The song Buffalo Stance was playing on the system.

I had not heard nor thought of it in at least twenty years. My ex-wife had worked with the singer and I had met her father.  But it was a case of a one hit wonder and now it did sound quite dated.

The beat, however, was infectious and no one was really in the place so of course, I just had to start dancing.  As it always was with the memory of a song, the words would just come back to you word by word as if you were following a bouncing ball or the subtitles on a screen maybe a karaoke bar machine they were buried in your memory as was the song itself and of course where you were when you first heard it if it was a love song or what the album cover looked like and later on, what the video was like but this song had the hook line jump start before I heard it because it was so catchy and as I heard it I realized that I did not like the second part of the hook line but since the first half was oh so good it did not matter:  “No money man, can win my love…(it’s) sweetness that I’m dreamin’ of!”

Come to think of it, as the song played on it hit me that even the sweetness part was not so great but still it was all worth it, the moves were getting more stimulating and invigorating so play it again:

“No money man, can win my love…his sweetness what I be dreaming up!” Then the title clause: “We always hang in a Buffalo Stance…I give you love baby not Romance…so don’t you get Fresh with me!”

So perhaps the producers were trying once again to start a new dance craze: The Buffalo Stance though she refers to a dance called ‘the dive’ as follows…”we do the dive every time we dance, I give you love baby not romance…” of course, I jump ahead in my head to 50 Cent’s “I’m into having sex, not making love…” so is this woman singing here saying love is real and everlasting and romance just like money?   You can’t buy her love, her friends are tough, a real crew, they always hang in animalistic ritual!  The thing is all of that was a pre existing condition but now, decades later a new part of the song emerged:

“Who’s looking good today?’’ “Who’s looking good in every way?”  What a great line that is…after all, you don’t hear lyrics like that now and who is in fact looking good today?  Well, just as the line came around and the euphoria got a major boost up, this young lady walks in through the wide entrance across the room as though she was being set off by a Film Director who said ‘okay, sweetie…who’s looking good…you are so GO!’ She was nearly strutting to the beat as though coordinated with me and yet she was clearly not aware of this – I was aware that she was approaching me quite directly – now!

She was about to speak to me, even though I was still dancing and trying not to reveal how much attention I had already given her.  But before she could say anything I saw her face I saw the color of her eyes and it hit me immediately at that moment that this image and the line “who’s looking good today” would be linked from now on.  I would never be able to hear this song again without thinking of her face even if we say nothing if we never meet or become friends or go out for dinner or make out on a subway this imprint was locked in and so, time resumed and she smiled and I smiled and still tried to ignore her:

“Are you an artist?” she’d asked.

The funny thing about the sense memory of music was that sometimes I might start to cry over the time I heard the song just recently.  One night I was at the Market Hotel during the Eliza Walton phase.  She was upstairs and I could not bring myself to leave even though I knew it was futile to remain.  I thought maybe when she came down, since she had to pass by, that I could maybe walk her home.  It was a very cold night during the dead of winter and it was already past one am so that the trains were running like shit.  It would take ninety minutes to get home and I had to be up early the next morning but then there was the promise of crashing on the couch upstairs just outside of Jenna’s room it was warm up there and it was the couch I had been sitting on when I first met Eliza when we were both so drunk that I started to run my hands all over her and she did not seem to mind something I was not sure actually happened or if I just made it up until months later when we discussed it while both sober.  I just wanted to crash out on the couch but I could not then I was too wired I was way too excited about being in the same vicinity as Eliza and it was Eliza and Matt who were busy sitting on it upstairs.  What exactly were they doing up there anyway, he wasn’t her boyfriend was he? No, her boyfriend was that guy with the glasses but he was on tour with some band so here she was two timing on him with Matt Sullivan and here I am the old guy, the awkward guy she won’t even remember meeting me and if she does she might just slap me around after all I had my hand on her pants and I did not even know her name that night. What the hell was I thinking? But I wasn’t thinking, I was killing time. I was avoiding being alone -that is what scared me the most I guess, well maybe I can just nod out here on the downstairs couch even though it is not big enough and it is cold down here but it is quiet and I’ll wake up when Eliza walks by to leave and then I’ll be prepared just as I am startled awake. I’ll practice ahead of time so I can say “Hey, Eliza…can I walk you home?’’  I don’t know, girls don’t like ‘hey’ so I’ll try “Hello Eliza…you remember me, the guy who is going to teach you to dance right…we can start right now with me walking you home…I think it is snowing…say, you know I think the snow is so romantic…do you believe in romance, god damn it Eliza I have had one long conversation with you and now I am ready to just give everything up and behave as though I am falling in love with you even though you have a boyfriend and you have another guy on the side and you may not give a shit and it doesn’t matter, because I can feel!”

Well, so…I am stuck in a ditch of indecisiveness when the rescue arrives in the form of Oscar LeGuinn IV and his best pal that Lebanese dude and they say ‘hey’ (okay, so ‘hey’ is okay with the dudes here at least) and they turn on a laptop and five six seconds later they are blasting out PET SOUNDS that’s right the album by the one and only fucking Beach Boys the album that we all fell in love to Bette Goldwert listening to the album we sang songs from standing outside Donna Levine’s terrace watching her on the couch with Stephen what’s his name who played second trombone the album that inspired the Beatles’ Rubber Soul the album that may be one of the most important Pop albums of all time and these twenty two year old guys start singing along and they know every word so that now every time I hear a song from it I remember being crazed by Eliza and by Becca and those few winter nights I slept there as the J train rattled by and I was cold and sniffling and had to take a shit but did not want to get up and use that bathroom and the lovely relief that I was not alone and that Eliza might walk by and wake me up or that in the morning, Becca might give me a scarf and a little kiss on the cheek before I left and that here I was forty fucking years out of high school and first love and first rejection and I had had children and I had had sex with more than sixty women and even a few men and here I was and emotionally nothing had fucking changed it was the same goddamned Beach Boys album and the same feelings and it was so fucking wonderful to feel this way and feel alive and feel lust and fantasize about licking pussy and just putting my hands on Eliza’s black silk pants and seeing her respond and her mouth opening and waiting for her to slap me and scream and watching Becca descend those dangerous stairs in her stockings and wondering when her legs would quit but they wouldn’t quit, they kept on coming and wondering if she would yell at me for drooling out loud while she walked by but no she would just smile warmly and it was all so good it was all so lovely at was then I wished that this would just last and that there would be no sleep and no next day and no need for me to deceive them into vacating the place.

Sure there was something about this place The Market Hotel from the first time I walked in and the night of that crazy party and then the night of the Karaoke throw down and the surrounding environs and the Taco Truck and the strange undercover cops who circulated around the J/M/Z subway station.

The tension caused by the constant sound of the train passing, making its sharp turn metal on metal the same damned train noise that passed by The Trophy Bar the same damned train noise that ran along Myrtle Avenue near Little Skips outside The Bossa Nova under the floor at The Old Silent Barn.

This was not the world of Morgan Avenue.  This was a world dominated by rats converted slums turning into rooming houses of marginally employed sweethearts.  Whereas Morgan was upscale, a former and present industrial wasteland with the potential of so many Soho style lofts, this here was a ghetto.

A ghetto where being from Connecticut or Rhode Island was something you had to keep secret.  Not one of the residents at The Market had a conventional job.  Very few of them woke up before noon.  The irony of all the nights I had crashed out was that I would wake up at seven in the morning only to find a few of the regulars just coming in from their respective night out.  Many a morning during this year I went into my business office on three hours of sleep with a fresh hangover quietly eyeing the legs of my first appointment as though she was one of the nymphs in my private chamber up at The Market.

I was playing out all kinds of unfinished business and the sleep-dep offered more open access to all of the realms of desire and past affairs I had had while I appeared to be a young man out for his first taste.  While the women of The Market had the wisdom to see me for what I was I am still not sure about Jane.

Every man who saw Eliza would generally become nuts over her, even if only for a moment.  First there was Alexis and the next night it was Samantha from Friends who just stood so close and put her arm around me but she was in control she was a pro she knew I was shaking she was just getting kicks and I saw this Steve guy hug her and kiss her and I asked her if that was her boyfriend and she said no so catty and then the next night I was already out buying Alexis dinner and taking her out to The Trophy Bar and there would be another another this one but nothing prepared me for the moment of Buffalo Stance:

“So…are you an artist!?”  “You didn’t answer” she pounded.

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