The Eggertsville Inn, 1984

April 1984

I was here, at the corner of Eggert and Delta. The glass-enclosed perch of my disc jockey sound-booth stared at the back of Northtown Plaza sitting across Eggert Road. The rear of that plaza was mainly marked by delivery entrances to non-descript stores. Dumpters and  empty boxes thrown in heaps gathered near those doorways. That small sound-booth was within the left front facing of what should have been just a modest, neighborhood tavern. Yet, "The Eggerstville Inn", like the part-time disc jockey in that sound-booth, saw itself as much grander than its own reality. It was owned by a local music and band promoter who also owned a much larger, more popular night club in South Buffalo; a major venue for rock bands on their way up and on their way down. "The Eggertsville"; a small corner "gin-joint", tried its best to bring some of that magic into the Town of Tonawanda, and though always packed, it was obvious it was not the same. The bands under contract to the promoter hated having to play in a dive like this just to also get access to the larger club in the south. They were always reluctant and their attitude was felt by everyone in the joint. Also, there was the surrounding neighborhood of modest yet extremely well-kept homes dating back to the forties and fifties, owned by the original owners, mostly elderly who had grown sick and tired of the steady thrum of guitars and bass drums muffled loudly and carrying over the neighborhood in waves like high-tide flood waters each and every night, especially Friday and Saturday.

And in between each rock band set, it was my job to play records and change things up. My job was to get the young women on the dance floor while so many rock fans took a break after the band's set and headed for the bar...time to make money...drunk guys watched drunk girls dancing to "disco crap" as they throated shots of "Jack Daniels" and "Cuervo", lubing up for the next set of the band.

And so, I observed the circus playing before me as it was now my turn to orchestrate just exactly how it would proceed for the next half-hour or so. I would repeat my segment of entertainment four or five times each evening. This evening was crowded and the particular band playing that night had attracted a younger set of drunks, many of them in college at nearby U.B.. I was also a student there and this was my way of paying for my books and part of my tuition, standing in that glass enclosure, managing drunks by using music to get them on and off the dance floor and to the bar, keeping them occupied as the band also got drunk and ready to play again.

As a disc jockey, it is important to know when to get the crowd riled up and dancing...getting them thirsty for alcohol and sex...and then when to release them back to the bar, after the bartenders have cleaned it up and are now ready to feed them once again. So, after once again packing the dance floor, it was now time for me to give those few rocker guys, drunk enough to get on the dance floor, the chance to drag their girls back to the bar and intoxicate them even more.

Instantly, as I occupied myself thumbing through my record collection, sizing up where I shall take them for the next few songs, I felt her presence. She was silent and seemed to want to be invisible, and almost was. Yet I glanced, pretending not to, as I stood there, back to the crowd, facing the windows and the rain outside.

She was standing all alone next to my sound booth, the wood and glass enclosed box within which I stood, cigarette dangling from my mouth.

Moments before, she stepped up to my booth from the surrounding darkness of that smoke-filled bar, with a shot of Mezcal...clearly having discovered from the bartender how to get my attention. She was stunning and yet not. She smiled a sad smile as she placed the full shot glass on the half-door that separated the two of us, saying nothing. Her silence ensued in that loud bar. It was me that finally broke the awkward pause. I was forced to shout loudly over the funk music cranking from my turntables.

"Hi...thanks for the shot!"

As I reached for the glass, she gently touched my hand. Her fingers were cold and her polished black fingernails gave me goose bumps as they purposely caressed the back of my hand. She leaned toward me and beckoned my ear. She whispered loudly, yet tenderly, her breath smelling pleasantly of schnapps and cigarettes,

"I need you to play a song for me", she said with a coquettish yet raspy voice.

The drinking age in New York State in 1984 was eighteen-years-old. I knew the doormen were somewhat relaxed about enforcing it. She still had the beauty of a little girl in her maturing face.; I suspected she was in her last year of high school yet she spoke with the commanding tone and affect of a thirty-something bar fly. At once I was captivated by the contrast. I again looked into her eyes. They had a profound sadness and the look of an old soul. It was apparent that she cynically knew the coal black eyeliner would multiply her melancholy. She was sporting the look of a growing fashion in 1984, that of early "Madonna". Yet she put her own Gothic spin on that look; "Madonna" dressed as a widow; black lace, black lingerie. With that dark, sensuous look and her foreboding expression, she had the affect and old wisdom of a beaten down traveler who long ago realized her fait acompli. Yet, I felt a desperate hope emerge as she spoke. It was all of that and not the shot of tequila that convinced me to take her request.

She spoke the title of the song. I wasn't familiar with it. Up until then, I never played music without hearing it first, but her eyes hypnotically drew me in.

"Is it fast or slow?", I yelled.

She looked at me with an inquisitive snotty smile, and I shuddered at how beautiful she was even when insulting me.

"It's not fast!" She extorted, loudly, with a tinge of sarcasm and mock anger.

Suddenly, it was I who seemed the child. Here I was, at twenty four years old, two years into a drowning marriage, struggling to recover a college career put on hold just before the wedding, having had reality and adulthood viciously awaken me to life...hardened by it and the affair of my wife, working on two hours of sleep as a disc jockey living on the brink of alcoholism while desperately studying for exams between songs, and this teenage old-soul stopped me cold, reversing roles and showing me it was she who knew the world better than I...all with one look.

I dutifully found the album, purple, the the pretty girl painted on the cover, pulled the record from its jacket and instantly placed it on the second turntable. I pushed the headphones, which were always nestled behind my ear when not in use, over one ear as I queued the song. The fast funk song was just finishing so I spoke into the microphone as I faded one song out and this new song in,

"O.K., gonna give ya a chance to cool off, grab a drink, get a breather...by request..." (pausing instinctively for effect) “this is Duran Duran."

As I faded up to full volume, the haunting synthesizers at the beginning of the song filled the bar, then the beat of the song kicked in and somehow transported me to a place where this sad girl existed. Whether it was that shot of tequila putting me over the edge after all the other shots and the two pitchers of beer I had already emptied, or not; the music invaded my soul. It had me connecting my own hapless journey with that of this Gothic woman-child. I was beginning to get where she was, that dream-like melody connected me with her. Suddenly she knew it as well. We each stood there together, yet alone, a crowded wannabe night-club, marinating in the thoughts of the empty relationships in our lives; the long one's abandoned, replaced with desperate connections that ended when the morning sun rose. That is what this song was all about.

Heavy black mascara exaggerated the sadness in her eyes; it caused them to stand out from the pale skin of her beautiful face. Like a scene from film noir, the reflections of the nighttime rain, dripping in strings down the window from which she blankly stared, wore shadows on her face making her skin appear to melt. She looked outward and emotionless, at the sole streetlight shining brightly into the glass. As she stared, she mouthed each word while the song played,

Feel the breeze deep on the inside
Look you down into your well
If you can, you'll see the world in all his fire
Take a chance
Like all dreamers can't find another way
You don't have to dream it all, just live a day...

I was transfixed on her gorgeous teenage face. The words truly meant something to her as I watched a tear leave her eye and mingle into the trails of rain reflected from the window rolling down her cheek.

She continued to stare out the window, and as I watched, I reached for my glass of beer next to the empty shot glass on the door. Continuing to stare at the nighttime rain pelting the window, she blindly reached out and found my hand with her own pale white fingers and held it.

I let her trembling fingers rest on my hand as I reached with my other hand, desperate for my beer. I watched her, lost in the song and suddenly I felt very old. Any intimate fantasies I may have had of her instantly vanished and were replaced with a fatherly or brotherly empathy. I felt a love for her that was as deep as my own depression. I felt a connection with her and as I did, I felt my own eyes begin to moisten. I didn't know her story and she didn't know mine...yet we knew how we both felt. I found it almost unbearable that a girl this young and this beautiful should be intimately aware of this deeply haunting nature...a lost soul pretending to live in the very real adult world, having been discarded like the wet empty cardboard boxes in the back of that plaza across the street.

For many people who succumb to liquor, there is a brief moment that seems to be the point they reach for when getting drunk. Sadly, it helps to keep them coming back over and over...at least in my experience working in bars. Alcohol and the right music does something at one single instant, just before one goes over the edge of intoxication, and I was there...in that weird but somehow very intriguing, curious place.

Here were two young people, lost and lonely, held captive within the bowels of a cynical ship, left there by love lost or a love that never was. I thought, “How was it that I knew her story?”, as lukewarm beer flowed into my mouth chasing the remnants of tequila. I tilted the glass from my lips and looked again at her stunningly beautiful, profoundly sad face. I was sharing an intimacy by the mere touch of her fingers and the transfer of energy; an electricity from her fingertips upon my hand and it was as deep as any lovemaking I’ve ever experienced.

“That lyric, that one line in the song”, I thought, as I watched her lips touch them like a sweet kiss upon mine.

It felt like I was deep within her, yet it was she that had invaded my very soul. Our lost loves, the pain we hid, the pain we shared, intermingled as one. We, each of us, felt this moment of rapture and it was done with one verse of a song I never heard until that moment.

She mouthed the words to this song and that single verse would haunt me for the rest of my life. The rest of that night disappeared from my head and she vanished from my journey, a pale white ghost dressed and covered in black, sending me a message that made me realize, there is beauty in life, no matter how tragic. As it was, days afterward I came to realize so much of that moment was as much about my lost love and the pure magic of two lost souls finding comfort with a mere touch. Even sadness has its place.

Like most of our memories, places we've been, especially as we found a road to maturity, one can file moments like this along with a song within their soul and go back to it as if it just happened, even with all the wisdom accumulated over miles and miles of journeys. I can hear this song thirty years later and instantly regain my spot, standing in that sound booth, with a hand on mine and tears shared together; nothing ever said, no words spoken.