Moonwalking Across The Brooklyn Bridge: Spring NYC 1983
Celebrating the Brooklyn Bridge Centenial and Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever
Traditional one-on-one dates were infrequent events in my single life. I felt most comfortable going out by myself during the early Eighties, and in this I was not alone: it seemed as though plenty of other young New Yorkers flew solo, sitting by themselves in movie theaters, or dining at a restaurant counter with a book or magazine. At night clubs, I usually arrived by myself, confident I’d run into friends and/or acquaintances; inside we’d stand around, have a beer or two and chat until the band started. Loud music precluded any chance of deep conversation.
The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial was hyped as a major event. The celebration fell on a Tuesday night, just before Memorial Day 1983. Everybody I knew was attending, in one configuration or another, yet rather than go with them or by myself, this night I elected to stay home. Dirty laundry sat in piles around my small studio, staring at me throughout an uninspired spaghetti dinner. My mood wavered between distracted and downright depressed. Impulsively, at the last minute, I decided that the mind-numbing jaunt to the laundromat could wait one more day. So I caught the L train over to Union Square, jumped on the RR train downtown, and emerged to find the normally deserted-at-night City Hall area packed with people. As courteously as possible, I elbowed and excused my way toward the East River.
South of the Brooklyn Bridge, the multi-lane FDR Drive was closed to traffic and open to spectators. I ventured out on the elevated highway and squeezed into the buzzing crowd. A flotilla idled in the water, comprised of many of the same boats that floated under the bridge every day: tugboats, yachts, fireboats, ferryboats, Coast Guard, Circle Lines. I couldn’t get close enough to see or hear the light-and-sound show projected on the stone columns and steel cables of the hundred-year-old bridge.
But the dramatic fireworks display was stunning, especially the grand finale: a sparkling waterfall of colored flame poured over the side of the bridge for endless minutes. Though my future in New York City felt iffy just then, the sense of being at least a tiny part of its history swept me away. I felt optimistic again, until I arrived back home.
My front door was double-locked, just as I left it. First wrong thing I noticed inside: the overhead light, which I never used, was switched on. Second thing I noticed: empty shelves on the room-divider. My stereo and television were gone. Record albums and paperback books formed tottering pyramids on the floor, alongside all my clothes, dirty and clean. The dresser drawers tilted out half-opened, and half-empty. A trail of muddy footprints leading to one of the big back windows, almost comically. And then I noticed the bars on the window guard: bent out, the padlock cut and gate forced open. Apparently, the burglar came and left through the window without much resistance. Only my pawn-shop manual typewriter was left in place. Maybe it wasn’t worth anything.
A call to the police proved to be useless. Two officers showed up an hour later, while I still tried to clean up without making a dent — the place looked even worse. I was dazed and confused, preoccupied, possibly in a mild state of shock. The patrolmen exhibited annoyance with the whole situation, saying I could report the stereo serial numbers but getting anything back was improbable. I knew the likely perpetrator was the my sketchy junkie neighbor, but I also knew I could never prove it and the cops wouldn’t or couldn’t do much about it and likely didn’t care. After I thanked them and shut the door, I heard their voices in the hall, talking about me.
“Geez, how do you live like that?”
It was humiliating, hearing that, in part because I’d never asked myself the same question until the break-in. I’d kept my head down and barreled forward. While the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial inspired me to stick it out in New York, the burglary spotlighted the need to improve my living situation.
In late May 1983, my younger brother John drove out from Cincinnati for a New York City sojourn at the conclusion of his junior year in college. We expanded his palate at one of the nearly interchangeable Indian restaurants on East 6th Street before digesting an indifferent musical bill of fare at CBGB. Later on, we finagled our way into Danceteria and aimlessly gawked at the decadent assembly. But the night we stayed in still sticks in both of our memories. Sitting on my rapidly fraying futon love seat and sipping cold bottles of Rolling Rock, we witnessed history in the form of Michael Jackson’s performance on the Motown 25 anniversary TV special.
“Those were old songs,” Michael said as his brothers left the stage. The Jackson 5 reunion medley was satisfying and sentimental, peaking when Michael slung an arm around estranged brother Jermaine during “I’ll Be There.” But Michael was ready to take control that night; watching the clip now you can see the quiet fire burning in his eyes, all the accumulated desire and ambition, before he starts singing and dancing.
“I like those songs a lot. But especially, I like the new songs.”
And then it begins: “Billie Jean” introduces the peak period of Michael’s boundary-crossing superstardom. This is his moment and it still mesmerizes, if you can suspend disbelief and submit to his magic spell. His appearance has been transformed from a few years previous but stops short of looking other-worldly or downright disturbing. Not yet. His skin tone is a shade lighter, his nose slimmer, his hair partially straightened and pulled back. A minute or two into the song, in the midst of astoundingly liquid music and dance moves, you notice the white glove on his left hand without wondering why he’s wearing it. The rhinestones on his black shirt sparkle like stars in the spotlights. When the song reaches its bridge and he glides backward into his gravity-free moonwalk, the studio audience erupts and time stops.
Born after Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, we were several years too young to fully appreciate the Beatles’ scream-inspiring television debut. But that night both John and I realized that we’d witnessed the Eighties equivalent. Even in the murky ambience of my Meatpacking District apartment, a shiny new pop era announced itself.
*
The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.
— Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
In Bellow’s semi-autobiographical last novel, this cautionary passage appears not long after the eponymous main character (modeled on the scholar Allan Bloom) and his buddy Chick (narrator and Bellow stand-in) have a random and entirely unlikely encounter with Michael Jackson and his entourage in a deluxe Parisian hotel. Who could be more extravagantly and tragically self-invented than the late superstar singer? Freakishly talented and fantastically troubled, Michael was then, and is now, precisely nobody’s idea of a role model or generational representative. Still, as someone who’s roughly the same age as Michael Jackson (and Prince and Madonna), I absorbed and adored his music over the years. He supplied the soundtrack to my adolescence and early adulthood. Michael’s smash-hit singles and blockbuster albums were omnipresent, part of the atmosphere. I didn’t literally follow in his footsteps — who could have besides Prince and Madonna? But I followed him, in more than one sense of the word, maybe more closely than I ever realized.
