others from our building. They are listening to a transistor radio. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“It’s a massive blackout, honey,” a woman tells me. “It’s affected the whole northeast coast, right up into Canada. They reckon there are thirty million people in the dark.”
“Oh no! Do you mean there are people trapped in buildings?”
“Yes, honey, right up in the Empire State Building.”
“Oh my God!” I cry, my hand to my mouth. “I told two strangers to go up there tonight.”
“And on the subway,” Ernie pipes in, his ear to the radio.
“None of the stoplights are working, so the traffic’s at a standstill,” a man I don’t know tells me.
I go out into the street again, craning my neck to look up at all the buildings shrouded in darkness. Everyone seems so calm. The people who live in my building are all talking to each other for the first time. Jilly’s is crammed with strangers sitting around candles, talking and sharing and connecting. Nobody can get home, so they have just stopped where they are. It feels like we are on the safest island in the world, and all of man’s foibles, all our anxieties, aggressions and fears, have melted away for one night
“Isn’t this awesome?” I tell Eddie, the dry cleaner.
“Sure is, Goldie. I’ve lived here all my life and I ain’t seen nothing like this.”
“Isn’t that old Mrs. Krokovitch?” I say with surprise, pointing to a gray-haired woman standing talking to someone else across the street.
“Oh my God, you’re right!” he says. “She hasn’t unlocked that front door of her apartment in ten years. Wow, this night is really something!”
I run back up to my apartment to find my roommates drifting in from their auditions or from Phil Black’s dance class. They are half giddy and half hysterical.
“Did you see the moon?” asks Anita.
“I know,” says Susan. “I’ve never seen it so big.”
“And how about the stars?” says Roberta. “It feels like I’ve never seen them before.”
We run around and light the candles as more and more friends arrive on our doorstep. “Okay, I guess the party’s at our house!” I laugh as I bring some glasses in from the kitchen.
“Well, you’re the only people we know who live in a three-story walk-up!” Eddie cries, holding up a bottle of scotch as he waltzes in.
We finish lighting the candles, relishing their flickering light. Someone strums on a guitar and another rolls a joint. My front door is wide open, and, suddenly, standing there are the two guys I met in the dry cleaner’s earlier this morning.
“Hi, Goldie! Sorry to crash this party,” they say in unison.
“Hi! Oh, thank God you’re okay! Come on in, this is great. I thought you might be stuck at the Empire State.”
“We didn’t get there yet,” one says. “And 888 Eighth Avenue was the only address we knew in the whole city!”
“Welcome!” I say, and happily fix them a drink.
Other friends and strangers arrive with bottles of liquor or tins of food. People empty their refrigerators, and they bring transistor radios so we can listen to some music. We create our very own nightclub—partying together by the golden glow of candlelight.
I stay up all night, chatting and laughing with my two new friends. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, we share joy and friendship, touching and laughing and telling our secrets. We have no judgment, no history. We are just three people, united in the moment and enjoying the freedom of it. They don’t push themselves on me, or try to take advantage. We have a closeness and an honesty that completely restores my faith in men.
At dawn, I eventually crash. I wake to find these two guys I have only just met sleeping on my pillow. My apartment is littered with people still making love or staring out the window, marveling at the tentative first light of morning. Reaching out, I switch off the table lamp, which tells me the power is back on. The blackout is over; the moment has passed. But this beautiful, magical experience, this perfect night, will forever mark my heart.
When we strip away the things that seem important and go back to the basics, we discover that all we really have is each other. I was a naïve out-of-towner who had been in New York less than a year. In that crazy period, everything had happened so quickly. I’d had some powerful, huge experiences, wins and losses, many of which had presented me with great personal dilemma. I had to get myself out of some tricky situations that I would never have even shared with my mom and dad.
I had left my rose-tinted family values behind and somehow come to be regarded as a strange sexual object by people who didn’t even know me. I had been leered at and groped almost daily. More than any childhood experience I’d had, even the young man kneeling on my bedroom floor in Takoma Park, the Al Capps and the subway jerks and the seedy bargoers of this city had almost succeeded in breaking my spirit, in making me lose my faith in men.
Then, just when I’d decided I’d had enough, I was going to quit New York and find a healthier path somewhere else, the blackout restored that trust. A sheet of black velvet fell over the moonlit city that night, and, as if by magic, all that was dirty and cheap vanished. This one night became, for me, the epitome of the flower-power, peace-and-love days of the sixties. No one slept. Everybody loved each other; strangers made friends with strangers, and we had the wildest, funniest, most romantic night.
There was no fear in the air, no robbery, no murder. New Yorker helped New Yorker. Volunteers assisted the police and fire service in rescuing those who were trapped, or sent coffee and blankets to the hundreds without food or heat. Even the people stuck in the elevators of the Empire State Building didn’t panic. They held hands in the darkness and sang.
That beautiful night of lovemaking and gentleness gave me a respite from the relentless onslaught of the worst, most predatory traits of man. It acted as an antidote and allowed me to lift my head again and decide to keep trying—both with my career and with men.
I have since come to learn a lot about men, about why they behave the way they do. Men had to protect their women and children when we were all out roaming the earth. They were the hunters. They became sexual animals that wanted multiple partners. I am so happy I was born a girl, because I have never had to struggle with that innate need to spread my seed or impregnate a mate.
Instead, I have learned over the years to feel a deep understanding for how difficult it is for men just to be male, to have this hormone raging through their blood like a drug. It makes it difficult to control their behavior. Just going out on the street can be hard for men because the sight of a girl in a short skirt, even if she has a bag over her head, ignites them physically. It goes directly to their sexual energy.
Men fight such impulses every day, especially in their prime years, always having to corral themselves because they have a family, a wife or responsibilities, because they have to be good boys, be part of society and hold down a job. We women can’t identify with the frustration that they feel at having to bottle that up. If we could have testosterone shot into us daily and experience what happens to our tempers, our sexual energy and our destructive forces, we would be horrified.
Most important, I no longer blame the male sex. I may not like it when they misbehave or are disrespectful to women; it doesn’t feel good, and, in fact, it hurts. But then I try to summon my higher self, the one that gets to observe, and look at the bigger picture. Only then can I see what happened and understand that when they say, “But I love you, honey, it didn’t mean anything,” the sad part is that for them, it didn’t.
The man who jerked off in front of me at the Peppermint Box probably went home to his wife and kids. Simil
arly, the photographer who groped me in the darkroom, or the two thugs on the subway. If I had acted differently, if I had responded to their advances, it wouldn’t have made any difference to them. They would merely have satisfied an urge, like scratching an itch, and—as sure as eggs are eggs—the itch would have come back sooner rather than later, with someone else.
What was so wonderful about the night of the blackout and its perfect timing in my life was that it taught me the beauty of a world where people’s defenses come down, where primeval urges are set aside and love and understanding prevail. We were all just human beings in the candlelight that night, trying to help each other out. I’d never felt more alive, more a part of everything. Everyone was just living in the moment. It was the most extraordinary revelation and a real awakening for me. Most of all, it allowed me to have hope again.
And with hope, I could pursue my dream.
postcard
Have you ever doubted the existence of God? I have, and I am sure most of you have, for it is a normal thought. But take the time to look around at some of our natural resources: the mountains, the rivers, the deserts, the oceans, the sunrises and sunsets.
All these things were created by God Himself, for man is not capable of making anything so beautiful. Yes, man can reproduce a mountain or a sunset on canvas. Man can make a lake, but never will he capture the true colors and feeling that God has created.
God made man just as beautifully as He constructed these geographical wonders. He has been able to preserve them just as He wished. Man is unable to change them, yet there are so many things man has altered against God’s wishes. How beautiful they must have been when they were first made; many have remained as beautiful. Sadly, man has ruined a great deal.
—Written at age nineteen, as I flew from New York to California for the first time
courage
It is not who we meet along life’s highway that matters; it is how we treat them.
“Okay, girls! Let’s roll!” yells my friend Sandy as we suck the last of our Orange Julius drinks through straws at Pete’s Hotdog stand in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. “Las Vegas, here we come!”