When Trisha Turned Thirty

Trisha and I were born almost exactly one year apart, we're both Libra's. When she turned 30, she and the Boss where already living in Southern California in what I liked to refer to as "Club Trisha".

The first time I visited, the Boss opened the blinds on the back of the house with a flourish. There, along with special mood lighting, was their swimming pool, along with a custom built water fall, and built-in jacuzzi. The house was built for entertaining, and I like being entertained. It was perfect for me.

But I digress, this is about when Trisha turned 30 and we took the most amazing birthday trip, just she and me. We had agreed as teenagers that we would be together on our 30th birthdays no matter where we were in life. We kept that promise. Actually, it was more of an odyssey than a vacation.

When I first got there, we hung out at Club Trisha for a few days and chilled. Then, it was time to hit the road to Vegas. The Boss stayed home with the kids for the first time in his or their life, and we headed west on the 115 in a brand new Lexus sports car.

So, there we are, going 90 miles an hour in the middle of the desert, windows down, hair blowing, radio blaring some Cement Blond song that I can't remember. We must have been such a sight. Unfortunately, red sport cars are pulled over more than any other car on the road.

Our bliss scratched to a stop like a needle on a vinyl record, when Trisha glanced up into the rear view mirror, and saw with horror, the flashing of police lights. We both said "shit" simultaneously, and Trisha pulled off the highway. We sat in the car and waited for the Nevada State Trooper to walk, more like swagger, to the Lexus.

I must tell you, this guy was super hot. We watch him stroll up to the car in our side-view mirrors, black leather gloves, tight outfit. When he finally gets there, he leans into the driver side window, one arm up on the window frame, and the entire car fills with the smell of testosterone. Not some bad cologne, no cologne, just testosterone. He's smiles at Trisha, with beautiful teeth, and says "I've been chasing you two for ninety miles now." I can't remember if he wrote her a speeding ticket, or not, but I do remember him hitting on her so I'd prefer to believe he didn't write the ticket.

After telling the officer that "yes, she was married" and "no, she wasn't interested" we were off on our way. Trisha had booked a room for us at the Flamingo Hilton, and since that's where we always stayed, I just assumed that's where everybody stayed. That place, until the second part of our trip, was the fanciest hotel (and I love hotels) I ever stayed at.

I don't remember too much more about that leg of the birthday tour. If you've been to Vegas a lot, it all starts to run together. But, I do remember Trisha letting me drive the Lexus through the desert on the way home. I can't even come up with a metaphor for what that felt like.

We went back to Club Trisha, and hung around for a few days. Swam with the kids, cooked in the gourmet kitchen, oh my God, I'm so shallow! Is it bad that I loved her good fortune? It was just so different from anything either one of us had ever experienced.

Next on the "When Trisha Turned 30" west coast tour, was Northern California. Our friend Jimmy had been living there for several years and we decided we would go visit him. Once again, we stayed at The Hilton, (have I mentioned I love hotels?). This one was located right in the heart of downtown San Francisco.

When you first walked into the lobby, which can only be described as just big and fat, there were live flowers in ginormous arrangements like never I had seen before. I went to smell the flowers, they where some kind of Lilly, and the yellow Lilly dust stained my nose yellow. Trisha and Jimmy thought this was hilarious. Pooh Bear goes to the City.

Our room was on the 20,000 floor (I'm guesstimating), and had a balcony. When we opened the drapes, it was night time, and there was a full moon. You could see the silhouette of that famous insurance company building, with the full moon behind it. It was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.

Trisha decided we needed to test our mortality, and suggested we go sky diving. She's so existential sometimes. I, on the other hand, not so much. We agreed on a compromise, we would go hot air ballooning instead. At first I gave her a hard time about it, we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning and I hate that shit. Then I got back with the program, and Trisha made the arrangements.

What comes before the crack of dawn? The dark before the dawn, I suppose, and I know this because that's when we got up. We had to get from San Francisco to the Sonoma Valley by 5:30 and it was about an hours drive. Off into the darkness we drove, me whining the entire way.

In my usual way, I didn't ask many details beforehand. It turned out to be a 2 hour balloon ride over the Sonoma and Napa Valleys. Then, when you landed on the other side, there was a champagne brunch! Our basket consisted of Trisha and me, a couple of couple's, and what I remember as a lot of guys. One of these guys said to me "Hey, look down there, it's black deer!" It was really a cow, and I sounded like Jessica Simpson because I believed him and commented on how cute black deer were. Who the hell gets to do that? It was one of the best days of my life.

The next day, we walked from our hotel to Fishermans Wharf. We walked, and walked for blocks and blocks. Along the way, we stopped to have coffee at a sidewalk cafe and I saw a tattoo shop. I was just starting to date Ken, and knew that things were getting ready to change forever. So I got this tattoo, and, no, it wasn't for Ken.

It's on my right shoulder blade and is the pegasus from "Fantasia" and he looks like he is about to fly over my shoulder. It was a tribute to an old, most-favored boyfriend that I had loved in my twenties, who's ghost I was ready to put behind me. He always loved "Fantasia" and I'm a lover of tributes. I'm a sentimental fool.

When we finally got to Fishermans Wharf, Trisha and I bought matching bracelets. The next day, we flew back to LA, and from there, I flew back east. It was one hell of a time. Thanks Trish. xxxooo

Dhyanna

The first conversation I ever had with Dhyanna was in the bathroom of the bar I was working at. When I first went in, she was sitting cross-legged on the sink vanity, smoking what appeared to be a very large joint. As I waited for the next available stall, she handed me the joint as if we were in the middle of a conversation. Two things came out of that chance encounter: I made a new friend whom I would create much debauchery and havoc with for the next several years, and I learned that a really big joint is called a spliff (sp?).

Dhyanna, while all of 5 foot nothing and weighing in at less than a buck wet, was like a force of nature. If I close my eyes, I can still smell her, clove cigarettes and patchouli oil. Her hair was red and baby fine, and her eyes sparkled when she was pleased. She dressed in mostly dark clothing, and lots of layers. Sometimes, she looked like a bag lady, a really beautiful bag lady.

She didn't show it, but Dhyanna had had a difficult life. When she was a little girl, like maybe 8 or 9, her mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer, a particularly painful and ugly form of cancer. Her mother died roughly a year after first being diagnosed. A child losing their mother is as cruel as fate can be.

When Dhyanna was a teenager, she was diagnosed with the exact same kind of cancer that she had watched her mother die from. By then, the colostomy had been perfected and her life was spared. Still, she lived the rest of her life with a bag connected to her side, something which very few people knew about her.

Her response to all this was wild abandon, she lived on the edge, with everything she did a blur of colored flourish. If she was angry, she was known to break dishes. If she was happy, she was known to dance on the bar. When she partied, it was known to go on for days. When she broke up with a man, it was always a magnificent show. I was more than happy to go along for the ride.

As a rule, I have no use for people who seem to have made it through life unscathed. They are the least interesting of all. It's the souls that have been to hell and back that can teach you the most and take you out of your comfort zone. That's why she was such a great friend for me,
fear was always a huge theme in my life, and she would rip me from it, and make me dance on the bar with her. Dhyanna was the Pied Piper of mayhem.

When we first met, Dyhanna was living in the strange building on Main and Liberty that I mentioned in an earlier post, and I was back living with my mother. Her apartment was bohemian chic, and needless to say, I began spending most of my time there.

This is the neighborhood that coined the phrase "racial diversity". A lot of the residents were left over from a great Appalachian exodus, others arriving from an exodus from the south. It was urban living in it's truest form, and being the urban Jew that I am, I knew I had found my planet.

That first visit, I remember helping here peel contact paper off of her kitchen table. It was the perfect activity as far as I was concerned, because it was just like picking and I like to pick. (ewwww, I know). So, there we sat, peeling the table, chatting, smoking and drinking. Eventually, her boyfriend Jimmy came home and joined us. You have no idea how bonding neurotic behavior, like the love of picking, can be.

We would go to this strange little store across Main Street for beer. Everything in the store was behind chicken wire. You had to point to what you wanted and the clerk would have to get it off the shelf for you. What I remember the most about this Mom and Pop operation were all the hand written signs posted all over the store. Each had a message that was phonetically spelled, like "Bee good", "Dont Steele", and "Wate yur turn". You can't pay for that kind of cultural entertainment.

At the time, Main Street was occupied by low income families and punk rockers. Every friend I ever had that you would classify as "punk" were really just artists. Personally, I haven't changed my hair since the second grade. The whole atmosphere was actually more salon like (think Gertrude Stein or Dorothy Parker) than thrash like. It was like Paris in A Movable Feast, poor but rich.

The rent was incredibly low, and the apartments huge with character. It was oddly safe to live there because, against common perception, it's the wealthy neighborhoods that have crime, mostly because there is more to steal in suburbia. None of us had anything that wasn't already second hand. Good Will was our fashion mecca, the Salvation Army our Clossen's.

Eventually, Dhyanna moved away. She had a baby boy, and wanted to live near her sister somewhere in the Ozarks. In my head, I can see her sitting on a porch somewhere in the mountains, watching her herb garden grow.

The Two Laura's

Long before it's most recent regentrification, Over-the-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati is where most of my friends lived. It all started when my friend Dhyanna moved into an apartment building at the corner of Liberty and Main, which is there to this day.

I met Dhyanna when I was working the door at a now defunct bar called JR's in Clifton, checking ID's and taking money. My friend Kevin was the bartender/entertainment booker, and hired me on the weekends. Working there changed the face of my social life completely, it's where I first met Patrick as well. I was living on the corner of Jefferson and Nixon at the time, so I could drink on the job and walk home if I had to, which I almost never did.

The apartments on Liberty and Main had strange configurations, with what is known as a "Dutch split". This means the kitchen and bathroom were across a common hall from the living room and bedroom. That meant you had to leave your apartment, go into the public hall, and back into your apartment to get to the other side. (Why did the punk rocker cross the hall? Because he was safety pinned to the chicken who crossed it to get to the other side to use the bathroom).

The building, which was probably over a 100 years old even back then, was actually made up of two buildings connected by catwalks. Hidden behind the front gate was a court yard that both buildings shared.

Dhyanna lived on the third floor. Laura C. lived on the floor below, with Tamara living in the building across the catwalk with her boyfriend Bill. Our friend Jimmy lived next to Dyanna, and then their were these guys that lived somewhere in there as well. Most of them were artists and musicians, at the very least appreciators of these things. That's the role I fell into, and may have been considered by some to be a muse.

The first time I met Laura C. was while we were both at my friend Derricks. Derrick owned a small shop on Main Street that sold African American art, and it got broken into like five thousand times till he finally gave up. He lived in a courtyard apartment and had hung chinese lanterns all over.

We were sitting in the courtyard, in the summertime, drinking espresso from tiny little cups with little gold spoons. Not being the sophisticate at the time, I had no idea what a ton of espresso in little cups could do to you. Laura C. and I ended up sitting all night talking talking talking, smoking, smoking, smoking, talking, talking, talking, well, you get the idea.

Laura C. could do a lot of things really well. She knew all about music, and cooking, and world travel, and literature, and art. She was so brilliant that I got an instant girl crush on her. Maybe I should define a girl crush. A girl crush is not a sex thing, it's meeting someone that you just admire everything about, and I wanted to be just like her. Laura C. and I were way too busy chasing men to chase each other.

Laura C., along the way, introduced me to Laura B., who lived over on Court Street over a dry goods store front. Eventually, both Dhyanna and Laura C. moved next door to Laura B. on Court Street. They lived in these apartments that were huge and the rent was like forty dollars a month, no exaggeration. Instead of going into the front, where the stores were, you had to go to a back alley where the entry to the above apartments were.

Laura B. became one of my dearest friends. She is the most profoundly talented person I've ever personally known. Most of the really great pieces in my house are Laura B.'s creations. She was in the artist's union, and was a scenic artist, first for the Cincinnati Ballet, and then for the movie business. She always went to the best opening night parties, post production parties, just really great stuff that you wouldn't expect to find in Cincinnati. Whenever she didn't have a date, I got to go with. A post all in its own.

Laura B. and Laura C. have already come up in a few posts so I wanted to introduce them to you. Laura B. was with me when I met Carlos aka New York Boy, and spent that incredible night in Manhattan with me. Laura C. showed up in a post but with an alias.

During my married time, I lost track of both of them. I keep an eye out for them on Facebook and Myspace but can't find either of them. If you see them, could you tell them to call Paula? They'll know who I am.