You Can't Go Home With Again

New York City, early '80s, that shining moment when Punk, Art, and Disco met Drag. I worked at the Pyramid Club, mixing sound.

In the "tech room" of the Pyramid I had sex with Peggy, a curvy, delicious singer-seamstress from Mississippi. In a chair. We also copulated standing, at the Palladium, just retooled as a mammoth dance club, so new it was easy to find an uncharted broom closet. Driving home in my '67 Volvo, my hand moved smoothly between the stick shift and her vulva.

Or: I'd walk out of the Pyramid at 4:30 a.m. slightly intoxicated, stop at a pay phone, and head on to 4th Street between B and C (supposedly Madonna's first East Village address), around the dealers in the hall, and up the stairs to a mattress on the floor. At 9 she'd leave for her storefront on St. Marks Place; I'd sleep till noon or 1 and let myself out. No questions asked. We both had other lovers.

She moved back down South, married, divorced, returned to New York. Back in the day she'd said that nobody ever touched her the way I had. One night she confessed breathily that she had been crazy for me, crazy. In 1989 she came home with me one more time, but things were different: Reaganism and safe sex had snuffed the shining moment and I had changed somehow—independently, hormonally. Peg didn't effect the change in me, but she did observe it. Suddenly I found myself making compilation tapes for her. Doodling Margaret, Peggy, Peg. Feeling desperate: Why hadn't she called "later," like she said? Didn't "later" mean the same day? We met the next week and I was flushed, wrecked, oozing dependency.

Peg, accordingly, vanished. As did my tolerance for the casual fuck. I went to Europe, came home, and started working days. Wherever you are, Peggy, thanks for the memories.