Chinese Food Delivery, 1991
I lived at 9 Cabrini for 8 or 9 months in 1991, scoring what seemed like a phenomenally cheap room in a 3-bedroom apartment. Paying only $240 a month for rent I was able to survive relatively handsomely on a part-time $10/hour job, but the doom of debt from student loans and other mistakes hovered, in their own space of forever, like a body ache.
I get nostalgic sometimes for that time in my life, which is not to say that I would want to return to it, or re-live it. The roaring sound of traffic coming off the George Washington Bridge was constant.
It has been 20 years since I lived at 9 Cabrini. Once in a while the phone number I had at this apartment pops into my mind. Other phone numbers and oddly precise bits of flotsam surface in the waves of memory. These waves may seem mercurial but they invariably rise from an immediate heritage which is sensible and sane, if only we can remember the paths.
It was a transitory time for me, and Washington Heights seemed like paradise after I’d lived for many months in the wretched Parc Lincoln on 75th Street in Manhattan.
The 2 men with whom I shared this apartment were the only roommates I have ever had as an adult. I do not remember either of their names, but one was a violinist and the other a trombonist who worked at Patelson’s Music Store.
It was a friend of the violinist who introduced me to the little world of chicanery that filled the performance resumés of young classical musicians. I have no memory of who this person was, but he told me that if I wanted, he’d be happy to be a reference for me, to verify that we had performed several concerts together at certain libraries, churches, and low-profile venues around the country.
Evidently this practice was routine, and musicians engaged in this sort of omertà as a sort of mutual support network. He explained that his resumé was filled with phony concerts that never occurred, and that the other performers and organizers who allegedly participated in those concerts occasionally received calls from legitimate concert venues and agents to verify that the concerts took place. All involved maintained the lies in the spirit of thickened thieves.
I never agreed to any of this. I never stuffed my resumés with phony information, but over time I encountered the practice in other ways. I responded to classified ads in the back pages of magazines, and to hand-written notices on music store bulletin boards. These inquiries sometimes led to murky worlds of strangely enterprising con artists for whom music and musicians were their targeted opportunity.
