Mel

Some of this was posted previously but this is a good place for a refresher...

My relationship with Mel spanned a few decades longer than anyone else on the list... so this is a longish tale... with background...

Growing up with Mel, etc.

Our apartment house was one of a multitude of pre-war buildings that had been part of the construction boom that occurred in the early 1940s. Originally, it had been surrounded by a two foot deep row of hedges and had a long canopy which stretched from the courtyard to curbside, but by the time we moved in both of these were long gone. The hedgerow had been cemented over and the all that remained of the canopy were the metal rings on the sidewalk where the poles used to stand in support of it. The outside of the building was faced with the deep red bricks which were common to the period. The builder had apparently cut some costs in the construction since quite a few of the internal mechanisms, like the boiler and the elevator were having more than their fair share of breakdowns. But all in all, it was a pretty nice place to live. The hallways were floored with a polished granite-type surface. There was a fire door which separated the two ‘wings’ of each floor.

Our third floor apartment, adjacent to the incinerator chute, had a closet which shared a common wall with the chute and which we dubbed the ‘hot closet,’ since temperatures in this closet were always in the hundred degree range. As you entered the front door, you found yourself in a powder blue foyer which forked in two directions, one leading to the living room, and the other branching off towards the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom. In addition to the ‘hot’ closet, there were two other closets near the entry to the living room which were a his-and-hers arrangement for my folks. If you continued on through the living room, there was a second entrance to my parents’ bedroom through a set of French doors and a vestibule at the far end of the room which turned left into the bedroom shared my brother and myself, and turned right into the bathroom. The linen closet was straight ahead. With the exception of the living room, which was carpeted in a dark green, all the other rooms had a variety of linoleum floor coverings. All these rooms were fairly spacious by today’s standards. While far from luxurious, the furnishings were pretty comfortable.

A four-room flat, it was in the back corner of the building with windows which overlooked a long fifty foot wide courtyard that served as a common service area for three other buildings. In the center of the courtyard, surrounded by a cement sidewalk, was a little arboretum (actually an untended 20 by 30 foot stand of trees and hedges interspersed with numerous weeds). My grandfather also lived on the third floor but his apartment overlooked the avenue just up the hill from the store. It was a pretty convenient set-up for the family.

Now Mel lived in the same apartment row as I did but his bedroom was two floors above mine. We used to knock on the steam pipe and send messages back and forth. Eventually, we became technologically more advanced and used frozen juice cans. He would tie a string to a juice can, and lower it to my window and I would attach my can and bingo, we had a working intercom. This step forward into the scientific age was greatly appreciated by the old couple, Leo and Fay Rice, who lived on the fourth floor, between us, since it meant that they didn’t have to listen to the pipes clanging all day and night. Although Leon was quite hard of hearing, his bed was right next to the pipe and he had no trouble hearing our Morse coded messages. (Fortunately, he hadn’t been in the navy) The other four apartment dwellers in our row of pipes were also quite relieved when the primitive communications system was abandoned.

Leo, who owned the grocery store on the corner, moved to the suburbs after investing most of his money in Toyota stock, which cost next to nothing, on the first day of its issue. He told my father about this opportunity, but Dad couldn’t see any future in Japanese cars.

I met Mel, when we first moved to the building from the Bronx, in 1952. At first, our parents encouraged the friendship, since we were two of the three Jewish boys in the building. The third, Kenneth Weiner, was deaf and dumb and most of the kids were deathly afraid of him. Looking back, I guess we were all scared of his guttural utterings, which nobody could understand but which sounded pretty aggressive. At the age of 5, you enter into relationships without regard for intellectual capacity or good or evil. Such concepts don’t affect your behavior until later on and sometimes, they never do. Socially, we were acceptable to our parents and that’s what mattered above all else. However, ten years later, they discovered that we could cause far more trouble together than we ever had separately. I was basically a prisoner of the candy store. My father knew everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knew me. I couldn’t shoot a paper clip without him finding out. Mel, on the other hand, whose parents worked in the Manhattan all day, was free to do as he pleased. He could lie to his folks and they would think he was as truthful as George Washington. And lying, it would turn out, was the least of Mel’s transgressions. In the end, my relationship with Mel would have a very meaningful effect on my future. But who could know this at the age of five or even fifteen?

Mel was attending Long Island City High School while I was traveling each day to school in Manhattan. In the middle of our sophomore year, he was sneaking around in the basement of his school and discovered a box of keys in the janitor's office. Among these keys was a grandmaster key for Sargent locks... And as it turned out, these Sargent locks were the standard used thoughout the New York City School system. Armed with this key, Mel was able to penetrate various offices at his school and grab a whole bunch of other stuff that was used throughout the city school system. There were passes of all description... from elevator passes (which were used mainly for handicapped students and faculty) to guidance passes (which were sent by school monitor to classrooms as a summons from Deans and guidance counselors to appear in their offices forthwith).

My friend Chris B and I arranged a plan where he would show up at my classroom posing as a monitor, show the pass to my teacher who would then release me from class to answer the summons. Chris would then enter his class a little late, and after a few minutes I would perform the same charade for his teacher. This scheme led to a virulent class-cutting binge where we found ourselves doing a brisk business as the passes proved to be a valuable commodity. We had been rubber-stamping the passes with the signature of Dean McGowan, a tall, red-faced, rotund alcoholic who served as the Dean of Student Behavior. (Through connivery and by using duplicates of Mel’s invaluable grandmaster key, we had been able to steal one of Dean McGowan’s rubber stamps and have it duplicated.) Our success, however, soon turned to greed, as we found ourselves selling the passes to our friends and anyone else who would pay the fee. Ultimately, one of these customers had a problem which led to his appearance before Dean McGowan. He spilled the beans to the Dean who, in a fit of rage, went personally to my classroom only to discover from the teacher that a monitor had taken me to his office earlier. This confirmed the story he had been told leading to my immediate suspension and requiring my mother’s appearance for an audience with Dean McGowan. During this meeting, I was repeatedly asked to inform on my source for the illegal passes and key, but I just couldn’t bring myself to implicate Mel. After some well-deserved punishment, coupled with a multitude of promises of good behavior, I was reinstated and allowed to return to classes.

so... when i went off to college (CCNY up in Harlem), Mel didn't do the college thing and got a job in the garment center. He was a bright guy but not in the schooling kind of way... much like Bobby except he wasn't an original thinker... more of a slick mover and shaker type... and a few years went by as we kind of went off to do our own things. Next thing I know, it's 1971 and I'm out of school, working at the paper... and Mel has been out and on the garment scene for a few years. We get together one night and find out that we're both into the same stuff... errr... well not exactly the same stuff but we're both doing our share of all kinds of recreational drugs. Now my crowd is filled with nerdy college types... and Mel is running with a totally different crew... He turns me on to a totally awesome receptionist... It doesn't take long and I'm living with her... Meantime, he turns me on to Brandy and that sends me to Franklin Street...

And Brandy, well... although she was living with Plato (Kenny L), she matches me up with Donna N... and holy fuck... Donna was something else... Always wearing skintight, see-through body stockings... and with the body that you really wanted to see through... and full lips, long luscious blond hair, standing like 5'10"... and totally crazy... geez... she was a damned goddess and I hope someone asks me about her... The trip to Jamaica was worth telling... Is she on the list? I mean guys jaws would drop when she walked into view... It really wasn't fair that she had that effect on men... And, to add to the nuttiness, her father was a police chief in New Jersey...

Okay... back to Mel... so unfortunately, Mel got really heavy into nose candy and eventually ended up losing everything... He got married, moved to New Jersey and cleaned up his act... for a while... and then he fell back into the coke and lost it all... lost his job, lost his wife... and I think he did lose his life... I never heard from him again and his family wasn't looking for me to share the news... Bottom line, Mel launched me into a completely different scene with a whole other set of connections... And... at some point I'll explain the significance of 'other sets' in the subculture I was a part of...

Obviously, there was a lot more Mel but that will do for now...