Last night I biked to Clinton Hill to visit the Alibi, the little dive bar with the backyard garden, over on DeKalb Street, off of Vanderbilt. It looks the same as the first time I went there, which was about ten years ago. What a totally great shithole.

I was forced to reminisce when I was there, which is such a self-indulgent thing to do. Certainly I think my little stories are charming, but that doesn't mean anyone else will. And as if last night weren't enough, I shall carry on today.

I visited the Alibi for the first time in the summer of '91, right before I left for England. I came to New York for a week before I left town and stayed with my brother part of the time and Kath the other half. Kath went to Pratt in Brooklyn for the first two years she was in New York so she knew of the bar, which is popular to this day with Pratt students. (Then she transferred to Parsons for a year, then finished in Parson's sister school in LA, OTIS. I know, I was impressed too.)

Kath was living with club boy Jack in some sublet in one of the then sketchy high rises on the Lower East Side. They had one bed which they shared, if and when they slept. They also had a closet full of latex and leather clothes, and weird wigs of all colors. We went through the closet together, giggling. Some of the trashier stuff (OK, it was all trashy) belonged to their friend Jen, who left clothes that her mafia-ensconced fiancee wouldn't approve of with Jack. (Jen was to later dump the fiancee much to her parents' relief. They promptly gave her the money they would have spent on a wedding so that she could buy an apartment on the Upper West Side.) I tried on a blonde wig. It didn't suit me. We had a drink. Then we dyed my hair pink.

Later we decided to go to the Alibi to meet Kath's friends, some of whom I had already met on various fucked-up visits to New York that had always ended up with everyone getting wasted at bars in the East Village like 7B, and someone having sex somewhere they shouldn't be having it. It was the first time I had met Bernie though.

I remember I was wearing this insanely low-cut pink flowered dress which matched the color of my hair perfectly. It was impossible not to look at my breasts when talking to me. The low-cut business was newfound to me, but I liked this attention I was getting. I was just happy to get any attention, I have to admit. I didn't recognize then that sometimes I was getting the wrong kind. In recent years I have learned to control and wield that power in a more appropriate fashion, or at least to take responsibility for it when it gets out of hand.

Anyway Bernie liked my breasts. A lot. We ended up in the bathroom at the same time and she cornered me, which wasn't a difficult thing to do since the bathroom is insanely small. I think she was smoking a joint.

"If I pay you, can I look at your breasts?" she said.

"Uh, sure. I guess."

And then she took a dollar bill, rolled it up into a thin tube, and then placed it inbetween my breasts. It stayed there, perfectly content. Bernie winked at me. I blushed. It was the first time a woman had flirted with me. To this day I cannot tell you how it made me feel, only that it was a very weird feeling. Now it's sort of commonplace to me, getting hit on by the ladies, though less so in recent years. But it doesn't faze me anymore, is what I'm saying. I guess I'm post-gay.

I think I walked around with that dollar bill in my breasts for quite a while that night.

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