“I arrived in Hell’s Kitchen with my turquoise vinyl trunk, my art school scholarship, and the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy sensurrounding my dreams.

Everybody’s talking at me
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echoes of my mind

I was eighteen, and ready for the ’70s. On my own.”

That was to be my opening paragraph. Now it’s tucked a bit further into the story. I lost count—nine drafts so far? Ten? All I know is that I now label it Latest Draft.

I wanted to move to NYC so badly in 1970 that when I saw Midnight Cowboy, I thought I could even live in the same kind of squatter’s squalor as Ratso Rizzo. Just how deep was the hue in those rose-colored glasses I had on? I suppose I was just making a point.

What propelled me out of my home environment is something I explore in my writing. At the same time I was planning my escape, I would archive all I was leaving behind, with my Instamatic camera and my innate sense that I would want to remember everything, eventually. That day has come.