Check Out Brief Excerpt From My Book "Love, Loss and Longing in the Age of Reagan"
Check it out! From Chapter 8:
From Chapter 8:
I was mesmerized by Chloe’s adventures but also a little jealous. My virginity was becoming a grievous burden and a source of shame. I wanted to get rid of it but how? I was not unattractive but I was timid when it came to my body and awkward with expressions of physicality. Outside of a peck during a game of spin the bottle when I was nine years old and an awkward smack on the lips during a bad date in high school, I had barely been kissed. I felt myself a walking embarrassment to myself, my peers, NYU and the sophisticated life I wanted to have and emulate. Would Anais Nin and Gloria Steinem be so mousy and maladroit? I don’t think so.
Drugs might not have helped me unfasten this invisible chastity belt squelching my erotic existence but I did see them as a way of gaining insight into life’s true secrets. Except for pot, which I adored but never purchased, always relying on the kindness of strangers and friends to ply me with it, I never really developed a passion for narcotics. But I didn’t refrain from using them to satisfy my curiosity or to keep me up if I had to cram all night for a final the next day.
Sometimes, it would backfire. Like one time, Chloe gave me a “caffeine pill,” when I told her I needed to stay up all night and finish an English history paper due the next afternoon. I took that “caffeine pill” alright—and then proceeded to clean and vacuum our dorm room—twice—before throwing on my mini gold lame dress and galloping off to Danceteria, a then popular club located nearby.
But I had always been curious about LSD. My rock heroes, the Beatles and the Who, had taken LSD and had spoken at length about its effects. I wasn’t interested in taking the drug on a regular basis; I just wanted to see what the big deal was with the drug and take it just once. Even if I would remain a virgin always (the thought palled), at least I could gain experience in other areas to make me the quasi-rounded woman of my dreams.
“Acid is great, Edie,” Peter said to me over dinner when I told him I was interested in taking it. “It’s truly like no other drug. It’s like a truth serum—the way it clarifies your feelings—about everything. We should take it together.”
Unfortunately, that never happened because Peter had always devised a string of barely plausible excuses for us not to do it together. We would plan to do it and yet again something would come up on Peter’s end to derail it.
Around this time, Chloe and I began going to the clubs on an almost nightly basis. Monday night it was Danceteria, Wednesday was the Pyramid, Friday was the Ritz and Saturday it was Danceteria again, (our favorite club) or another new hotspot. For me, those nights were bathed with a perfume of sweetness so airy and intoxicating I felt like I was floating in my own cloud. Pot and Quaaludes only deepened the pleasure. As the strobe lights poured over our bodies and everyone else in the club, limbs writhing, conjoined in a human tangle, I would look at Chloe and smile. I had never felt so alive. This was the reason why I came to New York. To feel like this. Always.
From Chapter 8:
I was mesmerized by Chloe’s adventures but also a little jealous. My virginity was becoming a grievous burden and a source of shame. I wanted to get rid of it but how? I was not unattractive but I was timid when it came to my body and awkward with expressions of physicality. Outside of a peck during a game of spin the bottle when I was nine years old and an awkward smack on the lips during a bad date in high school, I had barely been kissed. I felt myself a walking embarrassment to myself, my peers, NYU and the sophisticated life I wanted to have and emulate. Would Anais Nin and Gloria Steinem be so mousy and maladroit? I don’t think so.
Drugs might not have helped me unfasten this invisible chastity belt squelching my erotic existence but I did see them as a way of gaining insight into life’s true secrets. Except for pot, which I adored but never purchased, always relying on the kindness of strangers and friends to ply me with it, I never really developed a passion for narcotics. But I didn’t refrain from using them to satisfy my curiosity or to keep me up if I had to cram all night for a final the next day.
Sometimes, it would backfire. Like one time, Chloe gave me a “caffeine pill,” when I told her I needed to stay up all night and finish an English history paper due the next afternoon. I took that “caffeine pill” alright—and then proceeded to clean and vacuum our dorm room—twice—before throwing on my mini gold lame dress and galloping off to Danceteria, a then popular club located nearby.
But I had always been curious about LSD. My rock heroes, the Beatles and the Who, had taken LSD and had spoken at length about its effects. I wasn’t interested in taking the drug on a regular basis; I just wanted to see what the big deal was with the drug and take it just once. Even if I would remain a virgin always (the thought palled), at least I could gain experience in other areas to make me the quasi-rounded woman of my dreams.
“Acid is great, Edie,” Peter said to me over dinner when I told him I was interested in taking it. “It’s truly like no other drug. It’s like a truth serum—the way it clarifies your feelings—about everything. We should take it together.”
Unfortunately, that never happened because Peter had always devised a string of barely plausible excuses for us not to do it together. We would plan to do it and yet again something would come up on Peter’s end to derail it.
Around this time, Chloe and I began going to the clubs on an almost nightly basis. Monday night it was Danceteria, Wednesday was the Pyramid, Friday was the Ritz and Saturday it was Danceteria again, (our favorite club) or another new hotspot. For me, those nights were bathed with a perfume of sweetness so airy and intoxicating I felt like I was floating in my own cloud. Pot and Quaaludes only deepened the pleasure. As the strobe lights poured over our bodies and everyone else in the club, limbs writhing, conjoined in a human tangle, I would look at Chloe and smile. I had never felt so alive. This was the reason why I came to New York. To feel like this. Always.
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